Un discurso de Felipe III sobre el Patronato Regio de algunos Monasterios e Iglesias de Fundación medieval (Valladolid, 1604)

Abstract

This article claims to explain the position of the Spanish monarchy from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 17th, as mediating in the conflicts that face different bishops and abbots for the claimed control or usurpation of the Episcopal functions in the nullius abbeys. In 1604, King Philip III is in Valladolid, where he has restored the court in 1601 and he will maintain it until 1606. With this occasion, the monarch signs an extensive speech in which, by means of the collation of different royal and pontiffs' documents, the arguments are unraveling that confirm his royal sponsorship and that of his father, Philip II, on some monasteries and founding churches and endowment of the medieval kings, singularly on the abbey of Santa Maria the Royal of Burgohondo, in the province and land of the city of Avila, questioned from the times of the bishop Pedro Fernandez Temino (1581-1590) and of the abbot Melchor Perez de Arteaga. By virtue of his being considered king and boss of some monasteries, and in agreement to the dispositions of the different diplomas of the Roman pontiffs who are gathered, Philip III, the Pious, sees his authority legitimized and feels an obligation to the intervene as mediator in these conflicts of ecclesiastic jurisdiction, proceeding on occasion more as guarantor of the rights that some abbots have on the territories of his abbeys.