Territorializing Inquisition across the Pacific: the creation of a network of comisarios del Santo Oficio in the Philippine Islands (16th-18th centuries)

For the Inquisition of Mexico, the Philippine Islands naturally raised the question of what the best effective solution would be to insure the institutional representation of the tribunal over the distant archipelago. Separated from the seat of the tribunal by a vast Ocean and communicated only through the annual commercial route between Acapulco and Manila, the Philippines posed institutional challenges and difficulties to the desired procedural practices of the Holy Office. In the 17th century the Inquisition of Mexico tried to reinforce its presence in the archipelago by naming comisarios (representatives) in many of the islands by resorting to the several religious orders therein. This strategy revealed itself less straightforward than imagined as the tensions between the different orders impacted on the exercise and distribution of the comisarios’ networks. In this paper we aim to reconstruct the network of comisarios and analyse the difficulties felt by the tribunal in managing said network from afar.