La iglesia de Granada entre Austrias y Borbones (1668-1719). Los episcopados de Diego Escolano, Francisco Rois, Alonso Bernardo de los Ríos y Martín de Ascargorta

Abstract

This research deals with the episcopate of Granada in the last third of the 17th century and the first twenty years of the 18th. Specifically, we deal with the pontificates of Diego Escolano y Ledesma (1668-1672), Francisco de Rois y Mendoza (1673-1677), Alonso Bernardo de los Ríos y Guzmán (1677-1692) and Martín de Ascargorta y Ladrón de Guevara (1693-1719), all of them supporters of a process of episcopal reaffirmation. We approach these four prelates both personally and professionally. After analyzing some aspects of their private sphere in order to discover their psychology and personality, the investigation focuses on issues directly related to the exercise of the episcopal ministry. In this way we approach the spiritual and economic administration of the archdiocese. It is important to discover the spiritual conception and the measures adopted by the different prelates to ensure the correct pastoral service and the preservation of the moral order. But it is in the economic field where we find the most significant problems because the episcopate refused to accept its position of submission to royal power. Nothing illustrates this situation better than the controversy over the nature and property of the tithes of Granada, which became a structural problem that, in one way or another, appeared in all the economic disagreements between the royal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions. In addition, we study the frictions between the archbishops and some ecclesiastical and civil institutions of Granada. We can appreciate in these conflicts the interests of the episcopate (among which stands out the objective of strengthening the episcopal authority) and, of course, its defense strategies, which sometimes were not exempt from personal interests. Finally, the seriousness of the charges against Ascargorta and his government group during the War of the Spanish Succession requires to analyze deeply this important episode of his pontificate, which has hardly been studied. The denouncers got Philip V to order the banishment of the provisor, Cristóbal Damasio, and the auxiliary bishop, Tomás José de Montes, abbot of Sacromonte, in 1712. This resolution was a severe blow to the ecclesiastical curia that affected the archbishop’s prestige in the Philo-Bourbon circles.