Aside from its judicial functions, the principal attributes of the Cámara of Castile were ecclesiastical. As a government agency it had to procure for the observance of all the rulings of the Council of Trent, it exercised supervision over the settlement and administration of the estates of prelates, the retention of bulls and apostolic briefs, the occupation of ecclesiastical benefices, banishment, the extirpation of vice, the punishment of crimes, and over all questions imvolving the moral uplift of the religious orders. The cámara was empowered to enact such measures as would assist the provincials and prelates in the fulfillment of their ecclesiastical obligations, it exercised authority over all questions of the extension of the ecclesiastical influence, the occupation of new provinces by the orders, and the transfer to the secular church of districts formerly occupied by the missionary orders. In a word, the Cámara of Castile was the tribunal through which Spain exercised temporal jurisdiction over the church. This body constituted, in fact, the most important organ of the Council of Castile, and the relations of this section of the supreme tribunal to the audiencias of Spain formed the precedent for the relationship of the Cámara of the Council of the Indies to the colonial audiencias.
The latter tribunal for supervision over colonial affairs was in a sense an outgrowth of the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) which was originally entrusted with the administration of political as well as commercial affairs in the Indies, subordinate to the Council of Castile but the duties of this office were rapidly seen to be too extensive for this commercial tribunal. So in 1524 the Council of the Indies was created,[1] as the law of establishment
- ↑ Recopilación de leyes de los reinos de las Indias, lib. 2, tit. 2, leyes 1 to 4, 13 (that the laws of the Indies conform to those of Castile). Relative to the date of the establishment of the Council of the Indies there has been some conflict of opinion, and concerning this Bancroft (History of Central America, I. 280) has this to say in a note: "Prescott (Ferdinand and Isabella, III. 452) says, copying Robertson (History of America, II. 358) that the Council of the Indies was first established by Ferdinand in 1511. Helps (Spanish Conquest, II. 28), drawing a false inference drawn by Herrera, ii, ii (sic), xx, who makes the date 1517, goes on to describe a council for Indian affairs, dating its organization 1518, and of which Fonseca was president and Vega, Zapata, Peter Martyr and Padilla were members." Escriche, Diccionario, I. 578, says that this "had its beginning" in 1511.
