Storia do Mogor 338.14.2

338.14.2

The reason of the Catholic Church for this rule is justifiable and evident. It does not wish that any delegate should hold himself out as such until he has first presented his Bulls in extenso. By this piece of sincerity it cuts short the ambition leading some men to force themselves on God's flock, not as pastors, but as robbers, entering otherwise than by the door. This has already happened in Portugal, as is related by Savedra of a legate who, entirely without authority, introduced himself into the kingdom, and, exercising a jurisdiction which he did not possess, set up a tribunal of the Inquisition. If experience can show us this in Europe, so near to Rome, what might not happen in Asia if legates were acknowledged without minute examination of their Bulls and the powers they have brought ! Neither your reverence nor the other friars, ecclesiastical persons, and secular priests could in any way obey without an explicit display of the Pontifical Bulls, such being the order of the Supreme Pontiff, Boniface, and in the 'Clementina':