Storia do Mogor 338.23.8

338.23.8

The reputation of Your Honour is so well recognised in these regions that the trouble you take to acquaint me therewith is superfluous, for there survive abundantly in this Portuguese nation's memory the honours with which your exertions were rewarded in the time of the Most Excellent Senhor, the Count of Albor [Alvora] . I am extremely pleased to receive your information and the documents you transmit, and I have had the greatest joy in reading your discreet narration. Yet the subject caused me great grief, being aware of the perturbation aroused in that Christian community by the intrigues of those who are soliciting its favours, and by the private interests which are trying to persuade it. I grieve equally over the small attention paid in the matter to the Canonical Law and the rights of the royal Patronage and of the Primate of the East. They thought that in the submission of the Bishop, who confesses his error, consisted the legalization of their rights, disregarding the fact that the Lord Bishop could do no prejudice to the Primatial rights, and much less to those of the King. [227] When persons act in a form that prejudices these, the Primate has the law on his side if he repels at once any such encroachment made on his suffragan and on the Primacy. I write to the Lord Bishop, and transmit to him a Pastoral, by which I forbid the Patriarch to interfere in this Diocese and this Primacy, or in the patronage rights of the King.