ABSTRACT
As in Spanish America, the inquisition in the Philippines evolved through several stages, the number of phases depending upon the historian. Jose Toribio Medina, who published in 1899 the only existing monograph on the Philippine Inquisition, thought that the Islands experienced only episcopal and tribunal inquisitions. Richard E. Greenleaf, the acknowledged American historian of the Mexican Inquisition, identifies three stages in New Spain: a monastic or friar inquisition; an episcopal inquisition; and a tribunal inquisition. Civil/monastic inquisition in Manila, despite its stern handling of the Gibraleon and Avila cases, also demonstrated some flexibility. Two observations may be made of monastic and episcopal inquisitions in the Philippines. First, as in Latin America, civil government in the Islands shared jurisdiction with friar inquisitors. Second, rivalry and conflict over jurisdiction accompanied episcopal inquisition in the Philippines just as in Latin America. A review of inquisitorial cases in the Philippines reads very much like a survey of Latin American and Spanish procesos.
