Introduction
The close relationship that existed between the Church and the Spanish monarchy in conquest and colonization of America is well known. In 1493, the objective of the Crown was clear, when Columbus in his second voyage took priests to instruct the Indians, by express recommendation of the Catholic kings, the same motivation appears in the bulls by which Pope Alexander VI granted exclusive possession of the new discovered lands and to discover the Crown of Castile, ordering him to send priests for the "propagation of the Catholic faith and good customs".
Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries the Crown, thanks to the Royal Patronage, exercised a powerful control over the financial, institutional and judicial organization of the Church in America.
In the 18th century these prerogatives of the monarch increased even more by virtue of the application of the royalist doctrine. This granted the king of Spain the right to perform the function of vicar general of God in the American Church, at the expense of papal authority.
