Capellanías and obras pías: the mortgage credit and pious funds of the Indies, and the crown's rules over them

A capellanía was an endowment whose capital sat as a censo on somebody else's farm, paying a rent to a chaplain — in substance a mortgage book, and multiplied across Spanish America it made the Church its lender. The printed law shows the crown regulating it: royal judges, not censures, against lay debtors; bishops ordered in 1776 off the rents of vacant chaplaincies; a five per cent ceiling in 1786; the alcabala charged to churches from 1770.