The Omnimoda of Adrian VI (Zaragoza, 9 May 1522) and its extension by Paul III in 1535
The brief that chartered the missionary church of Spanish America. Adrian VI, writing from Zaragoza before he had reached Rome, let mendicant friars cross to the Indies, elect their own prelates there, and gave those prelates "omnimodam auctoritatem nostram in utroque foro" over friars and converted Indians wherever no bishop could be found within two days' journey — while handing the crown the power to fix how many friars went.
Why this wins its question: The Omnimoda is named constantly in histories of the American missions and quoted almost never; English pages that mention it give neither its incipit, its place of issue nor its operative clause, and several date it to Rome. This object quotes the Latin from a collection opened page by page: the "Exponi Nobis fecisti" opening, the excommunication protecting a friar's passage, the election of prelates for a triennium, the grant of the Minister General's own authority in both fora, the omnimoda clause with its condition that no bishop or official be findable within two days' journey, and the datum at Zaragoza on 9 May 1522 — a pope legislating for America from Aragon before he had seen Rome. It sets beside them the clause that lets the Emperor's council fix the number of missionaries, and Paul III's 1535 extension conditioned on the bishops' assent, so that the charter of the missionary church is on the record as a grant of extraordinary power that was dependent from the first day.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The document is read here from the Latin printed in the first volume of Francisco Javier Hernaez's Coleccion de Bulas, Breves y otros Documentos relativos a la Iglesia de America y Filipinas (Brussels, 1879), in the third part, "Privilegios de los regulares", under the heading "OMNIMODA DE ADRIANO", followed on the same volume by a "Texto castellano de la Omnimoda de Adriano VI". The collection is a nineteenth-century compilation, not the chancery original, and the evidence tier of this object follows the compilation; the volume refers the Latin to "Bullar. Ord. Praedicator, tom. 4, fol. 407, et apud Rodericum".
It is a brief to Charles V, and it answers a request the Emperor had made. It is addressed "Charissimo in Christo filio Nostro, Carolo Romanorum et Hispaniarum Regi Catholico" and opens "Exponi Nobis fecisti tuum flagrans desiderium ad augmentum Christianae Religionis conversionemque infidelium, illorum praesertim, qui, Christo duce, tuae ditioni sunt subjecti in partibus Indiarum" — the king had asked, instantly, that friars of the mendicant orders and especially of the Friars Minor of the Regular Observance be sent for the conversion and the due government of souls.
Its first grant is freedom of passage, protected by a censure. All friars of the mendicant orders, and especially of the Order of Minors of the Regular Observance, nominated by their prelates, who "divino spiritu ducti, ultro ac sponte voluerint ad partes Indiarum praefatarum, ac convertendorum in Fide praedictorum Indorum causa, se transferre libere et licite possint et valeant", provided they are sufficient in life and doctrine and acceptable to the Emperor or his Royal Council. No inferior superior may impede a friar so nominated, under pain of excommunication ipso facto incurrenda, even if he holds at that moment the office of confessor, preacher, lector, guardian, custos, minister, provincial or commissary general: "quibus non obstantibus transire possint et debeant".
In the same breath the number of missionaries is put in the hands of the crown. "Sed ne forte numerus Fratrum hujusmodi sit tantus, ut pariat confusionem, volumus, ut tua Regia Majestas, aut tuum Regale Consilium assignet et praefigat numerum Fratrum mittendorum." The Castilian text prints the same clause: "queremos que vuestra Cesarea Majestad o su Real Consejo senale y tase el numero de los Frailes, que han de ser enviados." A charter of missionary liberty and a royal quota on missionaries are the same sentence.
The friars are then authorised to govern themselves in the Indies. "Verum, ne praefati Fratres sint velut oves absque pastore", they may and must elect from among themselves two or three or more to preside over them in those lands, in the manner they or the greater part of them judge best; the elected hold that prelacy for a triennium or such greater or lesser time "prout in Hispania fieri consuevit", and all remain under the obedience of the Minister General and the General Chapter. Whatever is attempted in these matters without the pope's express mandate and assent is declared of no moment.
Distance is the stated reason for the central grant, and the grant is the Minister General's own power. Because the land of the Indies "valde distat a partibus, ubi Generalis Minister degere et incedere consuevit", and it would therefore be difficult to have recourse to him, the friars who are taken for the government of others in those lands are to have over the friars committed to them, "in utroque foro… omnem auctoritatem et facultatem, quam Generalis Minister habere dignoscitur" — with the Minister General retaining the power to limit and narrow that authority as he sees fit.
The clause the document is named after reaches past the friars to the people they served. The prelates of the friars, and others of their brethren to whom they commit it, are to have "omnimodam auctoritatem nostram in utroque foro" — over their own subjects, over other religious of any order deputed to the work, over "Indos ad Fidem Christi conversos", and over other Christians accompanying them — in those parts "in quibus nondum fuerint Episcopatus creati, vel si fuerint, tamen intra duarum dietarum spatium, ipsi vel officiales eorum inveniri minime possint". The authority is expressly extended to all episcopal acts that do not require episcopal orders, "donec per Sedem Apostolicam aliud fuerit ordinatum". The dependence of a whole ecclesiastical province on friars rather than on bishops, which shaped the first schools, the first hospitals and the first grammars of American languages, is written into that sentence and into its two-day radius.
The place and date are worth stating exactly, because they are usually given wrong or not at all. The datum reads "Datum Caesaraugustae, sub annulo Piscatoris, die 9 Maji 1522, suscepti a Nobis Apostolatus Officii, Pontificatus nostri anno primo" — issued at Zaragoza, not at Rome, on 9 May 1522, in the first year of a pontificate whose holder was still in Spain and had not yet entered the city. The brief also overrides earlier constitutions, "praesertim Sixti IV, incipiente: Etsi Dominici gregis, ac Bullae Coenae Domini".
Thirteen years later the grant was widened and, in the same act, made answerable to the bishops it had bypassed. Paul III's brief, which the collection summarises as "el breve de Paulo III Alias felicis", recites that "in dictis Indiarum partibus plurimae Domus dicti Ordinis fundatae, et una Provincia et una Custodia secundum dicti Ordinis Minorum de Observantia instituta existant", and extends Adrian's letters, with all their clauses, to the places "in quibus sunt Episcopatus erecti vel erigentur in futurum, si Episcoporum ad praemissa accedat assensus". It also orders friars sent by the Minister General or his Commissary General to stay in the province or custody assigned to them, and empowers the prelates to expel those found there without licence. It is dated "Romae, apud S. Petrum, sub annulo Piscatoris, die 15 Februarii 1535".
The compilation states where its text of that 1535 brief came from, and the note is the strongest provenance line on any of these pages: "(Authenticum Mexici apud Minoritas). Del Archivo de S. Francisco de Lima, Registro 26", adding that it is also found in "Bular. Dominic. Tom. 7. fol. 138". An authentic copy kept by the Franciscans of Mexico and a register of the Franciscan archive of Lima are the kind of witnesses a nineteenth-century editor could not have invented, and the reliability of this source is set with that in view — while remaining below what the original registers would carry, since none of them was opened here.
The cost of the arrangement is in its own wording rather than in a critic's. The faculties are granted only until the Apostolic See ordains otherwise; they operate precisely where no bishop or episcopal official can be reached; the 1535 extension makes them depend on the assent of bishops; and the number of men who could exercise them was set by the Emperor's council. From its charter onward the mendicant church in the Indies held quasi-episcopal power over converted Indians without ordinary episcopal oversight, and held it at the pleasure of two authorities that were both capable of withdrawing it. Every later conflict between friars, bishops and crown in Spanish America is a conflict over the terms set out in these two briefs.
What these pages do not contain is any record of how the power was used. They give the grant, its limits and its dates; they give no case of a friar judging a convert, no dispute with a bishop, no revocation. Statements about what the omnimoda meant in practice in Mexico or Peru would need other sources, and none is cited here for them.