The Apostolic Tribunal: Conflicts of Jurisdiction and Limits of Royal Authority in the Spanish Empire, 1560–1600

This paper examines the jurisdictional conflict between the Council of Military Orders and other religious courts in the Spanish Empire over the right to prosecute knights of the three Spanish military orders. For decades, the Council of Military Orders claimed supreme jurisdiction over its knights and engaged in legal battles with other religious jurisdictions to defend its members. The struggle lasted for decades and made the Knights legally untouchable by other institutions. In the late sixteenth century, King Philip II was forced to intervene in the conflict by founding the Apostolic Tribunal. This institution was made up of magistrates from the Council of Military Orders and other religious institutions to jointly judge military knights. Employing unstudied documents from the archive of the military orders, this paper explores the myriad conflicts that led the monarch to create this council. I argue that the creation of this institution reflects the limits of royal authority in the Spanish Empire and the ineffectiveness of imperial institutions, as the general interest was often subordinated to corporate rights and individual ambitions.