Creation and territorial delimitation of the Diocese of Mérida in Venezuela

Abstract

Abstract

By the eighteenth century, almost all of Latin America was united to the Spanish Crown and separated from itby an ocean that could be friendly or intensely dangerous also for the mail that weaved both official and personal relations between the Metropolis and its Colonies, whose Administrative political situations could not always be known with integrity by the Authorities of the Monarchy. In this general context, it is interesting to know who had the initiative in the foundation of the Diocese of Mérida de Maracaibo, as well as to be aware of the vicissitudes that accompanied its delimitation and its organization as an ecclesiastical circumscription that would later form part of the Captaincy General of Venezuela. Some important and interesting data, but not exhaustive,
we offer in the lines that follow below.

Keywords: Mérida, Barinas, Maracaibo, Caracas, Santafé, Pamplona, Fray Juan Ramos de Lora, Santiago
Hernández Milanés, Carlos III, Carlos IV, Council of the Indies, Governors, territorial delimitation.