GOVEKNMENT OE INDIA
DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY
CENTRAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL
LIBRARY
Class
Call No. 22USQ9StLk
e/pf.
D.G.A 79.
THE JESUITS IN
THE PHILIPPINES
1581-1768
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DIEGO LUIS DE SANYITORES
Portrait by an unknown artist, in the Cathedral of Burgos
The Jesuits in
the Philippines
1581-1768
by H. de la Costa, S.J.
I96 I
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge — Massachusetts
© Copyright 1961 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
CEN ,'RAL ABCH.-r?IOGl®A£
LIBRARY, NEW DELHI.
Ace. No 1/4
Date. 3.L.7.I.. • • • •• • •••»
Call
Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, London
Publication of this book has been aided by a grant
from the Ford Foundation
Designed by Marcia Lambrecht Tate
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-10036
Made and printed in Great Britain by
William Clowes and Sons Ltd, London and Beccles
To My Father and Mother
PREFACE
The materials for this history were gathered over a period of several decades.
The work was begun by the present archivist of Georgetown University,
Father W. C. Repetti, who devoted his spare time to historical research
while acting as seismologist of the Manila Observatory in the 1930*5.
Failing eyesight compelled him to abandon the project after the war, and
he passed on his collection of microfilmed documents to me. A grant from
the New York Province of the Society of Jesus enabled me to spend several
months in Europe in 1951, which I employed in gathering additional
material in Roman and Spanish archives.
Other assignments interrupted the work upon my return to the Philip-
pines. In 1955 the Ateneo de Manila, of whose teaching staff I am a
member, granted me leave of absence to undertake the actual writing of the
history. A grant from the Philippine Vice-Province of the Society of Jesus
permitted my doing this at Georgetown University, close to the great
repository of the Library of Congress. I finished the first draft of the work
at Fordham University in 1956. I wish to record my gratitude to all these
institutions, and I hope I may be forgiven if I do not add to a work already
lengthy by mentioning by name individuals connected with them who
have been especially kind and helpful to me.
The present volume takes the history of the Society of Jesus in the
Philippines from the arrival of the first Jesuits in 1581 to the expulsion
of the Order from the islands in 1768. It is therefore complete in itself.
A second volume, now in preparation, will resume the narrative from the
return of the Jesuits to the Philippines in 1859 and continue it to the
present.
H. de la Costa, S.J.
Ateneo de Manila
15 September 1959
Vll
X
BOOK THREE The Livery of Christ
The Province , 1 6j J*— 2768
18. Recoil and Advance
433
19. The Long Haul
458
20. Thunder and Lightning
482
21. Crossroads
513
22. Doors Opening
53°
23. A Door is Closed
552
24. The King’s Good Servants
582
Appendixes
599
Sources and References
629
Notes
635
Index
675
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
frontispiece
Diego Luis de Sanvitores. Portrait by an unknown artist, in the
Cathedral of Burgos. (Photograph by courtesy of the Rev.
Pastor Arraioz, O.F.M. Cap.)
following page 8z
I Street plan of Manila, 1671, by Ignacio Munoz, O.P. (Original,
in color, in the Archives of the Indies, Seville; reproduced by
Pastells in his edition of Colin's Labor evangelica)
II Landscape with figures. A panel from Murillo Velarde's Map a
hydrogrdfica , 1734. (Original engraving in the Library of Congress,
Washington^
following page 1 14
III Map of Magindanau, from Forrest's Voyage, 1779
IV Sangleys. A panel from Murillo Velarde's Mapa hydrogrdfica , 1734.
(Original engraving in the Library of Congress, Washington)
following page zy/f
V A caracoa, from Forrest's Voyage , 1779
VI Ormoc in 1847. Water color in Ricardo A. Olmedo's Keener dos de
Filipinas . (Manuscript in the Library of Congress, Washington)
VII Water festival in Butuan, 1847. Water color in Ricardo A.
Olmedo's Recuerdos de Filipinas
following page 306
VIII The Philippines and the Moluccas, from The Universal Dictionary
of Trade, London, 1751-1755
IX Cavite. A panel from Murillo Velarde's Mapa hydrogrdfica , 1734.
(Original engraving in the Library of Congress, Washington)
Illustrations
xii
following page 466
X Zamboanga. A panel from Murillo Velarde's Mapa hydrogrdfica , 1734 *
(Original engraving in the Library of Congress, Washington)
XI Christian Filipinos. A panel from Murillo Velarde's Mapa hydro -
grdfica , 1734. (Original engraving in the Library of Congress,
Washington)
XII The College of Cebu. Water color in Ricardo A. Olmedo's
Recuerdos de Filipinas . After the expulsion of the Jesuits, the
college was transformed into a seminary
following page 498
XIII Manila in 1734. A panel from Murillo Velarde's Mapa hydro -
grdfica . (Original engraving in the Library of Congress, Washing-
ton)
XIV The killing of Alejandro Lopez and Juan Montiel, from Matthias
Tanner, Societas lesu usque ad sanguinis prof usionern militans (Prague,
1675)
XV Diego Luis de Sanvitores, from Francisco Garcia, Istoria della
conversione alia nostra Santa Fede delVlsole Mariam (Naples, 1686)
MAPS
I Outline map of the Philippines, showing the principal islands
and Spanish settlements in the sixteenth century 2
II Manila and environs, showing principal suburbs and tidal
inlets ( esteros ) of the Pasig River. The broken lines indicate
the course of the city w^all built later. (From Repetti, The
Society of Jesus in the Philippines , Vol. I) 16
III The Tagalog region, showing towms mentioned in the narra-
tive 108
IV The Eastern Visayas, showing principal Jesuit mission
stations 1 47
V The Jesuit Compound in the Walled City 193
VI Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago 280
VII The Western Visayas, showing principal Jesuit mission
stations 432
Xlll
TABLES
1* Jesuit missions in 1600 187
2. Jesuit novices in the Philippines, 1604-1638 238
3. Number and distribution of Jesuits in the Philippines, 1597-
1651 242
4. Number of Jesuits in various mission residences, 1610-1651 243
5. Parish and mission residences of the Philippine province in
1656 434
6. The population of Bohol : a sampling from the Catalogus Chris -
tianorum of 1659 435
7. Distribution of personnel of the Philippine province, 1 659—
1696 438
8. Candidates admitted to the noviceship and novices admitted to
first vows in the Philippine province during five six-year
periods, 1659-1696 510
9. Number of members of the Philippine province in the eight-
eenth century 553
10. Jesuits and students in the College of San Jose, 1601-1768 571
BOOK ONE
Foundations
The Mission and Vice-Province , 1381-1603
u
Map I. Outline map of the Philippines, showing the principal islands and
Spanish settlements in the sixteenth century.
Chapter One
THE FIRST MISSION
In 1540 Pope Paul III granted the approval of the Holy See to a new
religious order organized by a Basque gentleman named Inigo de Loyola.
Inigo, or Ignatius, as he later preferred to call himself, abandoned a
promising military career at the age of thirty in order to devote himself
exclusively to the sendee of God* While studying for the priesthood in the
University of Paris, he gathered about him a number of like-minded young
men, and in 1534 they vowed themselves to a life of perpetual poverty and
chastity. They also took a third vow of going to the Holy Land after the
completion of their studies and there devoting themselves to prayer, good
works, and the preaching of the Gospel. The outbreak of war between
Venice and the Turks, however, made this project impossible; instead,
they went to Rome and placed themselves at the disposal of the Holy See.
The pope gladly availed himself of their services ; and not the pope alone,
for, as Ignatius wrote to a friend, they began to be “ greatly importuned
by this and that prelate to work for God our Lord in their territories/'
The prospect of their being separated from one another by their various
commissions caused them to consider more closely the nature of their
union. They had begun to call themselves, as Ignatius wished, la Companta
de Jesus , the Company or Society of Jesus ; but what kind of a society was it
to be ? To settle this question they held a series of meetings in the spring
of 1539 anc ^ embodied the result of their deliberations in a formula or
charter which they submitted to the pope for approval. The first article
of this charter is a declaration of the objectives to the pursuit of which they
wished to dedicate themselves :
Let him who would fight for God under the banner of the Cross and serve the
Lord alone and His Vicar on earth in our Society, which we desire to be dis-
tinguished by the name of Jesus, bear in mind that, after a solemn vow of per-
petual chastity, he is part of a community founded primarily for the task of
advancing souls in Christian life and doctrine, and of propagating the faith by
the ministry of the word, by spiritual exercises, by works of charity, and,
expressly, by the instruction of children and unlettered persons in Christian
principles. First and foremost, he is to have God always before his eyes, and then
the constitutions of this his order which are, as it were, a way to God, striving
with all his might towards the attainment of this end which God has proposed
to him, according to the measure of each one's grace and the grade of his vocation. 1
3
4
The Jesuits in the Philippines
The constitutions referred to in the article were subsequently drafted by
Ignatius himself, whom his companions elected, much against his will,
their superior or general. To the substantial religious vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience Ignatius added a fourth vow of special obedience
to the pope, “by which the companions are to be so bound that they must
immediately, without any shuffling or excuse, undertake whatsoever His
Holiness commands appertaining to the progress of souls and the propa-
gation of the faith, whether he sends us to the Turks, or to the New
World, or to the Lutherans, or to others whomsoever, infidels or Catho-
lics/' 2
The members of the Society who add this vow to the other three belong
to the grade of professed, but all members alike are bound by its spirit.
Besides the professed, Ignatius instituted three other grades of member-
ship: coadjutors spiritual and temporal, scholastics, and novices. Novices
are those undergoing probation and training prior to taking the religious
vows. At the end of two years they pronounce what are technically known
as simple but perpetual vows. If they are aspirants for the priesthood they
begin, as scholastics, the course of studies which will prepare them for the
sacred ministry. After the completion of these studies, ordination to the
priesthood, and a third year of probation, scholastics take their final vows
either as professed or as spiritual coadjutors. The vows of the spiritual
coadjutors are not what the canon law calls “solemn/' as are those of the
professed, but they are equally binding and perpetual. The temporal
coadjutors or lay brothers are those who, by attending to the domestic
offices and other temporal needs of the community, enable the other
members to give their full time and effort to the apostolate. On occasion,
they engage in the apostolate themselves by teaching school and instructing
catechumens. These differences of grade were intended by Ignatius to be
differences of function rather than privilege. All are equally members of
the same Society, living a common life as regards food, lodging, apparel,
and recreation, and subject to the same rules.
Barely a year after the Society had been canonically instituted, Francis
Xavier, the first and greatest of Jesuit missionaries, was on his way to India.
Before his death at the gates of China in 1552 he had founded mission
centers along the far-flung line of Portuguese trading posts from Goa to the
Moluccas and obtained a foothold in Japan. Other Jesuit missionaries had
gone to Abyssinia and the Congo, and still others to Brazil, where they
achieved such success that Ignatius made the mission a separate province
of the Society in 1553. When he died three years later the Society which
he founded had over 1,5°° members laboring not only to revitalize Chris-
tianity in Europe but to extend its frontiers in the Far East and the New
World.
It was not, however, until the generalate of St. Francis Borgia (1565-
The First Mission
5
1572) that Jesuit missions were established in Spanish America. The
mission of Florida was opened in 1566, that of Peru in 1 568, and that of
Mexico in 1572. The Florida mission had to be abandoned in 1572, but
the following year a new mission field, even more distant and in some ways
more difficult, began to open for the far-wandering Jesuits. Magellan,
seeking a westward route to the Spice Islands for the Spanish Crown, had
stumbled upon another cluster of islands north of the Moluccas, and there,
becoming embroiled in a local war, met his death (1521). Four decades
later, in 1565, a group of conquist adores from Mexico led by Miguel Lopez
de Legazpi succeeded in establishing a permanent colony in the archipelago.
Several names had at various times been applied to these islands, but the
name that prevailed was that given to them by Ruy Lopez de Villalobos
to honor Philip II: las Islas Filipinos — the Philippine Islands.
The Augustinians who accompanied Legazpi labored so valiantly and
well at the conversion of the inhabitants that in a few years they had more
Christians and catechumens than they could attend to by themselves. This
was reported to Philip II by LegazpLs successor, Governor Guido de
Lavezaris, who urged that more missionaries be sent out, not only Augus-
tinians but of other religious orders also, and especially Jesuits, whose work
in India he had personally observed and liked. 3
Philip II referred the request to the viceroy of Mexico, who endorsed it
to Pedro Sanchez, the Jesuit provincial. Sanchez took the matter up with
the provincial congregation of 1 5 77. 4 The congregation recommended that
the procurator whom they were sending to Rome collect as much infor-
mation as he could about the Philippines, especially from the Augustinians,
and lay the matter before the general, Everard Mercurian. Mercurian
agreed to send two priests and two brothers to the Philippines, not to open
a permanent mission, but “to be of assistance to the Spaniards there, and
after familiarizing themselves with conditions in that region, send back a
report . 99 The men for this task could be chosen from the large group of
missionaries which was sent in 1579 to strengthen the Mexican province. 5
That same year Philip II decided that the evangelization of the Philip-
pines was sufficiently advanced to warrant the erection of an episcopal see
at Manila, the capital of the colony. Fray Domingo de Salazar, a Dominican
of considerable experience in the Mexican missions, was nominated for the
post and found acceptable by Rome. Before leaving Madrid for his
diocese he requested royal permission to bring some Jesuits with him, and
was presumably told that they would be provided him at Mexico. 6
The four men designated for this first Jesuit mission to the Philippines
were Antonio Sedeno and Alonso Sanchez, priests, Gaspar Suarez de
Toledo, a scholastic and Nicolas Gallardo, a lay brother. Little is known
of Brother Gallardo save the fact that he was born at Valladolid and had
come to Mexico in 1580. The scholastic, Gaspar Suarez, enjoys a certain
6
The Jesuits in the Philippines
amount of reflected glory in virtue of his being a younger brother of the
noted theologian, Francisco Suarez. Aside from that, he seems to have had
a generous share both of his brother's intelligence and piety ; this made it
all the harder for his companions to bear when, shortly after their setting
out on their voyage across the Pacific, he was stricken with a burning fever
and, nine days later, died. 7
Astrain, the historian of the Spanish provinces of the Society 7 of Jesus,
remarks that there were many capable men in the group of missionaries
sent to Mexico in 1579, but Alonso Sanchez “ stood head and shoulders
above them all by reason of his talent, and also by reason of his peculiar
personality/' 8 Born of sound peasant stock at Mondejar in Castile, he was
sent for his schooling to the university town of Alcala de Henares, where
he enrolled in the college conducted by the Jesuits. During his four years
as a student there he acquired something of a reputation as an athlete and
a singer of popular ballads, which certainly suggests that he was equipped,
if nothing else, with a healthy pair of lungs and a serviceable pair of legs.
All the more puzzling, then, that when he applied for admission to the
Society, he was put olF on the grounds that the Jesuit vocation entailed a
great deal of wandering about on foot, and he did not appear to be strong
enough to do much walking! Young Sanchez resolved to make the Jesuits
eat their words ; which may possibly be what those wily pedagogues really
wanted him to do. He trudged off on a long, footsore pilgrimage to Sara-
gossa, where Our Lady watched over Spain from her ancient pillar, and
then to her other shrine at Guadalupe, after which he returned to Alcala in
triumph. The Jesuits, suitably impressed, opened their doors to him. On
20 June 1565, being twenty years of age, Sanchez began his noviceship.
He completed his theological studies at Alcala with great distinction,
and after his ordination to the priesthood in 1571 he was placed at the
head of the college of Navalcarnero in the archdiocese of Toledo. The
young rector promptly fell afoul of the administrator of the archdiocese by
laying claim to the parish church, and his superiors were compelled, for
the sake of peace, to remove him from his post and transfer him to Cara-
vaca, where he taught grammar for five years. It was at Caravaca, by his
own account, that he began to lengthen his hours of prayer and to with-
draw from the common life of his brethren to such a degree that he became
known as ‘'medio Cartujo ,, — almost a Carthusian. 9
His being sent as a missionary to Mexico in 1 579 failed to draw him out
of his shell. Instead of throwing himself into the active work of the
apostolate, as was expected of him and for which he was eminently fitted,
he shut himself up in his room for long bouts of prayer and penance. Not
only that, but he used his great powers of persuasion to convince other
members of the community, and even the provincial himself, Pedro
Sanchez, that his was the true undiluted spirit of the Society 7 ; acquiring
The First Mission
7
such an ascendancy over them that they too began to imitate his seclusion
to the detriment of their duties.
It was highly providential that before Sanchez could transform the
College of Mexico into a Carthusian monastery a man generously endowed
with common sense, Father Juan de la Plaza, arrived with full powers from
the general to make a visitation of the province and regulate its affairs.
Plaza was to say afterward that nothing gave him more trouble as Visitor
than persuading Sanchez and his imitators of the error of their ways. He
found it necessary to give a series of conferences to the community and to
explain in great detail that while the purely contemplative life was in itself
most pleasing to God, it was not that to which Jesuits were called. Their
vocation was to a mixed life, a life of action as well as contemplation, in
which prayer, to use a phrase of NadaFs, “ reached out to the external
work. M 10 It was by living this life in its fullness that God intended the
members of the Society to attain perfection, and even the highest degree
of perfection.
Sanchez was ordered to abandon his retirement and occupy himself with
preaching and hearing confessions. He seems to have obeyed with good
grace, for Plaza appointed him rector of the college of San Geronimo at
Puebla; it was there that the mandate reached him to go to the Philippines.
Before his departure, in order to allay any fears that Plaza, who was now
provincial, might have of his returning to the eremitical life as soon as he
had placed an ocean between them, Sanchez presented him with a signed
promise that he would continue to exercise the ordinary ministries of the
Society under pain of being repudiated as no true son of hers. 11
Sedeno, the superior of the group, was a veteran missionary of forty-six.
Like St. Ignatius he followed in his youth the profession of arms. He
sojourned for a time in England, when Mary Tudor was queen, as a page
to the Duke of Feria. Only with difficulty was the duke persuaded to
release him in order that he might enter the Society of Jesus. Admitted at
Loreto in 1558, he made his studies at Padua and was subsequently
appointed minister of the German College in Rome — that is, assistant to
the rector of this important Jesuit institution. Here he came under the
personal observation of St. Francis Borgia, who had shortly before been
elected general. St. Francis saw 7 in Sedeno the makings of a missionary and
in 1567 sent him to Lisbon w 7 ith orders to join the expedition being fitted
out to reinforce the Portuguese stations in the Far East. When Sedeno
reached Seville, however, he learned that the Portuguese fleet had already
sailed. He wrote back to Rome for instructions and was told to choose
between the missions of Peru and Florida. He chose Florida; and on 13
March 1568 set sail with a group of Jesuits headed by Juan Bautista de
Segura, who w 7 ere being taken to that inhospitable coast by its governor,
Pedro Menendez de Aviles.
8
The Jesuits in the Philippines
In spite of the missionaries* repeated attempts to make friends, the
Indians would have nothing whatever to do with them, and Segura was
forced to take them all to Havana for a period of rest and the opportunity
of a more fruitful ministry among the Negroes there. In 1570 they
returned to Florida, and, while Segura with six companions struck deep
into the interior in the hope of finding tribes that had not yet learned to
hate the white man, Sedeno remained with another priest and two lay
brothers to water the dry stick of the coastal mission. Some months later
the Spanish troops stationed at St. Augustine, the fortified settlement
founded by Menendez, were struck by the plague; and it was while
Sedeno was giving them what care he could that news came of the martyr-
dom of Segura and his companions, betrayed by their Indian guide and
tomahawked somewhere between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers.
Soon after that Sedeno contracted his patients* disease and had to be taken
by Menendez to Havana. He recovered, but the hardships and privations
he had endured left him with a chronic asthma which was to trouble him
the rest of his life.
Meanwhile, St. Francis Borgia had decided that the Florida mission was
too barren of results and too much of a drain on precious manpower to be
maintained any further. In 1 572, Sedeno was instructed to close it and
proceed to Mexico City, where he was to prepare the way for his brethren
who were being sent at the urgent and repeated request of the citizens.
Thus, Sedeno was the first Jesuit to enter Mexico; and it was while he was
acting rector of the college there that Plaza informed him that he was once
again to be a pioneer, as superior of the first Philippine mission. 12
Plaza*s instructions were that they should, as soon as they arrived in the
Philippines, apply themselves to learning the language of the people, “in
order to help them save their souls as far as they can according to our usual
methods,** that is, by preaching, hearing confessions, instructing cate-
chumens, and giving popular missions. However, they were not to take
permanent charge of any parishes or mission stations. Let them by all
means minister to the Spaniards also, whenever they found the oppor-
tunity; but above all they should from the very beginning work among
the natives of the country with special affection and familiarity, in order
that those who may be sent from here to join them may find it an estab-
lished custom and thus more easily apply themselves to it.** 13
Since the mission had been requested by the government, Sedeno and
his companions traveled at the king s expense. The royal treasury officials
allowed them 1,500 pesos with which to provide themselves not only with
clothing, books, and other equipment but also with food and drink for the
journey. In January 1581 the little band took the road that dipped down
from Mexico City to the little seaport of Acapulco, where the galleon
San Martin, 4 00 tons, Captain Luis de Sahagosa, waited to take them
The First Mission
9
across the Pacific, On 29 March the San Martin weighed anchor and stood
out to sea, carrying besides her complement of ninety-six officers and men
a little over a hundred passengers and a
ment of 153,376 silver pesos. 14
Aside from the illness and death of Gaspar Suarez and several other
passengers, the voyage was uneventful. They suffered somewhat from the
heat as they dropped slowly down to the region of the trades, but as soon
as they reached X 2 degrees north latitude they struck a cool, steady, follow-
ing wind that swept them across a sea so calm it was like sailing on a river.
This was the portion of its broad bosom where the Pacific Ocean earned
its name, and won from grateful mariners the even more poetic appellation
of mar it damas , the Ladies’ Sea. It was to the eastbound galleons that the
great gulf was inclined to bare its teeth.
The halcyon weather gave the Jesuits ample opportunities to get acquain-
ted with their fellow passengers, the most important of whom was of
course Bishop Salazar. The Bishop was accompanied by his Dominican
secretary, Fray Cristobal de Salvatierra, Canon (afterward Archbishop)
Diego Vasquez Mercado, and an entourage consisting of twenty-four
clerics and laymen. A large group of eighteen Augustinians was headed by
Fray Juan Pimentel, and a smaller group of six Franciscans by Fray Antonio
de Villanueva, Five married men with their familes and thirty-one unat-
tached males completed the passenger list. 15 Sanchez made a very favor-
able impression on Bishop Salazar, especially after a sermon he preached
to the passengers. We have Sanchez’s word for it that even before the
voyage was over the Bishop had taken him as his confidential adviser, con-
sulting him on the quality and quantity of his prayer, his penances, his
diet and apparel, the conduct of his household, and the discharge of his
duties as bishop. 16
After a brief stop at Guam for fresh water and provisions they resumed
their westward course and made their first Philippine landfall early in July.
The galleons of the Manila-Acapulco line ordinarily entered or left the
Philippines through San Bernardino Strait, between the southern tip of
Luzon Island and the northern tip of Samar. Once inside this emhocadero 1
the Manila-bound galleon threaded its way northwestward through the
archipelago to Manila Bay on the western side of Luzon. This year, how-
ever, the San Martin had made a late start and arrived well into the season
of the southeast winds or vendahales . Unable to make headway, she put into
a sheltered harbor just inside the embocadero, in the province of Ibalon
(now Sorsogon). After eighteen days of waiting for the wind to change
quarter, Bishop Salazar decided to complete the journey overland. The
Jesuits readily fell in with this plan, which afforded them an oppor-
tunity to see something of the country. Their route ran along the length of
the Camarines peninsula, across the southern tip of the Sierra Madre
subsidy for the Philippine govern-
I o
The Jesuits in the Philippines
mountains, and down to the Lake of Bai. Once they reached the lake they
could in reasonable comfort go by boat right up to Manila, since the lake
waters empty into Manila Bay through the Pasig River, which flows past
the city. But getting to the lake was much less comfortable, for, since there
were neither mounts nor roads, they had to do it mode apostolico , that is to
say, on foot. Moreover, it was now the rainy season, and so flooded fields
and swollen fords compelled them to travel modo apostolico in an added
Petrine sense; if not, like trusting Peter, by walking on the water, at least
by wading through it up to the waistline, like Peter of little faith.
However, the hardships of the journey were much lightened by the
exquisite hospitality of the Franciscans, for their whole route lay across
Franciscan territory. The Franciscans had responded more promptly than
the Jesuits to Lavezaris' call for help ; they came in 1 577 and chose for their
portion of the Lord's vineyard Camarines and the country around the Lake
of Bai. Thus Bishop Salazar and his companions were able to proceed by
easy stages from one Franciscan mission to another until, two months later,
on 17 September 1581, they made their entry into Manila considerably
bedraggled but otherwise sound of wind and limb. Nor did the charity of
the Franciscans end here, as far as the Jesuits were concerned; nothing
would do but that they should take up their abode in the Franciscan con-
vent until they could find lodgings of their own.
The governor of the colony, Don Gonzalo Ronquillo de Penalosa, wel-
comed them heartily and at once arranged for a house to be built for them
at government expense. He also provided for their maintenance by granting
to each one an annual stipend of one hundred pesos and one hundred
janegas of rice. This was the usual subsistence allowance which every
missionary in the Indies received from the royal government. The site
chosen for the house was a lot two hundred paces square donated by the
contador or comptroller of the colony, Andres Cauchela. It was located in
the suburb of Lagyo, about a mile south of the city and one hundred paces
from the beach. This would place it roughly where Plaza Militar is now,
between the present districts of Malate and Ermita. 17
After staying with the Franciscans for about three months, Sedeno and
his companions decided not to impose any further on their hosts, and, since
the new residence was not yet ready for occupancy, they set up house-
keeping for themselves in a small bamboo hut nearby. Their domestic
arrangements were of the simplest. The chest where they kept their books
served also as a dining table. For breakfast, lunch, and supper they had
boiled rice and fish. Vi/hen it rained and the roof leaked, they covered their
books and papers with a mat and hoped for the best. 18
Manila at this time gave no indication of that opulence which in a few
decades the profits of the galleon trade would bring it. It stood on a tongue
of land between the Pasig River and the bay, a cluster of perhaps a hundred
The First Mission
ii
wooden houses roofed with palm-leaf thatch. Legazpi, who founded it —
on Saint Pudentiana*s Day, 19 May 1571 — probably chose it because it
was easily defended, with the river on the north, the sea on the west, low
marshy ground on the east, and only the south side needing to be fortified.
It was not however a very comfortable or healthy place to live in. Being
half surrounded by water, it was hot and humid in the dry season, regu-
larly flooded in the wet, and infested at all times by mosquitoes that bred
in their millions in the steaming marsh. A disgruntled governor would take
one look at it and find no words to describe it but— “ Manila stands on a
little piece of dry ground. Outside of it is a beach the width of an arquebus
shot. The rest is salt water/* 19 He might at least have added that this out-
wardly unimpressive settlement was as much a city as Toledo was, with a
royal charter that conferred on it the armorial bearings of Leon and Cas-
tile, and the resounding title of the Very Noble and Ever Loyal City of
Manila.
Some three or four hundred Spaniards composed the population of the
city. Of these eighty were householders or vecinos , with full citizenship
rights. They elected the city corporation ( cabildo ), which consisted of two
mayors (alcaldes ordinarios ), a chief constable (alguacil mayor ) and a variable
number of aldermen (regidores). About fifty of the citizens had Spanish
wives ; the other thirty were married to native women. There were fifteen
widows, the relicts of those who had fallen in the conquest of the country,
and eight or ten marriageable Spanish girls. Thirty or so were priests or
religious ; the rest soldiers, who, since they had no barracks of their own,
and indeed received no regular pay from the government, were quartered
in the houses of the citizens. 20
The city walls and the citadel had not yet been built, but the streets had
been laid out pretty much as they are today, running straight and at
right angles to each other. The town square ( pla^a mayor) was in the north-
west quarter. On its south side Bishop Salazar found his “cathedral/* a
long low shed with roof and walls of nipa (palm-leaf thatch) and not even a
sacristy for the priest to vest in. 21 The city hall on the east side and the
casas reales or government house on the north, where the governor of the
colony resided and held court, were probably not much more elaborate.
The Spaniards were not, of course, the only people in the city. Each
citizen maintained, besides the soldiers quartered with him, a numerous
household of native servants and slaves. The incumbent governor, Ron-
quillo, had assigned the Chinese their own quarter or pari an across the
river, in what is today the district of Binondo; but many Chinese mer-
chants and artisans still had their shops within the city. On market days
the people of the surrounding villages brought their wares to the plaza, or
joined the Chinese peddlers of cloth, comfits, and trinkets in hawking their
fruit and poultry about the streets.
12
The Jesuits in the Philippines
Moving through the jostling, chattering throng of the plaza, poking
about in the dim, strangely odorous Chinese shops, pricing and sampling
everything, Sedeno and Sanchez were amazed at the cheapness and variety
of the goods offered for sale* Chickens, for instance, were four rials ( reales )
the dozen. There were eight rials to the Spanish dollar (the silver peso,
or piece of eight), so that four rials would be the numerical equivalent of
fifty cents. A fanega (two and a half bushels) of rice cost a rial. Rice was
the bread of the country, but anyone who wanted wheat flour could get it
from the Chinese at very reasonable prices. Enough cloth for a cassock and
a cloak, and that more durable than the product of Spanish looms, could
be had for thirty rials; fifteen yards of linen cloth for two or three. The
people of the country distilled a brandy from the juice of the coconut tree
to which Sedeno paid the supreme compliment of saying it tasted better
than that of Spain; a cask of it sold for twenty-five rials . 22
Near Manila were several native towns and villages which as the city
expanded became its suburbs. On the north bank of the river was Tondo;
on the south bank, Dilao ; farther south, along a number of tidal inlets or
esteros of the river, Maalat (hispanicized into Malate) and Lagyo. The people
called themselves Tagalogs, which in their language meant river men. This
was appropriate, for their settlements were strung all the way up the Pasig
and around the Lake of Bai from which it flowed. They were Malays,
brown-skinned, and lighter of build and shorter of stature than the
average European. They had migrated in their clans from the Malay
peninsula and Indonesia, island-hopping in their sailing vessels called
harangays . They settled at the river mouths and spread up the river valleys,
and as they did so they drove a much older population to the hills, small
black men who might have come when a land bridge still connected the
islands with the continent of Asia, for they had no knowledge or memory
of seafaring. The Spaniards called them negritos, but to the Tagalogs they
were Itas, the people of the hills.
The Tagalogs, having beached their barangays, retained their clan organi-
zation, each clan settling down by itself apart from the others, so that the
name “barangay” came to be applied to the kinship group and its village.
Each barangay, consisting of several families acknowledging a common
origin, was ruled by a patriarchal head or datu , who led its people in war
and settled their disputes according to the traditions handed down from
their ancestors. Not all in the clan village had the same social status. There
were those who were the equals of the datu in all respects save authority;
these were the wellborn ( maharlikd ), bound to their lord by kinship and
personal fealty, owing him aid in war and counsel in peace, but in all else
free, possessing land and chattels of their own. There were the timaua , who
did not have the noble blood of the marhalika but were, like them, free.
The rest were alipin, less than free. Some were serfs, aliping namamahay
The First Mission
x 3
(literally, housekeeping dependents), owning house and personal property,
but tilling the land of the datu or the wellborn for a share of the crop, and
bound to the soil. Others, aliping sagigilid (household dependents), were
chattel slaves, captured in war or reduced to bondage according to Malay
custom for failing to pay a debt.
Slavery was heritable and divisible. A debt slave's descendants remained
slaves until the debt, with its accumulated interest, was paid in full. The
child of a free man and a slave was half slave, half free ; if there were more
than one child, they were alternately free and slave. In general, the Taga-
logs were monogamous, and freeborn women had the same property rights
as men. However, the wealthy might take concubines, and in the coastal
villages commercial contacts with the Moslem south had brought polygamy
along with more developed forms of social and political organization. 23
The estuary of the Pasig was a regular port of call for Chinese junks as
well as Brunei traders. They sought gold, beeswax, and dyewoods for their
silk and porcelain, gongs and guns; and, under the stimulus of this
exchange, which involved ideas as well as merchandise, the clans of the
region merged into larger communities ruled by rajas who levied tribute,
collected customs duties, built strongholds defended by artillery, and
held court. When the Spaniards came Tondo was ruled by a raja whose
personal name has not been preserved, because he was known simply
as the Old Raja, Raja Matanda; his nephew, Raja Soliman, was lord
of Maynila, the Place of the Water Lilies, which Legazpi appropriated
and transformed into the Spanish city of Manila and the capital of the
Philippines.
The Spaniards, having conquered the country, merely superimposed their
rule on this social structure, making no direct effort to change it, at least
in the beginning. They tried as far as possible to maintain the rajas and
datus in their position of privilege, exempting them and their descendants
from tribute and appointing them petty" governors of towns ( gobernador -
eillosj and village headmen ( cahegas de barangay ). However, the conquered
territory was divided into encomiendas or areas of jurisdiction, and each
area, comprising several villages with the surrounding country, was
commended" by the Crown to a conquistador or colonist, who thus
became its encomendero . It was the encomendero's duty to maintain law and
order within his jurisdiction, protect the people from their enemies,
come to their aid in their necessities, and provide them with the oppor-
tunity to learn the Christian faith. In exchange for these sendees he had the
right to levy tribute and statute labor, subject to government regulation.
Certain encomiendas tvere not bestowed on private individuals but
retained by the crown in order to provide funds for the expenses of the
central government. Thus, in the 1580's, the area within five leagues
(thirteen miles) of Manila was divided into four private encomiendas with
14 The Jesuits in the Philippines
a total population of 3,500 and one Crown encomienda with a population
of 4 ,ooo. 24
The first contacts of the Jesuits with their Tagalog neighbors seem to
have been highly satisfactory on both sides. Lagyo was a fishing village, and
Sedeno in one of his first reports to Rome tells how at dusk the fishermen ,
coming up the beach with their catch, would invariably drop by to leave
some for the fathers. 25 In the beginning, they could only communicate by
signs and a few words of broken Spanish, but many of the Tagalogs in and
around Manila were already baptized or were catechumens, so that they
knew enough about religious to realize that these were men set apart for
the service of God and their fellow men. What struck Sanchez most was
their cheerfulness and their intelligence. “They are of a happy disposition / ’
he writes, “candid, loyal, simple and sociable. They love to speak our
language, even if they can only manage a few words. They have a lively wit,
and easily learn Christian doctrine and how to read and write in our
alphabet; most of them read and write in their own.” 26
Sanchez probably got this impression of a high degree of literacy among
the Tagalogs because of the proximity of Malate. In the days before the
coming of the Spaniards, Malate was where the marhalika of Maynila had
their country seats, their orchards, and their pleasances. When Maynila
was taken away from them, it was here that they removed. For this reason,
says San Agustin, writing toward the end of the seventeenth century,
“there remain even now strong traces of their ancient nobility, and they
are a people highly cultured and urbane. The men work at various trades
in Manila or hold public office in their own and neighboring towns ; the
women are so skilled in embroidery as in no respect to yield to those of
Flanders ; with this they earn their living, for they are not much given to
agriculture.” 27 Sedeno and Sanchez, on their way to the city or coming
home, must often have encountered them on the road; the men in their
short tight-fitting jackets of blue or black or crimson, wide-aproned breech-
cloths, and swords hilted with horn or ivory; the women, dressed in
Chinese silks or filmy fiber textiles of their own weaving, stepping
demurely under parasols held by slaves, gold armlets flashing in the sun
and copper anklets tinkling as they walked.
Sedeno soon after his arrival set himself to learn Tagalog, following
Plaza s instructions. In his first fervor he ventured the opinion that
although the vocabulary w r as copious, the structure of the language was
simple enough and should give no trouble. 2 * Clearly, this was before he
came up against internal augment and reduplication, not to mention the
inclusive and exclusive we. As for Sanchez, Bishop Salazar’s high
opinion of his abilities involved him in a number of unusual undertakings.
These it shall now be our duty to relate.
Chapter Two
THE SYNOD OF MANILA
The good-humored Filipinos, whose happy disposition Sanchez found so
characteristic, had need of all the cheerfulness they could muster. The
undeniable blessings of Spanish rule were in many instances so thoroughly
mixed as to be almost indistinguishable from oppression. This at least
was the contention of the Augustinians who had accompanied the con-
quistadores. The royal instructions that the inhabitants of the country be
attracted by peaceful means to a willing acceptance of the benefits that
Spanish sovereignty brought with it had not been observed. On the con-
trary, they had been robbed of their property, shot down if they resisted,
and, when captured, enslaved and sold. Incidents had been contrived to
provoke them to fight and thus, by striking the first blow, provide the
invaders with an excuse for waging a “just war” in self-defense. In this
way the conquistadores were able to “pacify” extensive tracts of country,
advancing steadily as they stoutly defended themselves.
No distinction, the Augustinians claimed, was made between friendly
and hostile natives. According to one of them, “by the enemy is meant
any town which the Spaniards have not yet taken.” The colonists
superiority of armament enabled them to break up into small bands to
pursue the “enemy” and it sometimes happened that natives who had
made peace with one marauding band and been issued a letter of safe-
conduct would be stripped of all they had or reduced to slavery by the
next band that came along. There were even cases of poor wretches being
killed in cold blood while begging for mercy on their knees.
Large numbers of the population abandoned their towns and villages
and fled to the hills. Others chose to stay where they were and submit,
but if they did so in the hope of receiving better treatment they were
mistaken. They were partitioned into encomiendas which the conquerors
divided among themselves, each encomendero levying tribute in gold,
goods, and labor as a fitting reward for his exertions. Since the Filipinos
in their primitive state were not accustomed to produce much of a taxable
surplus, strong-arm methods were often necessary. Arbitrary quotas were
imposed on the villages — so much gold, so many bushels of rice, so many
yards of cloth— and the village headmen were made responsible for deliver-
ing the full quota. If they failed to deliver, they were beaten or put in
stocks and armed collectors took away from the people even what they
15
Manila and Environs
Showing principal suburbs and tidal inlets (esteros)
of the Pasig River.
( Broken lines indicate the course of
the city wall built later.)
Map II. Manila and environs, showing principal suburbs and tidal inlets
(esteros) of the Pasig River. The broken lines indicate the course of the city wall
built later*
I 7
The Synod of Manila
needed to feed themselves. These collectors were usually soldiers who
because they received neither pay nor rations from the government sought
service with the encomenderos as bodyguards and bullies. Ragged, undis-
ciplined, perpetually hungry, they naturally welcomed this and any other
opportunity to fill their bellies and their pockets at the expense of the indios.
Over and above the exactions of the encomenderos and their henchmen,
there were the needs of the government. Labor was needed to build ships
and to fell the timber for masts and planking and haul it to the shipyards.
Oarsmen were needed for the galleys, bearers and auxiliary troops for the
expeditions sent out to still “unpacified” territory. To obtain this man-
power a system of repartimientos or requisitioning of labor was set up, where-
by each village had to supply its quota of able-bodied men. Their wages
were, by a refinement of irony, also requisitioned from their villages — and
pocketed by the collectors.
At the same time, rice was in much greater demand than ever before.
The primitive village economy, geared to producing only enough for its
own needs, now had to supply a sizable body of nonproducers, consisting
not only of the Spaniards but their often extensive households of slaves
and servants and the Chinese who came, attracted by Spanish silver, not
only to trade but to settle. Thus, in order to assure government officials
and institutions of their share of the crop, another type of requisitioning
was necessary, the repartimiento de generos , whereby rice quotas, and in the
course of time quotas in other commodities also, were imposed. These
quotas were paid for, of course ; but at prices fixed by the government,
which were usually lower than the market price and often considerably
low^er. Thus, the farmer was in many cases compelled to sell rice which he
needed for his own consumption at a price which did not enable him to
buy its equivalent.
An added complication was introduced by the fact that the requisition-
ing was committed to the provincial governors. These alcaldes mayores
w r ere appointed by the colonial governor for very limited terms, one or two
years, at a salary which was purely nominal when compared with what
they could be making in the galleon trade. Regrettably, therefore, but
quite understandably, they “requisitioned” not only for the government
but for themselves. By buying from the people at the government price and
selling back to them at the market price, or by buying at the harvest when
rice was plentiful and selling between harvests when it w r as scarce, or by
causing the government quota of cotton cloth to be slightly oversubscribed
and shipping the difference to Acapulco, or by extending the royal fifth,
a tax levied on all newly mined gold, to gold not so newly mined, to
heirlooms, in fact, an unscrupulous alcalde could make sure that he did
not return to Manila from his province poorer than when he set out to
administer justice in the name of the king . 1
18 The Jesuits in the Philippines
That was his main duty ; justice ; and of course justice can also be handled
like rice, as a vendible commodity; sometimes it was. This was almost
fatally easy because the alcalde could bring with him his own constable
and his own clerk, appointed by himself. This being the case, it was
extremely unlikely that they would testify against him during the official
inquiry, or residencia , to which in the Spanish system of administration
every official had to submit at the end of his term of office. Moreover, it
was scarcely to be expected that a governor like Ronquillo would inquire
too closely into the actuations of his alcaldes. In the first place, they were
his own familiars, whom he had brought out with him to the Philippines;
they were so close to him that they were referred to as “los rodeados,”
literally “the entourage, ” but which one is sorely tempted to render as
“the Boys/' 2 Secondly, he too was deeply involved in illegal business
transactions, and on a much larger scale, in spite of the fact that in the
residencia of his predecessor, Dr. Sande, which he conducted, he had
imposed on that luckless official extremely heavy fines for malfeasance in
office. A story was going around Manila when Bishop Salazar arrived that
someone asked the governor to explain this apparent inconsistency;
Ronquillo was supposed to have replied: “Let me amass as big a fortune
as Dr. Sande did, and I will cheerfully pay as big a fine/' 2
His operations were so extensive that the colonists felt compelled to send
an agent, Gabriel de Ribera, speeding to Madrid to represent to the king
that unless Ronquillo was somehow restrained no one else in the Philip-
pines would be able to make an honest peso and the colony would be
swiftly driven to rack and ruin. Their suggestion was that no governor be
henceforth appointed for life, and that an audiencia be established as in
Mexico, that is, a high council that would perform the double function of
an administrative board advisory to the governor, and at the same time a
supreme court which could receive appeals against his acts. Both sugges-
tions were accepted, but it was a few years before they could be put into
effect. 4
Meanwhile, under the conditions described, it was inevitable that basic
commodities should become scarce and increase considerably in money
value. The cheapness and abundance of the articles offered for sale in the
Manila market, which aroused the admiration of Sedeno and Sanchez when
they first arrived, did not last very long. Prices rose steadily and steeply,
and by 1584 rice and foodstuffs in general were costing six times what they
did in 1580, providing, of course, that they could be had. The people of
Ilocos in northern Luzon, goaded to desperation by their sufferings, rose
in revolt and killed twelve Spaniards before they could be quelled. 5
All these misfortunes the Augustimans laid squarely at the door of the
encomenderos and officials. These gentlemen, on the other hand, had
much to say in their own defense which was not entirely lacking in force
The Synod of Manila 19
and cogency. The Augustmian account of the horrors of the conquest, they
said, while doubtless motivated by zeal, was highly exaggerated. The first
settlers came offering peace and friendship, in accordance with their
instructions, and wherever they were received in the same spirit, as in
Ibabao (Samar Island), Bohol, Butuan, and many other places, no acts of
violence were committed. War was declared on the people of Cebu because
Fray Andres de Urdaneta himself, Augustinian chaplain of the expedition,
declared that the Cebuanos whom Magellan had converted to Christianity
were apostates and traitors and hence could be justly reduced to submission
by force of arms. War was declared on the people of Manila because having
made peace they broke it. If they lost their town to the Spaniards as a
consequence they had only themselves to blame.
Other military operations were undertaken for the same reason. The
natives broke their pledged word with great ease, and whenever they could
they ambushed and killed the Spaniards just as they ambushed and killed
one another. Because of this the Spaniards had to go everywhere armed
and to take reasonable precautions for their own security. This did not
mean that they treated all the natives indiscriminately as enemies.
True enough, they levied tribute on those they pacified. How otherwise
could they support themselves and govern the country? For it was to
govern the country that they had been sent. As to whether they had any
right to do so, or rather, whether the king had any right to send them, that
was a question they did not care to discuss; they were not lawyers, but
soldiers. At any rate, it could not be said of them that they took tribute
and gave nothing in exchange. They conferred many benefits on the
people; protected them from their enemies; stopped, or reduced con-
siderably, the bloody feuds with which from time immemorial they
destroyed each other; kept the sea lanes clear of pirates, so that now people
could go from one island to another on their lawful occasions without fear
or hindrance, something that they had never been able to do before;
supported a missionary, whenever one was obtainable, to instruct the
people of their encomiendas in the Christian faith.
These manifold services amply justified the tribute they demanded.
Moreover, there was nothing exorbitant in the amount of tribute. It was
simply not true that the encomenderos were enriching themselves by
taking food from people's mouths. There was no uniform rate of taxation
because certain regions were more prosperous and could pay more than
others ; but the average amount was six rials a year, payable in whatever
the taxpayers chose to give, whether gold, money, rice, or any other
commodity valued at the current price. Six rials was what any reasonably
active person could earn by labor or trade in four days. Was that exorbitant ?
The whole trouble was that these islanders were incredibly indolent. They
are so lazy that they will not go four leagues out of their villages to buy
20
The Jesuits in the Philippines
rice/' contenting themselves when their rice gave out with sweet potatoes,
sago bread, and other vegetables. Thus the missionaries were quite mis-
taken in thinking that the people whom they saw eating these things had
been rendered destitute by Spanish cruelty. It was not destitution at all but
sheer laziness, and also, in part, their preference ; 'They are vicious, and eat
all sorts of food/'
The encomenderos' critics sometimes tended to give the impression that
the Filipinos were poor naked savages from whom it was wrong to take
anything because they had so little. That was hardly the case. Some,
especially in the Visayan islands, were admittedly poor; but quite a
number were prosperous farmers and merchants. Commoners ordinarily
went about with gold ornaments on their persons, “ bracelets, chains and
earrings of solid gold, daggers of gold and other very rich trinkets/' ' and
even slaves wore them, “ openly and freely.” As for the datus of the towns
and villages, their property in land, slaves, and mines was such that some
of them could afford to deck themselves in jewelry worth as much as ten
or twelve thousand ducats. What wonder, then, if the encomenderos and
tribute gatherers should sometimes lose their patience with such people
for refusing to pay a paltry six rials a year, and perhaps exert a little
pressure to make them? They can pay well enough, but being spirited,
they “make it a point of honor to pay the tribute only when forced.”
The encomenderos did not deny that they were occasionally guilty of
taking more from the natives than they were entitled to. They frankly
acknowledged that “we have been forced to rob them and impose upon
them in other ways.” Forced was the operative word; they were compelled
to it by sheer necessity. The funds which had been released by the Mexican
treasury to defray the expenses of Legazpi's expedition were soon spent,
and since no further subsidies were forthcoming they had to live on the
country. They partitioned the territory they had gained into encomiendas,
but when all of it had been distributed, many of the encomiendas were so
small that the most frugal encomendero could not possibly live merely on
his income from the tribute. They were thus led to supplement their
incomes in other less justifiable ways, “burdening our consciences in this
fashion merely in order to subsist. We thus have a heavy load on our souls
which we are unable to shake off by reason of our great poverty, and
because of this we go about in great confusion of mind .” 6
If those who were fortunate enough to obtain an encomienda were m
such straitened circumstances, the lot of the ordinary soldier was even
worse. As has already been mentioned, he stopped receiving pay and rations
when the funds of the expedition gave out, and so the only way he could
keep body and soul together was to sponge on his more fortunate com-
patriots, eating dinner in one house and supper in another,” or to hire
himself out to the encomenderos as tribute gatherer, bodyguard, or
21
The Synod of Manila
retainer dancing attendance on his womenfolk when they went abroad.
Failing this, there was nothing for it but to go out to the native villages
and “requisition” a meah Even Bishop Salazar admitted that much of the
ill treatment to which the Filipinos were subjected by the troops were
motivated not by cruelty but by hunger; “for a soldier,” he says, “will
break in on a native who has just cooked himself a meal and take it away
from him, ill treating and beating him to the bargain; and if I should
restrain and reprehend them, they say, ‘ What do you expect us to do ?
Lie down and die ? 9 ” 7
It apparently never occurred to them to engage in farming; to till the
soil and grow their own food. They were soldiers, not farmers; whatever
they might have been in the old country, they were all hidalgos in the Indies.
Moreover there was the practical difficulty that they still had to stay pretty
much together, both in order to defend the Spanish settlements from sud-
den attack, such as that of the Chinese corsair Limahong who very nearly
took Manila in 1 574, and also because the country was still so lightly held
that for them to go off by themselves into the hinterland was to invite
extermination.
Under these circumstances it was impossible to enforce military discip-
line. As Governor Sande put it, “there are so few troops in this land that
it will never do to punish the murderer with death or the trouble-maker
with flogging, otherwise we should all be finished off in one day. Instead,
we do our best to keep personal enemies apart and are liberal with pardons,
because a man who has been flogged is useless as a soldier.” 8
Similarly the conduct of Ronquillo and his alcaldes could be, if not
excused, explained. Ronquillo’s appointment was based on an asiento or
contract between him and the Crown, whereby he undertook to fit out
and convey to the Philippines an expedition of 600 colonists with their
families and personal property at his own expense, in return for which he
was given the governorship for life, the right to choose his successor, to
award encomiendas, distribute lands, make laws, and appoint officials.
He spent practically the whole of his personal fortune on the enterprise,
and naturally intended to recoup his investment; how else could he be
expected to do it save by making full and free use of the powers accorded
him by the asiento ? Such a governor, Sedeno observes (^naming no names,
but it is quite obvious whom he had in mind), “arrives deeply in debt, and
with many people who are destitute and rely on his protection”; he has
to take care of them, reimburse them for their “past expenses” while
allaying their “present hunger”; and the only way he can do this is by
giving them the employments he has promised and permitting them to
help themselves. As for his own finances, he begins, perhaps, merely by
making sure that he breaks even, but eventually his extortions come to be
measured only by his appetites and the extent of the “pasturage.”
22
The Jesuits in the Philippines
Sedeno's conclusion is that given such an arrangement “a new and very
rich and abundant land, such as this was formerly/' would be needed to
satisfy each new governor who comes from Spain , 9
This was deplorable, and the missionaries could not deplore it more than
the colonists themselves, for the bigger the governor's share of the pickings,
the smaller their own. But was it not the fault of the system rather than
the individual ? Greed was of course inexcusable; but was it not inevitable
under such a system ? And ought not a reform to start by changing the
system rather than excoriating the individual ?
The Augustinians doubtless listened patiently to all these arguments,
but they failed to be convinced. To their way of thinking, the principal if
not the only reason for bringing the Philippines under Spanish rule was in
order that the Filipinos might be converted to Christianity; and whatever
the encomenderos, soldiers, and officials might have to say for themselves,
killing, beating, robbing, cheating, enslaving, and otherwise mistreating
the Filipinos did not promote their conversion. Doubtless the grace of God
was all powerful and could make benighted pagans see beyond the ugly
deeds of Christians the beauty and goodness of the Christ they served so
ill. As Bishop Salazar said in his first pastoral letter,
. . . this is precisely what enhances God's admirable power and brings into
greater relief the tremendous resources of our holy faith, that men beaten in war,
reduced by the ferocity of their conquerors to a miserable bondage, stripped of
their wives, their children and all their worldly goods, should in spite of all this
accept the faith and desire to profess the law of that God from whose worshippers
they have suffered so many and such great evils, and w r hose deeds belied the very
faith they preached. And what is even more wonderful is that they should be led
to accept this religion by missionaries who did not, as Peter did, heal the sick by
their mere shadow, nor raise the dead as did the other Apostles, nor have the gift
of tongues, but whose only argument w 7 as the word of God itself . 10
True enough, but this did not exempt Christians from the obligation of
using all human means to concur with the operation of grace, nor did it
make interfering with that operation any less culpable.
This, then, was the situation which confronted Bishop Salazar when he
took possession of his diocese. The Augustinians — and the rest of the
clergy, for that matter— considered that many of the methods used by the
first settlers in reducing the country to the Spanish allegiance, and many
of the demands currently being made by encomenderos and officials on the
persons and property of the native population, were grave violations of
justice. Hence those who committed them were bound to restitution, and
unless they were willing to make this restitution they could not be sacra-
mentally absolved. The general principle as such could hardly be called in
question, even by the laity ; the difficulty lay in its application to specific
cases. Was the conquest itself unjust, or only certain phases of it, and if so,
23
The Synod of Manila
what phases ? Was it wrong to levy tribute in any form ? If not, how much
tribute could be levied ? On whom ? How collected ? When were reparti-
mientos a public necessity, and when a violation of human rights ?
Supposing the obligation to make restitution established in a particular
case ; who were bound by it ? The principals of the deed only, or also the
accessories ? To what extent ? If the injured parties were already dead, or
absent, or unknowm, to whom was restitution to be made ?
On many of these questions there was no general agreement ; some con-
fessors tended to be too strict, others not strict enough. Since these were
by no means academic but eminently practical problems, deeply affecting
the spiritual and temporal welfare of the entire colony, Spaniards as well
as Filipinos, Bishop Salazar decided that an effort should be made to
thrash them out thoroughly in the light of Christian principles and the
accumulated experience of those most intimately acquainted with the
concrete situation. With this in view he summoned a junta or assembly
consisting of the dean of the cathedral, Don Diego Vasquez Mercado, and
delegations from the three religious orders, Augustinians, Franciscans,
and Jesuits, headed by their local superiors. Other priests were asked to
take part in the discussions from time to time, and public hearings were
held in which prominent laymen with a wide acquaintance of Philippine
affairs were invited to testify. 11
Although strictly contemporary documents refer to this assembly merely
as a junta or congregation, it is often referred to in later documents as a
synod; and if a diocesan synod is **a lawful assembly convoked by the
bishop, in which he gathers together the priests and clerics of his diocese
and all others who are bound to attend it, for the purpose of doing and
deliberating concerning what belongs to the pastoral care, 12 it can cer-
tainly put forward a pretty good claim to being the first synod of Manila.
At any rate we shall call it that, with due deference to the canonists, if only
to distinguish it from the numerous juntas of various kinds which we shall
have occasion to describe hereafter. The synod began late in 1581 and
continued to hold regular sessions until March of 1582. Thereafter it met
irregularly, with several long interruptions, until 1586. The ordinary
meeting place, at least in the beginning, was the Augustinian convent of
Tondo on the north bank of the Pasig.
Bishop Salazar made extensive use of Alonso Sanchez in the conduct of
the synod’s business. He served, together with an Augustinian and a
Franciscan, as official theologian and canonist; he prepared the agenda for
each session and regularly spoke first in order to define the points for
discussion and propose his own views ; he acted as secretary, taking down
the minutes of the meetings and putting in order afterward the substance
of what was said and the conclusions arrived at. All reports and memorials
submitted to the synod were given to him to be excerpted and summarized
24 The Jesuits in the Philippines
for convenient use by the other fathers. In addition to attending the
sessions of the synod, he was often obliged to confer with the bishop on
the various problems that came up until late at night. Or else Salazar, in
spite of his years, would come to see him at the house in Lagyo. Sanchez,
his patience worn paper-thin at the end of a long day, sometimes spoke
more sharply to the venerable old prelate than he had a right to. But Salazar
with wonderful meekness — for he had a fiery temper himself, as we shall
see presently — would put him to shame by saying, “ You musn't mind me.
Father, and you must be very patient, because this is just what God sent
you here for. You, not I, will have to give an account to him of this dio-
cese; so mind how you discharge your responsibility."
Once, however, Sanchez went too far. It was at a plenary session of the
synod, and he kept insisting on a point which the bishop had already
made clear he was not willing to concede. Sanchez went on and on with that
repetitious stubbornness which makes some of his more lengthy memorials
such difficult reading. Suddenly something snapped, and thunder and
lightning burst from the episcopal throne. Salvatierra, the bishop's secre-
tary, rose to pour oil on troubled waters, but Sanchez, unabashed, turned
and cried, 4 ‘ I call upon your Lordship to speak out and say in the hearing
of all here present if you have ever found me interested in anything except
God's service, or if I have ever given you any bad advice." Salazar, in spite
of being so angry, sat silent for a moment ; then, raising his eyes to heaven,
he said, “ Before God who is our Judge, I have known this father six years,
and during all that time I have never found in him any interest except the
interests of God ; and I have never erred in following his advice, although
I have often done so in departing from it." A fine tribute, surely, and one
which possibly blessed him that gave a great deal more than him that
took. 13
Some even among the priests summoned to the synod doubted the wis-
dom of holding it at that particular time. They pointed out that the affairs
of the colony were in such confusion and the colonists so intent in the
pursuit of gain that to insist on their obligations in the matter of justice
would be merely to goad them to open revolt. Moreover, it was unrealistic
to apply without modification or adaptation in a colony so newly founded
the prescriptions of “pure justice" or the laws prevailing in older and
more settled communities. In spite of these objections the majority of the
fathers of the synod decided to go ahead with their deliberations. It would
be a definite gain, they said, to set forth clearly what right reason and
sound theology demanded in matters of justice, even though it was fore-
seen that many would fall short of it. They would at least have some ideal
to live up to, a norm by which to guide themselves and others. The
application of the norm might sometimes go awry, but it would never do
to have the norm itself crooked to begin with.
The Synod oj Manila 25
Moreover, it seemed that the colonists needed reminding that if their
father confessors were strict with them, it was not out of a desire to meddle,
but because the law of God demanded it. There was danger too that the
familiar sight of injustice unchallenged might blur their perception of
the difference between what was just and what unjust. At any rate, the
apparent hopelessness of reform in many cases ought not to discourage
them from at least attempting such a reform . 14
The synod had barely begun when the Augustinians brought up the
extremely delicate question of slaves. They presented a ceiula or decree,
which they had obtained from Philip II, forbidding the colonists to retain
natives as slaves under any pretext whatever. This prohibition had been
issued often enough before, ever since Pope Paul III made his famous
declaration that liberty and property were of the number of those inalien-
able rights with which, as the signers of the American declaration of
independence finely said some two centuries later, all men are endowed by
their Creator . 15 But the Spaniards in the Philippines felt that they could
well exempt themselves from it since slavery was a universal practice in
the Islands long before they came, and the law surely did not intend that
the rulers should be in a worse position in this respect than the ruled.
Hence they did not scruple to keep war prisoners as slaves and to purchase
others from their native owners. The royal government's view, however,
was that slave-owning was an abuse rather than a privilege. The practice
might be tolerated in the natives, who presumably knew no better, but
not in the Spaniards who did.
The fathers of the synod at once appointed a delegation to bring the
cedula to Governor Ronquillo personally and request its immediate
publication and enforcement. As soon as the matter became known in
the city, loud complaints arose on every side. Some alleged that prisoners
captured in a just war could be lawfully enslaved, according to a long-
standing and unrepealed ordinance; others, that they simply could not
manage without slave labor. Still others claimed that the decree had
been obtained without the slave-owners being given an opportunity to
present their side of the question, and hence ought not to be enforced until
they had done so. Ronquillo asked the fathers of the synod to deliberate
further, taking into consideration these objections. They did so, and their
reply was, unequivocally, that the emancipation of all Filipinos held as
slaves by the Spaniards could neither be denied nor deferred, “as it was a
matter of natural and divine right and clear justice." The most they would
concede was that the slaves, although immediately to be declared free,
could be requested to remain with their former masters for a short time —
a month at the outside — to permit the latter to make other arrangements.
Bishop Salazar thoroughly concurred with this opinion and sent it to
Ronqudlo above his own signature and seal.
26
The Jesuits in the Philippines
Ronquillo compromised. He promulgated the decree but allowed the
colonists, bp interposing a petition to the king, to suspend its execution
until a reply to the petition was received. Thereupon Salazar at the next
session of the synod put the question as to whether the slave-owners who
retained their slaves on this basis could be given absolution in the sacra-
ment of penance. The fathers, apparently sensing that the opposition to
immediate and complete emancipation was too strong, replied that they
could, but on condition that they promised to free their slaves if their
petition remained unanswered, or in any case at the expiration of two
years . 16
The synod now proceeded to consider a more general question. The king
of Spain claimed sovereignty over the Philippines; what title or titles
could he exhibit to justify that claim? The reason for beginning with this
question is fairly obvious. All authority and rule in the Philippines was
exercised in the name of the king; unless therefore the king had a just
title to these Islands, every act of possession and jurisdiction hitherto made
by the Spaniards was invalid, and its moral implications must be examined
on that basis. It was all the more necessary to meet this question squarely
as one of the most respected of the early missionaries, Fray Martin de
Rada, had roundly asserted that ‘‘none among all these islands have come
into the power of the Spaniards with just title.”
To settle this question the synod laid down as a fundamental principle
that whatever sovereignty the king possessed over the natives of his overseas
dominions did not belong to him by natural right, but solely by papal
concession. Now the pope could confer on the king only such authority as
he himself had from Christ. But the authority conferred by Christ on Peter
and his successors was clearly a spiritual, not a temporal authority, namely,
“the commandment and the right to go and preach the gospel throughout
the world, and to send others to do so.” Christ did not give Peter and his
successors any power to take away from anyone what was rightfully his,
neither their property from private persons nor their kingdoms from kings
nor their government from commonwealths. Consequently, while the pope
could share and did share with the king of Spain his apostolic commission
to spread the Christian faith in the New World, he could not and did not
empower him to take away from the native peoples their freedom and
self-government .
In point of fact, however, the king had taken away from the Filipinos
their freedom and self-government, subjecting them to his rule through
the agency of the conquerors and settlers whom he had sent. Was there any
justification for this ? The synod replied that while the mission to spread
the gospel which the king had by papal delegation was a purely spiritual
mission, it could under certain circumstances justify the assumption of
temporal authority. For the right to preach the gospel implied a corres-
27
The Synod of Manila
ponding obligation binding on those to whom it is preached ; an obligation
not indeed to accept the gospel, but at least to hear it, not to prevent its
being preached, and not to deter those who wished to accept it from doing
so. If a people or their rulers violated this obligation in such a way as to
render the preaching of the gospel impossible, then the king was justified
in taking over their government. In other words the establishment of
colonial rule was lawful wherever it was necessary to create the conditions
requisite for the spread of Christianity.
These conditions, according to the synod, were mainly three. First,
a form of government and a code of laws conformable to right reason, so
that they did not contradict the principles and precepts of the gospel.
Second, a level of culture and a structure of society which would permit
the untrammeled growth of Christian institutions and usages. And third,
a people so well behaved, so considerate of the rights of others, that they
“ would not interfere with those who preach [the gospel] nor scandalize
those to whom they preach ; and who could not be suspected of plotting
the subversion or destruction of the Christian way of life or the expulsion
of those who teach it.” Wherever all of these conditions were verified, the
king could send missionaries in virtue of his commission, but had no title
to temporal sovereignty ; but wherever any one of them was absent, then,
said the synod, the gospel either could not be preached at all, or not in such
a way as to be properly heard, and hence the Spaniards could legitimately
take control in the name of the Crown.
Now it was quite clear that there were very few regions in the non-
Christian world where all these conditions were verified, and certainly the
Philippines was not among them. In the Philippines, the synod observed,
the government of the native rulers was often tyrannical and unjust, and
the laws by which they governed often cruel and contrary to nature. Bar-
barous customs and usages rendered the people incapable of Christianity
unless they were abolished; and missionaries would not live very long to
do any preaching unless there was a strong government to protect them
and their converts. Hence, the considered conclusion of the synod was
that, while the Spaniards came to the Philippines with a purely spiritual
commission, they were nevertheless justified in subjecting the inhabitants
to their temporal rule in ordine adfinem spiritualem , for the sake of achieving
the spiritual end which would otherwise be unattainable.
At this point someone proposed the objection that if native misgovern-
ment justified the taking away of their temporal rule, as the synod seemed
to be saying, what about Spanish misgovernment ? Was not the rule of the
conquistador es just as tyrannical and abusive and in certain cases far more
so than that of the native chieftains ? And was not Spanish injustice as
much an obstacle to the conversion of the natives to Christianity as the
barbarous condition of the natives themselves ? If the Spaniards could
2 *
28
The Jesuits in the Philippines
lawfully relieve the Filipinos of sovereignty because they used it ill, could
not the Filipinos lawfully rebel against their rule for the same reason ?
The sense of the synod was that Spanish rule in the Philippines did,
indeed, leave much to be desired. But the misgovernment of certain
Crown officials and that of the native rulers whom they superseded, while
both regrettable, were not evil in exactly the same sense. Native govern-
ment, such as it was, was evil in principle ; the very foundations on which
it was based was corrupt, for sin had so obscured the light of reason in most
pagans that they were no longer capable of governing themselves according
to the precepts of the natural law. The colonial government, on the other
hand, was not evil in principle but only in so far as practice fell short of
principle. Its laws were just ; if there was injustice in the land, the fault lay
with those whose duty was to enforce the laws, but instead ignored or
broke them to satisfy their own private passions and interests. Such officials
were guilty of betraying the king’s trust, for they transformed what was
designed to be a help to the conversion of the natives into the greatest
single obstacle to it.
Where then was the remedy? Not in rebellion, for by rebelling the
people would merely be exchanging good laws for bad. No, but in the
king ; it was the king’s duty, gravely binding in conscience, to choose with
care those whom he sent to rule the colony; to provide effective checks
against their abusing their authority; and if in spite of this they governed
badly, to remove them, punish them, and send others to take their place . 17
Having established to their satisfaction the lawfulness of Spanish
sovereignty in the Philippines, the fathers of the synod went on to consider
the lawful use of this sovereignty by those who governed in the king’s name.
Their first duty was to dispense justice. This was the very least that they
could do, for “the only justification for our being in their [the Filipinos’]
country is that we may administer justice.” Injustice was sinful no matter
against whom committed; but it acquired a special heinousness when
committed against the native population, ”the fruits of whose labor,”
says the synod, “we eat.”
Let the governor, then, as the supreme authority in the colony, be a
paragon of justice. For this, he must be thoroughly familiar with the king’s
laws and ordinances, in which the royal justice is enshrined. If ignorance
of the law is no excuse for anyone, the governor can plead ignorance least
of all ; for him to be ignorant of the law is in itself to break the law ; so that
if he commits an injustice, even through ignorance, he is bound to resti-
tution. Moreover it was his duty not only to be just himself, but to see
that everyone else under him did justice. This was precisely the root and
cause of the moral anarchy in which the colony was plunged. The governors
had consistently failed to punish those who committed injustices against
the natives, hence every Spaniard felt free to treat them as he pleased,
The Synod of Manila 29
“ exploiting them, heating them, forcing them to work against their will
or without pay, ' requisitioning ' their meager store of food, confiscating
their embar cat ions, ravishing their wives and daughters and inflicting
many other injuries upon them/"
The synod gave short shrift to the argument proposed by Sande and by
others after him that, since the Spanish settlers in the Philippines were so
few, the governor ought not to deal too strictly with them, for if he did no
one would be left to defend or administer the colony. This, said the synod,
was ridiculous. The death sentence was not the only punishment in the
penal code. Erring officials could be brought to book by imprisonment or
fines. Moreover, if someone deserved death, let him by all means be put to
death; such an example of Spanish justice would be more effective in
pacifying the natives than a large number of troops.
To the argument that the colonial government's chronic lack of funds
made it necessary to impose forced labor with little or no pay on the
natives, the synod replied, in effect, that lack of funds did not dispense a
government from meeting its just obligations ; on the contrary, since just
obligations must be met, the government had better get the funds to do so.
Nor was this difficult; all the governor had to do was reserve a sufficient
number of encomiendas to the Crown, instead of distributing them
lavishly to his friends.
The synod further reminded the governor that while he could safely
assume that the territory already subject to Spanish rule had been
legitimately acquired, it did not follow from this that he had the authority
to extend that territory by new conquests. Before making war on the
peoples beyond the actual frontiers of the colony, he had to make certain
that it was a just war and that he had explicit royal permission to make it.
A case in point, the synod said, was Governor Sande's expedition against
the people of Brunei in northern Borneo (1578). That was totally uncalled
for, both because it was unjust in itself and because Sande undertook it
without first informing the home government. Consequently, all who took
part in that expedition were liable to restitution to the extent of their
participation in the damage caused to the people of Brunei.
In the waging even of a just war there are certain rules to be observed.
For instance, an expedition must be of sufficient force to accomplish its
objective, or it should not be sent. Too small an expedition is capable of
nothing but a hit-and-run raid; such an expedition is brigandage, not war-
fare. Again, if the objective is conquest, the expedition should bring with
it enough provisions to maintain itself until the people can be justly taxed.
It should not be assumed that a people can be justly taxed the moment
organized resistance ceases. For tribute can be levied by a sovereign only
on his subjects, and the conquered do not become subjects until they
accept the authority of the new sovereign, at least tacitly, by living in
30 The Jesuits in the Philippines
peace under his regime* This map take some time; during that time the
army of occupation must live on its own resources or purchase what it
needs. 18
The office of alcalde mayor received considerable attention from the
synod. Some of the accusations brought against actual holders of that
office have already been mentioned. They received further confirmation
from a delegation of Tagalog datus who came to request Bishop Salazar to
transmit their grievances to the king. There were more than forty in the
delegation, not only from towns near Manila such as Tondo, but from as
far away as Mauban on the eastern coast of Luzon. These datus claimed
that because of the extortions practiced by the alcaldes their vassals were
abandoning their towns and villages and fleeing to the still unconquered
provinces. The result for them was not only loss of revenue but additional
burdens, for the alcaldes continued to make them answerable for the tri-
bute even of those who had fled. They concluded their deposition with the
simple statement that "their afflictions and troubles are so many that they
cannot be endured/' 19
From the data supplied by these and other informants the synod drew
up a list of the more common abuses which alcaldes mayores should avoid.
They ought not to govern their provinces in absentia . They ought not to
charge more than the legal court fees. They ought not to encourage law-
suits in order that they may have fees to collect. They ought not to force
the natives to sell their products to them at less than the market price.
They ought not to engross prime commodities, such as rice and cotton;
nor export them out of the province where they were needed, merely in
order to fetch a better price. In fact, they ought not to engage in any, even
legitimate trade within the limits of their jurisdiction, because this was
clearly forbidden by law. Finally, they ought not to employ statute laborers
drafted for public works on their private estates. The priests of the diocese
were instructed not to give sacramental absolution to those guilty of these
abuses until they had actually made good the damages resulting from them.
By refraining from such questionable transactions, alcaldes mayores would
have ample time to devote to the duties of their office, such as encouraging
agriculture and industry and seeing to it that the natives were not idle and
did not wander shiftlessly from place to place.
However, the synod adds, traveling merchants should not be stopped
from going about their business. On the contrary, they should be encou-
raged to do so, and especially to bring their merchandise to Manila, for in
this way the city and the larger towns will be better provisioned and by
this constant intercourse and communications Spaniards and Filipinos will
reach a better understanding of each other. The encomenderos are opposed
to this because they want everyone to stay put so that he can be taxed;
hence they try to stop native merchants from traveling on the plea that
The Synod of Manila 31
they are mere regraters ( regatones ), buying cheap in one place and selling
dear in another without adding to the value of the product. The alcaldes
mayores should pay no attention to this. 20
The synod next turns its attention to the duties of encomenderos. It
begins with the reminder that “the principal reason for granting an
encomienda is not so much to reward the encomendero for his labors in
the royal service as to discharge the conscience of the king with reference
to the natives of the encomienda." 21 It was a commonplace of Spanish
law that the king's conscience was “charged" with certain obligations
toward his colonial subjects, principally that of maintaining public order,
defending the people from their enemies, and providing them with
religious instruction. He “discharged" his conscience by entrusting a
given territory with its population to an encomendero, who in accepting
the encomienda with its attached emoluments also took upon his own
conscience the obligations of the king. This is clearly brought out in the
legal instrument or title by which encomiendas were usually awarded.
Here, for instance, is the operative clause in an encomienda grant 22 made
by Governor Tello in 1598:
By these presents, in the name of His Majesty, I grant in encomienda to you the
said Captain Toribio de Miranda and Captain Antonio Freyle the natives of the
towns and encomiendas which Juan Gutierrez del Real, deceased, held on the
coast of Caraga, the island of Cibabao, Catubig, Calbiga and the Mapono River
with its highlands and hills, for you to hold and enjoy jointly and equally, the
one as well as the other, in the same manner and form as they were held and
enjoyed by the said Juan Gutierrez del Real, in accordance with the law of
succession regarding Indians ordained by His Majesty, with the obligation of
instructing them in our holy Catholic faith to the end that they might attain to a
true knowledge of it, and in this matter I charge your conscience and discharge
that of His Majesty and mine in his royal name . . . and most of all I enjoin you
to treat the said natives well, preserving them from all vexation and trouble . . .
This was in accord with the instructions to the governor of the Islands
signed by Philip II at Segovia Wood in x 573 :
After the land has been pacified and the inhabitants thereof and their rulers
brought under Our sovereignty, let the governor divide the land among the
settlers, with their consent, in such wise that each one shall have charge of the
natives of his portion, with the duty of defending and assisting them and pro-
viding them with a missionary who shall teach them to live virtuously, besides
the other services which encomenderos are required to render to the inhabitants
of their territory . ♦ .
In consideration of these services, the encomendero was authorized to
collect tribute from the people of his encomienda :
The people who have been brought under Our sovereignty and distributed in
encomiendas are to be persuaded to pay a moderate tribute of the fruits of the
32 The Jesuits in the Philippines
earth in recognition of the universal lordship and jurisdiction which We have over
the Indies ; and We direct that the tribute thus rendered be given to the Spaniards
to whom these encomiendas have been granted, to enable them to discharge their
obligations . 23
This tribute took the form of a head tax, payable annually. A married
man paid one whole tribute for himself, his wife, and minor children;
unmarried adults of both sexes paid one half-tribute. At the time of the
synod great confusion prevailed as to the amount of the tribute and the
form and manner of its payment, because the ordinances of the early
governors were so ambiguous that they could be, and were, interpreted in
various ways. We have alluded above to the reply made by certain encomen-
deros to Fray Martin de Rada's “ Opinion," in which they claimed that
the average tribute of that time (i 574J did not exceed the modest sum of
six rials, payable in whatever form — gold, goods, or currency — the taxpayer
considered most convenient. In the 1580'$, however, the generally
accepted sum had gone up to eight rials, and it was being collected pretty
much in the form which the encomendero, not the taxpayer, preferred.
Since certain encomenderos preferred to be paid in those commodities
whose real value, through scarcity or for some other reason, exceeded their
assessed value, their tributaries were paying an actual tribute of fifteen,
twenty, and even thirty rials a year.
Moreover, tribute was being collected from encomiendas in which the
encomendero provided none of the services whereby he was supposed to
“ discharge the conscience of the king." Indeed, there were encomiendas
whose villages never saw their encomendero except once a year when he
came with an armed escort to collect the tribute; sometimes he did not
even bother to come personally, merely sending paid agents to do the
collecting for him. 24
With these conditions in mind, the synod bluntly informed encomen-
deros that unless they provided their people with the services specified in
the encomienda grant and the royal ordinances, namely justice, defense,
and religious instruction, they could not in conscience demand any tribute.
Unpacified territories could be granted in encomienda, but then the
encomendero was obliged to go there personally to establish peace and
order. While actually engaged in this work he could ask the natives for
support, but not take anything by force. Only when peace and order had
been effectively established, and all or morally all of the inhabitants had
accepted Spanish rule could he impose the full tribute. This tribute could
be imposed on all, non-Christians as well as Christians, “for as Saint
Gregory the Great says, Decretals I, 5, the infidel ought not to be favored
in his infidelity by allowing him a greater liberty than the faithful ; for if
he is exempt from tribute as an infidel, he will not want to be converted."
Nevertheless the encomendero should as soon as possible obtain the
The Synod of Manila 33
services of a missionary to instruct the natives, providing him with a
house and the subsistence allowance specified in the laws. He should also
see to the construction of churches and chapels, the cost of which were to
be shared equally by the royal government, the natives, and himself.
But the synod's conception of the encomendero’s duties went far beyond
the essential services specified by the royal decrees. More than a ruler, he
was to be a father to his people ; stand surety and plead for them at court ;
provide emergency relief in time of public calamities such as droughts,
floods, and typhoons; have particular care of the poor, the aged, the sick,
and the disabled; gradually gather the scattered clans together into larger
communities, the sites of which were to be carefully chosen in consultation
with the datus and the missionary, and, by thus introducing them to the
settled life of towns, enable them to acquire the arts and usages of civili-
zation.
If the encomendero was to attend to all this, he ought obviously to reside
in his encomienda, taking care to choose for his place of residence some
region where supplies were fairly plentiful, so as not to be a burden on the
inhabitants. He ought to go in person to collect the tribute so that he
might observe local conditions for himself and grant exemptions in neces-
sary cases. The law permitting the tribute to be paid in money or in kind
at the taxpayer's choice should be carefully observed; and tribute in kind
should be assessed in accordance with the schedule of fair prices drawn up
by the government. While on collection tour, the living expenses of the
encomendero and his entourage should be charged to the tribute, and not
imposed as an added burden on the villages. The tribute should be collected
individually and by households according to an up-to-date census list,
instead of demanding it as a fixed quota from the village headmen and
forcing them to make up the difference if the actual collection falls short
of the quota. In fact the datus ought not to be made responsible at all
for the tribute of their villages, although their good offices could be
requested to make the collection easier and more orderly. Once again, as
in the case of the alcaldes mayores, the synod directs priests who hear the
confessions of encomenderos to question them closely on their perfor-
mance of these duties, and to insist on full compensation for damages
inflicted before giving them sacramental absolution . 25
On the vexed question of corvee labor, which many held to be absolutely
indispensable to the very existence of the colony, the synod took a strong
position in favor of the fullest possible liberty for the native. Taking for
its starting point the principle that "the Indians are as free in their own
country as the Spaniards are in theirs, and neither the king nor the gospel
has deprived them of this liberty , '* it declared that the Filipinos could not
he compelled to serve as rowers in the galleys of the royal navy or as
laborers in the shipyards and lumber camps. Free contract labor should
34 The Jesuits in the Philippines
take the place of forced labor even in these allegedly necessary tasks ; for,
if the nature of the necessity is carefully considered, the building of
galleons for the Manila-Acapulco trade and the fitting out of expeditions
for new conquests may be necessary to the Spaniards but hardly so to the
Filipinos. Hence, if not enough Filipinos contract to w r ork at the wages the
government is willing or able to pay, “let the Spaniards perform these
services for each other, for it is absurd that a man of low degree, merely
because he emigrates to the colonies, should acquire the prerogatives of a
knight and lord of vassals, doing violence and a thousand injustices to the
miserable native, who because he is deficient in intelligence and strength of
character is unable to stand his ground against the arrogance of the Spaniard
and the tyranny of his own chieftains /' 26
Another point which the synod strongly recommended to the civil
authorities was that the Filipinos should be given a share in their own
government, at least on the local level. The passage deserves to be quoted
for its surprisingly advanced views . 27
On the supposition that the king and his governor exercise a just sovereignty
in this land (as we have said), we affirm that the governor is obliged not only to
appoint alcaldes mayores, but also to authorize in the larger and more settled
towns native magistrates, elected by the natives themselves, who shall have charge
of public peace and order and the hearing of ordinary cases. In the first place, in
order that the alcaldes mayores, who try cases of greater moment, may not always
be among the natives, since this is not advisable. Secondly, because this is of
natural right, and nature itself enjoins it even on brute animals. Thus we see that
cranes, ants and sheep have governors and chiefs belonging to their respective
species and not to others ; and what rules the members of the body is itself of the
body, namely the head, and St. Thomas shows that the head must be homo-
geneous with the body, that is, of the same nature. . . . Thirdly, because the
magistrate should be familiar with the laws, customs, uses and abuses of his
community, and this the alcalde mayor cannot be, because he has to depend on an
interpreter, and if the interpreter is a native he has no command of Spanish,
whereas if he is a Spaniard he understands the native but ill. And so even with the
best of intentions he is liable to commit serious errors, to the scandal of the
natives, who see only what is done and not what is intended. It follows from this
that the alcaldes mayores are not qualified to attend to the details of administra-
tion. Let them leave these matters to the native magistrate, who without incurring
the expense of hiring interpreters and scribes, but solely by word of mouth, can
administer them better than the alcalde mayor with his interpreters and scribes,
because of his familiarity with local conditions.
For this reason it is the opinion of the synod that the governor is obliged under
pain of mortal sin and restitution of the damages that may otherwise arise to
institute such native magistrates wherever possible. And let him not do so as a
mere formality, but in such a way that they are truly magistrates ; to this end he
must prescribe the limits of their jurisdiction . . . and back them up with his
The Synod of Manila 35
authority so that they will have the power to chastise those subject to them if they
deserve it.
The rest of the proceedings of the synod prescribes the duties of other
classes of persons in the colony, such as army and navy officers, public
defenders or protectores de indios 1 wives, widows, and heirs of encomenderos,
native rulers and magistrates, Chinese traders, and artisans, sometimes
going into great detail. This was considered by the fathers to be necessary
if the proceedings were to serve as a kind of vademecutn for confessors in a
region as remote from Europe as the Philippines was, where there were as
yet no schools, men of learning were few, books hard to come by, and most
of the laity so absorbed in warfare or commerce that they had little leisure
to reflect on the justice of what they were doing. 28 They did not apparently
give much attention to missionary methods and policies apart from making
the important decision that native catechumens were to be instructed in
their own languages rather than Spanish. This brought up the question of
authorized translations of the catechism. Fray Juan de Plasencia, who came
over from Mexico on the same voyage as Sedeno and his companions, com-
posed a Tagalog catechism after several years' experience in the missions
around the Lake of Bai ; it was examined by the synod and approved. The
Doctrina cristiana which was printed from wood blocks in Roman and
Tagalog characters, under Dominican auspices, in x 593 > was p r °bably this
synodal catechism ; although how much of it was Plasencia's original work
and how much the result of the synod's revision cannot now be deter-
mined. 29
After two months of regular sessions the work of the synod was inter-
rupted by the father provincial of the Augustinians and Alonso Sanchez
falling ill almost simultaneously. Sanchez's illness caused Sedeno some
concern, but he finally pulled through and went to one of the nearby
Franciscan missions for a much-needed rest. 30 The synod resumed sitting
when he returned but was forced to suspend its labors a second and a third
time in 1582 and 1583 due to later absences of Sanchez. It finally com-
pleted its task in 1586, but its ordinations and decrees were probably
made known to the public as they were taken up and approved.
The reception of these directives by the laity was, to say the least, not
encouraging. Some of the conquistadores and others who had taken part
in expeditions and “pacifications" stopped going to confession in order
to avoid paying the damages prescribed by the synod. Considered parti-
cularly objectionable was the prescription that those who had committed
depredations on the natives as a group, for instance, a detachment of troops
in the course of a campaign, were held to restitution in solidum , that is,
each member of the group was bound to pay the full damages in defect of
the others. Very few if any such groups must have remained intact in the
36 The Jesuits in the Philippines
1580*5, so that the surviving members would have had to assume the
obligations of all their dead or departed companions. Because of this the
ruling was opposed so stubbornly that Bishop Salazar was compelled to
withdraw it and merely demand that each one pay for his own share of the
damage done, as far as this could be prudently determined. But even this
reduced requirement was met by many colonists with great groans and
grimaces, although according to Salazar all it amounted to in hard cash
was 100, 200, or at the very most 500 pesos per man. These were, for
them, ridiculous sums, considering the fortunes they had managed to
acquire; but for the injured natives or their descendants they often meant
the difference between survival and starvation. 31
What influence did the other directives of the synod have on colonial
policy and practice? As anyone even moderately acquainted with human
frailty will suspect, a very limited one. Yet the influence that it did have
was not negligible, as we shall have occasion to note. And, at any rate, it
was something to have made so bold a bid for justice, when silence and
conformity would have been by far the easier course.
Chapter Three
SANCHEZ IN CHINA
At the time when our narrative begins, the Philippines was a Spanish
enclave surrounded by the advanced outposts of the far-flung, if thinly
spread, eastern empire of Portugal, Portuguese garrisons held the Moluccas
to the south and Malacca to the west, while to the north Portuguese traders
had but recently succeeded in establishing a foothold, albeit a precarious
one, in China, at a place called Macao near the great city of Canton.
In fact, the Portuguese bitterly contended that the Spaniards had no busi-
ness in the Philippines at all ; for if the Tordesillas Line which divided the
Spanish from the Portuguese spheres of influence in the West were pro-
ionged, as it should be, into the eastern hemisphere, the Philippines would
indubitably be found to belong to the Portuguese area of conquest. This
however the Spaniards refused to admit, and, when in 1 568 the captain-
major Gonsalvo Pereira appeared with a squadron of ten ships before the
Spanish settlement of Cebu, Legazpi gave him a coldly courteous reception
behind fortified earthworks. Blandly assuming that the Spaniards had been
driven off their course all the way across the Pacific by some extra-
ordinarily persistent hurricane, Pereira offered to take them aboard, bag
and baggage, and ship them out of Portuguese waters to Spain where they
obviously belonged, Legazpi politely but firmly refused the invitation, and
Pereira sailed off in high dudgeon after vainly trying for three months to
starve the Spaniards to submission. 1
Thus matters stood, with Spaniard and Portuguese warily watching each
other across the China Sea and the Sea of Celebes, while in the distant
Iberian peninsula which was their common home unforeseen events were
moving swiftly to change the whole pattern of their relationship. In 1578
Sebastiao I of Portugal fell fighting the Moors in Morocco. He was
succeeded by his granduncle Dom Henrique, a cardinal of the Roman
Church, old, sick, without issue, and not expected to live much longer.
The succession after him was disputed by seven claimants, among whom
were the Duke of Savoy, the Duchess of Braganza, a bastard of the royal
line named Dom Antonio, and Philip II of Spain. Dom Antonio was by
far the most popular among the Portuguese, but Philip had money and
armies. When Dom Henrique died at last in January 1580, 30,000
Spanish troops that had been massed at the border since the previous year
followed the Duke of Alba to Lisbon. Dom Antonio fled to Oporto,
37
38 The Jesuits in the Philippines
whence he disappeared. None of the other claimants could be seriously
considered, and in April 1581 the estates of the realm recognized Philip II
King of Portugal at the Cortes of Thomar. 2
Philip's agents were unable for some time to discover the whereabouts
of Dom Antonio. Actually he was in France ; but there were rumors that
he had taken ship for India and the Orient with the intention of rallying
the Portuguese establishments there to his cause. Dispatches were swiftly
sent to Governor Ronquillo in the Philippines, instructing him to forestall
Dom Antonio at Macao, and by getting there first with the news obtain
for Philip the sworn allegiance of its citizens. As Ronquillo looked about
him for an agent he could trust, his gaze lighted on the man upon whose
zeal and discretion Bishop Salazar leaned so heavily in the conduct of the
synod: Alonso Sanchez. 3 Neither Sanchez nor Sedeno, his superior, needed
much persuading to fall in with the proposal that Sanchez leave at once
for Macao on this business of the king's. Both were anxious to find out
more about the mysterious and fascinating empire so close at hand, from
whose dimly imagined cities came the glowing velvets, the delicately
modeled vases, the thousand and one useful and ingenious articles of trade
which the junk fleets yearly brought in ever increasing variety to Manila.
What kind of people were these Chinese who made so many things so well
and sold them so cheaply ? What truth was there in the golden tales of
travelers favored with a fleeting glimpse of that forbidden land? How
interpret the tantalizing accounts which the sangleys tried to give in
broken Spanish of their own country ? Why did they keep their doors
so resolutely locked against the foreigner ? And was there, perhaps,
a key ?
The two Jesuits were not the only ones in the Philippines who dreamed
of finding that key and flinging wide the doors before which Francis
Xavier had been stopped by death. Augustinians, Franciscans, and a little
later Dominicans crossed over to Amoy or Canton, but even when they
managed to squeeze past the coastguard and the harbor police they were
invariably stopped, haled before the magistrates, and firmly ushered out
with instructions not to return. Governor Ronquillo did not look with
favor on these attempts to, as the missionaries called it, “open China to
the gospel. If the gospel was really their only concern, they had more
than enough to occupy them in the Philippines without bothering their
heads about China. He suspected, however, that it was at least to some
extent a case of the grass always being greener on the other side of the
China Sea. The Philippines was doubtless far less attractive than the
Flowery Kingdom, but it was where the king had sent them, paying their
passage half-way around the world and maintaining them there at great
cost to the royal treasury ; they ought not, therefore, to go traipsing about,
abandoning their assigned stations where they already have so many
Sdncbe^ in China 39
native converts and are so badly needed, and where your Majesty has sent
them at your Majesty's expense for the discharge of the royal conscience/' 4
Another reason why Ronquillo did not want Philippine missionaries to
go to China was because it annoyed the Portuguese. Two Franciscans,
Fray Pedro de Alfaro and Fray Agustin de Tordesillas, who left Manila in
May of 1 579 and were joined in northern Luzon by three more of their
brethren, landed in Canton on 2 1 June and were promptly arrested. After
being kept in prison and repeatedly questioned by the magistrates as to the
purpose of their coming, they were finally permitted to go to Macao. The
Portuguese received them, albeit grumblingly ; but when they established
a convent and looked as though they intended to settle down for good, the
city officials trumped up charges against Alfaro and shipped him to Goa
to give an account of himself to the viceroy. The vessel was wrecked and
Alfaro drowned. His successor as superior of the Macao convent, Lucarelli,
was also hustled out of the city and sent packing to Malacca. When the
Philippine Franciscans heard of this they decided to send another expedi-
tion. Governor Ronquillo strictly forbade them to go, but Fray Pablo de
Jesus, the custodian of the Manila convent, and seven other friars secretly
went ahead with their preparations and stole out of Manila Bay some-
time in March 1582, only a few days before Sanchez set out on his
commission.
Ronquillo suspected, rightly, that the frigate chartered by the Fran-
ciscans would coast up Luzon and call briefly at Pangasinan before making
the crossing, so that if Sanchez left immediately he had a good chance of
overhauling them there. Sanchez was therefore given dispatches to the
alcalde mayor of Pangasinan instructing him to detain the Franciscans and
on no account to permit them to leave the country ; but if Sanchez wanted
to take one or two of them with him, he could. 5
Sanchez set sail on 14 March in a royal frigate with a crew of about
twenty Spaniards and Filipinos and a native of Bengal, christened, like
himself, Alonso, to act as interpreter. Alonso of Bengal had only a smatter-
ing of Chinese, but was the best Ronquillo could provide. They made good
time to Pangasinan and found the Franciscans still there. Sanchez delivered
his dispatches and obtained permission to take Fray Juan Pobre and another
friar with him. There were now twenty-six aboard the frigate. They
decided that it was too small to make the crossing and at Vigan exchanged
it for a larger vessel, which they stocked with additional stores. They
followed the coastline to Cape Bojeador, at the northwestern tip of Luzon,
and from there made the crossing in three days, sighting the bare hills and
stunted pines of Fukien coast on 5 April.
They crept through a narrow entrance on the coast into a large sheltered
harbor, where they ran right into the midst of a large squadron of the
imperial coast-guard fleet. As soon as the strange little frigate was sighted,
40 The Jesuits in the Philippines
a great pounding of gongs and whacking of drums arose from every ship in
the harbor, and a war junk caused her to heave to by putting a cannon shot
across her bows. A launch came alongside filled with soldiers with drawn
swords ; Sanchez climbed down to it with his interpreter and was conveyed
to a large two-masted junk obviously kept in a state of high polish, with a
black-lacquered hull trimmed in gold paint. He assumed, correctly, that
it was the flagship. His escort ushered him into an audience chamber
amidships which was filled with officers, and at the far end of it, standing
apart, the admiral, an imposing figure in a scarlet gown embroidered with
gold lions.
As soon as Sanchez entered, the whole assembly turned to the admiral
and fell on their knees to make the ceremonial kowtow. Those nearest
Sanchez made signs to him to do likewise, but he stoutly refused, declaring
that Spaniards made that form of obeisance only to God; to men, they
bowed, saying which, he bowed deeply. No one of course understood a
word of what he said.
Before leaving Manila, he had taken the precaution of having Governor
Ronquillo sign and seal a letter written in Chinese with the help of the
captain of a trading junk and addressed to the viceroy of Kwangtung
Province, under whose jurisdiction Canton fell. This letter accredited
Sanchez as ambassador with powers to negotiate a treaty of friendship and
commerce and to request permission for the Spaniards to establish a trading
post on the coast similar to what had been conceded to the Portuguese at
Macao. The obliging shipmaster was also asked to write out a statement to
the effect that the bearer was a law-abiding person who wished to enter
China to communicate a matter of importance to the viceroy of Kwang-
tung on behalf of the governor of the Philippines; in effect, a diplomatic
visa, except of course that it was highly doubtful whether the captain of a
trading junk had any consular authority. There was no serious intention of
entering into these treaty negotiations, but Sanchez feared that he might
land not at Macao, of whose location his pilot had only the vaguest notion,
but at some other spot on the Chinese coast where he could not communi-
cate with the Portuguese, in which case diplomatic immunity might
afford him some protection from too zealous minor officials. These fears,
as it turned out, were only too well grounded, and his foresight now
enabled him to step forward and present his credentials. The shipmaster's
statement read as follows :
To the captains and guards of the Chinese maritime frontier : Permit this priest
to pass without doing him injury. He comes on an embassy from the Great
Mandarin of Luzon to the Viceroy of Kwangtung Province. He is a man whose
profession is to teach the law of God and to serve Him, The people with him are
honest folk who come unarmed without evil intent.
Sdnche ^ in China 41
The admiral questioned Sanchez closely, or as closely as Alonso of
Bengal could interpret, regarding the way in which he obtained possession
of this document, because, as Sanchez found out later, it was forbidden
under pain of death for any Chinese to assist foreigners to enter China.
However, it served its purpose ; the admiral gave orders for the foreigners
to be treated well and escorted to Liampo (modern Ningpo), the head-
quarters of the supreme commander of the coast-guard fleet. The interview
with the supreme commander went well after an initial misunderstanding
due to language difficulties. Sanchez and his interpreter were lodged with a
line officer who had shipped to Manila and understood Tagalog. He served
them a tremendous twenty-course dinner, but since it was Wednesday of
Holy Week Sanchez excused himself and partook only of some oranges.
Before retiring for the night the officer sought him privately in his quarters
and asked for a letter of recommendation to the governor of the Philippines
as he wanted to leave the imperial service and return to Manila to trade.
Sanchez was glad to comply because it gave him an opportunity to send
back a progress report on his mission.
The party was then taken inland by river boat, past thriving and
populous villages, to a great city whose most distinctive feature was a
massive stone bridge spanning the broad river. This was Foochow, the
capital of Fukien Province. The prefect of the city, after examining
Sanchez's papers, decided to permit only the priests of the party to pro-
ceed to Canton; the rest he detained until further orders. Accordingly,
Sanchez and the Franciscans, after taking leave of their companions, con-
tinued their journey upriver for fifteen more days, then took to the road
on horses provided by the government. Before reaching Canton, however,
they were informed that the viceroy was at a place which Sanchez calls
Tancon, where the imperial arsenals were located. Thither they went.
Sanchez duly presented Governor Ronquillo's letter but apparently did
not press for a reply, merely asking permission to go to Macao by way of
Canton. This was granted, and in the morning of 2 May Sanchez and his
companions, traveling once more by river boat, caught their first sight of
Canton, with the tall tower of the imperial treasury in the midst of it.
They were ordered to disembark in a suburb at the outskirts of the city,
but the officer in command of their escort whispered in their ear that if
they gave him silver he would take them to where they could meet other
foreigners of their sort. They promised him the money and he took them
with great secrecy through narrow streets and back alleys to another section
of the river, where a number of Portuguese vessels lay at anchor. They
hailed the merchants on board, who came ashore to greet them, “and we
were so w r eary with dealing with these Chinese," says Sanchez, “with their
mean ways and flatteries and deceits, that when we saw the Portuguese,
although they were different in countenance, dress and language from our
42 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Spaniards, we embraced them as though they were angels from heaven/’
Sanchez’s cup of joy was filled to overflowing when the welcoming party
hustled up to him a totally unexpected fellow Jesuit* This was Francesco
Pasio, who with another Italian, Michele Ruggiero, had just arrived from
Goa to begin the China mission. It was a great moment for both of them,
and they “embraced each other with great joy and gladness, giving thanks
to the Lord that one of them having come by the eastern route and the
other by the western, they had in that embrace encompassed the globe, like
true sons of Ignatius, in fulfilment of their institute/’
The Portuguese learned from the guardsmen that the fathers were being
taken to the prefect of the city. This meant, if past experience was any
warrant, that they were in for a pretty uncomfortable time, so the good-
natured merchants pressed some silver coins into their hands and told
them that they would probably be sentenced to a whipping, in which case
the accepted procedure was to bribe the executioners not to lay on too
hard. They made their way to the prefect’s audience hall with this
uneasy prospect before them. Fortunately, while their case was being
dispatched, word came that an inspector-general from Peking was at the
gates of the city. The session was at once adjourned with much rustling
and bustling, for it was the custom that when an inspector-general arrived
all the city officials went out to meet him, and after they had conducted
him inside the walls, the city gates were sealed and all public business
suspended for three days while the inspector-general made his inquiries.
Sanchez had apparently managed to convey the intelligence that he
belonged to the same religious association as Pasio and Ruggiero, for before
going off the prefect ordered that he be taken to their lodgings. 6
While the Portuguese had been allowed to establish their trading post
at Macao and on rare occasions to come to Canton on business, no Euro-
pean had ever been permitted to reside in Canton permanently. This
unprecedented privilege Ruggiero succeeded in obtaining. Not only that,
but he became so proficient in the language and won the esteem of the
viceroy and the prefect to such an extent that they came occasionally to
visit him in his house. “This Italian father,” Sanchez observed, “was of a
mild disposition and very similar in his ways to the Chinese and for this
reason they liked him a great deal.” They liked him so much that they
gave him permission to install a chapel in his residence, where they came
several times to watch him celebrate Mass.
The three days of enforced leisure occasioned by the presence of the
inspector-general in the city enabled Ruggiero to acquaint Sanchez with
his plans for the evangelization of China. In 1573 Father General
Mercurian appointed Alessandro Valxgnano visitor of the Jesuit missions
in the East. He set sail from Lisbon the following year with a large
expedition of forty-one missionaries, spent some time in Goa, and arrived
Sanchez^ in China 43
at Macao in 1577. He was naturally interested in realizing Xavier’s dream
of introducing Christianity to the Chinese, but was confronted with the
hitherto insuperable difficulty of even gaining admittance to the empire.
After a careful study of the problem he came to the conclusion that this
policy was based largely on the Chinese view, reasonable enough if their
millennial isolation from the rest of the world was taken into account, that
foreigners unacquainted with the Chinese language and culture were mere
barbarians who could not possibly have anything of value to impart, and
on the other hand might if admitted do great harm by giving bad example
to the people or spying out the country. If this inference was sound, then
the only way to begin the evangelization of China was for the missionary
to put himself to school with the Chinese ; to learn the Chinese language
and culture so thoroughly as in a manner to make them his own ; and by
adopting Chinese ways and customs as far as his Christian faith and religious
profession allowed, to prove to the scholar officials who administered
China that he was worthy of their attention and respect. Valignano wrote
back to Goa for a man to undertake this exacting task, and Ruggiero was
appointed. He arrived at Macao on 22 June 1579, only a few days after
Valignano had left it to make his visitation of the Japanese mission. He
threw himself wholeheartedly into the project conceived by the visitor,
and after more than two years of patient effort achieved his first success,
the permission to reside in Canton. Meanwhile Pasio, whom Sanchez met
at the quayside, had come out to join him, and the following year they
would be joined by the man destined by Providence to establish the mission
in the very heart of the empire : Matteo Ricci. 7
After the departure of the inspector-general, the prefect of Canton sent
for Sanchez and the Franciscans, but instead of inflicting on them the
expected bastinado, he told them that he was giving them a safe-conduct
to Macao. It read :
The bearers are certain priests who are on their way to Macao to see their
brethren there. They are unarmed and harmless, and so may be permitted to
proceed. They are, indeed, deserving of some punishment because they submitted
a memorial to His Excellency the Viceroy which was inscribed on a small piece
of paper without proper authorization and not couched, as it should have been,
in the form of a petition addressed to a superior ; however, since they are ignorant
foreigners, they should be pardoned. 8
He informed them, however, that this safe-conduct had first to be
referred to the viceroy for approval, and possibly also to an even more
august authority, the imperial commissioner at Chaoking. Meanwhile,
they must w 7 ait. The imperial commissioner, Ch’en Chuei, was a man of
advanced years but unimpaired intelligence. Soon after his recent appoint-
ment he had begun to ask embarrassing questions. Who, for instance,
44 r he Jesuits in the Philippines
had ceded Macao to the Portuguese? The matter had apparently been
arranged between the provincial officials and the foreign traders to their
mutual satisfaction, but no one had thought of informing the emperor,
much less of telling him what sums, if any, the Portuguese might have
paid for the privilege. Again, was it part of the bargain that the Portuguese
should be free to bring Japanese and people of other nationalities into
Macao without restriction, as they seemed to be doing ? Further, had
Macao ceased to be Chinese territory ? For if not, why were the Portuguese
administering justice and exercising other acts of jurisdiction there?
It was while Commissioner Ch'en was still waiting for a satisfactory
explanation of these anomalies that the case of Sanchez was brought to his
attention. Who was this Sanchez ? A Spaniard, he was told ; one of a band
of seafaring barbarians who had only recently settled on some small islands
in the South Sea. What manner of men were they ? One of the officials
present had served as an interpreter with the Macao Portuguese and
acquired their unflattering opinion of Spaniards. He volunteered the infor-
mation that the Spaniards were thieves and spies, “an evil folk who went
about the world robbing kingdoms and killing their lawful rulers; and
whatsoever land they entered they took for their own.” Further infor-
mation was supplied from the records which seemed to lend color to this
description. It was recalled that other Spaniards had entered the province
in small groups without permission, had gone about making inquiries
and in general behaved very suspiciously. Highly indignant, Commissioner
Ch'en dispatched a message to Canton ordering the prefect to detain
Sanchez, and another message to Macao summoning whoever was in
charge there to appear before him in person and explain the exact status
of Macao, the intentions of the Portuguese, their relation with the
Spaniards, and so on.
The captain-major of Macao, Ayres Gonsalves, saw at once that the
matter was serious. He gathered together the sizable sum of 2,000 escudos,
gave it to one of the ouvidores of the settlement, a man named Panela, and
sent him to Chaoking with instructions to stop by Canton and take
Ruggiero along with him. Leaving poor Sanchez under house arrest in the
Canton residence, Ruggiero and Panela went to see if they could allay the
commissioner's scruples. Ruggiero's sweet reasonableness got him calmed
down sufficiently to agree that if he, Ruggiero, would personally guarantee
the good behavior of the people from Luzon, he would approve their safe-
conduct. The 2,000 escudos might also have contributed somewhat
toward this compromise, as well as convinced the commissioner that there
would be no point in disturbing the de facto arrangements regarding
Macao . 9
Thus, tow ard the end of May, two and a half months after his departure
from Manila, Sanchez reached his destination. Macao stood on a tiny
Sdtiche ^ in China 45
peninsula of the Chinese mainland, about 1,200 acres in area, not far
from Canton. It was established in 1557 or thereabouts, when the Portu-
guese transferred to it the trading post they had on Shang-ch'uan Island,
where Saint Francis Xavier died. In spite of its narrow confines it was a
much larger city than Manila, with a population of about 5,000, of whom
1,000 were Europeans. Because of the depredations of the w ako, the
Japanese counterparts of the Elizabethan sea dogs, who were traders when
they had to be and pirates when they could, Ming China had broken off
commercial relations with Japan. This gave the Portuguese the opportunity,
which they were not slow to grasp, of preempting the carrying trade
between the two countries, and it was on this trade that Macao waxed
mightily prosperous. One rough but sufficiently revealing measure of this
prosperity was that every third year, when a new viceroy of Kwangtung
took office, he received the not exactly modest cumshaw of 100,000 ducats,
as a reminder from the Portuguese of Macao that they would like to con-
tinue buying Chinese goods for sale in Japan.
In the beginning Macao was under the immediate and effective jurisdic-
tion of a Chinese magistrate, but the Portuguese gradually assumed extra-
territorial rights, setting up a government of their own which administered
the city according to Portuguese law. The Chinese authorities gave tacit
consent to this development, although they retained the right to conduct
periodic inspections and searches and firmly forbade the peninsula to be
fortified in any way. Finally, in 1573, they gave what amounted to recog-
nition of an existing fact when they built a wall across the neck of the
peninsula, the gate of which was opened one day in five (later fifteen) to
permit trade, but otherwise kept under guard and sealed with a seal w r hich
bore the inscription: '‘Fear our greatness; respect our virtue/' 10
The Macao Portuguese thus had two good reasons for not caring to have
anything to do with Spaniards. The first was that they meant to keep the
profits of the trade they had developed for themselves; they wanted no
interlopers. The second was that they were keenly conscious that the
Chinese government did not particularly want them there and was quite
capable of casting them out at any time; they did not want the proud
Spanish temper exploding like a string of firecrackers on their precarious
peninsula and attracting to it the wrathful notice of Peking. This was the
city from which Alonso Sanchez had to coax an oath of allegiance to
Philip, King of Spain.
While he was still at Canton, Sanchez had learned that Valignano, hav-
ing completed his visitation of Japan, was back at Macao. He wrote to
Valignano telling him in confidence of the purpose of his mission and
asking him to do what he could to prepare the ground for him. Valignano
did so by talking to the most influential citizens individually and getting
them used to the idea of a dynastic union between Spain and Portugal as
46 The Jesuits in the Philippines
a distinct possibility, in view of the latest news they had from Goa about
the disputed succession, Sanchez upon his arrival continued this line of
approach. He made no public announcements but told each of those whom
Valignano suggested he should see, privately and in confidence, that
Philip had been acclaimed king of Portugal upon his solemn promise that
the two realms would be kept entirely separate and governed, as hitherto,
according to each one's laws, institutions, and usages. No changes would
be made in the administrative structure of the mo empires, and no
Spaniards would be forced on the Portuguese where they were not wanted.
The only effect of the union would be that Spain and Portugal would
present a common front to their common enemies, and each would be
able to draw on the resources of the other in case of need.
Sanchez then asked Domingo Alvares, the rector of the Jesuit College of
Sao Paulo, to invite these leading citizens to dinner. Heading the guest
list were the bishop of Macao, Lionardo da Sa; the patriarch of Ethiopia
and bishop-elect of Japan, Melchor Carneiro; the captain-major of that
year, Joam d' Almeida, and the four regidores or burgesses of the city. After
dinner Sanchez explained his mission to them collectively as he had already
done individually. He presented the official dispatches and the accompany-
ing documentary proof that the leading universities and jurists of Europe
favored Philip's claim, and that that claim had in fact been recognized by
the highest ecclesiastical and civil authorities of Portugal. He then asked
them to take the oath of allegiance in behalf of their city.
All those present expressed their willingness to do so, but asked for time
to consider how this could be best effected. They were against any public
oath-taking, as this might arouse the suspicions of the Chinese, who were
already extremely nervous about the continual Spanish violations of their
exclusion policy. Moreover, though they did not perhaps tell Sanchez this,
they wanted to hear from the viceroy of Goa first. Confirmation was duly
received from Goa, and on 18 December 1583 the same personages met
in the college and took the oath of allegiance. The ceremony was conducted
very quietly and no dissenting voice was heard in the city, because Valig-
nano, Alvares, and Sanchez had in the meantime taken the opportunity on
Sundays and feast-days to explain to the people from the pulpit the nature
of the new connection and persuade them of the wisdom of accepting it. 11
The Macao authorities were grateful to Sanchez for the tact with which
he handled a potentially explosive situation. With the cooperation of
Valignano he gave them time and opportunity to get over the shock of
what must have been initially a most repugnant idea. He kept strictly to
the letter and spirit of Philip's instructions, making no demands beyond
the oath of allegiance to the legitimate occupant of the Portuguese throne.
He appreciated the importance of keeping things quiet so as not to alarm
the Chinese. As a matter of fact the union of the two Crowns did not go
Sdnche ^ in China 47
unperceived by the Kwangtung authorities. They asked questions about
it and its possible implications ; but since there was no undue disturbance
or rejoicing in the settlement, they did not attach much importance to it.
At the same time the Portuguese were still not quite easy in their minds
about the way the Spaniards in the Philippines intended to exploit the
new connection. In their letters to Manila they stressed the fact that any
Spanish intrusion into China would be not only fatal to Macao but
extremely dangerous to the Spaniards themselves. Almeida, the captain-
major, writing to Governor Ronquillo, thanked him for sending Sanchez
to administer the oath of allegiance, but told him bluntly that Spaniards
were in very bad odor with the Chinese, and upon hearing of the king of
Spain becoming also king of Portugal their suspicion and dislike had
increased considerably. Hence all communication between Macao and the
Philippines should be kept to an absolute minimum, and the Spaniards
in the Philippines should consult the safety of Macao as well as their own
by staying away from China. Bishop Da Sa sounded the same apprehensive
note, earnestly requesting Governor Ronquillo to prevent any Spaniard,
whether layman, cleric, or religious, from coming to China; the very exis-
tence of Macao depended upon it. Valignano elaborated on this theme.
The only way Macao could be preserved was by the Portuguese doing
exactly what the Chinese officials told them, because the city was com-
pletely dependent on the trade and hence on the good will of the Chinese.
The Chinese for their part were extremely suspicious of Spanish intentions
and the possible consequences of the union of the two crowns. It was, then,
of the highest importance to obey the stringent orders issued by the
Chinese government forbidding Spaniards to come to China. In fact, if any
Spaniard put in an appearance at Macao, the Portuguese might be com-
pelled, though much against their will, to surrender him to the Chinese
authorities. 12
Sanchez, his mission accomplished, now prepared to return; but so
insistent were the Chinese that no direct communication be established
between Macao and Manila that they would not give him back his frigate
to go home in. He therefore decided on the advice of Valignano and
Almeida to return to the Philippines via Japan, sailing from Macao in
July 1582 aboard the carrack that carried the annual cargo for the Japanese
market.
All went well until they hit the open sea, when an early typhoon drove
the lumbering carrack off its course and wrecked it on the island of
Formosa. Several of the ship’s company were drowned. The 290 survivors
spent three miserable months on that inhospitable coast. They were able
to salvage some rice and dry it in the sun soon enough to prevent its being
spoiled. Otherwise they would have starved, for there was no forage to be
had. Moreover, the hostile natives kept them under such constant attack
48 The Jesuits in the Philippines
that they were forced to entrench themselves and post guards day and night.
Under these trying conditions they tried to piece together from the planks
of the wreck a seaworthy vessel that would take them back to Macao. They
finally succeeded, and putting out to sea with only six jars of water and a
little rice, they made Macao in eight days. Their arrival sent the whole city
into mourning, for the carrack was a total loss, and there was no one in
Macao who did not have his pennyworth invested in the voyage. In his
letter to Manila reporting the disaster, Almeida paid tribute to the energy
and leadership with which Sanchez kept up the spirits of the castaways
and enabled them to survive.
The wrecked carrack belonged to a great friend of the Jesuits, a man by
the name of Bartolomeu Vaz Landeiro. He was a merchant of no small
means, as may be gathered from the fact that when he went abroad in state
he was accompanied not only by his Portuguese familiars but “by eighty
blackamoors and slaves with shield and halberd/' and when he came to
church servants went before to lay out his carpet and place thereon his
cushioned chair of crimson velvet studded with golden nails. Sanchez felt
that to ask Landeiro to provide him with transportation to Manila would
not be too great an imposition. Landeiro graciously consented to have the
vessel which the castaways had constructed from the wreckage of his
carrack taken apart and refashioned into a junk which would safely take
Sanchez home. And since it was going to Manila anyway, it might as well
carry a cargo of China goods for the galleon trade; which shows that
Landeiro did not make his money merely by parading about with his eighty
blackamoors. 13
There remained the problem of getting the Chinese to authorize a
direct voyage to Manila. Strangely enough, the permission was obtained
by appealing to the same reasons that had caused the prohibition to be
issued. It came about in this way. Soon after Sanchez's departure from
Manila, the Franciscans sent another expedition to repopulate their
Macao convent which neither Governor Ronquillo nor Bishop Salazar
were able to prevent. The expedition consisted of seven or eight friars led
by Fray Geronimo de Burgos. Soon after they landed on Chinese soil they
were arrested and brought to Canton. This time the magistrates were less
indulgent. They were cast into the public gaol, where they suffered such
great privations that the Portuguese out of pit y ransomed them and took
them to Macao. However, the Portuguese were determined not to let them
stay, and in this they had the full concurrence of the Chinese authorities.
To speed the parting guest, the prefect of Canton sent to Macao an exit
visa for both Sanchez and the Franciscans. It read :
Safe-conduct whereby, out of reverence to God, permission is granted to the
Spaniards who came to China to return to Luzon, seeing they have committed no
S a riche ^ in China 49
piracy at sea. Because God willed it there came to our port of Quecheu [kitchioh ?j
a frigate with eighteen men. They were captured by our fleet and brought before
us. At first we were for putting them to death, but after further inquiry we found
that they were good men. After that there came to another port of our land called
Chana [ ?] another frigate with twenty-six on board. Our guards likewise brought
them to us at Canton. Upon investigation we discovered that the masters of the
frigate were priests of God and all of them good men. We set them free and sent
their safe-conduct to the imperial commissioner who confirmed it and ordered the
viceroy and prefect of Canton to send them to Macao.
This frigate came from the island of Luzon with a letter and presents. We con-
sulted our laws and according to them it is forbidden to accept these presents and
make friends with these people, because they are what our laws refer to as people
with cat’s eyes, against whom we should guard ourselves. We informed the
imperial commissioner of this, and he declared that our laws permit free entry to
all except the people with cat’s eyes. For this reason he ordered the letter and
presents returned and the people sent to Macao.
In virtue of this we order that the Spaniards return to Luzon and no longer per-
mit themselves to be deceived by the Chinese who are there and who tell them
that we will not punish and put them to death if they come here again. Let them
take this safe-conduct with them and post it in a place where all the Chinese in
Luzon may see it and be warned not to counsel the Spaniards to come hither.
This time, because they are good men, we let them depart in safety. But let them
tell the others who are there not to come any more because we will not let them
in and our coastguard will put them to death. Here ends our safe-conduct. Let
it be published for the information of all. 14
It was represented to the Chinese that in view of their great anxiety to
be rid of the Spaniards as soon as possible, they should allow them to go
directly to Manila in Landeiro’s junk. The Chinese saw no flaw in this
reasoning and granted the permission. On 13 February 1583 the junk
weighed anchor with Sebastiao Jorge, Landeiro’s nephew, in command
and Sanchez and the Franciscans on board. After a slow crossing due to
calms and headwinds it entered Manila Bay on 27 March.
Four days previously, Sanchez had transferred to a fast launch and gone
ahead to warn the governor of the junk’s arrival. He found Ronquillo dead
and the city razed to the ground. Ronquillo’s death occurred on 14 Feb-
ruary, one day after the junk’s departure from Macao. His body was laid
out in state in the Augustinian church, which was of wood and thatch. The
candles around the bier set fire to the building. Fanned by a stiff breeze
the fire leaped to the adjoining houses and the whole city went up in
flames, including the fort, the arsenal, the government food stores, the
cathedral, the hospital, the bishop’s house with its fine library, and the
cargo which the citizens were preparing to load on the Acapulco galleon.
In two hours Manila was in ashes.
Sanchez was received with such great joy that the citizens ran coatless
5o
The Jesuits in the Philippines
out of their houses to tell each other the news/' It may seem strange that
they still had houses to run out of; but of course a bamboo-and-palmetto
house can be put up in the Philippines in a matter of days. Their delight
was not so much at seeing Sanchez again as on learning that the junk from
Macao was bringing merchandise : Portuguese wine and oil, Indian cottons
and linens, Chinese biscuit, taffeta, carpets, damasks, grosgrain silks, horns
and ivories, rare and costly drugs — it would mean that they could send the
galleon after all, and have a little port to wash down their evening rice
while waiting for it to bring their silver back.
Diego Ronquillo, who succeeded his cousin Gonzalo as governor, made
sure that the Portuguese were given a royal welcome. Captain Jorge dined
every day at the governor's table, and the cargo of the junk was soon sold,
on terms so profitable to both parties that it was agreed the Portuguese
would come every year to trade. 15
Sanchez discussed his experiences in China with Governor Ronquillo and
Bishop Salazar; and it was apparently during these discussions that the
fantastic China enterprise — la empresa de China — took shape. This was a
project to send an armed expedition from the Philippines to China with
the object of compelling the Chinese government to permit the entry of
missionaries into China, and of providing the missionaries with an armed
escort to ensure their safety while preaching Christianity to the Chinese.
If the Chinese government resisted, war was to be declared and Spanish
sovereignty imposed on the conquered territory. Sanchez claimed in a
letter to Acquaviva 1 ^ that he had broached this plan to the Jesuits at
Macao, and that they were all for it as the only means, humanly speaking,
of bringing salvation to countless souls who would otherwise be lost.
Without calling the veracity of Sanchez in question, it may be doubted
whether they gave it any such approval, at least in the form which it ulti-
mately assumed at Manila. For, as we have already seen, the Jesuits at
Macao were hard at work on a diametrically opposite approach, originally
conceived by Valignano, put into execution by Ruggiero, and ultimately
to be carried to its full development by Ricci — an approach which sought
to attract the Chinese to Christianity by peaceful persuasion based on a
sympathetic understanding of the Chinese mind and a deep respect for
the humane elements in Chinese culture. We have, moreover, a letter of
Valignano himself to Governor Ronquillo 1 ^ in which, without bothering
to argue the hypothetical and largely sterile question of whether, when,
how, in what circumstances, by what means and to what extent a conquest
of China would be justified, he shrewdly advised him as a practical man of
affairs not to think of attacking China until he knew a great deal more
about it.
The advice was not followed. To men sitting in nipa shacks amid a gutted
town China, silken China, Marco Polo's China, was irresistible. Bishop
5 1
Sdnche ^ in China
Salazar proposed the project to Philip II 18 in glowing terms. He prefaced
his remarks by saying that he had been “raised on the doctrine of the
Bishop of Chiapa,” that is, Las Casas, the great champion of Indian rights.
During the twenty-three years that he spent as a missionary in Mexico, he
had stoutly maintained with many other missionaries and theologians that
the wars waged against the Indians whereby the New World was con-
quered were unjust, and that the Spaniards who took part in them were
held to restitution for the deaths and damages they had inflicted. With
regard to the China project, however, he had after mature thought arrived
at the following conclusions. First, that the king of the united realms of
Spam and Portugal was justified in sending an army into China to compel
the emperor of that country to permit the preaching of Christianity and to
guarantee the safety of the missionaries. Second, that the cost of this
expedition could lawfully be imposed on the Chinese ,* and if they refused
they could be compelled, “always observing the equity and moderation
demanded by the purpose we have in mind.” Third, that the king could
legitimately tax the Chinese and bestow portions of Chinese territory on
the soldiers who took part in its “pacification.” Finally, “if the emperor
of China should be so stubborn as not to be induced to permit the preach-
ing of the Gospel in his empire, even after every reasonable inducement
has been tried, then your Majesty may take his empire away from him.
This proposition is as certain as the others, but since it may be quite
difficult to determine when and how this can and should be done, a more
lengthy consideration is required.”
Salazar realized that many objections would be raised against the pro-
jected expedition. It would undoubtedly be said that this manner of
preaching the gospel was unjust; that no one could be compelled against
his will to accept Christianity; that to secure the liberty of preaching in
an alien kingdom by making war upon it was to do evil that good might
result ; that this manner of conversion was more in conformity with the
teachings of Mohammed than with those ot Christ. Nevertheless he
said, he was confident that he could give a satisfactory answer to these
objections.
Ronquillo was quite willing to take Bishop Salazar s word that the
enterprise was justified; indeed, that Philip II could without any scruple
take possession of all the kingdoms of the Indies. In his own letter to the
home government 19 he confined himself to discussing whether it was
feasible. His conclusion was that with ten or twelve galleons and 8,000
Spanish troops he could overcome any resistance the Chinese might be able
to offer. But he could not undertake an expedition of this size without the
express approval of the king, who would have to send him the necessary
men and supplies. He therefore proposed that Sanchez return to Spain to
take up the matter personally with Philip. Sanchez replied that by himself
52
The Jesuits in the Philippines
he was not equal to a mission of such importance, but he would go if the
bishop went too. Salazar, in the first flush of his enthusiasm over the
project, agreed. It would be well worth the journey. The king should be
made to see that all other business must be put aside, for what was “the
reduction of a thousand Flanders ” to the conquest of China ? “Not even
Julius Caesar nor Alexander the Great ever had an opportunity such as
this ; and, on the spiritual plane, nothing greater was ever projected since
the time of the apostles/' But sober second thoughts made him change his
mind. He w r as the bishop of the Philippines, after all ; he could not leave
his diocese, even on such an errand. What would the king say if he sud-
denly turned up at court without so much as giving notice of his coming ? 20
So the great etnpresa was postponed for the time being, much to Ron-
quillo's disgust ; postponed, but not abandoned. It would come up again,
and Sanchez would get his chance to lay it before the king. Meanwhile
something else came up which resulted in Sanchez going to Macao a second
time. In June 1583 the galleon San Martin , Captain Francisco de Mercado,
left Manila for Acapulco. She left on schedule and should have had no
trouble; but Captain Mercado claimed that she ran into heavy weather
and was blown off her course all the way up to China. It may have been so;
but, according to another version of the story, Captain Mercado allowed
himself to be persuaded by certain members of his crew that it would be
far more profitable for all of them if they sailed the galleon to Macao, took
in additional cargo, and then made off with it to Peru, where they could
live the rest of their lives in opulence while the Manilans whistled for their
silver. At any rate, they ran into difficulties on the uncharted Chinese coast.
To lighten the vessel they had to land most of the cargo; the Chinese
coast guard, seeing the cargo, seized it. However, they were able to get
away with the galleon and eventually to limp into Macao harbor. Here the
crew mutinied and stripped Mercado of his command. The chief officer,
the navigator, and the notary then went ashore and got a Portuguese court
to adjudicate the vessel to them. This settled, they declared that they were
ready to take in cargo for Peru, to the great delight of the Macao merchants.
News of what had happened to the San Martin reached Manila in March
1584, when Landeiro came wfith two junks to trade as agreed upon the
previous year. He brought with him Captain Mercado and the loyal mem-
bers of his crew, whom the mutineers had put off the ship. In the circum-
stances it was useless merely to write to the Macao authorities and request
them to detain the galleon. Someone had to go there with a sufficient force
to repossess it before the mutineers could get away. Ronquillo decided to
send the royal factor, Juan Bautista Roman, and, to help him in any
difficulties he might get into with the Portuguese, Alonso Sanchez. 21
Sedeno was most reluctant to let Sanchez go this time. 22 He was begin-
ning to doubt whether these diplomatic missions were the kind of missions
Sanchez^ in China 53
a priest and religious can or ought to undertake* Sanchez himself felt the
need of explaining to Acquaviva 23 why he accepted the previous assign-
ment, as though he realized that it would raise eyebrows in Rome. Some-
one, he said, had to step forward to repair the poor opinion that the king
and his officials had of the Society. It had become a common saying that
Jesuits were interested only in making themselves comfortable in large
cities and dealing familiarly with the nobility ; that they loved nothing so
much as moving about amid the silks and velvets of the houses of the rich.
As for discharging the king's conscience among poor natives or going where-
ever the king sent them, they were singularly lacking in enthusiasm. This
was what decided him to “come out of his corner" and leave the retire-
ment which he loved, to show that Jesuits were ready to go anywhere, risk
any danger, to serve the king.
Both the governor and the bishop were most insistent that Sanchez
should once again be given an opportunity to prove his zeal in the royal
service. It was not as though he was being sent merely to help recover a
stray galleon. They had more important business for him to transact at
Macao than that. This time they wanted him to take up seriously with the
Chinese authorities the matter of a Spanish trading post on the coast of
Fukien Province. This was apparently to be a test of whether the Chinese
were willing to extend the hand of friendship to the Spaniards and even-
tually open their country to Spanish missionaries; for if the negotations
failed, “I say again," Bishop Salazar wrote to Philip, “that not only can
your Majesty enter China sword in hand and by force of arms open a gate
for the gospel, but . . * your Majesty is in duty bound to do so." 24
Sedeno was unable to resist these representations. Sanchez left with
Roman toward the end of 1583, taking with him Simon de Mendiola,
whom Sedeno had received provisionally as a postulant for the lay brother-
hood of the Society; on the first day of May 1584 he arrived at Macao.
Roman proved both resolute and ruthless. He boarded the San Martin , over-
came the mutineers, gave the ringleaders a summary trial and ordered them
garroted. He then hired a new crew and sent the galleon to Acapulco.
The Macao merchants tried to stop him from executing his commission
on the grounds that it was a violation of Portuguese sovereignty, but
Sanchez succeeded in convincing them that no such violation was involved,
since the crime was committed on a Spanish vessel, and the punishment
would be inflicted on the same vessel where it lay at anchor in Macao
roads, outside Portuguese territory.
The affair of the galleon settled, Sanchez applied to the viceroy of
Kwangtung for permission to visit Ruggiero. By this time Ruggiero, Pasio,
and Ricci had been allowed to transfer their residence from Canton to
Chaoking, the capital of the province. Ruggiero had written to Sanchez
asking him if possible to send a clock, “ which the Chinese make much of."
54 The ]esuits in the Philippines
Sanchez wanted to deliver the clock personally, because he needed Rug-
giero's help in the negotiations for a trading post. His application was
refused, but Ruggiero was permitted to come and confer with him in
Macao. 25
While waiting for Ruggiero to turn up, Sanchez busied himself at the
Jesuit college in writing a lengthy report to Acquaviva on what he con-
sidered the worldly ways of his hosts. 26 The college, he said, employed far
too many servants. He counted forty-four of them. Practically every
member of the community had his personal servant. When not otherwise
employed, these servants swaggered about in silks and taffeta hats and
daggers and made a great racket all day in the patio, playing cards and
bawling ballads. When they tired of these diversions they sprawled on the
benches along the corridors and napped.
The house was full of pet dogs and pigeons in cages. The fathers wore
silk caps on their heads and the collars of their shirts outside the cassocks.
They wore buttons on their cassocks. They wore slippers about the house.
They took frequent baths. They changed their underclothing very fre-
quently. They kept food in their rooms and porous jars to cool their
drinking water and lemons and pears and other fruit scattered about on
their desks among their books. They slept on mattresses and had pillows
with silk slipcovers and left their windows open at night. The bell for
meals might just as well not be rung; everyone came late for them. Some
of the fathers were served special dishes sent in by their friends. They went
into one another's rooms to talk whenever they felt like it, and their con-
versation often turned on secular affairs. They were inordinately fond of
music. They taught their students of grammar chiefly how to sing ; gram-
mar was just an excuse.
Valignano, the visitor, reformed none of this. (By this time Valignano
was back in Rome.) Sanchez admitted that Father Valignano was a holy
man and had been of great help and comfort to him personally. But — and
Acquaviva could show him this letter if he wished — he was a man who
liked to deal with the great of this world upon great affairs, while neglect-
ing the little details that made up the religious life: the keeping of the
rules, prompt obedience to the bell, silence, religious dress, order in the
running of the house, and so on.
The hot climate of Macao might be alleged as an excuse for the creature
comforts which the Portuguese fathers permitted themselves. But the
Philippines was a much hotter country; so much so, in fact, that the
Macao merchants who went to Manila broke out in rashes and could not
wait to get out again. Yet the Spanish fathers there stood it tolerably well
while keeping up the regular observance which they learned at Alcala and
Rome. This was because they did not even think of the various relaxations
of rule that had been discovered or contrived at Macao.
Sanchez^ in China 55
But Sanchez's principal complaint was the buying and selling in which
the Macao fathers engaged. According to him, they had as much as
20,000 crusadoes invested in the Japan trade. At the time of writing they
had just sent 100 quintals of crude silk to Japan, which was more than six
merchants together could send. And now people were saying that the
Jesuits in Japan were no longer content with selling this merchandise at
the ports, but were transporting it further inland where it fetched a better
price. Sanchez passed on to Acquaviva what a shipmaster who had gone
on a voyage to the Moluccas told him, that he was inclined to doubt
whether the Portuguese fathers there were really Jesuits because they were
not like other Jesuits he had known; they acted more like merchants than
the merchants themselves.
These criticisms seem to have got back to the Portuguese Jesuits in
China and Japan who naturally felt very bad about them. They also felt
very bad about a conference which Sanchez gave to the community of the
college in which he made certain statements which sounded very much like
criticisms of Valignano and even of Xavier himself. The vice-provincial of
Japan, Gaspar Coelho, wrote about it to Sedeno, who did his best to defend
at least the sincerity if not the prudence of his subject. 27 Sanchez did not
really mean to find fault with Xavier. He merely said that Xavier, who was
a saint, did certain things, such as hobnobbing with common seamen and
even playing cards with them, which his brethren would be rash to imitate.
After all, he was a pioneer, and so in a measure exempt from the rules that
must govern his more pedestrian successors; just as Adam who sprang
full-grown from the hands of God had no need for swaddling clothes and
milk, whereas his descendants who must begin life as infants could not do
without them. And all that Sanchez really said about Valignano was that
he could not very well as visitor descend to the small details of domestic
discipline. His task was to lay out the grand lines of mission policy ; it was
up to the local superiors to work out the details.
As for the hearsay reports retailed by Sanchez regarding the commercial
operations in which the Portuguese Jesuits were allegedly involved, the
best way to evaluate them is to compare them with the financial report
which Valignano drew up after his visitation. 28 Until 1 574 the total income
of the Jesuit mission in Japan consisted of a subsidy granted by the
Portuguese government to the amount of 500 ducats, payable annually at
Malacca. In 1574 Dom Sebastiao increased this to 1,000 ducats
in order to enable the fathers to open a seminary college for Japanese
students. Then Luis d' Almeida, a Macao merchant who later entered the
Society, invested 4,000 ducats in the trade in favor of the mission. The
investment was managed entirely by some merchant friends of his; the
Jesuits merely received the interest.
In 1578 Valignano entered into an agreement with the merchant guild
56 The Jesuits in the Philippines
of Macao whereby, of the 1,500 picos of silk annually shipped to Japan by
Macao, 50 picos would be to the account of the Jesuit province of Japan.
The province paid the pur chase price of these 50 picos at Macao and
received their first wholesale price when landed in Japan, the net income
averaging 1,500 ducats. Approval of this arrangement was requested and
obtained from Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.
In 1 568 the daimyo (feudal lord) of Nagasaki applied the anchorage fees
of the Portuguese carrack and other vessels visiting that port to the con-
struction and maintenance of the Jesuit church, and subsequently the
daimyo of Arima applied the revenues of certain lands of his to the Jesuit
province; but when Hideyoshi, the shogun, obtained control of southern
Japan these donations were rescinded. Finally, Pope Gregory XIII granted
a subsidy to the province of 4,000 ducats annually, payable from the funds
of the Holy See in Spain.
Thus, Valignano concluded, the regular income of the Jesuit province of
Japan, apart from occasional gifts, was in the neighborhood of 7,500 ducats
a year. With this sum it supported 1 30 religious distributed in 20 houses,
and 100 Japanese seminary students.
Even with Ruggiero's help Sanchez failed to persuade the Chinese
government to consider the Spanish request for a trading post. However,
Roman took in some Chinese merchandise as return cargo, and when the
ship was ready to leave port the Chinese customs officials came to measure
it, inspect the cargo, and collect harbor fees and duties, exactly as they did
with the Portuguese. Sanchez interpreted this action as implying without
actually saying that the Canton authorities would welcome the establish-
ment of normal trade relations between their city and Manila; with this
he had perforce to be content.
They cleared Macao on 1 October 1584. Roman commanded the vessel;
the passengers were Sanchez, Mendiola, and two Franciscans. They had
no sooner left their anchorage than a northeaster of hurricane force drove
them towards the island of Hainan. They jettisoned not only cargo but
even all movable furniture and partitions to lighten the ship. Cabinless
and bedless they stretched a mat across one corner of the poop deck and
huddled under it as their only protection from the weather. They were
soaked to the skin most of the time and with the w T ind knifing through
their thin cotton cassocks they were thoroughly miserable.
They did not dare to land on Hainan because of the notorious ferocity
of its inhabitants, nor would the gale suffer them to steer for Manila, so
they sought haven somewhere along the coast of Annam. Here the natives
refused to let them take in any provisions, although they sat patiently
watching them from the shore and waited for the ship to be dashed against
the rocks so that they could claim salvage. Finally about twenty-four of
the ship's company became so bored that they took the ship's boat and
Sanche^ in China 57
went ashore. The natives laid an ambush for them and took most of them
prisoner, the others scuttling off in all directions. The natives then seized
the ship's boat and with other boats of their own prepared to board the
ship itself. Those left aboard hauled up the anchors hurriedly and
scrambled out of the haven as best they could, Sanchez and Mendiola
helping to pole the ship off the rocks.
It was nightfall as they drew away from land, seeking the open sea, and
through the dusk they could hear their shipmates ashore crying out to
them to come back and not abandon them in that hostile land. ** Let each
one here consider , 9 ’ Sanchez wrote afterward, * ‘ what the Christian hearts
aboard that vessel felt at seeing themselves defenceless against wind and
wave in those uncharted seas, surrounded by treacherous rocks and shal-
lows, with winter and the dark of night upon them, and their brothers
ashore, some prisoners, some wounded, others screaming out to them from
the depths of their bowels, and they with no power to help them at all/ 5
Still the monsoon drove them southward, and a month later they were
riding off the coast of Cochin China. Some, wearying of the struggle, were
for taking port in Siam, even though white men were not usually made
welcome there, but the majority decided to take the ship to Portuguese
Malacca. It was a risky choice, because they could easily miss the strait and
keep on sailing blindly to the Moslem countries further south. As a matter
of fact they did miss the strait and only became aware of it when they over-
hauled the vessel of a courier of the sultan of Johore. The Malay told them
that they had bypassed the strait by 50 or 60 leagues, but would not guide
them to it until they laid hands on him and forced him to take them there.
In this way they finally reached Malacca where the fathers of the Jesuit
college hospitably received them. The royal treasury officials advanced
Roman the money which enabled him to repair the vessel and take in
provisions. They scraped together a thousand crusadoes more from various
sources and left them with the Jesuits to ransom their shipmates whom the
Annamese had taken prisoner. After three or four months they were ready
to return to Manila, which they made in forty days* sail. At the mouth of
Manila Bay they sighted a frigate with a strange lateen rig. They overtook
it and discovered to their great joy that their companions whom they had
given up for lost were aboard, all except one who had been killed in the
ambush. They had managed to elude their captors and find their way to
Siam, where a Portuguese shipmaster agreed to take them to Manila. Thus,
giving praise to God, they entered the city on 6 June 1595 . 29
Chapter Four
SURVEYING THE FIELD
In 1582, some time after Sanchez sailed on his first voyage to China, the
house which Governor Gonzalo Ronquillo had ordered built for the Jesuits
was completed. Sedeno was delighted with it. It stood facing the bay,
about one hundred paces from the beach, solidly constructed, in Sedeno's
phrase, on posts of ** incorruptible wood, the kind that lasts for cen-
turies. Sedeno was a trifle carried away ; though molave , which is probably
what it was, is undoubtedly one of the most durable of Philippine hard-
woods. The floor of the house was raised three fathoms off the ground,
which must have been quite damp because the back door opened on a tidal
inlet of the Pasig River. Compared with the shack in which he and Brother
Gallardo took their meals on top of the book case it looked enormous to
Sedeno, with room enough for a community of ten or twelve, spacious
and air) 7 , 4 'the best house there is in the city” Within the property were
more than 300 coconut trees, those versatile palmifers that provided the
Filipinos with food, drink, shelter, clothing, light, tableware, and firewood.
As many as twenty Jesuits, Sedeno thought, could live on them alone. But
they did not have to; Brother Gallardo discovered that at high tide fish
came up the inlet near his kitchen, so that by stretching a reed barrier
across it he could catch quite a number of edible ones when the water
receded. They could have fish with their coconuts. 1
While Sanchez was away winning Macao for Philip, Sedeno continued
to apply himself to Tagalog grammar and was soon able to make himself
understood by his friendly neighbors. He also went regularly to the city 7 ,
about a mile away, to hear confessions and preach in the cathedral. He
kept his eyes and ears open for all the information he could gather, and
gradually began to perceive beneath the surface of his first impressions the
salient features of this prospective mission field.
The Philippine archipelago consisted of the island of Luzon, the largest,
on which Manila was located; several smaller islands south of it whose
people, the Visayans, tattooed themselves, and so were called by the
Spaniards Pintados , that is, Piets. Still further south was the second largest
island, Mindanao, some of whose inhabitants were Moslems, hence to the
Spaniards Moros , like the Moors they had been fighting for eight hundred
years. There were still extensive areas which had not yet been subjected to
Spanish rule, especially in northern Luzon and southern Mindanao. The
58
Surveying the Field 59
known population of the conquered and tribute-paying territory was about
half a million; there were, perhaps, a million more in the rest of the
archipelago.
Besides Manila, the capital, four other settlements had been established
by the colonists: one at Cebu in the Visayas, the earliest to be founded,
called the City of the Most Holy Name of Jesus; another close by it on the
island of Panay, called Arevalo (native name, Ogtong, hispanicized into
Oton); a third in southern Luzon called Nueva Caceres (native name,
Naga); and a fourth in northern Luzon called Villa Fernandina (native
name, Vigan). When Sedeho wrote this information into his first report
to Acquaviva (June 1582) an expedition had just left to smoke out a nest
of Japanese w ako in another part of the northern Luzon called Cagayan and
found a fifth settlement there. To these must be added the port and ship-
yard of Cavite, so called because it projected like a fish hook (Tagalog,
kawit ) into Manila Bay from its south shore. The deep-draft galleons could
not come up to Manila itself because of the silting up of the river mouth ;
but here they could ride at anchor in deep water, load and unload, be
hauled up the slips for caulking and careening ; here, in fact, they were built.
These settlements were much smaller than Manila. In 1582 Manila had
an adult male population of 300 Spaniards; Vigan, 60; Nueva Caceres,
30; Cebu, 70; Arevalo, 20. In 1586 Manila had 329 Spanish men and
youths capable of bearing arms ; the most recently established settlement,
Nueva Segovia in Cagayan, had 97; Nueva Caceres, 69; Arevalo, 65;
Cavite, 64; Cebu, 63; Villa Fernandina, 19.
Luzon was divided for administrative purposes into seven provinces,
each with an alcalde mayor. Starting from the north they were Cagayan,
with a population of about 120,000; Ilocos, 108,000; Pangasinan, 20,000;
Pampanga, 88,000; La Laguna, 44,000; Balayan, 36,000; Camarines,
80.000. Two provinces had been created in the Visayas and named after
their respective seats of government: Cebu, with jurisdiction over the
island of the same name, and Samar, Masbate, Leyte and Bohol; and
Arevalo, with jurisdiction over Panay, Negros, and the Calamianes group.
The province of Cebu had an estimated population of 72,000; Arevalo,
88.000. Mindoro and Marinduque were attached to the Tagalog province
of Balayan just north of them. Palawan in the west, the Sulu archipelago
in the south and all of Mindanao save a narrow strip of the northern coast
(at Butuan) were still unconquered territory.
In 1586 the Augustinians had twenty-seven conventos (parish or mission
houses) chiefly in the provinces of Ilocos, Pangasinan, Pampanga, Balayan,
and the islands of Cebu and Panay. This area had a total population of
some 300,000, about half of whom were baptized or under instruction.
The Franciscans had missions in the provinces of La Laguna and Cama-
rines; together with the diocesan clergy, who administered the more
3*
6o
The Jesuits in the Philippines
settled parishes near the Spanish settlements, they had the spiritual care
of about 200,000 souls. 2
What were the opportunities for Jesuit work in this situation ? Sedeno
in his 1582 report to Acquaviva underscored the two features of it which
he considered significant. First, the Spanish settlers were few and their
spiritual needs were being adequately taken care of by the diocesan clergy
and the friars stationed in the settlements. Second, the provinces subject
to Spanish rule had already been preempted by the Augustinians and
Franciscans. True, they were short of men in relation to the number of
natives still to be converted ; but their Spanish and Mexican provinces had
already begun sending large missionary expeditions on almost every
Acapulco ship ; and from the point of view of administration it was pre-
ferable that each religious order continue the work it had begun in the
provinces where it was already established.
Ffence, there seemed to be no need for a permanent Jesuit mission in the
Philippines if the intention was merely to work among the Spaniards or
the natives of the pacified provinces. What about the territory not yet, or
not fully under Spanish rule ? Sedeno suggested that before that possibility
was explored the needs of the existing Jesuit missions in the East should be
attended to. There were large numbers of neophytes in the Moluccas and
Japan who were in danger of relapsing to paganism because the Jesuit
province of Portugal could not send enough missionaries to them. Since
these neophytes had been brought into the Church by Xavier and his
successors, it would seem that the Society had a prior obligation to take
care of them before opening any new missions. “And so,” Sedeno con-
cluded, “it seems to me that we ought not to start any new undertaking
among natives in other parts of the world until your Paternity is satisfied
that what the Society has taken upon itself is already well provided for,
since it has a continuing obligation towards those whom it baptized and
placed under the yoke of the Gospel.” The Manila residence could be
retained, but only as a center of diffusion whence the Spanish Jesuits could
be sent as the need arose to help their Portuguese brethren. This proposal
apparently met with Acquaviva's approval, for on the back of the letter is
written the minute of a reply: let them stay in Manila because of the
possibility of regular voyages being established between Japan and the
Philippines. 3
However, when Sedeno discussed this plan with Sanchez after the
latter's return in March 1583, they both came to the conclusion that it
would not work out. In the first place, there was little prospect of regular
trade relations arising between Japan and the Philippines in view of the
determination of the Macao merchants to retain their monopoly; this
made it impossible or at least very difficult for missionaries to go to Japan
via the Philippines. Moreover, it was much easier to supply the Japanese
6i
Surveying the Field
missions as hitherto by the eastern or Portuguese route, which, as Sanchez
had found out, was shorter by a full four months than the western or
Spanish route. Thirdly, the Portuguese at Macao were very much against
any kind of contact or communication with the Spaniards at Manila ; and
in any case the attitudes, usages, and methods of the Portuguese were so
different from those of the Spaniards, even within the Society, that they
would not be able to live and work together with the requisite harmony
and efficiency. As for the Moluccas, all the Portuguese desired of the
Spaniards was military aid in subduing the rebellious natives. Once peace
was restored they would undoubtedly insist on the observance of Philip
IPs solemn engagement that the Spanish and Portuguese colonial establish-
ments would continue to be entirely separate.
Thus the idea of Manila as a Jesuit base of operations covering the entire
Far East originally proposed by Sedeno seemed to be out of the question.
Jesuits sent to Manila would have to limit their sphere of activity to the
Philippines. But again the question came up: was there enough work in
the Philippines to keep them occupied ? It was true that the few Spaniards
in the colony would never lack for priests to provide them with the ordinary
ministries of the Church. But there was one possibility which Sedeno had
overlooked in his first report: education. An elementary and grammar
school for Spanish boys, and even seminary studies for those who wished
to enter the priesthood, would certainly not be out of place in Manila.
Moreover, Sanchez did not agree with Sedeno that there was little oppor-
tunity for Jesuit work among the natives. If the Society was to remain in
the Philippines at all, it should by all means share with the other religious
orders the responsibility of converting the Filipinos to Christianity. He
had compared notes in Macao with Jesuits who had worked among the
Chinese and Japanese, and had come to the conclusion that the Filipinos
were among all the peoples of the newly discovered lands the best disposed
to receive the gospel. In his contacts with them he was specially struck by
their simplicity and sincerity. The children in particular were intelligent,
cheerful, easy to deal with, and well affected toward the missionaries.
The Jesuits would do well to begin their missionary work with them.
There was also the practical consideration that by establishing missions
in the provinces they would be able to bring some land under cultivation
and thus supply the needs of the Manila residence.
This was all very well, but now the problem arose of how precisely to
undertake mission work in the conditions prevailing in the Philippines.
Sedeno's instructions very clearly forbade him to accept any “cure of
souls/' that is, the stable administration of parishes or missions. This
prohibition was based on the Constitutions themselves, in which St.
Ignatius had written that “ since the men of this Society ought to be
always ready to set out to any part of the world whither the supreme
62
The Jesuits in the Philippines
pontiff or their superiors might send them, they ought not to accept the
cure of souls or that of religious women.” 4 And St. Francis Borgia, in his
instructions to Pedro Sanchez, the first provincial of Mexico, in 1572:
“You are not to accept the administration of repartimientos of Christian
doctrine, so called, or take upon the Society any cure of souls, but rather
be of service through missions, as our institute prescribes, without accept-
ing any stipend for it, although it will be proper to accept the alms neces-
sary for your sustenance.” 5
What St. Francis meant by missions was, clearly, mission tours as then
practiced by the Society in Europe, whereby Jesuits either singly or in
groups went from town to town or from village to village preaching, hear-
ing confessions, teaching catechism to children, instructing converts,
reconciling enemies, and in general cooperating with the resident parish
priests in a revival of Christian life and customs. These mission tours
proved a phenomenal success in Europe ; but would they be effective, were
they even workable, in mission countries like the Philippines ? Sedeno
thought not, or not without considerable adaptation. There were no roads
to speak of in the Philippines. Travel was mostly by water; by sea from
island to island, or even from one part of an island to another; by river
from coast to hinterland. Each traveler made his own arrangements; public
transportation was unheard of. To go on a mission excursion of the sort
described the missionaries would have to fit out a sailing vessel, hire a crew
of from twelve to twenty, and lay in provisions to last them and their crew
for several months. The cost of this would be prohibitive unless the govern-
ment was willing to assign and the missionaries to accept a forced-labor
crew, or unless the secular priests and friars in the mission stations were
willing to defray the expenses of the expedition. Even if they were willing,
it was extremely doubtful whether they could, as the subsistence allowance
they received from the encomendero (or the king in a Crown encomienda)
was barely enough to provide them with the necessities of life.
Sedeno and Sanchez thought the problem over and finally proposed the
following solution to Acquaviva. Let a central residence be established in
Manila, and let it be a college as understood in the Society, that is, one in
which classes were conducted both for extern students and for Jesuits still
in their studies (scholastics). In addition to the fathers engaged in teaching,
let there be others available for the ordinary ministries among Spaniards
and for missionary work among the natives. This last would consist not in
going on mission tours or excursions but in establishing mission stations
near Manila. These stations would be staffed by resident missionaries but
they would not be parish priests in the strict sense ; they would be members
of the college community directly subordinate to its rector, and would
from time to time be recalled and others sent in their place. Thus they
would preserve their status as religious and their mobility as Jesuits, and
Surveying the Field 63
would not be altogether deprived of the religious discipline of community
life.
This would mean a community of at least eight, and possibly twelve,
to start with. Thus, more men should be sent, either from Spain or
Mexico. Sending so many from so far was bound to be a very expensive
proposition; Acquaviva should therefore consider whether the rector of
the college at Manila should not be authorized to receive candidates for
the Society. As a matter of fact, there were already two such applicants.
One was the dean of the cathedral chapter, Don Diego Vasquez Mercado ;
the other, Simon de Mendiola, was asking to be admitted as a lay brother. 6
A final problem remained, not the least important ; how was such a col-
lege to be financed ? A school for extern students would require a bigger
and more elaborate plant than they had at Lagyo, and if they were to
undertake ministries among the Spaniards they would have to have a
church. The members of the community who were missionaries were
entitled to the subsistence allowance provided by law; but the teachers,
scholastics, and novices would have to be supported by an endowment,
since no fees for tuition were charged in the Jesuit schools of the period.
This problem Sedefio and Sanchez took to their good friend, Bishop
Salazar. They laid before him the substance of their report to Acquaviva,
stressing their conviction that a school for boys and older students * * from
the first letters of the alphabet to the faculties of arts and theology" was
one of the most useful contributions they could make to the colony, where
no such school as yet existed. They were also very much interested in
missionary work among the natives, but they must do it conformably to
their institute, which called for some central residence w'here the mission-
aries could lead a community life and new members trained to take their
places. This meant that they had to have some capital for construction and
a stable income for the college, otherwise they did not see how they could
remain in the Philippines.
Bishop Salazar at once wrote to the king (18 June 1583) to recommend
very strongly that a Jesuit college be established at Manila and that its
expenses be defrayed by the royal treasury until a patron could be found
to endow it. The Jesuit provincial of Mexico, on whom the Philippine
mission was dependent, should be instructed not to close it but on the
contrary to send more men. They could teach not only Spanish boys but
also mestizos and sons of the ruling native families. To make a beginning,
a class of grammar and one of moral theology could be opened.
Such a college would admittedly be expensive, but it could be financed
by applying to it the revenues of encomiendas which w r ould otherwise be
granted to soldiers, w who, as far as one can gather, will not put the income
to as good use as the fathers." Moreover, it would really be a saving in the
end because the college would be training priests and missionaries who
64 The Jesuits in the Philippines
would otherwise have to be brought over from Spain at great cost to the
royal treasury. There was also this to be considered, that the missionaries
who came from Europe were quite often disappointed with what they
found, and after a few discontented years in the country sought by every
means to return or to go farther to what they imagined to be the greener
pastures of China and Japan. Whereas those who received their vocation
to the priesthood and were trained for it in the Philippines were already
familiar with the country, knew the language and customs of the people,
got along better with them, and would probably make better missionaries.
But the need for seminary studies was not only a prospective but a present
one. The religious orders in the Philippines had admitted a number of
applicants whom he, Salazar, was reluctant to ordain because they had had
little or no theological training. He himself had brought in his entourage
several clerics whom he ordained upon his arrival in Manila before they
were quite finished with their studies ; now he was worried about it because
he had no means of completing their education. A Jesuit college would be
the solution to these problems, besides serving as a house of formation for
the Jesuits themselves. 7
Bishop Salazar apparently asked Governor Diego Ronquillo to make the
same recommendations, because he did. To the bishop's arguments he
added a characteristic one from the point of view of the colonial adminis-
trator: such a college would serve to retain the Jesuits in Manila, who
because of their connections with those of their own order in China and
Japan would be very useful in the royal service. He thought that an annual
subsidy of 1,000 pesos would be sufficient for such a college. According
to Sedeno, the cathedral chapter also sent a similar letter of recommen-
dation to the king. 8
The reports of the Philippine Jesuits to Acquaviva were coursed through
Plaza, the provincial of Mexico, who was their immediate superior. 9
Plaza was dubious about sending more men because he saw no clear-cut
solution to the principal problem posed by these reports, namely, how to
carry on mission work among the natives without accepting the cure of
souls. He was still undecided when Doctor Santiago de Vera, who had
been appointed governor of the Philippines and was on his way there,
asked him so earnestly for some Jesuits to take with him, declaring that he
would not go without them, that Plaza was forced to give way. His choice
fell on three priests, Hernan Suarez, Ramon Prat, and Francesco Aimer ici,
and a lay brother, Gaspar Gomez. He came to no definite decision one way
or the other on the question of mission curacies, but merely repeated his
previous instructions to Sedeno about learning the native language and
working among the natives as much as possible. 10
Hernan Suarez, the superior of the group, was a native of Granada. He
taught philosophy and theology in Spain, went to Mexico in 1 578 and,
Surveying the Field 65
before his assignment to the Philippines, spent a year as missionary among
the Otomi Indians* Ramon Prat was a Catalan, born in 1557 in the little
town of San Cugat near Barcelona. He was received into the Society in
1576, having finished arts, made his noviceship at Gandia, and was or-
dained priest after his arrival in Mexico in 1 579. He adopted the Castilian
form of his name and usually signed himself Raymundo de Prado.
Francesco Almerici, an Italian, was born in 1557 in a town of the March
of Ancona called Pesaro. He went to Mexico in 1 579 and was ordained
there with Suarez. Gaspar Gomez was born at Ocana, near Madrid, in
1552. He entered the Society in 1570 and arrived in Mexico in 1580 as
one of a group which included Brother Gallardo, the lay brother in the
first Philippine mission. He performed the duties of porter for many
years and as we shall see, was a knowledgeable man. 11
Suarez was a good provider; according to the more frugal Almerici,
excessively so. Doubtless he had read or heard of provisions giving out
on long voyages, and how Magellan's men, crossing the Pacific, chewed
leather from their rigging to stave off starvation. That was not going to
happen to his expedition if he could help it. He browbeat the royal
treasury officials at Mexico to release 3,600 pesos for the expenses of the
four of them, more than twice the allowance given to Sedeno. With this
he bought not only a generous quantity of the usual staples, but quite a
number of luxury items, including live chickens (both Castilian and
Indian), rabbits, pickled squab, cheese, four kinds of preserved fruit, candy,
caramels, sweetbreads, raisins, almonds, olives, pickles, cocoa, and honey,
Suarez was in fact something of a gourmet, and during the voyage would
have little side dishes prepared specially for himself by the cook of one of
his official friends. He also liked to play the affable host. Several times in
the course of the crossing he invited the more prominent passengers to the
Jesuits' cabin for dinner; at other times Suarez's friends would spend
practically the whole day in the cabin talking, while the other Jesuits
wandered unhappily about the deck. In spite of this orgy of spending there
was quite a bit left over from the sum drawn at Mexico when the group
reached Manila. Sedeno heard what had happened and sternly ordered
Suarez to turn in all the cash in his possession to the Philippine treasury
officials. 12
It will be recalled that the contract whereby Gonzalo Ronquillo obtained
the governorship of the Philippines for life and the right to appoint his
successor was protested by the colonists through their agent, Ribera,
Heeding Ribera's representations the king in council revoked the Ron-
quillo contract, appointed a new governor and established an audiencia at
Manila. This audiencia was a board of four members, called oidores , who
had the dual role of administrative council and supreme court. As adminis-
trative council they acted in an advisory capacity to the governor, who was
66
The Jesuits in the Philippines
obliged to consult them on all important matters but not to follow their
advice. As supreme court they heard appeals from the provincial courts of
the alcaldes mayores and gave final judgment on all civil and criminal
cases originating in the colony, except those involving sums beyond a
specified amount, which could be appealed to Mexico. Government cases
were prepared and presented by an attorney-general orjiscaL If the governor
was a letrado , that is, a qualified lawyer with a licentiate or doctoral degree,
he presided at all the sessions of the audiencia, both as council and as court ;
if not, only at the administrative sessions or acuerdos . In case of the gover-
nor's death or disability the audiencia as a body automatically assumed the
civil administration of the colony and the senior oidor the supreme com-
mand of the armed forces. 13
The new governor, De Vera, was being promoted from a post as oidor of
the audiencia of Hispaniola; being a jurist he was by preference addressed
as president — that is, president of the audiencia — rather than as governor.
Making the voyage with him were his wife, Doha Isabel, and children;
two of the oidores, Melchor Davalos and Pedro de Rojas ; and the attorney-
general, Gaspar de Ayala. The Jesuits joined him at Acapulco, having left
Mexico City on 15 February 1584. They made an uneventful crossing in
two galleons and a frigate, clearing from Acapulco on 9 March and drop-
ping anchor at Cavite on 28 May. 14 From the moment he landed De
Vera took a dim view of his new domain. We have already quoted the few
cutting phrases with which he dismissed the most noble and ever loyal city
of Manila. As for the islands in general: "this land is very hot, lacking in
all conveniences and even the ordinary necessities of life. Rice serves for
bread, and buffalo and some evil-tasting chickens for meat. Fruit that
abound in other lands do not grow here. It rains all year round." So much
for climate and natural resources. The colony itself was "in ruins and
confusion. Nothing was in its place; the governor new, the city burned,
the citizens poverty-stricken and chapfallen for having lost all their
property in the fire and in two ships, one of which was sunk and the other
driven to port in China and so as good as sunk. I barely found a house for
myself and a building in which to establish the audiencia and hold court.
The affairs of justice, government and war are so disorganized that to
repair them and get them in running order it has been necessary to bind
them together, as they say, with baling wive (porter cueroy Correas ').” 15
Suarez was no less critical of what he found within the narrower horizons
of his Jesuit world. The orchard at Lagyo, with its noble coconut trees
that could feed and clothe twenty Jesuits, produced, according to him,
little of value. The house of which Sedeno was so proud was too far from
the city. It was a great inconvenience for people to come and see the
Jesuits, and a greater inconvenience for the Jesuits to go and see them,
because the lay people could at least protect themselves from the hot
Surveying the Field 67
sun with parasols, whereas it was apparently not yet a custom for clerics
to carry them. There was indeed a chapel attached to the residence, but it
was small, only the size of two ordinary living rooms, with nothing to
brighten it up but a scene with figures painted on one wall, and no furni-
ture except some old altar equipment. It was such a dark, forbidding place
that only about six people went to Mass there on Sundays. 16
He found less comfort in the state of the colony at large a year after his
arrival. As of June 1585 Manila had suffered from three destructive fires
with great loss of property. Much merchandise had also been lost at sea.
This had so impoverished the colonists that they simply could not afford
the restitutions imposed by the synod of Manila. On the contrary, they
felt obliged to continue oppressing the natives with forced labor and
iniquitous contracts in order to recoup their fortunes. The new audiencia
brought no remedy ; rather, it compounded these evils. The colonists now
took both each other and the natives to the law. Disputes which used to be
settled summarily in an hour began to take weeks and months, earning fat
fees for solicitors and notaries. The city gaols were full of natives awaiting
trial; this, added to all their other burdens, made them bitterly regret hav-
ing accepted Christianity ; for, they said, to receive baptism was to become
a slave.
Their smoldering resentment finally broke out in a serious uprising. The
rebels tore apart several towns near Manila and then fled to the hills,
vowing that they would come back to burn the city of the Spaniards to
the ground. Troops had to be sent to break up their concentrations. The
rebellion was put down, but there was no guarantee that there would not
be others. It was obvious to the natives that the Spaniards were only a
handful, that they could put a hundred fighting men on the field to every
Spaniard, and that Manila did not even have a fortified enclosure to which
the citizens could withdraw and defend themselves in case of need. There
were secret enemies within, powerful enemies without. Of 300 men who
went on an expedition to the Moluccas 200 had just returned, badly beaten,
“ with their hands on their heads.” So precarious was their situation that
many of the colonists wanted to abandon the Philippines. Yet, “in spite
of all this God preserves us,” Suarez concludes; then, gloomily, “He
alone knows why.” 17
But anyone who concluded from this that Suarez merely sat in his room
to wait for the last trump would be totally mistaken. Human nature is
fearfully and wonderfully made; and the man who complains the most
is not necessarily the man who works the least. Along with Prat and Alme-
rici he threw himself with zest into the study of Tagalog until, a few
months later, Sedeno stopped them. Sedeno had been making inquiries
as to the possibility of setting up mission stations which could be serviced
from the Manila residence, in accordance with the plan submitted to
68
The Jesuits in the Philippines
Acquaviva, but had found out that all the likely towns, and indeed the
whole Tagalog region, were already in the hands of the friars and the
diocesan clergy. North and south of the Tagalog provinces there was no
lack of places crying for priests, but they were far away and their inhabi-
tants spoke languages very different from Tagalog. Sedeno therefore
decided that instead of Tagalog they should all learn Chinese.
The sangleys or traders from South China were coming in increasing
numbers every year (Suarez counted thirty junks in the bay when his
galleon came in), and more and more of them elected to stay in Manila
permanently. Prat calculated that during the annual fair, when the mer-
chandise of the junks was put up for sale, there might be 5,000 or 6,000
Chinese in the city; of these, between 1,000 and 1,500 were permanent
residents. A census of the residents taken by the city corporation in 1586
revealed that about 750 were shopkeepers and about 300 plied an amazing
variety of trades; they were fishermen, truck gardeners, tile-makers, brick-
makers, lime manufacturers, carpenters, ironworkers, tailors, shoemakers,
candlemakers, pastry cooks, druggists, painters, silversmiths. A group or
family of vegetable growers had leased part of the Jesuit property at
Lagyo. They impressed Prat by their industry and intelligence; he thought
that in these two qualities they would stand comparison with any Spaniard.
Here, then, was a splendid field right in Manila for their apostolic
labors. The only difficulty was the language. It was reported to consist of
90,000 ideograms. But Prat was not to be daunted by this. Surely it was
not impossible to learn; after all, the Chinese did. Suarez and Almerici
shared this conviction and soon Suarez had learned enough of the Fukien
dialect to be able to teach catechism in the Chinese quarter every Sunday
and feast day. Both Bishop Salazar and President De Vera were delighted.
Salazar offered to constitute the resident Chinese into a national parish
and give the Jesuits charge of it. De Vera said that if they accepted this
offer he would build them a house and church inside the city where they
would be closer to their parishioners. Sedeno however felt that he had to
decline the offer in view of his instructions about not committing the
Society to parish administration. Still, there was nothing to prevent
Suarez and Almerici from doing what they could informally.
Suarez had among his catechumens a Buddhist monk from Fukien, who
told him that he came to Manila because the word had gone abroad in his
land that there were men here who preached a holy law by which men
could be saved, and he wanted very much to hear it. He was a man of grave
aspect and good judgment, and very willing to learn. Suarez taught him
not only the catechism but also how to read and write in Spanish.
Because of his interest in Christianity his fellow Buddhists looked upon
him as an apostate and subjected him to petty persecution of various
kinds. Because of this De Vera thought of sending him to Mexico; but
Surveying the Field 69
whether he actually went or not we do not know, because the documents
tell us nothing more about him.
We know a little bit more about one of Almerici's converts, a young
Chinese scholar who was preparing to take the examinations for the civil
service in his country when he was moved to inquire about the Christian
faith and eventually made the voyage to Manila. After completing his
catechumenate he was baptized by the bishop himself in the chapel at
Lagyo and given the name of Paul. Paul became an exemplary Christian,
but must have made himself somewhat obnoxious at times by inquiring
whenever he saw a less than exemplary Spaniard, “is that person a Chris-
tian ? Why, then, does he not observe the Commandments
The two Jesuits were proceeding happily with their catechetical work
when Bishop Salazar suddenly decreed that all Chinese converts must cut
off their queues before baptism and wear their hair in the Spanish fashion
thereafter. Many Chinese took great pride in their queues and finding
this requirement an insuperable difficulty stopped going to the catechism
classes. President De Vera tried to convince the bishop that wearing a queue
had no idolatrous implications but was merely a Chinese custom, just as
not wearing a queue was a Spanish custom; but to no avail. De Vera seems
to have misunderstood the bishop's motive, which was not unreasonable.
Salazar had observed that some Chinese Christians, upon going back to
China, apostatized. They could do so easily because there was no external
mark of their ever having received Christianity. It was even suspected that
certain sangleys made the best of both worlds, taking a Christian wife in
Manila and a pagan wife in Canton. To make such practices more difficult
and to provide a test of sincerity as well as a continual reminder to the
convert of his new status and obligations as a Christian, the bishop hit
upon the device of asking him to give up his queue. This, not a mistaken
notion of the queue's heathen significance, was the origin of the decree.
Suarez and Almerici apparently had no objections, for they continued their
instructions as long as there were catechumens to instruct. 18
Prat, perhaps the most eager to work among the Chinese, was not
assigned to this ministry. Bishop Salazar pounced upon him as the man to
conduct a class in moral theology for those of his clergy who had not yet
studied it and so lacked the requisite knowledge to hear confessions. Prat
began the course some time in 1585 with a series of lectures on the sacra-
ments which lasted for about a year. At the same time he undertook with
Suarez and Almerici a series of sermons in the cathedral for the benefit of
the Spanish laity on the proper reception of the sacrament of penance and
the duties arising from the virtue of justice. While giving this series and
hearing confessions, the three of them found that the knowledge which
some of the colonists had of their religion left much to be desired, so the
following year, 1 586, they planned and gave a second series of sermons on
70
The Jesuits in the Philippines
the virtue of faith and what a Christian needed to believe in order to be
saved . 19 The Manilehos appreciated what the fathers were doing for them
well enough, except that they thought Prat took too long over his Mass
and sermon, so that the saying became current that:
Del Padre Ramon,
ni tnisa ni sermon .
Or, to put it another way:
Mass and sermon by Father Prat
Takes about an hour flat . 20
While his subjects were engaged in these activities, Sedeno (and Sanchez
after his return) was kept busy trying to settle the differences that arose
between President De Vera and his oidores, and among the oidores them-
selves. We get a pretty good notion of what these feuds were about from
their correspondence. De Vera, writing to his friend and patron Arch-
bishop Moya y Contreras of Mexico, complains that he was having the
greatest difficulty with Davalos and Rojas. Davalos he compares to a bad-
tempered nag that cannot suffer saddle or bit, while Rojas — to continue
the equine metaphor — kicks and curvets and cannot keep a straight course.
His principal objection was that together with the attorney-general Ayala
they kept interfering in matters which were his concern alone as governor.
Moreover he accused Davalos of advancing his own fortunes and prejud-
dicing his impartiality as judge by marrying his daughter to Esteban
Rodriguez de Figueroa, a wealthy encomendero, and his son to one of
Manila’s most eligible heiresses, Doha Ines de Mendoza. This was in
violation of the royal ordinances, which forbade colonial officials to marry
or arrange marriages for their children during their term of office without
explicit permission, precisely in order to prevent their playing favorites.
But Davalos had his answer ready. The king had given him permission
to take his children to the Philippines with him, and it surely was not the
royal intention that all his boys should turn friars and all his girls nuns !
As for favoritism, let the record speak for itself. De Vera married his
niece to Pedro de Chavez and forthwith appointed his new son-in-law
maestre de campo . He married another relative or maidservant of his to
Gaspar Isla ; and Don Gaspar Isla was now acting alcalde mayor of Pam-
panga. The new alcalde mayor of Tondo was Diego de Montoro; Diego de
Montoro was also De Vera’s majordomo, under whose name De Vera had
embarked on the last galleon for Mexico five or six arrobas of gold and two
or three hundred bales of merchandise. The command of that galleon, one
of the choicest plums within the gift of the governor of the Philippines,
went to Rodrigo de Leon, a cousin of De Vera’s wife, who not six years ago
was a shopkeeper in Mexico City, and sold sassafras and shirts. Davalos
7i
Surveying the Field
simply could not understand why he was being persecuted in this way by
the president and the other oidores. The only explanation he could think
of was that they disliked him because he was always reading, he never
raised his eyes from his books ; whereas none of them was much given to
study. At least, said he, “ I have looked through their books, and have never
seen any underscoring or notes in them.” 21
Sanchez returned to Manila, as we have seen, early in June 1585. The
Lagyo community now consisted of five priests (Sedeno, Sanchez, Suarez,
Prat, and Almerici), two brothers (Gallardo and Gomez) and a postulant
(Mendiola); big enough, Sedefio thought, for the regular domestic arrange-
ments of the Society to be introduced. For this he made Sanchez responsible
by appointing him minister, the minister in Jesuit houses being the
official who assists the superior or rector in caring for the temporal needs
of the community 7 and seeing to the observance of external discipline. All
would have been well if Sanchez had confined himself to enforcing the
regulations and customs of the Society; but he went far beyond them,
apparently in a grim effort to make the Lagyo house as unlike the college
of Macao as possible.
He imposed an extraordinary rule of silence on the community, so that
without his leave they spoke hardly at all to each other, even during the
recreation periods. Anyone whom he saw walking about the house was
sent back to his room with a reprimand. He made it a regular practice
when they assembled for meals in the refectory to read out what he con-
sidered to be the violations of rule committed that day, imposing heavy
penances for the lightest faults. After all the external activity into which
he had been thrown or had thrown himself since his arrival in the Philip-
pines, he now returned to his former obsession that the true life of the
Jesuit should be a life of almost immobile contemplation. In this, indeed,
he was a shining example. If no business called him to town, he would
issue his orders for the day immediately after breakfast and then shut
himself up in his room until lunch time, emerging only occasionally to
check whether everyone was similarly shut up in his. He even made
arrangements for the community meals to be brought in from the outside
already cooked, so that the lay brothers would not have the distractions
of kitchen, garden, and market place to take them away from their
meditations. Although he was always available for consultation by the
bishop, the governor, and the oidores, being much in demand as peace-
maker, adviser, and confidant, and, although he continued to do yeoman’s
service in the resumed synod, he engaged in practically none of the ordi-
nary ministries of a Jesuit priest. He heard no confessions, and preached
only once in 1 585. 22 This in spite of the formal admonition of Acquaviva,
transmitted through the provincial of Mexico, that any method of
prayer which does not incline the soul to action and the ministries of our
72 The Jesuits in the Philippines
vocation in the service of God and the salvation and perfection of our
fellow men may cause great harm to the institute of the Society and should
be looked upon as a delusion, inasmuch as it is outside of and alien to the
grace and purpose which God our Lord has given to the Society ." 23
Perhaps he had no time to spare from the mound of paper work involved
in the problems and projects passed on to him by the authorities; but it is
disturbing to note that he seems to have discouraged the other fathers from
such ministries. "Here we are," Suarez writes to Acquaviva, "five priests
and three brothers, doing practically nothing, with our residence nearly
half a league from the city. The townspeople grumble about this a great
deal, and humble as well as gentle folk tell us to our faces that we live
apart and have become Carthusians and are of no use to them when we
could be of great assistance since the friars are all occupied with the
natives." This was in October 1585; seven months later the people were
still asking, according to Bishop Salazar, when the Jesuits would come out
of their retirement and "open up shop," exercising those ministries which
they were wont to elsewhere. There was a standing offer on the part of the
bishop and some of the citizens to let them have a fine site for house and
church in the best part of the city; the president of the audiencia joined
the bishop in proposing all sorts of inducements to transfer there; but
Sedeno on the advice of Sanchez kept putting them off with the excuse
that he lacked authorization from the general. 24
If there was no intention of establishing a permanent mission in the
Philippines, then, Suarez pleaded, let them go to some other country
where they would have something to do — Japan, China, the Moluccas,
anywhere. Because of the lack of employment and the uncertainty of their
staying the younger priests were restless and discontented and the two
brothers, Gallardo and Gomez, were grievously tempted to return to
Mexico. As Prat put it, spending most of the day in their rooms when there
was so much to be done for God outside made the Lagyo residence a
"seminary of temptations" rather than a religious house. 25
But what of Sedeno, who after all was the superior ? It must be admitted
that he was completely overawed by his formidable minister. Everyone
liked him, his brethren as well as externs ; he was admired and respected ;
the authorities sought his advice and placed great reliance on his judg-
ment ; but Sanchez ran the community. Like Sanchez, he now spent most
of his time in his room, studying or praying. He even refused to see visitors
who had walked all the way out from Manila to see him, and the other
fathers had to go down to make excuses for him. They had to go down
because, according to one of Sanchez’s house rules, they were not supposed
to ask visitors up, but receive them at the door and send them away as
soon as possible. They were forced to do this even to the Franciscans, who
lodged Sedeno and Sanchez so hospitably for six months in their own
Surveying the Field 73
convent. And yet when Sanchez's high-placed friends among the laity
came, they were taken right to his room. 26
As a result of Sedeno's excessive retirement the two lay brothers and the
postulant, Mendiola, got no direction whatever. They did pretty much as
they wished whenever Sanchez was not around, with the result that their
spiritual life became sadly disorganized. Gallardo and Gomez were good,
simple, hard-working men, in the best tradition of the Jesuit lay brother-
hood, but they had received their training in the College of Alcala, where
student philosophers and theologians argued all day long ; in this environ-
ment they had acquired a tendency to be disputatious. Suarez gave them
black marks, saying that they worked only when they felt like it and talked
back to the priests. Almerici's judgment was milder and probably more
just. It was true, he said, that you could not ask them the simplest question
without their giving you an argument ; and that if anything was discussed
in their presence, even if it was something they knew little or nothing
about, they were quite ready with their opinions ; and that one of them,
naming no names, even got quite huffy if contradicted ; but this must be
said for them, that whenever they were told to do anything, even if it was
against their will, they did it. They did not particularly want to come to
the Philippines, but they came, because they were ordered. And so with
everything else; they did what they were ordered, and they did it well. But
they knew quite well when they were being ordered to do something, or
requested to do it, or consulted about it. It was in the latter case that you
had to steel yourself for a minor disputation. 27
Still, the peculiar regime of the Lagyo house must have been a sore trial
even for such solid religious, and much more so for Mendiola, who had not
even begun his noviceship. Sedeno did nothing about it until another
applicant asked to be admitted to the Society. This was Garcia Pacheco, a
young man of twenty-five who had come to the Philippines from his
native Leon to make his fortune. He had received a good education, still
remembered most of his Latin, and even knew a bit of canon law. On
Christmas Eve 1585 Sedeno received him as a scholastic novice. With
Mendiola as a novice brother, they now had two novices, and a novice
master was needed. Sanchez, of course, was appointed.
His first act was to divide the small community into two parts : a resi-
dence and a novitiate. In the novitiate part of the house he placed himself,
Almerici as assistant master of novices, the two lay brothers, and the two
novices. Sedeno, Suarez, and Prat stayed in the “residence" part of the
house. They took their meals in common but met separately for the
recreation period after lunch and supper. The master of novices being busy
with other things, it was the assistant master of novices who gave all the
conferences and exhortations. Suarez complained several times to Sedeno
about these and other arrangements introduced by Sanchez, but all he got
74 The Jesuits in the Philippines
for his pains was a lecture to the effect that if Sedeho could stand them he
could, and that such complaints merely proved that he did not have the
true spirit of the Society* 28
We have seen that in 1582, during Sanchez's absence on his first voyage
to China, Sedeho sent certain recommendations to Acquaviva regarding the
future status of the Philippine mission* When Sanchez returned in 1583,
the two of them agreed on another set of recommendations modifying those
of 1582. The letters sent to Acquaviva in 1585 show that soon after
Sanchez's return from his second voyage (6 June) the five fathers of the
Lagyo community decided to reopen the whole question and reached
substantial agreement on a third set of recommendations which each one
formulated separately in individual letters*
It now seemed to the fathers that there was no way for them to undertake
any ministries among the natives* First, because of the directive forbidding
them to accept any stable missions or parishes. Second, because most of the
available territory was already in the hands of the friars. The only possi-
bilities left were the provinces of Ilocos and Cagayan; but neither of these
seemed suitable* The climate of Ilocos was reputed to be fatal to Europeans,
so much so that the friars who had charge of it for a while gave it up because
the missionaries sent there either fell sick or died. Cagayan was not yet
pacified ; moreover, the latest reports were that the friars were going to take
it over or had already done so. There were other provinces which had been
subjected to Spanish rule but not yet evangelized. They could go there,
except that the inhabitants had no desire whatever to become Christians
and unarmed Spaniards who went among them never came back. The only
way the encomenderos could collect the tribute was by paying troops to
escort them.
There was not much they could do among the Spaniards either. The
Spanish population of Manila was only about 300, and to take care of its
spiritual needs there were a bishop, his clergy, and two convents of friars.
The only time they came to the Jesuits was when they wanted advice on
some particularly difficult moral problem or to ask them to settle the feuds
that were continually breaking out among themselves.
A third possibility was for them to join their Portuguese brethren in
China, Japan, or the Moluccas. But, from what Sanchez had observed on
his two voyages, this too seemed to be out of the question. They could of
course go back to Mexico ; but what impression would that make on the
king, who had already spent a considerable sum of money to send them
out to the East ?
Thus, it seemed that they had little to keep them where they were, and
yet they could neither go back nor forward— a most uncomfortable
position. They suggested the following solution. Let three of them remain
in the Lagyo residence and the other four ask permission of the Portuguese
Surveying the Field 75
to transfer to Macao. Since there would only be four of them, the Portu-
guese might not offer any serious objection, and for their part they could
make a really serious effort to adapt themselves to Portuguese ways. Those
who stayed behind in Manila could devote themselves to the apostolate of
the Chinese ; this would certainly give them more than enough to do, and
if the mission in China should develop so as to require more men, they
would be ready for it.
Suarez also suggested that the Manila fathers could go on mission tours,
as their instructions directed; but against this Sanchez repeated the
objections outlined in previous reports, such as the variety of languages
and the difficulties of transportation. On the other hand, Suarez saw no
necessity for a college at Manila. Whom would they teach ? The colonists
were few, only a minority of them were married, and any sons they might
have would want to follow in their fathers’ footsteps as soldiers or mer-
chants rather than study for the priesthood, “ because here priests have
short commons.” However, he changed his mind a year later when he
learned that there was a possibility of the king sending out farmers from
Spain to settle the country and raise families. There would be some point
in having a college then, especially if a recommendation which Prat made
at this time, and with which he heartily agreed, was adopted. This was
that the proposed college be not only a school for Spanish boys but also a
seminario or boarding school for natives and mestizos. 29
All this time, and until the middle of 1586, they received no word from
Rome. The galleon that arrived in May or June of that year brought them
two important communications. One was from the provincial of Mexico,
informing them that Father General had as yet made no decision as to the
definitive status of the Philippine mission, but that they could expect a
decision the following year. 30 The other was a cedula to De Vera, signed
by Philip II at Barcelona, 8 June 1585. It ran:
I have been informed that the religious of the Society of Jesus stationed there
have done and are doing much good by their teaching and example and that their
preservation and increase in those Islands would be veiy beneficial. To this end it
is proposed that they be given a subsidy toward the establishment of a college and
the support of the religious who shall be employed there in teaching and instruct-
ing those who present themselves in grammar, sciences, and the proper conduct of
life; this subsidy to continue until someone offer an endowment, because other-
wise their lack of means would compel them to withdraw from those Islands.
And since it is my will that they remain because of the great results that I am
confident will follow therefrom for the service of God and the spiritual formation
of those natives, I enjoin you to confer with the bishop of those Islands concerning
the manner in which said college may be instituted, and the religious who shall
live and teach in it be provided with what they need, and from what revenues ; and
you shall send me a report thereof. In the meantime you shall take what measures
76 The Jesuits in the Philippines
you can that sufficient instruction is given in accordance with the proposals of the
said religious. 31
This was accompanied by another cedula granting the Jesuits 300 ducats
outright to use as they saw fit and confirming Governor Gonzalo Ron-
quillo's grant to them of the usual missionary stipend. One of the Jesuits at
Madrid writing to Sedeno informed him that these signs of the royal
favor were due in part to the excellent reports received of the way Sanchez
handled the business of Macao's allegiance. 32
These dispositions considerably altered the situation from that in which
the recommendations of the preceding year were made, and Suarez now
proposed to Sedeno and the other fathers the following plan of action.
First, they should build a church and residence of wood and nipa on some
lots that were being donated to them inside the city, and that all or at least
two of the fathers should go there to live, hold services and hear confessions
in the church, and act as chaplains in the city hospital. Second, they should
gather together in the church at stated times during the week the children,
Negroes, and slaves of the city and give them catechism lessons. Third, they
should all learn Chinese in order to be able to work among the sangleys and
be ready to go to China in case they should be sent there. Fourth, as long as
Sanchez did not seem to w T ant to hear confessions like the rest, he should
at least give a course of sermons in the cathedral, since he had a talent for
preaching and the bishop and the citizens had requested him to do so.
Lastly, they should try to interest some of the wealthier colonists in build-
ing a stone church and residence for them, in order that if Acquaviva should
decide that they were to remain, construction could be started as soon as
word was received.
Consultations were held on these proposals, but Sanchez offered so many
objections that nothing was done about them except the third and fifth.
A search for possible benefactors was almost immediately successful. A
prominent citizen not named in the letters but almost certainly Gabriel
de Ribera, offered to spend as much as seven or eight thousand ducats on a
new church and residence as soon as word arrived from Rome. With regard
to the study of Chinese, Sedeno ordained that since there was a possibility
of opening a school for natives, only Suarez and Prat should study Chinese,
while he and Almerici devoted themselves to Tagalog, 33 Nothing was said
about Sanchez, for by this time he was involved in another piece of busi-
ness which was to take him to Madrid and Rome as nothing less than the
unanimously chosen representative of the entire colony.
Chapter Five
THE COLONIAL AGENT
On 19 April 1586 the president and oidores of the audiencia of Manila
discussed in administrative session "the generally expressed desire of this
commonwealth to take stock of its situation and to consider that if a
remedy is not speedily procured for the many things which are said to
require it, it may be too late to set them right/* In order that all might have
a voice in this stock-taking, it was decided to hold a general junta or
assembly in the government house at two o*clock in the afternoon of the
following day, which was a Sunday. Special invitations were issued to
the bishop, the cathedral chapter, the superiors of the religious orders, the
city corporation, and the commander of the Manila garrison ; while the
town crier read a proclamation at the street corners of the city calling
upon all captains, enc omenderos, and citizens to attend, for matters of the
highest importance were to be debated and decided, to wit, what in
the present state of the colony needed to be brought to the attention of the
king in his Council of the Indies, and whether an agent should be accredi-
ted to go to Madrid on this business, and if so, who that agent was to bed
That all was not well in the Philippines during the years immediately
following the arrival of the first Jesuits has already been suggested. The
clearest indication of this was the steep rise in the cost of living between
1580 and 1 585,2 but what dramatized the situation and gave it a sense of
urgency was a series of recent reverses which filled the colonists with dis-
may and apprehension. In the Moluccas a general revolt had overwhelmed
the Portuguese garrisons, repulsed with heavy loss the Spanish expedi-
tionary force sent to their assistance, put the missionaries to flight and
placed their more than 200,000 defenseless converts and catechumens at
the mercy of the Moslem rebels. They were killing encomenderos on the
island of Leyte, and in northeastern Luzon the entire Cagayan valley was
up in arms ; but even more disquieting was the fact that the native levies
recruited near Manila to put down the insurrection had melted away upon
reaching the combat area and turned up again in the ranks of the enemy.
There did not seem to be anyone the colonists could trust except them-
selves, a mere handful surrounded by hostile multitudes, thousands of
miles away from any hope of help. And now on top of all this intelligence
had been received of what the heretical English— Drake, Hawkins, and
others of that bloodthirsty breed — were doing to remote and solitary
77
78 The Jesuits in the Philippines
outposts exactly like their own at Cape Verde, the Antilles, and even the
Main itself. The emergency was too great and too pressing for ordinary
government to deal with; the community itself must now consult about
its own safety. 3
De Vera gave the citizens an hour to assemble and called the meeting to
order at 3 p.m. Among those present were “the president and oidores, army
officers, many encomenderos, merchants, and citizens of Manila and some
from other towns. Representing the clergy was the bishop of the said
Islands and the cathedral chapter and the father provincial of St. Augustine
with three of his religious and the father custodian of St. Francis with
three of his and the father rector of the Society of Jesus with three others
of the same Society, and other clerics and laymen/' 4 The grievous state of
the colony, De Vera said in his opening address, was known to all. The
colonists were for the most part unable to support themselves because the
land was poor and largely an uncultivated wilderness. This situation was
aggravated by the fact that there was neither order nor method in the
conduct of public business, for the colonial government had neither
instructions, powers, nor means to undertake much that was necessary for
the common good and safety. There could only be one remedy for this, and
that was to send an accredited agent to propose to the king what they, the
colonists, believed to be necessary for the preservation and increase of these
dominions. He therefore charged them as a matter of conscience to consider
what was to be done and then to express their opinions individually. Action
would be taken according to the prevailing sense of the assembly.
Juan de Moron then rose in behalf of the city corporation and presented
a written memorial which they had drafted, he said, by common consent,
putting down in order the points which they believed should be called to
the attention of His Majesty. The memorial was read to the assembly and
then registered among its papers, the first of a pile that would in due course
reach impressive proportions.
Bishop Salazar was the next to be recognized by the chair. He stressed
the fact that the ordinary citizens, as distinct from government officials
and merchants, suffered particular hardship because they were not rewarded
for their merits and services. Nor, he added quickly, could the governor be
blamed for this, for he had first to attend to the expenditures of govern-
ment, as was proper, and funds were lacking even for those. 5 Thus the
soldiers' pay was in arrears, had been for years, and they were dismayed
and disconsolate because there seemed to be no hope of their ever getting
paid. At the same time, because the land was newly acquired and still had
to be put under the plow, and an orderly and stable government had not
yet been organized, the cost of living was daily rising to impossible heights.
These and other urgent considerations made it imperative to send a quali-
fied and fully accredited agent to the king.
The Colonial Agent 79
Melchor Davalos, the senior oidor, commented with approval on the
memorial of the city of Manila and proposed that the other estates of the
colony, such as the clergy and the military, consult together on their
particular needs and draw up similar memorials. This was endorsed by
Fray Juan de Plasencia, the Franciscan father custodian, who announced
that the bishop and the clergy had already decided to memorialize the king
on the state of the Church in the Islands.
According to Pedro de Rojas, the junior oidor, the chronic financial
embarrassment of the colony described by the governor and the bishop
could only be relieved by an annual subsidy from Mexico. How big a
subsidy? The colony’s agent should propose the figure of 100,000 ducats.
He should also make strong representations that funds be appropriated
to fortify Manila and provide its hospital with an endowment. Fray Diego
de Alvarez, the Augustinian provincial, warmly endorsed the idea of a
subsidy, pointing out that the lack of funds was the greatest single reason
why the religious had not been able to expand their missionary work.
The former staff officer of the Duke of Feria came to momentary life
when Sedeho rose to recommend that Manila be provided not only with de-
fensive works but with a strong military establishment consisting of
regular troops. The mere presence of such an establishment would act as a
deterrent on the numerous enemies surrounding the colony and prevent
‘ * brush-fire ’ ’ wars and rebellions from starting. By the same token garri-
sons of regular troops should be stationed in every Spanish settlement
throughout the Islands, instead of their defense being left entirely to the
settlers themselves, as hitherto. Such troops would serve the additional
purpose of protecting the missionaries stationed in the native towns and
villages. Captain Bartolome de Sotomayor, in seconding these proposals,
added that their success depended on the troops being paid adequately and
regularly; to guarantee this the king should be asked to determine their
rate of pay himself and designate a definite source of revenue from which
it could be drawn.
Alonso Sanchez, when called upon for his suggestions, said that among
other things Manila needed a refuge or hostel for unmarried Spanish
women where they could live in community and be trained in the proper
conduct of a Christian household until it was time for them to marry.
Fray Alonso de Castro, the prior of the Augustinian convent of Tondo,
developed the timeliness of this suggestion by explaining that many settlers
who came out to the Philippines as single men experienced great difficulty
in finding suitable wives ; such a hostel would supply this need. Sanchez’s
second suggestion was that a colonial navy “of moderate size” be orga-
nized capable of taking the offensive against any hostile power that
threatened the safety of the Islands. In time of peace the elements of such
a navy could be used as trading vessels whereby commercial relations
8o
The Jesuits in the Philippines
might be cultivated with Japan, Java, China, and other neighboring
countries. In the course of their trading voyages these naval units could,
incidentally, gather intelligence regarding the countries they visited and
regarding the movements of the Portuguese ; such intelligence would be of
the highest value in determining the foreign policy of the colony.
In this connection Fray Juan de Quinones, prior of the Augustinian con-
vent of Manila, reminded the assembly that the fitting out of maritime
expeditions required the drafting of large quantities of native labor, and
that one of the principal abuses which cried out for a remedy was the
manner in which these levies were imposed. He strongly urged that all
statute labor be paid an adequate wage and that the funds to pay it be
made a regular item of the government budget. Moreover in the recruit-
ment of men for these expeditions care should be taken that the religious
instruction of the natives be not interfered with.
The rest of the assembly endorsed one or the other of these various
recommendations and all agreed that it was necessary to send an accredited
agent to Madrid. Bishop Salazar then got up and proposed two additional
points to be taken up with the king. First, that in view of the well-known
poverty of the colony, the salaries of its officials be paid from other than
local revenues. Second, that the abolition of the audiencia be considered.
A lively general discussion of these points ensued. Sedeno expressed him-
self in favor of the first point, but suspended judgment on the second until
he could give it more thought. Sanchez, speaking on the second point, said
that in case the king was unwilling to discontinue the audiencia, he should
at least be requested to modify its constitution so as to adapt it better to the
needs of the country. Fray Alonso de Castro was opposed to abolishing the
audiencia but in favor of the modification suggested by Sanchez. Luis de
Barruelo, canon of the cathedral, and Luis Velez, clerk, were in favor of
continuing the audiencia provided its salaries were paid from other than
local revenues. Otherwise it should be abolished and the encomiendas now
reserved to defray its expenses awarded to deserving veterans. Juan Bautista
Roman, the royal factor, was for outright abolition with no ifs. The
colony was small, its treasury poor, and 'Tor 140 settlers, which are all
there are in these Islands, a country of such slim resources, there is no
need of so formidable a tribunal; moreover, the life of garrison and camp
in a frontier outpost such as this consorts but ill with the legal formalities
of an audiencia." Pedro Martin, merchant, begged to differ; the audiencia
should by all means be retained, in order that the governor might have
wise counselors to advise him; one head could not possibly rule the colony
better than many.
The president and oidores abstained from expressing an opinion as the
question concerned them personally. However, we know from other
sources that De Vera was privately in favor of abolition. Like Roman, he
8i
The Colonial Agent
believed that the colony was too small to need or to be able to support an
audiencia. The salaries of president, oidores, attorney-general, and staff
amounted to 20,000 pesos a year, chargeable on encomiendas reserved to
the Crown; this was a sore point with the colonists who felt that those
encomiendas should have been the perquisite of the veterans of the con-
quest . 6 Attorney-general Ayala also favored abolition, and, anticipating
Martin's objection, made the practical proposal that the governor, who
was usually chosen for his military qualifications, might be provided with
an asesor or legal adviser ; he cited the precedents of Cartagena, Chile, and
Popayan . 7
On the other hand, Davalos expressed strong opposition to the audiencia
being discontinued. He claimed that De Vera's real reason for advocating
its abolition was because he wanted to rule the colony by himself, despoti-
cally. So too the bishop and clergy wanted to get rid of it because it imposed
strict limits on the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, in former times so ill defined
as to be practically unlimited. But, if they had their way, what would
follow ? The very same evils that prevailed before the institution of the
audiencia, and which the audiencia was precisely instituted to prevent.
Once again the colonists would have to sue for their rights or defend them
in the Mexican courts — a ruinously expensive process. Once again the
death of a governor would be followed by disputes over the succession, as
happened after the death of Gonzalo Ronquillo. Once again the ecclesias-
tical power would encroach unchecked on the civil. But the Philippines
was too small a colony to have an audiencia ! This was to take a very short
view of the matter, Davalos said. The Philippines would not be small and
weak forever. It had a great future before it, and it was precisely to help
make that splendid future come to pass that the audiencia was founded . 8
Hernan Suarez made no speeches, but by sitting quietly in his place,
watching and listening, he was able afterward to send Acquaviva an
admirable summary of the general sense of the assembly. One solid fact
emerged from the discussions, and that was that the Philippines in its
present state of cultivation produced enough and even more than enough
to support the native population, but not quite enough to support them
and the Spaniards and Chinese besides. For this reason the China trade,
while doubtless profitable to a few, had an adverse effect on the whole
economy, because by increasing the numbers of the resident Chinese it
caused an increase in the cost of living.
Another contributing factor to this was that the colony was top-heavy
with bureaucrats who used their official position to extract from the natives
the gold, wax, cotton, and textiles which they sold at such fantastic
profits in Mexico. This unregulated exportation created a scarcity without
providing any incentive for increased production; prices rose as a conse-
quence.
82
The Jesuits in the Philippines
Although the natives were the hardest hit by these dislocations of their
traditional economy, the ordinary Spanish settlers were also finding it
difficult to meet the rising commodity prices. Small investors derived little
profit from the Manila-Acapulco trade because most of the cargo space in
the galleons was pre-empted by the officials and wealthier merchants ; while
the colonial government's income was so small that after paying the salaries
of the top bureaucrats there was usually nothing left for the minor
functionary or common soldier. 9
The assembly now proceeded to elect the agent who should present their
petitions to the king. There seems to have been no serious doubt as to the
results of this election. Earlier that April, even before the audiencia thought
of summoning an assembly, Bishop Salazar had held several meetings of
the religious superiors and their principal assistants to consider whether
someone from among their number should report to the king on the peri-
lous state of the colony. It was proposed that the bishop himself go ; but
on further reflection the fathers advised him not to leave his diocese.
Nevertheless, someone certainly had to go, and Sanchez seemed to be the
man with all the necessary qualifications. Still in the prime of life, he had
the health and strength to undertake the long, difficult, dangerous journey.
He had the learning and perception necessary to explain the colony's
complex problems and answer the questions which would be put to him
by the king's councilors. To a large measure of prudence and dexterity in
the management of affairs he added personal and first-hand knowledge not
only of the Philippines but of practically all of the neighboring countries
as well. 10 So the bishop's advisers; and the assembly saw nothing to modify
in this generous judgment. When, therefore, Bishop Salazar rose to with-
draw his previous offer to go as the colony's agent and cast his vote instead
for Sanchez, all those present followed his vote without dissent. Sedeno
as Sanchez's superior then declared that “ since the voice of all is often
found to be the voice of God," he granted Sanchez permission to under-
take this business for the common good. This viva voce election in the
general assembly was later ratified in writing by the estates of the colony
meeting separately; by the military on 8 May, the cathedral chapter on
20 June, and the city of Manila on 25 June. On 26 June the proctor of
Nueva Caceres, Captain Hernan Gutierrez de Cespedes, transferred his
commission to Sanchez; and on 27 June the bishop and his chapter granted
him full proctorial powers to act for them not only in the royal court at
Madrid but also in the papal curia at Rome. 11
Having chosen their agent, the assembly now set up a kind of central
committee to draft the general memorial of the colony as distinct from
those of the separate estates. Appointed to this committee were: Bishop
Salazar, chairman, two prebends of the cathedral, one of the royal treasury
officials, the former agent of the colony, Don Gabriel de Ribera, the
Street plan of Manil;
II, Landscape with figun
The Colonial Agent 83
commander of the Manila garrison, two officers representing the military,
two aldermen and two householders representing the city of Manila, the
proctors of the other Spanish towns, and the three religious superiors with
their advisers. Only one other session of the full assembly was held; on
26 June when the general memorial drawn up by the central committee
was ratified. 12
While the central committee was meeting by day, a smaller group com-
posed of Bishop Salazar, the oidor Rojas, Attorney- General Ayala, the
factor Roman, and Sanchez met at night in the bishop's house to prepare
a detailed plan of the empresa de China for presentation to the king. The need
for continuous consultation on this and the other memorials was so great
that Sanchez left the Lagyo residence and lodged temporarily with the
bishop. 13
Meanwhile Sedeno began to have serious doubts as to the wisdom of the
permission he had so blithely given. If Sanchez's two previous missions
were open to criticism as unbecoming a religious, did not this third one
mean an even greater involvement in secular business expressly forbidden
to Jesuits by their institute ? Sedeno took his doubts to the other fathers,
who advised that he could permit Sanchez to accept the agency in view of
the exceptional circumstances, but only on two conditions; first, that he
should be accompanied by another agent, equally accredited, so that if the
provincial of Mexico should forbid him to go any further, there would be
someone to take his place; second, that all dispatches, memorials, and
instructions given to Sanchez in his capacity as colonial agent should be
shown by him to his fellow Jesuits, who would decide which of them he
as a religious could accept and which he would have to decline.
Sanchez absolutely refused to go on these terms. The president and
oidores, convinced that no one else could fill the post as well as he, resolved
to force Sedeiio's hand. On 5 May they issued a decree in the king's name
declaring that the appointment of Sanchez was a matter of public necessity,
and hence that they "commanded, besought and charged" Sedeno to grant
the requisite permission. Sedeno complied. 14
Bishop Salazar invited Sanchez to have supper with him on his last even-
ing in Manila. The following day, having embarked on the galleon at
Cavite, Sanchez received the following affectionate note from his old
friend ;
The tears I did not shed last night in your pleasant company I shed after your
departure and am shedding now as I write this. I fear I shall have little to console
me in your Reverence's absence. May God Himself be my consolation, and may
He lead you by the hand and bring you back to us safe and sound. The usual
prayers and petitions will be offered here and public rogations held for your
Reverence and the success of your enterprise. May God grant you all the assistance
you need to secure the welfare of these realms. Amen . 15
4 *+
84 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Sanchez made the voyage to x\capulco on the San Martin , the same galleon
that brought him and Sedeno to the Philippines and that he helped Roman
recover at Macao* He was accompanied by Brother Nicolas Gallardo, the
novice Juan Garda Pacheco, and a ten-year-old Pampangueno named
Martin Sancho. Young Martin was to have the rare privilege of being
quizzed on his catechism by Philip II himself, and the even rarer privilege
of being the first Filipino to be admitted to the Society of Jesus* This took
place in 1593 at Rome, whither he had accompanied Sanchez* He was
attached to the province of Toledo and spent some time in the college of
Murcia, whence he returned to Mexico in 1 599. He sailed for home in the
group of Jesuit missionaries headed by Gregorio Lopez in 1601, but died
that same year soon after setting foot once more on his native land. He
was twenty-five years old at the time of his death and a Jesuit eight years* 16
The San Marttn entered Acapulco harbor early in January 1587 after a
stormy six-months' passage. When the Jesuit provincial, Antonio de
Mendoza, learned the nature of Sanchez's mission, he refused to let him
go any further, just as Sedeno's consultors predicted* The colonial agency
appeared to Mendoza so obviously incompatible with the religious pro-
fession that he insisted on Sanchez waiting in Mexico for Acquaviva's
explicit permission before proceeding to Spam. Sanchez represented that
he was confident the permission would be given, but to wait for it would
delay his arrival in Spain for at least two years, according to the most
probable schedule of Atlantic crossings* Such a delay would be fatal to the
business entrusted to him by the Philippine colony. Moreover he had
with him many important letters and messages both of officials and private
persons to their correspondents in Spain, of a nature that could not suffer
delay* He had sums of money, too, which Philippine residents had asked
him to invest for them in Europe ; they would be lying idle and unprofit-
able while he waited in Mexico. Nor could he write back to Manila and
ask his principals to make other arrangements ; there was no time for that*
He therefore begged Mendoza to let him proceed at least to Seville and
there await Father General's decision, or from Seville go directly to Rome
without presenting himself at court in order to give an account of himself
to Acquaviva personally . 17
This last alternative, however, Villamanrique, the viceroy of Mexico,
quickly ruled out. It would never do, he said, for Sanchez to go to Rome
first with the dispatches and documents which he carried for the king.
Whether he should have accepted the commission or not, Sanchez was in
point of fact an agent in the royal service, and it was his clear duty to
present himself and his papers to the king as soon as possible. 18 This gave
Mendoza no alternative but to allow Sanchez to proceed. However, he got
Villamanrique to agree that Sanchez should at least be made to show his
papers to a special commission of inquiry, for he had had disquieting
The Colonial Agent 85
reports from the other Jesuits in the Philippines regarding a China project*
Suarez in particular had registered his violent opposition to it, which was
apparently one of using force to win a hearing for Christianity in China*
The only way to win a hearing for Christianity in China, Suarez had said,
was Ruggiero’s way, patiently to cultivate the good will of the emperor
and his officials and make it clear to them that the missionaries had no
intention of subverting their government* Mendoza completely agreed
with this, writing to Acquaviva in his turn that ‘'we have little liking for
his [Sanchez’s! doctrinaire assertions that nothing can be done in China by
means of peaceful preaching, but that it is necessary and completely licit
to send an army to conquer it — that is the very word he uses, conquer/’ 19
Among those appointed to the commission of inquiry was Jose de Acosta,
one of the Society’s most distinguished writers on missionary affairs* He
had gone to Peru as a missionary in 1571, was made rector of the College
of Lima in 1 574 and provincial in 1 576. After his term as provincial he
served as theologian to the Third Council of Lima (1 582-1 583), and was
in Mexico City on his way to Europe when Sanchez arrived from the
Philippines* He set down his comments on the etnpresa de China in a
memorandum to the government dated 15 March 15 87, 20 and in another
to Acquaviva dated 22 March of the same year* 21
The just causes alleged for making war on China, he said, were four.
First, the Chinese policy of exclusion whereby the Chinese government
forbade all communication and commerce between its nationals and
foreigners of whatever sort, contrary to the natural law and the law of
nations, Second, ill-treatment of Portuguese and Spanish nationals by the
Chinese port authorities, continued in spite of formal protests and amount-
ing to a casus belli * Third, the right to preach the gospel to all nations,
which induced in all nations an obligation not to interfere with its being
preached; this obligation could be lawfully enforced by military action.
Fourth, persecution by the Chinese government of Chinese converts to
Christianity ; the Catholic king in virtue of his protectorate over the
missions could use force to safeguard the faith of these converts. None of
these causes, either separately or collectively, justified making war on
China as proposed.
With regard to the first cause, the grievance alleged did not concern
Spaniards alone but all foreigners seeking relations with China, hence if
any action was to be taken it ought not to be unilateral but collective* But
what action could lawfully be taken ? It was not clear what right of the
nations interested was being violated since the Chinese government did not
itself enjoy — nor, indeed, did it seek — any commerce or communication
with other countries. As for its being a violation of the natural right of
free association and intercourse among the members of the human race,
it wnuld have to be established that the Chinese adopted their policy of
86
The Jesuits in the Philippines
exclusion without provocation or without being given grounds to suspect
that that was their wisest course if they wished to preserve their territorial
integrity. But that was precisely what had induced the Chinese to exclude
Europeans,
. . . for the Chinese have reason to fear the Spaniards in particular, as being a
nation warlike and ambitious of rule; and because of the public record of the
past ninety years with which the whole world is familiar, namely that they have
eventually acquired dominion over those nations where they first gained admit-
tance under the guise of friendly intercourse and commerce. And if not, let me
ask those who are so much in favor of the conquest of China if their real purpose
is other than to make themselves lords of it, of its greatness and its wealth ? 22
As for the second cause, the injuries alleged to have been committed
against Spanish and Portuguese nationals were not such as to justify a war;
and as for the third, what exactly was the nature and extent of this so-called
obligation to hear the gospel, or not to interfere with its being preached ?
Where did it reside ? In individual pagans ? In their communities ? In their
governments ? And, even granting that it existed, was it the kind of obli-
gation that could be enforced by military action ? Lastly, even if military
action were valid as a last resort, had the last resort, in point of fact, been
reached ? Had every peaceful means been tried to win a peaceful entry into
China for the gospel of peace ?
The fourth reason cited could admittedly be a just cause for military
intervention, but only under very definite conditions: first, it must be
certain that the injuries committed against the Christian Chinese were
committed against them precisely as Christians, that is, in hatred of the
faith; second, that the intervention proposed would not result in more
hatred of the faith than existed already; third, that all means short of war
had been tried and found ineffectual ; and fourth, that the intervention was
not permitted to develop into a full-scale invasion, but strictly limited to
purely punitive measures and the necessary protection of the Christian
converts. None of these conditions seemed to be verified; hence, this cause
too should be rejected.
The concluding paragraphs of Acosta's memorandum to the government
deserve to be quoted in full:
Someone may object that according to this view the Spaniards will not be able
to make war at all on any pagan people, for some one or other of the difficulties
here proposed will always be present. My answer is that that is quite correct if the
pagans referred to are not Moors or Turks or any of that sort but those that have
recently come to the knowledge of Europeans. I say that they have no right to
make war on these for the sake of spreading the gospel ; for it is not surprising
that what holy Church has not done in fifteen hundred years and which when
attempted has always resulted in such grievous sins against God and widespread
harm to the neighbor should seem to us objectionable.
The Colonial Agent 87
It will also be argued that if New Spain and Peru had not been acquired by
conquest the faith would never have found in them a permanent lodgment; and
that the same will be true of China unless some Christian king were to take
possession of it and rule it. My answer is that this is a distinct possibility ; I will
go further and say that it is highly probable and to be expected. But what God,
who can draw good even out of evil, suffers us to do is one thing; what He ordains
and wants us deliberately to seek and procure is another. Unless some radical
change takes place in my general attitude I cannot pronounce such a war lawful,
nor will I for anything in the world take upon my conscience the numberless
evils that will follow upon it . 23
This measured judgment by an impartial fellow Jesuit seems to have
made little impression on Sanchez, whose only recorded comment was that
there was no agreement in Mexico on the merits of the China project.
Two members of the commission of inquiry who objected to it, he says,
admitted that it would be perfectly in order for the Catholic king to
station troops at Macao and a fleet in Chinese territorial waters if these
measures were likely to compel better treatment of missionaries. In
Sanchez's opinion a “ gunboat' ' policy of this sort was tantamount to a
declaration of war, and hence those who considered it lawful had no reason
to jib at the empresa de China , 24
While Sanchez was waiting for the silver fleet to take him to Seville,
the first expedition of Dominican missionaries destined for the Philippines
arrived in Mexico City. Some of them had the intention of using the
Philippines as a base for still another attempt to enter China. Sanchez,
apprised of this, took it upon himself to inform them that the authorities
in the Philippines were very much against any religious passing over to
China, and that once in Manila they were not likely to get permission to
go any further. Acting on this information, several of the Dominicans
voluntarily decided to remain in Mexico ; as for the rest, the viceroy acting
on his own authority forbade any of them to sail if their intention was to
go on to China . 25 It is difficult to justify the action taken by Sanchez in
this matter. It is true that one of the petitions in the general memorial of
the colonial assembly to the king was that no religious be permitted to go
to the Philippines who did not intend to stay there; still, Sanchez's
mandate as colonial agent was merely to present this memorial to the king,
not to communicate it to others or to take action upon it on his own
account.
It was not until August of that year that Acquaviva learned what
Sanchez was up to. "I w r ould have much preferred," he wrote with
admirable restraint to Acosta, "that Father Alonso Sanchez had saved
us all the trouble this embassy of his is sure to cause, especially since it is
concerned with matters totally foreign to the religious state." Still, since
the affair had apparently reached the point of no return, steps should be
88
The Jesuits in the Philippines
taken to control what could no longer be prevented. One of these steps
was communicated by Acquaviva to Sanchez himself: ‘'In order that all
may proceed with all decency and edification, I have decided to give your
Reverence as your immediate superior, with the same powers as provincials,
rectors, and heads of houses have according to the custom of the Society,
Father Jose de Acosta, whom your Reverence will consult on all the mat-
ters you may have to take up with his Majesty or with anyone else, and in
all of them you will follow his judgment and direction/* 26
This directive did not find either Sanchez or Acosta in Mexico, as they
sailed for Seville on 18 May; but it probably caught up with them at
Madrid, where, on 1 5 December, Sanchez presented himself for his first
interview with Philip II. According to Sanchez it lasted two hours by the
clock, Philip plying him with questions and listening attentively to his
answers on the state of his most distant possession. At the end of the
interview he left with the king the general memorial of the colony,
the particular memorials of the several estates, the special memorial on the
China project, the original copy of the proceedings of the Synod of
Manila, and a memorandum written by himself. 27 We are already
familiar with the proceedings of the synod ; the contents of the memorials
are best considered later when we see what the King did about them ; but
it may not be out of place to summarize briefly here what Sanchez had to
say in his personal memorandum. 28
He begins with an explanation of why he thought it necessary to add such
a memorandum to the already extensive series of memorials he was sub-
mitting. He tried to write, he said, from the point of view of a disinterested
observer, as objective an account as he could of the possibilities and present
state of the Philippines, something that the king could use as a kind of
control for the various memorials which, to a greater or less extent, were
necessarily ex parte pleadings by highly interested persons and parties.
No one can speak fairly of the Philippines unless he has seen it and has no
particular axe to grind ; and so there are few who are worthy of credence, although
almost everyone speaks ill of it and gives it a bad name. The governors and other
officials do it in order to enhance in your Majesty's eyes their hardships and
services ; but the fact is that nowhere do they live more like lords and have greater
opportunities of becoming rich. The bishop and canons complain that their
stipends are not paid; but this is hardly the fault of the country itself. The
religious who are discontented are so because of some personal grievance or
because they are anxious to pass on to China and Japan and see strange sights. The
merchants, if they say anything, do so to conceal their profits, which are greater
than any that I know of anywhere else. The captains and soldiers complain that
they are treated like slaves and work harder than troops in other stations, and that
they do this with neither allowances nor pay nor the option to transfer to some
other command , this is perfectly true, and that they should blame the country for
The Colonial Agent 89
it is understandable, but erroneous. Thus a mistaken impression of the Philippines
is derived from all these sources, and this it is which keeps it in its present sorry
state, for because of it it receives no increase of settlers, whether lay or clerical.
What, in fact, was the Philippines ? It was a country with a population
of between 250,000 and 300,000 tribute-paying subjects of the Crown
and over a million more who were still outside Spanish jurisdiction. These
natives were organized for the most part in small communities under petty
chieftains. Feuds between these communities were endemic; for this
reason the small band of conquistadores found it easy to divide and
conquer them, unlike the Portuguese who had great kingdoms and power-
ful rulers to contend with. Though warlike in their free state, the Filipinos
were peaceable once subjugated.
They are of a happy disposition, candid, loyal, simple, and sociable. They love
to speak our language, even if they can only manage a few words. They have a
lively intelligence and easily learn Christian doctrine and how to read and write
in our alphabet; most of them read and write in their own.
The climate w r as hot, but with a heat less oppressive than the summer in
Seville or even in Toledo. The soil was extraordinarily fertile. Much rice
and other edible plants were grown; wild fowl and game abounded;
buffalo in herds of 300 and 400 roamed the plains and valleys; many
species of fish filled the rivers, lakes, and seas. Whatever foodstuffs were
not locally available could be brought in from China.
The people wove cloth of various kinds from native materials. There were
many gold mines which the Spaniards had not yet found the opportunity
to exploit or even locate, but the natives knew where they were, for almost
everyone, men and women, wore gold ornaments. And as with foodstuffs,
so with manufactures ; whatever was not produced locally could always be
imported from China.
So much for the country itself ; what of its geographical position ? It lay
almost at the center of the great half-circle whose perimeter was formed
by Japan, Korea, China, and the countries of Southeast Asia. This made
it the logical base for the defense of all the Christian establishments in the
Far East and for the further expansion of Christianity in that hemisphere.
As such, if for no other reason, it should be retained at all costs. The
Portuguese route into the China Sea was a precarious one. It could be
severed easily at two points: the Straits of Malacca and the Straits of
Sunda. If it were- — and the Moslem powers in those areas were already
threatening to do exactly that — the trading post at Macao and the Chris-
tian missions in Japan would be completely cut off from India, and could
be defended and supplied only from the Philippines. Furthermore the
Philippines was the nearest base from which Malacca and the Moluccas
90 The Jesuits in the Philippines
could be supplied with men and arms in case of attack ; while any expedi-
tion into China or Southeast Asia, whether missionary or military, must
necessarily be mounted in the Philippines.
How came it, then, that a colony of such varied resources and strategic
importance should now, so soon after its discovery and conquest, have
reached its last extremity ? In the first place, Sanchez says, because of its
enormous distance from Spain. This results in that the only settlers who
cared to go there were for the most part impoverished adventurers in search
of quick riches, unprincipled, turbulent fellows who cared nothing for
authority or the common good. Secondly, the governors and other officials
appointed to that distant post were far more interested in enriching them-
selves than in promoting the colony's welfare. Moreover they usually
brought with them a whole rabble of hungry proteges who gobbled up all
the patronage and perquisites of government at the expense of the older
and more deserving colonists. Thirdly, public funds were always short
because the territory was parceled out to private persons as encomiendas
as soon as it was conquered and little or nothing set aside to provide a
revenue for the colonial treasury. Thus there was never any money even
for the most essential public works, nor for the salaries of any but the
highest government officials; this in turn encouraged officials to compen-
sate themselves by taking what they wanted from the natives. Fourthly,
the military establishment was completely demoralized; as the old
regulars from Spain died or left the service, they were replaced by “runa-
way boys, half-castes, exiles, and convicts" from Mexico. Finally, the
encomenderos made little or no provision for the religious instruction of
the native population. In view of all this it was not surprising that the
colony should now feel its very existence to be imperiled both by rebellious
natives from within and by powerful enemies from without.
What remedy should be applied ? Sanchez proposes several. First and
most important: send the best available man as governor. He should be
well paid and at the same time strictly forbidden to engage in business
during his term of office. He should be unmarried, or at least he ought not
to bring his family with him. He should be bound by as few ties of grati-
tude or blood relationship as possible either to persons in Spain or to the
members of his entourage. He should be a man of simple tastes, not given
to ostentatious— and expensive — living. He should have a genuine affec-
tion for the colony and a desire to promote its welfare. Second: send at
least 400 regular troops with the corresponding officers. Their base pay
should be 100 pesos a year, with suitable differentials according to rank,
and this pay should be given them regularly and promptly. To provide the
necessary funds for this, abolish the audiencia. An audiencia is useless in a
colony still on a war footing. The present audiencia has done its work by
introducing some semblance of law and order; it can now be dispensed
The Colonial Agent 91
with* Third: forbid private shipping between Mexico and the Philip-
pines. All trade should be carried in royal bottoms. Thus cargo and
passenger rates can be reduced to a minimum to encourage investment and
emigration. Fourth: compel encomenderos to be as solicitous in providing
missionaries for their encomiendas as they are in collecting tribute from
them. Lastly: let his Majesty remember the distance of the Philippines,
the urgency of its present need, and the consequence that immediately
follows : any action taken, to be effective, must be prompt.
It took exceptional hardihood to urge the prudent Philip to be prompt
at any time, but especially so at this time when the aging monarch, tor-
mented by gout, wrestled grimly with the colossal preparations for the
invasion of England. Still, Sanchez had an unusual faculty for making his
presence felt and his wishes considered, even in the endless corridors of the
Escorial. In March 1588, only two months before the great Armada sailed
from Lisbon, Philip found the time to appoint a special commission to
examine the Philippine memorials and report on them. Its members,
drawn from the principal royal councils, included Archbishop Pedro
Moya y Contreras of Mexico and Bishop Hernando de Vega of Cordoba
from the Council of the Indies, Juan Idiaquez and Cristobal de Mora from
the Council of State, Pedro de Cardona and Alonso de Vargas from
the Council of War, and Juan de Ibarra and Andres de Alba, royal secre-
taries. 29
The commission sat through that burgeoning spring, March through
July, until the disaster of the Armada fell like a sudden blight upon the
year. Sanchez as colonial agent sat with them to answer questions and
supply additional information. The decision was apparently taken to
examine the whole Philippine problem with as few assumptions as possible,
for the first question the commissioners wanted Sanchez's opinion on was
whether the king had any right to the Philippines at all. Sanchez replied
orally with a razonamimto or exposition which he afterwards committed to
WTiting. 30
Sanchez began by saying that there were really two questions involved,
namely, how temporal sovereignty might be justly acquired in the Indies,
and how it might be justly retained. He did not feel called upon to enter
into the first question, and so would limit his discussion to the second,
which was what the commission was mainly concerned with. Starting with
the fact that the Spaniards were already in the Philippines, he would under-
take to show that they were justified in retaining and ruling it.
But first, it was necessary to clear the ground by rejecting certain false
titles to sovereignty which were sometimes put forward. That the Filipinos
were a barbarous people in a state of servility and ignorance ; that they were
infidels who did not worship the true God ; that they were idolaters who
indulged in superstitious rites and practices; that they committed sins
4 **
g2 The Jesuits in the Philippines
against nature; none of these assertions, even granting that they were true,
provided sufficient grounds for imposing temporal dominion over them.
One word is enough to refute all such theories : neither pope nor king nor any
other lord spiritual nor temporal possesses dominion over lands and peoples he
has never hitherto seen nor heard of ; and if he possess neither dominion nor
authority over them, it follows that he cannot give them man-made laws nor
compel them to observe the natural or the divine law ; nor, consequently, punish
them nor take their land away from them because of any sin they might commit
against any of the aforesaid laws. 31
The true basis for the retention of Spanish sovereignty in the Philip-
pines was to be sought in the nature and needs of the four communities or
kinds of people by which that colony was composed. The first of these was
the community of Spaniards. They were there already as a self-governing
commonwealth subject only to the king of Spain; hence they had a pre-
sumptive right to maintain themselves as such. But how did they come to
be there in the first place, not as private persons residing in a foreign
country but as an organized and autonomous community independent of
any local government ?
This touched on the question of the acquisition of sovereignty from
which Sanchez said he w'ould prescind; he now found that he could not
altogether avoid it. Well, then, the right of the Spaniards to be in the
Philippines as a separate community had its origin in the natural law and
the law of nations, which gave men of whatever nationality the right to go
to foreign lands and there enjoy the use of what was by nature common to
all, such as the seas, rivers, coasts, pastures, woods, and game. The same
source gave them the right to occupy territory which was not already
private property; to acquire such property by exchange or purchase; to
build houses and towns on property thus acquired, and if necessary to
fortify and defend them; and finally, if the lords and rulers of the lands
where they held such property were to forbid them the free exercise of these
rights, to wage war upon them, and if victorious to take the lawful reward
of victory.
It should be noted that Sanchez says nothing about the lawfulness of
occupying property which though not privately owned might be public
domain ; it might have been his view that the concept of public domain
did not exist among primitive peoples.
So much for natural right; in addition, the original Spanish establish-
ment in the Philippines was justified by divine right, for the Spanish
Crown by papal delegation was authorized to communicate to the pagans
of the newly discovered lands the faith, laws, and usages of Christianity,
which it could only do by establishing permanent, autonomous Spanish
settlements. It should be noted further that while this right could be abused
93
The Colonial Agent
and often was, abuse did not abolish it. Hence, while the Spaniards were
bound to restitution for the injuries they committed in the process of
acquiring dominion, their unjust methods did not vitiate the essential
justice of their claims.
The second community or class of people in the Philippines consisted of
the natives who had accepted Spanish rule and the Christian faith. Their
need created in the Spanish colonists a new duty and hence a new right to
remain in the country. For these recent converts could not be left to them-
selves. They needed preceptors to teach them both by word and example
the fullness and not merely the essentials of the Christian message. They
needed rulers who would strengthen their new-found faith with paternal
solicitude. They needed protectors capable of defending them from those
who would take away or corrupt their faith. In short, they needed the
Spanish community, which alone could provide the missionaries to teach
them, the troops to defend them, and settlers from an older Christian
tradition by whose guidance and example they might learn to live the faith
they had received.
The third community or class of people consisted of the natives who had
been conquered but not yet converted. They lived intermingled with the
Christian population like cockle among wheat, so that if the tender faith
of the newly converted was not to be smothered by their ancient paganism,
they had to be effectively restrained by Spanish sovereignty", which ought
for that reason to be firmly established over both the Christian and the
pagan communities.
The fourth and last community or class of people consisted of those who
had not yet been either conquered or converted. They too made the con-
tinuance of Spanish rule in the Philippines imperative, both in order to
defend those already Christian from their attacks and to compel them, by
force if necessary, to permit the preaching of the faith in their territory
and not to hinder those who freely wished to embrace that faith.
Sanchez now took up what he considered to be the principal objection
to his thesis, one which we have already seen proposed at the Synod of
Manila, to the effect that the Spanish conquest of the Islands had been
accompanied by so many outrages that it could not be looked upon other-
wise than as an unjust aggression. Sanchez replied that in this matter
there were two extreme positions to be avoided. One was to consider all
use of force to be unjust. This was the position of those who held that it
was possible to introduce the faith permanently in pagan lands by means
of missionaries preaching in them without armed protection. Of such
virtuous and learned individuals he could only say that their trust in fallen
human nature was greater than their experience of actual mission con-
ditions. The other extreme position was that of those who looked upon the
natives of the newly discovered lands as naturally inferior races against
94 I he Jesuits in the Philippines
whom certain kinds of aggression and compulsion were not necessarily
unlawful.
The truth of the matter was that, while these peoples were fully human
beings with all the rights inherent in human nature, they were also for the
most part barbarians brutalized by their savage way of life, insensible in
their present state to purely moral or spiritual considerations unless they
were backed by a pretty tangible manifestation of physical power. It was
therefore naive to expect them to receive peaceably missionaries who came
armed only with the power of the gospel.
But was it right for missionaries to preach the word of God accompanied
by troops ? It was, provided the purpose of the escort was clearly under-
stood. The divine mandate by which missionaries went forth to teach all
nations would be meaningless if it did not imply an obligation in those
to whom they are sent not to hinder them in the execution of their man-
date. If obliged, they could be compelled; by moral compulsion, where
practicable, but if not then by physical. This was what justified a military
escort for the missionary, and, in a larger sense, a civil protectorate of the
missions. Its purpose was not to despoil the pagans of what was rightly
theirs, whether they be goods of the temporal order such as property, or of
the spiritual order, such as liberty. Far less was it to intimidate them and in
that sense to compel them to accept the faith. It was merely to command
their respect for the person and function of the missionary — a respect which
mere moral suasion was ordinarily powerless to command in primitive or
savage communities — and thus create the conditions whereby the faith
could be freely taught and freely received. It was precisely this support
which the Spanish Crown gave to missionary enterprise that in Sanchez's
view constituted its most solid title to retain the Philippines and rule it. 32
The commissioners apparently found this analysis completely acceptable,
for the question of withdrawing from the Philippines was definitely
shelved ; if, indeed, it was ever seriously considered. They completed their
examination of the memorials in July, and in late July or early August
Sanchez brought their recommendations to Philip II at the Escorial. The
king who had just lost 32 ships and 10,000 men in one of the most stupen-
dous disasters in the history of naval warfare received him with unruffled
calm, took his papers, and steadily went through them all, noting down
in his own hand on the margins of the memorials his answer to the petitions
of his Philippine subjects. His comment on the loss of the Armada is well-
known : “I sent my ships to fight men, not the elements . ’ ' 3 3 It was perhaps
the consciousness that in turning to the problems of the Philippines he
was turning to at least partly manageable human problems that nerved him
to the task.
Instead of following Philip in the tedious process of examining the
memorials paragraph by paragraph, we may be permitted the easier and
The Colonial Agent 95
possibly clearer method of summarizing the action he took under the heads
of defense, finances, civil and ecclesiastical government, agriculture, com-
merce, social services, and native rights, 34
Defense
The various proposals for putting the colony in a better posture of
defense received Philip's full approval. Manila was to be provided with a
citadel and a fortified wall, and four other forts were to be constructed at
strategic points in the archipelago. Six companies (400 men) of regular
Spanish infantry were to constitute the hard core of the military establish-
ment. Philip built up their wage scale on a base pay of 72 pesos a year,
considerably lower than the figure suggested by Sanchez. However, to
ensure that that at least was paid regularly and promptly, he reserved a
fixed proportion (15 per cent) of the tribute for the army pay roll, and
decreed an annual bonus of 1,000 pesos to be divided equally among the
six companies. Servicemen were subject to martial law, but they could
neither be imprisoned nor their weapons distrained for debt. On the other
hand, if a serviceman or an officer engaged in any other occupation or
acquired some other source of income, such as an encomienda, his salary
was automatically to cease. Troops recruited in Mexico for service in the
Philippines should not be mere boys, servants, or rabble, but qualified
soldiers, at least fifteen years of age, not bound by any indenture, and
dispatched with full equipment.
Philip went along at least part of the way with Sanchez's proposal of a
colonial navy of “moderate size" ; he approved the formation of a squad-
ron of eight galleys and frigates for coast-guard service.
Finances
The principal measures by which Philip tried to provide the Philippine
government with an adequate income were the following. He imposed a
customs duty of 3 per cent ad valorem on all merchandise entering or leaving
the Philippines. He decreed that the freight charges already being paid on
goods carried on the Manila- Acapulco galleon, and the sales tax collectible
at first sale of such goods in Mexico (almoj arifazjzp ) , were to continue in
force; but all this revenue was to be sent back to Manila as Philippine
government funds. He fixed the tribute or head tax to which all his Philip-
pine subjects were liable at a uniform 10 rials per annum , to be divided as
follows : 8 rials to go to the encomendero, to the army pay roll, and
\ to the bishop and his clergy for their support. To provide the city of
Manila with a stable revenue, he granted it half the fines collected in
Philippine courts and half the land rents paid by the Chinese residents.
9 6
The Jesuits in the Philippines
Civil Government
The audiencia was abolished. The China project was shelved. These are
the first two measures to catch the eye. The others are less striking but not
less important. The extension of Spanish sovereignty, for which “pacifi-
cation” rather than conquest was the term Philip wanted used, could
continue within the limits of the Philippine archipelago as long as it was
conducted according to the ordinances regulating such pacifications.
Priority was to be given to territories threatened by Moslem penetration.
Because of the distance of the colony, the governor could authorize
expeditions for this purpose without first referring them to Madrid, and
either finance them from government funds or enter into contracts ( asientos )
with private adventurers, granting them titles of governor, adel ant ado ,
marshal, and so on, subject however to royal confirmation.
A lucrative source of royal revenue in the Spanish colonial system was the
sale of government offices; nevertheless Philip granted the colonists'
petition that at least clerkships and secretaryships in the Philippines be
awarded on the basis of merit . 35 To ensure prompt and full payment,
government salaries were to be paid out of Philippine funds ; only when
these were insufficient were employees to be given drafts payable in
Mexico. Philip obviously believed that with this assurance of their receiv-
ing their salaries regularly, colonial officials no longer had any reasonable
excuse for engaging in those commercial operations about which there
was so much complaint. These were therefore forbidden once more under
new penalties both to government officials during their term of office and
to encomenderos within the limits of their encomiendas.
As to encomiendas : they were to be granted only to bona fide colonists on
the basis of meritorious service and length of residence in the Philippines,
the minimum requirement being three years. Encomienda grants to rela-
tives of governors or oidores were to be considered null. The encomiendas
granted should be of sufficient size ; that is, the head tax of the encomienda
population should be such as to enable the encomendero to meet his obli-
gations, especially that of providing his people with a resident missionary.
In encomiendas not yet completely pacified, no tribute was to be collected,
but only a nominal sum in recognition of Spanish sovereignty. The practice
of commuting encomienda grants for annuities in Mexico or elsewhere
reflected a growing tendency to look upon the encomienda merely as a
source of revenue. Philip forbade it, thus reaffirming the principle that the
encomienda was a wardship which required the encomendero's personal
attention.
Ecdesiastical Government
The governor of the colony was charged to cooperate with the bishop in
seeing to it that opportunities to learn the Christian faith were provided
The Colonial Agent 97
everywhere in the Islands. To this end he authorized the sending of more
missionaries (40 Augustinians and an unspecified number from other
religious orders) at the royal expense. Each missionary was allowed 500
ducats for his transportation and equipment. The annual stipend of
100 pesos and 100 fanegas of rice was confirmed. Missionaries thus sent
were to go to the Philippines with the intention of staying and working
there. They were not to go elsewhere without the explicit permission of the
bishop, and the governor was not to provide them with transportation with-
out this permission. A grant of 12,000 ducats was authorized for the
construction of the Manila cathedral.
Agriculture
As an encouragement to agriculture Philip authorized the sending of
100 farmer settlers and their families to the Philippines at the royal
expense. These settlers were to be exempted from taxation and, with the
approval of the bishop, from tithes. Both they and the natives in their
employ were also to be exempted from statute labor. They were to give
bond that they would actually^ engage in farming for a specified period after
their arrival in the colony", the length of this period to be determined by
the governor. Public land was to be assigned to them and natives encou-
raged to seek employment with them so as to learn European methods of
farming. Encomienda grants were henceforth to contain the added con-
dition that the encomendero would engage in agriculture himself and
promote it among his people. The breeding of farm animals was to be
started with twelve mares, two stallions, twenty-four cows and two bulls
which were to be sent from Mexico at the royal expense. Moreover, cattle
and horses were to be imported from China or Japan and native buffaloes
domesticated.
Commerce
Philip made the galleon trade a monopoly of the Philippine colonists by T
forbidding residents of Mexico and a fortiori of other parts of the empire
to invest in it. On the other hand, he denied the petition that the Portu-
guese of Macao be forbidden to export China goods to Mexico or Peru.
The question of whether the Chinese should be obliged to sell their
merchandise wholesale through a merchants' committee (the pancada
system) was left to the governor for settlement.
Social Services
An annual subsidy of 1,600 pesos, chargeable on the royal revenues, was
granted to the hospital for Spaniards in Manila and 600 pesos to the hos-
pital for natives. The bishop and the governor were enjoined to consider
98 The Jesuits in the Philippines
how the hostelry for unmarried women suggested by Sanchez might best
be founded and endowed. They were also to consider how these women
might be provided with dowries. A fund of 12,000 pesos was set up to
enable impoverished conquistadores to make the restitutions required by
the Synod of Manila for injustices committed during the conquest.
Native Rights
The ordinance forbidding Spaniards to keep native slaves was reaffirmed;
if any were still being held, they were to be freed at once. The natives
themselves were not henceforth to reduce anyone to slavery. Children born
of slave parents were to be accounted free. Their present slaves were not,
however, to be emancipated immediately. Those who had been enslaved
for ten years or less were to be freed at the end of twenty; those who had
been enslaved for more than ten years were to serve five years more. Any
slave was to have the right to ransom himself at any time, the ransom price
to be determined jointly by the bishop and the governor.
Lawsuits of natives were to be disposed of summarily by verbal process
to save the parties expense. Money fines were to be avoided as much as
possible. Natives were to be exempted from tithes (if Christians) and also
from the royal quinto , whereby one-fifth of all newly mined gold was reser-
ved to the Crown.
Encomenderos were again reminded that the natives had the option of
paying the tribute in currency or goods of equal value, whichever they
preferred.
Such were the measures taken by Philip to remedy abuses and improve
conditions in the remote colony which bore his name. Some of them would
prove unworkable because unfitted to local conditions; others would
become a dead letter through lack of adequate sanctions ; still others, such
as the abolition of the audiencia, would have to be revoked. On the whole,
however, they reflect great credit on the statesmanship both of the
monarch who framed them and on the colonial representative who informed
and advised him. But to frame good laws is one thing, to put them into
execution another. The success of the latter depended largely on the next
governor of the Philippines, who would indeed have to be, as Sanchez
insisted, a pearl among governors. It was not perhaps without irony that
Philip told Sanchez to pick his man.
Don Juan de Idiaquez, one of the members of the special commission
on Philippine affairs, asked Sanchez one day what qualities he sought in his
prospective governor. Sanchez replied that the man must be "neither too
young nor too old, but of mature years. He should have neither wife nor
children, neither debts nor dependents. He should not be openhanded, nor,
on the contrary, avaricious. He should be both extremely brave and excep-
The Colonial Agent 99
tionally prudent, and should already have proved his ability to govern in
some office of trust. A great gentleman, in short, yet for all his breeding
simple and approachable; and, above all, an exemplary Christian.”
Idiaquez laughed at him and so did the other councilors, saying that no
such man was to be found. “But,” says Sanchez, “the last laugh was
mine.” He found Gomez Perez Dasmarinas.
Dasmarihas had at least the right background for the job. He was a
Galician gentleman who entered the royal service under the aegis of Bishop
Antonio de Pazos, president of the Council of Castile. After three years as
commander of the galley fleet on coast-guard duty against the Barbary
pirates he was appointed corregiior of Cartagena and Murcia. He caught
Sanchez’s attention while at court on his way to a similar position at
Logrono. Inquiry revealed that he was a widower with one grown son,
Luis Perez. Philip II approved Sanchez’s choice and conferred on the new
governor the knighthood of St. James. His appointment, issued at the
Escorial on 9 August 1589, gave him the supreme judicial as well as civil
and military authority in the Philippines, the only limitations being that
civil cases involving more than 1,000 pesos were to go to the audiencia of
Mexico, and that the same audiencia could hear appeals from his
decisions. 36
Before Dasmarihas could leave for his post Sanchez had gone on to Rome.
There, in May 1589, he sat down and scribbled a few items of friendly
advice. 37 Dasmarihas ought not to bring too many dependents with him.
If anyone wished to join his entourage let it be at his own expense and risk.
Failure to observe this simple rule smothered Gonzalo Ronquillo with a
swarm of rapacious alcaldes and brought him in sorrow to an early grave.
Let him not upon his arrival try to change everything at once, but after
familiarizing himself with conditions introduce little by little the necessary
reforms. To this end he should show himself willing to listen to everyone,
though taking counsel only of a few.
Let him bear in mind that the land he was being sent to govern was
5,000 leagues from the center of Christendom and of the empire. Every-
one there was accustomed to act with great freedom and to look upon
himself as a lord ; whence arose two dangers. For, if the governor was not
tactful, he was bound to make enemies right and left who would flood
Mexico and Madrid with complaining letters and probably succeed in
having all his orders countermanded. On the other hand, if he were tactful
to the point of timidity he would accomplish little of value and much
against his conscience and reputation. Because he had to pick his way care-
fully between these two extremes he needed divine grace ; let him therefore
even at his busiest devote a certain amount of time to prayer and the calm
consideration before God of how he was performing the duties of his
office.
IOO
The Jesuits in the Philippines
He should expect to run into difficulties with the bishop, “not because
of the person, for the present bishop is a saint, but because of the basic
relationship between the two offices" of governor and bishop, both in their
respective spheres supreme yet compelled to operate in close conjunction
within the narrow confines of a frontier outpost. He would find that the
bishop made a good friend but a bad enemy. Let Dasmarmas therefore
strive to win his good will by making much of him and asking his advice
on matters in which he was competent. Let him make all the concessions
that he could without diminishing the royal prerogative. To priests and
religious in general he should show great reverence, giving an example in
this to the other colonists and the natives. At the same time, he should not
forget that being human, they were sometimes guilty of very human
faults, and even of exploiting the natives in the collection of tithes, alms,
construction of churches, convents, and so on ; he should take the necessary
precautions with this in mind.
We shall see later how Dasmarinas tried to put these avisos into practice;
meanwhile we must follow Sanchez to Rome. Sanchez's success in gaining
Philip's prompt and favorable attention to the problems of the Philippines
came as a pleasant surprise to Acquaviva, for the attitude of the royal
government toward Jesuits in general was at that time distinctly cool.
A small group of malcontents belonging to the Spanish provinces of the
Society had succeeded in getting to Philip and half convincing him that
certain internal arrangements of the order (such as the frequent interchange
of members and information among the various European provinces) not
to mention certain provisions of its fundamental law (such as the wide
powers wielded by a general elected for life) interfered with the work of
the Spanish Inquisition and came into conflict with his own royal authority
over his subjects. Philip, who was very touchy on these points, arranged
with the reluctant consent of the Holy See that the Jesuit provinces in
Spain should be subjected to a visitation by a visitor of his choice, the
Bishop of Cartagena. Acquaviva was perfectly willing that such a visitation
should be made, but not on the king's terms, which called into question
not only the conduct and loyalty of the Spanish Jesuits, but the institute
itself of the order as approved by the Holy See. Nevertheless, only with
the greatest difficulty was he able to persuade Philip to allow that the
visitation be conducted instead by two Jesuits, Gil Gonzalez Davila and
the recently arrived Jose de Acosta, with the obligation of placing a full
report of their findings in the royal hands . 38
When Sanchez was received at court in the midst of these strained cir-
cumstances with every appearance of cordiality, Acquaviva could not fail
to be impressed ; and he was even more impressed when Sanchez, having
been given Acosta as his immediate superior, readily consented not to press
his advocacy of the dubious emptesa de China . “I am delighted," Acqua-
IOI
The Colonial Agent
viva wrote, "that your address to the throne [the ra^onamientoj was so well
received ; it will I hope contribute with the divine assistance to the welfare
of those Islands. Your Reverence was well advised in not doing anything
about the China affair, for besides its being alien to your [religious] pro-
fession, I am convinced that nothing would have been done about it in any
case. The prudence and integrity with which you have handled the rest of
your commission pleased me greatly. " Shortly afterward, in the autumn of
1 5 88, Sanchez was on his way to Rome, and the following August, 1589,
on Lady Day, he made the solemn profession of four vows at the hands of
Acquaviva himself. 39
He was graciously received by the reigning pontiff, Sixtus V (1585-
1 590), who listened for nearly an hour to what he had to say in behalf of
the bishop and clergy of the Philippines, and then asked him to present
their memorials to the cardinals of the Holy Office for more detailed
examination. In one of these memorials 40 Bishop Salazar invokes the
pope's assistance in removing certain obstacles to the work of the Church in
the Philippines. For the civil authorities consistently took no account of
the bishop in sending out expeditions of conquest. Yet if the principal
purpose of such expeditions was the conversion of the natives, as admit-
tedly it was, they were bound not only to consult him but not to send
them without his consent.
Another obstacle to orderly ecclesiastical administration was the ten-
dency of the religious missionaries to exempt themselves from the juris-
diction of the bishop on the strength of their apostolic privileges, especi-
ally the so-called omnimoda faculties granted by Adrian VI. Salazar
believed that the bishop should have the right to limit these faculties in
accordance with local conditions in his diocese. If this was not advisable,
then his Holiness should at least ordain that what the bishop decreed with
the advice of his clergy regarding the good government of his diocese, as in
the synod recently held, should have the force of law, and religious
superiors should not thereafter feel free in virtue of their omnimoda
faculties to disregard or modify them.
Various other petitions accompanied this memorial, the tenor of which
can be learned from the pontifical documents issued in response to them.
Sanchez faithfully and tenaciously followed their course through the curia
under five different pontiffs, for Sixtus V was followed in rapid succession
by Urban VII (1 590), Gregory XIV (1 590-1 591), Innocent IX (1 591)1 and
Clement VIII (1 591-1605). Sixtus V died before the cardinals of the Holy
Office could make their recommendations; Urban VII lived only a few
weeks after his election ; it was Gregory XIV, therefore, who received the
cardinals' recommendations and was able to act upon them.
In a brief dated 18 April 1 59 1 41 he granted the principal petitions of
Bishop Salazar, decreeing that the bishop of Manila was authorized to
102
The Jesuits in the Philippines
determine the amount and manner of compensation due to the natives
from the conquistadores ; that his synodal decrees were binding on all the
clergy of his diocese ; that he had the right to reserve cases to himself from
which the religious could not absolve even in virtue of their omnimoda
faculties ; that he was empowered to make a visitation of all the parishes
of his diocese, even those administered by religious; that without his
permission the religious in his diocese could not go as missionaries to
neighboring lands which lay outside the Spanish jurisdiction; and finally
that he could add pontifical confirmation to the royal ordinances forbidding
the Spanish colonists to enslave the natives* In another brief dated 28
July 42 of the same year the pope approved the doctrine that the civil power
may, whenever necessary, lawfully give armed protection to missionaries
or avenge injuries done to them, and praised the services rendered to the
Church in this connection by the Spanish Crown*
These and other papal concessions obtained by Sanchez were in due
course referred to Philip II to see whether he had any objections to their
being promulgated. Apparently he had, for some time later a request from
Madrid was transmitted to Clement VIII through Cardinal Toledo that
five of the briefs obtained by Sanchez be suspended. The reason given was
“ because the manner of executing them needed more mature consideration,
in order that the good intended by your Holiness and the Apostolic See
may be obtained without the disadvantages that can easily follow.” 43 It is
not clear exactly what ‘ ‘ disadvantages ’ ' were adumbrated in this excessively
discreet representation, but the thorny problems connected with episcopal
visitation were almost certainly among them. At any rate Clement VIII
thought it prudent to accede to the request and decreed the desired suspen-
sion on 6 February 1596. However the numerous indulgences, favors, and
privileges of a purely spiritual nature obtained by Sanchez for the Philip-
pines remained in force and eventually reached their destination, together
with an unusually rich collection of relics representing 155 different
martyrs which he put together for the Jesuit church in Manila.
If Sanchez expected congratulations from his good friend Bishop Salazar
for his successful fulfillment of a difficult commission, he was promptly
disabused. In late 1591 or early 1592 the information reached him from
Madrid that he had been denounced to the king by Bishop Salazar as
having exceeded his mandate and grossly misrepresented the mind of his
principals, and that his razonamiento in particular ought to be delated to
the Inquisition as savoring of heresy. 44
The train of events that brought about this startling development began
when Sanchez was still in Madrid expediting the affairs of the Philippine
colonists. 45 There happened to be there at the same time mo religious who
were trying to get Philip II to approve and finance a project of theirs for the
conversion of China. They were Fray Juan Volante, a Dominican, and
The Colonial Agent 103
Fray Geronimo de Burgos, the Franciscan whom the Macao authorities
sent back to Manila with Sanchez in 1583. Their project was to transport
two large missionary expeditions — 60 Dominicans and 100 Franciscans —
from Spain to China via the Philippines at the king's expense. In order
that the authorities at Manila might place no obstacles in their way, they
asked that these missionaries be exempted while in transit from any subor-
dinate civil or ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Once on Chinese soil, they were
to be given complete freedom of action, for their plan was to enter the
Chinese empire as the first apostles did the Roman, without armed escort
or civil protection of any kind, relying solely on the inherent power and
persuasiveness of the faith they preached.
It was an enterprise nobly conceived, and one which as we have seen the
Jesuits Ruggiero and Ricci were already attempting, though on a much
smaller scale. Nevertheless Volante and Burgos had had no success in
arousing official interest in it, although they preceded Sanchez at court by
almost three years. Finally, some time after Sanchez's arrival, they were
given a hearing by the Council of the Indies. It is not clear exactly what
happened in the council room, but apparently either the indifference of the
councilors or the numerous frustrations to which the poor friars had been
subjected ruffled their tempers and caused them to speak with some heat.
The councilors, resenting this, dismissed them coldly with the instruction
that if they had anything further to propose they could submit it in writing.
It was probably at this juncture that they appealed to Sanchez for
assistance. Sanchez refused.
He explained his reasons for refusing in a letter to Volante dated 27
July 1588. He was, he said, the agent at court of the Philippine colonial
assembly, and one of the petitions which he had to submit in behalf of the
assembly was that no Spanish missionaries be permitted, at least for the
time being, to go to China. The repeated attempts of missionaries from
the Philippines to enter China had all ended in failure and had merely
served to arouse the hostility of the Chinese authorities against the
Spaniards, whom they suspected of spying out their country with a view
to subsequent invasion. They had also placed the Portuguese, whose foot-
hold at Macao was at best precarious, in a most embarrassing position; the
authorities at Macao were quite insistent that the Spaniards desist from
any more such attempts; and since the Portuguese were now equally
Philip's subjects, their interests had to be taken into consideration.
Hence, Sanchez said, he would be acting contrary to his mandate if he
assisted Volante in his project instead of trying to dissuade him from it
and doing his best to obtain approval of the Philippine assembly's
petition.
If Sanchez had stopped here, all might have been well; unfortunately
he went on to express quite gratuitously his personal opinion of the project
104 rta Jesuits in the Philippines
itself. It could not possibly succeed, he said, because whatever might have
been the case in apostolic times, experience proved that in the times in
which they lived the expansion of Christianity into pagan lands had to
have the backing and support of the civil power. The case of Japan might
seem to be an exception, but was not really so ; for if the Portuguese Jesuits
had found an entry there it was only because the Japanese were interested
in the Portuguese carrying trade. Thus if China was to be converted, it
could not be by the method advocated by Volante (and, Sanchez might
have added, by his fellow 7 Jesuits Ruggiero and Ricci), but by missionaries
operating under a civil protectorate, as described in his razonamiento.
It may be imagined with what feelings Volante read this letter and the
razonamiento to which it referred ; and he can hardly be blamed for under-
standing Sanchez as saying that the Chinese ought to be compelled by force
of arms not only to allow the faith to be preached but to accept and
embrace it. It was in this sense that he reported what Sanchez was about
in Madrid to Bishop Salazar. The bishop was naturally highly indignant.
It was never his intention, he wrote to Philip, nor that of anyone in the
Philippines, to spread the gospel by fire and sword. They were not
Moslems. And anyway even the Moslems, at least those in the Philip-
pines, did not compel anyone to accept their religion by force. They used
persuasion and the example of a good life ; that was why they made so many
converts ; would that Spaniards who prided themselves in being Christians
did the same ! It was true that he was at one time in favor of an armed
invasion of China, but he based this opinion on reports that the Chinese
could not be persuaded by any other means to open their doors to mission-
aries. He knew now that these reports were false, and hence thoroughly
endorsed Volante’s project and condemned Sanchez’s opposition to it.
When Sanchez learned of the bishop’s denunciation he wrote an apologia
which he directed to Sebastian Hernandez, one of the Jesuits at Madrid,
doubtless with instructions that it be shown in the proper quarters . 46
Bishop Salazar had urged the king to have the razonamiento examined by
the Inquisition. Nothing, says Sanchez, would please him better. Aside
from the fact that the doctrine it contained had been approved by many
eminent authorities, the bishop himself had defended it on numerous
occasions, at the Synod of Manila, in a sermon before the governor and
dignitaries of the colony, and at the colonial assembly. In fact, the plan for
the expedition to China which was based on that doctrine was drawn up
in the bishop’s house with the bishop’s active participation. The members
of the special commission on Philippine affairs to whom the razonamiento
was addressed saw nothing wrong with it; on the contrary, they asked
Sanchez to put it in writing and furnish them with copies. When he came
to Rome he requested the Spanish ambassador to the Holy See to check
his papers, the razonamiento among them, before submitting them to the
The Colonial Agent 105
pope; the ambassador found nothing objectionable in any of them. He
personally gave a copy of the razonamiento to Sixtus V, who promised to
read it and did read it. But of course Sixtus V could not very well dis-
approve of it because he held the same doctrine himself; he said so. Finally,
the cardinals of the Holy Office, to whom his memorials were referred,
had every opportunity to examine the razonamiento. Not only did they see
nothing wrong with it but their consulting theologian, Francisco de
Toledo, told Sanchez that the right delegated by the Holy See to the
Spanish crown of compelling a hearing for the gospel extended even further
than Sanchez claimed.
What, then, did Sanchez say in the razonamiento that won so many and
such authoritative testimonials ? He did not say, as Bishop Salazar
apparently thought he said, that the ministers of the gospel cannot and
ought not to go into mission territory without an armed escort. What he
did say was that they could and might go with such escort, not for aggres-
sion but for protection, and that it was often foolhardy to go without such
escort, or to make converts who would be defenseless against persecution
for lack of such escort or some sort of civil protectorate.
It should be clear from this that Bishop Salazar, Volante and Sanchez
were writing at cross-purposes, for Sanchez never advocated conversions
by force, as Salazar and Volante thought he did, nor did Salazar, as Sanchez
claimed, approve the armed invasion of China and then denounce both it
and him to Philip II. If Salazar changed his mind about the China enter-
prise it was not because he had abandoned the theory of a civil protectorate
but because the facts that justified the application of that theory had not,
apparently, been correctly reported. It is not recorded that Salazar and
Sanchez ever met again. They could have, at Madrid, for Sanchez
went back to Spain in 1592, and Salazar, having fallen out with
Governor Dasmarinas on the question of tribute, left the Islands to
report personally to the king in 1591. One hopes that they did meet
again, and in their meeting cleared the cloud that had fallen over their
long friendship.
Sanchez returned to Spain with the powers of visitor. The conspirators
against the institute of the Society had not been completely silenced by the
visitation of Gonzalez Davila and Acosta. Headed by Dionisio Vasquez,
they were still pulling strings at court to detach the Spanish provinces from
the main body of the order. Acquaviva was not mistaken in the man he
chose to deal with this danger. Sanchez acted quickly and decisively. He
expelled tw'O of the principal conspirators, and then persuaded Philip II
and the officers of the Spanish Inquisition to refer any outstanding doubts
they might have concerning the Jesuit institute to a general congregation
of the Society. Summons w ? ent out to all the provinces to elect their dele-
gates to the congregation, v r hich w^as to meet in Rome in 1593. Sanchez
io6 The Jesuits in the Philippines
was elected one of the delegates for the province of Toledo, but when he
was told of it he said that he had another journey to make shortly, the last
and most important of his many journeys. He spoke of the journey of
death, which took place on 27 May 1593 at Alcala de Henares, whence as
a young man he had set out to see the world. 47
Chapter Six
PERMANENT ESTABLISHMENT
The departure of Sanchez from the Philippines seemed to release the
Lagyo community from the state of suspended animation to which his one-
year term as minister had reduced it. Sedeno with the advice of the other
fathers promptly accepted the lots which were being offered by several
benefactors at the southwest corner of the city. Twenty-eight of these were
scattered residential lots, but fourteen were contiguous and occupied two
city blocks, sufficient for a church and residence. He then approached
Don Gabriel de Ribera and asked him to build a temporary structure of
nipa on this site, which could serve the Jesuits as a church until they could
build a permanent one. Ribera not only consented with alacrity but
improved on the suggestion. Scorning to use nipa, he raised for them the
biggest church in the city t walled in wood and roofed with tile, and com-
pleted it in six months. 1
As soon as it was finished, very probably in the early part of 1587, the
Jesuits, while still residing at Lagyo, transferred to it their center of
activities, putting into operation the plan suggested by Suarez of holding
catechism classes for children and slaves in addition to the usual services.
Suarez himself, however, was not to see this realization of his plan. He
seems to have thrown himself too vigorously into the active ministry after
Sanchez's departure, as though to make up for lost time. He preached and
heard confessions regularly in the cathedral, and these continual trips back
and forth between Lagyo and Manila, made in all kinds of weather after
long hours in the pulpit and the confessional, undermined his health. He
fell sick, and at midnight on 2 September 1586, having received the last
sacraments at the hands of Sedeno, died. 2
His death pointed up the need of the Jesuits having a house near their
church. Ribera offered to build it for them of the same materials, wood and
tile, but the fathers after thinking it over decided to put up with the
inconvenience of the Lagyo residence a while longer until it was definitely
settled whether they were to stay or go. Sedeno did not want good money
spent on a second temporary residence ; the next house he built would be
of stone. 3
Both Prat and Chirino claim for Sedeno the distinction of having intro-
duced the art of stone construction in the Philippines. According to
Chirino 4 it was he who after the fire of 1583 persuaded Bishop Salazar to
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Map III. The Tagalog region, showing towns mentioned in the narrative
Permanent Establishment
109
rebuild the episcopal residence in adobe, the most readily available build-
ing stone. He drew the plans himself and directed the construction, show-
ing the Filipino and Chinese workmen how to quarry the stone, dress it
and lay it, and how to mix mortar and use the plumb line. This was the
first adobe house in Manila. Other citizens followed suit, asking Sedeno
to do them a similar service. Chirino, who arrived in the Philippines in
1590, saw him actually at work on the house of Captain Juan Pacheco
Maldonado. He was not quite satisfied with the hang of the staircase, and
had the workmen take it down and do it over again. He was always patient
and gentle with them but very exacting.
When President De Vera decided to start the fortification of Manila
without waiting for authorization from Madrid, Sedeno helped him with
the plans. As pointed out earlier, the city had the river on its northern and
the sea on its western side. East of it, in the area occupied today by Plaza
Lawton and its approaches, was a marsh. The Chinese were beginning to
drain it to make room for their quarter or pari an, but it was still sufficiently
swampy to afford the city a measure of protection. The south side, looking
toward Lagyo and Malate, was the only completely open side, that by
which the corsair Limahong almost took the city. It was therefore the
logical place to start a system of defensive works.
The system 5 devised by De Vera and Sedeno was based on a tower at the
southwest corner of the city from which light artillery could command
both the beach and the southern approach. This was constructed first;
wings with covered platforms for heavy artillery were added later. From
this point a ditch was commenced, to run east along the city line and then
north between the city and the marsh to the Pasig River. It measured
34 feet across and was being dug deep enough so that even at low tide it
floated the barges that brought in the materials for construction. It was
not yet finished when De Vera reported to Philip II in June 1 587. The old
wooden fort commanding the river's mouth at the northwest corner of the
city was left standing, but a stone parapet was run from it to the point
where the ditch entered the river. Thus, Prat says in the obituary which he
wrote of his superior, Sedeno
. . . helped in the war plans department with both military and naval forti-
fication. His presence was required at all staff conferences. He attended town
meetings, helped to build churches, and made positive contributions to public
affairs, for he started the fashion of stone buildings in this city, which previously
was all of wood. He began the manufacture of lime and fired the first tile. He
imported silkworms, planted mulberry trees and set up looms in an effort to
develop a local silk industry, so that the money draining out of this land to
China every year might be retained . 6
Colin 7 adds that he sought out painters among the Chinese and put them
to work in a studio near the Jesuit house on pictures of saints and sacred
no
The Jesuits in the Philippines
subjects, not only for the Jesuit church but for other churches as well.
While there is no reason to doubt that Sedeno had a great deal to do with
these industrial and artistic beginnings, it should be pointed out that
others had an equal share in the credit. Bishop Salazar, for instance, dis-
covered the adobe which made stone construction in Manila possible.
According to one account, it was he who went prospecting up the river
with some Chinese until he came upon the quarries of San Pedro Makati. 8
Moreover, it is unlikely that Sedeno needed to teach Chinese workmen
how to mix mortar; surely they brought this art with them from China,
along with the process of making lime from seashells.
At any rate, Sedeno' s services to the community explain in part the
readiness of many of the citizens to help the Jesuits out with their perma-
nent church and residence. Among the first to come forward was Esteban
Rodriguez de Figueroa. Figueroa, born of Portuguese parents in North
Africa, had come with Legazpi's expedition as a penniless young adven-
turer* He rose from the ranks to a captaincy, took part in Ronquillo's
invasion of Brunei, led an expedition of reconnaissance to Sulu and
Magindanau, and was rewarded for his services with two extensive encom-
iendas, one in Camarines with a population of 4,700 and another on the
island of Panay with a population of 4,800. As conquistador and encomen-
dero he won the right of being styled a Spanish gentleman: hijodalgo de solar
conocido . He offered not only to build the Jesuit church and residence but to
provide the community with an endowment consisting of investments
either in the Philippines or Mexico which would yield an income of 1,000
pesos a year. To get the stone church started he gave 1,000 pesos in cash,
but Sedeno asked him not to draw up the legal instrument finalizing his
offer until permission could be obtained from the general. This was in
1586; soon afterward Figueroa married the daughter of the oidor Davalos,
and Sedeno concluded that with a family on the way he had given up the
idea of a foundation. He had not, as we shall see. 9
Another offer to build the Jesuit residence inside the city came from
Captain Juan Pacheco Maldonado, previously mentioned as the owner of
the house whose construction Sedeno directed in 1590. He and his wife,
Doha Faustina de Palacios y Villagomez, declared that if for some reason
Gabriel de Ribera was unable to make good his prior commitment, they
were ready to spend as much as 5,000 pesos on the new building. And still
another wealthy citizen, Don Luis de Sahajosa, reputed to be worth
100,000 pesos, was talking about leaving his entire estate to the Society. 10
These offers suggest that the acute financial embarrassment of the
colonial government, so heavily underscored in the memorials taken to
Madrid by Sanchez, did not prevent some at least of the colonists from
amassing sizable private fortunes. What enabled them to do so was of
course the galleon trade. Spanish silver was very highly valued in China,
Permanent Establishment
iii
so that the goods brought by the annual junk fleet went very cheaply, at
least during this first phase of the trade. “One would think/' De Vera was
moved to exclaim, “that they manufacture them in China without labor,
and everything there grows on trees/' 11 On the other hand, Chinese silks
and knickknacks fetched top prices at the Acapulco fair, regularly making
for investors profits of 200 per cent, and in good years as much as 600 per
cent. More could be made by an enterprising merchant who carried or
shipped European goods to Manila, for these also fetched high prices from
the colonists there, and bought China goods with the pesos realized for
sale in Spanish America. “Here I have remained,'' a merchant wrote from
Panama in 1 590, “ these twenty days, till the shippes go for the Philipinas.
My meaning is to carie my commodities thither; for it is constantly
reported, that for every hundred ducats a man shall get six hundred ducats
cleerely." And Sebastian Vizcaino, writing to his father from Mexico the
same year, “Foure moneths past, I came from China, and landed in
Acapulco ... I can certifie you of one thing ; that two hundred ducates of
Spanish commodities, and some Flemish wares which I caryed with me
thither, I made worth 1400 ducates there in the countrey. So I make
account that with those silkes and other commodities which I brought
with me from thence to Mexico, I got 2500 ducates by the voyage." 12
According to a report of the city corporation of Manila in 1586, the
annual junk fleet from South China consisted ordinarily of twenty vessels,
each with a crew of at least one hundred. The trading season was from
November to May. The total value of the trading goods they brought was
200,000 pesos, plus 10,000 pesos' worth of perishable commodities inten-
ded for consumption in the colony, such as flour, sugar, biscuit, fruit,
bacon, ham, and live cattle. In 1587 the galleon Santa Ana , 600 tons,
commander Tomas de Alzola, cleared from Cavite with an exceptionally
rich cargo of silks and brocades, 22+ arrobas of musk, a large quantity of
civet, pearls from Sulu, and 122,000 pesos' worth (102. 3 lbs. troy weight)
of registered gold, with an unknown quantity unregistered. So lucrative
was the trade that vessels from other Asian nations w r ere beginning to
make Manila a regular port of call. That same year two ships came from
the kingdom of Patani to open trade relations and a merchantman from
Japan which brought Sedeho letters from the Jesuits there.
In the crew of the latter vessel was a zealous Japanese Christian named
Gabriel, who in the course of the voyage succeeded in converting eight of
his pagan companions. He taught them catechism and upon arriving in
Manila turned them over to the Jesuits for further instruction. They must
have known some Portuguese to make this possible; at any rate Bishop
Salazar examined them, found them worthy, and solemnly baptized them
himself in the Jesuit church, with President De Vera and other notables
standing as sponsors. 13
112
The Jesuits in the Philippines
The master of this vessel, however, known to the Spaniards as Juan Gayo,
made other contacts during his sojourn in Manila and became involved in
a darker sort of business. To understand the events now to be related it is
necessary 7 to observe that the ancient ruling class of the Tagalogs had gone
down considerably in the world since their displacement by the Spaniards.
True, they were exempted from tribute and statute labor and their lands
were for the most part left untouched. But their wealth and power was
derived principally not so much from land as from slaves, and from the
tribute and services they collected from their serfs. The colonists, being
forbidden to own native slaves themselves, were naturally not disposed to
allow the datus the free enjoyment of this privilege, even though the royal
ordinances explicitly enjoined temporary toleration of local customs in this
matter. Thus slaves of native lords who applied to the Spanish courts for
relief usually obtained their freedom without difficulty. Moreover, the
Spanish head tax tended to channel away from the datus the tribute (hums)
which in former times were paid to them by their vassals; or, when the
exactions of the new government became particularly onerous, the people
simply moved away out of the reach both of the Spanish tax collector and
their former rulers. It will be recalled that this was the principal grievance
of the datus who came to see Bishop Salazar in 1582.
Thus the datu families now had to manage on a considerably diminished
income ; but more than that, they had to do so in the new money economy
introduced by the Spaniards and the China trade. The lesser folk among the
Tagalogs made out fairly well in spite of this change, for they had the
products of their farms and looms to sell, but their erstwhile rulers, accus-
tomed to leisure and command, had neither the ability nor the inclination
to work for a living. They were reduced to selling their lands piecemeal
and sitting in their half-empty houses, thinking dangerous thoughts.
One of the most influential of the datus of Tondo, the Tagalog town
across the river from Manila, was Don Agustm de Legazpi. 14 After serving
a term as petty governor of Tondo under the Spanish government, he was
subjected to the usual residencia, and having been found guilty of malad-
ministration sentenced to imprisonment, Released, he began to consider
ways and means of ridding the country of the Spaniards. It seemed to him
that if anything was to be done about it, it had better be done quickly,
before the fortification of the Spanish settlement which was then in pro-
gress could be completed.
Meditating thus, he happened to strike up an acquaintance with the
Japanese shipmaster, Juan Gayo. It soon transpired that Gayo was not only
a peaceful trader but a soldier of fortune. He had approached President De
Vera himself and inquired whether the Spaniards were contemplating any
enterprise for which professional troops were needed. For, he said, whether
the expedition be to Brunei, or Siam, or China, or the Moluccas, he, Gayo,
Permanent Establishment
113
would engage to recruit from among the vassals of his lord, the daimyo of
Hirado, and others as many as 6,000 men* Unfortunately De Vera was not
the man for foreign adventures that Doctor Sande was, and Gayo was
reduced for the nonce to ignoble buying and selling. However, he spent a
great deal of time with Don Agustin, eating and drinking in his house in
Tondo, and the acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship. Neither
could speak the other's language, but they got on well enough with the
help of Dionisio Fernandez, a Japanese who knew Tagalog.
One day Don Agustin invited a number of other datus to meet Gayo in
his house. Among those who came were Magat Salamat, a son of the Old
Raja (Raja Matanda) who was lord of Tondo when the Spaniards came;
Geronimo Basi, Don Agustin's brother; Felipe Salalila, datu of Meysilo;
and Salalila's son, Agustin Manugit. It quickly became apparent that they
all heartily agreed on one thing : the Spaniards had to go* The only question
was how to make them.
Don Agustin, who had been giving the matter considerable thought,
asked Gayo through the interpreter Fernandez whether he would be
interested in ruling the country in place of the Spaniards* It was simple*
All he would have to do was to return to Japan, collect a band of warriors
as resolute as himself, and bring them in his ship to Manila. The Spaniards,
believing that they came to trade, would let them land their merchandise
as usual. But it would not be as usual* This time, arms would be their
merchandise. Meanwhile, Don Agustin and his friends would rouse all the
provinces around Manila. Their warriors would be ready* The war horns
would sound from village to village, the signal fires flash from headland to
headland for the massacre of the Spaniards; and after it was all over the
datus would do homage to Gayo as their lord. They would retain the
Spanish tribute system, except that now the tribute would not go to the
hated foreigner but to Gayo and to them*
Gayo eagerly consented, and they sealed the pact in the manner of the
Tagalogs, splitting an egg over their oath, desiring to be broken as the egg
was broken if they were ever false to it* As proof of his good will, Gayo
gave Don Agustin a quantity of shields, arquebuses, and other weapons for
distribution among his men. Special markings were painted on the shields
by which the Japanese, when they came, would recognize their confede-
rates.
After Gayo's departure Don Agustin began to bring others into the
conspiracy* He made Amaghikon, the datu of Navotas, privy to his
counsels and gave him some of the Japanese equipment. Then he went to
Tambobong* Don Martin Panga, also a former petty governor of Tondo,
was in exile there, banished by the Spanish courts for adultery. There were
others too who had felt the rigors of a Spanish gaol: Gabriel Tuambakar;
his son, Francisco Akta; Pitong Gatang* They were told what was afoot,
1 14 The Jesuits in the Philippines
and they swore an oath “to come to one another's aid with their persons
and their worldly goods in whatever enterprise might present itself relative
to the freedom of their communities or any other object/'
These men secured, Don Agustin gave a great feast in Tambobong,
bidding to it, besides the principal conspirators, datus of nearby towns and
their retainers. Don Pedro Bolingit of Pandakan came, and Kalaw of Tondo
with his father Don Luis Ama ni Kalaw, and Don Dionisio Kapolo of
Candaba, and his brother Felipe Salonga of Polo, and Don Felipe Amarlan-
hagi of Catangalan. For three days Don Agustin feasted them and their
warriors. Having well drunk, they spoke their minds, as Don Agustin
intended they should. Behold them, they said, cast down from their former
honorable estate, no longer feared and obeyed as of old by the common
folk, for they had neither slaves nor gold any more, and skulked about in
daily expectation of being haled before a Spanish court of justice. Even
their women, whom they had fairly won in war, were being taken from
them and given to whomsoever had them first to wife. Therefore their
hearts were sad ; but if anyone knew of a way whereby they could shake off
the Spanish yoke and be lords of the land again, let him speak. Then Don
Agustin told them of what had passed between Gayo the Japanese and
himself, in the presence of Magat Salamat and others. They acclaimed the
plan and swore the oath.
But now it was 1588 and no word had come from Gayo. They dared not
strike by themselves, and yet delay was dangerous. The suspicions of the
Spaniards had been aroused. Some of the datus had not known to keep their
counsel. They had sold their lands and chattels openly for ready cash and
held hostings of their clans and spoken imprudently before men of doubt-
ful allegiance. Then, in February, word reached Manila of the Englishman
Cavendish, how he had captured the galleon Santa Ana , crossed the great
sea, and was even then cruising among the southern islands, waiting for
an opportunity to slip into the bay and attack the city. In Tondo, Tambo-
bong, Polo, Candaba, men held themselves in readiness, their spears and
shields beside them. The Englishman would serve their purpose as well
as Gayo ; let him but engage the Spanish artillery and they would do the
rest. But they failed to make contact with Cavendish ; he sailed away ; the
opportunity was lost.
Then Esteban Tasi, datu of Bulacan, sought out Don Martin Panga in
Tondo and demanded to know why they had always to be waiting for some
foreigner to help them. Did not the Tagalogs and the Pampangos by them-
selves suffice to carry out this business ? If Panga would speak to the datus
of Cavite, he, Tasi, would raise the towns from Tondo to Bulacan. The
other conspirators were called into consultation, and they decided that they
would need levies from the other provinces too, from Bataan, from Komin-
tang (Batangas), and from the villages around the Lake of Bai.
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Permanent Establishment
n5
They set to work immediately. The petty governors of Malolos and
Gxginto were won over quickly. A delegation of datus from Pampanga
were in Manila to petition the government to suspend a recently published
edict emancipating their slaves. They claimed that it would cause con-
fusion during the rice harvest which was imminent. Approached by the
Tondo datus they listened willingly at first, but when the question was
raised of a closer union than a loose confederation, of a supreme commander
over all the clans to ensure unity of action, they could reach no agreement.
The Pampangos refused to have any part in it and returned to their homes.
Still, there were the other Tagalog provinces east and south; but time was
lacking. Before any of the w T ar bands could take the field it was May, and
harvest time. The golden stalks drooped under their load of grain; there
was the reaping to be done, the winnowing and storing. No one could be
spared from the fields, and few wished to leave them even if they could,
for there was the harvest festival in the offing, the drinking and the
dancing. And this opportunity too passed by.
Don Agustin de Legazpi went back to his old plan ; a surprise attack from
the sea by a foreign confederate, and then all the back country piling on top
of the Spaniard while his cannon was turned the other way. He sent
Magat Salamat, Manugit, and Juan Banal to the Sultan of Brunei with
some of the Japanese shields and arquebuses as presents, and the message
to come quickly with a fleet, for the land was ready to make an end of
Spanish rule. Let Brunei make a feint at the Cavite shipyard; this would
give the Spaniards time to do what they always did in a crisis, send to the
provinces for auxiliary native troops. The datus would recruit these troops
most zealously ; they would come quickly ; they would enter the city, but
not to defend it. As soon as the Brunei fleet hove into sight they would
turn on their masters, fighting them if necessary from house to house. Their
forts and palisados would serve them little then, with Brunei in command
of the sea and the clans pouring in through the breaches made by their
fellows.
Magat Salamat and his companions called at Cuyo, one of the Cala-
mianes islands, because it was on their way and they wanted to alert
Sumadub, the lord of Cuyo, who was of their mind. But word of their
presence and mission leaked to the encomendero of Calamianes, Don Pedro
Sarmiento, through his majordomo Susabau. Sarmiento acted quickly. He
arrested the three envoys, took them to Manila, and delivered them to the
authorities. The whole conspiracy was laid bare; the leaders, taken by
surprise, were rounded up, tried, and sentenced promptly and ruthlessly.
There was little of the law's delay on this occasion.
Don Agustin de Legazpi and Don Martin Panga were dragged on
hurdles to the gallows, hanged, and beheaded. Their heads, stuck on pikes
inside wickerwork baskets, were exposed to public view; and their houses
ii 6
The Jesuits in the Philippmes
were pulled down and the land on which they stood plowed and sown with
salt, so that no green thing might grow on the soil that had borne traitors.
Magat Salamat, Salalila of Meysilo, Basi of Tondo, Tasi of Bulacan,
Amaghikon of Navotas, and the Japanese Fernandez were condemned to
death. The lesser datus involved in the conspiracy were banished to
Mexico. The land of the Tagalogs lay quiet; none of the villages moved
to save their former lords. For this was a conspiracy of marhalika, not a
people’s rebellion. That was not to come until centuries later, when a ware-
house worker would gather a handful of farm hands about him and raise
the cry of Balintawak.
There was in fact no consciousness among the Spaniards of Manila that
any great danger had been averred. They were much more concerned about
the loss of the Santa Ana ) for many had invested heavily on the voyage.
There was much futile grinding of teeth that that fellow Candes or Iskan-
der or Cavendish or whatever his name was, a mere youth of twenty-two
with two infinitesimal ships, should take it all away from them, and adding
insult to injury breeze through the Philippines as coolly as you please,
dropping the saucy message that he would return shortly with enough
powder to blow up Manila. 15 Indeed, 1588, the Armada year, was not a
particularly cheerful year for any of the Spanish dominions in Europe or
overseas. However, it did bring the Philippine Jesuits the long awaited
decision of Acquaviva.
To give the background of this decision: Sedeno and his companions
had been sent to the Philippines at the request of the colonial authorities,
but only on a temporary basis, with instructions to inquire into the possi-
bilities of Jesuit work in the area and to report on their findings. They
made this clear to Bishop Salazar, who informed Philip II that this was
“ the custom of this order before they settled down anywhere.” 16 In 1584
the first group of three was joined by a second group of four, but no change
was made in their temporary status. They duly sent their reports both to
the general directly and to the provincial of Mexico, to whom they were
immediately subordinate. On 6 November 1585 the provincial, Antonio
de Mendoza, laid these reports before the provincial congregation for
discussion. Taking into account the various suggestions made therein, and
the prospect of the royal government subsidizing a college at least until it
could be endowed, the congregation recommended that the mission be
permanently established; that it consist for the present of a college in
Manila and a house in some nearby town where ministries among the
natives could be undertaken without, however, any parish responsibilities ;
and that more men be sent to staff these two houses. 17 It was after this
postulatum had gone to Rome that Mendoza sent instructions to the Philip-
pine fathers that they carry on as they were doing until an answer was
received from Rome.
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117
Acquaviva replied to the Mexican postulatum on g May 1587. First,
with regard to the proposed college ; the Society had so many commitments
already that it could not possibly accept the responsibility for any more
colleges for extern students. Hence instructions were being sent directly to
Manila that the fathers there were not to think of opening a school,
"because that would be to commit us antecedently to the charge of a
college without first being able to consider whether this is advisable or not ;
for, clearly, we cannot open a school and then close it again without causing
great indignation and scandal/' For the same reason they were not to
establish any residence among the natives, because with no house of forma-
tion there, and men so scarce in Europe, it would be impossible to staff
such a residence. It was extremely difficult as it was to staff the residence
they already had.
What then was their status to be ? They were to be a permanent mission,
resident in Manila as a single community, accepting no stable parishes or
mission stations but devoting themselves principally to traveling missions,
going from town to town among the natives and helping them with the
ministries of the Society, The difficulties urged against this by Sedeno,
Sanchez, and Suarez had apparently made little impression on Acquaviva,
for the same system was being successfully operated by the Jesuits in
Japan, India, and Brazil, and he saw no reason why the Philippine fathers
could not follow their example. Finally, whereas the first instructions to
Sedeno left the possibility open of their being sent on to China, they were
now told that under no circumstances were they to go there or to Japan. 18
Not long after these instructions reached the Philippines, Sanchez
arrived in Rome and began his negotiations with the papal curia as colonial
agent. He was most anxious, however, to discuss the future of the Philip-
pine mission with Acquaviva, and Acquaviva with him. Doubtless they
did so orally, but a memorandum dated 1589 has been preserved which,
although unsigned, contains corrections in Sanchez's handwriting and is
pretty much in his style. 19 We may safely assume that it is a summary of
the views expressed by Sanchez to the general.
He begins by marshaling the arguments against the continuance of the
Philippine mission. The country is admittedly populous and the popu-
lation well disposed toward the Christian faith; in this respect there are
unlimited opportunities for missionary work. However, the Augustinians
and Franciscans are already there in large numbers, and a sizable group of
Dominicans are on the way. They have taken over the spiritual adminis-
tration of the entire territory or the best part of it, and it is extremely
doubtful whether they will want Jesuits working in their respective areas,
even as traveling missionaries.
The natives are not yet accustomed to contribute to the support of their
pastors, so that even where the Jesuits can go as traveling missionaries they
1x8 The Jesuits in the Philippines
will have to bring their own provisions* The cost of this and of transpor-
tation is bound to be prohibitive, especially since they will have to go quite
far to bypass the territory already occupied by the friars.
A missionary establishment in the Philippines is very difficult to govern
from Mexico because of the distance, and it will certainly be impossible
for the provincial to inspect it personally. Moreover, if the mission consists
only of one residence, as seems to be the plan, it will not be easy to make
any changes in the community even if this should become necessary. On
the other hand, an establishment independent of Mexico does not seem
possible, as there is no endowment to provide support and no house of for-
mation to provide personnel.
These are the principal arguments against remaining in the Philippines.
The arguments in favor of remaining are m Sanchez’s opinion much more
convincing.
First, not only the Spaniards in the Philippines but the king himself and
his ministers will take it very ill should the Society suddenly decide to
close the mission. They are giving us every assistance they can on the
assumption that we mean to stay. The king is looking for ways and means
to establish a Jesuit college. The president of the Council of the Indies told
Sanchez personally that they want to send Jesuit missionaries by preference
to the Philippines. This is hardly the time to disappoint them, in view of
the strained relations that exist between the Society and the Spanish
monarch.
Second, the very fact that the Philippines is such a remote and difficult
mission gives it a special claim on the apostolic zeal of the Society. More-
over, the difficulties should not be exaggerated. Alms may not be forth-
coming from the natives, but the government and the encomenderos will
see to it that the necessities of the fathers are taken care of; and the natives
themselves, once they realize what we are trying to do for them, will give
us their very lives. We already have a fine house at the outskirts of the city
and one of the wealthy citizens has offered to build us a house and church
in the city itself and endow a college.
Suppose, then, the mission retained ; what is there for the Society to do
in the Philippines ? A number of things. Our fathers can do a great deal for
the Spanish settlers over and above the ordinary ministries of preaching
and administering the sacraments. The colony is new and many problems
of conduct and policy arise which Jesuits trained in theology and law can
help solve. It is far from the centers of government, ecclesiastical as well as
civil ; this remoteness from central control often leads to friction between
church and state officials ; we may be of some assistance in preventing or at
least mitigating such conflicts.
We can also do a great deal of work among the natives, even without
going outside Manila. Manila has a large native population of slaves, ser-
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119
vants, and workmen whose religious needs are not being regularly attended
to; if we had a church in the city it could well be their church. Without
necessarily accepting the cure of souls in permanent parishes, we could take
charge of mission stations on a temporary basis, organizing and developing
them until we are able to turn them over as formed parishes to the bishop
and his clergy. Mendoza, the provincial of Mexico, talking this over with
Sanchez, expressed the opinion that missions of this sort could well be
undertaken for a three-year period.
But by far the most important contribution the Society could make in
the Philippines would be the establishment of a seminary or boarding
school for native boys and a college for Spanish students. A building for
the boarding school can easily be constructed on the property being offered
to the fathers in the city, which is large. It will cost very little to run such a
school, for native food, consisting mainly of rice and fish, is abundant and
cheap. Great good will result from it,
. . . for the children are of a happy and affectionate disposition, not at all bashful
or shy, well affected toward us, lively and very intelligent. By winning them we
shall also win their parents, brothers, and relatives, and almost the whole region,
so as to get them to come to catechism lessons, confession, communion, and
spiritual conferences. Moreover, the children will learn our alphabet, language,
culture, civil, and Christian usages, and spread them in their villages afterward.
Not only will they supply the colony as a whole with trusted interpreters, but
some of them can serve as companions to our fathers on missionary expeditions ;
in fact, many of them could be missionaries and catechists themselves. Teachers
of reading and writing could be recruited from them and almost the whole charge
and care of the boarding school could be transferred to them, for the work that
they are now r doing for the other religious communities and in our own house
proves that they are quite capable of all these things.
The college will take care of Spanish boys who are capable and desirous
of more than an elementary schooling and also of soldiers and merchants
who may receive a vocation to the priesthood. A start can well be made with
one grammar master, one lay brother to teach reading and writing, and one
priest to supervise the school. As many as 200 boys can be supported
adequately w T ith an annual income of 500 ducats.
These are the opportunities open to the Society now; many more will
offer themselves in the future, for the colony is sure to grow and prosper.
If then we are to remain in the Philippines permanently, the following
points should be considered.
First, more men should be sent, because it is difficult to maintain the
order and discipline of a religious community with so few. Second, it
should not be subordinate to Mexico, because of the difficulties previously
mentioned. Third, it should consist of a college in Manila which would at
the same time be the central house of the mission, and possibly in the
120
The Jesuits in the Philippines
course of time a novitiate and house of studies for the training of our own
men. In addition to this central house, one or two residences subordinate
to it could be established among the natives ; these could be the temporary
mission stations suggested above. A farm or ranch could be started in one
of them to supply the central house with country products. Fourth, a vice-
provincial directly responsible to the general should be put in charge of
the mission. Fie should be given some of the powers of a provincial,
especially that of admitting candidates to the Society and acquiring or
alienating property with the advice of his consultors. Fifth, the men sent
to the Philippines should not only be fully trained intellectually, but of
more than ordinary virtue in view of the hardships and privations they will
have to undergo. They should be young enough to be able to learn the
language but mature in prudence and the practice of mortification. They
should have no designs to go to China or anywhere else, and in order to
prevent such ambitions from developing it may be advisable to forbid them
to accept any ministry among the Manila Chinese. There are many other
priests able and willing to do that work.
After studying these recommendations, Acquaviva revised his instruc-
tions of 1587. The new instructions raised the residence at Manila to the
status of a college and Sedeho to the rank of rector. Permission was given
to establish mission stations with resident missionaries, but only on a
temporary basis. After two or three years they were to be turned over to
the bishop. However, the proposal that the mission be made an indepen-
dent vice-province was rejected and the subordination to Mexico retained.
Moreover, no decision was made for the present as to the nature of the
studies to be conducted in the college. 20
Sanchez expected to be sent back with these instructions, but Acquaviva
had other plans for him, as we have seen. Instead, the dispatches were sent
to Jose de Acosta in Spain, then functioning as visitor. Toward the end of
June 1589 Acosta summoned a young Jesuit named Pedro Chirino from
Jerez de la Frontera, where he was giving a popular mission. Chirino had
been ordained only two years previously. He had volunteered for the
American missions but had received no reply. He was now told that he
was going to the Philippines. It was the first time he had ever heard of the
place. Acosta gave him his dispatches and some advice which Chirino was
able to recall twenty years later; to perform his religious duties faithfully ;
to put his trust in God ; to exercise the ministries of the Society on board
ship, as far as circumstances permitted; in his dealings with others, to be
affable rather than severe; and not to forbid soldiers and sailors their
ordinary recreations.
Chirino was joined at Seville by his lay brother companion, Francisco
Martin. They attached themselves to the entourage of Governor Das-
marinas and with it left Sanlucar de Barrameda on 1 8 September, arrived
Permanent Establishment 121
at San Juan de Ulua in Mexico on 18 December, and cleared from
Acapulco for the Philippines on 1 March 1590. Two ships made the
Pacific crossing. Dasmarinas in the flagship reached Cavite without incident
on 3 I Map. The second ship, however, to which Chirino and Martin were
assigned, was dismasted by a typhoon and wrecked on the coast of Marin-
duque. No lives were lost, and the two Jesuits entered Manila on 20
June. 21
They found the Manila community already installed in a brand-new
residence on the Jesuit compound inside the city. Sedeno had it begun as
soon as he received Acquaviva's 1587 instructions, that is, early in 1588.
One wing, paid for by Pacheco Maldonado and his wife, was completed in
the latter part of 1589. It had accommodations for fourteen or fifteen and
was of brick, the first religious house to be constructed of this material in
Manila. Because it was such a novelty, it was thrown open for inspection
by the public until the Jesuits moved in, some time in April 1590.
Meanwhile work was begun on a new stone church and a second wing of
the residence, capable of accommodating ten more. This second wing was
at right angles to the first and contiguous with the church. 22
It is impossible on the available evidence to tell the precise location
within the Jesuit compound either of Ribera's wooden church or the new
stone church. We know that the compound itself consisted of the two
blocks bounded on the north by Calle Victoria, on the east by Calle Real,
on the west by Calle Basco and on the south by the Muralla, that is, the
street on the other side of which the city wall was soon to rise. These
names were not, of course, given to the streets until much later, although
Calle Real was called such quite early because it ran from the casas reales —
government house — in the north end of the city to the south gate, which
was called the Royal Gate — puerta real. A street, later called Calle San Jose,
ran east and west between the two blocks, but Sedeno obtained permission
from the city authorities to close the street to traffic, on condition that it
was not built over, for since it led directly to De Vera's fort they wanted
to be able to use it in an emergency.
I think we can safely assume that Sedeno' s church stood on the same site
as the later church completed in 1632; that is, on the northern block,
alongside Calle Real, facing north with a plaza in front of it. St. Paul's of
the Augustinians, which is on the same street further north, is oriented in
the same way. If this assumption is correct, then the first wing of the resi-
dence ran west along Calle Victoria and the second wing south alongside
the church. These wings were called cuartos, fourths, because the intention
was to build two more sections so as to complete a square enclosing an inner
patio.
The Jesuits were very happy about their new residence, especially since
it brought them closer to the center of their activities ; but being in the city
122
The Jesuits in the Philippines
and cut off from the sea breezes it was much warmer than their old house in
Lagyo. So at least we gather from the twenty-seventh postulatum of the
provincial congregation of Mexico in 1592: ‘‘The men in the Philippines
request a general dispensation from the twelfth of the common rules in
order to be able to sleep with their windows open, because of the extreme
heat.” Thus were the Jesuits of Macao vindicated against the strictures of
Sanchez! The dispensation was readily granted, but even so, an Italian
Jesuit who came somewhat later confided to a friend that “one perspires
continually, so much so that undershirt, shirt, and cassock become wet
through many times during the day and night, even if one does no work.
Only a breeze brings some relief. In short, of all the Indies and lands I have
seen, this country is the most apt to make a man a saint in a hurry — quest a
e celeste per jarsi Vhuomo presto santo ,” 23
Dasmarinas found the colonial government in an appalling state; or so
he reported to the king. It had no ships; no galleys; no iron; no copper;
no gunpowder; no ship's cables; not enough shot to service ten pieces of
artillery. The artillery itself consisted of only four stone mortars and one
big piece that was “neither culverin nor cannon nor saker nor anything
recognizable.” What was referred to as the royal stores was nothing but a
bit of rice in a mud hut, a stockade in which were deposited the wood and
gear of three rotten galleys, and a magazine in which gunpowder was kept
— when there was any. The treasury owed more than 30,000 pesos in
unpaid wages and requisitioned materials to the natives and arrears of pay
to Spanish employees and servicemen. The troops were still quartered in
private houses because they had no barracks and all the rations they drew
was three fanegas of rice a month. Under these conditions not even the
semblance of military discipline could be maintained; the soldiers spent
their time either running errands for their hosts or in gaming and idleness.
Dasmarinas did not think much of the fortifications constructed by De
Vera and Sedeho. The so-called fort at the southwest angle of the city,
which cost the enormous sum of 24,000 pesos, was of no use whatever;
merely a loosely cemented tower which immediately began to fall apart.
They tried to shore it up with four buttresses which they fondly believed
to be cavaliers, but this only made it worse. As for the covered artillery
platforms, they were death traps. Anyone could see they would cave in on
the gunners at the first direct hit. But this was only to be expected, since
“there is neither engineer nor architect in these Islands, aside from a few
natives.” So much for Sedeno's excursion into military engineering! 24
What Manila needed, Dasmarinas thought, was a proper wall, and to this
he immediately applied himself. First, how finance the project ? He called
the bishop and other leading citizens to a consultation and proposed a tax
on all Chinese imports for two years, a 2 per cent export tax on all mer-
chandise shipped on the Manila galleon for one year, and application to
Permanent Establishment
I2 3
the wall of the revenue from the government monopoly of playing cards.
They agreed, and construction began in 1591* De Vera’s fort was re-
modeled into a bastion and christened Nuestra Senora de Guia. The
wooden fort at the northwest angle of the city was torn down and replaced
by a citadel mounting eight pieces of artillery. Dasmarihas christened it
Fort Santiago, a name which it bears to this day. The course of the wall
that ran from Santiago to De Guia along the beach was provided with
screens and traverses, according to the latest style of fortification. Spanish
Manila began to assume the forbidding aspect which it was to keep for
three centuries and could now be referred to as the walled city — intra
muros . By 1593 the work was substantially complete.
Dasmarihas next turned his attention to the garrison. He had brought
with him 270 seasoned troops of the Spanish tercio or infantry. For these
and for the veterans he found in Manila he built a barracks and leveled a
parade ground in the citadel. The veterans, used to the freedom of life in
the town, were inclined to be obstreperous. Officers were liberal with
punishments, but the guardhouse held no terrors for these hard-bitten old
campaigners and even the rack made little impression on them. They did
not expect discipline to go much further than that ; a reprimand, a few days
of acute discomfort, and back to the ranks had been their experience. The
colony could not afford to lose soldiers. But they failed to take the measure
of their new captain-general. A private started an argument with his
sergeant and when a lieutenant intervened, struck him and caused an
uproar in the barracks. Dasmarihas had him executed. There was no
trouble with discipline for a long time thereafter.
The town too felt his heavy hand. He appointed a regular night watch of
garrison troops to patrol the streets and challenge nocturnal prowlers and
late revelers. Because no watch used to be kept citizens had got into the
habit of going about armed, and street brawls were common. Dasmarihas
ordered that civilians w*ere to be disarmed henceforth.
Naval construction was his next concern. He found upon landing at
Cavite that the keels of two galleons had been laid but their hulls left
unfinished. He finished them. He built four galleys for coast-guard duty
and bought all the iron, lead, cables, and other naval stores he could lay
hands on, storing them along with considerable rice reserves in four new
warehouses opposite the barracks. 25
All this government spending must have entailed no little sacrifice on
the part of the colonists, but there was surprisingly little grumbling. Quite
the contrary; on 31 May 1592 the “householders and common folk” of
Manila informed the king that in the two years since Dasmarihas took
office much had been accomplished. The city wall and fort almost finished;
two galleons launched in two years ; the city policed on a twenty-four-hour
basis ; new royal storehouses ; artillery being cast in a new royal foundry ;
5*
124
The Jesuits in the Philippines
new quarries and lime kilns opened. The governor attends personally to
all these projects, by night and day, in all kinds of weather. True, he is
austere and exacting and insists on discipline, and for this is disliked by
some; but he is just, blameless in his private life, and a devout Christian.
Under his administration the city has grown and prospered; private for-
tunes have increased; the galleons make regular sailings; more and more
trading junks come from China; new churches are rising; whole streets are
being lined with stone residences; the citizens feel more secure in their
houses with the wall around them and the voice of the watch marking the
hours of the night.
Still, a great deal remained to be done. The city needed a new town hall,
a new gaol, a slaughterhouse, a grain market. The river and its inlets, which
were used as canals, needed to be dredged; the waterfront needed wharves.
The city had no drainage to speak of; in the rainy season the streets which
were unpaved became flooded and mired. Drinking water had to be
brought in by carriers from as far as two leagues away. In order to finance
these improvements, the city corporation asked that the monopoly on
playing cards be assigned to it for six years. 26
It would seem, then, that Dasmarinas was achieving a fair amount of
success in putting through the reforms suggested by the colonial assembly
and approved by the king. Trouble arose, however, over the question of
rowers for the galleys. Dasmarinas obtained them from Camarines by
impressment, although he undertook to pay them at the rate of one toston
per man per month. Camarines was Franciscan territory, and Fray Pedro
Bautista, who was later to be martyred in Japan and is a canonized saint,
denounced the impressment as forced labor and the wages as miserable.
Dasmarinas admitted the difficulty but could think of no better solution
than to propose that lascars be imported from India to serve as galley
slaves. 27 But this was a relatively minor problem. It was over the old
question of tribute that a major controversy arose.
An official report of 1591 28 states that there were in the Philippines as
of that date 31 crown encomiendas and 236 private encomiendas with a
total population of 166,903 “tributes/' that is about 667,000 persons,
understanding by one tribute that paid by a man, his wife, and minor
children. As we have already seen, the tribute-paying territory was divided
for administrative purposes into provinces, each with an alcalde mayor.
In 1591 the number of provinces had been increased to twelve: Manila,
Pampanga, Pangasinan, Uocos, Cagayan, La Laguna, Camarines, Masbate,
Cebu, Panay, Balayan, and Calilaya (later to be called Tayabas).
Of the encomiendas enumerated in this report Bishop Salazar claimed 29
that those in the Visayan provinces generally (Masbate, Cebu, and
Panay), with the exception of a few encomiendas on the island of Panay,
had the benefits of Spanish justice but not those of religious instruction.
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125
In others religious instruction was given but inadequately, either through
lack of missionaries or because the population had not been sufficiently
organized to permit their being properly instructed. As examples of these,
Salazar cited Pangasinan and Ilocos, and the uplands of the Tagalog pro-
vinces where the people still lived in small scattered clan villages, such as
Tagaytay Ridge and the Marikina watershed. Finally, there were encomien-
das reserved to the Crown or granted to private persons about which the
report was discreetly silent, for in them there was neither effective govern-
ment nor religious instruction. Yet — and this was Salazar’s whole point —
the full tribute was being forcibly exacted from the people of these as of
all the other encomiendas . 30
He took his position on a principle established in the Synod of Manila :
that the king’s government could levy tribute only on subjects of the king.
Now the people of the colonies were not subjects of the king unless they
received some at least of the benefits enjoyed by subjects. Among the most
important of these benefits were the protection of the laws and the oppor-
tunity to become a Christian. Hence, those who received these benefits
in full could be taxed in full; those who received them in part could be
taxed only in part ; and those who did not receive them could not be taxed
at all. In effect, taxation without justice and religion was tyranny.
Encomiendas should therefore be divided into three categories: those
in which religious instruction was given, those in which no religious
instruction was given but in which effective government had been estab-
lished, and those in which there was neither religious instruction nor
effective government. In encomiendas belonging to the first category the
full tribute could be collected, but only from the natives who were actually
Christians; in those of the second, one-third or one-half the tribute; in
those of the third, nothing. Moreover if anything had hitherto been
collected in violation of these rules full restitution was to be made.
Bishop Salazar embodied these views in a memorial which he presented
to Governor Dasmarinas. But before Dasmarinas could act upon them —
and quite possibly in order to force his hand — Salazar cast them in the
form of twenty-five mandatory conclusions ” which he caused to be read
from the cathedral pulpit. Certain religious, apparently with the bishop’s
approval, took this to be a directive to be enforced through the sacrament
of penance, and refused absolution to those who were not prepared to
comply with all of its articles.
The encomenderos at once appealed to Dasmarinas. They asked him for
a definite statement of policy to allay the scruples raised by the twenty-five
conclusions, adding that if they were compelled to collect the tribute on
those terms they would be unable to maintain themselves in the colony and
would have to request his Excellency to let them take the next galleon for
Spain, where their services would doubtless be better appreciated.
126
The Jesuits in the Philippines
Dasmarinas' first move was to seek expert advice. He had copies made of
the bishop's proclamation and sent them to the heads of the four religious
orders for comment.
The Jesuit reply, signed by Sedeno, Prat, and Almerici, 31 was in sub-
stantial agreement with Salazar's conclusions but tried to mitigate some
of their more rigorous requirements. Accepting the principle that justice
and religious instruction provided the justifying basis for any system of
taxation, the Jesuits argued that in those encomiendas where effective
government existed and adequate religious instruction was given the full
tribute could be collected not only from the Christian but also from the
pagan natives. Their reason was that the encomendero fulfilled his obliga-
tion by providing the opportunities for learning the Christian faith ; if the
pagans failed to take advantage of these opportunities it was their own
fault.
They agreed with Bishop Salazar that in those encomiendas where effec-
tive government was established but no religious instruction was given the
full tribute could not be collected. The deduction of one-half or one-third,
however, they considered arbitrary and too great. Only that amount should
be deducted which was normally spent on the support of the missionary
and his work, namely, one-fourth. Hence there was an obligation to
restore this amount wherever the full tribute has been collected, unless
there was a reasonable hope of missionaries being assigned to the territory
in the near future ; in which case the one-fourth could be retained and used
to start the missions.
With regard to encomiendas which offered neither the benefits of justice
nor religion, the Jesuits fully endorsed the bishop's conclusion: no tribute
could be collected.
This opinion coincided in all essential respects with that of the Augus-
tinians. The Dominicans approved Bishop Salazar's conclusions without
reservations. The Franciscans submitted an alternative scheme which we
need not go into. On 28th February 159 1 Dasmarinas issued the policy
statement requested by the encomenderos. He accepted Salazar's con-
clusions with the reservations suggested by the Augustimans and the
Jesuits, and added one of his own: that in encomiendas which belong to
the third category because the population are in a state of revolt after
having once submitted to Spanish rule, a certain proportion of the tribute
must be insisted on as a token of vassalage until the rebellion is put
down.
These revisions were not acceptable to Bishop Salazar, but Dasmarinas
felt that he had to insist upon them. Other conflicts arose between the
two heads of the colony on which they could reach no agreement. Salazar
withdrew from the position he held regarding the use of armed force when
he advocated the China enterprise. He now held not only that it was unlaw-
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12 ?
ful to reduce any new territory to Spanish rule by conquest, but that it was
unlawful to use force even on rebels* He was no longer disposed to grant
any concessions to the conquistadores in the matter of restitution. He
insisted that the natives could not be compelled to work for the government
even for a wage, or forced to sell their products to the government at a fixed
price. He refused to recognize that the patronal privileges of the Spanish
Crown gave the governor any right to approve or disapprove ecclesiastical
appointments ; these were the sole concern of the bishop. 32
Unable to obtain satisfaction from Dasmarinas on any of these points,
the aged prelate determined to take his case to Philip II personally. In
June 1591 he left the Philippines with a Dominican companion, Fray
Miguel de Benavides, and the members of the suppressed audiencia. It
must be said that he got little satisfaction from the king either. Spanish
rule in the Philippines continued to be rounded out by conquest ; rebellions
were put down by force ; statute labor and requisitioning became permanent
colonial institutions. However, Philip II did accept two of his recommen-
dations. The first was that the audiencia be restored. Salazar had, indeed,
been among the first to advocate its abolition, but subsequent experience
taught him that in case of conflict with the governor neither he nor anyone
else in the colony could obtain a hearing, since there was no other authority
to counterbalance that of the governor. The audiencia was restored in 1598.
The second recommendation was that in view of the rapid spread of
Christianity in the Islands, the single Philippine bishopric be increased to
four, with Manila as the archiepiscopal see and Nueva Segovia (Cagayan),
Nueva Caceres (Naga), and Santisimo Nombre de Jesus (Cebu) as suffragan
dioceses. A petition to this effect was submitted to the Holy See on 17
June 1595 and approved in the August consistories of the same year.
Bishop Salazar having died in the meantime (4 December 1 594), Fray
Francisco de Santibanez O.F.M. was appointed archbishop of Manila,
Fray Miguel de Benavides O.P. bishop of Nueva Segovia, Fray Luis de
Maldonado O.F.M. bishop of Nueva Caceres, and Fray Pedro de Agurto
O.S.A. bishop of Cebu. 33
While Bishop Salazar's repudiation of armed force as an instrument of
colonial policy did him great credit, the practical difficulties which
Dasmarinas found against it should not be minimized. Shortly after the
bishop's departure a situation arose in central Luzon which brought out
some of these difficulties. The clans inhabiting the Zambales mountains
were accustomed to make forays on the Pampango villages in the rich and
fertile plain below. In 1 591 the damage they inflicted was exceptionally
great and Dasmarinas sent troops against them. The Zambal chieftains
sued for peace and promised that they would settle down as law-abiding
farmers. Dasmarinas thereupon withdrew the troops; but no sooner had
the tips of the Spanish arquebuses vanished below the horizon than the
128 The Jesuits in the Philippines
clans zestfully returned to their old way of life, raiding through the plain,
ravishing and killing.
Early in 1592 Dasmarinas sought the advice of the superiors of the
religious orders in Manila. Would he be justified in making war on
the Zambales with fire and sword, in view of their broken promises and the
harm they did to the peaceful lowlanders ? The replies he received were
unanimous; such a war, given the circumstances, was justified. Sedeno,
however, pointed out that a distinction should be made between a formal
war and a punitive expedition. War was made against a people that recog-
nized a single government, for whose acts they were all to a greater or less
extent responsible. To make war on such a government was necessarily to
make war on the people whose government it was; and if the war was just,
then the people justly suffered for the evils committed by their govern-
ment. But there were peoples, and the Zambales might well be one of
them, who had no single government recognized by all, but were divided
into many tribes or clans living and acting independently of one another.
Such groups were a people not in the political but only in a racial or geo-
graphical sense. Hence the whole people could not be held responsible for
the crimes committed by one or a few tribes. These guilty tribes could and
should be punished ; but the punitive expedition should be instructed not
to harm the other tribes which, although living in the same district and
going by the same collective name, took no part in the depredations.
A further question was whether even the innocent tribes could be com-
pelled to come down from the hills and settle in designated areas where
they could be more easily kept under government surveillance. To this
question Sedeno replied in the affirmative, because it seemed to be a
necessary measure of security for the whole region, and while entailing
immediate hardship to the tribes, w r ould in the long run be beneficial to
them. 34
Unfortunately Dasmarinas did not see fit to make these distinctions. He
dispatched 120 Spanish and 600 Pampango troops in several columns on a
deep penetration of the Zambales country, with orders to destroy methodi-
cally everything in their path — villages, granaries, even the standing grain
of the upland fields. All who resisted were to be killed; all who surren-
dered brought down to concentration camps in the lowlands while their
former homes were completely laid waste. Two thousand five hundred
Zambales were either killed or captured. Those who survived were told
where they could make their clearings and rebuild their villages. Four
hundred of the male captives were sent to Cavite as galley slaves, thus
relieving Dasmarinas of the bother of importing lascars. “I believe/ * he
said in his report to the king, “that they will not raise their heads after
this or commit any more acts of insolence. If they do, they can be promptly
wiped out.”
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129
But the Zambales campaign was a relatively minor police action. What
began to engage the attention of Dasmarinas at this time was a much bigger
operation: an expedition to regain the Moluccas. The islands of Ternate,
Tidore, and Halmahera were the original home of the clove tree. In 1513
the Portuguese after years of effort finally succeeded in tracing this precious
spice to its source, and obtained from the Moslem sultans of Ternate and
Tidore permission to establish trading posts in their respective territories.
These two sultans were the heads of rival confederacies, so that when the
Spaniards led by Elcano and Loaisa put in an appearance via the western
route the islands promptly broke up into two factions, the Portuguese
allying themselves with Ternate and the Spaniards with Tidore. St. Francis
Xavier, following in the wake of the Portuguese traders, founded a mission
in the islands which his successors built up into a community of 40,000
Christians. Not without great difficulty; for Portuguese rapacity (Xavier
wrote ruefully that they showed an amazing capacity for inventing new
tenses and participles of the verb rapio') alienated even their Ternate allies.
When they murdered Sultan Hairun after making peace with him, Ternate
rose in revolt. Baabullah, Hairun' s successor, laid siege to the Portuguese
fortress on the island and took it in 1574. The Portuguese retired to
Tidore, which the Spaniards had abandoned in the meantime, and carried
on the war from there. But their hold on it was, to say the least, precarious,
and the Jesuit missions were in danger of going under altogether. Frantic
calls for help to Goa failed to obtain either troops or missionaries. The
superior of the mission, Antonio Marta, went to see the viceroy personally,
but all he could bring back with him was a small contingent of 100 troops.
Seeing that no help was forthcoming from that quarter he turned to the
Spaniards in the Philippines. 35
Ronquillo's expedition has already been mentioned ; it met with disaster.
Dasmarinas realized that if another expedition was to succeed it must be
prepared for by better intelligence work and closer coordination with the
Portuguese garrison. Some time early in 1592 Dasmarinas went to the
Jesuit residence and after having bound Sedeno to secrecy told him that
he was preparing to strike a decisive blow in the Moluccas. A few
months back he received a letter from Marta informing him that
thousands of Christians were being compelled to apostatize by the
sultan of Ternate and begging him to send even a small expedition; as
few as 400 men, he said, would be sufficient to regain the islands for the
Crown.
Dasmarinas went on to say that he had authorization for this, as the king
wanted him to do something as soon as possible about the situation in the
Moluccas. For this reason he had at once dispatched an officer disguised as
a merchant to contact Marta and to spy out the country, but this officer
was killed by a wild boar while hunting before he could return. Hence he,
X3o The Jesuits in the Philippines
Dasmarinas, still did not have the information which he needed before he
could send the expedition.
Someone had to go quickly; could Sedeno send a Jesuit? With the
advice of his consultors Sedeno gave Dasmarinas the lay brother Gaspar
Gomez. Dasmarinas' instructions to Gomez were to tell Marta that the
expedition was on its way and to bring back as soon as possible accurate
information as to the effective strength of the Ternate forces and the
location of suitable anchorages and landing beaches. Speed and secrecy were
essential ; not even an inkling of what was being planned should be allowed
to reach the sultan of Ternate until the expedition was actually upon him.
Gomez left at once and returned late that same year or early in 1593, his
mission accomplished . 36
Meanwhile the people of Siau, a small island midway between the
Philippines and the Moluccas, threatened with invasion by the sultan of
Ternate, decided to place themselves under Spanish protection. The popu-
lation was almost entirely Christian, having been converted by the Portu-
guese Jesuits. The chieftains of the island asked their king, Don Geronimo,
to take the oath of allegiance in person at Manila ; Don Geronimo, in turn
requested the missionaries Antonio Marta and Antonio Pereira to go with
him. They set sail from Siau in May 1593 and reached Manila on 28 June.
Dasmarinas acceded to the petition of the people of Siau and on 16 August
Don Geronimo took the oath, with the Jesuits acting as interpreters and
witnesses. Dasmarinas then asked the delegation to go to Panay, where the
main body of the Moluccas expedition was assembling, and await him
there. 37
Dasmarinas had decided to lead the expedition in person, but before
leaving Manila he wanted to make sure that it was in a position to hold out
against a possible Japanese attack until his return. The previous year a cer-
tain Faranda Mangoshiro, who claimed to be an envoy of the shogun
Hideyoshi but brought no letters of accreditation, had come to Manila and
presented the blunt demand, supposedly from the shogun, that the Span-
iards acknowledge the suzerainty of Japan. Dasmarinas dispatched a
Dominican, Fray Juan Cobos, accompanied by an officer not so much to
negotiate with Hideyoshi as to find out whether Faranda Mangoshiro was
what he made himself out to be. In 1593 Faranda Kiemon, the uncle of
Mangoshiro, came, but still with no accreditation from the shogun. He
brought letters from Cobos, but they merely asked for Franciscan
missionaries to join him. Dasmarinas, now on the point of joining the
Moluccas expedition, sent Fray Pedro Bautista and three other Franciscans
with a letter to Hideyoshi offering to negotiate, on a basis of equality, a
treaty of friendship and commerce. This, he felt, would gain him time ;
meanwhile he hurriedly completed the city wall and entrusted its defense
to his adviser Rojas. 38
Permanent Establishment
By October the expedition was ready. The fleet consisted of one galleon,
six galleys, several frigates, and smaller vessels and transports of various
types; almost 200 sail altogether. The troops consisted of goo Spanish
infantry, 400 Pampango and Tagalog arquebusiers, 1,000 Visayan archers
and spearmen, and 400 hired Chinese rowers. The main body of the
expedition was concentrated at the port of Oton in Panay under the
command of Esteban Rodriguez de Figueroa; a smaller squadron under
Luis Perez Dasmarinas, the governor's son, waited at Cebu.
On 17 October 1 593 Governor Dasmarinas left Cavite in a 28-oared
galley manned by Chinese rowers. He was accompanied by his secretary, a
Franciscan chaplain, and his staff officers, altogether about 60 Spaniards.
His baggage included part of the expedition's payroll, amounting to
12,000 pesos, and his dinner service of silver plate. The Chinese rowers
were not chained to their benches, as was customary, at the governor's
orders. They were not slaves but paid laborers, and Dasmarinas thought
that leaving them free would be good for their morale.
The galley ran into a headwind near the shallows of Tuley on the Batan-
gas coast, but by dint of hard pulling the oarsmen were able to bring her
round Azufre Point, below which they slipped anchor on 25 October to
spend the night. In the early hours of the morning of the 26th the Chinese
rowers executed a design which they had apparently been contemplating
for some time. Putting on white shirts so as to be able to recognize each
other in che dark, they crept up the gangway, overpowered the watch, and
slew the sleeping Spaniards with their own weapons. Only 18 of the 60
were able to escape by leaping overboard and swimming for shore.
Dasmarinas, who had a cabin to himself, was awakened by the scuffle, but
a waiting assassin killed him with a swordstroke as soon as he put his head
out of the door. Taking up anchor and setting sail they ran before the wind
to China, stopping only at Ilocos to set down the governor's secretary and
the Franciscan, whose lives they had spared.
The news of the governor's death reached the expedition in mid-
November. A council of war met at Cebu, and the captains advised Luis
Perez to postpone the enterprise until the question of who was to succeed
his father was settled. He returned to Manila, taking Don Geronimo of
Siau and the two Portuguese Jesuits with him. Gomez Perez had been
authorized by the king to designate his successor; before leaving Manila
he had executed a document designating his son. This was recognized as
valid and Luis P£rez Dasmarinas took the reins of government. He took a
more serious view of the Japanese threat of invasion and definitely called
off the Moluccas expedition, but Don Geronimo and Father Marta were
sent with men, munitions, and supplies to reinforce the Portuguese. 39
Pereira, Marta's companion, stayed on at Manila, where he was instru-
mental in founding the city's oldest and most illustrious charitable
The Jesuits in the Philippines
association, the Hermandad de la Santa Misericordia. In 1591 there
arrived in Manila a secular priest named Juan Fernandez de Leon. He had
led a hermit's life in Mexico and planned to continue it in the Philippines.
For this purpose he built himself a retreat near a wayside shrine just outside
the city walls which was dedicated to Our Lady of Guidance, Nuestra
Sehora de Guia. His hermitage later gave its name to the entire district,
which is called Ermita to this day.
The good hermit took the alms which were given him by those who
sought his spiritual ministrations and distributed them among the poor.
He paid special attention to families who had lost their fortunes but were
ashamed to beg ; there were many such in a city dependent on the vicissi-
tudes of the galleon trade. Soon he had a long list of people dependent on
his charity, and in order to take care of them all he was compelled to emerge
from his retirement and beg from door to door. He did not however keep
the money himself but deposited it with a pious layman named Juan
Ezquerra, who made the disbursements as needed. The work grew to such
proportions that Father De Leon asked Ezquerra and others to help him
with the begging; they did so willingly, but it soon became apparent that
some kind of formal organization was now necessary.
Someone suggested that this organization could well take the form of a
Confraternity of Mercy along the lines of that founded at Lisbon by Queen
Eleanor in 1498. Prat, Ezquerra' s spiritual director, thought the idea an
excellent one, and when Pereira arrived he was immediately called in,
being Portuguese and familiar with the Lisbon association, to help draft
the constitutions. In 1594 au organizational meeting was held in the
Jesuit residence. Among those present besides Fathers De Leon, Sedeho,
Prat, and Pereira were Fray Cristobal de Salvatierra, the administrator of
the diocese, and other prominent clerics and laymen. The younger
Dasmarihas, now governor, was elected the first president of the association
with the title of hermano mayor.
One of the first works undertaken by the confraternity was to take over
the maintenance of the hostel for unmarried women which Sanchez had
suggested and which the elder Dasmarihas had started in accordance with
the king's instructions. Appropriately enough it was named after the city's
patroness the College of Santa Potenciana. Later on the Misericordia
opened a hospital for the slaves and servants of Spaniards and then took
charge of the Spanish hospital itself, merging the two m one institution.
The association held its meetings in the Jesuit residence until it was able
to acquire a building of its own. Meanwhile, Father De Leon returned
happily to his hermitage, which he transferred for greater seclusion to the
island of Corregidor; and there, full of years and merits, he died in 1601.
The Jesuit church ^still Ribera s wooden one, for the stone church was
not \ et finished ) had now become by preference the church of the native
Permanent Establishment
*33
servants and serving maids of the extensive Spanish households. This was
because the fathers, taking Acquaviva's directive to heart, devoted them-
selves almost exclusively to the Tagalog ministry, preaching, hearing con-
fessions, and teaching catechism in that language. Although they now had
Acquaviva’s permission to open a college, lack of men kept Sedeno from
taking the step. The royal subsidy too had not yet materialized, but he did
not expect any action to be taken on it for some time. In 1587 President
De Vera had reported to the king that he and Bishop Salazar conferred as
directed by the cedula of 1585 on the ways and means of founding a Jesuit
college, and came to the conclusion that it could only be financed by a
subsidy from Mexico. The following year, 1 588, the other members of the
audiencia wrote that they doubted very much whether there were enough
students in Manila to start a college. The Dominicans, they said, opened a
grammar school soon after their arrival, but were forced to close it down
due to lack of students. In view of these reports the king would be sure to
take his time over the subsidy. 40
However, Sedeno was already making his own arrangements so that even
if a subsidy were denied he could still start a school as soon as he had the
teachers for it. In 1593 he bought a small ranch with 240 head of China
cattle which Figueroa owned near Taytay, about twelve miles from Manila.
In 1594 he bought a farm in Mayhaligi, the district north of Tondo, from
Don Gabriel Tuanbakar, one of the leaders of the Tagalog conspiracy, who
had apparently returned from exile. The following year he purchased land
adjoining the Tuanbakar farm from other Tondo residents. These pur-
chases were doubtless made possible by donations received from citizens
interested in a college, such as the dean of the cathedral, Don Diego
Vazquez Mercado, who in 1594 donated some property which he had in
the district of Quiapo.
The ranch at Taytay Sedeno decided to operate himself and stationed
two lay brothers there. The lands in Mayhaligi and Quiapo he leased to
Chinese fruit growers, truck gardeners, and poultry raisers. By 1595 two
hundred leaseholders were paying the college a monthly rental of three rials
per leasehold. With this income and what the ranch produced, Sedeno
believed, as he wrote to Acquaviva, that he could w r ell support a college
even without a subsidy, if he only had the men. 41
But where were the men ? Sedeno was getting pretty worried because the
Manila residence had been a “college” since 1590 and everyone was wait-
ing for them to open school and he kept telling everyone to be patient, that
the next galleon would bring the teachers, and the next galleon came but
no teachers. Every letter he wrote to Acquaviva contained an impassioned
plea for more men; he even wrote to Alarcon, the Spanish assistant, be-
seeching him “to help us with our father, so that we may not be so com-
pletely forgotten.” 42 But men were hard to come by, and it w r as only with
134 Tk Jesuits in the Philippines
the greatest difficulty that the Spanish provincials could be persuaded to
part with any. At last, however, on 30 September 1 594, five priests, seven-
teen scholastics and eleven lay brothers destined for the Philippines dis-
embarked at San Juan de Ulua in Mexico. The Mexican provincial,
Esteban Paez, seeing that most of them were young men still in their
period of training, decided to retain all but three. To these three he added
six of his own men, all priests, so that the group that actually sailed from
Acapulco on 2 2 March 1595 consisted of eight priests and one lay brother:
Father Alonso de Humanes, superior during the voyage, Fathers Juan del
Campo, Mateo Sanchez, Juan de Ribera, Cosine de Flores, Tomas de
Montoya, Juan Bosque, and Diego Sanchez, and Brother Denis Marie. 43
They arrived in Manila on 1 1 June 1 595 ; a great day for Sedeno, who
now had the men not only for the college but for the mission stations which
he planned to found. The college, however, was the first item on his agenda.
He informed the governor, Don Luis Perez Dasmarinas, that he was now
in a position to comply with the request of the citizens for a Jesuit college.
Two courses would be offered, one in moral theology for candidates for
holy orders, under Father Juan de Ribera, and another in grammar for
Spanish boys, under Father Tomas de Montoya. 44 He seems also to have
acquainted Dasmarinas with the financial status of the college, which was
that while it would be able to support the teachers with the income from
its investments, and hence give tuition free of charge according to the
custom of the Society, that income was not enough if a boarding school
with endowed residential scholarships was desired.
This appears from the document issued by Dasmarinas on 5 September
1 595, 45 assigning a subsidy from the colonial treasury to the college of
1,000 pesos a year. This sum was to be used for the construction of a resi-
dence hall and for the board and lodging therein of twelve scholars chosen
from among the sons of the conquistadores of the Islands or of other settlers
of good standing. The candidates for these scholarships whom the rector of
the college considered eligible were to be presented by him to the governor
for approval. The hall was to be called the College of San Jose, and since
it was a royal foundation its edifice was to bear the royal arms. Note, how-
ever, that this hall or college was a distinct and separate unit from the
Jesuit college, the College of Manila, although its resident scholars would,
of course, attend their classes there. For these 1 ,000 pesos,” the document
goes on to say, "are to be spent on the said college, which is to be called
San Jose, only for its construction and for the necessities of the said
scholars and for nothing else, even though it be in the same house, and
not for the fathers of the Society, either in large or small quantity.”
This document, then, besides authorizing the College of Manila to open
classes, made pro\ision for the construction and endowment of an
attached hall or residential college, the College of San Jose, the scholars of
Permanent Establishment
135
which would be supported therein while taking courses in the College of
Manila. This was, however, still in the future. When the College of
Manila opened, some time in September 1595, the students in attendance
were day scholars and the classes were held in the Jesuit residence itself.
The inaugural lectures were attended by practically everyone of conse-
quence in Manila : the governor, the cathedral chapter, the city corporation,
citizenry, and clergy. The man chiefly responsible for the event, however,
was absent, for, on the last day of the previous June, Sedeno sailed for
Cebu to attend to the second item on his agenda: the mission stations.
Chapter Seven
MISSION STATIONS
The first of the Philippine Jesuits to engage in mission work, properly so
called, was Pedro Chirino. Before his arrival in 1590 the fathers were per-
mitted to give missions, that is, to go on mission tours from town to town
as was the custom of the Society m Europe, but not to take charge of
missions as resident missionaries* They found, however, that mission tours
were impracticable under Philippine conditions, and so requested permis-
sion to accept mission stations as did the other religious orders. Acquaviva
granted the permission, but only for two or three years ; this permission
Chirino brought with him.
As soon as it was received the priests of the Manila community got down
to a really serious study of Tagalog. They borrowed the grammar and
vocabulary which the Franciscans had composed and held daily classes for
three months (July-September 1590) with Prat acting as instructor. 1
Chirino was charmed by the language; he found in it the weightiness of
Hebrew, the variety of Greek, the elegance of Latin, and the courtliness of
Castilian. As more or less the same thing has been said by a great many
missionaries about the languages they have had to learn, we need not take
such praise too seriously. However, one who is himself a Tagalog may be
permitted to make it a matter of record.
Some months afterward Chirino was given an opportunity to undergo a
kind of apprenticeship in mission work. Don Luis de Salinas, the parish
priest of Balayan, asked for a Jesuit to take over his parish temporarily
during Lent. Chirino was appointed. The town of Balayan was in the
Tagalog province of Batangas, 14 leagues (35 miles) south of Manila. The
parish included two smaller towns nearby, Lian and Maniswa. It had been
a Franciscan mission, and Fray Juan de Oliver had made many conversions
there.
The people of Balayan were great seamen, making regular trading voyages
to the sultanate of Brunei. When Governor Sande went on his expedition
to that county in 1 578, he took along with him two Balayan datus, Magat
and Magatsina, as interpreters. In this capacity they went ashore to deliver
Sande's terms, which were written in both Tagalog and Brunei, to the
sultan. Magatsina was killed for his pains, but Magat was ransomed by a
Brunei friend of his named Biandi, and lived to tell the tale. 2 It is quite
Mission Stations
137
likely that he was among those who welcomed Chirino when he came to
Balayan.
Chirino discovered when he arrived that an epidemic of smallpox was
raging. This was a scourge before which the early missionaries were almost
as helpless as the people they served. They did what they could to feed the
sick and make them comfortable, hoping in this way to give nature the
advantage over the disease. When this failed, they prepared them for death.
Chirino's day at Balayan began with Mass, followed by a catechism class
in the church for the children and older catechumens well enough to attend.
He then went on a round of house-to-house visits, once in the morning and
again 111 the afternoon. In this w T ay he was able not only to bring the last
sacraments to many Christians, but to instruct and baptize quite a few
pagans as well before they died. 3
Two months later he w r as recalled to take charge of the first mission
station to be assigned to the Society in the Philippines, that of Taytay and
Antipolo. These were two Tagalog towns 15 and 20 miles east of Manila
which the Franciscans had been forced to give up for lack of personnel.
They were comprised in the encomienda of Sedeno's friend, Juan Pacheco
Maldonado, who persuaded Bishop Salazar to assign them to the Jesuits. 4
Taytay stood in the fertile valley of the Marikma River, and consisted
of about 400 households belonging to four different barangays. Antipolo
was a smaller town of about 1 00 households farther west, on the foothills
of the great Sierra Madre range which forms the backbone of Luzon island.
The rest of the people belonging to the encomienda and mission lived in
scattered barangay villages. The encomienda roll listed 600 whole tributes,
which places the population at 2,400 to 3,000 souls. The majority were
still pagan. When Chirino wrote his Relation , a dozen years later, he could
say with St. Gregory the Wonder-Worker that there were scarce forty
Christians when he came, and not four pagans when he left. 5
Taytay was a farming community, raising rich harvests on the well
watered land. After plowing and harrowing the Tagalogs diked their fields
into small plots which held the rain tvater. The seedlings were transplanted
from their beds to the flooded fields in July. In good years the rains were
constant from August to October, so that the green rice ripened golden
brown in the standing w r ater, and had to be reaped from boats.
The people of Taytay loved the water. They built their houses right up
to the edge of the river and spent much of their time in it. Even the croco-
diles with which it w T as infested could not deter them from their daily dip.
They simply staked out an enclosure with bamboo poles and hoped that the
Old One (nono, the name by which they addressed that rapacious beast)
would stay out of it. Chirino could not get over his amazement at this
passion for washing, for like most sixteenth-century Spaniards he con-
sidered frequent bathing a menace to health. “ These islanders/' he says,
138 The Jesuits in the Philippines
“ take to the water as soon as they are born. Men and women, even as very
small children, swim like fish. To cross a river they have no need of a
bridge. They bathe at all hours both for comfort and cleanliness.” 6
He was willing to concede that this strange practice might not be such
a bad idea after all in the tropics ; the trouble was that with the town so
near the river it was flooded several months of the year, and so was his little
church, right up to the altar platform. There was some high ground nearby
and he suggested several times that they move both church and town there.
The people listened respectfully but kept putting him off, for the place
used to be a cemetery, and they did not relish living among the dead.
Finally, Chirino decided to force the issue. He took the four datus of the
town to the choir loft of the church and showed them the expanse of sea
below. It was impossible, he said, to say Mass in such a church; moreover,
his rectory was flooded too, and he was tired of living like an amphibian.
Unless they built him a new church and rectory where it was dry, he was
moving bag and baggage to Antipolo. Seeing his determination, they
hastened to do as he asked. Those who were brave enough to move their
houses with the church found that their fears about the dead troubling
them in their sleep were groundless, and soon the whole community
followed. Chirino placed the new town under the patronage of St. John
the Baptist and christened it San Juan del Monte. But the people con-
tinued to call it Taytay, and Taytay it has remained to this day. 7
This incident brings out one of the strongest beliefs of the Tagalogs, that
of survival after death. They believed that the dead lived on a plane which
made them invisible to mortals, but which cut across the present life so
that they were never very far away. This was because in their shadowy half-
existence the dead needed nourishment, just as the living did, and it was
a sacred office to make this provision for one's departed by laying food and
drink on their tombs on stated occasions. If this office was neglected, the
spirits walked abroad unquiet and angry, blighting the crops, driving the
game away, and visiting the ungrateful living with sickness and sudden
death. They were also very touchy about their resting places being dis-
turbed; these were tabu, and must be given a wide berth or approached
only with fear and trembling.
There were other spirits as well, called anito or diwata , who lived in the
trunks of ancient trees, in caves, in birds of ill omen and beasts of prey ;
in short, whatever in nature was of dreadful aspect or injurious to man was
either a spirit or its instrument. The Tagalogs attempted to represent these
spirits visibly to themselves in the form of images ( larauan ) which they
fashioned out of wood, bone, or metal. The forbidding appearance of these
little idols, of which a few have survived, shows that the beings they bodied
forth were looked upon as malignant or at least redoubtable ; to be feared
rather than loved.
Mission Stations
*39
They were propitiated by sacrifice. Sacrifice was a private, not a public
act. It was commonly offered to release a man from sickness, for almost
every serious ailment was considered to be the handiwork of some aggrieved
anito. The minister of the sacrifice was thus a medicine man rather than a
priest. Among the Tagalogs the medicine man (or woman, for the office
could be held by either sex) was called a katolonan . The katolonan was
considered to have, by birth or special training, a perception of the spirit
world and an access to it not given to ordinary mortals.
When anyone fell sick, his family sent for the katolonan to discover what
spirit had laid the sickness upon him. A pig or chicken was chosen for
sacrifice and tied to a stake in the center of an open space. Around it, to
the measure of gongs and bells, the katolonan circled in ritual dance, slowly
at first but with gathering fren2y, uttering wild cries to the invisible
watchers of the spirit world. The climax of the dance came when they
consented to enter into him, speak through him as their oracle, and guide
his spear or knife to the throat of the waiting victim. After this brief
shuddering contact with the unknown, the katolonan revealed in human
terms what it was that the spirits wanted, whether they would accept
something else in exchange for the sick man's life, or whether they were
inexorable, and the man must die.
When a man died, they perfumed his corpse with storax and embalmed
it with buyo. They laid him out in state and lamented for three days. In
this lamentation not only the family took part but professional mourners
also, who served for a fee. During this time the family itself fasted on beans,
but all who came to pay their last respects were feasted. At the funeral
feast, if there was a minstrel present, he would be called upon to sing the
kumintang , which was a chant in praise of the dead, partly traditional and
partly improvised, relating the man's illustrious ancestry and his brave
deeds in battle. When a datu died, complete silence was enforced in his
village; the penalty" for breaking the silence was death. If he died by
violence this mourning period was not lifted until his barangay had
propitiated his spirit by other deaths, not necessarily of those who killed
him, but of anyone encountered on the warpath who was not of the
barangay.
Men were buried with their weapons, women with their utensils and
jewelry. Everything else that they r would need to continue in the next life
a shadow of the present was laid beside them. Slaves were killed to accom-
pany their masters, but this was a custom that had pretty much died out
when the Spaniards came. The valiant who fell in battle were believed to
attain a special state of blessedness called kalualhatian . Others who distin-
guished themselves in other ways, by wisdom or upright rule or beauty,
might reach it too. But not many; for the way to that blessed land was
perilous. There was a chasm to be crossed, with only a single plank for
140
The Jesuits in the Philippines
bridge, flung across the vast abyss. No woman might hope to cross it unless
she had someone who loved her well in life to help her . 8
This was how the Tagalog conceived his universe. Behind it all was a
figure dimly discerned, an Origin, the maker of heaven and earth : Bat-hala
Meikapal , Bat-hala the Fashioner. But little was known about this beneficent
being; only fitful glimpses of him came through the host of jealous and
exigent anito that filled the foreground of the spirit world. It was this
unknown God that Chirino had come to preach to the people of Taytay, as
long ago Paul preached him to the Athenians. He might almost have used
the same words:
What therefore you worship in ignorance, that I proclaim to you. God, who
made the world and all that is in it, since he is Lord of Heaven and earth, does
not dwell in temples built by hands; neither is he served by human hands as
though he were in need of anything, since it is he who gives to all men life and
breath and all things. And from one man he has created the whole human race
and made them live all over the face of the earth, determining their appointed
times and the boundaries of their lands ; that they should seek God, and perhaps
grope after him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. For in him
we live and move and have our being . 9
Like all primitive religions that of the Tagalogs was closely interwoven
with their culture and traditions. It governed not only ritual and sacrifice,
fast and festival, but almost the entire life of the individual and the
community. It covered household tasks, planting and harvesting, traveling
and hunting, war and love with a network of prescriptions and tabus. It
was the burden of song and story; indeed, it was by stories heard in
childhood, songs pounded on the festive board, chants beating time to the
oar that it was chiefly transmitted. This, rather than any reasoned convic-
tion, was the source of its strength and vitality. In a primitive culture
religion touches everything; there is nothing completely profane.
The missionary methods adopted by the Philippine Jesuits were shaped
by this fact. Ricci began his apostolate among the Chinese by discussing
philosophy with scholar officials. Chirino began his among the Tagalogs
by instructing children. In either case the objective was the same: to find
the logical point of insertion by which Christianity could permeate the
culture. In a primitive community that point was, as Francis Xavier
showed, the children. They were strangers to the community, in the sense
that they were as yet uncommitted ; their attitudes had not yet hardened
in the old pagan molds. They were also members of the community,
wanted and loved; whatever interested them was likely to interest their
parents.
As in Balayan, Chirino conducted his catechism class every morning after
Mass. His first task was, of course, to teach the children their prayers:
Mission Stations
141
the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Creed, the Hail Holy Queen. He
taught them not merely to recite these prayers but to sing them, using the
measure of the traditional Tagalog chants. Here was another point of
insertion ; the music that from time immemorial was the vehicle of pagan
belief would from henceforth be the vehicle of Christian belief. As soon
as the children had learned to chant the prayers, the catechism class began
with a procession. They would gather at one end of the village and go
through it singing to the church. Many of the parents would follow, and
catechism class would begin for both children and adults. 10
Chirino almost certainly used the Tagalog catechism adopted by the
Synod of Manila, which the Dominicans printed from woodblocks in 1 593,
the year after his arrival in Taytay. 11 This catechism contained, after the
four prayers mentioned above, the following sections in the order given:
the fourteen articles of faith, the ten commandments of God, the five
commandments of the Church, the seven sacraments, the seven spiritual
and the seven corporal works of mercy, the act of contrition, and a cate-
chism proper consisting of thirty-three questions and answers. The
emphasis with both children and adults was very heavily on learning by
rote memory, but understanding too was tested in regular question periods.
The catechumenate in Taytay as finally constituted had the following
weekly order. On Sunday morning the services began with the children's
procession through the town. The people fell in line behind them as they
passed and all went to church. When all were assembled the catechism
class began. The entire catechism was recited. This was followed by sung
Mass with organ accompaniment and a sermon during Mass. On Mondays
the Mass of the dead was celebrated and on Saturdays the Mass of Our
Lady. On these two days the young men and women assembled in church
for a sermon or conference, that is, for postbaptismal instruction. The
children held catechism classes every day. Adults who had not yet learned
their prayers or the responses to the catechism questions were obliged to
attend these classes. The more proficient boys were told off to give them
individual tutoring. As soon as their boy tutor passed them they were
exempted from attendance. The church bell rang the angelus at daybreak,
noon, and nightfall. All were supposed to stop whatever they were doing
when they heard it and recite the angelic salutation. At night before
retiring a handbell was rung through the streets to remind the people to
pray for the souls in purgatory. No fixed period seems to have been
assigned to the catechumenate. The catechumen was baptized as soon as
the missionary decided he was ready for it.
This program was modified as the number of Christians increased. The
general catechism class on Sunday morning was dropped down to the
afternoon, when only those who were still catechumens were obliged to
attend. On the other hand, the children's procession with the chanting of
142 The Jesuits in the Philippines
the prayers and sections of the catechism was extended to twice a week,
just before the evening angelus. Bodily penances were introduced during
Lent to commemorate Christ's passion, especially the procession of peni -
tentes, in which volunteers carried crosses or scourged themselves. 12
Chirino, using Taytay as his base, made regular trips to Antipolo and
the upland villages. At Antipolo he made one of his most important con-
verts, a mighty hunter named Sayor. Progress had passed Sayor by. In an
age of settled farming and increasing trade, he tarried in the age of epic.
He lived by himself in his highland lair, stalking the deer and trapping
the wild boar. Broiled boa constrictor was his favorite dish. His prowess
with spear and bow, magnified m the telling, made him the terror of the
region. Whenever he entered a village everyone fled. Sayor found this
convenient, as it enabled him to inspect the houses at his leisure and take
what he needed before melting back into the forest. However, there were
brave men who would occasionally stop to talk with Sayor, and through
them he learned about the white priest at Antipolo. He came to see for
himself. Chirino ever afterward retained a vivid recollection of the strange
apparition that materialized suddenly and silently at his door, naked save
for a G-string, bow and sheaf of arrows in hand.
Sayor took an instant liking to the priest and came to visit him often.
Rarely did he find so willing and appreciative a listener. Whenever the
silence of the forest palled on him and he felt like boasting of his exploits,
he came down to Antipolo. He spent many happy hours telling Chirino
how he hunted the boa constrictor; what a tremendous big serpent it was,
easily able to swallow a full-grown man or a buck of the fallow deer ; yet
no match for him, Sayor, the hunter. He appointed himself Chirino's
bodyguard on his mission journeys. While the people of Antipolo watched
in wonderment, they would take off together to visit the hill settlements.
As they trudged along, Sayor would point out the hidden lairs of the wild
creatures, and when he ran out of conversation, Chirino would give him
bits of Christian doctrine to chew upon.
Even after Chirino left Sayor continued to drop in at the mission house.
Finally he announced that he was ready to settle down and become a
Christian. The fathers put him through a catechumenate somewhat longer
than usual and in 1599 baptized him with great solemnity. He took the
name of Paul, and liked his new name so much that whenever anyone called
him by his old name inadvertently, he would frown and say, " Sayor ? Do
not call me Sayor. I am not Sayor; I am Pablo." After diligent search he
found a woman courageous enough to marry him, and he became for many
years one of the pillars of the Antipolo church. 13
In June 1592 Chirino was joined at Taytay by Father Martin Enriquez,
a recent arrival from Mexico. He was a Navarrese and had the same head-
long zeal as his countryman St. Francis Xavier. By September he was
Mission Stations
l 43
preaching in Tagalog and hard at work on a manual for confessors in that
language. In January 1593 Chirino was recalled for reassignment to Panay
and he took charge of the mission. Soon afterward an epidemic of malig-
nant fever struck Taytay. To help him care for the victims of the epidemic
Sedeno sent Brother Juan Prospero. Prospero had come with Enriquez from
Mexico in response to Sedeno’ s appeal for a lay brother who knew some-
thing about medicine. The disease they had to contend with was probably
malaria, for Enriquez fell a victim to it and the reason given is that he did
not bother to protect himself from the mosquitoes that abounded in his
waterlogged mission. He died on 5 February 1593 at the age of twenty-
eight. 14
His place was taken by Almerici who promptly fell sick himself and had
to be called back to Manila. This left only Sedeno and Prat, who took
turns taking Taytay for a week. They could not keep this up for long
because of the growing demands of the Manila church, and Sedeno
seriously considered giving up the mission. The arrival of the expedition of
1595 enabled him to retain it. Almerici, now completely recovered, was
sent back, and the following year Father Diego Santiago was sent to join
him as his assistant. 15
The reason for Chirino’s recall from Taytay was a request from Rod-
riguez de Figueroa, whom we have already met as one of those who came
forward to help the Jesuits build their church in the city. He wanted a
missionary for the people of his encomienda in Panay, and Chirino was
given the assignment with Brother Francisco Martin as his companion.
They arrived in Panay in February 159 3. 16 Rodriguez de Figueroa’s
encomienda was called Tigbauan (“field of reeds”) from its principal
settlement, fourteen miles west of the Spanish town of Arevalo. Arevalo
(Visayan Ogtong or Ot on, now incorporated into the city of Iloilo) was
founded in 1581 by Governor Gonzalo Ronquillo on the southeast coast
of Panay in front of the smaller island of Guimaras. The protected
anchorage formed by the two islands made Arevalo a suitable port for a
naval station. In fact, Chirino arrived just as the main body of Dasmarinas’
abortive expedition to the Moluccas was assembling there. In 1586 Arevalo
consisted of only twenty Spanish householders with encomiendas on the
island and a garrison of thirty soldiers ; but in 1593 the preparations for the
expedition must have filled it with unwonted life and movement. It was
the official residence of the alcalde mayor of the western Visayan islands.
It had a parish church with a beneficed priest, and an Augustinian convent.
The Augustinians had four other mission stations on the island. The
population paid tribute in gold, beeswax, cotton cloth, rice, and chickens.
The Visayans of Tigbauan were a settled, peace-loving, industrious folk.
The men were farmers, fishermen, and hunters ; the women wove the white
and colored cottons called lompotes whose fineness and durability created a
144 rta Jesuits in the Philipputes
demand for them at the Acapulco fair. Chirino speaks of an encomendero,
possibly Figueroa himself, who cleared 1 50,000 pesos in a few years by
shipping his tribute lompotes on the Manila galleon. The language of the
region was a dialect of Visayan called Haraya. Visayan belongs to the same
linguistic group as Tagalog, but a knowledge of Tagalog does not enable
one to speak Haraya immediately. Chirino therefore had to start by learn-
ing his second Philippine language, with such effect that in a few months
he was able to compose the first catechism written in Haraya. This cate-
chism was never printed and its manuscript has unfortunately been lost. 17
Chirino had no assurance that the Tigbauan mission would be retained,
for no one had been assigned to the Philippines since Father Enriquez and
Brother Prospero arrived in 1592. He therefore taught Christian doctrine
to all who would listen but did not baptize many. Most of his baptisms
were administered at Tigbauan itself and two other nearby villages which
could be reached by the parish priest of Arevalo. However, he and Brother
Martin started a school at Tigbauan for Visayan boys, in which they taught
not only the catechism but reading, writing, Spanish, and liturgical music.
These schoolboys soon were able to act as Mass servers and choristers. This
added greatly to the attractiveness of the church services for the people of
Tigbauan, who had a passionate fondness for music and pageantry.
Chirino then sent them in pairs to the outlying villages of the mission,
having first assured himself of their thorough knowledge of the catechism,
to teach the faith they had received. He had gone before them to these
villages and caused a small chapel of reeds to be built in each ; here, in the
late afternoons after work in the fields, the young catechists gathered the
villagers together and began to teach their own people, in their own
language, the things of God.
The Spaniards heard of the school and wanted Chirino to teach their
boys too. He replied that he could not leave Tigbauan to open another
school in Arevalo, but he would be glad to have the boys come to stay with
him at Tigbauan and go to school there. The Arevalo parents liked this
proposal, and Chirino at once put up a dormitory and school house for the
Spanish boys near his rectory; the first Jesuit boarding school to be estab-
lished in the Philippines. It did not last very long because Chirino stayed
at Tigbauan only two years and no one took his place; but during that time
it managed to produce at least one distinguished alumnus. Juan Nunez
Crespo came to the boarding school with the modest but assured reputa-
tion of being Arevalo's wildest boy, and a firm determination to win
additional laurels as the holy terror of Tigbauan. This youthful ambition
was destined never to be realized. Chirino claims with justifiable pride
that he took young Nunez Crespo in hand and knocked enough sense and
virtue into him to last him a whole lifetime, for the boy grew up to take
holy orders and lived for many years an exemplary secular priest. 18
Mission Stations
145
With the elementary school for Visayan boys, the boarding school for
Spanish boys, the Tigbauan church, and the catechism in the villages,
Chirino and Martin must have had their hands full. Luckily, they received
temporary but most welcome assistance from the two Portuguese Jesuits,
Marta and Pereira, who accompanied Don Gerommo of Siao when he came
to join the Moluccas expedition at Arevalo. With the break-up of the
expedition due to the murder of the elder Dasmarinas they returned to
Manila. Chirino and Martin stayed on for a year longer, but with Enriquez
dead, Almerici sick, and no replacements in sight, Sedeiio had no choice
but to recall them. They left Tigbauan on 25 April 1595. Pereira was sent
to take care of the mission as long as he was available.
Sedeho, Prat, Almerici, and Chirino talked the situation over and
decided that if no reinforcements arrived that year they would simply have
to give up the two missions of Taytay and Tigbauan and concentrate their
efforts in Manila. They hoped and prayed that this would not happen, and
that June their prayers were answered. Two galleons dropped anchor at
Cavite with the biggest expedition of Jesuits so far sent to the Philippines,
eight priests and one brother. 19
They brought with them dispatches from Rome creating a Jesuit vice-
pro vince of the Philippines dependent on Mexico, with Sedeiio as vice-
provincial and Prat as rector of the college of Manila. Permission was
granted to accept resident missions without limitation of time. These
decisions had been made on the recommendation of Diego de Avellaneda,
whom Acquaviva had sent to make a visitation of the Mexican province.
Important dispatches were also received by the colonial government from
Madrid. They directed that the Philippines be divided into several mission
districts, each of which were to be assigned to a separate religious order,
which would be in complete charge of its spiritual administration. It was
hoped that this would make for more efficient work and avoid possible
friction between missionaries of different orders. 20
Sedeho at once asked for and obtained the islands of Leyte and Samar.
He had had his eye on them as a possible mission field for some time.
Spanish rule had been extended to both and the settled regions divided
into encomiendas, but no missions as yet established. Leyte was reported
to have a population of 70,000 of which 30,000 paid tribute. 21 No figures
were available for Samar. A serious revolt had broken out on the eastern
coast of Leyte, but the rest of the people were quiet and well disposed. The
eighteen encomenderos who shared the island between them were anxious
for the Jesuits to come. The distance of these islands from Manila, over
300 miles, presented difficulties of transportation and communication.
Sedeiio believed these difficulties could be met by starting on a small scale
with one or two stations on the island of Leyte and establishing at the same
time a central house in the nearby city of Cebu, whence they could be more
146 The Jesuits in the Philippines
immediately supplied and supervised* The Jesuits had a standing invitation
from the citizens of Cebu to found a house in their city, so they were sure
of a welcome there. 22
Sedeno chose three priests, Chirmo, Juan del Campo, and Cosme de
Flores, and one lay brother, Caspar Garay, to open the mission of Leyte,
appointing Chirino superior of the group. Their instructions were to go to
Panay first, explain to Figueroa that they would have to close the Tigbauan
mission at least for the time being until Leyte was taken care of, and take
Pereira with them. They were to explore the island for suitable mission
sites while awaiting Sedeno, who would proceed to Cebu as soon as he had
wound up his business in Manila. At Cebu he would see to the founding of
the central residence and then join them in Leyte with more missionaries.
Chirino and his companions left Manila in the middle of June 1595,
performed their errand at Panay, and landed in northern Leyte, near the
town of Carigara, in the morning of 16 July. It was the day on which the
feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross was celebrated in Spain. The
priests said Mass on the beach and Brother Garay received communion.
They erected a cross to mark the day and place of their landing and pro-
ceeded on foot to Carigara, where they were welcomed by Cristobal de
Trujillo, the encomendero of the region. Trujillo called an assembly of
the people of the town and the surrounding villages to announce the arrival
of the missionaries and arrange for the construction of a residence for them.
There was already a chapel in the town which would do as a temporary
church. Leaving Del Campo, Flores, and Garay at Carigara to study
Visayan and organize catechism classes, Chirino and Pereira sailed east and
then south along the coast of the island to find a place for a second mission
station. 23
Beyond the green luxuriance of lowland vegetation they could see the
principal topographical feature of the island, a range of mountains running
like a backbone down its length and dividing the eastern from the western
coastal plain. Because of it the wet and dry seasons alternated in the two
coastal plains, enabling the people to raise two rice harvests a year. The
harvests were ordinarily so abundant that many people from neighboring
islands came to buy rice in Leyte. Dulag on the eastern coast was one of
the principal centers of this trade. There were not, however, many towns
the size of Dulag. The population was widely dispersed in little clan
villages, which stood usually at the mouths or along the banks of rivers,
for it was chiefly by these that one gained access to the interior of the
island. There were, of course, no roads. In the dry season, with an expert
guide and a sharp hole, the long native knife, one could slash one's way
along the hunters trails that wound through the ram forests between river
and river.
The people were Visayans, but spoke a dialect somewhat different from
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The Eastern Visayas ^
Showing the Principal Jesuit Mission Stations
Scale of Miles 0 ~ s 50 "*^3^
Map IV. The Eastern Visayas, showing principal Jesuit mission stations.
148 The Jesuits in the Philippines
that of Panay. In other respects they were very similar to the Tagalogs both
in social organization and religious beliefs. They too had their datus, their
freemen, and their various degrees and kinds of less-than-Iree. They too
believed in the survival of the dead, and the wild and willful spirits that
peopled rock and tree, forest and plain, the thunder and the typhoon. For
them too folk memory preserved the faint remembrance of an origin of all
things; not the Fashioner, as with the Tagalogs, but Laon , the Ancient of
Days. Two of their customs Chirino found wholly admirable. One was
their hospitality toward strangers. Any traveler overtaken by night or
weariness was certain of a meal and a lodging for the night in any house.
The other was that the price of rice never varied, whether the harvest was
good or bad. 24
Chirino and Pereira agreed that Dulag, the principal town on the eastern
coast, was the most suitable location for their second mission station.
When they returned to Carigara toward the end of July they found their
companions already occupying the residence that the people had built for
them.
Meanwhile, Sedeno, having made the necessary arrangements for starting
the courses at the college, left Manila for Cebu on 30 June. He took with
him two priests, Alonso de Humanes and Mateo Sanchez, and a lay
brother. They made the voyage in the sailboat of Alonso de Henao, an
alderman of Cebu, who had come to fetch them. The vessel was an un-
decked caracca with no cabins, so that when they ran into stormy weather
they were drenched to the skin and remained so for days. When they
finally arrived at Cebu on 21 July, after three weeks of exposure, Sedeno
was not feeling well.
Henao, Captain Antonio Freile, and other leading encomenderos had
assured him that they would provide the men he assigned to Cebu with a
residence and secure support. However, the details still had to be worked
out, and of course everyone wanted to hear and speak to the fathers.
Sedeno, not wishing to disappoint them, did as he was asked in spite of his
indisposition. He lodged at Henao's house, gave several sermons in the
parish church, received visitors, and held several meetings with prospective
benefactors. The sum of 500 pesos was immediately contributed, sufficient
to buy a house near the beach in a pleasant section of the city. The interior
arrangements of the house needed to be adapted to Jesuit use, and this
work was begun immediately. The city corporation deeded some empty
lots which it owned adjacent to the house in order to provide it with a yard
and garden. Definite arrangements were made to take care of the fathers
with regular alms until the usual royal subsidy could be obtained. The
strain of attending to these matters made Sedeno really ill. He took to his
bed after dispatching a note to Chirino asking him to come at once. 25
Chirino decided to take Pereira and Garay with him. They reached
Mission Stations
149
Cebu in the middle of August and were shocked at the condition in which
they found their vice-provincial. A high fever had wasted his frame down
to skin and bones and his old complaint, asthma, racked him. Knowing
that his end was not far off, he called his men together and made the
decisions that still had to be made. Humanes and Sanchez were to go to
Leyte, Humanes as superior of all the Jesuits there. They were to keep
Carigara and open a second mission station at Dulag. Chirino, Pereira, and
Garay were to remain at Cebu with Chirino as superior. At his death the
sealed letter that had come with the other dispatches from Rome was to
be opened. It contained the name of his successor. He then requested
Chirino to get the new residence ready for occupancy as soon as possible,
because he wanted to die at home, in a Jesuit house. Chirino was able to
have him carried there on 21 August. He rallied a little, and then began
to sink. They gave him the last sacraments, which he received devoutly,
just before he fell into a coma. He died on 2 September 1595* and was
buried in the domestic chapel on the ground floor of the house. Three
years later, when the Jesuit church was finished, Chirino transferred his
remains to a wooden urn beneath the main altar, and placed over it the
following epitaph:
FATHER ANTONIO SEDENO,
after having for several years administered the German College in Rome, was
among the first members of the Society of Jesus to preach the gospel of Christ in
Havana and Florida, and the first to do so in Mexico and the Philippines. He was
a truly apostolic man, and the recipient, though from so great a distance, of the
gifts and favors of the Apostolic See. He merited well of the Society of Jesus, the
King, the royal government, the people, and the Catholic religion as the first
Jesuit rector of Manila and the first vice-provincial of the Philippines. Born at
Cuenca, he went to his reward while laying the foundations of this Jesuit college
of Cebu on 2 September 1595, in the sixtieth year of his age. To him, with filial
affection, as to his father in the Society and in Christ, Pedro Chirino humbly
dedicates this memorial, and trusting in the resurrection of the flesh, places his
venerable bones in this small repository on the fourteenth of the calends of
March, which is the sixteenth day of February, of the year 1598. 26
The one designated by Rome to succeed as vice-provincial in the event
of Sedeno* s death turned out to be Prat. 27 He it was, therefore, whom
Figueroa approached to renew his offer of endowing the College of Manila.
Prat accepted the offer gratefully. Sedeno had overestimated, as he often
did, the income that could be derived from the college property. The
ranch near Taytay and the lands in Mayhaligi and Quiapo were now
yielding an annual revenue of a little under 1 ,000 pesos. This was sufficient
to provide for the needs of the present community, but not for any future
increase. Moreover, the college as the principal house of the vice-province
necessarily had to assume its common expenses, such as the transportation
150 The Jesuits in the Philippines
of the vice-provincial on his visits of inspection, of missionaries assigned to
the various stations, and of procurators sent to Madrid and Rome. This
would certainly amount to another thousand or so a year. Finally, the
church was still incomplete, and since Pacheco, his wife having died, had
left or was soon to leave for Mexico, he was no longer able to finance its
construction. 28
Accordingly, on 20 October 1595, Figueroa and Prat drew up an instru-
ment of foundation 29 the principal terms of which were as follows.
Figueroa was to complete at his expense the church and residence which
the Jesuits had under construction and to make over to the vice-provincial
the sum of 21,000 pesos to be invested at the current rate so as to yield a
revenue of 1,500 pesos a year. In consideration of this endowment
Figueroa was to be acknowledged as the founder and patron in perpetuity
of the College of Manila, with all the rights, privileges, and graces which
the Society was accustomed to impart to the founders of its colleges.
Among these rights, privileges, and graces were that every year, on the
day designated by the founder, all the priests of the college would say a
Mass, and all the scholastics and brothers a rosary, for his or his successor’s
intention. A solemn Mass would be sung in the church on the same day,
during which a candle with his armorial bearings stamped upon it would
be offered to him or his successor as a token of continuing gratitude for so
signal a benefit. In the beginning of every month one Mass or more,
depending on the size of the community, would be said for the same
intention. At the death of the founder every priest of the Society through-
out the world would offer three Masses for the repose of his soul. He would
be buried before the main altar of the church and his coat-of-arms would
be carved above the portals both of the church and the residence.
On 8 November the signers of the original document added a clause to
clarify the purpose of the endowment, namely, that the college might be a
house of studies “in which instruction was given and lectures held as
opportunity offers and the usage and custom of the Society demand.” The
nature and scope of these studies were left to the judgment of the vice-
provincial. At the ratification of this or soon thereafter Prat received from
Figueroa 14,000 pesos of the foundation agreed upon ; the remaining 7,000
pesos would be paid from Figueroa’s funds in Mexico.
Figueroa’s presence in Manila at this time and his desire definitely to
conclude the endowment of the college was because he was about to leave
at the head of an expedition for the conquest of Mindanao. This second
largest island of the Philippine archipelago (45,356 square miles) had not
yet been brought under effective Spanish rule. Its conquest presented
greater difficulties than that of the other islands, not only because of its
distance from the capital, but because the Moslem population of its
southern portion was politically more mature and better able to put up an
Mission Stations
I5i
organized resistance* The two principal centers of Moslem rule were the
islands of the Sulu group between Mindanao and Borneo, and the great
plain of the Pulangi River which was then called Magindanau and is the
present province of Cotabato.
Like the Tagalogs and Visayans these peoples of southern Mindanao
were Malays, though belonging to a more recent wave of migration and
speaking a language more akin to that of their cousins in Indonesia, Brunei,
and the Malay archipelago. With these they had close and contintious con-
tact, for they were excellent seamen, and it was through them that they
received in the course of the fifteenth century, just before the coming of
the Spaniards, the Moslem faith. The fact that they were Moslems put
them, as far as the Spaniards were concerned, in a different category from
the rest of Filipinos. They were Moros — Moors — the immemorial enemy
of Christian Spain ; war with them was a crusade and could be assumed as
just without further inquiry.
If further justification was needed, however, it was supplied by two facts.
The first was that the Moros were accustomed to go on slaving raids among
the Visayan islands. Their geographical location made this particularly
advantageous, for the slave-owning states south of them provided an
assured market, while the clan settlements to the north, more primitive
and incapable of organized defense, provided a convenient source of supply.
To the Spaniards their assumption of sovereignty over the Visayans
imposed on them the clear duty of putting a stop to these raids by break-
ing up their centers of origin. The second fact was that, when Governor
Sande attacked Brunei in 1 578, he sent Figueroa with a squadron to Jolo,
the principal island of the Sulu group and the residence of its raja.
Figueroa offered to conclude a treaty of friendship and commerce if the
Sulus abandoned their piratical ways and settled down to more peaceful
pursuits. Instead of accepting this offer the reigning raja, Pangiran, chose
to fight.
Figueroa thereupon landed his troops and beat the Sulus in two
encounters, one inside their town and the other at the foot of the rock
which was their citadel. Pangiran sued for terms and on 14 June 1578
ratified the capitulations whereby he acknowledged himself and his
descendants vassals of his Majesty Don Philip, King of Castile and Leon,
and as a token of his fealty and vassalage gave twelve pearls and thirty-five
taels of gold in his own name and in the name of his subjects of the islands
of Jolo, Tagima, Samboangan, Kawit, and Tawi-tawi, these being his
dominions.”
Figueroa then proceeded to Magindanau, but here he was less successful.
The Magindanau datus abandoned their fortified enclosures and fled to
the hills without even stopping to parley, and Figueroa, his provisions
failing, was forced to return to Brunei. However, the following year, 1 579,
152
The Jesuits in the Philippines
Gabriel de Ribera returned with an embassy and was able to confer with
several of the datus. These negotiations were inconclusive, but they pro-
vided the Spanish government with a sufficient excuse to plead a breach
of faith. Thus a Spanish expedition to Mindanao could be justified as
enforcing a vassalage which had been accepted and subsequently re-
nounced. 30
The elder Dasmarinas, already committed to the more important
Moluccas expedition, felt that the conquest of Mindanao could well be left
to private enterprise. He approached Figueroa as the logical man to under-
take it in view of his previous experience and present means. Figueroa
agreed to discuss terms, and on 10 May 1 591 he and Dasmarinas duly
signed an asiento. 31 Figueroa bound himself by this contract to organize
and equip an expedition for the conquest of Mindanao within three years
after its ratification by the king. He was to take command of the expedition
in person. If successful, he would be recognized by the Crown as governor
of the conquered territory for life, with the right to designate his successor.
He would also have the right to award encomiendas to those taking part in
the expedition, retaining for himself as many as would yield an annual
revenue of 15,000 pesos. Four years later, in June 1595, Figueroa at
Arevalo received word from the younger Dasmarinas that royal approval
of the asiento had been received, and that his presence at Manila was
required to settle the final arrangements. Since there was a distinct possi-
bility that he might not return alive from the expedition, Figueroa took
advantage of this opportunity to complete the foundation of the College of
Manila. He also, upon returning to Arevalo to organize the expedition,
drew up his last will and testament. The terms of this will and the curious
way in which it affected the Philippine Jesuits we shall see later.
The expedition got under way early in April 1 596. It consisted of 50 sail
and a force of 214 Spanish and 1,500 native troops. Figueroa had asked
Prat for a Jesuit to act as chaplain, and Juan del Campo was detached from
the Leyte missions for this purpose. He joined the expedition with Brother
Gaspar Gomez as his companion. Figueroa's plan was to deal with Magin-
danau first, leaving the Sulus till later. On 22 April his ships stood breast-
ing the current at the principal mouth of the Pulangi River.
The Pulangi, or, as the Spaniards called it, the Rio Grande de Mindanao,
spills down the southern slopes of the Bukidnon massif at the center of
Mindanao and snakes south and west across a low-lying marshy plain to
the Moro Gulf. Twenty miles from the seacoast it forks into a north
branch and a south branch. It was around the delta formed by these two
branches that the principal Moro strongholds stood. Twelve miles above
the fork, near the present town of Dulawan, was Bwayan. The raja of
B way an was Sirongan, at that time the most powerful lord of the Magin-
danau confederacy. On the south branch, sixteen miles below the fork,
Mission Stations
*53
was Tamontaka. Four miles across the delta, on the north branch, was
Magindanau town, from which the whole region took its name. It stood
on a hill called Tantayan (‘ * prospect "), easy to fortify and defend; this
fact has given its name to the present city of Cotabato, which means stone
fort.
Figueroa, learning that Sirongan of Bwayan had taken up a strong
position at Magindanau, landed a small force under his second-in-
command, Juan de la Jara, to reconnoiter the place. The reconnaissance
took longer than expected, and Figueroa, impatient at the delay, went
ashore to find out for himself what De la Jara was about. Sword in hand
and shield on arm, he strode through the tall marsh grass ahead of two
Spanish aides and a Cebuano spearman, his only companions. At a turn
of the path where the thick grass grew to a man's height, two of Sirongan's
warriors lay in ambush. They wore the crimson tunic of the amok , having
sworn that morning to kill as many of the enemy as possible before they
were killed themselves. When Figueroa was close enough one of them
leaped out of concealment with a cry, his kampilan , the long blade of the
Moros, upraised. Figueroa met the stroke with his shield as it fell, and
with a wide swinging blow of his sword cut the man down. Stepping over
his dead adversary, he called back to his companions who were racing down
the path that all was well. Fie had not gone more than a few paces forward
when the other Moro was upon him, and this time the kampilan came
down more quickly than he could parry. The blade clove through his bare
head (he had pushed aside his helmet impatiently when he was arming)
and fell, just as the Cebuano, running up, drove his spear through the
breast of the Moro, killing him instantly.
They picked their fallen leader up quickly and ran for the ships ; but the
wound was mortal. Figueroa never recovered consciousness, and died with-
in forty hours. Brother Gomez took the embalmed corpse to Manila where
it was given solemn burial in the Jesuit church. Over the grave in front of
the main altar the fathers caused to be cut the following inscription :
Occubnit ferro, sed non supcratus ab boste :
Ensis qui vitam sustnlit ipse dedit .
“He died by the sword, but was not vanquished by the enemy; for the
same blade that took away his mortal life gave him an eternal ." 32
De la Jara now took charge of the expedition. Many of the captains,
disheartened by Figueroa's death and the unexpected strength of the
Magindanau confederacy, were for going back to Arevalo. It was only with
the greatest difficulty that De la Jara was able to persuade them to estab-
lish a fortified camp near Tampakan, a settlement of friendly Moros at the
mouth of the river, there to await reinforcements and a more favorable
opportunity to resume operations. Conditions in the camp were far from
154 The Jesuits in the Philippines
ideal, and Juan del Campo performed his duties as chaplain with a zeal
more generous than prudent. Though of delicate health he took no pre-
cautions against the violent alternations at that time of the pear of torrid
heat and torrential ram. A brief illness laid him low and he died on 1 1
August 1596 at the early age of 33. He left behind him a note in which,
after commending his soul to God and asking for the suffrages of his
brethren, he added the following counsel to future missionaries : “I pray
you, be very zealous for the honor and glory of God and the good of so
many souls that here await salvation ; but do not be carried away by indis-
creet fervor, for it is by little and little that a great work is done/' His
place was taken by Juan de Sanlucar, who had just arrived that June. 33
The group of Jesuits sent from Mexico in 1596 was composed of fifteen
priests and three lay brothers. They came as part of the expedition led by
the new proprietary governor of the Islands, Francisco Tello de Guzman,
which included 300 troops, 25 settlers with their families, and 70 mission-
aries belonging to various orders. They disembarked at Sorsogon and made
their way overland to Manila, some arriving on 14 June and others on
1 August. 34
Prat had little difficulty in finding work for them. Diego Santiago was
dispatched to assist Almerici at Taytay, and Juan de Sanlucar to fill the
chaplaincy of the Mindanao expedition vacated by Del Campo’s death.
Francisco de Vera, whom Governor Tello had chosen as his father con-
fessor, and Brother Juan de Herrera were assigned to the Manila com-
munity. The rest, fifteen or sixteen altogether, he took with him to the
Visayas. They left Manila on 3 October 1596 and called first at Tinagon,
on the western coast of Samar, where they landed on the 22nd of the same
month. Here Prat left Fathers Francisco de Otazo and Bartolome Martes
and Brother Domingo Alonso to establish the first mission of the island.
With the rest he proceeded to Leyte, where to the two stations already in
existence, Carigara and Dulag, he added three new ones: Palo, Ormoc, and
Alangalang. The assignments were as follows : at Dulag, Father Alonso de
Humanes and Brother Denis Marie; at Carigara, Father Francisco de
Encinas and Brother Alonso del Barco; at Palo, Fathers Cristobal Jimenez
and Miguel Gomez; at Ormoc, Fathers Alonso Rodriguez and Leonardo
Scelsi; at Alangalang, Father Cosme de Flores and Brother Pedro Diaz.
The remainder he took with him to Cebu.
Several of the Cebu colonists who had encomiendas on the island of
Bohol and the region of Butuan in northern Mindanao had been urgently
requesting missionaries for them. Before leaving Manila Prat asked permis-
sion from the authorities to accept these missions. The permission was
readily granted. In fact, the cathedral chapter, administering the diocese
sede vac ante, gave him more than he asked for, assigning to the Society the
work of evangelizing not only Butuan but the entire island of Mindanao.
Mission Stations
155
To Bohol Prat sent Fathers Juan de Torres and Gabriel Sanchez ; to Butuan,
Fathers Valerio de Ledesma and Manuel Martinez. This left Chirino, the
superior of the Cebu residence, with a community of three priests, himself,
Mateo Sanchez and Pedro Lopez de la Parra, and three brothers, Gaspar
Garay, Francisco Martin, and Cristobal de Tapia. 35
The work done in these missions should be briefly surveyed. 36 Antipolo,
which as we have seen was a small town of 100 households when the
Jesuits first took charge of it, increased considerably in population during
1595 and 1596. Whole barangays which had previously been scattered in
the surrounding hills came to settle there. Nine hundred people altogether,
all pagans, flocked to Antipolo in 1595, and by 1596 its too households
had become 700. Even the Aetas came down from the high sierras to see
what was afoot. These small black people were the earliest surviving
inhabitants of the islands, and the most primitive. The Tagalogs found
them in possession when they first came and gradually drove them from
the lowlands they coveted further and further into the mountains, so that
they came to be known as Itas or Aetas, the upland people. Like the ravens
of the gospel they neither sowed nor reaped nor gathered into barns. God
fed them w T ith the fruits of the forest through which they wandered by
families, stalking the wild pig and the mountain deer with bow and arrow.
They had no fixed abode; what they killed or plucked they ate on the spot,
and when they were hungry again, they moved on. It was perhaps mere
curiosity 7 that made them leave their mountain fastnesses to watch, from
a safe distance, the strange white priests at Antipolo. But Almerici's trans-
parent kindness had a great deal to do wfith their consenting to stay. Not in
the town ; they could not yet bring themselves to do that ; but in little hut
villages near it, where the fathers were able to teach them how to grow
their food and take care of them when they were ill. Almerici gave them
some instruction in Christian doctrine but not baptism until he was quite
sure they had settled down for good. This precaution was necessary, for the
wild freedom of the forest still tugged strongly at their hearts, and every
now and again an Aeta family would vanish as silently as it had come.
Because of the growth of Antipolo and because of its more salubrious
climate, Prat decided in 1596 to make it instead of Taytay the center of
the mission and the ordinary residence of the missionaries. In 1 597 a third
town, Cainta, about two miles from Taytay, was added to the mission.
The work of conversion proceeded rapidly in all three towns. In Antipolo
alone 500 adult baptisms were administered in 1595. Chirino estimates
that by the end of the century the Jesuits had baptized about 7,000. The
converts as a rule found little difficulty in abandoning their pagan beliefs
and practices. Of their own accord they brought their little idols to the
missionaries to be destroyed. “ As I was writing this,” Almerici says in a
letter to a friend in Rome in 1597, “they brought me four or six little
6 *
* 5 6
The Jesuits in the Philippines
gold idols to be broken up.” 37 The practice of the missionaries in the case
of gold idols was to have them melted down and the gold returned to their
owners. Wooden idols were simply burned* A big bonfire of them and of
the furniture used in their worship was made at Antipolo in 1598*
Only the katolonan, the men and women shamans of the old religion,
caused the missionaries some concern* In 1597 it was discovered that a
number of female katolonan were operating secretly in Taytay. One of
them bore involuntary witness to the stronger appeal of Christianity by
claiming Christian attributes for her particular anito. It too, she said, had
come down from heaven, and was in fact a good friend to all Christians ;
there was no reason why it should not be worshipped alongside the Chris-
tian God. The Christians of Taytay did not think the argument good
enough, and reported the katolonan and her companions to the fathers.
They must have been converts who had apostatized, for the fathers had
them make a public abjuration of their idolatry in the church. After that
they were made to live for several years in a house by themselves, apart from
the community and under the tutelage of a reliable Christian family.
Several medicine men, more canny than their female counterparts,
practiced their arts in the wilderness outside the towns and villages, and
the sick whose faith faltered would sometimes have recourse to them.
They were arrested by the civil authorities and handed over to the mission-
aries, who put them under instruction and tried to persuade them of the
error of their ways. Most of them eventually received baptism and became
exemplary Christians.
The fathers did not communicate the eucharist to their adult converts
immediately after baptism, but only after a period of postbaptismal
instruction. However, once they began to receive it, the effect of the sacra-
ment on their lives was quite noticeable. So much so that the people would
sometimes say to Almerici, pointing out some old sinner, ‘‘Father, give
communion to that one, so as to force him to be good.” Frequent recourse
to the sacrament of penance was, however, stressed from the beginning.
In 1598 Prat reported that in the Antipolo mission many went to confes-
sion regularly every month, and some every two weeks or even weekly. The
practice was promoted by a pious association or confraternity of men which
the fathers organized in each town, one of the principal aims of which was
the frequent and regular reception of the sacraments.
In general, the fathers never destroyed or forbade a pagan usage without
introducing a similar Christian usage to take its place. This was in line
with the policy of making Christianity permeate the culture and its
institutions in the same way as the popular pagan beliefs had done. It was
not perhaps a fully conscious policy, but actual practice both at Antipolo
and the other missions fairly consistently conformed to it. Chirino set the
prayers and formulas of the catechism to the music of the chants by which
Mission Stations
157
the deeds of gods and heroes were told among the Tagalogs. Almerici and
Santiago continued and extended this practice. The custom arose in the
villages of the mission of people gathering in the late afternoons around the
wooden cross erected by the missionaries in each village and singing not
only the set words of the catechism but hymns and cadenced prayers of
their own composition based on what they had heard in church. The
melodies used must have been those of the amt, employed in love songs
and lullabies, simple tunes to which each one fitted his or her own verses
as the spirit moved. Women especially were very skillful in these impromp-
tu compositions. After Mass one Sunday one of the fathers heard a woman
across the way from the mission house chant the sermon he had just
preached in its entirety, put into verse adapted to a traditional melody.
For the propitiatory sacrifice which the people used to offer to the
spirits that they might not harm the crops, the missionaries substituted
the blessing by a priest of the rice to be sown and of the sprouted seedlings.
The Annual Letter of 1599 reports that
... at planting time all bring to the church part of the seed rice which they intend
to sow in order that the father might bless it. This year the people of one of our
towns asked for the priest to come specially in order to say Mass and impart a
blessing to the rice ; and they brought so much of it that the path to the doors of
the church was lined for quite a distance on both sides with baskets of rice. At the
same time they gave a good-sized alms, placing it on the altar as is their custom
while Mass is being celebrated. Alms of this sort is received and spent on charit-
able works to relieve the necessities of the people themselves.
Another blessing was given to the seedlings as soon as the first green
blades appeared, and blessed crosses were set up in the fields as a protection
from locusts. Locusts were among the most dreaded plagues of the period,
for no one knew whence they came nor how to stop them, and yet these
insatiable insects, descending like a dark cloud on the countryside, could
destroy a whole harvest. The missionaries encouraged the people to streng-
then their prayers against them by vow and promise. Thus in 1598 the
people of Taytay made a promise that if they were preserved from the
locust plague they would celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception
that year with special solemnity and contribute what was needed to dower
an orphan girl. Their prayers were answered, and they came to the Mass
of the feast in fulfillment of their promise with enough rice and money for
the girl's dowry.
The incident also serves to illustrate how the fathers tried to introduce
the idea of Christian charity into the life of the community. The adoption
of orphan children by the well-to-do was encouraged, and in general the
giving of alms to the poor. Debt slavery could not obviously be abolished
all at once, nor did the missionaries attempt it; but they undermined its
158 The Jesuits in the Philippines
foundations by holding up the granting of loans to the needy without
interest as an act eminently worthy of a Christian. They also attacked the
pernicious custom of the funeral feast, at which the bereaved family was
practically eaten out of house and home by those who came to mourn with
them. So expensive were these funeral banquets that the heirs of the
deceased sometimes had to mortgage their property and even their own
persons in order to pay for them.
In counteracting this custom the fathers made use of the gregarious
instinct which had led to the abuse. They assigned attendance at funerals
as one of the activities of the confraternity mentioned above. The members
accompanied the bier to the cemetery with lighted candles, and after the
burial went with the family of the deceased to church to say prayers for
the dead. Thus the offices of piety and friendship were fulfilled without
laying a burden on the bereaved.
However, the missionaries were not so foolish as to try to impose a ban
on all feasting. What they did try to do was to divest the customary festi-
vals of their pagan implications and accompaniments, and to reduce them
to moderate proportions. Two feasts were required to conclude a pagan
marriage, a betrothal feast and a w r edding feast. The fathers tried to limit
the festivities to the actual wedding by making the betrothal ceremony a
simple promise made before the elders of the village.
The Tagalogs feasted sitting or reclining on the floor before low tables.
Food was served in plenty, but, as Chirino observed, “ they eat little, drink
much, and are a long time at it.” When all are filled, the tables are taken
away and the singing and dancing begin, lasting sometimes all night. But,
he added
... we never see them so inflamed and excited by drink as to become disorderly.
On the contrary, they retain much of their ordinary manner, and address one
another when drunk with the same courtesy and decorum as before, except that
they are a great deal more lively and talkative and exchange many witticisms. It
is a common saying among us that none of them, no matter how drunk he leaves
a banquet or how late at night, ever failed to find his house. And if some business
awaits him there, whether of purchase or sale, he is not only fully equal to the
transaction, but if there is need of weighing the price in silver or gold (a practice
so common that everyone carries his scales around with him) he does it with such
steadiness that his hand never trembles nor misses the exact point of balance. 38
However, it is pretty obvious that in spite of this amazing capacity to
hold their liquor, they did get drunk. In preventing these and similar
excesses the missionaries made use of an official whom they appointed,
called a peal. Every parish and mission station in the Philippines had its
fiscal. There is no satisfactory English translation for this term ; the fiscal
was a kind of deacon without orders. An example was Don Mateo Apay,
Mission Stations
*59
who held the office in Taytay. Don Mateo belonged to the datu class, as
did his wife, Dona Magdalena Polosin. He had wide lands and a large
family. His duties were to take care of the church, help instruct cate-
chumens, visit the sick, and bury the dead. But, more than that, he was a
kind of “living rule/' who set an example of Christian living to the
community and admonished those who were inclined to set the opposite
example. Or, in the delightful definition given by the Annual Letter of
1605, the fiscal
. . . teaches catechism to the ignorant, strengthens the weak, visits the sick, and
if they are dangerously ill sends for the priest. He incites sinners to confession,
solicits alms, helps bury the dead, reprehends the guilty, gives advice, promotes
charity, inflames zeal, corrects what he can, and what he cannot, deplores . 39
By 1 599 a new stone church was rising in Taytay, with fourteen Chinese
stonemasons and several Tagalog workmen engaged in the work of con-
struction; and not far from Antipolo the Aetas had finally decided to
establish a permanent village, to be called Santa Cruz.
Humanes lost no time in carrying out Sedeno’s orders to establish the
mission of Dulag. 40 Juan del Campo shared the enterprise with him until
he was called away to act as chaplain of Figueroa’s expedition. After
constructing a church, making a preliminary census of the population, and
starting catechism classes, they set to work organizing a school. Some
sixty boys, mostly the sons of datus, were selected from the three encomi-
endas of eastern Leyte — Palo, Dulag, and Abuyog. As in Chirino’s school
at Tigbauan, classes were held in Christian doctrine, reading, writing, and
music. However, Humanes improved on Chirino’s idea by having the boys
live in the Jesuit compound itself, in a house which he built for them with
donations collected from the encomenderos. The school at Dulag was thus
the first setninario de indios or boarding school for natives to be established
by the Philippine vice-province. It was a completely free school, the living
expenses of the boys and the salary of a lay schoolmaster being paid for out
of the annual stipend received by the missionaries.
After the school was fairly started, Humanes and Del Campo went on a
series of methodical tours to cover their extensive territory, which had a
population of some 10,000. In every village and settlement they set up a
cross and a chapel and gathered the people together for instruction. They
baptized no one, even if he asked for it, because Humanes did not believe
in mass baptisms. He wanted to wait until they knew the language better
so that they could assure themselves that their catechumens had the proper
dispositions. It was not until Christmas eve of 1595, three months after
their arrival, that they baptized their first converts in the church of Dulag.
Of the 45 who received baptism many were children, and most of the
adults were servants and bearers attached to the mission. Before baptizing
i6o
The Jesuits in the Philippines
them, the fathers made it clear to each one individually that they were not
to ask for the sacrament unless they understood what it meant and really
wanted to receive it.
In 1596 Brother Denis Marie joined the mission and Father Del Campo
left. Humanes continued to insist on a long and thorough catechumenate.
In 1597 he baptized only 1 90 altogether, and of these 80 were children
and sick people in danger of death. One datu became impatient at being
put off so often and said, “ Father, was it not to baptize that you came?
Why then do you not start The reason why was clear in this case; the
datu had three wives and did not want to give up any of them, chiefly
because he stood to lose a lot of property if he did. Fie was also worried
that if he became a Christian they would not permit him to be buried in
the fine carved coffin he had ordered for himself. He finally decided to make
these sacrifices and was baptized Diego. Humanes allowed Don Diego to
keep only one wife, but, after inspecting the coffin, he saw no reason why
he could not await the resurrection in it.
Because of the dispersal of the population in scattered clan villages,
Humanes had to be continually on the move. If they were concentrated in
larger communities near Dulag he could devote to their instruction the
time he spent in traveling. He picked out eight possible town sites and
proposed the idea to the encomenderos. They opposed it vigorously, for
such a shift in population would mean that some encomiendas would lose
tribute payers to others, since the tribute was collected on a territorial basis.
Humanes had to desist from his plan, at least for the time being; but this
question of gathering the people into towns was to remain a major issue
between the missionaries and the encomenderos of Leyte for some years
to come.
The mission of Palo was founded in October 1596 by Fathers Encinas
and Jimenez. 41 Palo was (and is) a town on the eastern coast of Leyte north
of Dulag; but when the missionaries arrived, they found that the entire
“town” consisted of two small houses in which the encomendero’s
servants lived. The dispersal of the population was, if possible, greater here
than in the Dulag mission. Some boys who had gone to the Dulag mission
school welcomed the missionaries and undertook to teach them Visayan.
Encinas was called away to Carigara soon afterwards and Brother Gomez
took his place as Jimenez’s companion. When he had learned enough
Visayan to make himself understood, Jimenez started on a tour of his
mission. The people were suspicious, probably thinking he was another
tax collector, and few doors opened to him. Then he learned that there
were many sick in the villages, and this gave him an idea. He put himself
to school with the best herb doctors he could find. These Palo herb doctors
were not mere quacks. Doubtless by trial and error they had found some
effective remedies for common diseases. Their fees were high. If they
Mission Stations
161
cured a person of an ordinarily fatal illness they charged him his worth as
a slave, or his ransom if captured. They charged comparable fees for
instructing anyone in their craft. Jimenez paid cheerfully because it was
worth it. After his first few cures, he had an entry everywhere. Here, the
people said, was a Spanish herb doctor who charged nothing. He baptized
only a few, and those mostly infants, but he made many friends.
Some of the Palo datus were Moslems of a sort, and their rudimentary
belief in one God probably helped them to understand the Christian
doctrine better than their subjects. When they consented to be instructed
and baptized, their timawa usually followed their example. Whenever
possible, Jimenez waited until all the members of a family were ready for
baptism; he then baptized them all together, in order that the neophyte's
break from paganism might be complete, at least within the family.
Jimenez's most important convert was Kanganga of Malirong, the most
powerful datu of those parts, whom the Spanish government had appointed
petty governor of Palo. In order to make his baptism as solemn and public
as possible, he timed it to coincide with the dedication of the completed
church of Palo, which took place on the feast of the Immaculate Concep-
tion, 8 December 1598. Humanes performed the rite and the corregidor
of Leyte, Ensign Francisco Rodriguez de Ledesma, stood as sponsor. All
the datus of the surrounding country came with their retainers to see the
neophyte christened Don Juan Kanganga, and afterward performed a cere-
monial dance in front of the church to celebrate the occasion. Don Juan
was of great assistance to the missionary in choosing suitable town sites
where the clans could be brought together; but here as in Dulag the
opposition of the encomenderos made it slow and difficult work.
When Encinas left Jimenez at Palo it was to take charge of the mission
of Carigara, with Brother Alonso del Barco as his companion. The mission
included three other towns besides Carigara : Leyte, Barugo, and Sampua-
tan. Encinas and Del Barco visited all four every month. During their stay
in each town daily Mass was followed by catechetical instruction in the
church. Encinas, taking his cue from Chirino, put the principal truths of
the creed and several hymns into the verse form of the traditional Visayan
folk songs. These achieved instant popularity, especially at Carigara, where
they sang Encinas' compositions not only at Mass but in their houses in the
evening. Encinas also started a day school for boys at Carigara, with a
Filipino schoolmaster who taught reading, writing, and music. By 1597,
two-thirds of the population of the mission had received baptism. 42
The mission of Ormoc, on the west coast of the island, was founded by
Fathers Rodriguez and Scelsi in May 1 597. Here the people were not only
eager to receive instruction but most of them were literate in Visayan.
They asked the missionaries for the catechism in writing so that they could
make copies of it on the bamboo strips which they used for paper. The
i6z
The Jesuits in the Philippines
two missionaries made a positive contribution to the development of the
catechumenate by applying to it some of the principles of what was later
to be the Jesuit ratio studiorum or pedagogical code. They divided the
catechism course into grades. Each grade had to learn a part of the cate-
chism, progressively more difficult, and pass an examination on it before
going on to the next grade. The catechumens wrote down what they were
taught in their own language and script and took the bamboo strips home
with them to study. The class procedure was, first, to take the lesson down
from dictation, then to repeat it orally, and then to commit it to memory.
After the memory period the bamboo strips were laid aside and the lesson
was recited, either individually or in unison. Finally a discussion period
was devoted to getting the catechumens to put the lesson in their own
words by answering questions on it. 43
Alangalang was the only one of the five Leyte missions located in the
interior of the island, about twelve miles south of Carigara. It was founded
by Father Cosme de Flores, one of the first Jesuits to come to Leyte, and
Brother Pedro Diaz. The Alangalang church was dedicated on Trinity
Sunday 1597* Flores followed an exacting schedule, visiting each of the
five or six villages which composed his mission every week. His health was
not equal to it, and he died on 8 September of the same year at the early
age of 28. Before he died, however, he had brought the people of his
villages together in two towns, one of 300 and the other of 5 00 households,
thus achieving the first notable success in the Jesuit plan of bringing
together the dispersed population of Leyte. 44
The island of Samar lies northeast of Leyte and is separated from it only
by the narrow strait of San Juanico. Another strait, San Bernardino, the
embocadero of the galleons, separates it from Luzon. Its eastern coast is
washed by the Pacific, and Cape Espiritu Santo on its northeastern corner
was usually the first landfall made by the Acapulco ship. It is the third
largest island in the Philippine archipelago, with an area of 5,049 miles.
The interior is a tangle of low, heavily forested mountain ranges, but one
river, the Ulut, cuts almost across the island from west to east. It was on
the western coast of the island, not far from the headwaters of the Ulut,
that Fathers Otazo and Martes and Brother Alonso founded the mission of
Tinagon. 45
The people, who knew the Spaniards only as conquerors or tribute
collectors, fled at their approach, abandoning houses and villages. Only by
the exercise of the greatest patience and kindness were the missionaries able
to convince them that they had come not to take away but to give. 1596
and 1597 were years of the locust in Samar; the harvests were poor and
there was famine and sickness everywhere. Otazo and his companions went
from village to village with rice and medicines, doing what they could to
relieve the sufferings of the people. They had a high total of baptisms—
Mission Stations 163
2,057 in 1 596-1 598 — but most of these were administered at the point of
death*
Otazo opened a boarding school for boys at Tinagon similar to that of
Dulag, but it did not apparently last very long, because after an intensive
course in Christian doctrine the boys were sent back to their villages to
help instruct their own people. Longer-lived, and in some ways more
interesting, was another school founded in the little village of Paranas by
the fiscal of the place, Don Gonzalo. Don Gonzalo, with the approval of
the fathers, toured the clan villages of the coast like a pied piper of Hame-
lin, collecting all the boys whose parents would let him have them. He
brought over a hundred back with him to Paranas, where he put them under
a regular boarding school regime; morning prayers, classes morning and
afternoon, night prayers. One of the best features of the institution was
that the fathers did not have to worry about supporting it. It was com-
pletely self-supporting. The older boys did some fishing, and when the
rice stocks ran low they simply went back to their clan villages for more.
Two welcome additions to the Samar mission were Father Miguel
Gomez and Brother Juan Ontineda. They were at once sent on an extended
mission tour of the eastern coast of the island, where they won the warm
affection of the people by their charity toward the sick. They erected a
chapel at Catubig, but due to the shortage of personnel no resident
mission was established there for the time being.
The mission of Bohol was opened at the request of Doha Catalina de
Bolanos, the mother of Pedro de Gamboa, the encomendero of the island,
who was a minor. 46 Legazpi stopped there in 1565 and entered into a
blood compact with Katunau (Sikatuna), one of the principal datus, who
showed him how to get to Cebu. At that time the small and hilly island
had a fairly numerous population estimated at 10,000. There were gold
mines in the interior and the Boholanos traded widely north and south,
acquiring everywhere a reputation for enterprise and for having a high
opinion of themselves. A series of slaving raids by Ternate Moslems and
the Portuguese based in the Moluccas, however, considerably reduced both
their numbers and prosperity. The Boholanos fought back stubbornly, in
spite of inferior organization and equipment, under their paramount datu,
Warai Tupueng (the Peerless One). Warai Tupueng could have called the
Spaniards on the nearby island of Cebu to his assistance, but he did not
believe in foreign entanglements. To the end of his life, despite heavy
losses, he tried to cope with the raiders by himself. After his death, how-
ever, his four sons felt that they could do no more. They sent for the
Spaniard and paid tribute in exchange for protection.
Hearing of this, a babailan or female shaman (the counterpart of the
Tagalog katolonan) became possessed of the spirit of prophecy and
wandered about the island foretelling the disaster that would befall at
164 The Jesuits in the Philippines
the coming of the Spaniards. In every village she sang her wild chant : “ My
doom to them that dwell here ! My whisper to the people of this place !
For this settlement shall be dispersed; this place shall be moved. Yea, this
town shall fall; this place shall be uprooted.” 47
The behavior of the tribute collectors must have given some color to this
prophecy, for when the Jesuits came in 1596 they got a cold reception.
There were two of them, Juan de Torres and Gabriel Sanchez, both
priests. They left Cebu on 17 November and established themselves first
at Baclayon, where they spent some time in gaining the confidence of the
people. From Baclayon Torres went to Lob oc, an inland market village
where the fishing folk of the seashore exchanged their catch for the sugar
cane, sweet potatoes and bananas of the highland clans. This trading was
done chiefly by women.
Torres beckoned to some of them and after allaying their fears sat them
in a circle around him. He opened a box which he had brought, took out
knives, scissors and needles and passed them around. The women were
still chattering delightedly over these presents w r hen their menfolk came.
They had been out hunting, apparently without much success, for they
were very cross indeed. They gathered about Torres, fingering their spears,
and inquired what he was doing in the bukir , that is, the hinterland. Let him
stay where he belonged, they said ; the bukir had no use for Christians.
Torres replied that that was a question they could more profitably discuss
after they had eaten together, for it was now midday and he could see they
were tired and hungry. He brought out his provisions, gave them a good
meal, and then had recourse once more to his treasure box. This time there
came out of it pieces of linen cloth, sheets of brass and more needles. He
pressed them on his guests and told them they could keep them. One of
them asked, suspiciously, whether he would ask for the things back when
they died ? Torres replied that when he gave, he gave for good. They spent
the afternoon sitting at their ease and talking, after the unhurried custom
of the country. Torres told them what had brought him there from so far
away, that he had come to teach them matters of great importance con-
cerning God which would much advantage them in life and after death.
He spoke of other things too, especially farming, for he was born and grew
up in Montilla, in the rice country of Andalusia. What he said about
Spanish farming caught their interest, and they exchanged notes on
different methods of cultivation. Long before sunset they were fast
friends.
Torres explained that he wanted to build a church there, if they would
help him, and then perhaps they could bring their barangays and form a
town. The Boholanos found this to their liking; so much so that they
straightway picked out a site for the chapel and promised to start the very
next day to fell the logs for it. They were as good as their w ord, and soon
Mission Stations 165
eleven barangays had settled down near the chapel to form the town of
Loboc.
Another mission expedition Torres made was to the gold mines of
Talibong, five or six days' journey from the coast. Here a Spanish pros-
pector had already built a chapel, and there were Christians among the
miners. Torres invited everyone, Christians and pagans, to his first Mass.
After reading the gospel he turned around and told them why he had come.
It was not for gold ; he was not interested in gold. And suiting the action
to the word, he took a handful of gold dust from the altar, let it trickle
through his fingers to the floor and ground it under his heel. The Boholanos,
who were not accustomed to the noble metal being treated in this contemp-
tuous fashion, were deeply impressed. The datu of the region agreed to
gather his scattered clans together and found a town at Talibong. Thus was
the babailan’s prophecy fulfilled. The villages and settlements were indeed
being uprooted, but a new kind of community, the Christian town, was
taking their place.
Meanwhile Sanchez discovered that Katunau, Legazpi's friend, was still
among the living. He was by this time over a hundred years old, and his
wife not much younger. Both consented to be instructed and baptized.
A year later, on his deathbed, the old patriarch set all his slaves at liberty
and willed to the Bohol mission one of his coconut groves.
The mission of Butuan was founded in the same month and year as that
of Bohol in response to a similar request from the corregidor and encomen-
deros of the province. Valerio de Ledesma, the first missionary", was joined
the following year by Manuel Martinez. The population was pagan,
although some memory survived among them of a white man who came
and spoke to them of the Christian God. He did not tarry, and they never
saw him again. This was that remarkable Portuguese lay missionary,
Captain Francisco de Castro, who set out from the Moluccas in 1538 and
circumnavigated Mindanao, preaching in all the settlements and baptizing
those in danger of death.
The establishment of the Jesuit mission was, however, the first serious
attempt to convert the people of Butuan to Christianity. Ledesma and
Martinez began auspiciously with the instruction and baptism of the most
respected datu of the place, Elian, whom everyone affectionately called
“ father.' ’ As one of the other datus put it, “If the father of all becomes a
Christian, how can the rest of us do otherwise ?“
Ledesma, following the practice of his confreres, cast the prayers, creed,
and commandments into Visayan verse adapted to the traditional planting,
rowing, and weaving chants of the region. These he taught to the children,
and the children in turn to their households. In this way the chanting of
the catechism became the evening's entertainment in many homes, where
it was sometimes sung antiphonally, a child singing one verse and the
166 The Jesuits in the Philippines
company present coming in with the next. The mission church of Butuan
was dedicated on the feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, 8 September
I597- 48
Both Bohol and Butuan missions were founded from Cebu and were
considered dependent on the Jesuit residence there. 49 The superior of the
residence was Chirino, to whom Sedeno gave the title of rector, although
technically only heads of colleges were so designated in the Society. Under
Chirino's administration the Cebu Jesuits not only ministered to the
Spanish residents, but undertook two other works of importance: educa-
tion and convert work among the Chinese.
In 1595 Father Antonio Pereira opened a free primary school in which he
taught Christian doctrine, reading, writing, arithmetic, and deportment.
The school was originally intended for Spanish children, but Visayan and
Chinese pupils were apparently admitted as well. Toward the end of that
year Pereira was recalled to the Moluccas mission; his place as schoolmaster
was taken by Brother Gaspar Garay. Three years later courses in grammar
were added at the request of the first bishop of Cebu, Fray Pedro de
Agurto. Bishop Agurto arrived in Manila on 23 May 1 598 with two Jesuits
in his entourage: Luis Gomez, a priest, and Francisco Vicente Puche, a
scholastic. He asked Prat if he might take them with him to Cebu to teach
grammar both to those who had already learned their first letters in the
primary school and to his nephews and other boys who had come with him
as members of his household. Prat needed Gomez in Manila but readily
agreed to let the bishop have Puche.
The grammar school was formally inaugurated that same year with the
presentation by the students of an academy in Latin and Spanish in honor
of Bishop Agurto. It was held in the cathedral and lasted three hours.
According to Chirino, the academy took the form of a comedia , that is, a
play in prose and verse, and was composed by Puche during his voyage
from Manila to Cebu. He wrote it **to the measure of the oar stroke and
the swing of the sailors' chanteys/' but, alas, when he was half way
through it a sudden breeze blew his manuscript off the vessel. Nothing
daunted, he started all over again, and when, a month later, he stepped
ashore at Cebu, the comedia was ready to go into rehearsals. Puche was a
Catalan, which leads one to suspect that his name ought really to be
written Puig ; fortunately, this is one problem we do not have to settle, as
he gave it up as a bad job and decided to be called simply Francisco Vicente.
He was already a deacon when he arrived and was priested by Bishop
Agurto soon afterward.
In 1595 Cebu had a small Chinese quarter with about 200 residents. In
order to be able to work among them Chirino applied himself to the study
of the language (his third since his arrival in the Philippines) under a
young Christian Chinese whom Dasmarinas the Younger sent from Manila
Mission Stations
167
to be his tutor. He learned enough to be able to conduct convert classes
with the tutor’s assistance. On Pentecost Sunday 1596 his first converts
were solemnly baptized. They included two prominent members of the
Chinese community, Don Lorenzo Ungac and Don Salvador Tuigan.
In accordance with Bishop Salazar’s ruling, they submitted their queues
to the shears before receiving the sacrament. Puche, or Vicente, took up
the study of Chinese in his leisure time and was soon able to assist Chirino
in this ministry. By 1599 the Chinese Christians of Cebu had built their
own church, which the bishop gave to the Jesuits to administer.
The Cebu residence subsisted for a time entirely on the alms of the
citizens, to which the colonial government later added the usual subsidy
for two missionaries, 200 pesos and 200 fanegas of rice per year. Chirino
tried hard to make ends meet on this income, but found the going difficult.
As the central house of the Visayan missions the residence had to take care
of the men who got sick at the stations or needed a rest or were awaiting
assignment. Moreover, the building itself which was of wood was deterio-
rating rapidly and major repairs were urgently needed, or, better still, a
new house. In view of this Prat requested the municipal authorities of Cebu
on 6 April 1600 to hold public hearings on the ministries of the Cebu
Jesuits and the sufficiency or insufficiency of their income, and, if their
findings justified such a course, to request an increase of the royal subsidy.
Bishop Agurto and many prominent citizens testified at the hearings.
They declared that the Jesuits were fruitfully engaged in priestly ministries
among Spaniards, Visayans, and Chinese, and that they performed these
services free of charge in accordance with the custom of the Society. In
particular, they ministered to the Chinese in their own language. They also
conducted an elementary school and a grammar school without charging
any tuition fees. They lived in a small wooden house which was now too
small for them and which needed to be repaired and enlarged. The govern-
ment subsidy which was their only stable income, besides being too small,
was appropriated from a variable and uncertain source of revenue. This
was the so-called caja dt las cuartas , a fund made up from one-fourth of the
tribute derived from encomiendas where there was as yet no religious
instruction. On the basis of these depositions the city corporation of Cebu
endorsed Prat’s request for a more adequate subsidy to the audiencia of
Manila. And there the matter ended, for all the good will in the world
could not fill up the void in the public purse.
Chirino and his community had to struggle along as best they could,
trusting in divine providence and the generosity of their many friends.
Occasionally they would receive an extraordinary donation or a legacy, and
by careful husbanding of these Chirino began to put together the endow-
ment of a future college. In 1 599 he accepted the gift of a ranch which had
twelve or thirteen head of cattle in one pasture and five or six in another ;
168 The Jesuits in the Philippines
probably the tiniest beginning of a college endowment in the annals of
Jesuit education.
A provincial or vice-provincial of the Society is obliged by the rules of
his office to make a visitation of all the houses under his jurisdiction as far
as possible every year. Prat made his first visitation, as we have seen, in
1 596. Transportation difficulties obliged him to skip a year, but in 1598
he made a second visitation. At the end of each of these visitations he drew
up a set of ordinances for the guidance of local superiors and subjects.
These ordinances are of great interest. 50
They fall roughly into three groups. The first group is concerned with
the administration of the sacraments of baptism and matrimony. Prat tells
his men not to worry about statistics, but to see to it that they did not
baptize anyone who had not been properly instructed.
Let them not put their care in that as many as possible are baptized, but rather
that those who are baptized are ready for it and lead Christian lives, and even
though few give good example to their people. Make sure of two things : that those
whom you baptize are well instructed in the truths of our holy faith, firmly
believe them, and are convinced of the error of idolatry; and that they have
formed a real attachment to the Christian way of life, and are resolved in future
to avoid their pagan sacrifices, their usurious practices and their drunken feasts. 51
The very old may be baptized if they have an understanding of what they
must believe in order to be saved ; it is not necessary for them to know any
of the prayers by memory. On the other hand, children and young people
should know the prayers and the entire catechism before baptism. As for
those of middle age, they should be required to know how to bless them-
selves, and how to say the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Creed
from memory, although in certain cases these requirements could be dis-
pensed with. The missionaries should see to it that there are several Chris-
tians in each town or village who know how to administer baptism in case
of necessity, and that all their converts are familiar with the method of
making an act of perfect contrition in danger of death when a priest cannot
be sent for.
With regard to matrimony, it seems clear that the marriages contracted
by Filipinos in their infidelity are for the most part not true marriages
because there was no intention of entering into a permanent union. Hence,
if both husband and wife are willing to become Christians, let them be
baptized and then married before the Church. If one of the parties is not
ready to be baptized along with the other, let them be told that they are
not truly married until they give their consent to a perpetual union. This
consent should be given before the party who is ready for baptism is given
the sacrament. If one of the parties is absent and will not be back for some
time, and the other wishes to become a Christian, let him or her be bap-
Mission Stations
169
tized. If the absent party returns and is willing to be a Christian, he should
be baptized as soon as possible even without undergoing the full catechu-
menate. If he is not willing, then the Christian party may be permitted to
live conjugally with him if there is any probability that the marriage con-
tracted in infidelity was valid. If no such probability exists, they are to be
forbidden to live together as man and wife until the pagan party consents
to be baptized, or to live peaceably with the Christian party in a perpetual
union.
All the baptized in our missions are to be obliged to attend the whole
Mass on Sundays and holy days, and catechumens the first part of the
Mass up to and including the sermon. During Mass the lay brother should
be present in the congregation, in order to show the people when to stand,
when to kneel, and how to participate devoutly in the holy sacrifice.
The second group of ordinances regulate the relations of the missionary
with his flock. In all his dealings with the people he should show gentle-
ness combined with gravity and modesty. Hence he should never lay a
hand in anger on anyone, even a child. The ordinary punishment for faults
should be admonitions, either public or private, according to the nature of
the offence. More serious faults, such as rebellion or disobedience, may be
punished by whipping or a term of enforced labor on public works, such
as church construction or repair, clearing of town sites, road or bridge
building. However, if it is necessary to inflict physical punishment, the
missionary should not do so himself. He should notify the petty governor
of the town or the headman of the village in order that he may administer
the punishment.
In general, pecuniar)" fines should not be imposed. True, the bishops per-
mit the fiscal to collect certain fines and keep them as a prerogative of his
office; this may be permitted as long as it is clear that such fines do not in
any way redound to the benefit of the missionaries. Our missions should
have neither stocks nor jails, and the people should be notified that fiscals
have no authority to arrest or punish anyone without the express authori-
zation of the missionary in charge. In particular,
. . . the boys in our schools should be treated with great gentleness. Let them be
given ample time for games. As for the older catechumens, let them be given an
occasional treat of sweet potatoes or tuba, so that both the fathers and their
teaching may be more acceptable to them . 52
One of the missionaries should be designated to act as arbiter in disputes
voluntarily submitted by the parties for settlement, and all such disputes
should be referred to him. This is in order that the people may feel per-
fectly free to approach the other fathers for advice or spiritual consolation.
Besides being gentle and affable the missionaries should be very strict
on themselves in all matters of justice and give to everyone what is due him.
170 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Let the natives be paid a fair wage for their work, even the tanores . Whatever the
fathers buy should be paid for at the current market price, and not at the price
fixed by the central government or the alcalde mayor, unless this is considered to
be a just price. In general the people may be exhorted to practice almsgiving and
other good works; but in particular cases let this be done with great caution. No
alms should be received for the mission without making sure that it is freely
given and that in giving it the donors do not deprive their children and relatives,
whom they are obliged to support. 53
The tanores (from Tagalog tanod , watchman) referred to in the above
passage were the young men of the village or town who by a government
ordinance were assigned in rotation for a week of work or guard duty in
mission churches and residences. Because the government made no pro-
vision for their payment, Prat here enjoins that in the Jesuit mission
stations they should be compensated for what they lose in being thus with-
drawn from their ordinary occupations. These wages should be included as
a regular item in the mission aries* budget, along with food, clothing, and
other necessities. Another item to be included in the budget of mission
stations without a regular boarding school for natives is the support of a
few selected boys whom the fathers will cause to live with them in the
mission residence and train as catechists, hiring a teacher for them if
necessary. 54 The subsidy received by the missionaries from the encomen-
dero for their living expenses should be made to cover all these expenses,
and if anything is left over at the end of the year, it should be spent on the
poor ; nothing is to be retained for the Society.
Superiors of mission stations should be careful not to make any loans,
either of money or rice, to the people. In cases of real necessity, as when a
farmer has no seed rice during the planting season, what is needed should
be given as an outright gift. A loan merely serves to alienate the borrower
from the priest.
Special care should be taken to win the good will of the datus and head-
men because of their great influence for good or ill on the rest of the
people. The missionaries should treat them with respect and insist that
others do the same. If individual missionaries should have occasion to
communicate with the Spanish authorities on mission matters, they should
send their letters to the rectors of Cebu or Manila unsealed, and it shall
be at the discretion of these superiors to transmit or not such communica-
tions.
The third group of ordinances pertains to the personal conduct and
domestic arrangements of the missionaries, and are obviously designed to
safeguard their religious spirit and good name. Priests ought not to go on
sick calls or visit private houses without a companion. In fact, it is prefer-
able to have the people bring their sick to the church to receive the last
sacraments if this can be done without injury to the patient. This is not
Mission Stations
171
always possible in the Visayan missions, where the people are dispersed in
scattered villages ; hence, where these conditions exist, the missionaries not
only may but should bring the sacraments to the sick in their homes, even
if a companion is not available.
The lay brothers should come home from work before the evening
Angelus. The door of the mission house is to be locked every night before
retiring. The superior should see to this himself and keep the key. No
women are to be permitted inside the house or even in the yard, which is
to be fenced.
One day a week, preferably Thursday, should be set aside as a vacation
day not only for teachers and students but for missionaries also, for they
need this day of rest as much if not more than those in studies. During
these weekly holidays something extra in way of food, such as a merienda —
high tea — should be provided, and parlor games such as chess, checkers,
and molinillo may be permitted.
It will be gathered from these ordinances that the Philippine vice-
province had found in Prat a superior very much like St. Ignatius in his
happy combination of high ideals with solid sense. Two major criticisms
are made of his method of government in the reports sent to Acquaviva by
the Philippine Jesuits. Juan de Ribera, who succeeded him as rector of the
College of Manila, found his generosity to the mission houses excessive,
especially since he indulged in it at the expense of the college. The books,
furniture, and sacred images which he kept sending to the missions had by
1598 cost the College of Manila 2,000 pesos. Where would it all end?
Ribera made vigorous representations, but to no avail. He was also of the
opinion, and in this Chirino agreed with him, that Prat had overextended
himself, taking on more mission stations than his available personnel could
reasonably handle. This had the effect of dispersing the fathers and brothers
over too wide an area in fractional groups of two or three. This was especi-
ally disturbing to Chirino, as he knew from his own experience that this
kind of distribution, with its lack of companionship and of the safeguards
and incentives of community life, exposed a religious to many temptations
and dangers. He suggested the alternative polity of forming larger com-
munities in fewer residences and taking care of the other stations by the
method of mission tours.
Prat was fully aware of the disadvantages of dispersal, but he wanted to
stake out a claim, as it were, to mission territory which would be wide
enough to give full scope to a full-fledged Jesuit province. The mission
stations would be understaffed in the beginning, but he hoped as more men
came to assign four or five to each. According to Ribera, he kept insisting
that God would provide, but when his men began to die on him, he decided
that not to shorten his perimeter would be tempting Providence, in 1598
the missions of Catubig in Samar and Butuan in Mindanao were closed. 55
Chapter Eight
VISITATION
A project in which Prat took great interest was the foundation as part of
the College of Manila of a boarding school for native boys, which Alonso
Sanchez had suggested some years earlier to Acquaviva. It will be recalled
that Governor Dasmarinas the Younger had assigned a subsidy of 1,000
pesos a year for the maintenance of a residential college for Spanish scholars
taking courses in the College of Manila. Some months after Figueroa had
provided the College of Manila with an endowment, Prat saw the governor
and persuaded him to transfer the government subsidy from the proposed
college for Spaniards to a college of natives. We do not know what argu-
ments he advanced in favor of this change. He may have pointed out that
most of the Spanish students came from families resident in Manila, and
hence that there was less need of a residence hall for them than for native
students coming from the provinces, supposing that the idea of opening
a school for them met with the governor's approval. He may also have
suggested that Figueroa's endowment might, with careful management, be
increased so as to be able to support in the future not only the Jesuit com-
munity but the Spanish college desired. At any rate, Dasmarinas fell in
with Prat's proposal, transferred the subsidy to a college of natives, and
approved an additional grant of 600 pesos to pay for the construction of a
building.
The purpose of the institution as Prat conceived it was to give the sons
of the native ruling families an education which would not only make
Christians of them, but fit them for the local magistracy; for as town
governors and village headmen they could exercise a profound and salutary
influence on their own people. They were to live together in community
under a Jesuit priest and brother, and receive instruction in Christian
doctrine, reading, writing, vocal and instrumental music, and handicrafts.
In addition to educating Filipino boys, the school would grant resident
scholarships to poor Spaniards who wished to study for the priesthood.
This arrangement would provide them with excellent opportunities for
learning the native languages while pursuing their seminar) 7 studies in the
College of Manila.
Work was started at once — in late 1595 or early 1596—011 a building
within the Jesuit compound. It cost more than the estimated 600 pesos
(as Jesuit buildings often do) and Prat was obliged to borrow 1,000 pesos
172
Visitation
173
from the endowment of the College of Manila to continue the work.
Moreover, in his eagerness to make a beginning, he opened the school
before the building was ready, reserving a part of the Jesuit residence as
temporary quarters and classrooms for the school boys* He also hired two
lay teachers for them, one of music and another of reading and writing.
By 1598 the building was not yet finished and the debt of the college of
natives to the College of Manila had grown to 2,000 pesos. This worried
Ribera and his consultors greatly, but Prat assured them that it would all
be paid back as soon as the government started to release the annual
1
Unfortunately, the government never did. Tello, Dosm-arinas’ successor,
confirmed the grant in 1596, but the royal treasury officials were unable to
make it good. Prat was left with an unfinished building, a debt to the
Figueroa endowment, and a group of scholars he could no longer support.
Much against his will he was forced to disband them. On 6 July 1601
Governor Tello wrote to the king that the whole project had fallen through
because of lack of funds, and on 1 5 July 1604 his successor Governor Acuna,
put the final quietus on it.
It seems to me [he reported to Philip III] that although this work is very good
and holy it would be preferable that said college be founded for poor Spaniards,
sons of residents or those who come to settle, in order that they may study and
learn virtue and letters so as to be more fit later on to govern and administer the
colony and be parish priests and missionaries. This would be a greater benefit
than any which can be derived from a college of natives, since the sum of what
these will learn is reading and writing and nothing more, for they can neither be
priests nor officials, and after they shall have learned something they will return
to their homes and take care of their farms and earn their living.
Against this paragraph some royal secretary in Madrid scribbled the
notation: " No answer required; ” and that was that. The idea of a board-
ing school of natives in Manila was never revived, although it was realized
on a smaller scale in Leyte by Humanes, as we have already seen, and
later on by the Jesuits in Bohol. 2
Meanwhile the grammar and moral theology classes in the College of
Manila settled down to serious work. It is not known how many students
there were in the moral theology class. In the grammar class there were
18 or 20 in 1596-1597, 30 in 1597-1598, somewhat more than that in
1 598-1599, and at the beginning of the next school year it became neces-
sary to form two classes of grammar, one for beginners and another for the
more advanced.
Classes were held for two hours in the morning and two hours in the
afternoon during a long school year: from St. Barnabas’ Day (11 June) to
the end of April. This was thought to be reasonable, "considering the
174 Tfe Jesuits in the Philippines
oppressive heat of the country.” Moreover, no classes were held on Thurs-
day afternoons, and this even if a holiday should occur during the week.
But this comparatively light regular schedule was made up for by a
“summer session” lasting from I to 18 May, during which classes were
held for one hour in the morning and another in the afternoon. Only on
19 May, St. Pudentiana's Day, the patronal feast of the city, were the
grammarians left in peace, and this vacation lasted a bare 20 days until
St. Barnabas came around again.
Montoya, the grammar master, was not impressed either by the talent or
the application of his scholars; “one does what one can,” he said. How-
ever, he succeeded in making them bestir themselves sufficiently to present
a program of welcome for Archbishop Santibanez, Bishop Agurto, and
Bishop Benavides when they arrived in 1598. The program was staged in
their classroom and consisted of three dialogues and the recitation of epi-
grams and eulogies in Latin. Aside from this they seem to have made
reasonable progress in their studies, for on 28 June 1597 Governor Tello,
looking ahead, recommended to Madrid that the College of Manila be
authorized to open courses leading to a university degree, 'Tor the sake of
the students of this land which is so far away from the universities of
Europe.” There were, then, some at least in Montoya's class who showed
an interest in and capacity for higher studies. The response to this recom-
mendation was the usual one; Prince Philip, acting in behalf of the aged
Philip II, directed the archbishop of Manila to send a detailed report on
higher studies in the Philippines. Were there any ? Where given ? In what
form ? To what students ? With what results ? And what did he, personally,
think of the advisability of having an institution in the Philippines em-
powered to grant university degrees ? We shall see in due course how this
matter developed. 3
The college church begun by Sedeno was finally completed in 1596 and
dedicated on the feast of St. Anne, 26 July. Its general plan followed that
of the Jesuit church in Rome, with which Sedeno was familiar. Two bal-
conies ran up the body of the church from the choir loft, supported by two
courses of pillars which divided the church into three naves. Above the
main altar was a statue of St. Anne, wdiich a benefactor had donated along
with a silver lamp to burn perpetually before it. The statue seems to have
been replaced in 1604 by a new retable consisting of a large painting of
Our Lady with the Child Jesus and St. Anne, and two smaller paintings
on either side of St. Catherine and St. Ursula. The triptych was executed
by Chinese workmen.
On 12 January 1597 the relics obtained by Sanchez in Rome were
solemnly enshrined above the altar on the epistle side of the church. The
pomp-loving Manilans made this enshrining the occasion for elaborate
festivities.
Visitation
175
The caskets containing the relics were carried in procession from the
Augustinian church through the principal streets of the city. Taking part
in the procession were groups of Chinese, Japanese, and Tagalog dancers
in their national costumes. To the music of flutes and flageolets they
stepped and pirouetted solemnly beneath elaborately decorated arches
erected by the citizens. From the first-story windows of some of the houses
along the processional route fountains of water and palm toddy flowed,
presumably to fortify those who took part in the procession so that they
might not faint by the wayside. One particularly opulent citizen went his
neighbors one better by providing a fountain of fresh milk and another of
genuine wine from Castile. It is to be hoped that the refreshment derived
by the marchers from their occasional potations enabled them to decipher
the numerous inscriptions in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Spanish, and Tagalog
with which the church was festooned. The festivities were prolonged for
eight days after the actual enshrinement. On the last day a poetical joust
was held and prizes distributed to the winners. Two grammarians delivered
declamations and apparently acquitted themselves creditably, but Father
Montoya had to write their pieces for them. 4
The Jesuit church continued to be by preference the church of the native
population of the city, which in 1597 had grown to 6,000. Two priests,
Diego Sanchez and Luis Gomez, were assigned full time to this ministry.
They conducted a series of catechetical instructions on Sunday afternoons
which was so well attended that many people who could not squeeze into
the church stood outside in the street and the plaza to listen. After the
instruction vespers were sung by a Tagalog choir, with an orchestra of nine
Negro musicians, bequeathed to the college by Figueroa, furnishing the
accompaniment. Noting the great delight the Tagalogs took in church
music, Prat permitted all the Sunday Masses in which a sermon was given
to be sung with choir and orchestra.
Diego Sanchez usually took the Mass for the Tagalogs on Sundays. At
the end of it he gave a fervent exhortation to charitable works, and after
unvesting would take his cloak and sally forth to the hospital for natives
outside the walls, followed by a large part of his congregation. There they
would spend the rest of the day making beds, cleaning pots and pans,
washing dishes, sweeping the w 7 ards, fetching water, pounding rice, serving
meals, and doing whatever else they could to make the patients comfortable.
Another popular devotion which attracted great crowds was the Saturday
Mass of Our Lady. Saturday was a market day in Manila, and many people
came from the surrounding tow r ns and villages at daybreak, as soon as the
city gates were opened, to bring their wares to market. But instead of going
directly to the town square, many got into the habit of stopping at the
Jesuit church, leaving their baskets of greens and fruit and other merchan-
dise at the door and going in for Mass.
176 The Jesuits in the Philippines
The piety of the Tagalogs who frequented the college church encouraged
Prat to form a religious association or confraternity of laymen similar to
that founded at Antipolo at about the same time* He placed it under the
advocacy of All Saints, with special devotion to the martyrs venerated at
the altar of relics. Admission was limited to a few. Members were required
to go to confession and communion regularly ; to visit the sick and supply
them with food and medicines; to accompany funerals and pray for the
dead ; and to provide a free meal to the poor of the city on the three feasts
of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. The meal consisted of several courses
and was served by the members personally. Chirino witnessed one of these
banquets, at which there were over 100 persons. After the meal the mem-
bers of the confraternity washed the hands of their guests, kissed them and
sprinkled them with perfume. The food left over they took to the prisoners
in the city gaol and the convicts condemned to hard labor in the royal
foundry. Diego Sanchez was the first moderator of this confraternity.
Besides the Sunday school for Tagalogs in the college church, the Manila
Jesuits conducted two other catechism centers, one in the city square for
the Spanish children and another in Fort Santiago for the Spanish troops.
These were held every Sunday afternoon from All Saints to Easter until
with the increasing occupations of the fathers Prat limited them to the
Sundays of Advent and Lent. During Lent the catechetical instruction to
the troops was followed by a course of sermons which the governor and
the members of the audiencia attended. The Lenten series of 1599 was so
effective that the fathers heard at the end of it 290 general confessions,
which could not have been much less than the total number of officers and
men in the garrison.
The College of Santa Potenciana continued to be a Jesuit chaplaincy.
There were 60 girls in the college by 1598. The superior of the house and
several of the girls had applied for permission to take religious vows, and
in anticipation of ecclesiastical approval had begun chanting the office in
choir, making mental prayer, and adopting other practices of a religious
community. The girls who had no vocation for the religious state were
suitably married when they came of age, the dowry being provided by the
Misencordia. The college also served as a hostelry for the wives of army
and navy officers and merchants, who took up their residence there while
their husbands were away on protracted missions or voyages.
The Manila Jesuits did not neglect that most important ministry of the
Society, the giving of the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius. Popular mis-
sions were given during Lent to both Spanish and Tagalog congregations.
One feature of these missions was a public discipline for men which took
place in the church three times a week. The congregation assembled after
dark, and after the reading of a chapter from Fray Luis de Granada or some
other pious author, they scourged themselves in penance for their sins while
Visitation
177
the psalm Miserere was chanted. Closed retreats were also given in the
college to ecclesiastics and laymen, among whom the documents of the
time mention the schoolmaster of the cathedral, the admiral of the fleet,
and several army and navy officers. 5
These ministries in addition to the school work kept the college com-
munity fully and fruitfully occupied. They rose a little before 4 a.m.
and made their morning meditation from 4 to 5. This was followed by
Mass and breakfast. Dinner was at 10 A.M. and supper at 7 P.M. At
9 or shortly thereafter they retired. If modern Jesuits do everything an hour
later, they can blame (or thank) the electric light for it; the order of time
in the old Society was obviously planned to take full advantage of daylight.
But if these stalwarts rose an hour earlier, they also dined more heartily.
The ordinary fare of the college community was beef or pork at dinner and
supper except on days of fast and abstinence. Prat's ordinances of 1596
allowed two pounds of meat to every three men at dinner and half a pound
to every man at supper. Vegetables were served with the meat, and fruit
for dessert. Chicken and preserves made their appearance only on feast
days. On fast days the main meal consisted of a bowl of soup and fish
or eggs. Chinese candy and comfits, which could be had cheaply, were
sometimes provided as a treat during the recreations after dinner and
supper; not, hotvever, the expensive confections imported from Europe,
unless they came to the house as gifts.
The cassock worn by the Philippine Jesuits was of dark brown or dark
grey cotton, apparently because black cloth was more expensive. The
Jesuits of India and Japan, however, wore black, and this custom was
adopted in the Philippines early in the seventeenth century. A clerical cap
or bonete was worn with the cassock indoors ; this was exchanged for a wide-
brimmed hat out-of-doors as protection from the sun. As a further
concession to the tropical climate, Prat in his ordinances of 1596 allowed
each man to keep two changes of underwear in his room. However only
the lay brothers, because of the amount of physical work they did, could
have mo cassocks. Preachers were issued a biretta to wear in the pulpit. 6
On 8 July 1598 Francisco de Vera left Manila for Mexico and Rome
as procurator of the vice- province. His principal commission was to per-
suade the father general and the king to send more missionaries ; but there
were several other things that Prat wanted him to do. At Mexico he was to
try to obtain from the brothers of Figueroa the rest of the endowment
which the latter had settled on the College of Manila, and to pry loose
from the Jesuit provincial there the men who had been assigned to the
Philippines but whom he had retained on various pretexts. At Rome he
was to ask Acquaviva's permission to institute courses in arts and theology
in the College of Manila both for Jesuit and extern students, and to grant
degrees in these faculties in accordance with the Society's privileges. If
178 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Acquaviva approved, the king's authorization was also to be obtained.
Other proposals which De Vera was to lay before Acquaviva were that the
vice-province be raised to the status of an independent province and the
residence of Cebu to that of a college ; that candidates for the lay brother-
hood received in the Philippines be allowed to learn how to read and write
and do sums ; and that the vice-province be authorized to publish books in
the native languages. 7
Prat had a special reason for sending De Vera on this errand. It was the
most effective way he could think of to detach De Vera from Governor
Tello, who had appropriated him as his father confessor and confidential
adviser. There was nothing wrong with this in itself, but it was a continual
source of embarrassment for the Society, since the Jesuit behind the guber-
natorial throne was bound to be blamed for ever)- thing Tello did which
the citizens did not like. This happened with alarming frequency. Where
government officials were concerned, Manilans were not disposed to be
indulgent. Morga, writing in a black mood to the royal secretary Juan de
Ibarra, describes Manila as
... a small town populated by persons of little worth who have come hither from
New Spain and other parts on account of poverty and other embarrassments. For
this reason they are difficult to get along with, frauds and intrigues abound, and
everyone lives as he pleases. One of their bad habits is to try the patience of his
Majesty and the royal ministers with letters and reports against the governor and
judges who do not fall in with their wishes. Moreover they induce others to write
in order to throw discredit on such officials and win favor for those who are partial
to them and do what they want. They spend the greater portion of the year in this
pastime . 8
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that Tello gave them a number
of things to complain about. When the audiencia was re-established in
1598, he gave the oidores very clearly to understand that he considered
their advice superfluous, and on one occasion showed his supreme contempt
for them by coming to a session not only carelessly dressed but " almost
naked," according to the oidores' pained report. When the audiencia
ordered the arrest of a certain Pedro Cid on suspicion of murder, Tello
extracted him from durance vile, gave him sanctuary in his own house
and married him to one of his maidservants. To Archbishop Santibanez,
he was “a vicious and tyrannical Heliogabalus " ; for the king to compre-
hend the full extent of his iniquity, it was not enough to imagine him as
being endowed with particular vices; he must conceive, if he could, "a
universal idea of all vices, raised to the nth degree and predicated of a
lawyer; this w^ould be Tello, who is your Majesty's governor in the
Philippines." He was in fact so unpopular that a plot to assassinate him
was rumored. 9 One reason for his unpopularity, according to the oidores,
Visitation
179
was that he devoted more time to advancing his private interests than to
conducting public business. And in this De Vera, unfortunately, encou-
raged rather than restrained him.
We have already called attention to the royal ordinance strictly forbid-
ding colonial officials to engage in trade. Tello apparently consulted De
Vera as to the force of this ordinance. De Vera in turn consulted his older
confrere, Pedro Lopez de la Parra, who had taught theology in Mexico.
Parra, a man of strong opinions and little tact, declared both to De Vera
and others that the ordinance was obviously merely a penal law, that is, one
was not obliged in conscience to observe it, but merely to pay the penalty
if convicted of breaking it. This opinion might well be argued in the
abstract, but in the concrete circumstances of the Philippines it was at least
gravely imprudent to sustain it publicly. Accordingly, when Prat learned
about it, he ordered Parra to keep his opinion to himself. Instead of obey-
ing, Parra wrote it all out and gave it to De Vera, who gave it to Tello.
Not only that, but to make matters worse, he told Tello that it was the
official doctrine of the Society on the matter.
This was too much. Since Prat was away on visitation at the time,
Ribera, the rector of the college, called a meeting of his consultors, and
with their advice forbade Parra in virtue of holy obedience to teach or pub-
lish his opinion. When Prat returned, he dealt with De Vera in the man-
ner described, by sending him out of the country on a mission which Tello
could not very well interfere with. 10
As it turned out, De Vera did not get beyond Mexico. Shortly before
his arrival there, dispatches were received from Rome commissioning
Diego Garcia to make a visitation of the Philippine vice-province. It was
decided that the matters which De Vera was supposed to take up at
Madrid and Rome could wait until after the visitation. De Vera, relieved
of his procuratorship, remained in Mexico with his lay brother companion,
Caspar Gomez, while Garcia prepared to embark for the Philippines on
the next galleon. He left Acapulco on 16 March 1599 anc ^ arrived in
Manila on 17 June of the same year, accompanied by two priests, Melchor
Hurtado and Francisco Gonzalez, and a lay brother, Diego Rodriguez.
Garcia was a happy choice for the important task of organizing the work
of the vice-province on a stable basis. He had joined the Society in 1 572
while a student in the University of Alcala, and went as a missionary to
Peru in 1 577. Two years later his provincial, Juan de la Plaza, took him
to Mexico as his companion when he was appointed to make a visitation of
that province. He thus had firsthand knowledge of the problems and
difficulties which were likely to confront a visitor. When Plaza was
appointed provincial of Mexico after the visitation, Garcia remained his
companion and secretary. He retained the office under succeeding provin-
cials until he was appointed rector of the College of Tepotzotlan, and
i8o
The Jesuits in the Philippines
thereafter of the colleges of Valladolid, Puebla, and Mexico City. He was
master of novices when he received the appointment as visitor of the
Philippines, a man of proven ability and wide experience in Jesuit govern-
ment. Jesuit letters and reports are maddeningly silent on the physical
appearance even of those whose words and actions they describe in great
detail. We have no idea of what Sedeho or Prat looked like, and of Garcia
we are merely told that at 47, when he came to the Philippines, his hair
and beard were competely white. 11
As soon as Garcia arrived in the Philippines, it occurred to him that he
could get no better advice on how to conduct his visitation than from
Alessandro Valignano, who had by this time returned to Japan. Valignano
replied in a letter dated 1 October 1599 that since the two mission fields,
Japan and the Philippines, were so different, he felt he was in no position
to make any specific suggestions. “However,” he added,
. . . what is essential and ought to be common to all of us w T ho come to this part
of the world from Europe, is that we should not make any change in the methods
used by our missionaries, even though they seem strange to us, until we have
acquired by experience a thorough knowledge of local conditions. Otherwise we
shall easily deceive ourselves, for many things that seem strange at first are found
in the course of time to be necessary, and hasty changes can diminish considerably
the authority which a superior ought to have. 12
Words of wisdom which were not lost, as we shall see, on Valignano’s
counterpart. Four days after his arrival Garcia had a frightening experience
with a highly consoling sequel. An earthquake which brought down several
buildings in the city cracked the vault of the college church so badly that
it had to be torn down completely and replaced with a temporary bamboo
and nipa roof. The faithful of Manila contributed over 1,000 pesos toward
the expenses of this work, and more than 1,000 persons, young and old,
men and women, volunteered their services to remove the debris and put
up the new roof. Many of those who helped repair the church were sent
by the Augustinian, Franciscan, and Dominican parish priests of neigh-
boring towns. They worked with such good will that the job was finished
in a week. This unusual testimonial of the esteem with which the people of
Manila regarded their Jesuits was not lost on the visitor. At the same time
he noted with cold objectivity that the church was very badly constructed
to begin with, and that this was due to ill-considered economies motivated
by a false notion of religious poverty, for what was saved on a loosely
mortared vault was lavished on a purely ornamental tower and an excessive
amount of gilding on the altar of relics. 13
He spent July, August, and part of September with the community of
the college, which consisted of six priests, five brothers, and seven novices.
The first change he introduced was to give the novices a separate section
Visitation
181
of the house for their living quarters and a full-time master of novices, for
up till then the rector had doubled as master. The second was to require
the younger fathers who had not yet made their tertianship or third year
of probation to join the novices at least for two or three months.
He then called the fathers into consultation as to the future development
of the college. Should the grammar school be continued ? All were agreed
that it should, for, although it would never have many more students
than it had, considering the size of the colony, it was performing a distinct
service. Already there were boys in the city who had learned their first
letters and were waiting to enroll the following year. Should higher studies
be started ? The fathers were unanimous in recommending it. and Garcia
was inclined to agree with them. The governor, the audiencia, the bishop
of Cebu, and the cathedral chapter of Manila were all sending strong
representations to Madrid that the college be authorized to grant univer-
sity degrees. The two grammar masters reported that eight or ten of their
students would be ready to begin the arts course the following term. Two
of the novices about to take their first vows could join them.
There was another consideration which weighed greatly with Garcia. His
experience as provincial secretary had taught him that the provincials of
both Spain and Mexico were much more willing to send scholastics rather
than priests to the Philippines, for a priest was no sooner ordained than two
or three rectors engaged in a grim tug-of-war for his services. If, then, the
vice-province had the means to complete the training of scholastics, it
would have a much better chance of obtaining the necessary personnel for
its rapidly expanding work. Finally, a school of higher studies would not
only give the Society a wider influence in the colony; it would fill a real
need, since there was no one else there, as he put it, <f to attend to this
ministry of the education of youth . ” This was perfectly true at the time,
for it was not until 1 6 1 1 that the Dominicans opened the College of Santo
Tomas.
Garcia brought with him a patent from Acquaviva appointing Chirino
rector of the college. When Prat learned of this he was horrified. Chirino,
he said, was a tireless missionary and exceptionally gifted as a preacher;
but he had a truly terrible temper. The poor man was perfectly aware of it
and had been trying to get it under control for years, with a singular lack
of success. If he was such a Tartar as a subject, w r hat would he be as
superior ? Garcia was sympathetic, but did not feel free to change Acqua-
viva’s mind for him; Chirino was accordingly sent for from Cebu and
installed as rector. 14
On 17 September Garcia proceeded to Antipolo and spent tw r o weeks
inspecting that mission and the cattle ranch of the College of Manila near
Taytay. He was much impressed by Almerici’s work. The patience and
tact of the gentle Italian had won the people over completely; so much so
182
The Jesuits in the Philippines
that many had abandoned their immemorial way of life, leaving their
scattered clan villages to take up their residence in the towns, simply
because he wished it. On 4 October Garcia returned to Manila and eleven
days later set sail for the Visayas with Prat, Juan de Ribera who acted as
his secretary, Melchor Hurtado and Francisco Gonzalez, the two priests
who came with him from Mexico, and four lay brothers. They reached
Tinagon on 4 November after a stormy voyage. From Tinagon Garcia
proceeded to Carigara and thence to the other mission stations of Leyte. 15
Writing Acquaviva, he tried to convey as accurate a picture as he could of
the arduous conditions under which the fathers and brothers carried on
their apostolic labors.
The climate of this land is excessively hot and oppressive. Mosquitoes and
poisonous vermin abound; snakes as thick as a good-sized beam; vipers which,
though small, are so poisonous that few survive their sting ; a great many crocodiles,
here called cayman or huaya , which in some of the missions devour quite a number
of people. Travel is mostly by water, with the usual attendant perils. Where one
can go by land it must be on foot, because up to now there are no mounts to be
had in the Visayan islands. And even if there were, the roads are so steep in places
that there is no going on horseback ; one must clamber. Where the ground is level
the mire is so deep, especially during the rainy season, which is the greater part
of the year, that horses would simply get stuck without being able to move. In
fact, our missionaries must do their travelling not only on foot but barefoot. 16
He found the men cheerfully putting up not only with these difficulties
but with great privations as to food, lodging, and medical care. As he told
Governor Tello when he returned to Manila, he had lived in five provinces
of the Society both in Europe and America, but in none of them had he seen
such poverty as in the Leyte missions. The sixteen Jesuits stationed there
had no other means of support except the 800 pesos and 800 fanegas of rice
given them as their annual stipend by the encomenderos, for in accordance
with the policy of the Society they accepted no fees whatever for Masses,
marriages, and burials. Out of this income they had to manage to feed and
clothe themselves, build and furnish their houses, pay and feed the bearers
and rowers when they went forth on their missionary expeditions, and
support the dozen or so boys who lived with them in each house and were
being trained as catechists. 17
However, the love of God and the zeal for souls have often been able to
impart a surprising elasticity to the most tenuous of means, and so it was
in this case. It was surely an echo of what the missionaries themselves told
Garda when he added in his report to the general that
. . . these hardships are not really as formidable as they appear. The climate is hot
but healthy, provided one lives temperately ; the poisonous vermin rarely do harm
to Europeans [I]; and a readiness to rough it makes the difficulties of travel, the
Visitation 183
dangers at sea, the unpalatable food and the poor lodgings bearable. Without this
readiness, of course, those who are sent here will hate this kind of life. 18
Having completed his tour of inspection, Garcia summoned all the
missionaries of Leyte and Samar to a conference at Palo. The conference
began on 6 January 1600 with twenty-six Jesuits in attendance. It lasted
for almost a month during which daily meetings were held. Garcia began
by promulgating the decrees of the fifth general congregation and commen-
ting on some of the more recent ordinances of the fathers general. He then
announced an important communication which had recently been received
from Rome. Acquaviva had apparently anticipated the concern w r hich
Chirino and others felt lest the vice-province spread itself too thinly over
too large an area. In particular, he questioned the wisdom of assigning
Jesuits in small groups of two or three to isolated mission stations, thus
depriving them of the safeguards and incentives of community life.
Accordingly, he directed that no new mission stations be opened for the
time being, and that the missionaries in the existing stations be withdrawn
to a few central residences, each of which should consist of not less than
six members. The towns thus deprived of a resident priest could be taken
care of from the central residence by the missionaries going out in pairs at
regular intervals on a circuit of the surrounding district.
This directive received the complete approval of those present at the
conference, who asked that it be put into effect at once. Garcia complied
by merging the two stations on eastern Leyte, Dulag and Palo, into one
residence at Dulag, with a community 7 of three priests and three brothers
under Francisco de Otazo as superior. Carigara, Alangalang, and Ormoc
were reduced to one residence at Alangalang, with a community of four
priests and four brothers under Mateo Sanchez. Tinagon was the only
station on Samar, Catubig having been closed earlier by Prat; Garcia
enlarged its community to six — three priests and three brothers — and
placed Alonso de Humanes at its head. In accordance with Acquaviva's
directive he ordained that the missionaries of each residence should tour
the district assigned to them in pairs, spending several days in each town
or village to instruct the people and administer the sacraments and return-
ing at the end of their tour to the residence while another pair went out,
and so on. In the residence itself the regular daily order of a Jesuit house
was to be kept. Four times a year the members of each community were
to spend several days together in the residence to make the annual retreat,
the semiannual renovation of vows, and to confer on the state of the
mission and the effectiveness of their methods. 19
Prat did not agree entirely wffh these dispositions. If the objective was
to have the missionaries lead the full common life of a Jesuit house they
did not go far enough, The residential communities were not big enough
184 The Jesuits in the Philippines
for one thing; for another, at least two out of the six or eight were always
out of the house on tour, except during the four stated times during the
year when the whole community returned to the residence for a week or so.
The only really effective change was that, instead of the old mission stations
being permanently staffed, the personnel was rotated every three or four
months. He proposed the more radical change of establishing only one
central house in Leyte and another in Samar, with a community of ten or
twelve in each. Only a community of this size could, he claimed, maintain
the order and discipline of a religious house even if two or four members
were away on tour, Moreover, it could undertake works of importance
which a smaller community could not, such as the conduct of a bigger
boarding school for natives and a more methodical course of studies in the
native languages for new missionaries. This proposal was discussed and
found impracticable due to the size of the two islands and the difficulties of
transportation. 20
Sanchez, the superior of Alangalang, urged the same difficulties against
the choice of Alangalang as the residence for the northern and western
districts of Leyte. In his opinion a seaport town such as Carigara would have
been preferable. Garcia, however, decided to let the arrangement stand,
with the modification that Ormoc, the most distant town of the district,
was to be administered by a priest and a brother in permanent residence,
who were to be relieved from Alangalang every three or four months. 21
From his own observations and the reports of the missionaries Garcia
learned that the biggest single obstacle to their work was the dispersal of
the population. Many of the so-called towns where chapels had been
erected were such only by courtesy. They had few if any permanent resi-
dents. The “ townspeople M were strewn by families and clans all over the
surrounding countryside, wherever they had their farms or hunting
grounds. They came to town only on Sundays to chant the catechism and,
if there was a priest, to hear Mass ; but, Mass over, they dispersed at once
to their microscopic settlements without the missionary's being able to
detain them for a few days' instruction. To do this, to hear the confessions of
those already Christian, and to baptize the sick in danger of death, the Jesuits
were forced to travel continually from one small settlement to another.
In a few cases they succeeded in persuading the people to form larger
communities. But, even where the people were willing, the encomenderos,
motivated by self-interest, vigorously opposed this change. For this reason
Prat felt obliged to have recourse to the King, representing in a petition
which he sent a year before Garcia's visitation that
. . . the Pintados Indians who were assigned to us and are under our care are
scattered over the hills and river valleys just as they were before the arrival of the
Spaniards, for which reason it is impossible to give them religious instruction
Visitation
185
unless they are gathered together in convenient townships. The encomenderos
whose duty it is to do this are not only of no help but some even oppose it. I
beseech your Majesty to command strictly that it be put into execution, for it is
. . , for the service of God and the good of the natives both spiritually and
politically. 22
This petition set in motion the cumbrous machinery which ordinarily
operated in such cases. A royal cedula floated slowly back across two
oceans instructing governor, audiencia, and archbishop to confer on the
problem and draw up a report on how the reduction of the natives to town
life could best be carried out with the help of the encomenderos. The
cedula was received, one of many ; circulated and annotated ; the data for
another massive dossier began to be compiled ; meanwhile things remained
as they were. The missionaries, all too familiar with the process, realized
that if they wanted anything done they had to do it themselves. Therefore,
they went ahead and tried to form the townships in spite of the opposition
of the encomenderos. The latter appealed to the alcalde mayor, alleging
that by interfering with native customs the Jesuits were driving their
people to the hills or to other islands. The Jesuits were ordered to desist,
and there seemed to be nothing else to do but abandon the whole project
when, as the Annual Letter of 1599 relates,
... it pleased Our Lord to touch the hearts of the encomenderos by means of one
of our missionaries, persuading them to account the eternal good of souls of
greater worth than a slight temporal loss, and thus to withdraw their objections.
As one of them, who happened to have the deciding vote, remarked: “Well,
since this is for the service of God, we have no option but to allow it, whether we
lose the people or not” ; for this is the reason why the encomenderos are opposed
to the project. Thereupon the alcalde mayor gave orders under specified penalties
that the new towns be organized within two months. 23
In order to build the churches in the new towns the missionaries wisely
decided to hire workmen instead of using forced labor, as the law permitted
them. In order to defray the expenses of this work the colonial government
with commendable generosity appropriated 1,500 pesos from the fund of
the fourths. It w r as slow, uphill work, nevertheless, for, as the encomen-
deros had warned, many of the natives preferred the wild freedom of the
hills to the discipline of town life. Seeing their tributaries dwindling, some
of the encomenderos went back on their word and began to undo what the
missionaries had accomplished at the cost of much weary trudging over
muddy trails and endless argument with mulish datus. This was a sore
trial; an occasional Jesuit temper wore thin and snapped; hot words were
exchanged, regretted as soon as said. One of the tasks which devolved on
Garda was to smooth down ruffled sensibilities and restore harmony
i86 The Jesuits in the Philippines
between the encomenderos and the missionaries in order that the work of
God might go on. 24
At the end of the Palo conference the missionaries separated to set up
their new residences while the Visitor, accompanied now only by Prat,
Ribera, and Brother Diego Rodriguez, proceeded by way of Ormoc to
Cebu, where he arrived in the early part of February. Fifteen of the
missionaries stationed in Cebu, Bohol, and Butuan assembled at his
summons for a conference similar to that of Palo. After listening to their
reports and suggestions, Garda decided to close the Butuan station, return
the Chinese parish in Cebu to the bishop, and set up only one residence at
Cebu city for the two islands of Cebu and Bohol. Bishop Agurto, realizing
the advantages of concentration of effort, gave his consent to these
measures, but requested that in lieu of Butuan and the Chinese parish the
Jesuits take charge of two Visayan towns: Mandaue near Cebu and Tanay
on the eastern coast of the neighboring island of Negros. Garda accepted
Mandaue, which could be easily administered from Cebu, but declined
Tanay as a resident mission, although he promised the bishop to include it
in the regular circuit of the Cebu Jesuits. 25
In fact, he made good his promise immediately by dispatching Gabriel
Sanchez thither on a forty-day mission. Tanay was a beneficed parish held
by Don Diego Ferreira, the archdeacon of the Cebu cathedral, but since
Don Diego knew no Visayan he had been able to do little for his parish-
ioners and apparently did not even reside among them. Sanchez found that
many of the people had been baptized with little or no knowledge of the
religion they had embraced. He began the mission with a series of con-
ferences on the creed held daily in the town church. After explaining each
article he would call on different members of his audience to repeat in their
own words what they understood from the lecture, or to retell the story
they liked best among those with which he had interspersed his expla-
nation. The garrulous people of Tanay, who liked nothing better than a
prolonged exchange of views, took to this with great enthusiasm, the datus
especially trying to outdo each other in eloquence. He repeated this course
five times to different groups until he was sure that most of the towns-
people had been through it. Then he had them memorize the question and
answer part of the catechism in a verse form suitable for chanting, so that
it might serve as a perpetual catechist in their gatherings during the long
periods when they would have no priest. At the end of the forty days he
returned to Cebu. 26
By thus concentrating the missionaries formerly dispersed, Garcia was
able to form at Cebu a sizable community of four priests and four brothers,
over whom he appointed Valerio de Ledesma rector. This was a bold move,
for the finances of the residence continued to be shaky in spite of the fact
that the twenty head of cattle which Chirino had accepted as a gift were
Visitation
187
placidly multiplying at a steady rate and had now become fifty. Prat,
always the stickler for religious poverty, wanted to get rid of them, alleg-
ing that the residence was not really a college and hence had no right to a
stable income. However, since permission to make it a college had been
requested, Garcia thought that the community, as a collegium inchoatum or
college-in-the-making, could retain its little herd. 27
Having made these dispositions, Garcia returned to Manila with his
entourage. His report to Acquaviva, dispatched on the galleons of 1600,
was written in sections from 8 June to 26 July. 28 It contained some con-
soling statistics. The Philippine Jesuits had under their spiritual care a
total population of 54,330, of whom 12,696 were already Christians. All
of the latter, with the exception of a few in the Antipolo mission and the
recently accepted stations of Mandaue and Tanay, had been instructed
and baptized by them. Table 1 gives the figures for the individual
Table l . Jesuit Missions in 1 600
Mission
Towns
Churches
Christians
Total population
Antipolo
4
4
3,500
3,500
Tinagon
10
10
2,600
8,430
Ormoc
3
3
646
4,000
Palo
5
5
1,200
6,000
Dulag
8
8
I, 4 °°
8,000
Carigara
4
4
1,100
2,500
Alangalang
5
5
600
4,000
Bohol a
-
4
700
9 o°°
Tanay
-
0
600
8,000
Mandaue b
1
0
35 °
400
Total
4 °
43
12,696
54 * 33 °
a. Although the four churches listed had been built, the towns were still in process of
formation.
b. The people of Mandaue attended services in the Jesuit church in Cebu.
missions. In addition to the settled population there were an estimated
25,000 or 30,000 more within the confines of the Jesuit missionary district
to whom the gospel had yet to be preached. This tremendous enterprise
rested on the shoulders of only fifteen priests and their lay brother com-
panions ; a fact which Garcia did not fail to point out in order to under-
score the urgent need for more missionaries.
Acquaviva’ $ instructions were that as soon as he had completed the
visitation Garcia was to succeed Prat as vice-provincial. But the Visitor
7*
i88
The Jesuits in the Philippines
had fallen in love with mission work, and felt that the long dull years he
had spent in administration entitled him to make at least one bid for
freedom* He wrote to the provincial of Mexico begging him to appoint
someone else, left the disgruntled Prat in office, and took off for Antipolo
without a care in the world. There, while Almerici devoted himself to
enticing his beloved Aetas to abandon the jungle for the sown field,
Garcia went happily to work among the Tagalogs, resolved to shape them
into a Christian community that could serve as a model for the rest of the
vice-province. 29
His first care was to establish a mission school similar to that of Humanes
at Dulag, for he was more than ever convinced after his visitation that the
hope of the missions lay in the children. *T would like to see one of these
boarding schools,” he wrote to Acquaviva, “established in each of our
residences, because the future of these Christian communities depends in
great part on the proper education of youth.” The school building which
he caused to be erected in the mission compound was a long low bamboo
structure large enough to contain a dormitory, a dining room which had
an altar at one end and doubled as a chapel, and a classroom which served
as a parlor on holidays. He decided not to make it a completely free
school, as were those of the Visayas, doubtless in order to accustom his
Christians to the idea of supporting their Church. Thus the boys who
belonged to datu families were required to pay for their board and
lodging; only poor boys were awarded free scholarships. The school opened
some time in late 1600 or early 1601 with twenty-four scholars carefully
selected on the basis of ability, regardless of social status.
The inauguration ceremonies took place on a Sunday. Mass over, a pro-
cession was formed with the flageolets leading, then the young men of the
mission, then the children of the catechetical school, then the violins, then
a group of boys doing a Spanish dance, and finally the boarding scholars
in their new uniform, the main feature of which was a long camisa like a
surplice. Garcia and the other fathers of the mission brought up the rear.
A banquet was served in the parlor-classroom to which all the prominent
people of the totvn and the surrounding countryside had been invited.
There were sixty guests altogether, among them sixteen datus of the high-
land clans (tagabundck) who were probably not yet Christians. It was a very
impressive affair, well calculated to impress upon the people the impor-
tance of what was being undertaken. Regular classes ensued, with courses
in Christian doctrine, deportment, reading, writing, arithmetic, and vocal
and instrumental music, taught by Garda and a Spanish layman who had
taken an interest in the school and volunteered his services. Besides the
boarding students, day scholars from the town were admitted to the
classes. 30
In 1602 the Annual Letter, speaking of Antipolo, mentions the fact that
Visitation
189
** a play in Tagalog, which is the language of this island, was performed by
the boys of the boarding school of this town, to the great delight and satis-
faction of the people* The boarding school makes great progress both
spiritually and temporally, the natives helping to support it with sizable
donations/’ 31
Garcia’s next project was a hospital, for which he erected another
building on the compound* Its purpose was two-fold : not only to take care
of the sick and make them well, but also to get the people to bring even the
sick who were beyond cure to the compound and thus enable them to
receive the last sacraments. Meals for the patients were prepared in the
fathers’ kitchen and served by the members of the laymen’s confraternity,
who also did the nursing and cleaning in the hospital*
The building of a new church was proposed by Garcia to his people in a
similar way, as a community enterprise. The royal government had given
100 pesos toward the construction, but this was obviously not enough,
even for the wooden structure which they planned. How were they to
account for the rest ? The response of the Antipolo Christians exceeded
his expectations. Two families donated a house and lot each; another donor
gave the money to purchase a set of vestments ; a third turned in 70 fanegas
of rice; other gifts raised the church fund to 400 pesos. Those who could
contribute neither money nor goods gave their labor, going deep into the
forest for the best timber they could find and hauling the logs back
through runways which they had to clear themselves* By 1603 the people
of Antipolo had almost finished their new church, a structure well and
stoutly made, according to the Annual Letter of that year, but best of all,
their very own. 32
Meanwhile the stone church begun some years earlier by the more
opulent Christians of Taytay needed only a roof to cover it. 33 But Diego de
Santiago, the missionary under whose direction the work had been begun,
was not fated to see it finished. In October 1600 two Dutch warships sailed
without warning into Manila Bay, grim harbingers of the mortal struggle
for naval supremacy in the Far East in which the Philippines would become
embroiled for the next half century. The flagship, Mauritius , Admiral
Oliver van Noort, had a crew of 100 men and mounted 24 guns; her
companion vessel, ironically christened Concordia , Captain Lambert
Biesman, carried 40 men and 10 guns. After parading before the walls of
Manila and the galleons at anchor near Cavite Hook, Van Noort took up
his station outside the narrow entrance to the bay, resolved to capture or
drive off the Chinese junks upon whose trade the very life of the colony
depended.
The Spaniards had no choice but to give battle. A merchantman, the
San Diego de Cebu , was hastily fitted out and placed under the command of
Antonio de Morga. For almiranta or companion vessel he was given a small
igo The Jesuits in the Philippines
lateen-rigged gali^abra under Juan de Alcega as captain. The two ships
carried a complement of 1 50 Spaniards and as many Filipinos. Appointed
chaplain of the flagship was Father Diego de Santiago. He came aboard
with a young lay brother, Bartolome Calvo, as companion. Calvo had
been admitted to the Society in Manila. The two were of the same age:
twenty-nine.
On 14 December Morga sallied forth to try conclusions with the enemy.
He sighted the Mauritius about half a league from the little island of
Fortun and closed in. Van Noort, seeing that he was heavily outnumbered,
signaled to the Concordia to come alongside, took aboard all but fifteen of
her complement, and told Biesman to take to his heels. He then turned
to deal with the two Spanish ships singlehanded. Morga wisely declined
a gun battle and closed in to grapple as quickly as he could, for the Dutch,
like the English, were deadly with their cannon, but in a hand-to-hand
fight with pike and cutlass the advantage might well be on his side. So it
turned out. His men swarmed aboard the Mauritius and after a desperate
melee which lasted four hours captured the enemy standards and drove the
surviving Dutch below their own decks.
The San Diego , however, was so ill-made that in the process of grappling
and boarding she began to list, shipping a considerable amount of sea. In
the heat of the combat no one noticed what was happening until it was too
late. In a desperate effort to save his ship Morga called back his men, just
as Van Noort was about to yield, and had them cast off the grappling irons
to separate the two ships. But the San Diego was finished. She rolled over on
her side and began to sink rapidly. While the jubilant crew of the battered
Mauritius spread every rag of sail to make good their escape, Morga had
just enough time to leap overboard, still clutching his cutlass and the
captured standards. A handful of his crew followed him, swimming to
safety on the bare beach of Fortun. They beckoned to their chaplain to
leap in with them, but just as he was about to do so a wounded officer on
the deck behind him cried for confession. He turned back to do his priestly
duty. Brother Calvo stayed with him. They perished with the ship, as did
109 Spaniards and all the Filipino and Negro members of the crew.
Meanwhile Alcega on the galizabra — at Morga' s orders as he claimed
afterward, without them according to Morga— set off in hot pursuit of the
Concordia , overhauled her, dismasted her with a well aimed shot, and
towed her back in triumph with Biesman and 12 of his crew in chains.
The prisoners were condemned to death out of hand as pirates, but since
they were also heretics an effort was made to assure their eternal salvation
by convincing them of the error of their ways. All were converted except
Biesman, stubbornly Protestant to the last. The rest were merely hanged;
he was garrotted and his body cast into the sea. 34
Almost exactly a year after young Santiago’s heroic death, his old superior
Visitation
i 9 i
Almerici went to claim the reward of a long and fruitful apostolate. His
final illness overtook him while organizing a settlement of Aetas five or
six miles from Antipolo, to which he gave the name of Santiago. It was
his hope that the 1,200 Aetas whom he had encountered in his ceaseless
rounds of that mountainous district would one day make Santiago their
home, but he was obliged to bequeath this ambition to his successors.
Chirino hurried to the side of the stricken veteran and with loving care had
him taken by litter to the College of Manila. There, on 2 December 1601,
just as the bells of the city were ringing the evening Angelus, Almerici
died. 35
The loss of these two men was compensated for in part by the arrival the
previous May of seven priests and three lay brothers. The priests were
Gregorio Lopez, the superior during the voyage, Gregorio Baroncini,
Fabrizio Sarsali, Tomas de Villanueva, Diego Laurencio, Pedro de Segura,
and Angelo Armano. The brothers were Francisco Simon, Diego de Zar-
zuela, and Martin Sancho. 36 Sancho, it will be recalled, was the little
Pampango boy who had accompanied Sanchez to Europe fifteen years
earlier. The unaccustomed cold of winter, especially in unheated Jesuit
houses, must have been too much for him, for he died of tuberculosis less
than a month after his arrival. 37
Chapter Nine
ORGANIZATION
Lopez brought the reply of the provincial of Mexico to Garcia's request
that he be spared the burdens of the vice-provincialate : a round and
unequivocal No. Garcia, who probably did not expect anything else, com-
plied as cheerfully as he could. Montoya took over the Antipolo mission
and Prat became master of novices. Another communication from the
provincial of Mexico stated that it was Acquaviva's wish that the College
of Manila should not open a course of arts unless it was fairly certain that
it would not have to be discontinued later on for lack of students ; as for
the idea of making the college a university", nothing whatever should be
done about it until a detailed report had been sent to Rome.
Garda replied, on 27 June, that the grammar school of the college, which
had been in existence five years, had already produced twelve or thirteen
students ready to begin arts. To these should be added two Jesuit scholas-
tics received in Manila who after completing their novitiate were put to
reviewing the Latin studies they had previously made; they too were ready
to commence philosophy. There were enough, then, to make up a class of
arts, and the course could well be taught in a three-year cycle, each enter-
ing class joining the previous one and completing the course in the next
cycle. A small but steady supply of students was assured by the grammar
school, which now had an enrollment of forty in two sections. Because of
these excellent prospects he had already made the announcement that the
course of arts would be definitely inaugurated in August with Miguel
Gomez as professor. 1
As for transforming the college into a university, Acquaviva must have
been misinformed. There was never any intention either on his part or
that of the colonial government of establishing a university in the full
sense, with faculties of law and medicine; what was desired was authori-
zation to grant degrees in arts and theology. The Society already had this
authorization by papal privilege ; all that was necessary was the permission
of the king as patron in the Philippines. This was being warmly urged not
so much by the Jesuits themselves as by the civil and ecclesiastical authori-
ties of the colony. Bishop Agurto of Cebu, for instance, expressed himself
as being thoroughly in favor of the project, principally because it would
supply badly needed diocesan priests. He added as a supplementary but no
less cogent reason that an institution of higher studies would give the idle
192
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194 Tie Jesuits in the Philippines
young men of Manila something to occupy themselves. The good bishop
obviously looked upon this as a serious problem, the best answer to which
was a stiff dose of Aristotle and Euclid; “for,” he said, “ since the Span-
iards do not practice the mechanical trades, their sons do not learn them;
hence, with the exercise of letters and having something to occupy their
time and associating with the fathers of the Society, they will give them-
selves to the exercise of virtue .” 2 A sanguine prediction, which a long line
of professors of the College of Manila strove mightily to realize.
It was uphill work in the beginning, for there was little in Manila at
that time to encourage a red-blooded young Spaniard to apply himself to
his books and much to entice him away from them. When Garcia returned
from his visitation of the Visayas he found the grammar masters thoroughly
discouraged at the little progress their students were making. They were
inclined to throw the blame on the enervating climate, which made it an
effort even to take a tome down from the shelf, and on the complete
absorption of everyone in the China trade, for which familiarity with
letters of credit was much more relevant than familiarity with letters.
The result was that while the boys were practically pushed by their parents
to school every morning, they still managed — such is the inexhaustible
inventiveness of the young mind — to keep their class attendance down to
what they considered a reasonable minimum . 3
Garcia felt, however, that the grammar masters failed to touch the nub
of the problem. This was, in his opinion, the social milieu itself in which
these youngsters were forced to live. It was a society in which money was
easily got and just as easily lost. Everything depended on the silver ship
coming safely into port from Acapulco, and that depended entirely on the
humors of the Pacific, not on whether those who owned a piece of it were
frugal, thrifty, lived soberly, and saved their pennies. Hence the very
manner of their livelihood encouraged the Manilans to indulge in every
form of extravagance and ostentation. Why deny yourself anything you can
pay for ? If the next galleon fails to sail or to return, you might be begging
your bread in the streets a year from now.
This frame of mind gave to secular life in Manila a shrill feverish tempo
which more than climate or commerce prevented young people from giving
serious attention to their studies. As Morga pointed out in the memoran-
dum he presented to the re-established audiencia on the state of the colony,
rich and poor, official and commoner alike, “all wish to dress in fine gar-
ments, have their wives carried in chairs attended by pages, have carpets in
the churches, and many other unwarranted luxuries, from which arise
many difficulties. He subjoins immediately what some of these difficul-
ties were.
In Manila the men are accustomed to gamble for enormous and excessive
stakes. . . . During the visits and gatherings of the women, their chief diversion
Organisation 195
is to play cards, and more commonly than is becoming their station. Men are
admitted to these games, from which greater evils are likely to arise. This matter
requires attention . . . Inside Manila there is a great number of natives, both men
and women, who are vagrants and of evil life. They lodge in the very houses of
the Spaniards ; some have houses of their own. They act as fences for the articles
which the servants steal and supply them with liquor. They eat up the city's food
supply, buy cheap and sell dear, hoard commodities and commit many other
crimes and misdemeanors, as is well known. They should be expelled from the
city and made to go back to their towns and parishes to work.
There was, then, no lack of opportunity for the young man who had a
mind to divert himself, and it was fatally easy for him to fall in with evil
companionship. Even if he belonged to a family of relatively modest
means, he was waited on hand and foot by compliant servants and even
slaves ; for, although it was forbidden to enslave Filipinos and to import
Negro slaves, “ except very young ones/’ these ordinances were more
honored in the breach than in the observance. Indeed, the demand for
slaves was so great that, as Morga told the audiencia, the Portuguese were
flooding the country with their most undesirable Negroes, those they
could not sell anywhere else. But even more dangerous to the young than
their slave-filled houses was the fact that Manila had become a dumping
ground for the human refuse of Mexico. Mexican prison officials emptied
their overcrowded gaols by packing off convicts to Manila, where they
were permitted to go where they would and even carry arms like gentlemen,
with nothing in their costume to distinguish them from honest folk . 4
Even while he was at Antipolo, Garcia gave the problem a great deal of
thought, and came to the conclusion that the only way 7 to cope with it was
to go through with the residential college which Dasmarinas the Younger
had planned to subsidize. In this way parents who took the education of
their sons seriously could remove them altogether from the many distrac-
tions with which they were surrounded even in the best regulated homes,
and put them in a house organized for growth in learning and virtue.
With Dasmarinas no longer governor and the colonial treasury in its usual
parlous state, there was no longer any hope of a government subsidy ; but
if the College of Manila could manage the cost of the building, many
parents would be only too glad to pay a modest board and lodging fee . 5
Garcia was not mistaken in his judgment, for, when Chirino at his
behest broached the project to the authorities and some of the citizens,
the response was enthusiastic. Accordingly, his first care upon assuming
office of vice-provincial was to see what could be done about a building.
His eye fell on the unfinished foundation walls of the defunct college of
natives, and he thought that by building on them in wood and nipa a suit-
able and inexpensive residence hall could be erected; this was done.
Meanwhile he appointed Luis Gomez rector of the new college, for which
196 The Jesuits in the Philippines
he retained the name of San Jose as proposed by Dasmarinas, and instruc-
ted him to obtain formal permission to open it from the civil and ecclesias-
tical authorities. This was readily granted, the ecclesiastical heneplacitum
being couched in the following terms :
The precentor Santiago de Castro, provisor, judge, and vicar general of this
archdiocese of Manila, in the name of the dean and chapter seek vacante . . .
Whereas, the Reverend Luis Gomez, rector designate of the College of San Jose,
has made representation that the fathers of the Society of Jesus, considering the
need there is in this city that the youth be formed and trained in right conduct and
letters, have decided to found and erect the said college for the aforementioned
purpose, and to tram ministers of the gospel of whom this country stands in need ;
and whereas, he has applied for and sought permission for the foundation and
erection of the said college, and that A4ass may be celebrated therein ; and whereas,
having examined the said petition, I have found it to be proper and the object
thereof conducive to the service of Our Lord; I do hereby grant to the afore-
mentioned religious of the Society of Jesus and the said Father Luis Gomez
licence to found the said College of San Jose for the purpose described, and to
celebrate Mass therein, provided the place of celebration be decent and furnished
with the necessary appurtenances ♦ . . Manila, 25 August 1601. 6
Thirteen students, that is to say, almost all those whom the fathers
expected to inaugurate the course of arts, were enrolled by their parents
as boarding scholars of the College of San Jose at a fee of 100 pesos a year.
Among them were Pedro Tello, a nephew of the governor, and Antonio de
Morga, son of the former legal adviser of the government, now one of the
oidores of the restored audiencia. On the morning of the inauguration of
the college, they proudly arrayed themselves for the first time in the
academic gown which they were henceforth to wear on all formal occasions :
a long robe of tawny-colored husi cloth with a scarlet hood. Standing at
the front door of their hall, they made their guests welcome : the governor
of the colony, the administrator of the archdiocese, the cathedral chapter,
the city corporation, members of the religious orders, their parents and
friends.
All proceeded to the chapel, where the inauguration began with inves-
titure ceremonies symbolizing the admission of the scholars to membership
in the college. This probably consisted in the rector placing the hood,
previously carried on the arm, over the shoulders with an appropriate
formula. Mass followed, celebrated by the archdeacon of the cathedral,
Don Francisco Gomez de Arellano, and served by young Tello and young
Morga. After Mass a Latin oration explaining the nature and purpose of
the institution, and some Spanish verses commemorating the occasion,
were recited by two other students. Open house was kept all day for those
who wished to inspect the new building. In the afternoon the scholars,
accompanied by their rector and the professors of the College of Manila,
Organisation 197
went in solemn academic procession up the length of Calle Real to pay the
governor and audiencia a ceremonial visit at government house. 7
The statutes which Garcia gave the College of San Jose imposed on the
scholars a Spartan regime which would dismay a modem college student.
They rose by the bell before sunrise, not much later than the Jesuit com-
munity, made half an hour of mental prayer, and attended Mass. After
breakfast (which must have been very light because not much time was
allowed for it) and a period of private study in their rooms, they went to
class in the adjoining College of Manila with the Jesuit scholastics and the
manteistas or day scholars. They took dinner and supper in hall. There was
always reading at table, varied only by a sermon or lecture given by one of
themselves. These two meals were followed by recreation periods, outside
of which the same silence was kept as in religious communities. After an
examination of conscience according to the method of St. Ignatius and
night prayers in chapel they went to bed, just as the supper parties and
dances were beginning in the city. They were permitted to receive visitors
on Sundays and holidays, but permission to leave the college during the
daytime was granted rarely, and overnight permissions were unheard of.
Only during the annual vacations could they go home to their families. It
was a regime which pared life down to the bare essentials and focused it on
the things of the spirit ; aut studium aut suicidium , as has been said, half in
earnest and half in jest, of the somewhat similar order of time in a modern
theological seminary. There was nothing much for the scholars of San Jose
to do but study; so they did. 8
This dominant theme was not, however, without variations. Some the
scholars provided for themselves, as when in 1603 they formed a literary
academy to serve as an outlet for the imaginative faculty which the bodiless
abstractions of philosophy tended to starve. Its soirees or seminars aroused
some interest in the city, which was not after all as obtuse to the finer
things of life as the grammar masters would have us believe. They were
occasionally graced by Archbishop Benavides and the members of the
audiencia, whose presence and participation doubtless put the scholars on
their mettle. 9 Other variations were provided for them, as when in 1601
their brand-new hall almost went up in flames. The fire started in a group
of houses just outside the south wall of the city. Since San Jose stood on the
block of the Jesuit compound nearest the wall, sparks from the conflag-
ration, borne by brisk breeze, started to fall on its nipa roof and threatened
to set fire to it. The Annual Letter of 1602 tells us that the josefmos were
equal to the occasion. ‘ ‘ Those of the scholars who were limber enough for
it clambered up to smother the sparks, while those who were not fell on
their knees in the yard and besought Our Lord to deliver them from the
flames. Our Lord vouchsafed that the building should not catch fire due
to the preventive measures taken/’ 10
198 The Jesuits in the Philippines
A more serious fire took place in May 1603. It started in the grass hut
of some of the attendants of the hospital for natives in the eastern quarter
of the walled city. Fanned by a strong wind it spread, and in the space of
an hour razed 150 buildings — about one-third of Spanish Manila — to the
ground. Among the buildings destroyed were the Spanish hospital, the
church and convent of the Dominicans, and many of the warehouses in
which the city merchants stored the goods they intended to ship to
Mexico. An estimated 300,000 pesos' worth of merchandise was lost, but
the total loss, including the value of the buildings burned, was over a
million. Twenty-five persons were killed; this high mortality may be
accounted for by the rapid spread of the fire and the fact that the disaster
took place at three in the afternoon, the siesta hour. Luckily, neither the
College of Manila nor the College of San Jose suffered damage, though
the more agile josefinos were doubtless called upon once again to do some
roof-climbing. 11 Life, in short, brash and undisciplined, kept continually
breaking in on their studious retreat. Later that year of 1603 the Chinese
outside the walls rose in revolt and laid siege to the city; of that we shall
speak presently.
In spite of these rude interruptions the students of the College of Manila
managed to put in a fair amount of study. The new arts course was that
uniformly given in Jesuit colleges of the period. Its subject matter, organi-
zation, and procedures, as well as those of the grammatical studies pre-
ceding and the theological studies subsequent to it, had but recently been
codified in the form of a manual of rules and regulations called the Ratio
studiorum Societatis lesu , promulgated by Acquaviva in 1599. Since the arts
course was conducted entirely in Latin, the normal prerequisite was five
years of grammar school after primary school, that is, three years of Latin
grammar and one year each of Latin poetry and rhetoric, with some Greek
thrown in. The core of the course was philosophy, expounded from the
basic works of Aristotle as interpreted by St. Thomas Aquinas. In addition
to and in the light of this central subject arts students were also taught
mathematics and the elements of the physical and social sciences as then
understood. Textbooks did not come into use until much later; the stu-
dents took down the matter of the course from dictation, the professor
accompanying his text with a running commentary. Mastery in handling
what they learned ’was developed in regular recitation and disputation
periods, which were held much more frequently than in modern colleges.
Examinations were oral, before a faculty board; and even the thesis
required for the degree was not submitted as a written dissertation, but as
a proposition or series of propositions which the candidate had publicly
and successfully to defend. 12
By 1603 the enrollment in the grammar school had risen to sixty and
that in the arts course to a little less than thirty, of whom twenty or so
Organisation 199
were resident scholars of San Jose, and the rest Jesuit scholastics and
manteistas. Eight students who had finished two years of arts and who
intended to go on to the priesthood were considered ready for theology.
These with four scholastics 13 recently arrived from Mexico made up a
class of twelve, sufficient in Garcia's opinion to start the four-year theology
cycle. Miguel Gomez was appointed professor of dogmatic and Juan de
Ribera of moral theology ; they delivered their inaugural lectures that June.
The following year another chair of dogma was added and two public theo-
logical disputations were held, in one of which a Jesuit scholastic defended
the theses proposed for discussion, in the other an extern student. Con-
ferences on practical moral problems were held once a week during the
school year in which all the priests of the college community joined the
theologians. 14
By means of these conferences Ribera's prudence and skill in unraveling
tangled cases of conscience came to be known and appreciated even outside
the college walls. Churchmen and government officials, as well as private
citizens, brought him their doubts and difficulties, which he either solved
himself or, with the permission of the inquirer in cases which were not of
a purely private nature, submitted them to the entire theological faculty
for consideration. The written solutions to these cases, penned by Ribera
and his successors in the chair of moral theology, provide interesting and
valuable insights into the social and economic life of the period.
Meanwhile, permission still had to be obtained from the royal govern-
ment to grant degrees in arts and theology. The petition of the College of
Manila to this effect had gone to Madrid accompanied by the endorsement
of the highest colonial authorities: Bishop Agurto of Cebu, Governor
Tello, the oidores of the audiencia, the attorney-general. 15 Unfortunately,
however, Bishop Miguel de Benavides of Nueva Segovia, who succeeded
Archbishop Santibanez in the see of Manila, fell into the same misunder-
standing as Acquaviva regarding the intentions of the Manila Jesuits.
He thought that they were aiming at a full-fledged university with the
traditional four faculties, a scheme which he considered, rightly on the
whole, too grandiose for so remote and small a colony. But worse than that,
he suspected the fathers — incorrectly, as far as we can ascertain — of seeking
to endow their professorships by obtaining control of the restitutions "
fund, that is, the damages paid into the royal treasury, in accordance with
the precepts of the Synod of Manila, for injuries committed against the
natives. This aroused the archibishop's fighting blood, of which he had a
fair share.
The fathers of the Society [he wrote to Philip III] want your Majesty to do
them the favor of granting them a university for these islands. Your Majesty may
as well grant a university to each of the religious orders and the diocesan clergy
200
The Jesuits in the Philippines
too; that is how ill-considered such a project is at the present time. If your
Majesty sees fit to let me handle this affair, I shall do my best to reduce it to its
proper proportions. Much less is it advisable — indeed, it would be contrary to
conscience — to permit the said fathers of the Society to divert to their professor-
ships, as their plan is, the income from certain restitutions which a number of
veterans left in their wills to be spent on the natives, and which is being well
employed either in ransoming poor captives who would otherwise be sold into
slavery among Moors and other heathen, or in assisting them in times of illness
and scarcity. I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone can in conscience
deprive the poor natives of these benefits and put an end to such good works.
May God give his light to all of us . 16
If Acquaviva to whom the Philippine Jesuits sent regular and detailed
reports, and the good archbishop with whom they were in almost daily
personal contact, could be so mistaken as to what they were about, it was
greatly to be feared that misunderstandings about their petition might
also arise at Madrid. This was doubtless one of the reasons which moved
Garcia and his consultors to send Chirino to Europe as procurator of the
vice-province in 1602. His instructions were to proceed first to Rome
and make a verbal report on the state of the vice-province to the general.
He was to explain the nature of the residential College of San Jose and the
reasons that led to its establishment as an adjunct of the College of
Manila, namely, the need felt by the parents, clergy, and officials of the
colony for boarding facilities whereby the fathers could exercise a closer
supervision over their students, ensure regular class attendance, and culti-
vate vocations to the priesthood and the religious life. He was to request
for a solution of certain doubts and difficulties that had arisen in the ad-
ministration of the vice-province, and in particular urge once again that
the Philippines be made a province independent of Mexico. He was then
to proceed to Madrid and answer questions the Council of the Indies might
have regarding the petition for authorization to grant degrees. 17
Other matters besides the organization of studies occupied the busy vice-
provincial. The slow but steady increase in the number of novices made it
necessary to see to their adequate support. Garcia had foreseen this even
during his sojourn at Antipolo, where he hit upon a simple and inexpen-
sive way of providing the novitiate with an endowment. At a total cost of
less than 20 pesos for seedlings and labor he caused to be planted near the
town a grove of 2,000 coconut trees. As he told Acquaviva, these trees
would start to bear fruit in six or seven years. If the current market price
of the coconut and its derivative products held, each tree would then yield
an income of a peso a year, so that deducting maintenance and other
expenses, the grove should clear 1,000 pesos annually at the most conser-
vative estimate. This would be more than adequate to take care of all the
novices needs, especially if, as he proposed, the novitiate was transferred
Organisation 201
to Antipolo, where life was cheaper, the climate healthier, and the absence
of city sights and sounds more favorable to spiritual growth. 18 It will be
recalled that Sedeno had earlier placed a similar touching reliance on the
earning power of the coconut. As no further mention is made in later docu-
ments of the Antipolo coconut grove, it would seem that Cocos nucifera
failed the Jesuits a second time.
The formation of an elite or leadership group among the Catholic laity
which will act as an intellectual and moral leaven on the society in which
it is imbedded has always been a prime objective of the Jesuit apostolate,
whether in colleges, parishes, or missions. It is directly inspired by one of
the key meditations in St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises , that on the Kingdom
of Christ, in which the Son of God is represented as the commander-in-
chief in a great campaign issuing a call for volunteers who would not merely
serve in the ranks, but strive to distinguish themselves in his service out of
a complete and unqualified devotion to his Person and cause. We have
already seen various applications of this distinctively Jesuit method, such
as the special care given by the missionaries to the training of boys from
datu families, and the formation of lay confraternities which had for their
object not merely the performance of devotional practices in common,
but the practical expression of devotion in works of charity and social
reform. However, what may be termed the classic expression of this
method as institutionalized in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
was the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The original sodality orga-
nized by the Belgian scholastic Jean Leunis among the students of the
Roman College in 1563 was almost immediately perceived to be a par-
ticularly effective means of developing an elite not only among students,
but at every level in which society was divided at the time. Affiliations to
the Roman sodality — henceforth called the prima primaria — spread rapidly
over the expanding network of Jesuit establishments in Europe and the
New World, until in 1600 its furthest eddy reached the College of Manila.
On 4 October of that year Chirino, the rector, called six carefully
selected students to a meeting in one of the classrooms and explained to
them the nature and purpose of the sodality. He appointed Tomas Braceros
de Cardenas secretary and giving him the rules of the sodality asked him
to translate them from Latin to Spanish, which he did in one night.
Young Cardenas was, according to Archbishop Benavides, who esteemed
him highly, the first Spaniard to be born m the Philippines. He was a
brilliant student, and after completing arts and theology in the college with
distinction, became a priest of the Manila archdiocese. He acquired such a
complete mastery of Tagalog that even as a deacon and still in his studies,
the archbishop had him preaching regularly in the cathedral in that
language. 19
In the course of the following year the new sodality received so many
202
The Jesuits in the Philippines
applications for admission, from nonstudents as well as students, that it
was decided to divide it into two sections, one for students and clergy and
the other for Spanish laymen. A third section for Tagalogs was organized
by transforming the Confraternity of All Saints which Prat had founded
into a sodality. Petitions for aggregation with the prima prirnaria were sent
by the officers of all three sodalities in June 1601. Acquaviva as supreme
moderator approved them and dispatched the letters of aggregation on 1 8
November 1602. 20 Garcia, who took a deep interest in the movement
from the beginning, gave the sodalists the first of the series of conferences
which was a regular feature of their weekly meetings in the college church.
By 1603 Garcia was able to report to Acquaviva that the students'
sodality had a membership of 40 and that of the gentlemen's sodality 100.
Every member made a general confession before his admission and
received holy communion on the principal feast days of Our Lady. The
two sodalities collaborated in celebrating these feasts, the students with
inscriptions and declamations in verse and prose, the gentlemen “with
such an ensemble of silk, brocade and velvet hangings, paintings and
sketches, symbolic figures, triumphal arches, and other festive inventions,
that many Spaniards familiar with the life of court deny ever having seen
churches so finely arrayed as ours has been on these occasions/' A regular
activity of the gentlemen's sodality was to give a huge banquet with all
the trimmings, once a year on a feast day, to the inmates of the city gaol.
Adding a touch of the Arabian Nights to their act of charity, they carried
the courses of the banquet into the prison in solemn procession and waited
on their guests with embroidered towels slung on their shoulders. They
also took turns with the students in taking care of the patients in the
Spanish hospital, as the Tagalog sodalists did in the hospital for natives.
The student sodalists carried on an unobtrusive but effective apostolate of
the press by keeping the parlor of the Jesuit residence supplied with
spiritual books, which visitors could peruse while waiting for some
dilatory Jesuit to come down and see them. 21
Garcia must have decided to make the sodality the preferred form of lay
association in all the establishments of the vice-province, for we find the
confraternities founded earlier under various invocations at Antipolo,
Leyte, and elsewhere referred to henceforth as sodalities. On 20 April
1606 a sodality composed of clerics and laymen at Cebu sent a petition for
aggregation to the prima primaria which Acquaviva approved on 2 Decem-
ber 1607. 22 ^ 1 1
Another pious practice which Garcia popularized, if he did not actually
begin it, was that of distributing by lot to all who frequented the college
church a patron saint for the year. The first drawing of saints, so to speak,
took place on All Saints' Day 1602, when, as the Annual Letter of 1603
relates, “the saints of the year in the form of slips of paper printed in our
Organisation 203
college were distributed to the people of the city, who came in large num-
bers with much devotion to receive them/' The detail of the leaflets being
printed in the college is tantalizing, for there is no record of the Jesuits
owning a press at this early date; probably wood blocks were used. 23
Although Garcia had received explicit instructions from Acquaviva not
to accept any new missions until further notice, he was not able to refuse
Silang, a town in the uplands of Cavite with four subordinate villages and
a population of 1,500. Silang belonged to the encomienda of Diego Jorge
de Villalobos and was under the spiritual care of the Franciscans until
1598 when they were compelled to give it up. In doing so they suggested
to Villalobos that he invite the Jesuits to take it over. Prat being in the
Visayas at the time, Ribera, the rector of the College of Manila, accepted
it in his name on the understanding that the vice-province would not be
obliged to take effective possession of it until the missionaries became
available. On 8 May 1599 the cathedral chapter of Manila sede vacante
formally entrusted Silang to the Jesuits.
Garcia felt himself compelled to honor this engagement, and after send-
ing Chirino and Scelsi to Silang on a temporary mission in January 7 1601,
appointed Gregorio Lopez and Pedro de Segura as resident missionaries
later that same year. The Jesuits found that their Franciscan predecessors
had been conducting a school at Silang in which there were three classes :
those who were learning to be altar boys in the highest class, those learning
to read in the middle class, and those learning the catechism in the lowest
class. They retained this division but took in more boys and girls in the
catechism class and divided it into grades according to the parts of the
catechism. They also opened a class for adult catechumens, in the conduct
of which they received valuable assistance from an ex-katolonan, Diego
Magsanga, who though blind became their best catechist. 24
Meanwhile in faraway Peking, Pehou Yameng Liang, a captain of the
imperial guard, was memorializing the Emperor Wan Li as follows:
He, Liang, had been reliably informed by a certain cabinetmaker named
Tiongeng who had resided for a time in a city of the south sea named
Manila that near this city was a place called Keit where stood a mountain
of gold and silver belonging to no one in particular. Would not his
imperial Majesty grant him, Liang, gracious permission to go thither and
bring back 100,000 taels of gold and 300,000 taels of silver for the
imperial treasury, in order that by this means it would no longer be neces-
sary to lay so heavy a burden of taxation on his imperial Majesty’s subjects ?
Tiongeng the cabinetmaker was forthwith arrested and questioned, and
his deposition along with Liang’s memorial referred to the imperial minis-
ters for comment. Among the opinions submitted was one by Limtolam,
governor of Hongkong, who roundly advised the emperor to give no
credence to the report. The other officials felt, however, that there might
204 The J esu ^ ts i n the Philippines
be something to it, and the emperor commissioned Cocha y and two other
mandarins to go to Luzon with the annual junk fleet, bringing Tiongeng
with them, to see what truth there was in his story.
In May 1603 they slipped anchor in front of Manila. Before landing, the
mandarin Chamchian took up his brush and explained in a message to
Governor Acuna the somewhat unusual purpose of their visit. “ We have
come on no other business but this/' he concluded, “ wherefore the
governor of Luzon may sleep soundly and without fear, apprehending no
evil. We know well that Tiongeng is a liar; but come, let us make haste
and see whether this gold exists or not. Send an interpreter to accompany
us, for we have no mind to tarry in this country and give occasion to dis-
putes. Please believe us, we have no wish to stay.”
On the 23 rd of the same month the three mandarins landed and went in
state to a house which had been prepared for them in the parian. To make
them welcome and attend to their needs, the Chinese community appointed
an influential Christian convert named Eng Kang, who had taken at his
baptism the name of Juan Bautista de Vera. No sooner were they installed
in the parian than the three mandarins began to administer justice in the
Chinese fashion, hearing complaints, summoning the accused, and inflict-
ing on those found guilty the customary punishment of the bastinado,
that is, beating on the soles of the feet. Governor Acuna, upon hearing of
it, sent them a curt message to desist from exercising jurisdiction on
Spanish territory.
To placate the ruffled hidalgo the mandarins decided to pay him a state
visit. One fine morning toward the end of May Attorney-General Salazar
looked out of the window of his chambers in government house upon a
startling procession pushing its way up Calle Real through a press of
onlookers. First came six tall footmen of stern and martial aspect bearing
rods on their shoulders and white wooden tablets on their heads. Salazar
did not know, but might have guessed, that the gold Chinese characters
on the tablets identified them as police officers. Next came six other foot-
men carrying bannerets of different colors, the characters on which declared
the academic title and official rank of the mandarins. Next came one bear-
ing a black bamboo staff: the rod of justice. Then a cymbal player and four
other musicians producing the outlandish squeaks and w^ails of Chinese
music. Then a band of executioners bearing the instruments of their grisly
trade: cords and bastinadoes. Two heralds, crying out at regular intervals
to the gaping crowd to give way. Coolies, bearing on their shoulders the
lacquered box which contained the imperial commission and the creden-
tials of the commissioners. And, finally, the mandarins themselves in their
sedan chairs, each borne by four bearers and flanked on either side by
archers. Bringing up the rear was the secretary of the commission, mounted
on a charger.
Organisation 205
Acuna and the oidores hastily assembled in the hall of the audiencia to
receive the mandarins. The Spaniards found it difficult to believe that men
of such obvious intelligence could take Tiongeng's report seriously; and,
indeed, Chamchian in his note had made it clear that they did not. Why
then had they come ? Was it perhaps to spy out the country in preparation
for a descent in force ? The shoe was now on the other foot ; the Spanish
officials found themselves in precisely the same predicament as the
Chinese officials who had had to decide what to do with the various
groups of western barbarians seeking an entry into the Middle Kingdom.
After a brief consultation with the oidores, Acuna told the mandarins that
the place they called Keit was probably Kawit or Cavite. He would send
them there at once with a military escort commanded by Ensign Cervantes,
and as soon as they had verified with their own eyes the mythical nature of
the magic mountain, they would doubtless be so anxious to convey this
intelligence to their emperor that they would take their departure at once.
The mandarins agreed. They proceeded to Cavite, and found that the
sand of its shores and the soil of its fields were no more like gold and silver
than those of China. The cringing Tiongeng cried out that the sand of
Cavite was indeed sand, but the emperor could, if he wished, turn them into
gold ; the mandarins had seen enough of Manila and its wealth to realize
that it could become a veritable mine of gold and silver if certain steps
which he did not need to specify were taken to obtain control of it. The
mandarins looked at him with contempt, ordered him bound so that they
could deal with him later, went aboard their junk and sailed home. 25
This might have been the end of the affair; but by this time the
suspicions of the Spaniards were fully aroused. They had reason to be
nervous, for Spanish Manila counted only 700 able-bodied fighting men
altogether, including the troops in the Santiago garrison, whereas the
Chinese in the parian and the north bank of the Pasig, most of them males
of an age to bear arms, had reached the enormous figure of 20,000. This in
spite of the fact that the number of Chinese residents in the Philippines
was restricted by law to 4,000. The reason for this disparity between law
and fact, according to the city corporation, was that when Governor Tello
assumed office in 1596 he authorized a certain number of his friends, as a
special mark of favor, to issue residence certificates to the Chinese who
applied for them at two rials per head. When this was reported to Madrid,
the Council of the Indies took away from the governor the control of
Chinese immigration and gave it to the audiencia, to be exercised by each
of the oidores in turn on an annual basis.
In 1601 it became Morga’s turn to act as commissioner of Chinese
immigration. He appointed Jose de Nabeda assistant commissioner and
Juan Paez secretary. Nabeda, a minor official, had been banished from
Mexico for certain irregularities, and both he and Paez had arrived in the
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The Jesuits in the Philippines
Philippines with only the shirt on their backs. By 1603 Nabeda had two
riding horses in his stables (there were not three private citizens in the
entire colony who could boast as much), and he and Paez were shipping
great quantities of merchandise on the Acapulco galleon. All they did to
achieve such affluence was to sit in an office signing residence certificates.
The trick, of course, was to wait until the annual junk fleet had sailed
away, and then to seek out the Chinese who had stayed without permission
and threaten them with dire punishment unless they paid six pesos a head
for a residence certificate. They paid ; thousands of them. 26
These quick, ingenious, hard-working sangleys found life good in
Manila, where the easy-going Spaniards paid well in silver for their ser-
vices. Even in Bishop Salazar’s time the extensive parian or quarter which
they had raised as though by magic out of the noxious marsh northeast
of the walled city was a hive of profitable activity. As the good bishop wrote
to Philip II,
This parian has so ennobled this city that I make bold to assert to your Majesty
that there is no known metropolis either here or there in which there is anything
so well worth seeing as this. In it is carried on the whole commerce of China,
involving every sort of merchandise ... In this parian are to be found practitioners
of every trade and mechanical art ... In this parian are physicians and apothe-
caries with shingles over their shops announcing what may be purchased within.
There are also eating houses in great number where the sangleys and natives go for
meals, and which I am told even Spaniards frequent . . .
We have been vastly entertained here by what befell a bookbinder from Mexico
who came to this country with the materials of his trade and set up a bookbinding
shop. A sangley attached himself to him saying that he wished to be his servant,
but covertly without his master's knowledge observed how he went about binding
books ; and in less than [blank in ms.] he left his house saying that he wished to be
servant no longer. He then set up his own bookbinding shop, and I assure your
Majesty that he turned out to be such a superlative tradesman that he forced his
master out of business, for everyone now takes his custom to the sangley, and he
does such excellent work that no one misses the Spanish tradesman. Even as I
write I have in my hands a Latin Navarro bound by this man which in my opinion
could not have been better turned out in Seville.
There are many truck gardeners among these sangleys who raise abundant and
excellent crops of vegetables on soil which did not seem as though it could grow
anything . . . There are many bakers who bake bread out of the wheat flour which
they import from China. They sell it in the city square and hawk it through the
streets . . . good bread and cheap, so that in spite of the abundance of rice in this
country many prefer to eat bread . . . and they give such easy credit that if one
has no money to pay for the bread it is customary to sign a chit for it. Many sol-
diers feed themselves in this way, sometimes for a whole year, the bakers faith-
fully supplying them with all the bread they need during all that time . . .
In the open space within the four sides of the parian there is a considerable
pond which is supplied with sea water by an inlet which enters it. In the middle
Organisation 207
of this pond is an islet where the sangleys who have committed some crime are
punished so as to be seen by alh This pond adds much to the beauty of the parian
and is also very useful, for many vessels enter it by means of the abovementioned
inlet at high tide, bringing provisions to the parian which are distributed thence
throughout the city . . .
Their skill and industry enable the sangleys to construct solid and inexpensive
houses of brick and mortar ; and they do so with such dispatch that there is a man
of this city who had a house built which was ready for occupancy in less than a year
. . . They produce a great deal of cheap but excellent brick and tile. In the begin-
ning lime was manufactured here, as in Spain, from limestone, until the sangleys
began to make it from certain small stones found along these coasts called white
coral, and from seashells, of which there is a plentiful supply . . .
They engage to deliver all lime, brick, and tile at the house of the buyer, which
is a great convenience. It is also a great convenience to give one's construction
work to these sangleys, as they contract to build at so much per yard, the owner
supplying the lime only while they make themselves responsible for quarrying
the stone, bringing in the sand and all other materials. Thus they deliver the
building or other work completed without the owner having to bestir himself.
The daily wage of a sangley when he is not doing piece work is one rial, and that
includes his meals . 27
In these and other ways the sangleys made themselves indispensable to
the Spaniards of Manila. But they were, at best, a necessary evil; in the
measure as they grew in numbers and prosperity, Spanish suspicion and
dislike of them increased. As Bishop Salazar's successor, Archbishop
Santibanez, reported eight years later,
... a great obstacle to the improvement in faith and morals of the natives is their
continuous communication with the heathen Chinese. Since these people come
here to trade, it would be best for them to leave the country as soon as they have
sold their merchandise, because a great many serious evils result from their
remaining in these islands. In the first place, they have in their greed for gain
taken to vegetable farming and other forms of cultivation, with the result that
the natives, generally, lead lives of idleness and vice, since there is no compulsion
for them to work. Buying and selling and the provisioning of the country have
become a monopoly of the Chinese as retailers of foodstuffs. This has had the
effect of raising prices to such an extent that a chicken which used to cost a half
rial now costs four. Formerly a ganta of rice sold for one- fourth rial or even less ;
now it sells for two rials or at least one; and so with other commodities. Worse:
not only are they engrossers and regraters, but they are such great consumers them-
selves that one Chinese puts away more food and drink than four natives. Worse
still: the sin of Sodom is widespread among them, and they have infected the
natives with it, both men and women, for since the latter are a poor-spirited
people who follow the line of least resistance, the Chinese make use of them for
their corrupt pleasures; this curse though extensive attracts little public notice . 28
But what made them most dangerous to the tiny Spanish settlement was
their sheer numbers; that, and their close proximity to the mighty and
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The Jesuits in the Philippines
mysterious empire which, presumably, still held their allegiance. This
made the Spaniards keep a sharp eye on their indispensable but unwelcome
guests for the least sign of unrest or disaffection, and, quite possibly, in-
clined them to endow every unusual occurrence with a sinister significance.
Thus the visit of the mandarins on what was so obviously a wild-goose
chase gave rise to the most disturbing speculations. Archbishop Benavides
and others publicly declared that it was the prelude to invasion; that an
armada was being readied to take Manila with the help of the sangleys the
following year ; that they were told this in confidence by reliable informants
among the Christian Chinese.
Governor Acuna, without giving entire credence to this report, decided
to take precautions. He caused the buildings of the parian nearest the city
wall to be razed to the ground and started to dig a ditch there with the
intention of extending the moat. He sent word to the alcaldes of neigh-
boring provinces to muster native troops and have weapons made for them.
He ordered a search for arms to be made in the quarries, lime kilns, lumber
camps, truck gardens, and fishing fleets operated by the Chinese. He
summoned the leaders of the Japanese community, traditional rivals of the
Chinese, and asked them to hold themselves in readiness to join the
Spaniards in repelling the expected invasion . 29
These martial preparations, in turn, caused the liveliest apprehension
among the Chinese. Word passed from mouth to mouth that the Spaniards
were preparing a general massacre of their nation. In vain did Acuna go
personally to the parian and tell an assembly of the leading Chinese
merchants that there was no truth whatever to the rumor. The Japanese
were swaggering about boasting that they had been asked to take part in
slaughtering every sangley in the land. Tagalog hoodlums joined them in
baiting the Chinese whom they encountered in the streets, calling them
traitorous dogs, and telling them it was known they intended to rebel, but
would all be killed before that. Thoroughly frightened, the smaller artisans
and tradesmen began to desert the parian and seek safety in numbers
among the sangley truck-gardeners, fishermen, salt-bed workers, stone-
masons, charcoal makers, carters, and carpenters who lived on the north
bank of the Pasig. Among the excited crowds that gathered there to discuss
the situation, there were not lacking hotheads to propose that they com-
bine and strike first before the Spaniards could cut them up piecemeal.
Eng Kang, who was governor of the parian for that year, reported to Acuna
that trouble was brewing on the other side of the river; he was sent there
post-haste to try and dissuade his people from doing anything rash. He
found that the idea of an uprising had gained ground considerably, chiefly
through the efforts of his own adopted son, a certain Juan Ontal or Suntay.
In fact, as he told the governor upon his return to the walled city, it was
only with the greatest difficulty that he was able to make his escape, for
Organization 209
they wanted to detain him and make him their commander and king.
Meanwhile the wealthier merchants who had remained in the parian found
themselves in an intolerable position, for their fellow countrymen across
the river were threatening them with dire reprisals unless they joined in the
uprising, while the Tagalogs and Japanese of the suburbs, looking forward
to an orgy of looting, were in no mood for fine distinctions, and would
doubtless deal with them as rebels with the rest. They decided to throw
themselves at the mercy of the Spaniards and asked permission to enter the
walled city with their most valuable goods. Archbishop Benavides favored
admitting them and assigning them a section of the city where they could
be interned and placed under surveillance. But many of the citizens were
against it, fearing a Trojan horse; what was to prevent these merchants
from combining with the Negro slaves, of whom they were none too sure,
and taking the city from within? While the parian merchants waited
anxiously and the archbishop, accompanied by Prat, hurried to government
house for a further discussion of the problem with the governor and
Eng Kang, soldiers broke into the latter's residence in the walled city and
found his household Negroes in possession of a quantity of explosives. It
could have been intended for the manufacture of firecrackers ; it could also
have been intended for the manufacture of bombs. That decided the
matter. Eng Kang was placed under arrest; the city gates were slammed
shut and the drawbridges raised. Night fell. It was Friday, 3 October, the
vigil of the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
The dean of the cathedral, Don Francisco Gomez de Arellano, and the
commissary of the Holy Office, Fray Bernardo de Santa Catalina, were
spending the night with Don Hernando de los Rios Coronel, a diocesan
priest, in the latter's house in the suburb of Quiapo, across the river from
the walled city. They were sitting talking after supper when they heard
shouting and screams, seemingly from the house of Captain Esteban de
Marquina, which stood by itself in an open space not far away. They went
out into the night to investigate, and saw in the light of Marquina's house,
which was ablaze, figures running toward them with clubs and torches.
Not pausing to inquire, they fled as they were toward the river.
The fire was noted in the walled city and Governor Acuna at once sent
Pedro de Chaves and some men across to investigate. They found the place
deserted when they arrived, but were able to identify among the smoulder-
ing ruins the charred bodies of Marquina, his wife, and four children. Only
the youngest child, a baby girl, escaped, as it turned out later, in the arms
of a slave woman. Looking sharply about them in the blackness that had
suddenly become menacing, they hurried back to their boat to report to
the governor.
Don Luis Perez Dasmarinas had supper that night in the Dominican
convent of Binondo. Binondo lay west of Quiapo on the north bank, and
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The Jesuits in the Philippines
was almost entirely a Chinese parish. In the uncanny stillness which
seemed to have fallen suddenly on the night they heard a number of
curious noises ; the sudden rush of many feet ; a burst of excited chattering ;
from farther away, the rumor of many voices raised, but whether in anger
or acclamation it was impossible to tell ; and every now and again the sound
of a muted trumpet. Then the fire in Marquina's house rent the blackness,
and Don Luis immediately dispatched a messenger to Acuna asking for
troops. It was now midnight. Acuna had his bugler sound the call to
quarters. Soldiers and citizens sprang out of their beds to answer it.
Twenty men, fully armed, were sent across the river to Dasmarinas, As
the night wore toward the dawn, the sentries stationed on the wall saw
several more fires break out in Quiapo, accompanied by a great racket of
yelling and screaming. The uprising had begun in earnest; the sangleys
had decided to strike first.
Suntay, who had assumed command, established his headquarters on a
hillock north of Quiapo which he fortified. How many effective fighting
men he had to begin with is uncertain ; Spanish estimates drawn up after
the event range all the way from 2,000 to 6,000. What is certain is that
he had very few cutting weapons and practically no firearms ; most of the
sangleys were armed only with pikes and cudgels. Suntay" s plan was,
apparently, to clear his flank of the natives by burning Quiapo to the
ground, get control of Tondo to the north and west by occupying its
strongest place, the church, and then, doubling back toward the river, use
his advantage of numbers to overwhelm the Spaniards in Binondo. Once
the north bank of the Pasig was his, Eng Kang would, he hoped, rally the
parian Chinese to his cause and sweep the southern suburbs. After that, it
would merely be a matter of starving out, if they could not storm, the
Spaniards within their walls. He obviously was not aware that Eng Kang
had been arrested. Indeed, to give his men confidence, he spread it about
that his adoptive father, not he, was the real leader of the rebellion, and
they would soon be hearing of his activities across the river. This claim
cost Eng Kang his life.
Suntay's preliminary operation, the burning of Quiapo, was on the
whole successful, in spite of the clumsiness of his undisciplined troops.
But when he advanced on Tondo church, he discovered to his chagrin that
Dasmarinas, anticipating the move, had taken possession of it and was pre-
pared to offer stiff resistance. His small detachment of 20 men had been
reinforced at dawn and he now had 140 arquebusiers at his command.
Against such fire power Suntay's 1,500 cudgel men, though they assaulted
bravely, had perforce to fall back, leaving their dead strewn over the plaza.
After an hour of fruitless charges in which he lost 500 men, Suntay
retired to his fortified hillock to devise a better plan.
Dasmarinas called his captains and told them he intended to pursue.
Organisation 211
Alcega, the alcalde of Tondo, objected that they had no orders from the
governor to take the offensive. Don Luis threw him a contemptuous glance
and said, " Senor Juan de Alcega, what chicken has whispered in your ear ? "
Saying which, he gave the orders to advance in the direction which the
enemy had taken. The way led through a low-lying, reedy marsh where
the men with their heavy equipment sank into yielding ooze and got
tangled in the underbrush. Soon the rear ranks were pressing against the
vanguard, which had come to a standstill, and the whole column rolled
up into a close-packed mass of sweating, cursing men churning about for a
firm foothold in the clinging mud. Water soaked into their powder flasks,
lighted fuses were snuffed out, arquebuses slipped as the mired troopers
clutched at marsh grass to lift themselves out of the bog. Suntay saw his
opportunity and seized it. Wheeling back on his tracks he fell upon the
helpless Spaniards and literally clubbed them to death. Dasmarinas,
Alcega, the governor's nephew Tomas Bravo, and the other captains, the
very flower of Manila's chivalry, perished. Only Don Geronimo, the lord
of Siao, who had come with the reinforcements, escaped with his body-
guard, being more lightly armed and unencumbered with armor. Suntay
had his men strip the corpses, retrieve all the firearms they could, cut off
the heads of Dasmarinas and Alcega and carry them off as trophies.
It was now high noon. Gregorio Lopez was in the guard room in Fort
Santiago, hearing the confessions of the wounded who were being ferried
across the river from the combat area. The talk among the soldiers was that
there was nothing serious in the situation ; just a crazed rabble of sangleys
who had taken it into their heads that they could fight guns with clubs . . .
Mess call sounded. Lopez left the men to their lunch and walked to the
river gate, near the convent of the Dominicans, to see if he could make out
what was happening on the further bank. As he reached it, a courier sprang
up the steps from a boat and brushed past him muttering, “Bad news,
Father; bad news." Fie disappeared into the citadel on the double, and
soon afterward the alarm bell clanged. Lopez hurriedly retraced his steps.
He burst into the guard room just as the soldiers, routed from their mess,
heard the news of the massacre. “They were like men wakened from
sleep," Lopez wrote afterward, “as they gradually came to realize that
the Sangleys were actually killing Spaniards."
He collected his lay-brother companion and started off for the college.
With Dasmarinas' force wiped out, the city was in very real danger. It
might be necessary to prepare for a siege. He had recently been appointed
rector, and with Garcia away on a visitation of the Visayan missions, he
was the acting vice-provincial. The responsibility weighed heavily on him.
Bad news travels fast; as Lopez and his companion strode down Calle
Real, they heard the first wails of lamentation in the houses of the slain.
Acuna sent runners to the alcaldes of Pampanga and Bulacan ordering
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The Jesuits in the Philippines
them to come to the aid of the city with all the troops they could muster.
He divided the circuit of the wall into sections and assigned each section
to a volunteer company to guard during the night. One of these volunteer
companies was composed of Tagalogs from the parish of San Miguel east
of the parian. This parish had been given to the Jesuits to administer
shortly before the uprising. That afternoon some of its young men came to
see if they could be of any assistance to the fathers. They were given a
section of the river wall, near the royal storehouses, to guard. That night
rebel raiders attempted a surprise attack on their parish, but were repulsed
by the men who had remained behind.
Sunday morning, 5 October, dissension broke out in the rebel camp. No
word had been received from Eng Kang, and the parian Chinese had made
no move to join the rebellion. In fact, the parian gate of the city remained
open, and parleying seemed to be going on between the Spaniards and the
Chinese. Merchandise was being taken out of the parian and brought
inside the walls. Suntay had no ready explanation for these movements. He
was placed under arrest by his officers and condemned to death as a traitor.
He died crying that Eng Kang had deceived him and deceived them all.
Two heathen sangleys were chosen supreme commanders by acclamation.
They set up their standards and ordered auguries to be taken on the issue
of the rebellion. Lots were cast which were interpreted as calling for an
attack on the city on the following day. The rebels rested, bestirring them-
selves only to behead some of Suntay* s familiars.
Lopez went to San Miguel to give the parish Sunday Mass. Hearing of
the nocturnal attack, he told the people to pack up their most essential
belongings and come with him for safety inside the walls. He opened the
college church to them and had them build temporary shelters against the
stone enclosure of the patio. That afternoon the town criers proclaimed an
ordinance calling on all householders to dismantle nipa roofs and walls, in
order to lessen the danger of an attack with fire arrows. The Jesuit com-
munity and the San Jose scholars started on this work at once and com-
pleted it the next day. They also filled a row of fire buckets for emergency
use. Acuna finally decided to adopt the archbishop’s suggestion and invite
the parian Chinese to come into the city with their merchandise. The
Chinese readily consented to let their goods be hauled in, but refused to
go in themselves, fearing some trick. That night emissaries crossed over
from the rebel camp to confer with the heads of the parian community,
but these insisted on maintaining their neutrality. The night passed quietly.
The morning light revealed the rebel host massed on the Quiapo shore,
clearly intending to cross in force. Acuna decided that he was not strong
enough to prevent them, but sent patrols to set fire to the parian. At this a
shout of rage went up from the rebels and they began to cross. The patrols
retired, having done their work, and the parian gate was closed. The rebels
Organisation 213
ran through the billowing smoke of the burning quarter, killing those who
had opposed the uprising and calling on the rest to arm themselves.
Stamping out the fire in some of the houses, they climbed to the upper
storys and roofs to flaunt their banners and rake the nearest parapets with
a steady and pretty accurate fire from their captured arquebuses. The
Manilans on the wall returned the fire briskly. Among them was a theo-
logical student from San Jose who distinguished himself by calling his
shots. “The man with the banneret next/' he would call out coolly; and
sure enough, the man with the banneret would suddenly lose interest in the
proceedings.
As it became clear that the sangleys were mounting an attack from the
parian, the Spanish and native companies swarmed to defend their respec-
tive sections of the wall. Even the lay brothers among the friars had formed
a company of their own, and were looking very fierce with their habits
tucked up under their cinctures and armed to the teeth, some with sword
and pike, others with lighted fuse and arquebus. Lopez, accompanied by
one of the scholastics who flourished a rusty and obviously useless halberd,
moved along the parapet hearing confessions.
When the sangleys finally attacked, it was pell-mell, with no sort of
direction or concert. Some ran in ragged groups with scaling ladders which
they tried to place against the wall, but concentrated fire from the walls
dispersed them with heavy loss before they could achieve their purpose.
Others made for the gates as though to force them open, but with nothing
but clubs and axes to do it with. They too turned back before the mur-
derous musketry, leaving scores of dead behind. All day until late in the
afternoon they kept coming, trusting blindly in whatever gods had told
them through their auguries that the city would be theirs; but the gods
had lied.
As the twilight lengthened and the sangleys retired to lick their wounds,
Acuna sent out his incendiary patrols to set more fires, in order to clear
the area near the walls completely of cover. By nightfall the quarter of the
soap-makers and the parishes of San Miguel, Dilao (now Paco), and
Bagumbayan were a mass of flames. Showers of sparks from the burning
buildings fell on the walled city , carried by a seaward breeze. The San
Jose scholars, experts now at this sort of thing, stood by the stacks of nipa
thatch which used to be their roof and kept it from burning, while the
Jesuit lay brothers and novices did the same with the nipa of the residence
and church. Prat, the master of novices, and Armano, the rector of San
Jose, directed operations and doubtless prevented the emergency from
turning into a lark.
Acuna, having taken the measure of the enemy, decided to counter-
attack in the morning. Three of the college fathers stayed up all night,
going from company to company in a slow circuit of the walls to hear the
214 The Jesuits in the Philippines
confessions of the men who might be going into battle with the first light.
All the priests of the college celebrated early Mass, after which they
assembled with the lay brothers for a conference which Lopez had called
for the purpose of determining their course of action in the emergency. It
was decided to consume the Blessed Sacrament and to bury the sacred
vessels and the most important documents. If the day's battle should turn
against them and the enemy effect an entrance to the city, were they merely
to remain quiet and offer no resistance ? No, they said; it was lawful in this
instance to take up arms and fight with the rest of the citizens, for it was
not merely their own lives at stake, but that of the commonwealth. Until
that crisis arose, however, they were to continue as before to attend to
prayer and the spiritual ministry of priests and religious.
The sortie was made through the royal gate by a column of picked
Spanish and Japanese infantry. It was commanded by the hard-bitten
Juan Juarez Gallinato, who had behind him years of hazardous soldiering
not only in the Philippines but in other countries of the Far East. The
sangleys had drawn their battle line in solid formation facing the gate, its
left wing anchored on the parish church of Dilao, its right extending to the
bridge across the inlet which divided Dilao from the parian. Gallinato
drew up his Spanish musketeers in a wide screen in front of the gate and
told them to hold their ground. He then sent the Japanese to execute a
practiced maneuver : they advanced toward a section of the Chinese battle
line, and, having engaged it, gave ground slowly, drawing it forward until
it was within range of the musketeers. They then disengaged in a lightning
move, and wheeling rapidly to one side, opened the enemy line to the full
shock of a musket volley.
This tactic was repeated successfully several times until the Chinese
commanders found a way to counter it. They permitted several units to be
drawn forward by the Japanese as usual, but just before they came within
range of the muskets, had them break into a feigned retreat. It looked like
the beginning of a general rout, and the Japanese, instead of continuing the
maneuver, set off in hot pursuit. This was too much for the Spaniards, who
broke ranks against orders and advanced for what they thought would be
the kill. Gallinato bawled after them to stop, but could not make himself
heard. The Chinese kept yielding ground, invitingly, in the direction of the
parish church, and the Japanese and Spaniards, in their eagerness to secure
that prize, failed to notice the ominous swing of the massed Chinese right,
scooping them up in an enveloping movement that would have cut off their
retreat and inevitably overwhelm them. Lopez and Montoya, who had
taken their station in the bell tower of the college church, watched with
their hearts in their mouths as Gallinato plunged into the melee and finally
succeeded, at great personal risk, in extricating his command from the trap.
It seems strange that there was not a single piece of artillery emplaced
Organisation 215
anywhere along the length of the city wall that faced inland; yet such was
the case. They had probably been removed to arm the galleons and some
at least must have gone down with Morga’s ill-fated San Antonio . At any
rate, the lack was remedied by the resourcefulness of a prebendary of the
Cebu cathedral, Rodrigo de Figueroa, who as a young man had seen mili-
tary service in Naples and Lombardy. Under his direction two guns which
had been hauled across the city 7 from the citadel were manhandled into
position, one over the parian gate and the other near the royal gate, where
the Dilao church fell just within its range. This gun now went into action,
and made life for the sangleys who had taken possession of the church so
uncomfortable that they abandoned it and retired to the parian. Meanwhile
another attempt by the rebels to rush the parian gate was flung back by the
other piece, which did great damage. It was serviced by an artillery officer
named John the Greek, whose pious practice it was to dedicate each deadly
shot to one of his favorite saints, and he had a great number of them.
With Gallinato now in possession of Dilao and artillery being brought
to bear, the position of the sangleys in the parian was much less happy than
it had been the previous day. It was now rendered desperate by the
sudden descent of the Bulacan and Pampanga levies, who, cutting across
the bay, rowed up the Pasig in their warboats, streaked past the city and
fell upon the rebels. Caught between this unexpected attack and Galli-
nato’s force the sangleys lost what little cohesion they had. They fled in
the only direction they could, inland, splitting into two main bodies which
were mere frightened mobs. One column of about 2,000 streamed toward
the region of Calamba, the other, about the same in number, toward the
town of Pasig. The pursuing force under Major Cristobal de Azcueta
broke up the two concentrations. The rest was carnage. Not only the
regular troops but the entire population, including the Aetas of the hills,
fell upon the sangleys and massacred them without mercy. The fighting
men of Antipolo alone accounted for 1,500. Archbishop Benavides esti-
mated the Chinese dead at 1 5,000. The few who were spared were reduced
to captivity and put to work strengthening the fortifications of the city
they had failed to take. Eng Kang was tried and condemned to death.
Lopez, who was present at the execution, said that he died like a Christian,
accepting his doom as a penalty for his sins, but asserting to the end that
he was innocent of the charge for which he was being executed. To the few
surviving merchants Acuna returned the goods which they had deposited
in the walled city, about 70,000 pesos' worth. The unclaimed merchandise,
valued at 360,000, he distributed as largesse among the victorious troops.
In order to ensure that the incident caused no interruption in the China
trade which was so vital to the colony, Acuna multiplied his assurances
to the merchants that business would be carried on as usual, except that
the immigration laws would henceforth be more strictly enforced. He also
2l6
The Jesuits in the Philippines
took care to write to the Canton authorities, giving them the antecedents
of the uprising and justifying the action taken by his government. The
annual junk fleet came as usual in 1604, to the great joy of the citizens,
who treated the merchants with the utmost consideration. Since the parian
was in ruins, Acuna permitted them to reside in the walled city while they
disposed of their merchandise. 30
The junks of 1605 brought a reply to Acuna’s communication from the
inspector-general of Fukien province. The inspector-general stated that
upon being informed of the massacre, the imperial ministers met to
consider what would be the appropriate action to take relative to it. They
took note of the fact that the Chinese who had emigrated to Luzon had
made many positive contributions to the welfare of that country, such as
helping to build walls and buildings, cultivating farms and orchards, and
other useful works of that nature. It seemed less than just that the Spaniards
should requite such services in this bloody fashion.
Nevertheless, they decided that the imperial government would take no
reprisals. In the first place, a treaty of friendship existed between the two
governments. Secondly, there was not complete certainty regarding some
aspects of the affair. Thirdly, the Chinese who had perished in the
massacre were, in a certain sense, undesirable citizens, who by abandoning
their homes and families in China had renounced their allegiance to the
empire. Fourthly, the incident had been occasioned at least in part by the
lying tales of a certain Tiongeng, who had been duly executed and his
head exposed in a cage. And finally, Luzon is, after all, “only a wretched
little country of no importance whatever, the abode — in former times — of
snakes and devils.” The governor of Luzon, concluded the inspector-
general, will doubtless be suitably impressed by the magnanimity of this
decision, and derive from it a juster concept than hitherto of the greatness
and power of the emperor of China. 31
The College of Manila emerged from the crisis considerably impover-
ished, for its lands and houses on the north bank which had been leased by
the sangleys accounted for 1,900 pesos of its annual revenue. 32 Neverthe-
less, Garcia was able to keep its classes open, and in 1604 the first three-
year cycle of the arts course was successfully completed. The generosity of
the Manilans enabled him to cover the church with a tile roof which was
completed in 1604. As for the College of San Jose, the Annual Letter of
1605 tells us that
... it had gone into a decline by reason of the wars and disturbances to which
this city is ordinarily subject, and because of the failure of the ships plying
between here and Mexico to reach port. But when we had resigned ourselves to its
demise, Our Lord was pleased to raise it up, so that it is today as sought after and
full of students as never before. The study of letters flourishes. A lecture is given
in the refectory twice a week on some subject related to their class matter. In all
217
Organisation
school functions to which the public is invited the resident students are the first
to contribute declamations and original compositions as well. A constant improve-
ment in external behavior and the interior life takes place, for almost everyone
habitually goes to confession every eight days. All are sodalists, take the discipline
throughout the year, wear the hairshirt often, give alms to penniless soldiers
(never lacking in this country), and practice mental prayer. The older students
help the others by inciting them to the practice of virtue and drawing them away
from bad company ; in this they give great edification not only to their parents but
to the community at large. One of them joined the Society this year, and another
the Dominicans. 33
The order and method which had been established in the missions were
likewise beginning to achieve results. Each principal town now had its
men's sodality, whose members pledged themselves to the regular reception
of the sacraments, service in the hospitals, visiting the sick, burying the
dead, and other works of mercy. At Dulag a girls' school had been opened
alongside that of the boys. The girls came as half-boarders, spending the
day with their schoolmistress, the wife of the fiscal of the town, who taught
them not only the catechism but handicrafts. The system of dividing the
catechumentate into grades which was developed at Ormoc was extended
to all the missions. The catechists whom the missionaries had attached to
their households as boys and given a special training were now beginning
to make up for their lack of numbers.
Because the centers of population are many and the workers few, it is impossible
to visit them as often as we would like. To remedy this situation we have chosen
from among those who have been brought up in our houses from childhood a
number of young men, the most capable and loyal and the most thoroughly
instructed in Christian doctrine and the ways of civilized life, and we have
assigned them to the towns to perform a function similar to those whom the
blessed Father Francis Xavier called in his letters canacapulis . As school-masters
they each have a school in which they teach the children their prayers. They
assemble the people on feast days in the chapel to recite the catechism. On Fridays
they take the discipline there along with many others. They see to it that drunken
feasts are not held and irregular unions outside of marriage are not contracted ;
in particularly difficult cases they consult the priest. They send word to us when
anyone is in danger of death, administer baptism in cases of extreme necessity,
assist at the death bed and help dying Christians to make the act of contrition.
In this way they make up to a large extent for the shortage of priests. 34
It was time for the architects of this apostolate, Prat and Garcia, to
transmit it to younger and more vigorous hands. When Garcia dispatched
Chirino as procurator to Rome, he especially charged him to persuade the
provincial of Mexico to have him replaced as soon as possible. On 19
February 1603 Chirino wrote from Mexico as follows: “ Your Reverence
will forgive me if I have taken no steps to have you relieved of your office.
I never did intend to from the beginning ... If God wishes to give your
2i 8 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Reverence a rest, He has to do it without my help.” To which Garda replied
June 1603 : “Dear Father Chirino: I see. You never intended, and do not
now intend to do anything to have me changed. I certainly picked a fine
procurator ! I thought that was what I asked you to attend to most of all l
Well, don't expect any thanks for the good opinion you have of me. It has
no foundation in fact. I would be better pleased if you thought me useless."
On 12 September 1604 God did arrange, without Chirino's help, for
his faithful servant Diego Garda to attain the rest he had so wistfully
looked forward to. He died at fifty-two while conducting a visitation of the
College of Manila. When the news reached Cebu, his good friend Bishop
Agurto preached a touching eulogy, taking for his text: He was beloved of
God and men: and his memory shall be held in benediction .
About four months later, on 17 January 1605, Ramon Prat was also
called to his reward. Death did not come for him as quickly as it did for
Garcia, and so there was time for his many friends to say farewell. First
came the notables of the city, Archbishop Benavides, Governor Acuna;
the community of the college ; the novices. Last of all came the members
of the Tagalog choir, and they asked him if there was any song he would
like to hear. He asked them to sing his favorite, a hymn of his boyhood
which ran: “ Let my eyes see thee, good and gentle Jesus; let my eyes see
thee, and then let me die." 35
The passing of these two men was the passing of an era, the era of
foundations; how their successors built on those foundations, whether well
or ill, I shall now attempt to relate.
BOOK TWO
Growth under Stress
The Province 1603*1633
8 *
Chapter Ten
THE MEN
On 25 February 1605 a fast dispatch boat from Acapulco dropped anchor
at Cavite and set ashore a special courier. He was Gaspar Gomez, the lay
brother whom Dasmarinas the Elder sent as a confidential agent to the
Moluccas, and who subsequently accompanied Father Francisco de Vera to
Mexico. This time, he was the bearer of two important packets, one for
Governor Acuna and the other for the Jesuits. The governor's packet we
shall examine later, although it was what chiefly motivated the sending of
the dispatch boat. More to our present purpose was that directed to Diego
Garcia, notice of whose death had not yet reached across the Pacific.
Gregorio Lopez, who as rector of the College of Manila had automatically
succeeded him as vice-provincial, opened it. It informed him that Father
General Acquaviva had erected the Philippine vice-province, hitherto
dependent on Mexico, into a full-fledged province of the Society of
Jesus. 1
This was an arrangement which the Philippine Jesuits had long been
advocating. Both Sedeno and Sanchez believed that, due to the distance of
the Philippines from Mexico, the Jesuit establishments in the Islands
could not be properly administered except by a superior with the powers of
a provincial, especially with regard to the admission of candidates and the
disposal of property. Moreover, dependence on the Mexican province
entailed several serious disadvantages, according to Ribera. 2 One was that
the vice-province had to contribute toward the expenses of the annual
visitation which the provincial of Mexico made of his province, a visitation
which did not include the Philippines. Another was that the Mexican
provincial felt free to retain in Mexico missionaries w r ho were on their
way to the Philippines from Europe. He looked each group over, chose the
best men for himself, and sent the rest ahead. True, he occasionally re-
placed the men whom he retained with others ; with those, namely, whom
he did not particularly want. This was not quite fair. Ribera himself, after
all, was one of these replacements. Moreover, we know that at least on one
occasion the reason for stopping the Philippine men in Mexico was in order
that they might complete their training there; all, or almost all of them
were sent ahead after their ordination to the priesthood. Still, there seems
to have been something in Ribera’s claim that several hard cases were sent
to the Philippines in the pious hope that “ a change of climate would make
221
222
The Jesuits in the Philippines
them better men'—a hope seldom if ever realized. He mentioned one
particular individual who had eventually to be dismissed from the Society.
In spite of the cogency of these arguments, Acquaviva was slow to sever
the small and recently founded establishment which the Society had in the
Philippines from its Mexican connection. To obviate the principal difficul-
ties represented by the Philippine Jesuits, he drew up an ordinance regu-
lating the relations between province and vice-province. In this ordinance,
dated 16 December 1602, he communicated to the vice-provincial of the
Philippines all the essential powers of a provincial, in particular that of
assigning to each member of the vice-province his work and station, and
of designating local superiors, vice-rectors, and other officials whose
appointment was not reserved by the Society's constitutions to the general.
He could not, however, dismiss any member of the vice-province from the
Society without the prior approval of the general, or in urgent cases of the
provincial of Mexico. There were several other cases in which Acquaviva
had delegated his own powers to that functionary; in all such cases the
vice-provincial was to have recourse to him. But if the Mexican provincial
issued any orders which the Philippine vice-provincial considered inex-
pedient, and the majority of his consultors agreed, he was empowered to
suspend the execution of such orders pending representation. Moreover,
the Mexican provincial had no authority to recall any member of the vice-
province without the consent of the vice-provincial, nor to retain in
Mexico missionaries specifically assigned to the Philippines except on the
advice of his consultors, in which case he was to communicate to the
vice-provincial his reasons for retaining them. Finally, he was not to
stop any procurator whom the vice-provincial might choose to send to
Rome. 3
Two years after this ordinance was issued, Chirmo arrived in Rome as
procurator of the vice-province. Needless to say, the request for an inde-
pendent province was high in the list of petitions which he presented to
Acquaviva. This time, the general permitted himself to be convinced. The
detailed reports which Chirino submitted both verbally and in writing
showed that the vice-province had the financial resources to support the
increased personnel of a province, and the facilities at Manila to give a
proper intellectual and religious formation both to novices locally recruited
and scholastics who might be sent there from Europe and America. The
missions were in a flourishing state, they were being administered with
little or no help from Mexico, and there was ample room for expansion. In
fact, so pleased was Acquaviva with Chirino's account of what the Philip-
pine Jesuits were doing that he had him put it all down in writing for
publication. It came out that same year, 1604, from the press of Esteban
Paulino at Rome ; a small 200-page book, written in limpid and vigorous
Castilian, to which the present narrative is greatly indebted.
The Men
223
The most important problem which the new province had to cope with
was that of obtaining a sufficient number of men to carry on its work.
Only a small fraction of its membership could be recruited from the
Philippines itself; the majority had of necessity to come as missionaries
from Europe and Mexico. One of Chirino's commissions was to obtain as
large a contingent as he could from the general and the Spanish provincials.
It was hoped that the latter would be disposed to be more generous, now
that the Philippines was ready to accept not only priests and formed lay
brothers, but scholastics, novices, and even postulants. They were. A group
of twenty volunteers was formed under the leadership of Father Pedro de
Montes, former rector of the colleges of Granada and Seville. They left
Seville on 14 June 1604 and arrived without mishap on 22 June of the
following year, although some of the company apparently stayed behind
in Mexico and came with the expedition of 1606. 4 With the exception of
Montes, who was 44 years old, they were young men mostly in their teens ;
as Lopez reported to Acquaviva after welcoming them to the Philippines,
“a few were theologians, more were philosophers, still more students of
grammar, and some novices who have yet to begin their musa , musae He
was not complaining; he was happy to get them; but, he added with a
shrewdness born of necessity, ‘ ‘ with this goodly number of young people
to train, and with the gap in our ranks caused by the death of Fathers
Diego Garcia and Raymundo de Prado, our petition must again be for men
already formed and especially for some of exceptional ability who can
function as masters of novices, professors of theology, and superiors on
whom Your Paternity can place complete reliance/' 5 Acquaviva and the
Spanish provincials must have thrown up their hands at the unabashed im-
portunity of this last and littlest of the Society's provinces, which began
with a modest request for young men still in their training, and ended by
asking for men “of exceptional ability" to help train them!
Still, they did their best to keep the Philippines supplied with the men
it needed. Several years earlier, for instance, Garcia had represented the
great need there w r as in the vice-province for “a brother painter who can
teach some of the natives in the residences we have now to paint the statues
and retables in the churches, wffiich are very deficient, they tell me, in this
regard." A brother architect would come in very handy too, to take charge
of the vice-province's building program, “for since the natives are so
primitive and so recently converted, there is no one among them who
knows anything about this ; and even here in Manila we can scarcely find
someone to consult regarding the reconstruction of the church." In the
Italian provinces, Garcia suggested, “there are usually brothers who are
skilled in these trades; if someone among them should feel the call and
inclination to come here, he will be received with open arms." 6 This invi-
tation was answered by Francesco Simon, or Simone, of Aquila, a painter,
224 The Jesuits in the Philippines
who came in the group headed by Gregorio Lopez. It was composed of
seven priests and three brothers, and arrived in Manila, as we mentioned
earlier, on 19 May 1601. The following year — 18 November 1602 — a
smaller group came; three priests and one brother; but the brother was
another Italian, Gian Camillo Rtccio, who must indeed have been wel-
comed with open arms, for he was a carpenter. He was sent at once to the
Visayan missions and rendered invaluable service by supervising the con-
struction of the mission chapels and residences. 7
The expedition of 1603 consisted of two priests and four scholastics, the
latter being those who formed part of the inaugural class of theology in the
College of Manila. It was followed in 1605 by Montes and his group and
in 1606 by Chirino with two priests and four scholastics. After 1606 the
newly created province adopted the practice of the other overseas provinces
of sending a procurator to Europe at regular intervals of six years or so, for
the purpose among other things of bringing new missionaries back with
him. Thus the expeditions became less frequent, but larger than those we
have enumerated.
Seven procurators were sent by the Philippine province to Europe
during the fifty years following its erection: Alonso de Humanes in 1609,
Diego de Otazo in 1615, Francisco Gutierrez in 1621, Francisco de
Encinas in 1627, Juan Lopez in 1633, Diego de Bobadilla in 1637, and
Miguel Solana in 1647. Humanes returned in 1615 with an expedition of
twenty Jesuits. Fifteen of this number — six priests, eight scholastics, and
one lay brother — were contributed by the four Spanish provinces of
Castile, Toledo, Aragon, and Andalusia, and by the province of Sardinia;
the other five probably joined the expedition in Mexico. The expedition
organized by Otazo sailed from Cadiz in 1620 but without him, because
he was taken suddenly ill. Juan de Bueras led another group of twenty
which arrived in the Philippines in 1622. It was composed of fourteen
priests and six scholastics who had volunteered from the Spanish and
Italian provinces. The expedition organized by Gutierrez left Cadiz in
1625, a g a in without the procurator; the superior appointed was Juan de
Aguirre. The names of one priest and seven scholastics in this group are
known, but the total number is not. They arrived in the Philippines in
1626. The fourth expedition was again a group of twenty (seven priests,
nine scholastics, two lay brothers, and two postulants), including the
procurator Encinas and his lay brother companion. They left Cadiz in
June 1631 and reached Cavite in May of the following year, with the
exception of Father Mateo de Aguilar, who died during the voyage. Royal
permission was granted to the procurator Juan Lopez on 18 April 1635 to
take twelve Jesuits with him to the Philippines, but we do not know how
many actually went on this expedition.
But by far the largest expedition to be sent to the Philippines during this
The Men
225
period was the sixth. The procurator, Bobadilla, and his assistant, Simon
Cotta, set sail from Cadiz on 15 July 1641 with forty-one missionaries
gathered from twelve provinces of the Society: Rome, Milan, Naples,
Sicily, Upper Germany, Austria, the French-speaking Belgian Province,
Sardinia, and the four Spanish provinces. Twenty-eight were priests, eleven
scholastics and two lay brothers. Five more joined the expedition in
Mexico — two priests and three scholastics — but five died during the
Pacific crossing, so that including Bobadilla (the assistant procurator Cotta
stayed behind in Mexico), forty-two altogether arrived in the Philippines
in July 1643. Solana, the seventh procurator to be sent during this period,
obtained royal permission to return to the Philippines with thirty
missionaries, but due to the plague then ravaging Andalusia and the civil
war in Catalonia which cut off a part of the province of Aragon from the
rest of Spain he was not able to fill this quota in a single expedition. Four
were dispatched in 1650, nine in 1651, and nine more, including Solana
and his lay brother companion, in 165 3. 8 We do not know how many of
these actually reached the Philippines. Thus, the total number of Jesuit
missionaries from Europe and Mexico who joined the Philippine province
during the period 1615-1653 was, as far as we can gather from the
existing records, in the neighborhood of 140. Actually there must have
been somewhat more than this, for Colin informs us that in 1656, seventy-
five years after the foundation of the Philippine mission and fifty years
after its erection into a province, a total of 272 Jesuit missionaries had
come to the Philippines from abroad: I 51 priests, 198 scholastics and
23 lay brothers. 9
By far the greater number of these missionaries were Spaniards. How-
ever, volunteers from the Italian provinces figure among the earliest expedi-
tions. Almerici, it will be recalled, was an Italian, and so were the two
lay brothers Simone and Riccio. There were five Italians in the group that
came with Gregorio Lopez in 1601 ; two out of four in that of 1602; two
out of six in that of 1603. In 1615 the province of Sardinia began to send
men to the Philippines, and Italians and Sardinians invariably formed part
of the expeditions thereafter. Toward the middle of the century the
Philippine procurators began to range more widely in their search for volun-
teers. Bobadilla appealed not only to the Italian but to the German and
French-speaking provinces, three of wffiich responded with two priests each.
The Italian provinces also rose to the occasion with a larger quota than
usual, so that of the forty-one that arrived with Bobadilla in 1643, twenty
were non-Spaniards. It is sometimes difficult to identify them on the basis
of the printed sources because they adopted Spanish names, a custom which
their successors continued. Thus, Walter Sonnenberg of Luzern exchanged
his fine German name for Ignacio de Monte; the Austrian Adolf Stein-
hauser became Juan de Pedrosa: the Neapolitan Carlo Receputo began to
226
The Jesuits in the Philippines
call himself Carlos de Valencia. These selfless men adapted themselves so
thoroughly to Spanish ways and customs that in many cases their nationa-
lity can be traced only by having recourse to the manuscript catalogues in
the central archives of the Society.
If one stops to consider that the Spanish provinces were sending mission-
aries to all the Jesuit establishments in Central and South America, it is
not difficult to see why they had to call on the other European provinces
for assistance. Moreover, the general economic decline of Spain during the
seventeenth century began to have an increasingly serious effect on the
number of applicants whom the Spanish Jesuits were able to receive.
According to Astrain, many of the Spanish residences and colleges of the
Society were so impoverished and so deeply in debt by the second quarter
of the seventeenth century that their financial situation can only be
described as distressing. It was chiefly with Spain in mind that the eighth
general congregation of the Order (1645-1646) took the unusual step of
authorizing the general to limit the number of novices which each pro-
vince could admit each year, and even to suspend the reception of candi-
dates altogether if he thought that the finances of the province could not
support any increase in membership. ‘'This one fact,” says Astrain,
"proves better than any arguments which may be elaborated the extreme
poverty which the Society of Jesus was undergoing at the time. When the
extreme measure had to be adopted of not admitting any more religious
because it was impossible to give them sustenance, one ought to be con-
vinced that the finances of the Society were in a truly lamentable state.”
But this was not all. The period also saw the outbreak of a protracted
civil war in Catalonia (1639-1652) and of epidemics in central and sou-
thern Spain. Thus, while the number of vocations fell off in the province
of Aragon, a considerable number of Jesuits succumbed while assisting the
plague-stricken in those of Toledo and Andalusia. These disasters are
reflected in the statistics compiled by Astrain. During the years between
1615 and 1625, ^e membership of the four Spanish provinces showed a
small but constant increase, with the exception of Castile, which fell from
570 to 550 members. After 1625* however, the totals dipped with alarm-
ing rapidity, so that while there were 2,173 Jesuits in Spain in 1616 there
were only 1,800 in 1652. It speaks well of the generosity and zeal of the
Spanish provinces that they managed in spite of this thinning out of their
ranks to send as many missionaries as they did to the Philippines. 10
These economic considerations bring out another important aspect of
the personnel problem of the Philippine province. It would have been
impossible to send any missionaries there at all had not the Spanish govern-
ment shouldered the greater part of their expenses during that long and
costly voyage. 11 Besides giving them free passage on government transports
or paying their passage in privately owned vessels, the king through the
The Men
227
House of Trade at Seville granted to each missionary an allowance for
“an outfit of clothing, of the kind they are wont to wear, and a mattress,
a blanket and straw for the voyage 9 9 ; and also to reimburse them for what
they spent in transporting themselves from their respective residences in
Spain to Seville, and from Seville to the port of embarkation, that is,
either Sanlucar de Barrameda or Cadiz. This allowance amounted on the
average to 32,000 maravedis or about $250 per missionary in the early part
of the seventeenth century. Moreover, since the missionaries usually had
to wait at Seville for their companions to assemble, and after that for the
Indies convoy to complete its preparations for the voyage, each missionary
was also granted a subsistence allowance of one and a half rials (about
30 cents) per day for the period of his sojourn in Seville.
Upon landing at Vera Cruz, the superior of each expedition presented
the royal officials there with a treasury warrant which entitled him to the
necessary funds for the transport of his men and their luggage by pack
animals to Mexico City. He presented a similar warrant to the officials of
Mexico City for the journey to Acapulco. If any of his men should fall ill,
as was very likely given the arduous conditions of travel in those days,
he was entitled to medical care at government expense. The missionaries
were not ungrateful for this truly royal munificence. At the end of his
report to Father General Vitelleschi, Bobadilla, the head of the large
Jesuit expedition of 1643, makes the following observation:
Let me close with a word about the liberality of our great sovereign Philip IV
... At Seville he gave us for the voyage 8,040 ducats [about $32,000], and here
in New Spain we are to receive an additional 13,000 pieces of eight [about
$20,500]. This does not quite cover the enormous expenditures we have had to
make in the course of such protracted journeys overland and oversea, and must
still make ; but it is an alms of a size that no other sovereign on earth would be
likely to give, and this at a time when funds are so badly needed to wage so many
wars for the defense of the Catholic faith. 12
And he adds that a group of Dominicans were on their way to the
Philippines at the same time ; and since they were exactly half the number
in the Jesuit group, twenty, they had very likely been given half the sum
that had been granted to the Jesuits.
It is quite true, however, as Bobadilla notes, that the royal grants did
not quite suffice for the expenses of the traveling missionaries. The deficit
had to be made up by the Philippine province of the religious order to
which they belonged. Moreover, their actual extraction from the disburse-
ment officials concerned were accompanied by the annoyances, delays, and
petty graft wffiich seem to be inevitable in a bureaucracy, especially one as
huge and sprawling as that of imperial Spam. Fray Diego de Aduarte, who
set out from Spain wfith a group of Dominicans assigned to the Philippines
228
The Jesuits in the Philippines
in the same year as Chirino and his companions (1605), gave the viceroy
of Mexico a rueful but diverting account of these trials. 13 After describing
the difficulties he experienced at Valladolid, where the court was resident,
in negotiating the royal order permitting his expedition to sail, he goes on
to relate his encounters with the Seville officials.
In Seville . , . another swarm of difficulties arise. The ordinary procedure in the
House of Trade is to append additional clauses to the cedulas of his Majesty.
Many conditions are attached to the approval of these additions, noncompliance
with any one of which is sufficient for approval to be withheld. Since it often
happens that some requisite or other is missed, the embarrassment of one who
has already brought his companions to Seville, and does not have sufficient funds
for their support, may easily be imagined. This happened to me, and I certainly
was not the first to whom it happened, nor will I be the last. I suffered such
frustration that it cost me no little effort not to abandon the whole project there
and then.
Furthermore, the allowance given at Seville to the religious for their journey
falls far short of what they need. After paying for their clothes, beds, transport of
books, and passage on the ferry from Seville to Sanlucar, all they have left to buy
shipboard supplies is 22 ducats. This was the case with us, and it is clearly
impossible at this rate to obtain anything like what is necessary . . .
Armed though he comes from Seville with all the necessary papers, the traveler
will not fail to find obstacles awaiting him at Sanlucar . . . even though it be
nothing more than the handouts which are ordinarily demanded by the registry
clerk and the customs inspector ... It is absolutely outrageous. The clerk asked
me for three rials for each member of my group. I did not think this was proper,
so I went to the accountant and told him about it. He did not think so either,
and said he would take care of it. He certainly did, for the next day he told me to
give the clerk what he asked and to give him one and a half rials per head, other-
wise we did not go on board. On my word as a priest, this actually happened.
Fray Diego goes on in this vein. The royal treasury officials at Mexico
City were especially trying. Even if one had the patience of a Job, he says,
he would need it all because of the numerous opportunities they provided
for losing it. As for the bureaucrats at Acapulco, they woodenly refused to
give his friars any lodgings while waiting for the galleon to take in passen-
gers. Fray Diego showed them nothing less than a royal cedula ordering it,
but they kept repeating that the order had to be countersigned by the
viceroy of Mexico. As a result, they had to build shelters for themselves
and sleep aljresco for two and a half months. It did not seem quite fair,
Fray Diego concluded, that men who had sacrificed family, friends, and
native land to spend their lives converting the heathen and discharging the
king’s conscience should be subjected to such unnecessary hardships.
But they were ; and to other, heavier trials as well ; as though the Lord
they served wanted to bring home to these dedicated men, right from the
beginning of their apostolate, that he meant to demand of them the last
The Men
229
full measure of devotion. Fray Diego gives us a perceptive insight of what
going out to the Philippines must have meant to these seventeenth-century
missionaries.
They have no sooner started on their journey than they hear a thousand evil
reports of the land to which they are going ; and even if nothing more is said about
it than that bread and wine are not to be had there, this alone is enough to appall
a giant. Those who have the strength of mind to overcome these fears, when they
come to the water's edge, are terrified by the sea. They hear the usual dire
prognostications that the convoy is sure to be lost because it is putting out from
Spain so late in the season (as it almost always does), and they have not the heart
to embark. If they are equal to this trial and do embark, they promptly become
seasick, never having gone to sea before and the cramped quarters of a ship being
what they are. Many lie flat on their backs during the whole course of the voyage,
desiring to be back on land as though life itself depended upon it.
They land on New Spam, with the prospect before them of another and even
longer voyage than that which they have just endured. The strange climate begins
to affect them. Some die. Others contract a thousand illnesses. The tales they
are told about their destination are not better than what they heard in Spain ;
much worse, in fact, for they now have them from eye-witnesses, both lay people
and friars, and they scarce have the courage to go any further.
Just how cramped the accommodations were in the ships of the period
may be gathered from the fact that in 1 604 Montes and his group of twenty
Jesuits were assigned ‘Three ordinary cabins ten feet long by eight feet
wide/' and a fourth cabin “a little larger/' 14 Ten feet long by eight feet
wide is not much space for five full-grown men. Similar accommodations
were given to Aguirre and his companions in 1625. Diego de Cartagena,
a scholastic who made this voyage, tells us how they managed in their
cubbyhole under the quarterdeck. It was so small, he said, that the only
way they could all fit inside when they went to bed was to lie with the feet
of one resting on the head of another. What made it even more crowded
was that they had to keep their boxes of ship's biscuit in the cabin in order
to have them handy, for otherwise they would have been stowed away in
the hold. The cabin door was so blocked up with gear as a result that they
had to crawl into it like cats, and once within, it was an effort even to
breathe. Under these conditions no one took off his clothes, ‘ ‘ for the sake
of holy modest) 7 ," and everyone was soon crawling with vermin as big as
chickpeas. 15
Gemelli Careri, an Italian traveler who made the Pacific crossing some-
what later in the century, became quite an expert on these vermin.
The ship swarms with little vermine the Spaniards call gorgojos , bred in the
biskit ; so swift that they in a short time not only run over cabbins, beds and the
very dishes the men eat on, but insensibly fasten upon the body. There are several
230 The Jesuits in the Philippines
other sorts of vermin of sundry colours that suck the blood. Abundance of flies
fall into the dishes of broth, in which there also swim worms of several sorts. 16
Since Cartagena and his fellow scholastics had their biscuit in the cabin
with them, one can easily believe that their gorgojos were — or at any rate
felt — bigger than ordinary. In 1643 Bobadilla was able to obtain much
roomier quarters for his large expedition. The Mexican officials assigned
them to the smaller of the two galleons making the Pacific crossing that
year, and gave them the whole quarterdeck from port to starboard, a
luggage room in which to stow their gear, and a private stateroom for
Bobadilla himself. This was indeed to travel in style. But the captain of
the vessel, Don Martin de Arregula, was still not satisfied, and gave them
in addition half of his quarters on the poopdeck. With this, Bobadilla
relates,
... we were able to make arrangements conformable to our religious way of life.
On the port side of the quarterdeck we fixed up an infirmary for the many who
fell sick . . . On the poopdeck we placed benches against the bulkheads and thus
made of it a fair refectory, with the passageway as kitchen and buttery. Thus the
space assigned to us permitted our men to rest well at night and to stretch their
legs in the day time on the poopdeck and passageway. 17
But this was exceptional, and was doubtless due, at least in part, to the
fact that Bobadilla belonged to a well-known Madrid family with connec-
tions at court. No amount of creature comforts, however, could make up
for the length of the two ocean crossings. Normally, the voyage from
Sanlucar or Cadiz to Vera Cruz was made by Spanish merchantmen in a
convoy under naval escort and took two months. Vessels which crossed
singly or in pairs without escort risked capture by English or Dutch
privateers, but got to Mexico faster. Montes and his companions probably
made the voyage on such a vessel, for they reached Mexico in little more
than a month. On the other hand, it took Bobadilla’s expedition eighty-
two mortal days and nights to cross the Atlantic. They were repeatedly
becalmed during the run from Porto Rico to Mexico, and water had to be
rationed. The Pacific crossing took about two weeks longer on the average
— if an average can be struck with reference to a voyage in which almost
anything could happen. The greater part of this westward run was relatively
safe and uneventful ; what was uncertain and often perilous was the actual
approach to the Philippines. If the galleon made a late start, some time in
March or April, she was in for trouble, for she entered Philippine waters
with the first typhoons of the year streaking across her path. But even if
she cleared from Acapulco in February, no one on board — least of all,
perhaps, the pilot — could promise himself a safe arrival. The San Antonio ,
which brought Lopez and his companions to the Islands in 1601, set
sail on 19 February; after a crossing of seventy-two days, they made their
The Men
231
Philippine landfall on 29 April; just before nightfall, the pilot thought
he recognized a headland of Cape Espiritu Santo, which meant that they
were right at the entrance of San Bernardino Strait; all was well* But all
was not well. They were actually opposite the rock-ribbed Catanduanes
coast, and, when a squall rose during the night, it was a miracle that they
did not split against it. Instead, the galleon was driven into Sistran Bay
between Luzon aud Quinalasag Island, and all on board, from the general,
Antonio de Ribera Maldonado, to the last rating, were firmly convinced
that it was their fervent prayers to Saint Ignatius, rather than their
seamanship, which saved them from shipwreck. Saint Ignatius was not yet
canonized at the time, but was, of course, already in a position to lend a
helping hand. Very likely he did. 18
Altogether then, if, to the five or so months at sea, five or more months
spent in Mexico waiting for the Manila galleon are added, the journey
from Spain to the Philippines took about a year. In order not to waste so
much precious time, it was decided that, notwithstanding the confined
quarters on board ship, the priests in each expedition would hold regular
classes for the scholastics while at sea. Of Aguirre’s expedition of 1625-
1626 we learn that Father Francisco Colin, the future historian of the
Philippine province, lectured on theology, our friend Diego de Cartagena,
even as a scholastic, lectured on philosophy, and Father Pedro Parrado
taught logic. 19 There is no reason why a biscuit box cannot serve as a
professorial chair, but one hopes that Gemelli’s “swarms of little ver-
mine” were not too distracting.
Bobadilla and his companions, because of their much better accommo-
dations, were even able to follow the regular order of a religious house.
They rose at four in the morning and made the usual hour of mental
prayer. If the sea was calm one or two priests celebrated Mass which the
rest attended. The priests received communion every day Mass was
offered ; the scholastics two or three times a week. Morning and afternoon
were devoted to class or study. The noon and night examinations of con-
science w r ere made at the sound of the bell, and there was reading at table
in the poopdeck refectory. In the early evening the whole company sang the
Salve Regina and recited the litany of Loretto. Then, at the request of the
other passengers and the crew, one of the fathers gave a brief exhortation or
told an ejemplo , an edifying story from the bible or the lives of saints. 20
Religious festivals, celebrated in the exuberant Spanish manner with
fireworks, artillery salvos, folk dances, and the breaking out of banners,
prevented regular order from becoming monotonous. There were other,
unexpected, interruptions. One experienced by Aguirre and his band was
nearly tragic. The master of the vessel in which they crossed the Atlantic
decided to make a brief stop at Guadeloupe, in the Lesser Antilles. All the
passengers w T ent ashore to replenish their water casks, w'ash out the gorgojos
232 The Jesuits in the Philippines
from their clothes, and “free themselves for a day from the prison of their
ship.” The natives were naked savages, but seemed to be harmless enough,
frequently raising their voices in the only Spanish they knew: “Amico
bono, amico bono espanol." But on the second day, just as the Jesuits and
other passengers, to the number of a hundred, were about to return to the
ship in their boats, the natives without warning sent a flight of arrows into
their midst. Five of the Jesuits fell wounded, but none mortally. Ignacio
Marti, pierced through the shoulder, gave the ship's surgeon some con-
cern but finally pulled through. After the first shock of surprise, those who
had swords among the passengers closed ranks, and, though they had not a
single firearm among them, advanced with such resolution that the natives
abandoned their ambuscade and fled. 21
During their stopover in New Spain, the priests on the Philippine
expedition helped out in the various residences and missions, while the
scholastics continued their studies in the colleges of Mexico and Puebla.
It became customary for the theological students to be priested even before
they had completed their third year, as long as they had the canonical age.
This was because they were never quite certain of finding an ordaining
prelate in the Philippines, since several years could pass between the death
of a bishop and the arrival or consecration of his successor. Aboard the
Manila galleon the regular shipboard order was resumed as far as conditions
permitted.
The arrival of a missionary expedition was, of course, a great event in
Manila. All the church bells of the walled city pealed a welcome, and a
great crowd accompanied the travel-weary but thankful voyagers from the
river gate to the church of their order, where the Te Deutn was intoned.
Bobadilla has left us an account of the reception given to himself and his
forty-one Jesuits in 1643. 22 They had landed at Lampon, on the eastern
coast of Luzon, and traveled to Manila overland. Father Igancio Mtijica
was sent from Manila to meet them. One hundred bearers were recruited
to carry their baggage up the rainwashed, slippery trail that climbed to the
Sierra Madre passes and plunged down again to the Lake of Bai where boats
would take them down the Pasig River to Manila. Eight litters were pro-
vided for the sick. The rest walked. “In this manner,” Bobadilla relates,
“we traveled cross country for three days, over very rough ground, uphill
and down again.” One particular descent could be made negotiable for the
fathers only by the bearers' cutting some eleven hundred steps into it with
lengths of rough-hewn logs. At the lake village of Pangil a lay brother
awaited them with a hot meal of enormous proportions “ which we needed
badly after the arduous way we had come.” The alcalde mayor of the
district provided them with boats and crews to take them across the lake
and so down river to Manila. They were met part of the way by more than
thirty gaily decorated vessels, full of the Jesuits' Tagalog and Chinese
The Men
^33
friends and the scholars of San Jose and the College of Manila. They had
brought a whole band of musicians with them and kept firing arquebus
salvos in the air. Somewhat deafened by this ferocious reception, they
stepped off their boats at the river gate, where the community of the
college waited to take them home.
For, though they were more than 15,000 miles from Spain, they had
indeed come home. They were among men who had found in the company
formed by the Basque captain the opportunity for the same kind of dedi-
cated service in the cause of God to which they, too, aspired, and who
like them had crossed the perilous seas to establish in this remote corner
of the earth the kingdom of Christ. The new arrivals were usually sent to
the mission residences near Manila for a few weeks of rest and relaxation.
Cartagena was sent to Taytay, where he found the saintly Father Juan de
Salazar hard at work on a new stone church. He found the mission houses,
which were made of bamboo, surprisingly comfortable, and the land in
general by no means as unbearable as he had been led to expect. Wheat
bread was even obtainable in Manila, baked from flour imported from
Japan. Elsewhere, of course, boiled rice took the place of bread. He learned
to eat it according to the custom of the country, without the benefit of
spoon or fork, but simply by means of the cinco mandamientos , the five
fingers. 23
Notwithstanding the difficulty and expense of bringing in missionaries
from abroad, the Philippine Jesuits were slow to accept local recruits into
the Society. It does not appear that they ever seriously considered at this
time the admission of indios , that is, pure-blooded Filipinos, to member-
ship. This was in marked contrast to the policy adopted by the Portuguese
Jesuits in Japan of fostering vocations not only to the lay brotherhood but
even to the priesthood of the Society among the native-born Japanese. It
conformed, however, to the climate of opinion which had developed in the
Spanish Indies in the course of the sixteenth century, and continued to
exert a decisive influence throughout the seventeenth . 24 The failure of
early attempts to form a native clergy in Mexico was considered sufficient
evidence that indios in general were not yet ready for holy orders, and
several provincial councils discouraged further experiments in that direc-
tion. The first council of Mexico, for instance, declared in 1555 that holy
orders w T ere not to be conferred on indios, mestizos, and mulattoes,
because they resembled the descendants of Moors and persons who had
been sentenced by the Inquisition as lacking in the good repute which
those who bear the sacerdotal character ought to have. This was slightly
softened by the second council of Mexico (1585), which forbade “that
Mexicans who are descended in the first degree from indios, or from Moors,
or from parents one of whom is a negro, be admitted to holy orders without
great care being exercised in their selection/ ' Six years later, in 1591, the
234 The Jesuits in the Philippines
second council of Lima decreed that the indios, being but newly converted
to the faith, ought not to be promoted to any sacred order of the Church.
These legislative precedents effectively blocked the admission of native
Filipinos into the Society as candidates for the priesthood; and even the
lay brotherhood was closed to them by the reason which motivated the
decree of the council of Lima, namely, that their conversion to the faith
was too recent for them to dedicate themselves by perpetual vows to a life
of evangelical perfection. After Alonso Sancho, who was received as a lay
brother not in the Philippines but in Rome, there is no record of a native
Filipino becoming a Jesuit, even as a lay brother, before the expulsion of
the Society from the Philippines in 1768.
The same disabilities, though for different reasons, were imposed by the
prevailing climate of opinion on mestizos, or persons of mixed European
and Asian parentage. It was not so much their constancy in the faith that
was called in question as their constancy in virtue. They were in many
instances children born out of lawful wedlock; and even those who were
legitimate received their upbringing from native mothers (or, more often,
servants and slaves) of limited intelligence and culture, growing up to
adolescence in large disorganized households which favored the develop-
ment of habits of self-indulgence rather than self-control. Such at least
was the contention, and it must be admitted that there was a great deal of
truth in it. The Jesuits of Peru, in a provincial congregation held in 1567,
went on record as being opposed to the granting of holy orders to mestizos
passim , that is, as a general rule, although they were willing to make excep-
tions in the case of those more than ordinarily gifted. 25
Only a few raised their voices in warning against making too sweeping a
generalization from the observed facts. One of them was the Jesuit Jose de
Acosta, whose opposition to Alonso Sanchez’s China project we have had
the occasion to record. Fie was one of the principal theologians of the
second Council of Lima, and his treatise on missionary methods, De pro -
curanda Indorum salute , exerted wide influence. It went beyond the bounds
of justice, he claimed, to question out of hand the origin of those born of a
Spanish father and a native mother. Such men are by no means to be
despised merely on the grounds of their mixed parentage. Timothy, after
all, St. Paul’s disciple whom he consecrated bishop, was the child of a
pagan father and a Jewish mother; “and it may well be that among these
mestizos we shall come upon another Timothy.” However, Acosta agreed
on the basis of long experience that the utmost care should be taken in
selecting, training, and proving such men before committing to them the
responsibilities of the priesthood. 26 The Philippine Jesuits were less dis-
posed to make exceptions. Hernan Suarez says of the mestizos of Manila
in his time that * * they cannot be admitted to the priesthood because they
are a low type of people with little inclination to this way of life;” while
The Men
2 35
Diego Garcia, in one of his reports to Acquaviva, more succinctly stated
that to admit mestizos into the Society was not advisable — non expedite 27
The exclusion of native Filipinos and mestizos limited the area of local
recruitment to two groups, neither of them very numerous: Europeans
who had emigrated to the colony and criollos , persons born in the Philip-
pines of European parents. Moreover, aspirants even from these two groups
were subjected to special scrutiny and restrictive regulation. With regard
to criollos, the congregation of the Peruvian province mentioned above
proposed to Father General Mercurian that only those over twenty years
of age and of proven virtue should be admitted to the Society. This pro-
posal was approved ; but the criollos who joined the order under this dis-
pensation apparently did not turn out so well, for thirty-six years later, in
1603, we find Acquaviva not only renewing the age requirement but add-
ing the following restriction:
Let means be found to establish a number of seminaries in which those born
in the country may be instructed and trained. Let the selection [of candidates for
the Society] be made from these, in such wise as to preclude the necessity of
admitting those accustomed to the [excessive] freedom of their own homes.
However, if among the latter an older man should apply* who shall have com-
pleted the course of arts and one or two years of theology, and whose vocation
and constancy in virtue shall have been tested satisfactorily for at least four years,
we have no objection to his being admitted after a thorough discussion of the
matter in consultation. Thus a number of priests who are called r to the Society]
by God will not be entirely excluded. 28
Similar instructions were issued to the provincial of Mexico. Greater
latitude in the admission of criollos was apparently permitted in the
Philippines, probably on the basis of a recommendation made by Alonso
Sanchez, who wrote in 1583 that the charges of softness and inconstancy
brought against criollos elsewhere did not apply to those of the Philippines,
whose characters the arduous life in that frontier outpost could not but
harden and anneal. Garcia was more cautious. He thought criollos to be
generally weak in character, and hence that ‘ ‘ outside of a few soldiers and
seamen who apply for the lay brotherhood ’ 9 they should be refused admis-
sion. However, he revised his opinion some years later when he received
six novices, some of them criollos. He still thought them weak, but not
hopelessly so. 29 In general, Sanchez’s estimate of the Philippine criollos
seems to have been borne out by the event. Writing to Lopez in 1605,
Acquaviva said that, according to information received, the criollos who
had been received into the Society in the Philippines had lived up to
expectations; hence, if Lopez and his consultors after discussing the
matter thought it advisable, they could disregard the restrictions which
were in force in Mexico and Peru. But he suddenly changed his mind four
years later. “1 consider it of the highest importance,” he wrote to Lopez,
236 The Jesuits in the Philippines
that you proceed with great caution in the admission of those born in that
country. The directives which we have sent to the other provincials of the
western Indies on this subject should be kept. For this purpose a copy of
them is being sent to your Reverence. I charge you to observe them strictly,
for what has been experienced in other parts shows that this is wholly
necessary/' 30 This injunction was complied with to the letter and even a
little beyond it, for Andrea Caro reported in 1615 that “only Europeans
are admitted to the Society in this country, and even they are chosen with
great care — cum magno delectu /' 31 Francisco Gutierrez, writing to Acquaviva
the same year, protested against this complete exclusion of the criollos.
Some of the students in our college who apply for the Society are capable
young men of great promise, although they have only completed their humanities
course and are among those born in this country [naturales de la tierra], otherwise
known as criollos. A number of them seem apt for our Society, but for many
years now no one has been admitted. I do not think this is wise, for we have
certainly come across some very good prospects who lead model lives. By all
means let us proceed with great caution in admitting candidates of this sort and
test their vocation thoroughly. But to close the door altogether on all of them and
thus deprive the Society of good members seems too narrow a policy, especially
since there are no Europeans here who can be admitted excepting some ex-soldiers
who are usually received as lay brothers. And as far as they are concerned, it would
be far better not to admit so many of them, because they have very rough manners
for one thing and for another most of them are good for nothing but to lay a
heavy burden on the Society. 32
This representation apparently had some effect, for criollos entered the
Society thereafter, and turned out to be very fine Jesuits.
With regard to European emigrants from Europe the principal restriction
was that they should be able to prove their limpie^a de sangre, that is, that
they were not of Jewish or Moorish descent. This had been decreed by the
fifth General Congregation as an impediment to admission from which
even the general could not dispense ; a step occasioned by the serious inter-
nal disturbances which took place in the Spanish provinces during the
early part of Acquaviva's generalate. “The Society desires to be all things
to all men/' the fathers of the congregation explained, “in order to bring
salvation to all. But this does not necessarily mean that it must derive its
members from every social class. What is more conducive to the greater
glory of God and the more perfect fulfillment of its stated purpose is that
its workers should be acceptable to people of every nation throughout the
world, and that they should be such that their services may be willingly
and confidently sought by those w r hose favorable or unfavorable attitude
(as Father Ignatius of holy memory pointed out) is of great importance in
providing or withholding opportunities for the service of God and the
salvation of souls/' 33 This last observation was certainly applicable to the
The Men
237
vast Spanish empire, where a priest of known Jewish or Moorish descent
would have been of very limited usefulness.
It was relatively easy to obtain legal proof of limpie^a de sangre in Spain
itself, but not so easy in the Philippines. Several requests were submitted
to Rome for a relaxation of the rule, and they were apparently granted at
least to the extent that strictly legal evidence, such as affidavits from the
applicant's place of origin, was dispensed with.
As may be expected, most of the Europeans who entered the Society in
the Philippines as candidates for the priesthood were alumni of the College
of Manila or San Jose. Pedro Tello, the nephew of Governor Tello, became
a novice in 1602, a year after, in academic finer) 7 of tawny jusi cloth with
scarlet facings, he served the first Mass in the San Jose chapel. Domingo de
Penalver, like many another young Spaniard of his adventurous age, had
emigrated to the colonies to win gold and glory. He seems to have had no
thought whatever of that other aim of Spanish colonization — God— when,
one day in 1604, he walked into the College of Manila on a sudden impulse
and sat down at the back of the class of rhetoric. Father Angelo Armano was
lecturing, and Penalver liked the lesson so much that he came back the next
day. He must have had some previous schooling in Latin, for during the
repetition period, when Armano could get no satisfactory recitation from
his students, he got up and expounded the classical text so well that the
class burst into spontaneous applause. That sealed his fate. He enrolled
as a grammar student, and the following year entered the novitiate. 34
But not all the Europeans who joined the Society in the Philippines were
Spaniards. Daniel Theoclitos, who was employed as a foreman in the
construction of the college church and became a novice brother in 1590,
was a Greek. A transcript of the document by which he renounced all his
worldly goods to become poor with Christ's poor has been preserved. 35
It reads :
I, Daniel of Candia, two years having elapsed since I entered the Society [of
Jesus with the object of] pronouncing the three vows which its members make
at the end of two years, on this day, the nineteenth of March, Saint Joseph’s
day, 1592, make a donation of and irrevocably give to this house of the Society in
Manila the sum of three hundred and some pesos which it owed and paid as part
of the wages due to me, provided the Father General, or the Father Provincial in
his name, approves this donation and does not judge that said sum would be
better employed elsewhere. Furthermore, all the houses and farms which I possess
in my native land, worth, as I believe, over one thousand pesos, I herewith devise
and give to my mother, if she is still alive ; but if she be dead, to my three sisters
in equal portions ... To which I affix my signature, because it is the truth.
The notar) 7 who drew up the document having got this far, it was
brought to his attention that Brother Daniel w 7 as illiterate. He therefore
added: “In my behalf, because I do not know how to write: Father
238 The Jestiits in the Philippines
Raymundo [Prat]. Brother Gaspar Garay. Father Francisco Almerique.”
Then follow the signatures of these three Jesuits and that of a witness who
must have been one of Brother Daniel's Tagalog carpenters. (Because he
knew how to sign his name, he makes this brief appearance on the stage
of history and vanishes forever: “Agustin Calunbaba.")
In 1608 two Italians who might have stepped out of one of Shakespeare's
plays began their noviceship in Manila. They were Stefano Oliverio of
Genoa and Sebastiano Roderigo Bertarello of Mantua. 36 Being bosom
friends from boyhood, they set out together to seek their fortune. After
many adventures by sea and land they settled down halfway around the
world in the city of Manila, and like the Merchant of Venice began to
send rich cargoes to distant ports. They were expecting a handsome return
of six thousand silver pesos from Acapulco when they suddenly decided
to purchase that pearl of great price for which so many men before and
since have given all their possessions and thought themselves to have had
the better of the bargain. Undivided in the world, they were undivided in
the religious life, and labored happily in the College of Manila at the
humble tasks of the Jesuit lay brother, Stefano as sacristan and Sebastiano
as buyer for the college. In 1614 Valerio de Ledesma, the provincial at the
time, noted that Sebastiano was not quite equal to his task, though he
always did his best and was “ quiet, serene and orderly/' But Stefano, he
wrote, “performs the office of sacristan with distinction — con eminencia ," 37
By 1656, according to Colin, 143 Jesuits had been received and had
Table 2. Jesuit Novices in the Philippines, 1604- 16 38
Year
Novice scholastics
Novice brothers
Total
1604
6
4
10
1605
2
2
4
1610
3
6
9
1612
1
7
8
1614
1
6
7
1615
0
4
4
1618
5
2
7
1620
0
6
6
1621
0
5
5
1622
3
5
8
1624
0
5
5
1632
-
-
10
1638
0
2
2
Sources: ** Catalogi triennales,” ARSI Phil . 2; “ Litterae Annuae,” ARSI PhiL 5.
The Men
239
persevered in the Society in the Philippines: three priests, twenty-three
scholastics and one hundred and seventeen lay brothers. 38 As may be seen
from Table 2, compiled from the extant annual letters and catalogues of
the period, there were never more than ten novices in any one year during
the period 1604-1638. Documents do not enable us to continue the table
down to 1650, but they do show that in 1637-1643, thirteen applicants
were accepted, five scholastics and eight brothers; in 1644-1646, two,
one scholastic and one brother; in 1647-1649, seven, four scholastics and
three brothers; and in 1650-1651, two, one scholastic and one brother.
Diego Garcia planted 2,000 coconut trees at Antipolo as a future endow-
ment for a novitiate, and proposed to transfer the novices to a separate
house of their own there. This move was actually carried out by his
successor, Gregorio Lopez, who reported it to Acquaviva on 1 July 1606. 39
Since the coconut grove was not yet equal to the task of feeding and cloth-
ing the novices, the College of Manila was helping out with part of its
income and with meat from its Taytay ranch. Besides providing the
novices with more peaceful surroundings than those of the College of
Manila, Lopez had an ulterior motive in sending them to Antipolo,
namely, to see if he could interest some generous soul in giving the novitiate
a more ample and secure foundation than Garda's grove. As long as the
novices formed part of the college community, the fact that they belonged
to an entirely different grade in the Society, were engaged in work which
had nothing whatever to do with the college, and hence needed an endow-
ment of their own, was likely to pass unperceived.
It turned out as Lopez had hoped. Two years later, Captain Pedro de
Brito and his wife Dona Ana de Herrera came forward and presented the
newly erected Philippine province with a novitiate of its own. 40 Brito was
a native of the Canaries. He first came to the Philippines with Governor
Sande's expedition, a dashing young officer at the head of a company of
300 infantrymen which he had mustered himself. That was 34 years ago.
After taking part in several campaigns he settled down, like many another
conquistador, and amassed a modest fortune from the galleon trade. He
did not, however, retire completely from public affairs, but served the
colony in various positions of trust, such as that of aide to the army chief
of staff and chief constable of the audiencia. When in 1589 a permanent
seat in the city corporation was put up for sale at public auction, in accor-
dance with the custom of the period, he purchased it for 1,400 pesos. Some
years later the people of Manila expressed their esteem for this grand old
man — he turned seventy in 1608 — by making him alfe're ^ general , or
principal standard bearer of the city.
The terms of the foundation which he and his wife, Dona Ana, offered
and Father Gregorio Lopez, as provincial of the Society of Jesus in the
Philippines, accepted, are specified in a document dated 1 July 1608 as
240 The Jesuits in the Philippines
follows. 41 The founders engaged themselves to provide an endowment
for a house of probation to the amount of 14,000 pesos, which when
invested would yield an annual income of 1,000 pesos, according to the
current rates. The house of probation and its adjoining church were to be
built on a hill called Buenavista, within the confines of a cattle ranch
which the founders owned in a district called Makati, about four miles
up the Pasig River from Manila. Both the novitiate and its church were to
be placed under the patronage of Saint Peter. The principal part of the
endowment was to consist of one-half of the territory and herds of the
cattle ranch, valued at 5 >°°° pesos. A second part, consisting of 4,000
pesos in cash, was delivered by the founders at the time the document was
signed. The remaining 5,000 they promised to deliver the following year
on the feast of St. John the Baptist (24 June), or earlier if the galleons
from Acapulco arrived earlier. In the meantime, they would begin to pay
the income due from that sum out of the revenue which they received
from certain leased houses and from the other half of the Makati cattle
ranch. The income from the endowment was to be employed in the con-
struction of the house and church until they were finished, after which it
would go to the support of the novitiate community. In return, Lopez
granted to Don Pedro and Dona Ana the same privileges and graces which
had been conferred on Esteban Rodriguez de Figueroa as founder of the
College of Manila.
Lopez was delighted with the site of the future novitiate, and the fact
that it is now occupied by the minor seminary of the archdiocese of Manila
proves that he was not mistaken as to its advantages. Being on high ground
in wooded country, it was distinctly cooler and more salubrious than the
tidal flats on which the city was built. The broad acres of the Brito estate,
uninhabited save by a few herdsmen and their families, assured healthful
exercise. As Lopez told Acquaviva, San Pedro Makati when built would
serve admirably not only as a novitiate and tertianship but as a villa house
as well, where infirm and ailing Jesuits could be sent to live and the scholas-
tics could spend their weekly holidays. Moreover, since it was so close to
Manila the priests of the community could come down on occasions to
preach and give missions. 42
Two lay brothers were immediately assigned to the estate, one to take
charge of the cattle ranch and the other to supervise the construction of the
novitiate. 43 For some reason, possibly because the building had to be
financed from income rather than capital, it took a long time before the
house was ready for occupancy, but in 1622 the novices finally moved in.
It seems somewhat surprising that, in spite of the many undoubted advan-
tages of the place, San Pedro Makati was actually used as a novitiate for
less than a decade. By 1630 the novices were back in the College of Manila.
Two reasons for this change are given in the documents: first, the novices,
The Men
241
even when joined by the tertian fathers, were too few to form a regular
community ; and second, it was found to be less burdensome to the estate to
support the novitiate as part of the College of Manila rather than as a
separate house.
Not that the original endowment had suffered diminution in the course
of time ; on the contrary, careful management of the ranch and the leasing
of part of the estate to tenant farmers had increased the annual income to
1,500 pesos in 1621 and 2,200 pesos in 1636. True, a debt of 6,800 pesos
was incurred in 1630 for improvements on the estate, and another debt of
700 pesos for repairs on the house and church ; but these debts were paid
off, and in 1649 the income still stood at 2,000 pesos. However, certain
other charges had been placed on the endowment, doubtless with the
consent of Brito's heirs, who succeeded to the patronage of the house.
Toward the latter part of the 1630's part of the income was used for the
traveling expenses of novices who had entered in Mexico but had volun-
teered for the Philippines, and another part for the support of the pro-
vincial and his staff. Thus, from 1630 on, San Pedro Makati ceased to be
a novitiate but continued to function as a villa. It was also used as a
retreat house not only by Jesuits but by secular ecclesiastics who wished
to make the spiritual exercises according to the method of St. Ignatius.
In any case, Don Pedro's benefaction continued to serve the cause of Christ
and his Church long after he was dead, and fully justified the inscription
which the Jesuits placed on his tomb:
SAPIENTI TRAPEZITAE QVI VT TERRENAS DIVITIAS
COELESTES FACERET TOTAS FOENERATVS EST DEO
CAPITANEO DOMINO PETRO DE BRITO
HAEC PROBATIONS DOMVS SOCIETATIS
IESV OPTIMO FVNDATORI SUO
IN GRATI ANIMI MONUMENTVM
HVNC SEPVLCHRALEM LAPIDEM POSVIT
which we may render into English as follows: “This funeral tablet has
been erected by this house of probation of the Society of Jesus in grateful
memory of its founder, Captain Pedro de Brito, Gentleman, a wise investor,
who converted his earthly securities into heavenly by banking them with
God . "44
In 1604, just before its erection into a province, the Jesuit establishment
in the Philippines consisted of 67 members, of whom 32 were priests,
5 scholastics, 20 lay brothers and 10 novices. It had the College of Manila
with the attached residential College of San Jose, five stable mission resi-
dences and two temporary mission stations. The membership increased,
slowly and with fluctuations, to 100 in 1621, lio in 1630 and 133 in
1643, the highest total reached in the first half of the seventeenth century.
242 The Jesuits in the Philippines
But the number of colleges and missions increased with it, so that by 1643
the Philippine province was administering five colleges and eleven
residences. The number of houses remained stationary at this figure until
the middle of the century, whereas the total membership began to decline
rapidly; 116 in 1646, no in 1649, 96 in 1651. Thus, while valiant
efforts were made to keep the mission residences at the minimum strength
of six prescribed by Acquaviva, the actual staff in most of them kept
falling below that figure, until in 1651 we have the following meager
distribution: Silang, two; Bohol, two; Carigara, two; Palapag, three;
Dagami, eight; Catbalogan, four. These trends may be studied more in
detail in Tables 3 and 4.
Succeeding chapters will show how this handful of men organized
themselves for the apostolate, what solutions they found to the problems
presented by their environment, and in what measure their enterprises met
Table 3. Number and Distribution of Jesuits in the Philippines , tjgy-l 6 jl
Year
Colleges
Novitiate
Residences
Stations
Men
1597
2 a
-
7
-
43
1600
2
-
5 b
-
53
1604
3 C
-
7
•7
b 7
16x0
3
-
7
1
91
1612
3
-
7
-»
86
1614
3
-
8
1
84
1618
3
-
X I
-
97
1621
3
-
1 1
I
IOO
1624
■)
l d
10
-
I l6
1630
5 e
-
10
1 IO
1636
5
-
1 1
-
!09
1643
5
-
1 1
*33
1646
5
-
12
-
1 16
i6 49
5
-
12
-
1 10
165I
5
-
12
-
96
a. Manila and Cebu.
b. The result of the reduction of residences effected by Garcia.
c. College of San Jose added.
d. San Pedro Makati is listed separately in the catalogues as a novitiate while it was still
under construction and even after the novices had been recalled to Manila; I list it here
separately only during the period when it was actually occupied by the novices, and at
other times as a residence.
e. Colleges of Cavite and Arevalo added.
Sources : “ Catalog! triennales," ARSI Phil . 2; “Litterae annuae,” ARSI Phil. 5.
The Men 243
Table 4. Number of Jesuits in various mission residences, 1610-1631
Residences 3
1610
l6l2
1618
1621
1624
163O
1636
1643 1646
I649 1651
Antipolo
7
4
7
5
4
3
3
2
4
5
-
Silang
2
3
6
5
7
6
3
3
5
5
2
Bohol
5
6
5
5
6
4
4
6
4
4
2
Carigara
6
6
6
7
9
7
5
4
1 1
4
2
Dulag-Dagami b
Tinagon-Catba-
6
7
7
8
9
5
5
8
7
8
logan
5
7
8
6
6
4
4
4
4
5
4
Palapag
5
7
8
9
7
4
5
6
3
a. I have selected for study the mission residences for which figures are available for the
entire extent of the period 1610-1651.
b. The Dulag residence was transferred to Dagami in the 1630*5, the Tinagon residence to
Catbalogan in the 1640*8.
Sources : Same as those for Table 3.
with failure or success. But it will not be out of place to tty to visualize, as
far as sources will permit, what kind of Jesuits they were; how they under-
stood and to what extent they put into practice the ideals proposed to
them by their founder, Saint Ignatius. Indeed, as Astrain rightly points
out, in the history of a religious order ‘ * the first inquiry which the historian
should make is how its members observe the holy rule which they have
embraced. By all means let the notable undertakings which the order takes
in hand, the books it publishes, the difficulties which assail it from with-
out, and the more or less interesting details of its action on society be
described. But when all is said and done, the most important factor in a
religious body, that which constitutes its inner strength and the source of
its spiritual well-being, is the exact observance of the regulations imposed
upon it by God through the instrumentality of its saintly founder/' 45
This is no more than what Saint Ignatius himself had in mind when he
called upon all the members of his Company to " devote themselves to
the pursuit of solid and perfect virtue and of spiritual things, and account
these of greater worth than learning or other natural and human gifts ; for
they are the interior things from which force must flow to the exterior for
the end proposed to us." 46
Fortunately, a certain amount of reliable information on our subject,
though not as much as we would like, is supplied by some of the docu-
ments which have come down from the first half of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Such, for example, are the reports sent by the Philippine provincials
to the general, or submitted to him personally by the procurators elected
by the provincial congregations, on the "spiritual state" of the province;
such are occasional letters from local superiors or private individuals
244 The Jesuits in the Philippines
informing the general of certain practices which they considered contrary
to the statutes of the Society or harmful to its spirit; such, finally, the
instructions issued from time to time by the general, from which some
idea may be derived of the conditions they are intended to remedy.
Among the papers which Chirino brought with him to Rome in 1602
was a report drawn up by Garcia and his consultors on the spiritual state
of the vice-province. 47 The report stated that, in accordance with
Acquaviva's orders,
... all the residences in the Visayas have been reduced to four, namely, Dulag,
Carigara, Samar, and Bohol, in each of which are stationed eight or six of our
men, four fathers and four brothers. They live in community and follow the
order of time of a college, with the specified examinations of conscience, mental
prayer, bells [for the beginning and end of each duty], exhortations and con-
ferences, penances and admonitions, and the practice of lowly and mean offices
such as sweeping, washing dishes, and serving table. They go out in pairs on
mission tours through the towns of their district, returning at the end of a month
for a week of common life in which to rebuild the forces of both the inner and
the outer man. This is in addition to the two occasions when they come together
for a longer renewal of vows. Thus they engage in missionary work and at the
same time live as a religious community, as far as circumstances allow, and
generally speaking these missionary fathers as well as those who habitually reside
in the colleges of Manila and Cebu conduct themselves very religiously, observing
the rules faithfully to the great advantage of their own souls and that of the
neighbor.
At the same time Garcia and his consultors stressed the fact that life in
the missions offered special dangers to the virtue of those who did not have
their passions well under control; hence special care should be taken in
selecting the men who are sent to the Philippines. Four years later Angelo
Armano called Acquaviva's attention to certain general defects which had
been observed not only by himself but by many other members of the
province . 48 He had had excellent opportunities of making these obser-
vations at first hand, first as rector of the College of San Jose for three and
a half years, then as preacher and confessor in the college church, and,
at the time of writing, as superior of the Silang residence. His reply to
those who kept urging him to report these things to the general had hither-
to been that that w 7 as the business of the provincial's consultors and the
procurators sent to Rome. However, since nothing was apparently being
done he would now do as they asked.
The first defect was that superiors took little care to encourage and
stimulate the zeal of their subjects. For this reason many of the mission-
aries who have come from Europe full of enthusiasm are now sorry that
they did so, and only a kind of pride prevents them from showing it.
Like the apostles in the gospel, they labor all night and catch no fish,
The Men
245
because they find nothing to their satisfaction either in the place to which
they are sent, the work to which they are put, or the fellow Jesuits given
them for companions. '‘This is why so many have left or been dismissed
from the Society in Peru, Mexico and here, and why so many others have
become sick in both body and soul and even died. Being melancholy
and restless, they live among the natives as though in exile, and even in the
colleges and houses they withdraw into their shells, and thus fall an easy
victim to their illnesses; for a melancholy man is not long for this world / 9
The second defect was the contemptuous attitude of some of the Euro-
peans toward the criollos, which they did not hesitate to express in such
remarks as, that the criollo Jesuits were good for nothing; that they were
invariably the ones dismissed from the Society; that they lacked per-
severance ; that orders had been issued not to admit them before a certain
age ; that none of them ever distinguished himself in anything or showed
himself capable of being a superior. The older men among the criollos,
who are excellent religious and many of them professed, though naturally
deeply hurt by these gratuitous insults, have not bothered to reply to them ;
but the younger ones have answered in kind, giving as good as they got.
Quite effectively, Armano adds, “for since many among those who have
had to be dismissed are Europeans, it is somewhat difficult to find a suit-
able rejoinder. The world is all one, and that's a fact; there are good people
and bad people everywhere/ 1
The third defect was the low esteem to which the principal ministry in
the Indies, namely, the study of the native languages and missionary work
among the natives, had fallen. At least, there were some who seemed to look
upon it as a penance, and who made every effort to have themselves assigned
to work among Spaniards, not hesitating to seek the patronage of the more
influential fathers in order to achieve their object. Superiors lent them-
selves to this abuse by giving in to such pretensions, on the plea that if they
sent so-and-so to the missions he might be gravely tempted against his
vocation. The result was that even outsiders had been affected by this
attitude, and esteemed the padres lenguas — those who because of their
familiarity with the language were assigned to the native ministry — less
than those who belonged to the faculty of the college or ministered to the
Spanish community.
The fourth defect was the propensity of superiors to adopt different
policies from those of their predecessors, and undo what they had done for
insufficient reasons. This was most unnerving from the subjects' point of
view, and gave rise to the impression that superiors issued orders according
to how they felt rather than according to the constitutions of the Society.
Lastly, refriguit charitas ; charity was growing cold.
Few and far between are those to whom we can look up to as a father; and yet
such are the men whom we seek and ought to have here more than anywhere else
246 The Jesuits in the Philippines
in the world, for in the Indies we have no relatives, no friends, more trials, less
food, fewer comforts. If then he who governs, governs with authority and gravity,
but without the human touch — sin hnmanidai — it is difficult to live content. And
what makes it worse is that while many have enough virtue to be happy even under
such conditions, there are others who resent this mode of government, criticize it,
complain against it, and by their lack of resignation hurt both themselves and
others.
These were the shortcomings, Armano said, that he had noticed in both
superiors and subjects. He had tried to state them as objectively as possible;
and in conclusion, he would say that in the province * ‘ there is no lack of
good men ; excellent men ; but in some the spirit of our holy father [St.
Ignatius] is sadly wanting, and there is much room for improvement in our
way of doing things out here — I mean to say, in all the western Indies / 9
Francisco de Otazo, the rector of Cebu, sent a similar report to Acqua-
viva at about the same time . 49 He agreed in part with those who thought,
like Armano, that superiors should be more gentle and considerate. By all
means; but let them not be weak. “I have observed,” he said, “that in
some cases a policy of extreme condescension and as it were of politic rule
has resulted in serious harm to certain subjects and might easily have
brought greater dishonor to the Society than was actually the case.” For
instance, superiors were too slow to remove from a post a man who was
giving great disedification, their excuse being that replacements were
lacking. This was no excuse at all, because the matter could be settled by a
simple exchange of men between two houses.
Extreme gentleness was needed not so much with the Jesuits as with the
natives, and that was precisely where it was sometimes lacking. If the
conversion of the natives was to be advanced, the missionaries must deal
with them
... in the spirit of love, respect and confidence in the Lord, and . . . with a
certain deliberately cultivated enthusiasm and energy so as to put life into these
natives, who are innately indolent; for we have observed that while they are
relatively free of other bad habits, indolence is their principal vice. Hence
superiors and supervisors especially should have the spirit described to such a
degree that they can communicate and inspire it in their subordinates . . .If, on
the contrary, a local superior of these missions should be of the opposite persuasion
and show his lack of esteem and trust, he will do great harm not only on his own
account but because his subjects will take their cue from him.
Furthermore, we ought not to make so many demands on our Visayans
for the decoration of churches, the salaries of schoolteachers, and other
projects ; they have more than enough to do trying to pay the tribute and
meet the calls made by the encomenderos on their services. We should try
to finance our various works in other ways. And, speaking of financing,
The Men
247
I have observed that the Society has an unblemished reputation as far as engaging
in trade in the towns of our mission district is concerned. Let us hope we do not
lose it in consequence of a plan which has been adopted and put into effect once
already, namely, of loading a vessel with beeswax in the Visayas and sending it to
Manila to be sold in order to buy provisions for our houses. I am very much
afraid that this arrangement will cause talk and be looked upon as not very
edifying. By reducing what we ordinarily spend on ourselves, not to mention
other economies, there is no need to have recourse to an arrangement of this sort.
With regard to this suggestion of Otazo’s, it should be pointed out that
while the Church forbids clerics to engage in trade, there is nothing
whatever in canon law against their selling the products of their own
industry or that of those who work for them in order to buy what they
need for themselves. What the law of the Church understands by trade
and forbids as incompatible with the clerical state is the purchase of goods
or effects for the specific purpose of resale in their original condition at a
profit. The beeswax to which Otazo refers was a forest product which the
Jesuits in the Visayas obtained partly as voluntary contributions and partly
by workmen whom they employed for that purpose. Because of this, and
because they sold it not for profit but to obtain what they needed to support
themselves and their work, they did not consider the transaction to come
within the purview of the prohibition. Otazo doubtless knew this, but
was anxious nevertheless to be on the safe side and avoid even the
appearance of commercialism.
In 1612 Lopez reported after a visitation of the province that religious
observance flourished in all the houses. 50 The defects which he noticed
were minor and he took steps to correct them. At the College of Manila,
for instance, some of the fathers argued more heatedly than they should
at recreation, and sometimes carried their arguments into the time when
silence should be kept. At the College of Cebu, two acting rectors had
alternately spoiled and repressed the community; the reappointment of
Otazo as rector should restore the balance. The superior of Bohol who was
too timid and retiring was advised to allow his men more initiative ; the
superior of Carigara, to be more diligent in providing his community with
what they needed ; the superior of Arevalo, to be more affable in his deal-
ings with both Spaniards and natives. At Carigara, differences of opinion
had arisen among the fathers regarding missionary policies and procedures.
Some wanted to encourage their neophytes to approach the sacraments
more frequently than the others thought proper. Lopez chaired conferences
in which these differences were ironed out. The house which delighted
Lopez most of all was the mission of Butuan, which was restored on a
temporary basis some years after Garcia had closed it because of the
establishment of a garrison there. The missionaries won the hearts of the
people so completely that, when there was talk of withdrawing the garrison,
248 The Jesuits in the Philippines
the Butuanos went to Lopez and asked him to let the Jesuits stay, promising
to protect them with their lives.
Lopez's successor, Ledesma, made another visitation of the province
three years later. 51 He found the same substantial fidelity to the vows and
rules in most of his subjects, but noted many instances of a defect which
has already been mentioned several times in the course of our survey,
namely, the excessive harshness of certain superiors toward their subjects
and of certain missionaries toward their converts. The superior of Silang,
for instance, Pedro de Segura, had so antagonized the people of that town
that Ledesma was forced to remove him. “It cost me many tears and
exhortations," he says, "to pour oil on the troubled waters stirred up by
the personality and procedures of Father Pedro de Segura." As for the
superior of Dulag, f ‘ Father Pascual de Acuna is most exact in keeping the
rules and seeing that others kept them; a virtue which would be much
more solid if he had as much gentleness and religious urbanity as he has
vigilance." The province suffered irreparable loss in the death of two great
missionaries stationed in Samar: Alonso Palacios and Hernando de San
Roman. "These two fathers," Ledesma remarked, "had by their true
religious spirit stolen the hearts of the natives, so that they were looked
upon as real fathers. Their apostolate in this mission was most fruitful,
because from the very beginning they adopted the method of spreading the
gospel which the gospel itself teaches, namely, that of love. For this reason
they were uniformly successful ; whereas others, by their harsh and puni-
tive measures, tear down with one hand what they build up with the
other."
Yet, it is exceedingly curious that while Ledesma and Otazo deplored
the rigor of other superiors, they themselves were not exempt from the
same fault. That same year the expedition headed by Humanes arrived.
Some of the scholastics brought with them a few small religious articles
which they proceeded to spread among the other members of the commu-
nity, apparently without bothering to ask the rector's permission. This was
of course a fault; but Otazo who was acting rector at the time was so
much angered by it that he gave the community a series of withering lec-
tures on the virtue of poverty, absolutely forbade the giving or receiving of
any article, however small, and temporarily took away all authority from
the minister of the house. Representations made to Ledesma against these
measures were of no avail; he backed Otazo fully. Moreover, the new
arrivals were not sent out to the country, as the custom was, to rest after
their long and arduous journey, but told to make a retreat at once. 52 And
what of Humanes, who might have pleaded with success for a little more
consideration for his scholastics ? He seems to have made no move to do so.
Instead, he raised a cry of alarm at the growing custom of drinking
chocolate, writing Acquaviva that
The Men
2 49
. . . poor health and illness are being alleged as an excuse for introducing the drink-
ing of chocolate into this province, and it seems that once a person has begun to
indulge in it, he can no longer live without it. Your Paternity knows well, from
what has happened in New Spain, that this cannot be countenanced. For my part,
I beseech your Paternity with all my heart to put a stop to this abuse. The ministry
of this province is for completely apostolic men ; men who have no use for such
delicacies and creature comforts . 53
And what had happened in New Spain ? Merely that a few of the older
fathers had written urgent letters to Rome calling upon the general to cast
out chocolate if he wished to save the Society from destruction. This new-
fangled potion, they claimed, which the Spaniards had learned to drink
from the Mexicans, was a violation of evangelical poverty; it was a danger
to chastity ; and by' arousing the passions it cast our ministries into dis-
repute. Acquaviva, acting on this information, forbade the use of chocolate
in Jesuit houses except as medicine to be taken only on the advice of a
physician. This did not satisfy the alarmists, who thought this directive a
weak compromise. They continued to declaim against the drug in their
letters to Rome until they convinced Vitelleschi, Acquaviva 1 s successor,
to forbid it to Jesuits altogether. The prohibition, being based on a com-
plete misapprehension of the properties of chocolate, was not, as Astrain
points out, successful. Even the most conservative fathers were gradually
convinced that the Mexican electuary was a relatively inexpensive food
which, to use Astrain's expression, left the Christian faithful who con-
sumed it neither worse nor better than they were before. By the end of the
century chocolate had become a standard breakfast food on Jesuit tables
in Spain and the Indies . 54
The prevailing impression these documents give of the Philippine
Jesuits is that they were for the most part austere men who placed great
stress on the exact observance of external discipline and the mortification
of the rebellious flesh. Because they were so hard on themselves, they were
occasionally hard on each other too, and on the hopelessly light-headed
Tagalogs and Visayans whom they had come to save, but who kept straying
after flowers from virtue's thorny path. The tremendous sacrifices which
they made to come as missionaries to the Philippines clearly prove that they
loved God with all their hearts; and if so, then they must have greatly
loved their fellow men also, as the Lord commands; unfortunately, their
outward manner did not always make this love immediately perceptible or
attractive.
One reason for what might be considered the excessive rigor of the
superiors of this period was the recalcitrant attitude manifested by some
of the lay brothers. Another was the defection of a number of priests in the
mission residences who committed serious external sins against their
vows and had to be dismissed from the Society. Brother Gaspar Gomez
250 The Jesuits in the Philippines
caused a great deal of anxiety to provincials and rectors by his interminable
involvement in military intelligence* He seemed to be always going from
Manila to Mexico to Madrid and back again with top secret documents of
extreme urgency. Moreover, he obviously took great delight in these con-
fidential missions, and when the colonial government was finally persuaded
to dispense with his sendees, he refused to settle down to the humdrum
chores which are the Jesuit brother’s lot. He kept pestering his superiors
to let him go back to Mexico, and became particularly difficult in June,
when the galleons began to spread their sails for the eastward voyage.
However, his heart was in the right place, and in 1614 Ledesma was able
to tell Acquaviva that “ thanks be to God, he seems to have settled down
at last. He acts as companion to the fathers who go out of the house, and
there is not a word of complaint out of him ; he seeks no other employment ;
in short, he has us all edified/’ 55
Many of the brothers received in the Philippines were ex-soldiers, hard-
bitten men who had knocked about the world, killed their man in hand-to-
hand combat, and brawled in barracks with the best of them. God’s arace
had touched them and would in time transform them; but they did not
put aside their rough and ready ways the moment they put on the cassock.
Superiors needed an iron hand to keep them in line, and it is not surprising
that when they turned to handle the more tractable, they should occa-
sionally forget to replace the velvet glove.
But it was the priests who were found guilty of serious misdemeanors
that gave superiors the greatest concern. I have counted about ten of them
mentioned in the official correspondence of the province up to 1630;
there may have been one or two more. Most of these defections took place
in the Visayan missions where the scandal they caused to the native con-
verts made superiors take particularly severe measures against the guilty
party. A missionary of Palapag who was convicted of grave sins against
chastity in 1615 was placed in stocks by his local superior and commanded
to be whipped in the presence of the town officials as a public reparation
for the scandal he had caused. After that he was dismissed. 56 Dismissal was,
in fact, the invariable sentence in all these cases, except where the offender
was solemnly professed. In that event he was withdrawn from all minis-
tries and imprisoned on short rations for an indeterminate period. One
of the saddest of these defections was that of Pedro Tello, the San Jose
scholar who has been mentioned once or twice in the course of this narra-
tive. After giving great promise as a scholastic that he would one day
become an outstanding missionary, and after actually laboring in the
Visayan missions for a few years following his ordination to the priesthood,
he had to be dismissed in 1615 for unchastity. His repentance was appa-
rently complete and permanent. After living an exemplary life for many
years as a secular priest, he applied for readmission into the Society. The
The Men
251
application was accepted and he persevered as a Jesuit until his death. 57
There is no need to mention the others bp name; they are not otherwise
known to history.
The fact that most of these regrettable occurrences took place in the
mission residences aroused a general desire in the province to re-examine
the whole system of missionary endeavor as currently practiced, in order
to see whether greater personal safeguards could be provided for the men
without placing too many restrictions on their ministry. The problem was
posed with great clarity by Juan de San Lucar who wrote to Acquaviva as
early as 1601:
There are three circumstances which are capable of doing great harm to religious
in these mission stations. One is the opportunities there are of committing sin
with women; for although the women of this country do not ordinarily invite
improper advances, neither do they resist them. The second is that when a reli-
gious has too much to do, too little time for his devotions, and lives for the most
part alone, severe temptations are inevitable. The third is that all the religious
here must always be going about giving orders, meting out punishments and
handling money; there is no help for it; but if virtue is lacking worldliness is the
result. 58
The reduction of the stations to a few residences with larger commu-
nities was designed precisely to deal with the problem, but it did not seem
to work very well. For one thing, the men were out of the house on tour
for most of the year, and for another, the periods when they lived a com-
munity life were too short to be really effective. So at least it seemed to
many. But this brings us to the question of missionary policy, one of the
major problems with which the Philippine province had to grapple during
its early years.
9*
Chapter Eleven
PROBLEMS AND POLICIES
Since this chapter is concerned mainly with administrative affairs, a few
preliminary remarks on Jesuit government are necessary. 1 The Society of
Jesus is divided into areas of administration called provinces, each under a
provincial superior. These provincials are appointed by and subordinate to
a superior general who ordinarily resides in Rome and has charge of the
government of the whole order. He is aided in his task by an advisory body
whose members are called assistants. Each assistant concerns himself
particularly with the affairs of a number of provinces, grouped on a terri-
torial or linguistic basis, which together form an assistancy. During the
period with which we are concerned, the first half of the seventeenth
century , there were five assistancies : the Italian, the German, the French,
the Spanish, and the Portuguese. The Spanish assistancy consisted of the
four Spanish provinces, the province of Sardinia, and all the provinces of
the Spanish Indies; it was therefore to this assistancy that the Philippine
province belonged.
The general of the Society of Jesus is elected for life by a general congre-
gation consisting of the assistants, the provincials, and two delegates from
each province. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, the
provinces outside Europe were exempted from sending their provincials or
delegates to the general congregations. This was because of the length
of time it would have taken them to come to Rome where the congregations
were invariably held. However, if a procurator of an overseas province
happened to be in Rome at the time, he was ordinarily admitted as a
delegate. Miguel Solana from the Philippines -was admitted in this way
to the ninth General Congregation which elected Francesco Piccolomini in
1649. This was the only time, to my knowledge, that a delegate from the
Philippines took part in a general congregation.
The general congregation elects not only the new general but his assis-
tants who remain in office until replaced by another general congregation.
With the general and assistants, the general congregation also functions as
the supreme legislative authority of the Society, and its decrees have the
same binding force as the original constitutions of St. Ignatius. There is
no fixed time for convoking a general congregation except when a general
dies and it becomes necessary to elect his successor. However, a general
may summon it during his lifetime to deliberate on matters of importance
252
Problems and Policies
2 53
affecting the whole Society, He may do this either of his own accord or at
the instance of the congregation of procurators. The assistants also may
summon a general congregation if they consider the general's conduct of
affairs so detrimental to the Society that he ought to be replaced. Finally,
the Roman pontiff, as supreme head of the Catholic Church, may convoke
a general congregation of the Society, or cause it to meet at regular intervals,
if he deems it advisable. In 1646 Innocent X ordained that a general
congregation be held every nine years. This ordinance was revoked by
Benedict XIV in 1746.
The congregation of procurators, as its name suggests, is composed of
procurators sent to Rome by the provinces at regular intervals for the
purpose of reporting to the general on the affairs of their respective pro-
vinces, and of deliberating together with the general and his assistants on
whether a general congregation should be convoked or not. In the seven-
teenth century procurators from the European provinces came to Rome
every three years, and from the American provinces every four; but a
procurator from the remote Philippine province usually did not show up
except at intervals of six years or so.
The wo delegates from each province who accompany the provincial to
the general congregation, and the procurator sent by the province to the
congregation of procurators, are elected at a provincial congregation com-
posed of the provincial, the local superiors, and the professed fathers who
are able to attend. As the provinces increased in size, the number attending
a provincial congregation was limited to fifty if there was question of
electing delegates to a general congregation, and forty if it was to elect a
procurator. Unlike the general congregation, the provincial congregation
has no legislative powers. However, it deliberates on the spiritual and
temporal state of the province, and instructs its delegates or procurator in
accordance with its findings. Chief among these instructions is, of course,
a decree expressing the mind of the province as to whether a general
congregation should be held or not. But besides this decree, and besides
the written reports prepared by the provincial and various committees, the
procurator also brings with him a set of postulata or petitions to be pre-
sented to the general (or the general congregation) in behalf of the province.
The postulata of the provincial congregations of the seventeenth century,
along with the acta or summary of the proceedings which led to their
adoption, constitute one of our most valuable sources of information
regarding the problems which confronted each province at various stages
of its development, and the policies which it evolved to cope with them. 2
The provincial is appointed by the general, and so are the consul tors,
usually four in number, who act in the same advisory capacity toward him
as the assistants toward the general. The general also appoints the major
local superiors, that is, those of the colleges and principal residences. These
254 T/tf Jesuits in the Philippines
appointments are made on the basis of confidential reports on the adminis-
trative ability of the eligible members of the province, which those who
know them best are asked to make. In the seventeenth century European
provincials and local superiors held office for three years, those overseas —
at least the provincials — for six and even more, until at the request of
several provincial congregations in Mexico and the Philippines an attempt
was made to adopt the European practice toward the middle of the
century. Because of the slowness of communications this led to various
difficulties, as we shall see in due course. At irregular intervals, whenever
it is deemed necessary, the general sends a personal representative to a
province, or appoints a priest already there, to conduct a detailed, on-the-
spot inspection of its houses, establishments, and works. The visitor is
granted extensive powers for this purpose, including those of making
appointments and framing ordinances ordinarily reserved to the general.
Twelve provincials and one visitor administered the Philippine pro-
vince during the first fifty years of its existence, in the following order of
succession :
Gregorio Lopez 1605
Valerio de Ledesma 1613
Francisco Calderon, visitor 1618
Alonso de Humanes 1621
Juan de Bueras 1627
Juan de Salazar 1637
Francisco Colin 1639
Francisco de Roa 1644
Diego de Bobadilla 1646
Francisco de Roa 1648
Ignacio Zapata 1650
Diego Patino *653
Miguel Solana 1654
Seven provincial congregations are on record as having been held during
the same period. The following are their dates and the names of the
procurators elected in each. It should be noted that a substitute procurator
and sometimes two were elected to take the place of the procurator in case
he should be prevented from fulfilling his commission. When word was
received in the Philippines that Encinas had been captured by the Dutch
in 1629, Juan Lopez, the substitute procurator, was sent in his stead.
1609 Alonso de Humanes
1615 Francisco de Otazo
1621 Francisco Gutierrez
1627 Francisco de Encinas
1637 Diego de Bobadilla
1643 Miguel Solana
1651 Diego Patino
Problems and Policies
255
Missions and dependent vice-provinces are not empowered to hold
provincial congregations and send regular procurators. However, it some-
times became necessary to send a special procurator, as Garcia and his con-
suitors did in 1602. The postulata which Chirino brought to Rome on that
occasion presented a number of basic problems and drew from Acquaviva
a policy statement to serve as a guide for the province he was erecting. 3 A
survey of the internal administration of the Society in the Philippines
during the early seventeenth century ought, therefore, to begin at this
point.
The gradual adaptation of Acquaviva' s mission policy to the special con-
ditions of the Philippines has already been described. In the beginning he
would not allow the Philippine Jesuits to accept resident missions, direct-
ing them to devote themselves exclusively to mission tours from a central
base such as the College of Manila. When this was represented to him as
impracticable, he gave permission to accept resident missions for two or
three years, and then without limitation of time. He insisted, however,
that every precaution be taken not to let them become permanent charges
and thus tie the Society down to parish administration, a work -which,
however laudable, was alien to its institute. Let it be clearly understood
that the Society would retain these missions only for as long as it took the
Jesuit missionaries to convert the population of the district and organize
them into Christian communities. That done — and Acquaviva apparently
believed that it would not take many years to do so — the mission was to be
handed over to the diocesan clergy and the Jesuit residence transferred to
some other district where the Society could devote itself to its proper and
particular work, namely, the conversion of pagans.
Garcia and his consultors now instructed Chirino to take up the subject
again with the general, informing him that while they agreed entirely with
his objectives in framing this policy, they did not think he took Philippine
conditions sufficiently into account. These conditions demanded, not
perhaps the permanent retention of the mission residences, but at least a
much longer tenure of them than the general's policy envisaged. The
arguments which they advanced are an excellent restatement of those which
both they and their predecessors had proposed from time to time.
The first [reason] is that if the Society gives up its organized residences, there
are no other districts to which it can go except those which lie in still unconquered
territory.
The second is that several years ago these islands were partitioned by royal
command among the religious orders and secular clergy, the reason as stated in
the ordinance being that the king did not want missionaries belonging to different
groups working in the same area. This makes it contrary to law for the Society to
enter districts assigned to other missionary groups; it seems impossible, then,
to put the present plan into practice. By the same token we cannot undertake
256 The Jesuits in the Philippines
mission tours in places where other religious orders are in charge, because they
will not allow us to so. Furthermore, the Society does not have the means to
defray the expenses of ships, oarsmen, and provisions which will have to be made
on these journeys, for the natives cannot do so and there is no precedent for it.
The same holds for the parishes and towns of the diocesan clergy; besides which
they are so few and so small that the Society will not have enough to occupy them-
selves in them for a long time to come. We may take it for certain that not every-
one will welcome our assistance. This being so, abandoning our residences may
place the Society in the highly embarrassing position of having nowhere to go on
missions and thus being stranded in these parts without employment.
The third reason is the difficulty of language. It is no small thing to ask our
missionaries to abandon the language which they have learned and used for many
years and go to regions of entirely different speech. Even today our Visayan and
Manila [Tagalog] missions are so far apart that it would be difficult for the fathers
to go from one to the other and work among natives speaking a different language.
The following additional arguments may be adduced. Experience shows that
the missionary can do very little with these neophytes unless they recognize in
him a stable superior. The fathers themselves would feel it very keenly if they are
obliged to give up the fruit just when it is ripe and in season in order that
someone else may eat it, while they are not permitted to enjoy the reward of their
labors. Finally, even granting that the abovementioned ordinance of your
Paternity can be put into effect, it will take many years before our missions
reach the level of organization and well being which your Paternity specifies,
and by that time God may have shown us how to proceed better in this affair.
We request your Paternity to suspend the ordinance until, as we have said, our
Lord should give a different disposition and direction to conditions here.
A related problem on which Garda and his consultors requested an
authoritative declaration concerned the stipends which the encomenderos
were supposed to give the missionaries. Sometimes the encomenderos
found it convenient to forget them; more often they paid, but not in full.
Could the missionaries demand that these stipends be paid in full, and on
time ? If so, it would mean that they had a right to them. But had they ?
God knew they needed them badly enough, for they had no other means
of support ; but could they ask for them as a matter of right and justice ?
It seemed not; St. Ignatius was quite insistent that his men should “give
freely what they had freely received, neither demanding nor accepting any
stipend or alms whereby Masses, confessions, sermons, or any other work
which the Society according to its institute can undertake may seem to be
recompensed. As far as Jesuits were concerned, then, the mission stipend
was an alms, and they must do their best to manage on what they were
given, when it was given. Yet, it was not only they personally who
depended on this allowance, but their work also, to a large extent; hence
the need of finding some method of putting the whole arrangement on a
more stable basis.
Problems and Policies
2 57
A third problem was the exact nature of the commitment which the
Society took upon itself in accepting missions from the king. Was it an
obligation in justice or a charitable undertaking? Prat thought the
question merely academic, since Jesuits worked for the love of God in any
case. Acquaviva, however, promptly disabused him. “ There is a big
difference/' he wrote in 1597, “ between accepting missions among the
natives as a strict obligation and accepting them without such obligation.
I am of the opinion that they ought not on any account to be accepted as
an obligation, for this brings with it the requirement of informing the
governor whenever we wish to transfer a man from one place to another,
of being subject to official inspection.'' 4 This was perfectly correct. The
royal government's view was that the king, as patron of the Church in the
Indies, had the right to examine and approve all ecclesiastical appoint-
ments either personally or through his officials, and hence to be informed
of all changes in personnel, which were not to be made without his consent.
Corresponding to this right of the royal patron was a strict duty on the
part of the religious who accepted missions from him; an obligation in
justice to administer those missions in accordance with the regulations
which he issued from time to time. Philip II put it very plainly in a cedula
to Dasmarihas the Elder:
I see by your report that with regard to the mission stations which have been
established and staffed there in the approved form, the bishop as well as the
superiors of religious orders have introduced the practice of changing the mission-
aries when and in what manner they please, recalling some and substituting others
in their place without informing the governor; and if you ask why they do so,
their reply is that these are ecclesiastical matters which do not concern you. It is
desirable that you should know what procedure to adopt in such cases. Please be
informed that when a situation of this sort arises in which it becomes necessary
to remove or change a religious from a mission station, it must be done with the
knowledge and consent of the governor and not otherwise. 5
Acquaviva saw at once that if this ruling was insisted upon, it would take
away from the superiors of the Society that free disposal of their subjects
which was an essential note of the Ignatian constitutions. It was impossible
to accept any missions from the Spanish government on these conditions,
and he told Prat so. The other religious orders in the Philippines took a
similar stand, and the four religious superiors served notice in 1598 that
they would return all their missions to the king rather than administer
them under that obligation. No official reply was made to this represen-
tation, and the colonial authorities made no attempt to enforce the ruling.
In view of this, Garda and his consultors reported to Acquaviva that the
cedula had apparently been suspended. But if the question should come up
again, to what extent could they recognize the royal right of patronage ?
Could they, for instance, consent to inform the governor of all changes in
258 The Jesuits in the Philippines
personnel, purely as a matter of record, without giving the reasons for such
changes and without recognizing any right on his part to interfere with
them ?
Relations with the diocesan prelates also called for careful examination.
The Council of Trent had decreed that religious who functioned as parish
priests were subject to the jurisdiction, visitation, and correction of the
bishop of the diocese. When Bishop Salazar tried to apply this ruling to the
Philippine missions at the Synod of Manila, he came into sharp conflict
with the Augustinians, who alleged exemption in virtue of the extensive
otnnimoda faculties granted by Adrian VI to religious missionaries in the
Indies. The Franciscans and Dominicans, who shared the same faculties,
naturally took the same stand. The Jesuits wrote to Rome for a decision.
Acquaviva's reply was that they should maintain cordial relations with
the bishops and accede as far as possible to their wishes, but that they were
in no wise to consent to a diocesan visitation in the sense of an inquiry into
their personal behavior. That was the responsibility of their superiors, who
were answerable for it to the Holy See from which the Society of Jesus had
received its charter, and not to the diocesan prelates. However, if the
diocesan prelate wished to inspect the mission churches and chapels to
assure himself that they were being properly maintained, this was perfectly
within his rights and he was to be asked to do so as often as he wished.
But the Philippine bishops were clearly not going to be satisfied with
merely inspecting baptismal fonts and tabernacles. They looked upon the
religious missionaries as parish priests, and hence subject to them to the
full extent of the Tridentine decree. If, then, they should decide to press
the point, what was the Society to do ? Abandon its missions ? Garcia and
his consultors asked Acquaviva to weigh the alternatives carefully. If they
sacrificed the missions rather than undergo episcopal visitation, they did
indeed keep the freedom of the Society intact, but they made themselves
incapable of doing the work they had come out to do ; if on the other hand
they consented to episcopal visitation, they could by paying this heavy
price continue to bestow on the people of the Philippines the priceless gift
of the faith. Which of these two difficult alternatives was for the greater
glory of God ?
Such was the remarkably able statement of the principal problems con-
fronting the Society in the Philippines which Garcia and his consultors
presented to Acquaviva. The rest of the memorandum was devoted to a
number of minor doubts and difficulties, and to a request for approval of
the foundation of the College of San Jose and the plan to open courses in
arts and theology at the College of Manila, which had already been
granted. Garcia in a separate memorandum 6 posed a fifth problem
which concerned his particular office. The vice-provincial — or the provin-
cial, in case the Philippines was made a province — was obliged by his rules
Problems and Policies
2 59
to make an annual visitation of all the houses under his jurisdiction. This
meant that he was absent from his office in Manila for almost six months
out of the year, making hazardous trips in a small sailing vessel from one
island station to another. It was necessary that he should do so if he was
to direct the activities of the missions at all ; but perhaps the visitations
could be spaced a little more widely, at one-and-a-half or even two-year
intervals. The trouble with this was that during those intervals problems
might arise which the local superiors could not handle and yet which could
not suffer the long delay of writing to Manila and awaiting a reply. Was
there a satisfactory solution to this problem of communications ?
Acquaviva's dispositions are contained in a careful point-by-point reply
on these memoranda and in a separate set of instructions, dated 26 March
1604, which Chirino took back with him to the Philippines. 7 With regard
to the question of episcopal visitation, Acquaviva directed the Philippine
Jesuits to observe the official interpretation of the Tridentine decree which
he had obtained from the Sacred Congregation of the Council and was
transmitting. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a copy of this document.
However, since the problem did not actually arise during Acquaviva's
generalate, and since when it did arise new instructions were sought and
given, this is perhaps no great loss. With regard to the requirements of the
royal patronage, if the cedula demanding that missionary appointments be
submitted to the government for approval had indeed been suspended, the
missions they had accepted could be retained; otherwise they were to give
them up. The three related problems of mission tenure, finances, and
supervision were dealt with in a statement of integral policy which can be
summarized as follows.
1 . The principal obstacle to the rapid Christianization of the Filipinos
seems to be their dispersal in small scattered settlements. Hence the royal
government should be induced to take effective measures to gather the
population of our missions into towns where they can be properly instruc-
ted. If the encomenderos persist in their opposition to this project, the
governor and audiencia should be asked to send a commissioner with ade-
quate powers of enforcement, including that of depriving uncooperative
encomenderos of their encomiendas. In fact, it might be advisable to pro-
pose that the encomiendas within our missionary jurisdiction be trans-
ferred from private hands to the crown, as it would be simpler to deal with
the government rather than with a multitude of encomenderos.
2. To assure some regularity in the payment of mission stipends, arrange-
ments should be made whereby they could be drawn from the royal
treasury instead of directly from the encomenderos. If necessary the
government could appoint a collector to obtain the sums due from the
encomenderos and deduct his salary from the stipends.
3. The institute of the Society does not permit us to undertake the
260 The Jesuits in the Philippines
permanent administration of parishes. On the other hand, it is clear that we
cannot abandon the resident missions which we have already accepted.
Hence our policy for the future should be to christianize the people
committed to our charge thoroughly and well. As these mission commu-
nities begin to acquire the stable organization of parishes, let us consider
which of the residences would be most apt to convert into colleges. Two
of these should be retained and the rest turned over to the diocesan clergy.
A college should then be established in each of the two residences retained,
where courses in moral theology and the native languages for the diocesan
clergy can be given. The Jesuits assigned to these colleges could also go on
mission circuits through the surrounding parishes, and since we may
reasonably expect that most of the parish priests will have done their
seminary studies in our colleges, they will have no difficulty in being
assisted by the fathers in this manner.
4. No more mission residences should be established. Let us concen-
trate all our efforts on those we already have ; let us organize in them not
only hospitals and sodalities but “ boarding schools for both Spaniards and
natives, in order that as this educational work develops, some of the
students trained by us may be found worthy of being ordained and put in
charge of the parishes by the bishop.”
5. With regard to the difficulty of the provincial's being unable to visit
the mission residences as often as he might wish, a possible solution is that
contained in earlier instructions sent to the province of Brazil. These pro-
vide for the appointment of a superintendent of missions, subordinate to
the provincial and to whom the local mission superiors are subordinate.
His function is to go from one mission residence to another on a continuous
tour of inspection, seeing to it that the proper missionary procedures are
applied, acting as liaison officer with the civil government for the mission-
aries and their communities, and maintaining morale and religious obser-
vance in our houses. Let this arrangement be tried in the Visayan missions.
As soon as these instructions were received in the Philippines, Lopez
appointed Humanes superintendent of the Leyte and Samar missions and
Otazo, the rector of Cebu, of the Bohol mission. 8 Later a single superin-
tendent for all the Visayan missions was appointed.
On 21 October 1609, the first congregation of the Philippine province
convened in the College of Manila. 9 It consisted of Lopez, the provincial,
and eighteen local superiors and professed fathers. After electing Humanes
procurator and making of record their belief that there was no need to
summon a general congregation, the assembled fathers proceeded to
examine the missionary work of the province in the light of Acquaviva's
policy statement of 1604. Serious efforts had been made to organize the
scattered population of the Visayan missions into larger communities, but
a new and formidable obstacle had arisen which rendered them largely
z6i
Problems and Policies
ineffectual. The Moros — Moslem Malays of Magindanau and Sulu, aided
by their cousins in Borneo and the Moluccas — had suddenly erupted in a
series of piratical raids on the seacoast settlements of the Visayan islands,
putting them to the torch after looting them and carrying men, women, and
children off into slavery. The Spanish government, caught off-balance,
had not as yet been able to organize an effective defense. Consequently, it
was extremely difficult and in many cases impossible for the missionaries
to stop their neophytes from abandoning the new towns, most of which
were easily accessible from the sea, and returning to their former mode of
life farther inland, where they were out of reach of the raiders. Neverthe-
less everything possible was being done to cope with this unexpected
difficulty.
No steps had been taken to follow Acquaviva’s suggestion that the
encomiendas in our mission districts be transferred from private hands to
the government. This was directly contrary to the policy of the Crown,
which was precisely to grant encomiendas to private individuals as a reward
for past services. Moreover, there was no longer any need for it, as the
encomenderos were now much more sympathetic to the work of the mis-
sionaries and much more ready to cooperate with them. For the same
reason, it was unnecessary to modify the existing arrangement whereby the
missionaries received their stipends directly from the encomenderos.
The congregation presented three important petitions to the general.
The first was that since mission work among the natives was beyond all
question the principal ministry of the province, its supreme importance
should be stressed by a regulation to this effect : ‘ * that no one will be given
his definite grade in the Society, or appointed to any administrative
position, or permitted to teach, unless he has first learned a native language
and acquired fluency in it by actual use.” This, of course, was to be under-
stood as a general rule; the provincial would have the power to dispense
from it for good and sufficient reasons. However, in order that all the
members of the province might have the opportunity of learning a native
language, the study of it should be made one of the experiment a or “tests”
of the tertianship. By study the congregation meant, not only desk work
on grammar and vocabulary, but field work in which the tertian would
accompany and assist a veteran missionary on his rounds. The second
petition was that in view of the great multitude of Filipinos to whom the
word of God still had to be preached, the province be permitted to open
more residences. The third was that the province be allowed to found a
college in Spain, preferably in the university town of Alcala, to be used
exclusively for the training of young Jesuits destined for the Philippines.
Humanes reached Rome in 1612. Acquaviva approved the course which
the province had adopted with regard to the encomenderos. He called for
further efforts to promote the organization of towns, in spite of the
262
The Jesuits in the Philippines
complications introduced by the Moros, as this was clearly, in his view,
the cornerstone of the whole Jesuit missionary enterprise in the Philippines.
He gave full approval to the proposed measure regarding the study of the
native languages, but refused permission to open any new residences,
stressing once again concentration rather than dispersal of effort. The
foundation of a college for Philippine missionaries at Alcala was disap-
proved because of the administrative difficulties involved. Acquaviva
suggested the alternative plan of sending money from time to time to the
Spanish provinces which contributed missionaries to the Philippines, in
order to reimburse them, at least in part, for what they had spent in train-
ing the men they sent. In this way, the Spanish provincials would feel their
loss less keenly when their most promising scholastics volunteered for the
missions. 10
Meanwhile, it became increasingly evident that there were serious draw-
backs in the reorganization of the Visayan missions which Garcia had
effected at Acquaviva’s orders. It will be recalled that this reorganization
consisted in withdrawing the missionaries from the small stations estab-
lished by Prat and concentrating them in a few central residences. It was
hoped that in this way they would be able to maintain the life in common
of religious, with its advantages and safeguards, while continuing their
missionary work by means of mission circuits which they would conduct
in pairs. Subsequent experience showed, however, that these circuits,
during which the missionaries succeeded in spending only a week or two
in each village, were far less effective than the continuous influence which
the fathers were able to exert when they lived close to the people in the
stations. This is well brought out by Adriano de las Cortes, the superior
of the Tinagon residence, in a letter which he wrote to Acquaviva on
16 May 1612. 11
It must be borne in mind, he said, that their Visayan converts were
simple and untutored primitives. Like children, they needed to be
closely and continuously supervised. Unless the missionary was at hand
to remind, admonish, and correct them, they easily forgot what they had
learned or had promised and quickly reverted to the immemorial customs
of their paganism. Now this was precisely what the missionary could not
do under the system of mission circuits from a central base. Cortes des-
cribes its actual operation:
We come together for our periods of common life in this residence every one
and a half or two months. It lasts twelve or fifteen days. At the end of it we make
our circuit of four, five, or six towns during the next one and a half months. This
means eight or ten days spent in each town during a circuit; at the end of a year
the natives will have had a priest in their town four or five times for the period
mentioned. It sometimes happens that a town will not have fifteen days of
Christian instruction by a priest in six or seven months, and some towns none at
Problems and Policies
263
all. Moreover, since the natives in order to see us have to come to town from their
farms, where they reside most of the time, we cannot give them a regular course of
instruction to which they can come as children come to school; yet this is the
only way in which these people can be properly trained.
Another disadvantage was that, with the fathers living five, ten, or more
miles from many of their villages, most of their Christians died without the
sacraments. Cortes estimated that they were able to assist the dying in only
five, or at most, eight, out of a hundred cases.
The system was hard not only on the natives but on the missionaries.
The original plan was that they should go on their circuits in pairs, two
priests, or a priest and a brother; but this was not always possible. If some-
one in the community fell sick his partner had to go alone ; and in any case
they had too many small villages scattered over too wide a territory to be
able to cover them all in this way. Another hardship was that they were on
the road most of the time. They no sooner arrived in a village than they
must begin preparations for departure. This was because they had to bring
everything with them; “ altar equipment, statue, Mass kit, and even
kitchen utensils: plates, pots, bowls, and so forth/' besides provisions.
Bearers must be commandeered in the village to carry their packs, if the
next leg of their circuit was by land; oarsmen, if by river or sea. Besides the
enormous amount of trouble which all this gave to everyone, missionaries
and natives alike, it involved great loss of time which could otherwise be
devoted to the actual ministry.
And since this manner of going from one place to another is not for two or
three months only, as in the mission tours in Spain, but our employment
throughout the year and all our lives (for it is the same in all the residences of
these Visayan islands), a twofold damage results; damage to the spiritual life,
for we must make our spiritual duties almost always on the road, and damage to
bodily health due to the alternation of sun and rain on land, and at sea the tossing
about, the squalls, the snatching of sleep in a small boat, which after several years
break the frame even of the most rugged.
The solution proposed by Cortes was, first, to continue despite repeated
setbacks the work of gathering the scattered clans into towns, and, second,
to return to the system of small stations staffed by two or three, but with
modifications. Of the two or three residences on each island, let one be
kept; and let it be the superior of this residence, rather than all the
missionaries, who shall do the traveling. He it is who shall go from one
station to another, spending some time in each to direct and supervise the
work of his men resident there. As for their religious life, it should be
sufficient for them to retire to the central residence twice a year, when they
make their annual retreat and when the provincial comes for his visitation.
The superintendent of missions now becomes superfluous. Let him be
abolished ; it is not good to have too many superiors.
264 The Jesuits in the Philippines
This proposal was laid before the provincial congregation of 16 x 5. 12 The
assembled fathers did not consider it advisable either to do away with the
office of superintendent of missions or to reduce the number of central
residences, as Cortes suggested. But they approved the substance of the
proposal, which was that the former stations, with a resident staff of two
or three missionaries, be reactivated; not, however, as independent
entities but subordinate to the superiors of the residences, A postulatum
to that effect was accordingly drawn up for presentation to the general by
the procurator of the congregation, Francisco de Otazo. It was couched
in the following terms :
Whether the following petition should be presented to Father General: That
subordinate houses or residences [that is, subordinate to the central residence] be
designated, in which our missionaries will be stationed for the purpose of instruct-
ing and training the people committed to their care; for it seems that we can
properly discharge our obligations in conscience by this kind of organization
rather than that now in force.
The Congregation decreed that the petition should be made in the terms pro-
posed. For if these smaller houses — which will, of course, remain subject to the
rector of the residence — are established, and our missionaries sent to dwell in them
closer to the people, the spiritual needs of the district will be better attended to
than they can be from a central residence situated at a distance. At present many
natives die without the sacraments; they receive Christian instruction only a few
days each year, since the fathers do not reside among them ; some of the churches
are not properly equipped, and divine worship is held in them without music
and other accompaniments of the liturgy. This lack is a cause of sorrow to the
fathers, and so too is the fact that they spend themselves on the ministry and yet
obtain less fruit than they have a right to expect from their exertions, besides
which they are compelled to be continually on the move and to make the best of
what lodgings they can find. It is true that the multitude of widely scattered
villages, the small number of missionaries, and the continual attacks of pirates
are largely responsible for our not being able to do as much for the natives and
their salvation as we would like. Still, we shall be easier in conscience, the natives
will make greater spiritual progress, and greater glory will be given to God, if
through the establishment of these subordinate stations we achieve a more effective
method of administering the missions and promoting Christian life. We shall at
the same time maintain the good name of the Society and satisfy the complaints
of the encomenderos, who claim that while they provide us with the necessities
of life, we for our part do not take care of their people as we should.
That same year, 1615, Acquaviva died and was succeeded by Muzio
Vitelleschi. Otazo presented the petition of the Philippine province to the
new general, who asked him to bring back word that he would issue the
necessary instructions after giving the matter careful study. These
instructions, however, had not yet been received when in 1621 a new pro-
Problems and Policies
265
vincial congregation assembled in the College of Manila. The fathers of
the congregation therefore instructed their procurator, Francisco Gutierrez,
to remind Vitelleschi of his promise. Gutierrez did so by means of a
written memorandum, submitted at Rome in 1624, in which he stressed
the fact that it was now more than ever necessary “ to clarify certain points
regarding the method to be followed in christianizing the natives/'
because the Tagalog mission had evolved an organization of its own,
different from that of the Visayan missions, and the Philippine Jesuits
were sharply divided as to the relative merits of the two systems. It was
therefore highly desirable that the general decide between them, “in order
that as far as possible uniformity may be established among the Tagalog
and Visayan missions, which would lead to greater union, peace of mind,
and tranquillity of conscience among our men/' 13
Vitelleschi quite rightly perceived that he did not have enough infor-
mation on local conditions to make such a decision immediately. He there-
fore wrote to the Philippines directing that the controversy be thoroughly
thrashed out in the next provincial congregation and both the majority and
minority opinions sent to Rome with the procurator, so as to provide a
basis for a definitive declaration of policy. 14 Five years later, in 1629, the
Flemish Jesuits sent word to Rome that Francisco de Encinas, the Philip-
pine procurator elected in the provincial congregation of 1627, had been
taken prisoner by the Dutch. 15 He had the misfortune to be aboard one
of the ships in the silver fleet captured by Piet Heyn off Matanzas Bay.
This was, incidentally, one of the richest hauls in the history of naval war-
fare. The gold, silver, indigo, sugar, and logwood of which Heyn so
unceremoniously relieved the Spaniards were sold in the Netherlands for
15,000,000 guilders, and enabled the Dutch West India Company to
declare a dividend of 50 per cent. Encinas, who expected the worst of
pirates who were heretics to boot, was treated, much to his surprise,
remarkably well. They took him to Rotterdam, where the city fathers put
him in solitary confinement in the city jail, but allowed several Catholics
in the town to visit him. It was probably through them that he was able
to communicate with his brethren in Flanders. He asked them to inform
Vitelleschi that he was safe and well and hoped to be released through an
exchange of prisoners; but that he did not know when this would be, and
that he had lost all his papers in the confusion of the capture. Vitelleschi,
not wishing to delay his decision on the Philippine problem any further,
sent for Gutierrez, who fortunately had not yet left Europe, and asked him
to write out a summary 7 of the problem as it presented itself when he left
Manila. Gutierrez did so in a paper dated 28 May, which he entitled
“A Treatise on the Mission Methods Used in the Philippines/' 16 We
shall let this interesting document speak for itself. It begins with two pre-
suppositions which neither side of the controversy called in question.
266
The Jesuits in the Philippines
First Presupposition. No one doubts that our men who are engaged in mission
work among the natives ought to be subordinate to the rector of the [central]
residence and not immediately to the provincial. Otherwise there would be as
many local superiors as there are fathers resident in the towns, and everyone sees
what a great inversion of order this would be, how alien to our way of life, and
how destructive of religious discipline.
Second Presupposition. The Society has missions among two native peoples
diverse in speech and customs, and up to the present they have been administered
diversely. The fathers who work among the Tagalogs are stationed in the towns
themselves which they administer. The superior or rector resides in the central
house located in the principal town of the district, and each father is assigned a
town where he resides, and from which he can conveniently visit the neighboring
villages, which are thus called visit as, to instruct the people, bring them the
sacraments, and so on. All these fathers are subject to the rector of the residence,
who supervises their work. From time to time they come together in the central
house for the purpose of renewing themselves in spirit as well as considering how
their ministry might be more effective. The fathers who administer the Visayan
missions follow a different system. There the individual missionaries have no
definite towns of which they are in charge, nor are they stationed in any one place.
The rector of the residence sends them on circuit to the towns which he designates,
and in this manner they instruct and bring the sacraments to the people of their
district.
Gutierrez goes on to say that this diversity of organization had given
rise to a difference of opinion among the fathers of the province as to which
of them should be adopted uniformly in all the missions. It was apparently
assumed that such uniformity was desirable, and the only question was
wffiich of the two forms should prevail. In presenting the two series of
arguments, Gutierrez obviously tries his best to be objective, but it is
not difficult to guess where his preference lay.
The advocates of the Visayan system bring forward the following arguments.
1 . This system is more in accord with our institute, for it is exactly the kind of
mission described in the Constitutions; whereas the Tagalog method, which is
that proper to parish priests, is contrary to it.
2. Stable residence in one town develops in the missionary an attachment of it.
He gets to know the people intimately, both men and women, and thus forms
ties of affection. He loses his heart to the town, to its people, to the settled and
restful rounds of its ministry, with the result that his way of life becomes that of
a secular priest rather than a religious of the Society. There is no danger of this in
the Visayan method. There the heart is free of all such attachments; one lives an
apostolic life, with no house of one*s own, no fixed abode, no particular friends;
a life of unflagging self-denial.
3* By this method the natives are assisted spiritually, not indeed as much as
they require, but as much as we are able, that is, within the limits of our form of
life and religious institute, to whose preservation we should give pride of place.
True, we have assumed charge of the natives ; but we are not strictly speaking their
Problems and Policies
267
parish priests. We are not obliged in justice to give them the full extent of pas-
toral care [el pasto cumplido de doctrina ] . It is only out of charity that we have engaged
to give them those services which our manner of life permits us to render.
The arguments advanced by the Tagalog fathers are the following.
1. This method, whereby the missionaries reside among the natives in their
towns, is in use throughout the Catholic Church, as may easily be shown by
going over all the Christian communities throughout the world, and all the
missions of which the Society has charge in the eastern and western Indies. They
do not seem to suffer from the disadvantages alleged by the advocates of the
Visayan method, and it is hard to believe that all the religious orders in the
world, and the Society itself in the rest of the world, are mistaken, and that only
in the Visayas has the right way of administering a native mission been discovered.
2. By limiting itself to the mission tours described, the Society fails to provide
the natives with the doctrinal instruction and the opportunity of approaching the
sacraments which it is obliged to provide. If we are able to render these services,
and we are, we are certainly bound to do so. Bound in justice, for we are truly
parish priests, as the king has so often declared in one cedula after another. The
missions and the stipends which go with them are given to religious on this
understanding, not that the natives might be provided for in a manner that admits
of more or less, as one gives alms out of pity or charity. No indeed, the obligation
is one of justice. Surely we did not need the king to tell us this. It is obvious from
the very nature of the case that while the Society is not bound in justice but only
in charity to take charge of native parishes, once it has accepted that charge it is
bound in justice to render the services called for. The obligation to accept the
charge is one thing ; it is an obligation arising from charity ; but the obligation to
administer the sacraments, and the rest of it, once having accepted the beneficed
curacy, is quite another thing; that is an obligation arising from justice. It is a
duty consequent on the very nature of the parochial office, and hence the accep-
tance of the office necessarily induces and imposes the said duty ex iustitia .
3 . The merit of this method whereby the towns are administered by resident
missionaries is clearly seen in the great spiritual fruit produced; the progress
[made by the neophytes] in the knowledge of God, in virtue and Christian living,
in the frequentation of the sacraments; and especially in the opportunity given
them to receive those sacraments at the hour of death. The results of the method
of mission tours are quite otherwise, as is obvious from the [recent] uprising
among the Visayans and the folly, ignorance, and oafishness which they mani-
fested, as though they had never really arrived at a knowledge of God and the
Christian law after so many years and so many mission tours. Not only that, but
at the last congregation practically everyone agreed that at the hour of death,
when they need the sacraments most of all, ninety out of a hundred did not get
them ; and in the most remote villages it was usually not the priest of Christ but
the priestess of the devil who was at hand to assist the dying with the idolatrous
sacrifice of their forbears.
4. By this method of mission tours we not only fail in our duty to God and to
the sheep committed to our care, but we present a sorry spectacle to the other
religious orders, for whom our method of instruction is matter for amusement.
268
The Jesuits in the Philippines
It is not unusual for the friars to stop natives journeying through their territory
and quiz them on their catechism, for they hold it for certain that if they cannot
give a good account of themselves in Christian doctrine and the mysteries of the
faith, they must be natives taught by the Jesuits. The encomenderos too are
scandalized and complain that we do not teach in their towns and yet keep coming
for the stipend.
5. With the method of mission tours it is not possible to have decent churches
or decent worship. Many of the churches in the Visayas look more like cattle pens
than houses of God. And, indeed, what kind of churches can we expect where
there are neither priest nor sacraments ?
6. There is no proportion between the vast amount of work our fathers [in the
Visayas] do and the little they accomplish, and because of their incessant journeys
their health is broken before their time*
7. All things being equal this method they have in the Visayas of moving about
continually and being always on the road is more conducive to a disordered life,
to omitting meditation, examen, exercises of piety altogether, and hence to moral
breakdowns. Furthermore, whatever it is that the fathers are able to do in die
eight or fifteen days that they stop at a village, he who comes after them undoes,
for they neither know their sheep nor do their sheep know them. Nothing in their
work is stable; everything is subject to change.
8. We lay an intolerable burden on the natives by this method. These mission
journeys are made either by land or sea. If by sea, each missionary must have a
boat with thirteen or fifteen oarsmen, and besides these he must take with him a
sacristan, a cook, and food for all these people. If by land, he must have a sizable
number of native bearers to carry all his clothing and equipment, for it is necessary
to bring everything, from ketde to chalice. This causes the natives a great deal of
trouble which they resent, for since these missions are made one after another, we
must be calling upon their services continually. Moreover, it is no small expense
to feed so many mouths. As for wages, we do not ordinarily give them any. We
cannot.
Gutierrez adds, as the ninth and final argument of the advocates of the
Tagalog system, the postulatum of the congregation of 1615 which we
have previously cited, and then concludes:
These are the arguments brought forward by one and the other side. All those
fathers or most of them desired me to implore your Paternity to determine what
must be done in this matter for the greater glory of God, the good of souls, and
the honor of our order ; and so I lay the whole question before your Paternity with
all detachment, and I am sure all those fathers will accept with the same detach-
ment whatever your Paternity shall direct, knowing it to be the will of God our
Lord.
Meanwhile, word of Encinas' capture having reached Manila, the alter-
nate procurator elected by the congregation, Juan Lopez, set out at once
with duplicates of Enemas' papers and arrived in Rome in 1630. Enemas,
released by the Dutch, joined him there at about the same time. It was at
Problems and Policies
269
once apparent from the proceedings and petitions of the congregation that
the terms of the problem were no longer what they were in 1621. 17 Many
if not all the Visayan residences had gone ahead without waiting for
Vitelleschi's decision and modified their organization along the lines of the
petition of 1615. Thus uniformity had been achieved in practice. In all or
most of the missions, Tagalog and Visayan alike, the missionaries now
resided habitually in their respective stations, though they still came to-
gether in the central house for retreats and conferences and were still sub-
ject to the superior of the residence. So far so good; the problem now was,
how did this affect the relation between superior and subjects ? Although
they still constituted a single community, they now lived in several differ-
ent establishments. Should these establishments be supported by a com-
mon fund under the exclusive control of the superior, or should each
station have some control over its own income and expenditure ? Again,
ought the superior of a residence to have the power to transfer his men from
one station to another as he sees fit, or should they have a certain stability
of tenure, so that they can be transferred only with the knowledge and
consent of the provincial ? These were the questions to which the thirty-
four fathers of congregation of 1627 addressed themselves. There were two
main parts, they said, to the problem of mission organization.
The first question is this. Should there be one rector in each residence who has
full charge of its temporal administration and spiritual direction, in such wise that
no one belonging to that residence may dispose of money or anything similar
without the rector's permission ? Or is this a more reasonable system : that every-
one in charge of a mission station should have his own funds which he can dispose
of as he sees fit, and that a group of stations should be under a superior, this
superior to have no fixed residence, but to visit the fathers in their little houses
[domunculas], each in turn, for the purpose of supervising them and watching who
does his work and who does not ?
All with great unanimity, the congregation reported, one alone excepted,
voted that the first alternative was preferable, and should be tenaciously
[■ mordicns ] retained. The reasons that moved them were, first, because this
was the method chosen by the founders of the province, approved by the
generals, and praised even by missionaries of other religious orders ; second,
because it was more conducive to religious observance and discipline ; third,
because experience showed that the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedi-
ence could be better kept under such a system ; fourth, because the second
alternative would lead to innumerable disputes among the various stations
as to jurisdiction and territorial limits ; fifth, because the sick could not be
properly taken care of unless there was a central residence with funds and
facilities for that purpose; sixth, because not everyone had the prudence
and ability to handle money without getting into financial difficulties ; and
270
The Jesuits in the Philippines
finally, because if every missionary felt financially responsible for his mis-
sion station, he might easily be led into transactions which were at least in
appearance if not in fact commercial, to the great injury of the poverty
and reputation of the Society. The principal argument in favor of the
second alternative and the answer to it were stated by the fathers as
follows :
It was argued in support of the opposite view that the rectors [that is, the super-
iors of residences] took care only of the central house and neglected the subordinate
houses. And as a matter of fact this is what has given rise to so many complaints
and proved so unsettling to many of our men. Our answer is that this objection
cannot outweigh the many good reasons in favor of the view adopted, and that
the fathers provincial will see to it that the rectors show themselves more liberal
and not make the ministry more difficult for their subjects than it is.
The second part of the problem concerned the powers which the superior
of a mission residence ought to have. Should they include that of moving
his subordinates from one station to another, or should this be reserved to
the provincial ? The assembled fathers, again with only one exception,
voted for the first alternative. Their reasons were that mission superiors
ought to have the same freedom to dispose of their subjects as do rectors of
colleges ; that they were in the best position to knew what places and works
suited each man's abilities — and shortcomings ; and that emergencies might
arise in which changes had to be made quickly, before the provincial could
be notified. The fathers recognized the advantage of leaving a man in the
post where he was doing well, and hence they warned local superiors not
to make changes lightly; but they felt that the commander on the spot
should have ample freedom to dispose his forces in the manner he
considered most effective.
Thus the congregation, by devoting itself to the problems arising out of
the existence of resident stations, tacitly assumed that the earlier problem
of whether there should be such stations at all was already beyond dispute,
having been solved by actual practice developing out of experience. Vitel-
leschi accepted this assumption and by so doing gave it his approval. His
decision on the other problems was as follows :
We have carefully read in its entirety what the congregation proposes regarding
the spiritual and temporal administration of the missions. After comparing and
considering in the sight of the Lord the arguments for one side and the other, we
are inclined to agree with the conclusions of the congregation. We therefore
enjoin that in future there should be one superior in each residence to whom the
other stations of the district should be subject in all things. As for the power of
moving his subjects from one place to another without consulting the provincial,
there seem to be good arguments for and against it, and so we grant such power
to the local superior only by way of experiment until we are able to see our way
more clearly. Moreover, he must make no change unless it is clearly necessary,
Problems and Policies
271
and if he can conveniently notify the provincial, he must by all means do so. If
time or place or some other circumstance does not permit this, then, having made
the change, he should at least let the provincial know in writing what he has done
and his reasons for doing it ; and if the provincial should command that someone
be not changed, the local superior must do exactly what he is told . 18
Two other postulata of this congregation deserve to be mentioned. One
was that the superintendent of the Visayan missions be given the title and
powers of vice-provincial for that territory in the absence of the provincial,
just as, when the provincial went to the Visayas on visitation, the rector
of the College of Manila automatically became vice-provincial of the
Luzon Jesuits. This would remedy to some extent the delays in the expe-
diting of business caused by the difficulties of communication between the
Visayan missions and Manila. Vitelleschi agreed. The other was that the
provincial be empowered to appoint a Jesuit protector de indios . His function
would be that formerly exercised by the superintendent of the Visayan
missions, namely, to defend the rights of the natives and represent their
needs and grievances before the colonial government, except that he would
perform this service not only for the Visayans but for all the people under
the spiritual administration of the Society. Vitelleschi denied this petition,
possibly because he did not want to multiply offices without necessity, for
when the congregation of 1635 asked for two protectors, one for the
Tagalog and another for the Visayan missions, he consented without any
difficulty. 19
Encinas returned to the Philippines with these responses and an expedi-
tion of twenty new missionaries in 1631. Lopez, his alternate, remained
behind to recruit more volunteers and attend to some financial matters. In
1634 he informed Vitelleschi that the Spanish government had resumed
its efforts to enforce the claims of the royal patronage on the Philippine
missions. A cedula had been issued ordering all the religious orders that
whenever a mission station became vacant, they were to submit three names
for the post, out of which the governor would choose the missionary to be
appointed. No one was to be presented for appointment to a mission unless
he had previously been examined by the diocesan prelate as to his com-
petence to administer the sacraments and ability to speak the language of
the region. The procurators of the other religious orders in Spain had
already protested the ordinance as incompatible with their respective
institutes, and were ready to resign their Philippine parishes and missions
if it was not revoked. What course was the Society to follow 1 ? 20 Vitel-
leschi’s reply w r as:
It is not right that the Society should consent to submit three names for each
mission station in order that one might be approved, for up to now, by the grace
of God, we have given no cause for complaint ' although this method has not been
272 The Jesuits in the Philippines
followed]. Hence it will be proper to protest the order that has been issued, with
all due courtesy. If its execution is urged, we have no choice but humbly and
quiedy to withdraw from our missions, for it is contrary to our manner of
government that a superior should not have the power to appoint a subject to a
mission station, or remove him from it, whenever he judges this to be for the
greater glory of God and the good of the neighbor. As for the clause requiring
that our missionaries be examined as to their competence, I have declared in an
earlier communication what our policy is, namely, that we have absolutely no
difficulty in complying with this requirement of the diocesan prelates, as long as
the inquiry is not extended to the personal life and conduct of our religious . 21
Later we shall see the various ways in which the royal officials and the
bishops put this policy to the test. Right now a word or two about
finances seems in order, for money, or more precisely the lack of it, was a
problem which plagued the Philippine province with peculiar persistence.
In 1602 the yearly income of the College of Manila was 3,700 pesos.
According to Garcia and his consultors, this was sufficient to support
twelve scholastics in addition to the existing community. Or rather, it
would be sufficient if the college could dispose of it entirely. However,
such was not the case. Since none of the other houses could contribute
to the general expenses of the vice-province, all of it was charged on this
revenue. The traveling expenses of procurators sent to Europe, and what-
ever missionaries coming to the Philippines spent over and above the
allowance given them by the government, were paid out of it. Finally, the
provincial of Mexico had ruled that since the Philippine Jesuits technically
belonged to his province, they should pay the province tax. This was 1 3
pesos per man per year. He was willing to accept half that amount; but
even so, the total for the vice-province amounted to a sizable sum, which
also had to come out of the college income. This explains the other item
in the financial statement of the college for that year : a debt of 2, 5 1 o pesos.
Garcia and his consultors asked Chirino to lay these facts before Acquaviva
and request, first, that the vice-province be exempted from the Mexican
province tax, and second, that it be permitted to receive further donations
in order to enlarge its endowment. Both requests were readily granted, the
first automatically by the creation of an independent Philippine province. 22
The principal investment of the college at this time was the land which
it had acquired by purchase and gift in the districts of Mayhaligi, Tondo,
and Quiapo, across the river from the walled city. The rent paid by the
Chinese cultivators who leased it amounted to 1,500 pesos a year. Arch-
bishop Santibanez, who looked on the Chinese as an economic and moral
liability, thought this was a mistake. The Jesuits would have done far better
to let their land be cultivated by the lazy, good-for-nothing natives with
which Manila abounded. 23 Exactly how this was better the good arch-
bishop did not say; however, he was rather unexpectedly proved right.
Problems and Policies
273
The Chinese took up arms against the Spaniards in 1603 and were
massacred almost to a man. At one stroke, the College of Manila was
poorer by 1,500 pesos a year. In order to make up for the loss to some
extent, Lopez, the provincial, tried to develop the urban property in which
part of the college endowment was invested. He borrowed more money
in order to build houses which could be put out to rent. By 1609, the
college debt stood at 3,856 pesos. However, the Chinese were once again
being allowed to remain in the country, and some of them had resumed
cultivation of the college land. With what they paid, the house rentals,
the produce of the stock farm near Taytay, the occasional alms of the
faithful who frequented the college church, and the stipends of the four
priests of the community who devoted themselves to the ministry of the
natives, the income of the college that year amounted to 3,627 pesos. This
was only a little less than the figure for 1602, but on the other hand, the
community was more than twice as large: forty-one instead of eighteen.
Furthermore, a new office, that of procurator general of the Indies, had
been established in Madrid to expedite the business at court of the nine
overseas provinces; consequently, the Philippine province, that is to say
the College of Manila, had to pay one-ninth of the cost of its maintenance.
In 16 ix the college owed between 7,000 and 8,000 pesos. 24
Fortunately, the bottom had been reached. From this point on, to the
middle of the century and past it, the financial position of the college
improved steadily. One reason for this was Francisco Gutierrez. Some
years before he went to Rome as procurator in 1621, he was asked by
Ledesma, the provincial, to straighten out the accounts of the province,
which were, as Ledesma put it simply, “a chaos/' Gutierrez did a fine
job, at least to the extent of enabling superiors to know how badly off they
were. 25 Another reason was that after protracted negotiations the college
finally succeeded in obtaining from Figueroa's heirs and executors the
13,000 pesos which were still lacking to complete the endowment when
Figueroa met his untimely death. A third reason was that with the appli-
cation of part of the income of San Pedro Makati to the general expenses
of the province, most of this weighty burden was lifted from the college.
Finally, the first half of the seventeenth century saw the most prosperous
years of the galleon trade, in spite of the fact that the Dutch put forth
their best efforts to destroy it. Almost all the chroniclers of the colony are
agreed that after the great earthquake of 1645 Manila never recovered the
affluence and splendor which she had known before it. Given the open-
handedness of the Manila merchants, the college could not but share in
this general prosperity. Sizable gifts and bequests were invested in houses
for rent in the Chinese quarter, more land on the north bank of the Pasig,
in the district of Santa Cruz, an hacienda called Jesus de la Pena in the
rich Marikina Valley, and several annuities. The resulting increase in
2?4
The Jesuits in the Philippines
annual revenue is recorded for us by the triennial catalogues: 5,400 pesos
in 1618, 6,900 in 1621, 6,500 m 1624, 10,000 in 1630, 10,700 in 1636,
and 10,930 — the peak — in 1643. After the great earthquake it dropped
to 7,000 pesos and remained stationary at that level to 1651. 26
Of course, there was a reverse side to this shining coin. The indebtedness
of the college increased at a much faster rate, especially after construction
began on the new church in the latter part of the i 62 o’s. The figures (in
pesos) from the triennial catalogues show :
Year
Debt
1618
8 >459
1621
15,000
1624
I 1,000
1630
24,000
1636
41,800
1643
45.690
1646
40,092
1649
40,092
1651
39,266
Fortunately, the college did not have to pay interest on part of this debt,
and the interest payments on the rest (1,597 pesos in 1643, and 1,230 in
1651) were apparently considered well within the ability of the endow-
ment to carry.
It will be recalled that the College of San Jose was started by Garcia in
1601 without an endowment. The building, erected by the College of
Manila, was rented from it at 200 pesos a year. Rent and running expenses
were paid for out of the board and lodging fees of the resident students,
which were set at 100 pesos a year. There existed, indeed, the possibility of
an endowment, but it was remote, being based on a clause in the last will
and testament of the illustrious founder of the College of Manila, Esteban
Rodriguez de Figueroa.
This document was drawn up in due form on 16 March 1596 in the
town of Arevalo in Panay, just before Figueroa set out on the conquest of
Mindanao. 27 Its main purpose was to provide for his wife, Dona Ana de
Oseguera, his daughter, Margarita, and the child of which his wife was
pregnant at the time, in case he failed to return from the expedition.
Having bequeathed to them the bulk of his estate, he considered the
possibility of the death of Margarita or the unborn child before they
reached their majority. In that event, he willed that four-fifths of the
child's inheritance should revert to the mother. One-third of this four-
fifths, however, was to be deducted, and together with the remaining one-
fifth of the whole, was to be set aside as an endowment for a college. From
this endowment, Figueroa said, “a house is to be built near the residence
Problems and Policies
275
of the Society of Jesus in the city of Manila, fit to serve as a college and
boarding school [seminario] for boys, where all may enter w r ho wish to learn
their first letters/* He wanted the Jesuits to take charge of this institution,
and so,
I request and charge the provincial that is or shall be of the Society to assume the
direction of this boarding school and provide suitable teachers for it. And the
money left over after the construction of the said house must be invested for
the support of the said teachers and boys, and the patron and administrator of the
said college must be the said Father Provincial, without whose leave and permis-
sion no one may enter it. His it shall be to visit, reform, and manage its affairs,
select its investments, purchase its properties and buildings, appoint a rent
steward and other officials and employees, and give them the necessary powers to
perform their duties. No other functionary or judge, clerical or lay, shall have
anything to do with the said college or have a claim upon it. And if after providing
food and clothing for those of the said scholars who are poor something should
be left over from the aforementioned revenue, let the said patron spend it as he
deems fit, either on the said college, or on the college of the Society, or on some
other pious work to his liking, without any accounting being taken or asked of
him, for any reason whatever.
The child whom Figueroa never saw was a girl, and was christened Juana.
In 1604 little Juana, who w r as being taken to Mexico, perished in the
wreck of the galleon San Antonio; whereupon the contingent clause which
Figueroa had written into his will went into effect. Since San Jose, already
in existence, was exactly the kind of institution Figueroa intended to
endow, it was to San Jose that the allotted share of Juana’s inheritance fell.
It consisted of investments in Mexico and the Philippines valued at
35,500 pesos and a ranch on the island of Panay with 14,000 head of
cattle. The colonial government put in a claim on the grounds that the
prosecution of Mindanao campaign after Figueroa’s death was chargeable
on his estate, but this claim was disallowed by the courts, and on 28 Feb-
ruary 1610 the legal formalities were completed giving San Jose possession
of the property. It should be noted that this endowment did not make
San Jose a different institution from that founded by Diego Garcia in 1601,
although it did give it a new legal status as an obra pi a or pious foundation,
distinct from the Society of Jesus but under the administration and con-
trol of its Philippine superiors.
The ranch in Panay found a ready market for its cattle in the expedition
which the Philippine government regularly sent to the Spanish garrisons
in the Moluccas during the early years of the seventeenth century, for these
expeditions, while starting from Manila, were provisioned at the port of
Iloilo. The demand, however, seems to have been so great or so constant
that the ranch w r as unable to replenish its stock. There were only 7,000
head of cattle left in 1618 and only 5,000 in 1624. Also, the government
10*-}-
276 The Jesuits in the Philippines
apparently bought on credit, as it often did in those days, for we note that
the royal treasury owed the College of San Jose 4,000 pesos in 16 1 8,
12,000 pesos in 1621, and 7,000 in 1624. Soon after that San Jose must
have sold or otherwise disposed of the ranch, for it ceases to figure in the
triennial catalogues. It is not difficult to guess why.
In place of the ranch, San Jose acquired from the College of Manila, it
is not clear for what consideration, certain lands which it owned in what
was then the territory of Binan, on the southwestern shore of the Lake of
Bai, about twenty miles from Manila. This transaction took place in 1629.
In 1634 it purchased additional land in the same area from the widow of
Sergeant Pedro Dominguez Franco, and the whole complex became the
hacienda or estate of San Pedro Tunasan. 28 It eventually comprised some
2.400 hectares of farm land and pasture, and like the ranch of the College
of Manila near Taytay was administered by lay brothers. Part of the
endowment was also invested in urban property.
Between 1612 and 1624 the income of San Jose increased slightly, from
1.400 to 1,700 pesos. At the same time, it became necessary to borrow
9.400 pesos for a new building, the old one having collapsed from old age.
This was in 1621 ; soon afterward the Panay ranch was disposed of and the
Tunasan property acquired. This turned out very well, for in 1630 the
income of the college jumped to 3,000 pesos and it started to pay off its
debt, which stood at only 2,500 six years later. In 1639, however, disaster
overtook San Pedro Tunasan. The Chinese who had been put to work
against their will in the neighboring government estate of Calamba revol-
ted, cutting a wide swath of destruction in their advance toward the city.
The sugar cane fields of Tunasan were trampled and burned, its herds
slaughtered, the tenant farmers scattered in all directions. By 1643, the
yearly income of San Jose had dropped to 1 , 300 pesos, and there it remained
until the patient, unsung lay brothers who managed the estate were able
to build it up again. In 1646 some of the fields were once more under
cultivation, and in 1651 the revenue of San Jose had risen to 1,700 pesos.
The College of Cebu was endowed by Ensign Pedro de Aguilar in 1606.
The 14,000 pesos of the endowment was invested mostly in houses for
rent in Manila. Alonso de Henao also made the college his sole bene-
ficiary; through this and other bequests two small ranches, one in Cebu
and another in Bohol, were added to the one the college had acquired in
Chirino’s rime. There was, however, no such market for cattle in Cebu as
at Iloilo, and these ranches were eventually disposed of. During the first
half of the seventeenth century the yearly revenue of the college was
between 1,000 pesos and 1,200 pesos, with little variation. A debt of
1.400 pesos, contracted in 16x2, was paid off completely in 1618.
The endowment of the college occasioned some discussion in the pro-
vincial congregation of 1 609.^ The doubt was proposed whether it could
Problems and Policies
277
he accepted, since the establishment at Cebu was hardly a college in the
sense used by Saint Ignatius in the Constitutions. No scholastics were
being trained there, and the grammar school, which had been started
chiefly at the request of Bishop Agurto, was closed down for lack of stu-
dents just before he died. Only the primary school for boys remained in
operation. Was this sufficient to permit the acceptance of an endowment ?
Acquaviva's reply to this query is important, as it determined the status
not only of the Cebu establishment, but also of the other so-called colleges
subsequently founded at Cavite, Arevalo, and Zamboanga. “We accept
foundations for our colleges/ * he wrote in 16x2, “primarily for the
support of scholastics of our Society. Those establishments where this
cannot be done due to the smallness of the income are to be considered
colleges in process of formation [ collegia inchoate 1], and it will be sufficient
to maintain a primary school for boys in them until the revenue is
increased.” We might add that foundations were also accepted, even in
Saint Ignatius' lifetime, for colleges of externs in which grammar and
the higher disciplines after grammar were taught. Thus the only colleges
in the full sense conducted by the Philippine province were the College of
Manila and the College of San Jose; the others were “inchoate” colleges.
The mission residences were placed on a par with professed houses, that
is, communities consisting chiefly of professed members of the Society,
in that they were not permitted to accept endowments which would
assure them of a regular income. Neither were the missionaries allowed to
accept stole fees or any other perquisites for preaching, teaching, or the
administration of the sacraments, unless the diocesan prelate ruled other-
wise. They were supposed to subsist entirely on the free-will offerings of
the faithful, in order that they might the more closely imitate the poverty
of their Master and preserve an apostolic freedom unhampered by con-
siderations of worldly gain. It was for this reason that some of the Visayan
fathers questioned the nature of the regular stipends which they received
from the encomenderos ; they did not feel that they could accept it if it
was a stipend in the strict sense and not an alms. Acquaviva did not
explicitly clarify this point, but implicit in his reply was that the regu-
larity with which the stipend w r as given — which w as not, after all, so very
regular — did not make it less an alms, since either the encomenderos or the
king could withdraw it at any time they wished.
The established stipend for each missionary priest during the period we
are considering was 100 pesos and 100 fanegas of rice a year. Paddy rice
was meant, roughly equal to 50 fanegas of hulled rice, which is the
amount mentioned in some documents. To this was sometimes added one
arroba of Mass wine, and oil for the lamp that burned perpetually before
the Blessed Sacrament. The cost of the construction of churches w^as
divided equally among the community of the towm wffiere it w r as built,
278 The Jesuits in the Philippines
the encomendero of the district, and the government. In the early part of
the seventeenth century the stipend of a Jesuit priest in the missions was
considered sufficient to support both himself and a lay brother, with some-
thing left over for the work itself. It is a sign of the general rise in the value
of commodities that in 1643 this was no longer considered sufficient. 30
However, in most of the residences the missionaries were still able to make
out because the natives made up what was lacking with their free-will
offerings. Not a few of the Tagalog towns gave more than enough to
support their priests, even without the royal stipend. This was not the case
with some of the poorer and more remote Visayan stations, and so the
missionaries there adopted the practice of asking their converts to collect
forest products for them, principally beeswax, which they sent to Manila
to be sold. With the proceeds they bought what they needed for their
churches and chapels. This was perfectly compatible with canon law, but
because it gave the appearance of a commercial transaction for profit
Acquaviva strictly enjoined Lopez, the provincial, to put a stop to it. 31
The fact that only a handful of the Jesuit establishments in the Philip-
pines derived a regular revenue from an endowment made it impossible
to provide for the general expenses of the province by means of a tax on all
the houses, as is the usual practice. Instead, part of the endowment of the
novitiate of San Pedro was diverted to this end. This province fund was
increased by later donations and bequests, but never to the point of quite
erasing the note of anxiety in the correspondence of the procurators of the
Chapter Twelve
THE GREAT RIVER
We left Figueroa’s expedition at Tampakan, near the mouth of the Great
River of Mindanao, uncertain what to do after the death of their leader.
Juan de la Jara was in temporary command, and the captains had no heart
to carry on the enterprise. Desirous of obtaining definite instructions, or
of evading responsibility, it is not certain which, Jara left the camp and
went in person to Manila. Governor Tello had him arrested for abandoning
his command and dispatched another officer, Toribio de Miranda, to hold
the expedition at Tampakan or, if it had already left, to bring it back.
Miranda found that the expedition had indeed returned from Tampakan
to a place called La Caldera, at the tip of the Zamboanga peninsula,
preparatory to breaking up. He kept it together and brought it back to
Tampakan. Meanwhile Tello appointed a successor to Figueroa in the
person of Juan Ronquillo, the commander of the galley fleet.
When Ronquillo arrived at Tampakan, he found the expedition besieged
by the Magindanau confederacy. He raised the siege and took the offensive.
After intercepting and routing a flotilla that had come from Temate to
assist the confederacy, he forced his way upriver to Bwayan and received
its surrender. Dissension broke out among the Magindanau princes. Raja
Mura — the Young Raja, nominal head of the confederacy — was for
capitulating to the Spaniards, a move which his two most powerful datus,
Sirongan and Bwisan, opposed. Raja Mura actually submitted and took
the oath of allegiance to the Spanish Crown. So at least Ronquillo reported ;
yet, strangely enough, he failed to exploit his victory 7 ; not only that, but he
sent the most urgent representations that the expedition be recalled. Tello
agreed, and ordered Ronquillo to inflict as much damage as he could on
the Magindanaus, dismantle the Tampakan camp, leave a small garrison
at La Caldera, and come home. Ronquillo complied with these orders by
destroying as much as he could of one of the region’s principal sources of
food. He cut down or set fire to all the coconut and sago palms within
reach of his patrols, to the number of 50,000 trees. He then sailed away,
stopping only at La Caldera to put ashore 1 00 men under the command of
Cristobal Villagra. 1
Some time later, Villagra had occasion to send a detachment of some
30 men to the island of Jolo for supplies. An uncle of Raja Mura happened
to be there at the time. He and his entourage fell upon Villagra’s men,
279
Map VI. Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago.
The Great River
281
killed 1 3 Spaniards and put the rest to flight. To take reprisals for this deed,
Juan Pacho, who had in the meantime relieved Villagra of his command,
went personally to Jolo with a force of 70 Spanish troops. The Sulus dis-
puted their landing so vigorously that they were forced to regain their
boats, leaving Pacho himself and 20 others dead on the bloody beach.
When word of these disasters reached Manila, Miranda was sent with
reinforcements to strengthen the Caldera garrison, but with orders not to
embark on any foolhardy adventures. Miranda stepped ashore at La
Caldera on 26 August 1599- He dedicated himself to improving the
fortifications of the camp and exercising the garrison, now 114 strong, in
the proper handling of their weapons. He also sent a Visayan datu with a
summons to the Magindanau princes to pay the tribute which they owed
to the Spanish government ; and let it be a respectable amount, he said, for
it should cover ‘ * the expenses which they had caused in the war by their
disobedience . 99 Raja Mura received the Visayan with fair words, but the
tribute which he sent back with him was not of a size to command respect.
However, Miranda was no longer in a position to argue the point.
Intelligence had been received at Manila of the presence of two English
warships in the waters south of the Philippines. They had been sighted
entering Sunda Strait, but with what design was uncertain. Tello, fearing
an attack on the Spanish establishments in the Visayas, sent hurried orders
to Miranda to demolish the Caldera fort and take the entire garrison to
Cebu. There he was to join forces with Juan Tello, who was also being
dispatched thither with 100 men, and prepare to give the English a warm
reception. Tello and Miranda threw themselves with enthusiasm into the
work of building a stone rampart; but the English never came. From later
reports it turned out that the English warships were really Dutch merchant-
men seeking to establish a trading connection with the Spice Islands inde-
pendently of the Portuguese. They touched at Bantam and various
Javanese ports in 1596, but being unable to reach the Moluccas, returned
to Holland in 1597. 2
The false report was particularly unfortunate in that it caused the
Spaniards to give up a position of great strategic importance. As the pilots
of the Loaisa and Villalobos expeditions had discovered, it was next to
impossible for a sailing vessel to claw north along the eastern coast of
Mindanao. The only way, then, for the Magindanau flotillas to gain the
Visayan islands was to sail westward across the Moro Gulf and around the
Zamboanga peninsula. Now, La Caldera commanded the channel between
that peninsula and the island of Basilan; and, if the Magindanaus took
the more circuitous route south of Basilan, patrol boats based at La Caldera
could easily give warning of their approach as well as of any suspicious
movement of ships in the Sulu archipelago. By withdrawing the garrison
from La Caldera, the Spaniards had removed the stopper from a bottle and
282
The Jesuits in the Philippines
released a malignant djinn. Toward the end of 1599, 3 °° Magindanaus
in 50 war boats, under the datus Sali and Sirongan, fell with a fury long
repressed on the coasts of Cebu, Negros, and Panay, ravaged the villages
with fire and sword, and carried away 800 captives. The following year
Sali came again with a much larger force of 60 sail and 800 men. It was
his intention this time not to limit himself to attacking the relatively
helpless Visayans, but to try conclusions with the Spaniards themselves.
He stormed Arevalo, and was only with the greatest difficulty repulsed by
a handful of Spaniards and 1,000 Visayans under the command of Juan
Garcia Sierra. Foiled, he flung himself on the nearby villages, herded 800
captives into his ships and on his way back, glutted though he was, decided
to make a quick raid on Baclayon, a village of Bohol. But the people of
Baclayon, having been forewarned, were able to flee in time, and Sali found
no one in the abandoned town but three old women and one old man, too
feeble to run. He killed them and sailed away A
The cold ferocity of the Magindanaus and their seeming ability to raid
anywhere at will without the Spaniards being able to prevent them struck
terror throughout the Visayan islands. When the southwest monsoon began
to blow again in April of the following year, whole villages abandoned
their homes on the seacoast and fled to the hills. The encomenderos and
missionaries tried to keep the people calm and organize some sort of
defense, but they could do little against the wild rumors that flew from
island to island of massed sails, silent and swift and terrible, just below
the horizon. Word came today, ” Miguel Gomez wrote from Cebu,
“ that the enemy armada has been sighted and that it is composed of 200
vessels which they call caracoas with many thousands of them on board.
The news is not quite certain but there is no doubt that if they have not
come yet they will, as they did last year.” 4 But the report was false. That
year the Magindanaus took their ease in the peaceful villages along the
banks of the Great River.
For the authorities at Manila were less concerned about them than about
the Sulus. It was Jolo that demanded immediate attention; the massacre
of the officers and men of the Caldera garrison had not yet been avenged.
To take care of this matter Governor Tello dispatched 200 arquebusiers
under his most experienced field officer, Juan Juarez Gallinato. The
expedition landed at Jolo on 3 March 1602. The Sulus pretended to sue
for peace, but when it came to determining the amount of tribute they
could pay, their envoys declared, with a straight face, that the Sulus were
very poor and could only contribute at the most five taels of gold a year,
that is to say, about seven pesos. The negotiations broke off and they fell
to fighting. The town of Jolo stood near the beach, but behind it was a
steep hill on top of which the townspeople had their citadel. To this they
retired after two days of skirmishing, and try as he might Gallinato could
The Great River
283
not take it by storm. Moreover, the Sulus observed that the Spanish
arquebusiers were effective only in good weather, when they could keep
their fuses lit; under pouring rain their firearms were useless, and they
had neither the training nor the stomach for the close hand-to-hand fight-
ing m which the Sulu swordsmen excelled. These, therefore, began to
make sorties from their citadel on rainy days, with some effect. Gallinato,
realizing his disadvantage, sent post-haste to Manila for a special battalion
of Japanese samurai . When these failed to arrive, he gave up his attempts
on the citadel and resorted to a scorched-earth campaign. Major Pedro
Sotelo was sent with a detachment on a circuit of the island for the purpose
of destroying everything that could be of any value to the inhabitants.
Ordered to “cut down coconut groves, trees, orchards, and to burn ships,
towns, and houses,” Sotelo fulfilled his commission scrupulously,
“leaving nothing standing/ ' Gallinato then withdrew his command to
La Caldera. 5
While there, his patrol boats picked up several suspicious looking
characters skulking about in the neighborhood. 6 At least one of them
turned out to be a spy, sent by a datu of Zamboanga to find out the num-
ber and disposition of the Spanish force. Questioning elicited from them
the information that a great raiding fleet, greater than any hitherto assem-
bled, was on the point of setting out from Magindanau to harry the
Visayas. There were 50 war vessels from Ternate, Sangil, and Tagolanda,
and at least 60 from Magindanau itself. The whole expedition was under
the joint command of Raja Mura, Bwisan, and Sirongan, who were calling
up 100 fighting men from each of their villages. They had invited Ligua-
nan, the principal datu of Basilan, to join them, and Liguanan had called
an assembly of the datus of his island and of Zamboanga at which it was
agreed to add 3 5 sail to the Magindanau fleet.
The Spaniards, not a little amazed that so great a host should go raiding
this year, put the question to one of the prisoners, a man about fifty years
old named Onarano. Onarano, asked whether he was a freeman or a slave,
had declared that he was a freeman of the village of Lumian near Jolo;
asked what his occupation was, he had replied that “his occupation was
always to fight/' What then did Onarano, who had grown old in his
chosen trade, think was the reason behind this expedition ? Onarano said
that he was not quite sure himself, but “that he had heard from other
natives of the kingdom of Jolo that as long as the Spaniards remained in the
aforesaid kingdom, all the natives of Mindanao would go with a large fleet
to Pintados, to plunder it.” 6
That was it, then; the Magindanaus were counting on the Sulus to give
them a clear field in the Visayas by absorbing the full attention of the
Spaniards and causing them to thin out their Visayan garrisons in order to
make additional troops available for the Jolo campaign. Well, they would
10**
284 The Jesuits in the Philippines
have to build a better trap for Gallinato than that. On 29 May he was at
La Caldera, interrogating the prisoners ; two days later he was at Dapitan,
on the north coast of the island, dispatching part of his force to Arevalo
and the other to Cebu. His plan was to form at each of these stations a
small but highly mobile task force, requisitioning for the purpose the
fastest sailing vessels he could find ; and, relying on the advantage of sur-
prise, to strike at the Magindanaus as soon as they appeared in Visayan
waters.
It was an excellent plan, but its success depended on his being able to
keep his two task forces intact; they were small enough as it was. This,
however, was precisely what the encomenderos would not let him do.
No sooner had he established his headquarters at Arevalo than a shower of
urgent messages descended upon him from the citizens of Cebu, insisting
that he release to them the usual small detachments of troops to help them
collect the annual tribute. These were influential men, whose word and
wealth carried great weight in the councils of government, and Gallinato,
raging inwardly, felt obliged to give in. To make sure that his task force
at Cebu did not evaporate completely, he went there himself. 7 And it was
there, while fighting off as patiently as he could the importunities of the
encomenderos, that he got word at last of the movements of the Magin-
danau fleet. In hoping to take the Magindanau princes completely by
surprise, Gallinato had seriously underestimated their ability to obtain
intelligence of his movements. As the Spaniards found out later, it was
customary for a raiding party to call at Dapitan first, where small traders and
peddlers who wandered at will through the Visayas, and who were friendly
to the Magindanaus, brought astonishingly detailed information as to the
Spanish movements. Learning of the mobile units Gallinato had mounted
at Arevalo and Cebu, the princes decided to by-pass the central Visayas
and strike further north where they were least expected: the Calamianes
group, Mindoro, and the underbelly of Luzon itself.
They seem to have divided into two main groups. That which raided the
Calamianes under Raja Mura and Sirongan received unexpected and unwel-
come assistance from a tribe of sea raiders whom the Spaniards called
Camucones, and who infested the north coast of Borneo and the tail of
Palawan Island. Seeing the Magindanau sails flash by, they scurried out of
their hiding places to join in the kill, and considerably disrupted metho-
dical operations. The raid, which yielded 700 captives, might have
yielded more if the turbulent Camucones had not alerted the Spanish
garrison at Cuyo. The armada under Bwisan, unencumbered by these
unwanted auxiliaries, achieved complete surprise. After harrying the
eastern coast of Mindoro, it pounced on the populous Tagalog towns of
Balayan and Cahlaya in southern Luzon and succeeded in carrying off a
rich haul of captives, Tagalogs, Visayans, and Spaniards, men, women, and
The Great River
285
children, clergy and laity. A sampan carrying some Spaniards from Cebu to
Manila fell among the raiders and was likewise captured. Bwisan moved
so quickly that he was gone before the squadron at Arevalo even knew that
he had come. Pedro de Lemos, the alcalde of Balayan, set off in pursuit,
but his lumbering sampans were no match for the lean Magindanau
cruisers. He did overtake some of the more heavily laden raiders and
succeeded in capturing one or two ; the rest made good their escape by the
simple device of throwing their captives overboard, thus forcing the
pursuers to stop and fish them out. 8
The seriousness of the situation was now apparent to all. Gallinato at
Cebu wrote bitterly to one of the oidores that unless the encomenderos
sacrificed their private interests to the common good and left his troop
concentrations alone it was impossible to defend the Visayas. Don Pedro
Bravo de Acuna, the new governor who had succeeded Tello in May of that
year, went down to see for himself. He dispatched a squadron to flush the
Camucones out of Palawan, but must have realized that he did not have
enough resources to deal with the Magindanaus. Moreover, the alcaldes
and encomenderos of the Visayas apparently succeeded in persuading him
to discard Gallinato* s plan of regional defense by means of massed mobile
forces in favor of their alternative plan of local defense, with everyone
taking care of his own island or strip of coast.
Archbishop Benavides did not think much of this policy when he heard
of it. What was the good of waiting for the Moros to strike before striking
back ? He was not a military expert, he said, but he knew enough about
warfare to realize that the best means of defense was attack. The only way
to stop these raids was to carry the war into the Moros' own country. If,
he added, we are too weak to do this, then let us honestly admit the fact
and negotiate a peace. This last barb seems to have stung the hidalgo in
the new governor to action. Weak ! Against Moros ? Totally absurd !
Steaming, as we may suppose, he sent for Gallinato, gave him 150 Spanish
troops and told him to proceed at once to the Great River and teach those
insolent Magindanaus a lesson they would never forget. Here was action
at last. Gleefully, Gallinato went off to Iloilo to get ready. But just as he
was about to sail, a message came from Manila to stand by and await
further orders. An emergency had arisen. The Magindanaus were to be
spared the lesson which they needed so badly. 9
In 1598 the Dutch merchants made a serious effort to break the Portu-
guese monopoly on the spice trade by establishing the direct connection
with the Moluccas which the expedition of 1 595 had failed to secure.
Twenty-two ships in five separate expeditions set out from Holland for the
East Indies this year. One of the expeditions was that of Oliver van Noort,
who took the western route through the Straits of Magellan and, as
described earlier, was worsted in an attempt to bottle up the Spaniards
286
The Jesuits in the Philippines
in Manila. He continued on his westward course and became the first
Dutch commander to circumnavigate the globe. Other expeditions visited
Borneo, Sumatra, Siam, China, and Japan; but the principal one, that
commanded by Jakob van Neck, succeeded in reaching Amboina and
Temate and taking in a cargo that netted investors in the voyage a hand-
some profit of 400 per cent. The Portuguese in India were not slow to
realize what this portended. If they did not bestir themselves to regain
control of the Moluccas, they stood to lose the entire spice trade to the
enterprising Dutch. Thus, what the Jesuit missionaries could not persuade
them to do for the converts of Xavier they now decided to do for them-
selves.
In May 160 1 a formidable expedition set out from Malacca under the
command of Andrea Furtado da Mendonga. It consisted of five galleons,
twenty-one smaller vessels, 2,000 seamen and 1,300 troops. Mendon^a
decided to secure Bantam before proceeding to the Moluccas, but when he
arrived there five Dutch ships under Wolphert Harmensz came out to
meet him. They gave him such a warm reception that he drew off to see if
he would have better luck at Amboina. He did. There were no Dutch there
at the time and he was able to occupy it without too much difficulty. But,
when he had completed operations and was .about to proceed to Ternate,
he discovered that there was little food to be had on the island and the
provisions he had brought with him were almost gone. In this predicament
he bethought him of the Spaniards in the Philippines, and immediately
sent a Jesuit, Andrea Pereira, and one of his staff officers, Captain Antonio
de Britto, thither with an urgent request for provisions and additional
troops.
Governor Acuna, having listened to what Pereira and Britto had to say,
decided that this was a much more important enterprise than the punitive
expedition to Magindanau. He loaded a carrack, the Santa Potenciana , with
20,000 pesos' worth of supplies and sent it to Iloilo with orders that
Gallinato should embark with his force and proceed to the Moluccas
instead of Mindanao. On 16 February 1603 Gallinato joined Mendon^a
before Ternate.
Ternate turned out to be a more difficult nut to crack than Amboina.
The Sultan of Temate had shut himself up in the former Portuguese
fortress and dared Mendonga to take it back. Gallinato and Mendonga de-
cided that they had neither the time nor the supplies to starve out the
fortress ; they would have to take it by storm. But when Gallinato saw the
Portuguese stumble out of their landing boats to the beach, his heart sank.
After weeks on short rations they were all sick of the scurvy — here~vere
[beriberi] Gallinato called it (the earliest use of the term I have encoun-
tered). And, even had they been in the best of health, most of them were
mere boys who did not even know how to handle an arquebus. Still, there
The Great River
287
was no alternative ; the attempt had to be made. They made it, and were
driven back with heavy loss. The Portuguese lost their nerve completely.
Gallinato tried to persuade them to stay, scour the island for food, recoup
their forces, and try again, but Mendonga had no spirit left. He sent his
scarecrows back to their ships and sailed off for Goa, while Gallinato
returned to Manila in utter frustration, the Moluccas as lost as ever, and
the Magmdanaus unpunished. 10 However, he must have wondered after-
ward if there was not some dark design at work behind all these unlucky
chances, for he arrived just in time to help defend Manila from the
Chinese. We may add, just to make it a little more complicated, that if
he had gone to Magindanau as planned, he might have prevented Bwisan
from raiding that year. For Bwisan was planning a raid ; and this time, his
objective was Leyte.
So far, with the exception of the old people whom Sali murdered at
Baclayon, the Jesuit missions had escaped the scourge. In 1600 Bishop
Agurto of Cebu convoked a diocesan synod, summoning to it the superiors
of all the mission residences, Jesuit as well as Augustinian, of his extensive
diocese. A commission composed of two diocesan priests, two Augustinians,
and two Jesuits was given the task of revising the various Visayan cate-
chisms in current use, and their versions were given an official character.
Certain encomenderos who had fallen out with the Jesuits in their terri-
tories tried to get the synod to declare that the missionaries were subject
to the jurisdiction and visitation of the diocesan prelate in the same way as
the secular clergy; but Bishop Agurto indignantly rejected the suggestion
and forbade all further discussion of the matter. He did, however, go on a
tour of the Jesuit missions as soon as the synod was over for the purpose of
administering the sacrament of confirmation. In spite of his more than
seventy years, he sturdily traveled through Leyte and Samar by trail and
outrigger canoe, sharing the simple fare and Spartan quarters of the
missionaries, and confirming in the faith more than 4,000 neophytes:
836 at Palo, 1,161 at Dulag, and about 2,000 at Tinagon. Two years later,
in April 1602, he did the same in Bohol, administering confirmation to
1 ,602 persons. 11
In October 1601 Diego Garcia made his first visitation of the Visayan
missions as vice-provincial. He paid particular attention to the boarding
school for native boys at Dulag. Before leaving Manila he saw Governor
Tello about a government subsidy for it, and had no difficulty in obtaining
what he asked, subject to the royal confirmation. The grant, dated 1 3
October, was couched in the following terms :
Don Francisco Tello, Knight of the Order of Saint James, etc. The fathers of
the Society of Jesus state in a petition that with a view to educating native boys of
the Visayan provinces in good manners and right conduct they desire to found and
288
The Jesuits in the Philippines
maintain a boarding school in which said boys may be trained in the knowledge
of our holy Catholic faith and the Spanish language and other things pertaining
to virtue, the said school to be established in the place and region which shall be
found most convenient for the said natives. I approve this project as eminently
conducive to the service of God and the welfare of the said natives ; and in order
to give effect to so excellent a w r ork, I order and command that for the four years
immediately following the day on which the galleons sail for New Spain, ioo
pesos, oro comiin , and 200 fanegas of unhulled rice be disbursed each year to the
fathers of the Society of Jesus for the support of the boys receiving their education
in the said school. If at the end of the four-year term royal confirmation of this
grant is not received, it shall cease. 12
This grant enabled Garda to place the Dulag boarding school on a firmer
footing and to reorganize it along the lines of the one he had founded at
Antipolo. The building was enlarged to include dormitory, refectory, and
private chapel for at least thirty boys. These were chosen from among the
ruling families of the region and given an intellectual and spiritual forma-
tion which would fit them to be the teachers and leaders of their people.
The length of time they spent in the institution apparently was not fixed
though it took several years. The Annual Letter of 1603 mentions a few
seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, but the majority must have been
younger than that. New boys made a general confession of their past life
and received holy communion on the day of their entrance.
The scholars rose at the sound of the bell every morning. After a visit
to the Blessed Sacrament and a short meditation in the chapel for the
older boys, they formed the customary procession and went through the
town chanting the catechism. The townspeople who could fell in line
behind them and followed them to the mission church for Mass. Classes
were held morning and afternoon on weekdays. They learned how to read
and write in Spanish as well as Visayan, and a new subject was added to
the curriculum : painting. This was less for its own sake than to enable the
future catechists to decorate their village chapels and to provide them-
selves with the drawings which were in common use at this time as “visual
aids' * to catechetical instruction.
Afternoon classes over, they went to the church to recite the rosary and
sing the Salve Regina , and then to their games till supper time. They sat
down to meals at long refectory tables, European fashion, and listened in
silence to reading in Visayan. We would give a great deal to know what
these Visayan books were that were read from the pulpit of that long
vanished dining hall, but our sources do not enlighten us further. After
evening recreation the scholars met in what might be called a workshop
or practice session, during which one of their number gave a catechetical
instruction or told an exemplary tale as he would when the time came for
him to take part in active missionary work. An examination of conscience
The Great River
289
and night prayers in chapel ended this busy day. 13 Otazo, the superior of
the residence in 1601, expressed great satisfaction with the progress the
seminaristas were making. ''I am amazed,” he told Garcia, '‘at their ability
to absorb what they are taught. I have often considered how they would
measure up to Spanish boys, and it seems to me that European children are
by no means their superiors in understanding and judgment.” 14 Two years
later he began sending them to the villages to assist in the post-baptismal
instruction of neophytes. They gave a very good account of themselves.
The boys of our boarding school [Otazo reported] have shown more clearly than
ever this Lent that they are as capable as their Japanese counterparts of assisting
us in our ministry ... We divided the people of the district into sections and put
a seminarista in charge of each. No one was allowed to approach the sacrament of
penance unless the seminarista declared that he or she was ready. I had previously
practiced them in what they had to require, so that the results obtained were
highly satisfactory. Their manner of teaching is not fumbling, as one might be
led to expect, but amazingly direct and effective, so that one almost feels the
finger of God at work.
On one occasion, by way of experiment and because I happened to have no one
else, I sent several seminaristas on a catechetical tour of the villages. They per-
formed and are performing this assignment with a degree of success that I find
difficult to convey. The reports that they write to me from the villages give
evidence of a maturity of judgment and an apostolic zeal that reminds one irresis-
tibly of the primitive church. I am beginning to realize, dear Father, what a rich
source of manpower this is that Our Lord has opened to the Society, manpower
to help us in every phase of our work for souls. When this project [the boarding
school] was first undertaken, it was out of obedience, for humanly speaking there
seemed little to recommend it. But consilium Dei stabit , giving the lie to the
timorous estimates of human prudence. So it has turned out, and I am more than
ever resolved to rely implicitly on what holy obedience directs.
On the feast of St. Joseph, the patron of the school, there was no reading at
table because of the holiday. The thought occurred to me of having one of them
go up and instead of reading say a few words about their glorious patron and their
seminary, in the same way that they deliver impromptu exhortations during
their evening conferences. I am not easily moved to tears, but I must confess,
dear Father, that on this occasion I could not hold them back. The boy who got
up spoke so lucidly and movingly that I was wholly amazed . . . 15
Besides the boarding school, the fathers at Dulag maintained a hospital.
The Annual Letter of 1602 says two hospitals, but obviously means two
wards, one for men and one for women. It goes on to relate that that year
the people brought down from remote hill villages a multitude of the
aged, blind, deaf, and lame, so sick and helpless that "they looked more
like sacks of earth than men.” The Jesuits could not offer them the skilled
medical care of the modern mission, but they could and did feed and nurse
them to the extent of their resources. In this they were assisted by the men's
290 The Jesuits in the Philippines
sodality, founded that same year. The practices of the association were
similar to those already described in connection with the Manila and
Antipolo sodalities. In addition to Sunday Mass, the members attended
Saturday Mass in honor of Our Lady and Monday Mass for the dead. They
brought food and clothing to the hospital on Sundays and spent the day
with the sick, attending both to their physical and spiritual needs. The
Annual Letter adds the detail that the sodalists of Dulag had adopted as a
kind of uniform, in addition to the rosary worn round the neck, trousers. 16
It was not possible to establish boarding schools in the other mission
residences, but during his visitation of 1 602 Garcia saw to it that each one
had at least a day school for both boys and girls, not only in the residence
itself, but in the larger mission stations of the circuit. The local superiors
were to provide the masters and mistresses who conducted these schools
with written instructions, and one of the duties of a missionary on tour
when he arrived at a station was to inspect the school. Parents were to be
urged to send their children to school at least until they were twelve; only
after that should they be asked to take their share of the labors of farm and
household. And even then, boys who showed promise of becoming school-
masters and fiscals later on should be given an opportunity to continue
their studies.
At Garcia’s suggestion the Visayan Jesuits used these schools to develop
a technique of popular instruction whose effectiveness had been tested at
Antipolo. This was the sacred play or pageant, consisting of dialogue and
dance, performed by the school children under the direction of their
teachers either in the sanctuary of the church itself or on an improvised
stage in the village square. It became one of the principal features of the
Christmas and Easter festivals and of the town fiesta or patronal feast. 17
As additional missionaries arrived from Europe, local superiors grad-
ually extended the range of their circuits to take in more territory. The
eastern coast of Samar and its abandoned station, Catubig, was revisited
by Juan de Sanlucar in 1601 and by Juan de Torres in 1603. In the latter
year the Leyte Jesuits began to move southward: Francisco Vicente to
Abuyog, Cristobal Jimenez and Fabrizio Sarsali to Cabalian, Sogod, and
the neighboring island of Panahon. When in 1 60 x the colonial government
decided to construct a galleon on the island of Panamao (now Biliran) north
of Leyte, Francisco Vicente conducted a fruitful mission there among the
Filipino, Negro, and Chinese workmen. The Bohol Jesuits went on similar
temporal*) 7 missions to the satellite islands of Panglao and Siquijor. 18
These are unmistakable signs of growth; but they must not be allowed
to conceal the fact that the principal obstacle to the total Christianization
of the population remained to a large extent unsurmounted. Although
many of the encomenderos had withdrawn their objections to the gathering
of the clans into townships, and the datus were willing enough to cooperate,
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291
the people themselves, who had submitted meekly enough in the beginning
to the process of transplantation, now began to drift back to their ancestral
farms and favorite hunting grounds and to resist all efforts to make
permanent townsmen of them. The most they would consent to was to
come to town, or to the site designated as such, whenever the traveling
missionary came and sent for them, but when he left, they too went back
to their little clan villages and isolated homesteads, leaving the “town”
deserted. The missionaries, having broken through the relatively fragile
barrier of the encomenderos' self-interest, had come up against a funda-
mental and stubborn difficulty in the people themselves — that which the
sociologists call ecology. Let us say, in nontechnical terms, that the
Visayans had adapted themselves to their environment in a way that
involved dispersal, and hence to make them live stably in larger com-
munities was to upset the balance of their lives. Only by a totally different
adaptation to environment could that balance be restored. Until that
adaptation was achieved, and it would take several generations to do so,
the pull of the old way of life upon the majority of the people would be
well-nigh irresistible.
The problem was perceived and posed in its full extent by one of the
Leyte missionaries, Mateo Sanchez. Writing to Acquaviva from Carigara
in 1603, he said that in his opinion it was impossible to organize any
large towns in Leyte, no matter how hard the missionaries tried. The reason
was simple; the people had to live in the countryside near their sources
of food. They were farmers, but not after the European fashion, living in
nucleated villages or townships, cultivating nearby farms and with their
surplus production obtaining at a central market the articles they needed.
In the first place, their methods of cultivation were such that they pro-
duced no surplus. Even with maximum effort the ordinary Visayan and
his family extracted from the soil only enough to support them for two
months, and that only if they supplemented it by hunting and fishing.
They knew neither hoe nor plow. Armed only with the long knife or bolo
they slashed out a little clearing in the jungle, dug holes in it with a bam-
boo stick, dropped two or three grains of rice in each hole, and covered
them up again with the foot. Having done this, they had to protect what
they had sown from birds, rats, wild pigs, and thieves, and to keep it from
being choked by the lush weeds and creepers that sprang up almost over-
night. At the same time they had to fish and hunt, for the clearing's yield
would not suffice to feed them. They even had to make their own salt
themselves by boiling sea water. This should explain, said Sanchez, the
great reluctance of the Visayans to abandon their clearings and live in a
town.
How could they possibly make a living in a town ? As cobblers ? Every-
one goes barefoot in this land. As tailors ? Every family weaves and sews
292
The Jesuits in the Philippines
its own clothing, which is not much anyway. And wives and children
obviously cannot live in a town while the husband is in the hills for the
greater part of the year. No, there is nothing for it but to leave them in
peace in the ramshackle hut near the clearing which is the only way they
can survive.
The family on its clearing is self-sufficient ; transfer it to a town and you
take away its self-sufficiency without providing it with any other means of
support. On the contrary, town life brings with it many features which
they have good reason to fear: the impositions of their Spanish masters;
forced labor ; stripes ,* the continual calls upon them to act as bearers and
oarsmen for encomenderos and missionaries, for there are no pack animals
here, and so they must perforce be our beasts of burden. Thus far Mateo
Sanchez. 19 His experience of almost ten years in the Leyte missions was
borne out by what his brethren encountered in Bohol. It was deceptively
easy in the beginning to persuade the datus to muster their clans, pick out
a likely town site and have the people build their easily constructed houses
around a chapel. But it was quite another matter to make them stay there.
They were continually melting away, so that the reported population of
Loboc, 1,000 in 1600, was largely a population on paper. When an epi-
demic of influenza ravaged the island in 1601, the missionaries were com-
pelled to establish field hospitals to care for the sick where they were, that
is, in the clan villages. 20
The basic conflict between ecology and mission policy was aggravated
by the misgovernment of provincial officials. The administrative reforms
proposed by the Synod of Manila had not been undertaken. Alcaldes and
corregidores continued to be appointed with nominal salaries for terms of
one year only; an open invitation, which scarcely needed to be expressed
in words, to compensate themselves at the expense of the subject popu-
lation. How in the world, Mateo Sanchez inquired, could they be
expected to administer justice under such circumstances? “ These justices
of the peace,” he said, “are in reality injustices. They do not come to
judge but to rob during their one-year term of office. That is why today
the whole land is full of killing and killers, violence and oppression.”
This was rhetorical exaggeration; still, it was quite true that there had
been sporadic outbreaks of resistance to the civil authorities, and a growing
restlessness among the neophytes whom the missionaries had succeeded
in persuading to come and settle in the new towns. At Alangalang, the
central mission residence for eastern Leyte, the relations between rulers
and ruled were strained almost to the breaking point ; everyone, Spaniard
and Visayan, went about his business armed. 21
This was the situation when, in August 1603, word came that the
Magindanaus had spread their sails to the southwest monsoon. 22 The
expedition consisted of fifty vessels under the command of Bwisan, and it
The Great River
293
was reported that they intended to harry the eastern coast of Leyte. The
alcalde mayor of Cebu at once ordered his subordinate, the corregidor of
Leyte, to collect all the Spaniards on the island and what Visayan troops
he could muster and fortify Dulag. He did so. Thirteen Spaniards, mostly
tribute collectors, and an unspecified number of native troops threw up
earthworks before Dulag and waited. They waited for two months.
Nothing happened. The year was drawing to a close, and the tribute had
not yet been collected. The Spaniards felt that they were wasting their
time. When it was rumored that Bwisan had made for Balayan to repeat
his performance of the preceding year, the corregidor decided that the
danger was past and disbanded his garrison. Otazo, the Jesuit superior,
prepared to sail to Cebu and confer with Garcia, who was there on his
annual inspection trip. Before doing so, he called all the fathers who were
out on tour to a meeting at Dulag. Melchor Hurtado left Dagami as soon
as he received the message and arrived at Dulag on 28 October.
Very early the following morning, just before dawn, a fisherman of the
town put out to sea in a canoe to inspect his fish traps, which he had not
visited for some time. The eastern sky grew lighter before him as he
paddled, and suddenly he could make out against it the dark hulls of a
great fleet. It was the Magindanaus, riding lightless and silent just out of
sight of land, waiting for daybreak to swoop on a town still half asleep.
Even as the fisherman swung his canoe about the signal was given, a great
shout went up, a thousand oar blades splashed whitely in the water, and
the high sharp prows leaped forward.
The people of Dulag had just enough warning to scramble out of their
homes and run to the woods for cover. The fathers and brothers of the
mission joined a fleeing group with nothing but their breviaries and the
clothes on their backs. Otazo ran out of the church with the ciborium
containing the Blessed Sacrament as the first of Bwisan's ships hissed
against the beach. Fortunately, the older boys of the boarding school kept
their heads. They collected the panic-stricken people into small parties
and set out with them to designated hiding places in the hills. They had
prepared these earlier under the fathers' direction and stocked them with
emergency rations. But with women and children in the company, they
made slow progress through the overgrown trails. Moreover, it had begun
to rain. It was easy for the pursuing Magindanaus to follow their tracks
and to hear them floundering through the underbrush. The Jesuits and the
people w'ith them stopped for a moment at a bend of the trail to catch
their breath. They were about to resume their flight when their silent
pursuers were upon them. It was a case of each man for himself. While his
companions plunged into the thickets, Hurtado found a hollow in the
twisted trunk of a banyan tree and flattened himself within it. A woman
with an infant in her arms ran past him. A Magindanau pounded after
294 The Jesuits in the Philippines
her and brought her back, weeping. As the warrior swung past the banyan
tree, dragging his prey, he saw Hurtado. He leaped at him with raised
kampilan, but when he saw it was a Spaniard and a priest, took him alive.
Bwisan was glad to see Hurtado. Here was a valuable prisoner. He could
be exchanged for the artillery piece he had lost to the Spaniards in his
Balayan raid. The beach in front of Dulag was lined with Bwisan* s ships.
Hurtado counted seventy. The raiders were busy ransacking the town.
They were carrying altar vessels and vestments out of the church, and
dumping armfuls of clothes and books from the mission house on the sand
in order to pick out what they fancied. Jubilant warriors were coming out
of the woods with captives. Except for the huddles of dejected prisoners,
it was a bright and lively scene, full of color and movement; almost as
though it were market day. Some of the men had rolled rice mortars from
the houses down to the beach and were pounding rice for their breakfast.
Bwisan kept Hurtado by him. He was very pleased with himself and very
proud of his ships. He tried to convey to Hurtado what fine ships they
were. Most of Bwisan* s enthusiasm was wasted on the Jesuit, who was a
landsman. Beyond remarking that they crawled with vermin, Hurtado
does not bother to describe them in the account which he wrote afterward
of his captivity. But we know well enough what these caracoas — for so they
were called — looked like from other sources. Here is Captain Forrest*s
description of a “coro-coro” ;
A corocoro is a vessel generally fitted with outriggers, with a high arched stem
and stern, like the point of a half-moon . . . They have them from a very small
size to above ten tons’ burthen; and on the cross-pieces which support the out-
riggers, there are often put fore-and-aft planks, on which the people sit and
paddle, beside those who sit in the vessel on each gunnel. In smooth water they
can be paddled very fast, as many hands may be employed in different ranks or
rows . . . When they are high out of the water they use oars, but on the outriggers
they always use paddles . 23
The caracoa used by the Magindanaus on their raiding expeditions was
called a mangaio prau . It averaged about three or four tons* burden and
carried a round or pointed sail on a tripod mast of bamboo. Besides speed,
it had the advantage of extreme maneuverability, for being prowed at stem
and stern, it could reverse direction without having to put about. It had,
however, a very thin shell, sometimes less than a finger*s breadth in
thickness, and stood very low in the water, thirty inches or less. For this
reason the Magindanaus and the Sulus seldom ventured into the open sea
except in very calm weather. The caracoas of the more opulent datus
mounted small bronze swivel guns called lantakas 24
A tall warrior with a spear sauntered past as Bwisan spoke of these things.
He was a Visayan, a renegade Christian. Catching sight of Hurtado he
The Great River
295
grinned broadly, and coming up, pushed him on the chest with the butt
of his spear. “How now,” he cried, “have not the Spaniards hung
Sirongan yet V* And he laughed, recalling the dire threats that the colonial
officials had uttered against that prince, who was sitting safe and sound
in his long house near the Great River. Bwisan gave the man a good-
natured shove and sent him about his business.
Hurtado, seeing the little library of the mission house scattered on the
beach, asked if he could have some of the books. Bwisan told him to pick
out what he wanted and then go to his caracoa and wait there. Thus, Hur-
tado went into captivity with a copy of the Exercises of St. Ignatius, a copy
of Kempis, the Letters of Blessed John of Avila, and an odd volume of
Suarez. However, he adds wryly that what with one thing and another,
he was not able to do much reading.
Bwisan called one of the captives, the fiscal of Dulag, gave him a flag of
truce, and told him to say to the datus of the region that he, Bwisan, would
meet them at Dulag in a week's time. Let them bring ransom for those they
wished to ransom, and let them give heed to his words, for he had some-
what to say to them. On 3 1 October, having put church and town to the
torch, he gave orders to embark and sail north. He sacked Palo and
Lingayon, which had been abandoned by their inhabitants, and burned
the churches there. He intercepted a frigate bound for Cebu with tribute
rice from Samar and captured two Spanish tribute collectors who were
aboard. Then he returned to Dulag.
The Leyte datus were waiting for him. He took their gold and bells and
released to them whom they would. Then he opened his mind to them.
It was not so much for the ransom, he said, that he had sent for them, but
to ask them to consider well what advantage they derived from being
tributary to the Spaniard. Had the Spaniard been able to protect them?
Had he been able to protect the people of Panay, Mindoro, and Balayan ?
But if they allied themselves to the Magindanaus, they would have him,
Bwisan, for their friend, and not as he was now, much to his regret, their
foe. Let them further consider how easy it would be for them to throw off
the hated yoke with the help of the Magindanaus. The Spaniards, after all,
were only a handful, nor were they as invincible as they made themselves
out to be. Let the people of Leyte be resolute ; let them prepare to rise as
one man. The following year he, Bwisan, would come with a great armada
and together they would sweep the island clean of Spaniards.
The datus, many of whom were disaffected for the reasons given earlier,
thought that there was much wisdom in this speech. They sat down with
Bwisan and entered into a blood compact with him. They slashed their
wrists and let the blood drip into a bowl of brandy. Then they drank their
mingled blood from the common bowl, and so became brothers. This done,
Bwisan turned the prows of his fleet for home.
296 The Jesuits in the Philippines
He coasted southward, touched at Panahon, crossed Surigao Strait, and
continued down the eastern coast of Mindanao to Caraga. The Moslem
datu of Caraga, Malangit, feasted him and his men for a few days, after
which they continued their southward course, swung past Batulak Point,
which the Spaniards called Cabo de San Agustin, and rounding the bottom
bulge of Mindanao reached the mouth of the Great River without
incident. Here they paused to trim their ships and display the trophies
of victory; then, with bannerets flying and oars keeping time to the
chantey, they rowed past the throngs of village folk that cheered and
waved them home.
And what of Hurtado ? It had been a long hard voyage for him. He was
not ill-treated. On the contrary, he shared Bwisan’ s table with his familiars,
that is to say, the narrow stern deck of his caracoa. He shared his bed at
night, that is to say, a mat on the same deck. But he was not inured as his
captors were to the discomforts of a slaving expedition. His cassock, which
he refused to take off, was soon crawling with vermin. "It seemed to me,"
he said, "that two hundred of the beasts got married ever) 7 day and the
next day had as many children." He spent most of the day delousing
himself, and his clothes, rotted by the salt spray, were soon in tatters. Sores
covered his skin and on top of that he contracted dysentery from the un-
familiar and not too clean food, which left him very weak. Nevertheless,
though scarcely able to stand, he kept his spirits up and his w T its about
him.
They carried him ashore at Bwayan and set him before Sirongan and his
court. The datus of the Great River had assembled to welcome Bwisan,
and there were besides ambassadors from the Sultan of Brunei, and the
young heir of the Raja of Sulu, who was on a holiday trip. Hurtado related
afterward how they crowded around him,
. . . and among other questions, they asked me whether I wished to be baptized
and receive their Law; for some of them were not without zeal for their religion.
The answer I gave them, and Bwisan too, on several occasions, was that I was
already a Christian, and for my part would rather baptize them, if they were
willing. Then they said that if I would not be baptized willingly, it would have
to be by force. I replied that they had no power to force my will, though they
were welcome to cut my throat and baptize me in my own blood. They remarked
that I was very brave; still, they knew of Spaniards who had apostatized. This
was a fact ; there were two right there in that part of the Great River. I told them
that personally and by heredity I was timid, cowardly, and faint-hearted, more so
than anyone else ; but with God's grace and favor, I felt enough strength in myself
to endure what I said in witness of the true faith which I professed. I added that
if by any chance there were Spaniards who apostatized, they were nothing but
shadows of Spaniards, unworthy Christians, and craven soldiers of Jesus Christ.
I was absolutely right, they replied ; for among them also the Moslem worthy of
the name would rather die than give up his religion. 25
The Great River
297
Sirongan at once dispatched one of the Spanish captives, Ensign
Cristobal Gomez, to arrange with the authorities in Manila for his own
ransom and that of the other Spaniards. Meanwhile, he retained Hurtado
at Bwayan and treated him honorably. He gave him and the other Spanish
captives a house of their own to live in and slaves for their service. He sent
them food from his own table, but since he ate no pork and drank no wine,
according to Moslem custom, he arranged that they should be provided
with these things. Hurtado was soon on his feet again. Sirongan, who was
learned in Islamic law and was curious about Christianity, often sent for
him to dispute about religious matters. Hurtado rapidly picked up the
Magmdanau tongue and even a little Arabic, so that he was able to hold
his own in these disputations . 26
Doubtless he learned from Sirongan the oral traditions of the Magin-
danaus regarding the coming of Islam to their country. These traditions
were later set down in writing. According to the version transcribed by
Saleeby, the Moslem faith was brought to the people of the Great River
by Sarip Kabungsuwan, a cadet of the ruling house of Johore, early in the
sixteenth century.
Sarip Kabungsuwan ... set out on a sea voyage with a large number of followers
from Juhur ... A very strong wind blew and scattered them in all directions, so
that they lost track of one another. As a result Sarip Kabungsuwan arrived at
Magindanau. The others scattered to Bulunai [Brunei], Kuran, Tampasuk,
Sandakan, Palimbang, Bangjar, Sulug [Sulu], Tubuk, and Malabang . 27
This sounds suspiciously like a telescoped account of several migrations
or trading voyages taking place over a period of years. Understood in this
sense, it is not unlikely that there was a Kabungsuwan who set out from
Johore with companions, either on a trading voyage or expelled by dynastic
conflicts, and found his way to Magindanau. At the time of his arrival the
tribes of the Great River were ruled, according to this account, by two
chieftains, Tabunawai and Mamalu. Tabunawai must have been a common
name, or perhaps the generic name for chief, for the Moslem Malays who
first landed on the Zamboanga peninsula had to deal with a native ruler
also called Tabunawai. At any rate, when Kabungsuwan and his men
landed at Natubakan, at the mouth of the Great River, it was to Tabuna-
wai and Mamalu that their arrival was announced. They happened to be
fishing at the time, so they
. . . directed some people of Magindanau to carry their nets for them and went
down to the mouth of the river. There they met Sarip Kabungsuwan, and Tabuna-
wai sent Mamalu up the river to bring down all the men of Magindanau. After
the arrival of the men Tabunawai invited Kabungsuwan to accompany him to
Magindanau. Kabungsuwan refused to accompany them unless they became
298 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Moslems. Tabunawai and Mamalu . . . promised to become Moslems. Kabung-
suwan insisted that he would not land at all unless they came together then and
there and 'were washed and became Mohammedans. This they did, and on account
of the bathing at that place they changed its name to Paygwan. 28
The conversion of the natives to the faith of the immigrants could
hardly have taken place as quickly and as peacefully as stated in the bare
account. Several details, such as Mamalu going up to fetch more men,
Kabungsuwan’s reluctance to accept Tabunawafs invitation, and the fact
that several of the Magindanaus fell dead at a look from the stranger,
suggest that the reception was somewhat more lively, and that Kabung-
suwan and his men had to prove their prowess in battle before the Magin-
danaus could be persuaded to dip themselves at Paygwan.
Whether by conquest or intermarriage — very probably by both — the
lordship of the Great River passed to the invaders. Kabungsuwan, having
converted the people of Matampai, Siangan, Simwai, and Katitwan to
Islam, established the center of his rule on the hilltop of Magindanau, and
was succeeded in due course by Maka-alang, who was succeeded by
Bangkaia. According to the codex edited by Saleeby, 4 k Bangkaia married a
woman of Magindanau and begot Dimasangkai. He also married a woman
of Matampai and begot Gugu Sankula. Later he married Umbun of
Siangan and begot Kapitan Lawut Bwisan.” 29 The latter is our Bwisan;
"Kapitan Lawut/' freely translated "Admiral of the Open Sea/' was an
honorific title won by his daring in taking his cockelshell caracoas beyond
the shelter of the islands to open water. His return journey from Leyte
along the Pacific coast of Mindanao, instead of by the more usual and safer
route around the Zamboanga peninsula, was an example of this.
Further up the river, Bwayan became a second center of Moslem rule,
the succession descending from Mamu through Budtul and Pulwa to
Sirongan. 30 There is no mention at all in the codex edited by Saleeby of
Raja Mura, the third member of the triumvirate constantly mentioned
together in the Spanish sources. This, and the fact that he seems to have
possessed little effective power, leads one to suspect that this personage
was merely the nominal head elected by a loose confederacy of the lords of
the land, among whom the most powerful were the lords of Magindanau
and Bwayan.
The original inhabitants who refused to become Moslems, or were too
primitive to do so, retired further inland, but paid tribute to the Moslem
lords and on occasion provided them with wives and troops. They were
called Tagoloan, Tirurai, and various terms meaning people of the hills. 31
Otherwise, the new rulers changed little of the economic and social
organization of the Magindanau people, perhaps because it was the
organization with which they themselves were familiar. Only later, through
contact with the more advanced sultanates to the south, do we find a more
The Great River
299
complex political structure developing* At the time of Hurtado’s captivity,
Magindanau society was only a step further advanced toward centrali-
zation than that of the Tagalogs and Visayans. At the base of the social
pyramid were the slaves, almost all of them captives or descendants of
captives. Above them, corresponding to the timaua class of the northern
peoples, were the tuan , freemen who tilled their farms with their slaves
for part of the year, and went trading or raiding during the monsoon
season. Whether by kinship or homage, each tuan owed fealty to a clan
chieftain, under whose leadership he went to war. These chieftains or datus
were clearly of the same social class as the maharlika of the Tagalogs and
were collectively known by an analogous name: orangkaia , the great men . 32
Had the social organization of the Magindanaus stopped here, it would
have differed in no essential respect from that of the Tagalogs and Visayans.
But the Moslem Malays added a summit to the pyramid ; the princes ; and
the domination of these war lords gave to the Magindanaus a cohesion, a
solidarity of purpose and action which the peoples of the north had not yet
attained. The Magindanaus had, in fact, almost arrived at the idea of
feudal kingship ; and that they were developing in this direction is sug-
gested by the fact that the lords of Magindanau and Bwayan began to call
themselves at about this time kachil , a term used in the Moluccas to desig-
nate princes of royal blood. The son of Bwisan, the redoubtable Dapitwan
Kudrat, of whom we shall have much to say, would be known even among
the Spaniards as Cachil Corralat.
In addition to a more developed policy, the Moslem Malays gave to the
Magindanau culture its predatory character. They were sea rovers who
lived on trade, and trade in that period was almost indistinguishable from
piracy. Seafarers grabbed what they could, and bought and sold when they
had to. Moreover, the plain of the Great River produced nothing of any
great value for exchange. It produced rice and the sago palm and thus
assured them of food, but for articles of trade they had to go elsewhere.
They went to the Visayas and there discovered a commodity of great
value which was both self-propagating and easily obtainable: human
beings. The Magindanaus and the Sulus were just settling down to the
profitable business of supplying the slave markets of the Malay archipelago
with Visayan captives when the Spaniards arrived.
The Spanish conquest of the Philippines affected this trade in two ways.
First, it threatened to cut off the source of supply. But, secondly, if this
threat could be warded off or circumvented in some way, it tended to
increase the source of supply, to make it more readily available. The policy
adopted by the Spaniards of gathering the Visayan population into larger
communities, combined with their failure to provide these communities
with adequate defense, was, in effect, to pen the quarry in large enclosures
close to the water’s edge, where the raiders could conveniently pick it up
300 The Jesuits in the Philippines
without the necessity of hunting for it. That this advantage was not lost
on the Magindanaus is shown by the considerable increase in the size of
their armadas during the early part of the seventeenth century.
What we have said of the Magindanaus applies equally well to the
people of the southern coast of Mindanao, the Iranun Moslems, and those
of the Sulu archipelago, the Sulug Moslems. While Kabungsuwan and
his companions were imposing their rule and religion on the tribes of the
Great River, seafaring warrior traders of the same type and origin were
doing likewise in these other areas. A traditional account of their arrival,
very similar to that reported by Saleeby, survives among the native
Subanun of the Zamboanga peninsula. 33 In this account the Moslem
settlers were led by two brothers “from Mecca,” Assam and Salingaia
Bungsu. “Bungsu" means younger son; it is worthy of note that both
Salingaia and Kabungsuwan are characterized as cadets of ruling families.
The native chief whom they encountered was calling Tubunawai, a name
almost identical with the Tabunawai of the Magindanaus. When Salingaia
landed at Nawan, near the mouth of a river, he noticed that after several
days of rain the swollen current carried taro leaves, rice straw, calabashes,
and stalks of sugar cane. “There must be people in those hills above us,” he
said to his men, and sent seven of them up with a load of fish to trade. They
did so, but the Subanuns fled at their approach, so they left the fish on a flat
rock and withdrew. Tubunawai came to the rock to investigate. He tasted
the fish and seeing that it was good he brought it back to his people and
commanded them to place rice and vegetables on the rock in exchange.
Thus trading began. Tubunawai came down from the hills and paid a
visit to Salingaia's settlement. Salingaia returned the visit and learned the
Subanun language. He asked for Tubunawafls daughter in marriage.
Tubunawai agreed if Salingaia renounced his Moslem customs and ate
pork. Surprisingly, Salingaia said he would, but when he was about to pop
a piece of pork in his mouth, Tubunawai stopped him, saying, “Do not
eat pig's flesh if you do not wish to. I only set this trial to test your
sincerity.” Some time later a man came from Mecca. He gave Salingaia
and his men a ritual bath to cleanse them from their sins, and at the same
time baptized some of the Subanuns, thus making Moslems of them. Did
Tubunawai become a Moslem ? Apparently not, for he remained a chief
of the Subanun, and his descendants after him. Tubunawai was succeeded
by Lumaiag, then by Insak Sadangan, then by Sugjaku. It was in the time
of the latter, according to the informant from whom we have the account,
that the Spaniards arrived. This establishes the arrival of Salingaia at Zambo-
anga as roughly coinciding with that of Kabungsuwan at Magindanau.
The “man from Mecca” who washed Salingaia from his sins and made
converts among the Subanuns is an early example of the pandita , the
scholar learned in the law and worship of Islam who performed among
The Great River
301
the Moslem Malays the office of teacher and priest. Besides resident
panditas, there seems also to have been traveling missionaries or overseers
who went from place to place reforming abuses and restoring worship and
conduct to their primitive purity. Hurtado's account of his captivity
affords us a glimpse of this functionary in action:
Although their [the Magindanaus'] beliefs are false, they give to their vain
rites and rubrics a seriousness of attention which we ordinarily fail to give to those
of our true religion. An inspector-general who had been sent from Jolo repri-
manded the young men because when they were at worship in their mosque
(a worship performed after their custom with many prostrations and genu-
flections and bows of the head towards the west), they did it with little reverence,
turning their faces this way and that in a way that detracted from the attention
and respect with which they ought to address God. For this reason, when the
hour of worship sounded, even a slave was permitted to take his master by the
shoulders and turn him toward the west. And even if the raja himself were to pass
by, he should get no attention from them. They say of a brother of Sirongan . . .
that one day while performing this vain worship he was bitten by a poisonous
centipede. It was a painful bite, but it moved him as little as though he were a
piece of stone. Only after he had finished his prayer did he put his hand inside his
clothes; for, he said, he considered it a lack of reverence to scratch oneself while
speaking with God . 34
Like the renegade who jested with Hurtado at the time of his capture,
some of the Visayan Christians captured by the Magindanaus apostatized
and became Moslems. They were not, however, forced to do so. Hurtado
was allowed to minister to them and he did. Among the exemplary Chris-
tians who helped him strengthen the faith of the others was Diego Inongan,
a convert of Valerio de Ledesma's from Butuan.
Meanwhile, terror gripped the Visayans. Even as Bwisan was putting
Dulag and Palo to the torch, the Camucones struck a second time at
the Calamianes, and, in retaliation for the expedition sent against them the
previous year, killed the Spaniards they captured. Not long after that the
Caragans, their greed aroused by the spoils of Bwisan' s expedition, crept
up their rock-bound coast and fell without warning on the towns of western
Leyte . 35 Everywhere the system of local defense broke down as the panic-
stricken population abandoned their homes on open shore and river mouth
to seek a hiding place in the hills. The depleted garrisons at Iloilo and
Cebu scarcely knew where to turn. No one could say for certain how
many packs of raiders prowled among the islands, or where they were, or
where they would strike next. And then, on top of all that, came the
chilling news that the Chinese of Manila had revolted, and that the
capital was under siege. Grimly, the handful of Spaniards at Cebu packed
their families off to the country and prepared to defend their city against
whatever foe, Chinese or Moslem, might be the first to descend upon it.
Chapter Thirteen
CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE
Garcia, caught by the general panic in Cebu, sent couriers to the Leyte
missionaries directing them to come together at the inland town of
Alangalang. As soon as they were assembled, they were to compare notes
regarding the state of their various residences. There were persistent reports
that the whole island had apostatized from the faith and risen against the
Spaniards, or was about to. If they found this to be true, they were to
try to make their way to Cebu. If on the other hand some at least of the
Christian communities remained loyal, then they were to stay with their
flocks, no matter what the danger to themselves personally. 1
The fathers sent back word that there was no question of their abandon-
ing the island. The reports of a revolt, while not unfounded, were greatly
exaggerated. The majority of the neophytes, in spite of their fear of the
Magindanaus and the loss of their homes, not only had not apostatized
but were not even thinking of it, while those whom they had specially
trained for leadership, like the students of the Dulag school, fully justified
the hopes placed in them. If the government should send, as soon as it was
able, a strong force to garrison the island, the confidence of the people
would be quickly restored and the disaffected datus prevented from going
over to Bwisan. Garcia took this proposal to Manila as soon as word came
that the Chinese revolt had been put down. Governor Acuna acted with
commendable promptness. He sent forty Spanish troops to Leyte at once
and ordered their commander, Francisco Rodriguez de Avila, to explain
to the datus that because of the Chinese uprising the government had not
been able to come to their assistance earlier; but that they need not to
worry about the Magindanaus from now on; and as for those who had
been carried away into captivity, the sum of 4,000 pesos was being
appropriated to ransom them. Having by these assurances restored a
measure of calm to the population, he sent additional troops to comb
the interior, send refugees back to their towns, and convince the datus
who had drunk blood with Bwisan that Spain was still firmly in the
saddle. 2
He could not, however, be as firm as he would have liked with the
Magindanaus, as long as Hurtado and the other Spaniards were in their
power. He therefore sent Cristobal Gomez back with a soft reply. Let
there be peace henceforth between the Spaniards and the people of the
302
Challenge and Response 303
Great River. That this peace might be just, durable, and lasting, he pro-
posed the following terms. First, mutual restoration of captives and spoils.
Second, mutual renunciation of war as an instrument of policy. Third, an
offensive and defensive alliance against the sultanate of Ternate. Fourth,
freedom for Spanish missionaries to preach Christianity among the
Magindanaus, and for any Magindanau, if he so wished, to embrace
Christianity. Fifth, the Spanish government to recognize Sirongan as lord
paramount of the Great River. The last proviso was, of course, deliberately
designed to sow dissension among the Magindanau princes, for Acuna had
by no means given up the idea of conquest. With this message, Gomez
returned to Magindanau. 3
Bwisan, who had set his heart on getting back his swivel gun in exchange
for the Jesuit priest, was thoroughly disgusted. Fearful lest Sirongan might
release Hurtado, he went to Bwayan and took him away with him to
Magindanau. A great dispute arose among the princes as to what reply
they should give to the terms they were offered, but it did not lead to the
quarrel Acuna had hoped for. In the end, Bwisan consented to give up
Hurtado for a ransom, and the ransom could be either the swivel gun or its
price in gold. To this Gomez consented, but since he did not have the
gold with him, Sirongan gave his personal bond to Bwisan that it would
be paid. The other Spaniards were released on the basis of an exchange of
prisoners. As for the other terms proposed by Acuna, the princes desired
more time to deliberate upon them. They were particularly doubtful about
the alliance against Ternate, with whose people they had been on friendly
relations since time immemorial. Besides, being so much closer to Ternate
than to Manila, they could be attacked and subdued by Ternate before
the Spaniards could come to their aid. An alliance in which the risks were
so unequal did not seem feasible, unless the Spaniards were willing to
establish a garrison close by for their defense. It would be well if some time
in the near future Acuna could discuss these difficulties with them per-
sonally or through an accredited envoy.
The night before Hurtado and the other Spanish prisoners left, Siron-
gan' s wife gave them a farewell banquet. Magindanau etiquette did not
permit her to be present herself, but she sent slaves to the house occupied
by her guests with a complete thirteen-course supper and an apology that
she could not serve them pork. Sirongan, for his part, presented Hurtado
with a complete new suit of clothes, “both interior and exterior." They
left with Gomez on 17 September, 1604, and stepped ashore at Cebu in
the middle of October, amid wild rejoicing, after exactly a year of
captivity. 4 The following year Acuna asked Flurtado to return to Magin-
danau, not as captive, but as ambassador..
The mission was a delicate and dangerous one. In spite of the fact that
they had been offered terms of peace which they had agreed to consider,
304 The Jesuits in the Philippines
the Magindanau princes had not seen fit to suspend hostilities. In 1604
they descended on the Calamianes. Not content with taking captives, they
levied tribute on the inhabitants and compelled them to hand over the
fifteen Spaniards who were stationed there. Some of these escaped and
brought the news to Manila. 5 Acuna decided that there was only one
thing to do : carry out his original plan of annexing Magindanau by con-
quest. For the second time Gallinato was told to get ready; and for the
second time found himself on his way elsewhere.
This time it was another Jesuit, Brother Gaspar Gomez, who was
responsible for the change of plan. When Governor Acuna was in Mexico
on his way to the Philippines, he asked to see the Jesuit lay brother whom
Gomez Perez Dasmarinas had sent to the Moluccas as his confidential
agent. Brother Gomez duly presented himself. He must have impressed
Acuna deeply with the importance of gaining control of the Moluccas, for
the result of the interview was that, while Acuna continued on his way to
Manila, Gomez took the next ship for Spain to obtain royal permission
for the Philippine government to conquer and occupy the Moluccas.
Permission was granted, and Gomez set out for the Philippines on the
fastest ship the royal navy could provide him. He carried two packets, as
we saw earlier; one, the royal commission for Acuna, and the other,
Acquaviva’s letters erecting the Philippine Province, which happened to
arrive at Seville just as he was leaving. 6
Gomez reached Manila on 25 February 1605, with the result that
Acuna decided to reroute the Magindanau expedition to the Moluccas and
take command of it himself. This gave rise to a difficult problem. The
Visayan garrisons would have to be reduced considerably in order to pro-
vide men and equipment for the expedition. Thus the islands would be
much more vulnerable to raids than ever before, with the added handicap
that the governor would not be there to direct defensive operations.
Furthermore, the Magindanaus could make the conquest of the Moluccas
more difficult than it was by coming to the aid of their old ally, the Sultan
of Ternate. Some way had to be found to prevent the Magindanaus from
doing either of these two things until the conquest of the Moluccas was
completed. The solution hit upon by Acuna was to resume the peace
negotiations, to draw the attention of the Magindanau princes to them as
much as possible, and to prolong them until his return. If terms were
arrived at satisfactory to both parties, well and good; if not, considerable
damage to the Visayas and additional complications to the Moluccas
expedition would at least have been prevented. This was the mission which
Acuna entrusted to Hurtado.
At midnight on 24 April 1605 Hurtado left Manila for Magindanau. 7
He made the voyage on a Chinese sampan and was accompanied by a lay
brother companion, Diego Rodriguez. He touched at Cebu, Dapitan, and
Challenge and Response 305
Zamboanga on the way and arrived at the mouth of the Great River on
4 August. He was met by Raja Mura and Bwisan and by them escorted
to Bwayan, where Sirongan awaited him. He had apparently decided that
the best course to pursue was to tell the princes the simple truth. The
governor of the Spaniards, he said, was getting ready a great armada to
regain the Moluccas. His right to do this was based on the fact that the
Moluccas originally belonged to Portugal, and the King of Spain was now
sovereign also of Portugal. The quarrel of the Spaniards, then, was only
with their rebellious subjects of the Moluccas. With the people of the
Great River they had no quarrel. On the contrary, they wanted peace, if
they could agree on the terms of peace. If they could not agree, then it was
quite within the bounds of possibility for the Spanish armada to call at
Magindanau on its way back from the Moluccas, which would be regret-
table. It was to prevent matters from coming to such a pass that he had
been sent. To show the good will of the Spaniards, he brought with him
presents for the princes. The presents were: one bull, three cows, two
saddles, one Malacca bed with its furnishings, and several bolts of taffeta
cloth for Sirongan, and other gifts of lesser value for the other princes.
When Bwisan saw how much more Sirongan received than he or the
others, he rose and made an angry speech. He did not believe, he said, that
the Spaniards were preparing any such armada as Hurtado spoke of.
The purpose of this embassy was obvious : to prevent, by a combination
of flattery and intimidation, the raids which the Spaniards could not parry
by force. Besides, what reliance could be placed on the word of Spaniards ?
Sirongan had given bond for Hurtado's ransom; did Hurtado bring the
ransom with him ? The Jesuit was forced ro admit that he did not, but the
governor had arranged for its delivery. Then, said Bwisan, since he was not
yet ransomed, he was still his slave, and that being the case, it was his
intention to sell him to a buyer in Ternate. With this threat, Bwisan and
Raja Mura withdrew to Magindanau, where ships were already assembling
for that year's raid.
Sirongan, however, asked Hurtado to stay, saying that he and the datus
of his faction were whiling to resume discussion of the peace terms. After
a month of conversations they arrived at an agreement. The Spanish
government w^as to recognize and support Sirongan as paramount lord of
Magindanau, and in consideration of this Sirongan engaged himself to the
following. First, to swear allegiance to the King of Spain; second, not to
make war save in self-defense against any other faction in the territory of
the Great River; third, to discontinue all raids on Spanish territory and
persuade the other factions to do the same ; fourth, to return all Christian
captives and plundered church property ; fifth, to give armed assistance to
the Spanish government upon request ; sixth, to give no aid or comfort to
the enemies of Spain. With regard to the free preaching of the Christian
306 The Jesuits in the Philippines
religion, Sirongan and his datus agreed to the following proviso: ‘'that we
will not be compelled to abandon our own religion for that of the Spaniards ;
but if any one of us should wish of his own free will to embrace the Christ-
ian religion, he will not be prevented from doing so.” The agreement was
put in writing and signed at Bwayan on 8 September 1605, to go into
effect upon ratification by the Spanish authorities. 8
Not long afterward Bwdsan and the other princes of the delta came
posting to Bwayan, much disturbed. Their agents in the Visayas had
brought certain news that the Spaniards were indeed fitting out an armada
of considerable size at Iloilo for the ostensible purpose of reducing the
Moluccas to submission, though what its real purpose was remained in
doubt. Hurtado was summoned to their assembly and minutely ques-
tioned. He repeated what he had told them earlier, that the expedition
was intended for the Moluccas, not for them — provided of course that
they were able to reach agreement on a peace treaty. The princes protested
that he was placing them in an impossible predicament; for if they refused
to sign a peace, this armada would fall upon them, and if they agreed, then,
since the proposed treaty included an offensive and defensive alliance
against Ternate, they would have to reckon with Ternate and their new
allies, the Dutch, as soon as the Spaniards had returned to Manila, as
they were bound to do sooner or later. In either case, they would be the
losers. Hurtado made light of this objection. They would be amply
protected by the Spaniards, he said; and besides, they need have no
fear of the Dutch. The Dutch were merchants, not conquistadores ; they
wanted trade, not territory; the Magindanaus had nothing that would be
of the slightest interest to them.
This was a mistake, and Hurtado probably realized it as soon as it was
uttered. It drew the attention of the princes to the difference between
Dutch and Spanish policy, and to consider the Spanish offers of peace in
the light of that difference. If what the Spaniards were ultimately interested
in was the extension of their rule, could these peaceful overtures be totally
sincere? Was it not likely that these negotiations were in the nature of a
holding operation, designed to lull them into a false sense of security until
the Spaniards were ready to attack them in turn ? Nay more, could not
Hurtado s real purpose be, not to negotiate as an ambassador, but to gather
information as a spy ?
No sooner had Hurtado been dismissed from the council of the princes
than he found himself and Brother Rodriguez under house arrest. Even so,
however, Sirongan permitted him to minister as a priest to the Christian
women of his household, although he was no longer allowed out of the
compound to see the other Christians in the town. 9
Toward the end of February 1606 the Spanish armada was sighted in the
Moro Gulf: thirty-six vessels of various types, with a complement of
Challenge and Response 307
3,000 men. A hush of fear fell on the Great River. The little raiding
cruisers vanished as if by magic from their points of assembly up tortuous
creeks and canals. Streams of refugees with their hastily bundled belongings
on their heads and backs began to stream out of the towns and villages near
the river bank. On 2 March, a Spanish galley appeared at the river
entrance. Gallinato, its commander, looked at last on the land which he
had been sent twice to conquer. There was a deathly stillness upon it.
Houses, whole villages stood deserted. No one answered his herald's cry.
He sent a light skiff up-river with a message for the princes to come down.
They had expressed a wish to meet the governor of the Spaniards. He was
here, awaiting their pleasure. On 5 March another galley came with
Acuna himself on board. They waited. The princes did not come. At
Acunas orders, Gallinato went some distance up-river to see if he could
get in touch with them. Both sides of the river were completely empty;
there was not a living soul. He sent another messenger up to Bwayan to
demand that at least Hurtado be sent down. There was no reply. He rowed
back to Acuna's galley. Acuna decided that they had waited long enough.
He had the swivel gun which Bwisan wanted for Hurtado's ransom set
ashore, and sailed off to rejoin the fleet. 10
When Hurtado at Bwayan learned of the galleys, he went to Sirongan
and asked permission to go down. Sirongan refused. It was not known, he
said, what the Spaniards intended. But one thing was certain. If they
attacked, and anything happened to Sirongan, Hurtado's life would pay
for it. The Jesuit was kept under closer guard. Only when it was reported
that the galleys had left, leaving his ransom on the beach, was he able to
breathe freely.
We may be sure that the Magindanau princes sent scouts to observe and
report on the issue of the Moluccas campaign. They brought back news of
a resounding Spanish victory. The fleet arrived before Ternate toward the
end of March. On 1 April Acuna landed his forces : fourteen companies of
Spanish infantry and 344 Pampango and Tagalog troops. Sultan Said Dini
and his Dutch allies retired as before to the fortress built by the Portu-
guese. Acuna attacked, and on 9 April took it by storm. Capitulations were
presented to the captured Sultan, which he signed the following day. By
them he surrendered all his forts, all captives who were Spanish subjects,
and all the towns formerly Christian on the islands of Batachina, Morotai,
and Herrao; pledged allegiance to the Spanish Crown; and promised not
to make war or peace without the consent of the resident Spanish com-
mander, to deliver apostate Christians to the same commander, and to allow
his subjects freedom to embrace the Catholic religion. This done, Acuna
restored the former rulers of Tidore and Batchan, ordered the reconstruc-
tion of the ruined mission churches, and left a garrison on Ternate of
600 troops under the command of Martin de Esquivel. Then, taking
11 +
308 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Sultan Said and his principal nobles with him as prisoners, and not bother-
ing about Magindanau for the present, he set his course direct for Manila,
where he arrived on 6 June 1606. 11
This feat of arms apparently made a profound impression on the
Magindanau princes. They summoned Hurtado and asked him to return
to Manila with a letter couched in the most abject terms.
This letter is from the Lord of Buhayen and Raja Mura and Capitan Laut
[Bwisan], and is addressed to the Lord Governor and Captain General of Manila
... We ask for mercy, if your Excellency has any love for us. If there has been any
fault on our part, we ask to be forgiven for the love of God. If we should find grace
and pardon in the sight of your Excellency, we ask your Excellency to befriend
and honor the Lord of Ternate, in order that our hearts may be assured that we
shall be protected and pardoned in our turn ... We are ignorant men, lacking
in counsel, and being such we ask your Excellency's pardon. Now our eyes are
being opened somewhat, and we begin to realize that we are nothing. For if the
Lord of Ternate with all his power yielded and became subject to the power of
your Excellency, what are we, all of us, worth ? ... If your Excellency should
take pity on us and pardon us, there need be no concern for the captives in
Magindanao, since they as well as all of us belong to your Excellency; for, indeed,
just as the city of Manila belongs to your Excellency, so does the river of Min-
danao ... We ask and beseech your Excellency that Father Melchor Hurtado be
deputed to bring back the answer to this letter, for he alone knows the good as
well as the evil in our hearts . 12
As a token of their good will — a small token, to be sure— the princes
released thirty captives to accompany Hurtado to Manila. He must have
been delayed in the Visayas, for he did not reach Manila until September.
By that time Governor Acuna was dead, having succumbed to a sudden
illness three weeks after his victorious return. The audiencia took over the
administration of the colony until the arrival in 1608 of an interim
governor, Rodrigo de Vivero, appointed by the viceroy of Mexico. The
proprietary governor, Juan de Silva, arrived the following year and re-
mained in office until his death in 1618.
These changes of government were unfortunate in that they broke the
continuity of the Moro policy developed by Acuna. What the audiencia
should have done was either to ratify the agreement negotiated by Hurtado
or to proceed finally to the perpetually postponed conquest of southern
Mindanao. The audiencia did neither. It simply let things slide, and so
gave the Magindanau war lords grounds for thinking that the fight had
gone out of the Spaniards with Acuna's death. In 1608 the raids were
resumed. 13 Bwisan and Raja Mura led sixty-seven caracoas to the coasts
of Leyte and Samar, burned several churches, and carried away much booty
and a considerable number of captives. At Carigara a volunteer force
hastily organized by the rector, Alonso Rodriguez, and officered by three
Challenge and Response 309
lay brothers courageously made a stand on the open beach. But they were
no match for the marauders, each of whom could say with the spy
captured by Gallinato that “his occupation was always to fight/ ' Their
brief resistance gave the townspeople enough time to flee to safety, but
they were unable to save the town itself. The Magindanaus took a
leisurely two days to sack it and reduce it to cinders, including the new
church and mission house which had just been completed.
The naval patrol stationed at Cebu was alerted and sallied forth to inter-
cept with a small force of 70 Spanish and 60 Pampango marines. The
commander, Salgado, reported that he found the raiding fleet standing at
anchor inside a bay. He drew the enemy out of the anchorage by showing
himself and pretending to turn tail ; then, when he had strung them out on
the open sea, he turned suddenly and struck at the vanguard with such
effect that the rest fled. The comment of one of the oidores, Juan Manuel
de la Vega, on this report was that if he knew Salgado at all, a man who
had obtained his post through political patronage, “thoroughly incompe-
tent in military affairs and a weak-spirited coward/' ' his turning tail was
no pretense. He simply fled, and if he fought at all, it was because he was
overtaken and forced to fight.
However that may be, Salgado' s next move was a diplomatic one, which
had for its object to relieve the pressure on the Visayas by setting the
Sulus at odds with the Magindanaus. He paid a visit to Jolo and tried to
persuade the raja to send a friendly embassy to Manila. To Salgado's
delight, the raja graciously consented ; but what Salgado did not know was
that the raja had just entered into a dynastic union with the Magindanau
confederacy through a multiple marriage between his and Raja Mura's
children. Moreover, both rajas were in constant contact with the Ternate
lords. In fact, Sirongan was in Ternate at the time, organizing an offensive
alliance of the three nations against the Spaniards; so that the raja of Jolo
pounced on Salgado' s suggestion as a splendid opportunity of putting the
captured Sultan Said in touch with all these developments.
Fortunately, Acting Governor Vivero was no fool. He got wind of these
maneuvers, and, foreseeing rightly that they portended bigger and more
daring raids, reinforced the Cebu squadron and replaced Salgado with the
veteran Gallinato. Faithful to his tactic of interception rather than pursuit,
Gallinato did not wait at Cebu for notice of a raid but led his squadron to
Dapitan, where he could cut across the raiders as soon as they rounded the
shoulder of Zamboanga. He was not a moment too soon. Although it was
early in the year (March 1609), Sirongan, Raja Mura, and Bwisan were
already in Visayan waters at the head of a fleet of uncertain size but
consisting, according to reports, of 2,000 men. They had crept quietly into
the narrow bay of Pangil, north of the wasp-like waist of Mindanao,
presumably to perfect their plans on the basis of the latest intelligence
310 The Jesuits in the Philippines
reports. Gallinato at once perceived the advantage that this gave him.
Within the narrow corridor of Pangil the Magindanaus would not be
able to take advantage of their numerical superiority in ships and men,
while he would have the advantage of surprise. So it turned out.
The Magindanaus fought ferociously, bringing their 24 biggest caracoas
into action; but when 13 of these had been sunk they sued for terms.
Gallinato agreed to terms, for, although he had the enemy bottled up, he
was still greatly outnumbered. It is not known what the terms were, but
it was apparently necessary to send them to Manila for ratification. Galli-
nato therefore kept watch at the mouth of Pangil until the ratification
should arrive. Word came from Iloilo that Father Melchor Hurtado, who
had been assigned to the newly opened mission there, was dead. Gallinato
transmitted the message to the Magindanau princes. The three of them
came in person to express their sorrow at the passing of one whom they
called “the good Father / 9 It is interesting to note that the quality which
they admired most in the Jesuit was his fidelity to the vow of chastity,
something which in their polygamous society must have struck them as
quite exceptional.
Since Manila seemed to be taking its time, the Jesuit chaplain of the
squadron, Pascual de Acuna, took advantage of the period of waiting to do
mission work among the people of Dapitan, a settlement founded by
Visayans from Bohol.
A month, two months passed, and still no word from Manila. What
happened then is not clear, but the vigilance of Gallinato's squadron must
have wavered, for the Magindanaus were able to steal out of the bottle.
However, their newly acquired respect for Gallinato was such that instead
of raiding the Visayas, they went to Brunei to see whether it would be just
as easy to rob old Moslems as new Christians. It was not. The sultan of
Brunei, for whom their manner of fighting held no secrets, gave them the
drubbing of their lives and sent them yelping back to the Great River. 14
This is the last that we hear of the Magindanau triumvirate who terro-
rized the Visayas for a decade. They drop out of the stage of history with
the same remarkable suddenness and unison with which they entered it.
Did they retire from active piracy to enjoy in the twilight of their years
the accumulated loot of their busy prime ? Content with the role of elder
statesmen, did they gladly surrender the steering paddle and the flame-like
kris to younger and more capable hands ? Or were these symbols of their
power wrested from them by ambitious upstarts ? Did they fall out among
themselves at the last, and perish by the assassin's hand or on some fratri-
cidal field ? We do not know. All that we know is that the Visayas had
peace from the Magindanaus for three successive years; and when in 1613
they returned to the attack, there was a new commander in the lead
caracoa, a datu named Pagdalanun.
Challenge and Response 311
The expedition was a joint one, in which the Caragans took part. They
broke up into three squadrons which struck simultaneously at Leyte and
Samar. They took 400 captives from Dulag, 600 from the Samar towns.
At Palo they surprised and captured the resident Jesuit missionary, Father
Pascual de Acuna, formerly chaplain under Gallinato. This time the raiders
were not content merely to take captives and burn towns. They burned the
rice fields too. The Cebu squadron gave chase and overtook a flotilla of the
enemy under the personal command of Pagdalanun. The Magindanaus,
hampered by their load of captives, among whom Acuna was one, refused
to engage ; but as they drew off Pagdalanun was wounded. This so enraged
his bodyguards that one of them tried to transfix Acuna with a spear.
Fortunately he missed, and Pagdalanun intervened. Having eluded pursuit,
they made their way along the familiar escape route down the east coast of
Mindanao, stopping as usual at Caraga.
While they were there, Pagdalanun, taking a stroll along the beach, came
upon one of the captives. It was Father Acuna, who had been brooding on
his misfortunes and was apparently in tears. Pagdalanun stopped to
question him. “Are you married V 9 he asked. “Do you have a wife and
children Y* The Jesuit answered that he was not married. “Are you a good
Christian?" He tried to be, was Acuna's reply. “Then,” said Pagdalanun,
“since you are a Christian, and have neither wife nor child, of what con-
cern is it to you whether you die here, or there, or elsewhere ? Let God's
will be done. Of this mind was Father Hurtado, your brother; for on one
occasion, when we were about to bury him alive with a dead datu, in order
that he might serve him in the other world, he replied with fortitude:
Do with me what you will; I am in God's hands." A noble speech, and a
lesson which Acuna doubtless took to heart. Nevertheless, had Pagda-
lanun' s hands been less steeped in innocent blood, he might have said it
with better grace. At any rate, Acuna obtained an unexpected release soon
after this incident. A datu of the Caragas named Gumaras remembered
that he owed a favor to a friend of his in Cebu, Alonso de Pedraza, a
Spanish officer. To discharge his obligation he ransomed the Jesuit and sent
him as a present to his friend. A year later, Acuna returned to Caraga as
chaplain of the force which took the town. What happened to the magna-
nimous Gumaras is not recorded. 15
The establishment of a permanent Spanish garrison at Caraga, by cutting
off the escape route of the Magindanaus or at least making it less secure,
seems to have stopped them from making any large-scale raids for the
next two decades. Another reason, and possibly a more important one,
may have been that the communities of the Great River were passing
through a period of internal reorganization. This is, however, merely a
conjecture from the fact that in 1634, when the Magindanaus resumed
their depredations and so began to figure once more in the Spanish records,
312 The Jesuits in the Philippines
the old confederacy had taken the form of a unified sultanate under
Bwisan's son, Kechil Capitwan Kudrat; or, as he was known to the
Spaniards, Corralat.
The Jesuit establishments least affected during this initial phase of the
Moro wars were those on the islands of Bohol and Cebu. In 1605 a board-
ing school similar to that of Dulag was founded at Loboc, and supported
from the stipends received by the Bohol missionaries. By April 1606 there
were sixteen boys in the school, all of them from the leading families of
the island. The schoolmaster, a native of Palo named Juan Maranga, was
an alumnus of the Dulag school. He was a man of exemplary life who had
resolved, instead of marrying and founding a family of his own, to devote
his life to the service of the mission as a lay helper. He took no vows and
was therefore technically not a religious; rather he belonged to that com-
pany of devoted laymen whom the Jesuit missionaries of this period
associated with them in their work, and of whom Saint Ren£ Goupil, the
North American martyr, is the most illustrious example. They were called
donnes or donados; Maranga is the first Filipino donado mentioned in our
records. 16
On 1 April 1 609 Acquaviva stole a minute or two from the cares of the
whole Society to answer a collective letter from the students of the Loboc
school. They had apparently given him an account of their studies and
other activities and then asked for a present. They wanted a replica of the
church of Santa Maria Maggiore. He answered :
The letter which you wrote me pleased me very much, because in it you express
your gratitude for the goodness of God in sending you men to teach and instruct
you in what is needful for your salvation. This is indeed a very estimable thing.
I also gather that you are making progress in virtue and Christian piety, and in
this way repaying the care and labor which the fathers lavish on your boarding
school. I am going to see to it that when one of the fathers comes here as pro-
curator of the province he can bring back the painting of St. Mary Major you ask
for. In the meantime, I want you to be very devoted to the Mother of God, and
ever strive to make progress in virtue and piety, as true and fervent Christians
should. God bless you and give you abundant grace. 17
The only student of the Loboc school whom we know by name is
Miguel de Ayatumo. Miguel was baptized at the age of seven by Father
Gabriel Sanchez and died at sixteen on 19 November 1609. He was a
fervent sodalist, assisted at Mass every day, and rose in the morning at the
same time as the fathers in order to make mental prayer. He fasted on
Fridays and Saturdays, and often accompanied the fathers on missionary
journeys, serving as cook and general factotum. Father Pedro de Aunon
recalled how Miguel used to go before them with his bolo, slashing a path
through the dense jungle undergrowth; and how when they had to spend
Challenge and Response 313
the night on the trail he would stand guard over them while they slept.
Three years before his death he took a private vow of chastity which he
faithfully kept. Going down to the river one day to wash his clothes, he
slipped on the bank and fell against the sharp prow of a moored boat. He
was anointed and died, having received holy communion that morning. 18
The Annual Letter of 1610 gives some interesting details of the work of
the Jesuits in Bohol :
This year we established a hospital to which we brought many who had fallen
sick because during the recent famine they ate wild fruit and the leaves of trees
and whatever they could lay their hands on. We shared whatever food we had in
the house with them and with many others lying about in the streets and
houses . . . Before the famine became general it was a consolation to see how our
people shared the litde food they had with the poor, and how every day when
they came to Mass they brought something for this purpose, which was collected
in baskets at the church door and taken to the hospital. Every Sunday a village
would take its turn to feed the poor, in this fashion. During the week they hunted
wild pig or deer, and the following Sunday they brought the meat cooked and the
rice to go with it (for rice is like bread here) and distributed it until everyone had
enough. Those who have no rice bring instead certain edible roots somewhat like
potatoes which here are called ubi, a heavier and more substantial food. The head-
men of the village take great pride in serving the meal to the poor, imitating in
this the fathers of the Society who started the work . . .
The boys of the boarding school presented a play on Saint Gregory the Great
with such devotion and modesty that everyone was greatly taken by it ; and since
the point of the play was the example of almsgiving which the saint gave, the
people were greatly encouraged to do likewise. The natives derive great profit
from these plays. They are an exceptionally efficacious means of teaching them
our religion, not only because they come in vast numbers from all parts to see
them, but also because they grasp more readily what is taught in them. Thus, in
order to make them love the virtue of chastity and show them how in time of need,
sickness, and danger they should have recourse not to their idols but to God, we
presented another play on the life of the glorious virgin and martyr Saint Cecilia,
in which the first lesson was brought home by the incident of the two crowns
which the angel brought to the saint and to Saint Tiburtius, and the second by
the prayer which she made to God. In order to give your Reverence some idea of
how pat this second lesson [regarding the vanity of praying to idols] came, let me
tell you something of the ancient usage of the Visayans.
The devil, working through his ministers, has them all convinced that all the
good or evil which befalls them is the work of the spirits of their ancestors. Thus
if they fall sick it is because the souls of the dead have come to take them to the
other life. The sick do not actually see these spirits ; but that, they say, is because
the world is divided into three parts, an upper, a lower and a middle part. The
upper part, or heaven, is the dwelling-place of their diuata , of men of valor, and
of certain women who live as recluses without ever going out of the house, and
who are called in their language binocot . The lower part is where all the other souls
314 The Jesuits in the Philippines
of the dead go. Thus the two places are alike in being abodes of the dead. The
middle part is the earth which we who live inhabit; but both the upper and the
lower regions are contiguous to it, and that is why any one of the dead can come
to earth and take away with him whomsoever he wishes. When a Visayan becomes
ill, therefore, he sends the baylana [i.e., the babailan or medicine woman] and asks
her who the spirit is that has come for him and given him that sickness. The
baylana gives him any answer she chooses, adding that if he wishes that spirit to
go back to the other life without taking him along, he must sacrifice so many pigs
and so many chickens, in other words, what she would like to partake of most.
They lived in such blindness that they believed all this and gave to the extent of
reducing themselves to beggary, and even of selling themselves as slaves . . .
They also had the custom during the planting and harvest seasons, and when
they went out to hunt or fish, of calling upon the diuata, which are their gods,
and the souls of their ancestors, which are called omalagar , in order that they
might be propitious to them. Instead of this we taught them how to have recourse
to God, who alone can help them. Whereupon they came to ask one of our fathers
one day what they should do before going on a hunt. The father replied that they
should first go to church and ask God for help through the intercession of his holy
Mother, our blessed Lady. If they did this they would see how much more
successful they would be; he even promised them this in God’s name. They
followed his advice and with this preparation sallied forth, and not far from where
they lived, in the course of one morning’s hunt, they brought down twenty-two
head of game between wild hog, wild boar, and deer ; which helped to open their
eyes to the frauds they formerly believed in and to strengthen them in the true
faith. For they said afterward: When we used to invoke the diuata and omalagar ,
we caught two or three deer at the most and very often nothing; but now by
praying to Jesus Christ we caught twenty-two. No doubt about it, he is the true
God and all those others are mere deceptions . 19
The Annual Letter of 1 6 1 1 records the mass conversion of thirty babailan
who burned their altars and idols and joined the children’s catechism class.
This was in the village of Tubud alone; there were similar conversions in
other places. In their first fervor, these newly converted medicine women
went so far as to join in the public self-flagellation held in the churches
during Lent, although this particular form of penance was meant only for
the menfolk. Only with difficulty were the fathers able to persuade them
to desist. 20
But although Christianity made these obviously considerable gains, the
old paganism was by no means completely extinct. Not all the shamans
submitted meekly to the loss of their livelihood and prestige. They retired
before the advance of the missionaries to the hilly interior of the island,
where they were joined by those who, for one reason or another, found it
irksome to live in the new Christian communities. Aside from the per-
sonal and social discipline which the reception of baptism imposed on the
neophytes, the people of Bohol found it just as difficult as the people of
Challenge and Response 315
Leyte to make the change from the old life of the clan settlement and the
temporary clearing to the new life of the town and the settled farm. The
vague discontent to which this gave rise, the occasional restlessness which
would seize a lowland village and cause its people to wander off to the hills,
needed only a focus to stir it into active rebellion; this focus the unrecon-
structed shamans supplied.
In December 1621 almost all of the Bohol Jesuits went to Cebu for the
celebration of the beatification of Saint Francis Xavier. During their
absence the word spread that a diuata had been seen in the hills, his face
covered by a hood like that of the flagellants in the Lenten procession of
the Christians. The oracle of the diuata was that all should abandon the
towns and religion of the Spaniards and come to him in the hills and there
build him a temple. He would give them food in abundance, without the
necessity of work and without the burden of paying tribute. He would
protect them, so that if the Spaniards came against them, their muskets
would do them no hurt. Four towns, that is, all except Loboc and Baclayon,
rose to do the will of the diuata, led by the shamans who had come down
to fetch them.
The alcalde mayor of Cebu, Juan de Alcarazo, hurried to the island with
a force of 50 Spanish and 1,000 Visayan troops. On 6 January 1622 a
pitched battle took place between part of this force and 1,500 of the rebels.
As the Spanish muskets turned out to be as effective as ever, the rebels
withdrew to the fortified enclosure which they had built, and which con-
tained 1 ,000 houses around the temple of the diuata. Alcarazo invested
and took it in two weeks, thus breaking the back of the rebellion. He
returned to Cebu, but was compelled to come back six months later to
complete the pacification of the island.
This uprising kindled a similar one in Leyte, led by that datu of
Limasaua, Bankau, who had welcomed Legaspi to the Philippines in 1 565.
This vigorous old man, who had settled at Carigara after his baptism,
raised a temple to the diuata and with the help of his son Pagali persuaded
six towns to revolt. Alcarazo came over with a fleet of forty sail and decided
that a salutary example was needed to stop the spirit of dissidence from
spreading any further. He pursued the rebels to a pocket in the hills and
there put them to the sword, men, women, and children. No one was
spared. The body of Bankau was found among the dead. Alcarazo ordered
his head cut off and publicly exposed on a pike. 21
The revolt must have made the missionaries realize that they were still
some distance from the stable Christian commonwealth which was the
goal of their endeavors. Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem . Yet the
remarkable thing was not that such a revolt should take place, but that
there were not more of them, and that the towns which they had formed
with so much labor continued to exist and grow in spite of internal
n*
3i 6 The Jesuits in the Philippines
difficulties, compounded now by the external pressure of the Moslem raids.
The fact is that, no matter how many times the Magindanaus or the Sulus
reduced to cinders such seacoast towns as Dulag, Palo, Carigara, Ormoc,
and Tinagon, the people always returned to rebuild them, each with its
church and mission house, its school, catechumenate, hospital, confrater-
nities, and all the other institutions introduced by the missionaries. 22 One
reason for this was undoubtedly an increasing appreciation on the part of
an ever greater number of Visayans that town life possessed inherent
advantages which their dispersed clan villages lacked, such as opportunities
for mutual help and a more diversified economic and social activity*
Another reason, less ponderable but very real, was the implicit trust
which the people had come to repose in their pastors. They might not
quite comprehend what the good fathers were about, but they were
perfectly certain that it was ultimately for their welfare. This was placed
beyond question by the readiness of the missionaries to risk death or
capture with them, to share their privations and sufferings, and to place at
the disposal of the sick and the starving all that they had, even the food on
their tables. Samar had always been subject to recurrent famines, each of
which usually brought an epidemic in its train. A particularly severe
drought blighted the crops of 1610 and 1611, just after the foundation of
the new residence of Palapag. The Jesuits stationed there at once opened
a hospital in the mission compound, and for three months never had less
than 200 persons in it, suffering either from disease or plain starvation.
Four women of the town served as nurses in the women's ward, a lay
brother and four sodalists among the men. Food and medicines were
supplied out of the missionary stipends. The fathers themselves did the
cleaning and washing up. In addition to the hospital, they also ran a soup
kitchen which fed over seventy persons daily. The same emergency relief
measures were taken at Tinagon. 23 Meanwhile, the instruction both of
catechumens and neophytes continued, with the fathers being able to count
more and more on the assistance of the “graduates” of Don Gonzalo's
boarding school at Paranas. At about this time, however, the school was
transferred to Tinagon, where a similar school for girls was also opened
with one of the pious women of the town as house-mistress. 24 Thus, by
16x0 each of the three islands which were entirely under the spiritual
administration of the Jesuits — Samar, Leyte and Bohol — had its own
seminario or boarding school.
One of the missionaries stationed at Carigara at this time won a special
place in the hearts of the Visayans. His name was Juan de Ballesteros, and
he was neither a priest nor a lay brother but a simple donado . He left his
birthplace in Spain, Badajoz, when hardly more than a boy, to go soldier-
ing in the Philippines under Governor Acuna. Some time after his arrival,
we do not know exactly when, he asked to be allowed to help out in the
Challenge and Response 317
Jesuit missions as a donado, and was sent to Leyte. There he became for all
practical purposes a Visayan, even to the extent of wearing the native
costume. A man of amazing versatility, he served in every conceivable
capacity: as cook, sacristan, porter, gardener, carpenter, tailor, school-
master, nurse. He helped construct many of the mission chapels and resi-
dences, going with the village stalwarts to cut timber in the hills, and by
dressing stone and mixing lime with them, taught them these arts. Chapel
and mission house finished, he would help build their own homes; in
short, there was no labor or hardship that he did not share with them.
In addition to these duties, he would occasionally serve as pilot for the
missionaries sailing back and forth between the Visayas and Manila. One
of the articles he always brought back from these trips was sheet music.
He taught the Carigara schoolboys the villancicos and folk dances of his
native land, and did it so well that at the festivities held in Manila for the
canonization of Saints Ignatius and Francis Xavier, it was the Carigara
dance ensemble that carried off the palm. Needless to say, not even the
word of the king ran in the towns and villages of Leyte as did the word
of Juan de Ballesteros. 25
At Cebu the fathers were no less fruitfully occupied. When the Dutch
occupied Amboina in the Moluccas in 1605, they expelled the Portuguese
Jesuits stationed there, but permitted their converts, if they wished, to
follow them to exile. The superior of the mission, Lorenzo Massonio, and
his assistant, Andrea Pereira, could not take them all in the ship placed
at their disposal, so they took only the sick and made for Cebu as fast as
they could. Luckily, Bishop Agurto had provided Cebu with a hospital
a year or so earlier and asked the Jesuits to take charge of it. Here the
exiles were housed, fed, and cared for until they were well enough to shift
for themselves. The Jesuits financed the operation partly from their own
resources, partly by going to the wealthier citizens and asking each one to
endow a bed, that is, to furnish the bed in the first place, with all its
appurtenances such as pillows and sheets, and then to contribute what was
needed for the food and medical care of its occupant. 26
The Jesuits themselves were largely dependent at this time on the day-to-
day alms of the people, as they still had no regular income except the
200 pesos and 200 fanegas of rice a year which they received from the
colonial government on the basis of a temporary grant. When Chirino
went as procurator to Europe one of his commissions was to see whether the
king would be willing to endow the College of Cebu. On 26 May 1607,
the privy council reported favorably on his petition, and suggested that
sufficient funds be set aside to provide the college with an income of 2,000
ducados a year. 27 However, it proved to be no longer necessary. On 3
August of that same year, Gregorio Lopez as provincial accepted from the
executors of Ensign Pedro de Aguilar, a citizen of Cebu, the bequest which
318 The Jesuits in the Philippines
he made of 14,000 pesos to “the College of San Ildefonso of the Society of
Jesus in the city of the Holy Name on the island of Cebu/’ Aguilar’s will,
dated 9 December 1606, prescribed that 7,000 pesos was to be used for
the construction of a new house and church and the remaining 7,000 to be
invested so as to yield an annual revenue of 5 00 pesos for the support of
the community* However, discretion was left the executors to modify this
according to circumstances, and at the request of Lopez they allowed the
entire endowment to be invested and the church and residence to be con-
structed out of income. The completed church was inaugurated on 29
November 162 5. 28
One of the special ministries in which the fathers of Cebu engaged was
the giving of the spiritual exercises to laymen. They did this in the form
of closed retreats held in the Jesuit residences; but, unlike the retreats at
the College of Manila, which were made only by Spaniards, the Cebu
retreats were made by Chinese and Filipino groups as well. It is interesting
to note that there were Filipinos in Cebu who had advanced sufficiently in
the knowledge and appreciation of the Catholic faith as to be able to make
the spiritual exercises. It is also interesting to note that although the
Jesuits had already given up the administration of the Chinese parish, the
members of the Chinese community continued to have recourse to them
not only for retreats but also for regular spiritual conferences during the
year, and that there was always a priest in the community capable of giving
both retreats and conferences in the Chinese language. 29
It was also from Cebu as a center that various temporary missions to
neighboring islands were undertaken at the request of their respective
encomenderos or parish priests. Some of these missions resulted in the
establishment of a permanent residence. In 1605 the parish priest of
Arevalo, Don Miguel Garcetas, feeling the weight of his declining years,
asked the Jesuits for assistance. Francisco Gonzalez was sent from Cebu.
The citizens of the town liked him so much that not only did they refuse
to let him go back, but they clamored for more Jesuits to form a resident
community. In order to forestall a refusal, they immediately set about
building a church and house; and no sooner did Garcetas become vicar-
general of the diocese upon the death of Bishop Agurto than he requested
and obtained from the audiencia the necessary government approval for the
project. It was granted on 14 December 1606, a remarkable record for
speed considering the leisurely pace at which business was transacted in
those days. Thus, in spite of Acquaviva's repeated warnings to the Philip-
pine Jesuits not to overextend themselves by accepting new establishments,
Lopez had no option but to accept Arevalo and write to Rome (3 July 1 608)
for a belated permission to do so. Acquaviva, in giving his reluctant con-
sent, asked Lopez at least to make sure that the new community’s essential
needs would be provided for by some sort of regular income. There was
Challenge and Response 319
no need for him to worry on this score, for although none of the citizens
of Arevalo was rich enough to take care of the endowment singlehanded,
the various contributions and bequests which they pooled together sufficed
to take care of the Jesuits adequately. 30
As we pointed out earlier, the port of Iloilo, not far from Arevalo,
became the station for the naval squadron charged with the defense of the
western Visayas. After the conquest of Ternate by Governor Acuna, it also
became the port at which the convoy annually sent to the garrisons there
took in their supplies. The Arevalo Jesuits took care of the spiritual needs
of the service personnel involved in both these operations, and often
accompanied them as chaplains on their various missions. This work,
voluntarily undertaken, was officially imposed by Governor Tabora in
1628. 31
The discontinued mission of Butuan in northern Mindanao was restored
at the urgent request of the government in 1611. Francisco Vicente, who
was sent there from Cebu, was received by the people with great rejoicing.
They went out in their boats to escort his ship to port, singing a chantey
whose refrain was simply “ Jesus, Marfa, Jesus, Marfa/ ' Ledesma had
taught it to them nearly a decade earlier, but they had never forgotten it.
Vicente began the conversion of the Manobos of the upper Agusan River,
many of whom came down to Butuan for instruction when they heard that
a priest had come; and his successor, Juan Lopez, accompanied the
Manobos several times to their home country up the snake-like, sluggish
river. This mission did not, however, become a permanent one, and it was
terminated some time after 16 14. 32
The last two missions undertaken by the Cebu Jesuits during this
period were Dapitan in northern Mindanao and Ilog in western Negros.
The beginnings of the Dapitan mission might be traced to the two months'
sojourn there of Pascual de Acuna while he was chaplain of Gallinato's
squadron. It was missionized several times thereafter by other Jesuit naval
chaplains, for the Spanish squadrons on patrol made it a regular port of
call. The man who took a special interest in Dapitan was Pedro Gutierrez,
and so, when in 1631 Governor Tabora requested a permanent mission
residence there, Gutierrez was sent to found it and be its first superior. 33
An account of this residence, as well as that of Ilog, founded permanently
in 1628, will appear later in this narrative. But enough has been said to
show that, in spite of the disruption of normal life caused by the Moro
raids, the Visayan missions of the Philippine province managed not only
to survive but even to grow and expand ; indeed, one might go so far as to
say that the challenge merely served to deepen the appreciation of the
Visayans for their newly acquired faith, and strengthen their attachment
to it.
During the period 1614-1634 what began as slaving raids developed
320 The Jesuits in the Philippines
into a full-scale war, the leadership of which passed, on the Moslem side,
from the Magindanaus to the Sulus. The Sulu archipelago is a series of
volcanic islands laid like the stepping stones of a giants' ford from the
tip of the Zamboanga peninsula southwestward to Borneo. The first
people to make use of this ford were not, however, giants but pygmies.
These cousins of the Dyaks of Borneo seem to have been the earliest inhabi-
tants of the islands; and because later migrants drove them from the
beaches to the hilly interior they are called Buranun — people of the hills.
The migrants referred to were seagoing Malays of the same sort as those
who established themselves all along the southern coast of Mindanao,
though they seem to have arrived much earlier. Saleeby conjectures 34
that they started coming as early as the fourteenth century from Johore,
Macassar, and Palembang, attracted no doubt by the pearl oysters with
which the waters of some of the islands abounded. The most important
of these islands, and the one which eventually became the seat of rule
for the entire archipelago, is Jolo. Here, according to the traditions of the
Sulus, a certain Tuan Masha'ika from Johore or Malacca displaced the
Buranun rajas and became raja in their stead. About 1380 a Moslem
scholar and traveler named Maldum came and converted Masha* ika's
people to Islam, or at least confirmed them in that faith. Toward the end
of the century Baginda, a Moslem prince from Menangkabau in Sumatra,
conquered the island. He it was who brought the elephants whose progeny
Governor Sande heard about in Brunei and asked Figueroa to get for him.
So we are told; but how Prince Baginda was able to transport these pon-
derous pachyderms all the way from Sumatra to Jolo is a detail about which
the traditions preserve a discreet silence.
It is from Bagmda s son-in-law and successor, Said Abu Bakr, that the
lords of Jolo traced their lineal descent. Said (jloruit 1450) not only made
the Moslem religion general throughout the island and archipelago, but
codified the customary law of the Sulus, bringing it into conformity with
the prescriptions of the Koran. 35 He bequeathed to his successors a here-
ditary feudal kingdom in which the ruler governed with the aid and coun-
sel of the most powerful datus. There were fifteen of these datus in the
latter part of the eighteenth century, holding seigneuries in Jolo or the
other islands which, like the kingdom itself, were hereditary, descending
from father to eldest son. An interesting feature of this government was
that the common people were allowed to elect two mantiris or tribunes to
represent them in the sultan s council. 3 ** The sixth ruler of Jolo after Said
Abu Bakr was Raja Pangiran, who capitulated to Figueroa because he was
unable to gain his citadel, the hilltop fortress near the town of Jolo which
was to give the Spaniards so much trouble afterward.
In 1616 Governor Juan de Silva sailed out of Manila Bay with the
mightiest fleet ever launched by the colony. All the military and naval
Challenge and Response 321
establishments of the Islands were stripped to organize and equip it.
Silva's object was to combine with the Portuguese in a massive operation
to drive the Dutch from the Far East. The operation failed. Instead of
accepting battle like gentlemen, the canny Dutch avoided the armada and
sent a squadron to attack Manila instead. On their way there they stopped
at Jolo and asked the Sulus to join them. It was too good an opportunity
to miss. While the Spaniards made desperate preparations to meet the
Dutch, a powerful Sulu fleet destroyed the shipyard at Pantao in Camar-
mes, slipped into Manila Bay, burned the Cavite navy yard, and carried
away a number of Spanish prisoners for ransom. 37
The unprecedented spectacle of the Sulus taking Spanish captives almost
within sight of the city of Manila encouraged the Camucones of Palawan
and Brunei to enlarge their scope. They now began to infest the northern
Visayas and the southern coasts of Luzon, hunting their human quarry in
packs of their own, instead of merely following like jackals in the wake of
the Sulu and Magindanau armadas. The Camucones were heathen, and
much more savage and ruthless raiders than the Moslem Malays. They
were known in Brunei as the Tedong people, Orang Tedong , , and this is the
description that Forrest gives of them :
The Orang Tedong live very hard on their cruises, their provisions being some-
times raw sago flour. They have often no attop or covering ; nay, sometimes as the
Sooloos have told me, they go, especially if it rains, stark naked. The Moors of
Magindanao and the I llanos who are also Moors despise these people. When they
meet, however, in roads and harbours among the Philippines, where the common
prey is, they do not molest one another . . . Their boats are sometimes small and
made of thin planks sewed together. I have heard of some such, once shut up in a
bay by a Spanish cruiser ; they took their boats to pieces and carried them away
overland . . . When the Orang Tedong get into their hands many prisoners, to
secure themselves they will lame some of the stoutest ; nay leave them, on perhaps
a little sandy island . . . till they be at leisure to fetch them. Nor do they stick at
breaking the limbs of their captives in cowardly fear of their own. 38
Possibly for this reason they took no Spanish prisoners, but if any fell
into their hands killed them outright. In 1618, they almost captured the
Jesuit provincial, Juan de Bueras, who was on his way to make his visi-
tation of the Visayan missions. 39 In November 1625, while returning from
a raid on Samar, they sighted a sailboat carrying passengers from Tayabas
to Marinduque and swooped down on it. A shot from a stone mortar
wounded one of the passengers, the Jesuit missionary Juan de las Misas.
The ship was boarded after a brief resistance and the Camucones, finding
that the wounded man was a Spaniard, cut off his head. He was an alumnus
of San Jose, and the first in the illustrious list of Jesuit missionaries who
lost their lives in the Moro wars. 40
Meanwhile, a dynastic struggle was in progress among the Sulus. The
322 The Jesuits in the Philippines
rule of the reigning raja, Batara Shah Tangah, was being contested by his
cousin Badasaolan, who had established his power among the Samals of
Basilan Island. 41 The Samals, who also called themselves Lutaus — people
of the sea— belonged to the latest wave of Malay migration to wash the
shores of the Sulu archipelago. They were fishermen, and spent most of
their lives in their boats, drifting from island to island, although they
would occasionally establish villages wherever the inhabitants did not
object too strenuously. They were a patient and peaceful folk, whom the
warlike Sulus considered their inferiors and vassals. But they proved them-
selves respectable fighters when aroused, and Badasaolan apparently suc-
ceeded in arousing them. In 1624, being hard-pressed, Raja Batara sent
an embassy to Manila to request aid of the Spaniards. At the head of the
embassy was Ache, Jolo's most influential datu.
The embassy was well received, but, since the governorship was vacant
at the time, the audiencia dismissed it with vague promises. In 1625 Datu
Ache and his entourage took in a cargo of trade goods and set sail for home,
just after the Camucon raid in which Father Misas was killed. Their ship
was intercepted by one of the naval squadrons which had set off in pursuit
of the raiders. The commander of the squadron, enraged at the Camucones
having eluded him, vented his spleen on the Sulus. He confiscated their
ship and cargo and brought them back prisoners to Manila. There they
were clapped into a detention cell, and, as the audiencia was fully engaged
in fighting off a Dutch blockade, promptly forgotten. The Jesuits of the
College of Manila, on one of their regular rounds of the city gaols, found
the ambassadors in a state of semistarvation, for they were completely
destitute; and upon learning their story made strong representations to the
audiencia for their release. The oidores were most apologetic and strove to
repair the damage done. The ambassadors were instantly released and the
officer responsible for their arrest was ordered to restore what he had
confiscated. When the new governor, Juan Nino de Tabora, arrived in
1626, he decided to send the force requested by the Sulus and asked for
two Jesuit chaplains to accompany them. Thus, with the help of the
Spaniards, Badasaolan was induced to listen to reason, and after com-
plicated negotiations Batara s successor, Raja Bungsu, was installed as
unchallenged lord of all the Sulus, with Tuan Baluka, a Samal lady, as his
consort. 42
But Datu Ache, now Bungsu s chief minister, never forgot what he had
suffered from the Spaniards, nor the three great pearls, his ow r n personal
possession, which the government had been unable to make his captor
disgorge. Vengeance he must have; but there was rich spoil too for the
taking. He had heard while in Manila talk of a new shipyard in Camannes,
a big one, where the keels of two galleons, two or three galleys, and several
smaller vessels were to be laid. This meant an enormous concentration on
Challenge and Response 323
one convenient site not only of Spanish overseers (who could be held for
ransom) and native workmen (for the slave market), but of iron, brass,
lead, cables, guns, powder, and shot, all of which the Sulus needed badly.
He laid these considerations before the raja, who agreed that they carried
weight. The Spanish auxiliaries and their chaplains were courteously but
firmly speeded home, and a great fleet organized with a nucleus of more
than 30 oversize caracoas, called joangas, and a total force of 2,000 men.
Bungsu, who assumed personal command of the armada, took the ship-
yard completely by surprise. 43 The fourteen Spaniards assigned to guard
the place had not even bothered to mount four pieces of artillery which
they had lying about. Bungsu* s landing force of 700, swarming up the
beach just at the crack of dawn, immediately took possession of them and
killed two of the garrison before the others could barricade themselves in
a blockhouse. There they fought a delaying action until they were able to
make good their escape up a hidden creek. Bungsu ordered the half-finished
hulls fired, food-stocks amounting to 1,000 fanegas of rice thrown into
the sea, and sailed away with 300 captives and all the metal and usable gear
his ships could carry. On the way home he called at the Jesuit mission of
Ormoc in Leyte and carried oft another 300 captives.
Father Fabrizio Sarsali, at the request of the Cebu authorities, brought
the news of the disaster to Manila. He returned to Cebu with orders for
the commander of the naval squadron there, Captain Cristobal de Lugo, to
proceed at once to Jolo and inflict condign punishment. De Lugo set out
with 200 Spanish and 1,700 Visayan troops and appeared before Jolo
on 27 April 1628. He destroyed all the ships in the harbor, stormed the
lower town and burned it, but was unable to take the citadel, whither the
Sulus had retired with their treasure, their womenfolk, and their slaves.
The following year Datu Ache swept north for the counterblow. He led
his armada to Camarines first, where he burned a galleon under construc-
tion on the offshore islet of Bagatao. From there he worked his way south-
ward methodically, harrying the seacoast towns of Samar, Leyte, and
Bohol. Nowhere did he meet with any resistance save at Carigara, where
Father Melchor de Vera had fortified the church and mission house, and
at Baclayon, where the resolute readiness of the Boholanos forced him to
retire without a fight. 44
It was now the Spaniards' turn. The Jolo expedition of 1630 consisted
of 350 Spaniards and 2,500 Christian Filipinos. The commander was
Lorenzo de Olaso. His orders were to attack the citadel and take it. He
dutifully made the attempt, but failed. 45
In 1632 the Sulus were back in Leyte. This time their principal prize
was a Jesuit, Father Giovanni Domenico Bilanci, whom they captured while
on a missionary journey near Hinundayan. The usual ransom note was dis-
patched to Manila. With it came a letter from Bilanci himself. 46 His
324 The Jesuits in the Philippines
captor, he said, was one of the chief datus, who had received a daughter of
the raja in marriage. He was allowed to communicate with the Christian
captives, of whom there was a great number, before they were taken to the
slave market at Macassar. All that he was given to eat was cooked rice
sprinkled with salt, with a piece of fish or a boiled radish on rare occasions.
He had grown quite thin on this diet, and possibly a few years closer to the
grave. But that was not far off in any case, because he was really quite old.
In view of this, he did not think there was any point in ransoming him.
He was perfectly happy to end his few remaining days in captivity.
His superiors did not, of course, agree with him. They got the ransom
money together and sent it as soon as they could ; but it was too late. In
March 1634 Bilanci died, having spent his last days confirming in the
faith his fellow captives. 47 Later that same year the Magindanaus, having
put their internal affairs in order and found a leader in young Kudrat, put
out to sea once more in their predatory ships after two decades of inaction.
Twenty-two sail, 1,500 fighting men, made up the armada. Unchallenged,
they roamed the southern Visayas, plundering and taking prisoners where
they would. Dapitan was wasted first; then Maribohoc and Inabangan on
the south coast of Bohol ; then Cabalian and Sogod in southern Leyte ; and
finally, on the west coast of the latter island, Baybay and Ormoc. They
attacked Ormoc on 4 December 1634. The Jesuits there, following the lead
of Melchor de Vera at Carigara, had started to fortify the town, but only
a small stockade of wood near the church had been completed. While the
townspeople fled, fifty warriors made a stand in this stockade and the
adjoining church. With them was the resident missionary, Father Juan del
Carpio. The Magindanaus took the church at their first onslaught, penned
the defenders in the stockade, and set fire to it. Tormented by the heat and
smoke, the gallant little garrison surrendered. The visitors immediately
began to divide them up as prizes ; but when they came to Father Carpio,
a dispute arose whose he should be. The quarrel was laid before the com-
mander, who chose the quickest way to end it. He ordered the Jesuit put
to death. As soon as he heard his doom, Carpio knelt to pray, and praying
thus received the blow of the kampilan. 48
In a circular letter which he addressed to the Visayan Jesuits on 1 Feb-
ruary 1635, the provincial, Juan de Bueras, reviewed the irreparable damage
done to the missions by the five major raids of the past ten years. Three of
the missionaries, Juan de Las Misas, Giovanni Domenico Bilanci, and
Juan del Carpio, had lost their lives. Mission churches had been repeatedly
sacked and burned. Sacred images mutilated and destroyed. Chalices and
other altar vessels stolen and profaned. Christian communities scattered,
pursued, and killed. Numberless neophytes captured and sold into slavery
in distant lands. No one could fail to be appalled by these disasters, and
the heart of the Jesuits who labored in the relative security of the Tagalog
Challenge and Response 325
missions went out to their hard-pressed brethren in the Visayas. Neverthe-
less, Bueras continued, let us be patient and endure, keeping our gaze
fixed on the eternal reward that awaits God's faithful servants. As for the
brethren who have met their death at the hands of the raiders, let us be
careful not to call them martyrs, especially before outsiders, for this would
be to anticipate the judgment of the Church. We may be sure, however,
that they have gone before us to that life of perfect blessedness which shall
be ours also if we follow their shining example of sacrifice. 49
But Bueras did not confine himself to writing letters of consolation. He
called two veteran missionaries, Pedro Gutierrez and Diego Patino, to
Manila and asked them to help him draw up a better plan of protecting
the Visayan islands from the Moros than the strategy, or lack of it, which
the government had hitherto followed. They pointed out that the naval
squadrons based at Cebu and Iloilo had never been able to provide an
adequate defense because they were then obliged to seek them out over a
wide area in which there were several avenues of escape. As a necessary
complement to this system of defense they suggested the establishment at
the tip of the Zamboanga peninsula of a permanent garrison. The advan-
tage of this move would be threefold. In the first place, if the garrison were
provided with a pursuit squadron of its own, which would be desirable,
it could intercept a raiding fleet from Magindanau or Jolo even before it
reached Visayan waters. Secondly, if this was not possible, it could at
least send a fast dispatch boat with news of an impending raid and thus
alert Cebu and Iloilo much earlier than had been hitherto possible. Thirdly,
missionaries could be sent with the garrison to begin the evangelization of
the region and thus lay the foundations of a permanent peace.
The acting governor at the time, Juan Cerezo de Salamanca, saw the
merits of this proposal as soon as it was presented to him, and he decided
to put it into execution at once. 50 Toward the end of March 1635, 2 force
of 300 Spanish and 1,000 Visayan troops set sail from Cebu under the
command of Captain Juan de Chavez. But instead of proceeding to Jolo as
in previous years, they went ashore at what is now the site of the city of
Zamboanga, and there proceeded to fortify themselves. The date, a
memorable one, was 6 April 1635.
Two Jesuits went with the expedition as chaplains: Pedro Gutierrez,
the founder of Dapitan, and Melchor de Vera, who started the mission
forts of Leyte. They were not very popular. Many of the officers and men
had no stomach for the enterprise, which took them too far away from
Manila and too close to the Moros. They grumbled a great deal, and kept
discovering new reasons why they should give up the whole thing and go
home. The place was nothing but soft earth, they said ; where would they
get the building stone for a fort ? And the ground level was pitched so low
that all the streams were brackish for miles inland. Even if they could
326 The Jesuits in the Philippines
build a fort, how would they supply it with water ? Chavez's engineers
seemed to have no solution to these problems. But De Vera did, and to the
dismay of the malcontents, Chavez put him in charge of construction. He
soon found a workable quarry of good adobe stone close by, and after
diligent search a spring of sweet water. One of the disgruntled soldiers
had half a mind to stop the inquisitive Jesuit from making any further
discoveries, muttering that he would much rather '‘put two bullets in this
priest than Corralat.”
He restrained himself in time, and De Vera lived to choose the site for
the fort, design it, and supervise at least the first stages of its construction.
Its cornerstone was laid on 23 June 1635, and parts of it are still standing;
in particular, a section of the wall bearing an image in low relief of the
puissant patroness to whom it was dedicated, Nuestra Senora del Pilar.
Chapter Fourteen
THE SUN OF HOLLAND
The Moros hampered the normal growth of the Visayan missions; the
Dutch placed the existence of the colony itself in jeopardy. The rich cargo
brought home by Van Neck's ships definitely decided the merchants of
Holland to wrest control of the spice trade from the Portuguese, The
better to accomplish this objective, they consolidated the various joint-
stock companies which had hitherto financed expeditions to the East in
one United East India Company, the Vereeinigde Oostindische Com-
pagnie or V.O.C, Within three years of its foundation in 1602, the
V,O.C, sent a total of thirty-eight ships in powerful, heavily-armed fleets
to overwhelm the Portuguese establishments in Southeast Asia. In 1603
they routed a Portuguese fleet off Johore, and in 1605 wiped out Furtado
da Mendon^a's limited successes of 1601 by seizing the Portuguese garri-
sons at Amboina and Tidore and establishing a protectorate over Ternate.
But the Portuguese refused to acknowledge defeat; the Spaniards in the
Philippines came to their aid; and together, they put up a surprisingly
vigorous resistance. In 1606 Acuna conquered Ternate and retook Tidore,
while the Dutch attack on Malacca, the key to the Indies trade route, was
beaten off. In 1607 the Dutch tried to recover Ternate; they failed.
Leaving a garrison to guard a bridgehead on its eastern part, they retired
to strengthen their positions at Amboina and Bantam while awaiting
reinforcements from Holland. Such were the opening moves in the struggle
for power in the Far East which would occupy the better part of the
seventeenth century. 1
In 1608, just before he died, Hurtado outlined the situation and its
dangers for the information of Acquaviva. 2 The Dutch in the Moluccas
are few in number, but they have been reinforced according to reports by a
fleet consisting of ten or eleven warships. This gives them a naval superi-
ority 7 in those waters which may well enable them to do two things : first,
cut off the supply line of the Spanish garrison on Ternate and eventually
starve it out ; second, strike at the other end of the supply line, the port of
Iloilo, which is poorly defended, and either destroy or take it. Moreover,
they do not have to fight their battles alone. The people of Ternate, still
smarting from their defeat and the capture of their sultan; the Magin-
danaus and the Sulus, closely united with them in religion, culture, and
commerce; all these are only too eager to make common cause with the
327
328 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Dutch against the Spaniards. In their letter to Governor Acuna, the
Magindanau princes made it quite clear that they wanted Sultan Said
released. And there is no doubt that they are in constant touch with the
sultan. They course their messages through the Sulu traders who, because
their merchandise is pearls, are allowed free entry to Manila. Some of these
messages have been intercepted by army intelligence. It appears to be the
plan of the Magindanaus to dangle before the Spaniards the possibility of
a treaty which would put an end to the raids on the Visayas, with the
freedom of the sultan as the price of peace. If the Spaniards refuse to pay
the price, they intend to kidnap a personage of sufficient importance to be
exchanged for the sultan. The arrival of the sultan in Temate is to be the
signal for a general revolt. It will coincide with a Dutch attack on the
Spanish garrison. Meanwhile, the raids on the Visayas are to continue
unabated, with Ternate contributing ships and men to the armadas.
There is little question that the Dutch are privy to these counsels. It is
reported that they have established direct contact with the Magindanaus.
(The report is accurate; we know from other sources 3 that a Dutch agent,
Motilief, visited the Great River in 1607.) “Thus,” Hurtado concludes,
“these islands are today in far greater peril than ever before in their his-
tory; for by the occupation of Ternate we have stirred up not only domestic
pirates but foreign enemies capable of inflicting greater damage to them,
and consequently to the Christian missions and missionaries. Efforts are
being made to strengthen our defenses. As many troops as possible are
being transferred to the Visayas, where, if they do not suffice to mount an
offensive that will stabilize the situation for good, they can at least ward off
the blow that we fear is about to descend.”
The blow descended the following year. Spanish renegades who had
gone over to the Dutch gave them the information which Hurtado was
afraid they would find out sooner or later, namely, that the supply base of
the Spanish garrison on Ternate was Iloilo, and Iloilo had no defenses to
speak of. Admiral Francois de Wittert, who had served under the luckless
Van Noort and so had a score to settle with the Spaniards, detached five
warships from the V.O.C. s East Indies fleet and suddenly appeared before
Iloilo in October 1609. Now it was quite true that Iloilo ordinarily had
only a token garrison, but this time, as chance would have it. Major
Fernando de Ayala was there with three companies of Spanish infantry,
awaiting passage for Ternate. It was not therefore quite the picnic that
Wittert s landing force expected. Those who eluded Ayala’s hot pursuit
regained their ships with considerably greater alacrity than they went
ashore, and Wittert sailed off to find out whether he would have better
luck with his secondary objective. This was to damage and if possible to
destroy the port and naval base of Cavite, which was also reported as being
sketchily fortified. Again, this was quite true, but unfortunately for
The Sun of Holland 329
Wittert a new governor had arrived just that April who was a professional
soldier and did not believe in wasting any time,
Don Juan de Silva got his first inkling of the presence of the enemy in
Philippine waters on 4 November, Realizing that Cavite was his most
vulnerable point, he moved instantly to secure it. By the time the Dutch
squadron arrived, he had thrown up enough defenses on the Hook to make
a landing operation a costly undertaking. Wittert did not even attempt it.
After a cautious reconnaissance out of the range of Silva's shore batteries,
he sailed out of the bay again. One last alternative was open to him : to take
up his station at the narrow entrance to the bay, as Van Noort had done,
and deny it to all incoming vessels. Actually, this was what the Spaniards
feared most, for the trading junks would soon be coming in from China
with the merchandise on which the colony lived. Wittert knew this. He
also knew from his reconnaissance that there was nothing in the Cavite
anchorage save an old dismantled hulk and no ships under construction in
the yards. He was therefore in a much stronger position than Van Noort;
the Spaniards had not the means to break his blockade. And, as a crowning
piece of good fortune, the V.O.C. sent up an extra warship to replace one
that he had lost and bring supplies. His squadron was now up to full
strength; five ships, well-provisioned, in complete control of the situation.
His luck had turned at last. While his flagship and its companion vessel
rode at anchor near Fraile Island just north of the bay entrance, the other
three ships of the squadron patrolled the Luzon coast as far as Cape
Bolinao, swooping down on the slow-moving junks as they hove into sight
and stripping them of their cargo.
Meanwhile, what of Silva ? Silva took the simplest and most direct view
of the situation. He had by all means to break the blockade. To do so, he
must come out and fight. To fight, he needed ships. He had no ships. He
would build them. There was a galleon under construction in the island of
Marmduque which had somehow escaped Wittert's notice. Silva sent word
to complete her hull, give her a jury rig, and run her through the Dutch
blockade to Cavite. It was a chance he had to take, but not a hopeless one.
The Dutch stood north of the bay entrance and were on the lookout for
shipping from the north; if then the Marinduque galleon, coming from
the south, moved cautiously and hugged the shore line as closely as possible,
she might be able to make it. She did. Silva flung an army of carpenters on
her to complete her rigging, and there was his flagship — the San Juan
Bautista , 600 tons, 26 guns. His second ship was right there in the
anchorage, the hulk that Wittert had noticed and despised. He hauled it up
the slips and set to work on it, at the same time laying the keels of two
40-oared galleys. From all the surrounding provinces came gangs of
laborers to build the ships, seamen to sail them, troops to man them.
Cavite became a roaring city overnight, a wild confusion of workmen's
33 o The Jesuits in the Philippines
huts, supply sheds, powder magazines, lumber yards, forges; a sleepless
city working around the clock, by day under blazing sun and pouring ram,
by night in the glare of torches. In the midst of it Silva set up his head-
quarters and drove everyone mercilessly. Iron for nails and weapons ran
out ; he sent to Manila and requisitioned all ornamental ironwork — gates,
fences, balustrades, lattices. Fire broke out in the workmen's quarters and
sped, crackling and roaring, toward the powder magazines. Brave men fled.
Silva coolly walked into the nearest magazine, shouldered a powder keg
and dumped it on the beach. Shamefaced, those who had panicked
returned to save the powder and stamp out the fire.
Several Jesuits came from Manila to help keep order and supply the
spiritual needs of this heterogeneous population thrown together helter-
skelter and kept working under tremendous pressure by the implacable
Silva. As soon as the galleys were ready for launching the convicts who
were to man their oars were driven aboard and chained to the benches.
Some of the Jesuits went with them, eating and sleeping below decks with
these wretches to calm their fears and prepare them for death. Others
acted as chaplains to the various companies of troops, along with priests
from other religious orders. When the little fleet finally weighed anchor,
Fathers Angelo Armano and Melchor de Vera were aboard the flagship,
and Father Hernando de San Roman and Brother Francisco Nieto aboard
the reconditioned Ispiritu Santo . Silva managed to mount twenty-two guns
on this latter vessel, which he placed under the command of his nephew
Fernando de Silva. The two galleys, four small gunboats and several
auxiliary craft completed the armada. It had a total complement of 2,000
Spanish troops, between soldiers and seamen, and an indeterminate num-
ber of Filipino servicemen. Silva had put it together in four months.
On 24 April 16x0, between six and seven in the morning, Wittert, still
at anchor near Fraile, saw to his vast surprise this miscellaneous collection
bearing steadily down upon him. He beat to quarters, took up one
anchor, and when the other dragged, hurriedly cut the anchor chain. Then
he stood out to sea, signaling as he passed to his two other ships (two were
on patrol) to follow. Silva gave them no opportunity to maneuver. He
drove the San Juan Bautista full tilt at Wittert's flagship while the Espiritu
Santo engaged his second ship and the two galleys his third. It was to be a
single-combat melee in the old style, the only one in which Silva's forces,
ground troops almost to a man, could fight Wittert's skilled seamen and
gunners on fairly equal terms. There was time only for one ragged broad-
side before the San Juan Bautista closed in and her grappling hooks locked
the two ships together. Screaming the ancient w^ar cry of the Crusades, the
Spanish tercios swarmed over the side with musket, pike, and cutlass.
Luckless Wittert was the first to fall. His men fought with desperate
gallantry, but the Spaniards fierce, pent-up hatred gave them the day
The Sun of Holland 331
after three hours of carnage. The Isptritu Santo , ungainly patchwork though
she was, took the second Dutch ship by similar tactics, while a well-aimed
shot from one of the galleys ignited the powder magazine of the third ship
and blew it off the water. But Silva had not yet had enough. Leaving a
guard to bring the captured flagship to port, he set off to hunt the two
remaining enemy ships. One he overhauled and captured, but while he
was engaged with it, the other one made good its escape, abandoning a
Japanese junk which it was leisurely picking apart. At two in the morning
of the following day all the church bells of Manila pealed the victory to the
surrounding countryside, and sent it swinging from belfry to belfry across
the land. The action was called the Battle of Playa Honda, after the stretch
of water on which it was fought, and was the first of several which bear that
name in the distinguished annals of the Spanish navy in the Philippines. 4
As Armano wrote to a friend in Rome,
The Lord gave us a glorious victory and a magnificent prize of many thousands
of scudi , more than 50 pieces of artillery, two fine ships — a third was burned — and
over 900 crates of assorted silks and velvets. We also freed ten friendly merchant-
men which had been captured by the enemy. As for myself, by the grace of the
same Lord I passed unscathed through all the perils to which those surrounded by
enemies are ordinarily subject, all the while exhorting and hearing confessions of
the Spaniards and natives in our armada. 5
Silva* s inexhaustible energy — it was his greatest virtue, but was to
betray him in the end — would not let him rest on his laurels. He must
press his advantage home to the Dutch in the Moluccas, for he reasoned
that as long as they had a base anywhere in the Far East, they would always
have the power to put Manila in the same peril as that from which he had
freed it. To a large extent he was right, but he could not take the time to
make sufficient preparations for the enterprise. Adding four hastily assem-
bled and reconditioned ships to his original fleet, he set sail at the end of
that same year without bothering to determine the enemy’s strength and
positions. Doubtless he reckoned that the Dutch would not be on the look-
out for him so soon. He also assumed, quite naively, that the Moslems of
Ternate would join forces with him against the heretic; to this end he
brought with him Sultan Said, who of course encouraged him in this
belief. His war council strongly advised against such precipitation, and
the event proved them right. Silva found the Dutch so firmly established
at Amboina that it would have required a much larger expedition to dis-
lodge them, and the warriors of Ternate refused to raise a finger to help
the Spaniards unless their sultan was freed. This, however, Silva would not
allow; and so he came home again, having gained nothing but two small
islands and experience. 6
Angelo Armano went on this expedition too as Silva’s personal chaplain.
332 The Jesuits in the Philippines
He wrote an account of it to his friend Saint Robert Bellarmine, loyally
trying to enhance what it had accomplished. According to him, Silva left
his second in command in the Moluccas to complete the mopping up of
the Dutch, that “ locust plague of heretics” which threatened to spread
northward to Japan and China and thus inflict irreparable damage to the
Christian religion. 7 Silva, however, had come to know better than that.
A great deal more than “ mopping-up” operations was needed to stay the
rising sun of Holland. The Dutch fleet in the Far East, upon which all the
operations and the very existence of the V.O.C. depended, must be
destroyed utterly, and all the resources both of the Philippines and of
Portuguese India must be brought to bear on this one objective. He addres-
sed himself to the task in his customary whirlwind fashion as soon as he
stepped ashore at Cavite. “ Everything here at present,” Valerio de
Ledesma writes to Acquaviva in September 1612, “is a succession of war
plans and sessions of the general staff; stock-piling of supplies, forging of
cannon, construction of ships, and the like. I think that what his Excel-
lency the Governor told me is very likely to happen, namely, that after
the ships now expected from New Spain arrive, no more shipping will
either go hence or come hither, because we shall all be at war.” 8
But the Dutch were not idle either, and before Silva was quite ready,
they struck. On October 1614 a squadron of seven ships and three dis-
patch boats appeared before Iloilo, and this time caught it unprepared.
The Dutch landed unopposed, sacked the town, and burned it. A handful
of troops, one-third of the force sent yearly to reinforce the Moluccas
garrison, was wiped out. The other two-thirds, which was on its way from
Manila, arrived only after the Dutch had done their work and left. The
Dutch of course knew better than to proceed to Manila; they were fully
informed of the great armada that Silva was assembling there. Instead, they
called at the Great River on their way back in order to encourage the
Magindanaus to step up their raids on the Visayan islands ; doubtless they
also supplied them with armament. 9
The surprise attack on Iloilo was a heavy blow, but Silva refused to be
distracted from his main purpose. He continued to strip outlying garrisons
of their defenders in order to concentrate his forces in the grand fleet that
would defeat the Dutch for good and all. One thing remained to be done,
and that was to persuade the viceroy of India to undertake combined
operations with a similar fleet. The mission was entrusted to two Jesuits :
Juan de Ribera, who was in his second term as rector of the College of
Manila, and Pero Gomes, superior of the Ternate mission. They made the
voyage separately, Ribera leaving Cavite in November 1614 and arriving
at Goa m May of the following year. The viceroy agreed to send four
galleons (400 troops, 90 guns) with Francisco da Miranda as commander
The Sun of Holland 333
and Affonso Vaz Coutinho as admiral. In order to assure unity of action,
it was decided that the Portuguese would not operate independently but
proceed to Manila and place themselves at Silva's disposal.
While Gomes went ahead to announce this decision, Ribera stayed with
the Portuguese fleet, which left Goa on 12 May 1615. On 30 July, 30
leagues from Malacca, the Portuguese flagship encountered two Dutch
men-of-war. She was alone, having been separated from the other three
vessels by adverse winds. She engaged, nevertheless, and gave such a good
account of herself that the two Dutchmen were forced to retire under cover
of darkness. The fleet rode into Malacca harbor on 22 August and left
almost at once, because it was very late in the season and the favorable
southwest monsoon was almost spent. They had barely passed the straits
when the wind failed entirely; on 5 September a council of war decided
to bring the fleet back to Malacca. They arrived in time to defend the city
against a surprise attack by a powerful Dutch-inspired Achinese expedition
consisting of 150 sail and 40,000 men. The Achinese, seeing the fleet in
the harbor, pulled back and returned to the straits to await their Dutch
allies.
The fleet set off in hot pursuit, overtook the Achinese, and a running
battle began on 1 5 November, in the course of which one of the Portu-
guese galleons caught fire and was lost. On 7 December a squadron of seven
Dutch ships sailed into the fray, engaging the remaining three Portuguese
galleons in a tremendous gun battle that lasted for three days. At the end
of the third day the Portuguese admiral, unable to run and unwilling to
yield, ran his ships aground and burned them. The survivors, Ribera
among them, were able to make their way to Malacca. 10
All that year Silva waited for the Portuguese. When they still had not
put in an appearance in January 1616, he decided to wait no longer but
meet them halfway at Malacca. The fleet that weighed anchor from Cavite
and swung slowly past Manila for a last salute was the largest and most
formidable that had ever yet been assembled in the bay. Besides an
unspecified number of galleys, supply ships, and other auxiliary vessels,
there were ten principal ships, as follows: La Salvadora , flagship, 2,000
tons, 46 guns; San Marcos , 1,700 tons, 32 guns; San Juan Bautista and
Espxritu Santo , 1,300 tons and 22 guns each; San Miguel and San Felipe ,
800 tons and 22 guns each; Guadalupe and Santiago , 700 tons and 22 guns
each; San Andre's , 500 tons, 22 guns; San Lorengo, 400 tons, 18 guns. Some
of the guns were 30-pounders; all of them were of bronze. The fleet
carried 4,500 arrobas (1 14,000 lbs.) of gunpowder, 5,000 arrobas (126,800
lbs.) of ship's biscuit, and 1 3,000 fanegas of rice for 5,000 men, of whom
2,000 were Spanish troops. The huge flagship alone had a complement of
900 men. Six of the fleet's chaplains were Jesuits; aboard the flagship,
Father Garcia Garces of the Japan mission and an unnamed Japanese
334 Tie Jesuits in the Philippines
Jesuit, attached to a company of Japanese volunteers; aboard the San Juan
Bautista , Fathers Pero Gomes and Manoel Ribeiro of the Moluccas mission ;
and aboard the San Felipe , Fathers Miguel Ignacio and Melchor de Vera of
the Philippine province.
The fleet entered the Straits of Malacca on 25 February; unfortu-
nately, the Dutch squadron that had worsted Miranda got wind of its
approach and fled. On 22 March Silva slipped anchor before Malacca and
was given a royal reception. The loss of the Portuguese galleons failed to
dishearten him, and he was about to proceed to the Moluccas to deliver
his knockout blow when he was seized by a sudden illness which proved
fatal. He died on 19 April, and his great enterprise, which might have
changed the course of history in Southeast Asia, died with him. His cap-
tains voted to return to Manila without striking a blow. On the first day
of June they carried ashore at Cavite, to the sound of muffled drums, the
still corpse of that restless and intrepid warrior. From the supreme pitch
of effort to which he had whipped it, the colony dropped, exhausted ; never
again would it feel equal to mounting an offensive against the enemy on so
grand a scale. From this point on the war would be, as far as the Philip-
pines was concerned, a grim affair of pertinacious defense. But if the
Dutch ever imagined that they could wear down that defense by attrition,
they failed to take the measure of Spanish pertinacity. 11
The news of Silva's projected offensive brought momentary dismay to
the Dutch in the Moluccas, but their habit of cool calculation did not long
desert them. The first step they took to counter it was to prevent the
juncture between the Spanish and Portuguese fleets. This they did by
sending a squadron to intercept the Portuguese while their allies the
Achinese immobilized Malacca. The operation did not go precisely
according to plan, but was, nevertheless, successful; the Portuguese fleet
was swept off the board. That left only Silva's fleet to reckon with, and as
far as can be gathered they meant to reckon with it in this way. With a
small diversionary squadron they planned to entice Silva as far south as
possible, and with the main body of their fleet, aided by the Magindanaus
and the Sulus, strike at Silva's bases, not excluding Manila itself, which
they shrewdly guessed had been left practically without defenses. Silva,
deprived of his bases, would thus have no option but to surrender, for
there was no point in the entire area of operations where so large a fleet
could be provisioned at short notice .
Even the timely arrival of reinforcements from Holland— five ships and
1,200 men under Joris van Speilbergen — did not cause them to abandon
this plan, but decided them rather to put it into execution without delay.
Speilbergen, who had taken the western route from Rotterdam, did not go
directly to the Moluccas, for he had orders to call at Manila first and see
whether he could ransom the officers captured by the Spaniards in the
The Sun of Holland 335
Battle of Playa Honda* He entered Manila Bay in late February or early
March 1616, just after Silva's fleet had left it. The consternation into
which he threw the city may well be imagined; but Speilbergen had of
course no w*ay of knowing that the massive walls he scanned through his
spyglass were practically destitute of usable artillery and had for their
defenders only a raw militia of old men and youths. The Manilans had
enough sense to return an arrogant reply to his offer of ransom (the officers
had already been executed in any case) ; and Speilbergen took his departure
none the wiser.
When he reached Amboina and was informed of the state of affairs, he
must have felt like kicking himself. However, the opportunity was by no
means past, and when he learned of the plan to catch Silva off-base by
capturing Manila, he endorsed it heartily, offering to lead the expedition
himself. Even prescinding from Silva's fleet, he had come to the conclusion
that Manila should in any case be the main objective of Dutch efforts in
the Far East. As he wrote on this occasion to his principals in Holland,
“the best and only means of re-establishing our affairs in the Indies and of
making ourselves entirely masters of the Moluccas is in my opinion to dis-
patch a fleet and armada directly to the Philippines in order to attack the
Spaniards there and to overpower all the places and strongholds it may be
possible to conquer." 12 Some time in August 1616 he led a powerful
squadron northward to do precisely that.
Spanish accounts report ten ships in the squadron, but give the names of
only nine: the Sun of Holland, Speilbergen's 47-gun flagship, the New Moon ,
32 guns, the Old Sun , the Old Moon , the Berber , the Danolays , the Red Lion ,
the Fresne , and the Don art. It carried a much smaller complement than a
Spanish squadron of similar size, only 1,000 seamen; but almost all of
these were trained gunners, and the nine ships mounted 306 guns to the
300 of Silva's ten. Speilbergen called briefly first at Magindanau and then
at Jolo. He made the Moro warlords privy to his purpose and succeeded
in persuading them to make simultaneous raids on the Visayas. He par-
ticularly stressed the necessity of seeking out and destroying any and all
shipyards, and the ships which the Spaniards might have under construc-
tion in them; he did not intend to make the same mistake that had cost
Wittert so dearly. He then proceeded to Iloilo, which was now not simply
to be destroyed but to be occupied.
Meanwhile, unknown to Speilbergen, the basic assumption of the
Dutch plan had been rendered invalid by the decision of Silva's captains to
take the fleet back to Manila. The ships, however, were in extremely poor
condition, having been constructed in great haste, and the two most
serviceable ones had been dispatched on the regular run to Acapulco.
Moreover, a large proportion of the troops had been sent back to their
provincial stations; and finally, the Acapulco galleon having failed to
336 The Jesuits in the Philippines
arrive, the treasury was empty. Thus, the approach of the Dutch fleet put
the city in a situation which, though not hopeless, was critical. Silva's
death had placed the government in the hands of the audiencia and the
command of the armed forces in those of the senior oidor, Andres de
Alcaraz. The former appealed to the citizens for a subsidy with which to
hire laborers to refit the ships and crews to man them. The latter, realizing
that Speilbergen's first objective would be Iloilo, sent thither 70 Spanish
infantry, all he could spare at the moment, under Captain Diego de
Quinones.
Quinones had something of the boundless energy and resolution of
Silva. As soon as he arrived on 17 September he put his little force and all
the local manpower he could lay hands on to hauling logs to the beach,
digging trenches, and building breastworks. When, therefore, Speilbergen
appeared before the city eleven days later, he saw that he would have to
fight for it. He approached his task methodically. On 29 September the
ships of the squadron swung smartly into line and subjected Quinones'
fortifications to a continuous heavy bombardment that lasted all day. That
night orders were issued to prepare for a landing. At dawn on 30 Septem-
ber 500 men, one-half of the total Dutch force, hit the beach. They
advanced on the double toward the breastworks, swarmed over them, and
fell on the defenders. A bloody struggle ensued in which the Spaniards
and their Visayan recruits fought with such bitter ferocity that the
invaders, although they had already gained some of the trenches, were
compelled to disengage. They fell back in good order, dragging some of
their dead with them in order to give them burial on the beach. The
defenders later counted 49 graves. At the end of the day's action Speil-
bergen, having come to the conclusion that Iloilo would cost more than he
bargained for, recalled the landing force to the ships, and abandoned the
attempt.
He sailed north to a temporary station off Marinduque, where he had
agreed to rendezvous with the raiding fleet of the Sulus. They came to
report the exploits mentioned in the preceding chapter : the destruction of
the Pantao shipyard and the daring commando raid on Cavite in which they
took several Spanish prisoners. It was doubtless from these prisoners that
Speilbergen learned of the return of the Spanish fleet to its base. This
explains why he refrained from entering Manila Bay, where he might be
trapped, and took up his station instead at Play a Honda, where he could
blockade the port and at the same time have plenty of room to maneuver
in case the Spaniards came out to him.
Meanwhile, both at Cavite and Manila, desperate measures were being
taken to repair the ships before Speilbergen found out that in their present
condition he could almost have gone in and blasted them like sitting ducks.
Once again recruiting officers scoured the Tagalog and Pampango towns
The Sun of Holland 337
for labor gangs and troop levies* The Mamlans responded to the audiencia's
appeal for gold with the same alacrity as they had responded to Silva's
appeal for iron. Coined money, jewelry, gold, and silver plate poured into
the colony's war chest from rich and poor alike and from the religious
communities. Two strokes of good fortune heartened the defenders. The
galleons that had left for Mexico were forced by bad weather to turn back.
Warned away from Manila and the Dutch blockade by sentinels posted at
San Bernardino Strait, one threaded its way to Cebu, the other found safety
in the bay of Batangas. The pilots, sailors, and troops of both galleons were
immediately dispatched to Cavite, where they were welcomed with open
arms. The second piece of luck was the escape of the incoming silver ship
from the clutches of the Dutch. Speilbergen was aware that the Acapulco
galleon was due to arrive, laden with a sizable treasure in silver pesos repre-
senting the returns from the previous year's shipments and the annual
government subsidy. He detached a man-of-war to intercept it, but was a
little too late. The vigilant San Bernardino lookouts waved the galleon
away, and she raced for one of the Tayabas ports, possibly Mauban, just as
the Dutchman got on her track. There was just time to unload the treasure,
cart it away to safety, and set the galleon on fire to prevent it from falling
into the enemy's hands.
On 8 April 1617 the Philippine fleet sallied forth to try conclusions
with the Dutch. It consisted of seven galleons, three galleys, and one
dispatch boat, mounted 223 guns, and carried 1,408 Spanish and 889
Filipino troops under the command of Juan Ronquillo. The line of battle
was as follows:
La Salvador a, flagship, 1,900 tons, 46 guns, 331 Spaniards, 375 Fili-
pinos, Commander Juan Ronquillo.
San Marcos , 1,100 tons, 38 guns, 209 Spaniards, 107 Filipinos, Captain
Juan de la Vega.
San Juan Bautista , 1,000 tons, 30 guns, 229 Spaniards, 77 Filipinos,
Captain Pedro de Heredia.
San Miguel , 900 tons, 3 1 guns, 290 men, Captain Rodrigo de Guill^s-
ti § ui *
San Felipe , 700 tons, 29 guns, 205 Spaniards, 100 Filipinos, Captain
Sebastian de Madrid.
Guadalupe , 700 tons, 24 guns, 153 Spaniards, 70 Filipinos, Captain Juan
Bautista de Molina.
San Lorenzo , 400 tons, 22 guns, 1 17 Spaniards, 48 Filipinos, Captain
Juan de Azevedo.
Contact was made with the enemy at Playa Honda on 13 April. The
Dutch slipped their anchors upon sighting the Spanish fleet and the day
was spent with both fleets under canvas, maneuvering for position.
338 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Nightfall brought to both commanders the ticklish problem of keeping
contact with their respective ships. Ronquillo managed very well to keep
his fleet together for the better part of the night, but toward dawn his
flagship drifted away from the rest. Speilbergen, as soon as it was light,
perceived his opportunity and pounced on it, sending six of his ships to
sink the Salvadora by gunfire. The cumbersome galleon, unable to maneuver,
stood her ground like a bear at bay and traded salvo for salvo with the
circling Dutchmen. Her stout sides of molave , the Philippine iron wood,
stood her in good stead that day, and Speilbergen was amazed to find that
he had seriously underestimated Spanish gunnery. All morning long the
cannonade thundered and echoed on the Bataan hills, the Dutch ships
passing and repassing the battered galleon and raking her as they passed;
but the answering roar of Ronquillo* s guns did not falter or diminish. The
sun passed its zenith, but still La Salvadora stood her ground, unsunk and
seemingly unsinkable, and still the warily circling Dutch refused to close
in and grapple. For Speilbergen knew that the Spaniards would have liked
nothing better; that was their style of fighting, the smiting and slashing
toe to toe on the bloody deck, in that they had no equal ; and their enemies
in every ocean had learned that when fighting a
to keep your distance.
At four o'clock in the afternoon the other Spanish ships were able to beat
back at last to their flagship. Each took on a Dutchman, but only two hours
of daylight remained, and nothing conclusive was done. At sundown the
two fleets disengaged, and that night Speilbergen called his captains to a
council of war. After some debate, he decided against their advice to resume
the battle the next morning. Through the night, Ronquillo kept in con-
tact with the enemy, edging his ships as close to him as possible, for he
knew that it would be disastrous to allow Speilbergen to pull away and
fight an artillery battle. His plan, therefore, was to grapple as soon as
possible and let cutlass instead of cannon decide the day.
The weather held, a mild following wind and quiet water; at first light
Ronquillo ran up the signal to board, and, as "Santiago ! ” roared from a
thousand throats, each ship bounded forward under crowded sail to close
with her chosen antagonist. With a flash of grappling hooks La Salvadora
clasped the Sun oj Holland to her in an iron embrace. When, hours later,
she finally relaxed her grip, the great Dutch flagship, deck strewn with the
bodies of her massacred crew, keeled over with a great splash of masts and
rigging. The last victorious Spaniards saw of her was the great golden
sun painted on her poop being swallowed up by the swirling waters. Of the
eight other Dutch ships, two were sunk, three were captured, one caught
fire, and two escaped. One of the two survivors, m fact, fought free of the
San Marcos and punished her so effectively that she began to run. The
Dutchman set off in pursuit. The captain of the San Marcos , Juan de la
Spanish ship it was best
The Sun of Holland 339
Vega, panicked, ran his vessel aground at Masinglo and burned it* The
Dutchman stopped to watch her go up in flames, and one of the crew who
knew Spanish called out to the men ashore: “ Traydores infames , no os fuer a
de mas credito perder esse Navio peleando , que no averle per dido tan afrentos ament e ? 93
With this they left; and so ended the second Battle of Playa Honda. 13
Notwithstanding this severe drubbing, the Dutch reasoned that if they
continued to blockade Manila at the time when the junk fleets made their
annual voyage, they could eventually discourage the Chinese from coming
and thus disrupt the trade on which the colony relied for its support*
Moreover, the Spaniards would be forced to maintain a fleet in continual
readiness to fight off the blockading squadron, and this might well prove
to be an intolerable strain on their marginal resources* In October of 1618
the Dutch were back at the entrance of Manila Bay with five warships.
Once again the colony was placed under the hard necessity of building
ships to send against them, for the seven victorious galleons of Playa
Honda, every one of them, had been lost in a storm while on their way for
repairs to the Marinduque shipyards. After a month of effective blockade,
the Dutch commander, who seems to have had a wry sense of humor,
permitted a Japanese junk to pass through on condition that it take a
message from him to the Spanish governor, Alonso Fajardo de Tenza. The
message was to the effect that the Spaniards should take all the time they
wished to build their ships, for he intended to be there for an indefinite
period; if, however, they were anxious to come out and fight as soon as
possible, he and his men would with the greatest pleasure come and help
build the ships*
What Governor Fajardo replied to this message is not recorded, but on
the first day of May 16x9 he was finally able to take to sea with three
galleons and four galleys. The Dutch, however, having largely accomplished
their objective, refused battle and sailed away to the north. What Fajardo
said on this occasion is also not recorded, and it is probably just as well.
Somewhere on the Ilocos coast one of the Dutch ships sent a party of
twenty men ashore to forage. In a village from which the inhabitants had
fled they found a large quantity of palm brandy on which they got very
drunk. They managed to stagger to their boat notwithstanding and row
back to their ship ; all except one, whom the Ilocanos found the next morn-
ing sleeping off his carouse on the beach. They watched from a safe dis-
tance as the bibulous stranger groaned, sat up, looked about him, and
realized that he was all alone, “Seeing that his ships were already under
sail/* says the Annual Letter of 1619, “he threw himself into the water
after it — and well for him he did, to dilute the great quantity of liquor
he had poured into his belly. But since his ships were already a long way
off, he was forced to swim back to land to save himself from drowning.”
The Ilocanos took him prisoner and brought him to Manila. 14
340 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Whether they knew it or not, the Dutch were succeeding very well in
what they hoped to do* The cost of building Fajardo's squadron, coming
right on top of the enormous expenditure it took to win at Playa Honda,
stretched the finances of the colony almost to the breaking point* Worse
still, by far the heaviest part of the burden had of necessity to be imposed
on the native population in the form of unpaid labor, compulsory military
service, and the requisitioning of supplies on credit, with the result that
in certain areas a deep disaffection was developing which might at any time
explode into open revolt. When in 1617 Francisco de Otazo went to
Europe as procurator of the Philippine Jesuits, the colonial government
took the opportunity of requesting him to act as its agent in Madrid, and
to represent to king and council the urgent necessity of sending financial
and military aid to the Philippines if they wished to keep it under
Spanish sovereignty. In his memorial to the throne (1619) Otazo stressed
the disquieting fact that Dutch diplomacy was gradually enclosing the
Portuguese and Spanish establishments in the Far East in a vast network
of hostile alliances stretching from the Achinese kingdom of northern
Sumatra to the Magindanaus. Playa Honda was indeed a great blow to their
naval power, but it did not render them incapable in the near future of
bringing the Philippines to "the last extremity." 15 According to Valerio
de Ledesma, that extremity had in fact been reached. On 30 July of that
same year, he concluded a letter to the king in the following words : ‘ ‘ In
short, my Lord, the governor lacks neither diligence nor determination in
squeezing the last ounce of effort from these islands; but they are now so
exhausted, having given all they could and even more than they could, that
only blood remains to be squeezed out of them. So that if your Majesty
does not dispatch a great armada from Spain, it is much to be feared that
this realm will succumb to the hostile Hollander." 16
But the time was past when Spain could afford to send out armadas. In
fact, the Cortes of 1621 proposed that since the Philippines had apparently
become untenable, it should be given up altogether. 17 This, however, the
government was not prepared to do. The Philippines was retained, but
left pretty much to defend itself* In 1620 the Dutch adopted a new tactic.
Instead of blockading Manila as usual, three ships went to San Bernandino
Strait to waylay the galleons coming in from Acapulco. Two galleons were
making the voyage this year under the command of Don Fernando de
Ayala* The flagship sighted the Dutch toward nightfall, but believing
them to be friendly vessels, kept her course. When the Dutch ran up their
colors, Ayala with great presence of mind unlimbered the one heavy gun
which the galleon carried and with a lucky shot disabled one of the attack-
ing ships. While the other two maneuvered for position, night fell and a
squall arose. Under cover of darkness Ayala gave them the slip and racing
southward before the wind made port at Borongan, on the eastern coast of
The Sun of Holland 341
Samar, where he succeeded in landing his precious cargo. The other
galleon also escaped capture by running aground near Palapag, on the
north coast of the same island. Passengers and crew were taken care of by
the Jesuit missionaries and their communities. 18
For some years back the English had been trying to get a piece of the
spice trade. The Dutch regarded their efforts with a singular lack of
enthusiasm. In fact, at about the time that Ayala was extricating himself
from the trap which the Dutch had laid for him, the ships of the two East
India companies were about to come to blows near Morotai. Hostilities
were prevented by the arrival of two dispatch boats, one from England and
one from Holland, announcing that a modus vivendi had been reached.
Instead of fighting each other, they would combine to prey on the Span-
iards and Portuguese, sharing the booty amicably between them. Manila
was accordingly blockaded in 1621 by a combined Anglo-Dutch squadron
of nine vessels under an English commander. The blockade began in early
February and lasted well into the following year. A number of Chinese
junks were captured easily enough, but one showed unexpected fight. The
crew defended themselves by the highly original method of boiling sugar in
cauldrons and throwing it at the enemy; * ‘whereby,*' * the Jesuit newsletter
of this year informs us, “they sent fourteen Dutchmen to hell in the form
of candy / * But molten sugar proved to be no match against standard
weapons ; the junk was taken and the furious Dutchmen avenged their sugar-
coated companions by massacring the Chinese aboard — all 220 of them.
In spite of these ferocious methods the blockade was not very successful.
Chinese ingenuity soon found a way of beating it. The junks took to
covering their hulls and masts with boughs and palm fronds and creeping
close inshore, where they melted against the lush green vegetation of the
coastline. Even three Portuguese galliots, bringing rich merchandise from
Macao, successfully ran the blockade in this fashion. Thus the Manilans
did not find it necessary to send out a fleet, as in former years, and some
time in the middle of 1622 the Anglo-Dutch squadron sailed away in
disgust. 19
In 1625 r ^ e Spaniards did go out to break the blockade of that year.
Five galleons and two galleys under Jeronimo de Silva slipped out of Cavite
on 4 February and engaged the seven ships of the Dutch squadron at Playa
Honda. The action that followed is obscure. According to Silva, the Dutch
got the worst of it and fled, but his orders to pursue were disregarded, so
they escaped. His captains, on the other hand, accused him of “esteeming
life more than honor/' for when a cannonball killed a seaman beside him
on the bridge, he turned coward, withdrew the flagship from the battle,
and thus allowed the enemy to retire. The audiencia took the latter view
and sent Silva to prison, in spite of the fact that he had at least achieved
the objective of lifting the blockade. 20
342 The Jesuits in the Philippines
By this time, however, the Dutch had thought of a better way of dis-
rupting Manila’s trade with South China. This was to establish a fortified
naval station on the island of Formosa, and from there intercept the junk
fleets in open water, where they could not play the tricks which had
proved so successful against the Manila blockade. The Spaniards were com-
pelled to counter the move by sending an expedition to establish a similar
base on the island. The commander of the expedition, Francisco Carreno
Valdes, found a suitable location at the mouth of the Tanshui River in
northern Formosa, a short distance from the present city of Taipei. There,
in 1625, he built a fort and commenced operations against the Dutch.
He made little headway, however, because Manila was hard put to it even
to maintain the garrison there at all. By 1628, the Spaniards in the Philip-
pines were fighting on four widely separated fronts at once: on Formosa
with the Dutch and the natives, in the Moluccas with the Dutch, in
Visayan waters with the Moro raiders and in northern Luzon with the
people of Cagayan, who had once again revolted. And as if this was not
enough, men, ships, and artillery had to be sent to Macao at the urgent
request of the Portuguese, to help defend that city from the ubiquitious
Hollanders. 21
Then, all of a sudden, the V.O.C. called off its ships. The canny mer-
chants on its board of directors had apparently come to the conclusion that
the offensive paid too little and cost too much. Far greater profits could be
had by exploiting the agricultural riches of Java, where Batavia had been
founded in 1 6 1 9. Thus, Spanish tenacity won out at last, and not a moment
too soon. The British doubtless richly deserve their reputation of being a
bulldog breed, but the little known conflict here chronicled proves that
the Spaniards may with some justice lay claim to a similar title. Not until
the 1640’s did the Dutch return to the attack.
What effect did the struggle have on the internal development and
administration of the Philippines ? The first and most obvious effect was,
of course, the continuous and exorbitant demands which it made on the
manpower and resources of the little colony. For this reason there were not
lacking those who thought that Governor Acuna’s conquest of Ternate,
and Governor Silva’s attempt to extend that conquest, should never have
been attempted. Gregorio Lopez was of this opinion. On 14 June 1612, 22
he wrote as follows to Acquaviva:
These Philippine Islands are being impoverished and the cost of living therein
increased by the conquest of the Moluccas and the subsidies of men, munitions,
and supplies sent thither annually. The enormous amount of goods taken out of
this realm to be consumed in the Moluccas represents a severe drain on its
resources. True, we have a number of garrisons there, but the Dutch, because
they have closer and more continuous contacts and more numerous establishments
and troops, bear away by far the greater share of the spices. Moreover, their
The Sun of Holland 343
merchantmen and warships assure them of so great a mastery at sea, and permit
them to plunder and disrupt all other shipping to such an extent, that since we
could not put forth the tremendous effort required to expel them altogether from
this area, nor on the other hand negotiate a just and lasting peace with them, it
would have been far better for this colony to have had nothing whatever to do
with the Moluccas, and thus to have saved ourselves all that has been and is being
spent to win and defend the few places that we there maintain with little profit
and great risk.
Another consequence of the conflict was that military strength was
dissipated in the Moluccas which might have been used to put an end
permanently to the depredations of the Moros. Lopez goes on to make this
point in the same letter:
The effort to annex and subdue the Moluccas has turned us away from the work
of subduing and pacifying the island of Mindanao, in spite of its being close to
our Visayan islands and notwithstanding the fact that its inhabitants go forth
yearly to plunder and enslave the Visayans. This is a very great obstacle to their
conversion and the proper development of our missions, for all these rumors of
wars and raids make it impossible to bring more people together in the towns or
keep them there permanently. Our settlements, scattered throughout the islands,
are numerous; the naval forces assigned to their defense are few. Hence the
enemy, who travels light, raids and rounds up captives where he wills, while our
patrols either get to the scene too late or are unable to overtake him as he flies
home with his prey. Both our people and our reputation suffer as a consequence,
and the natives friendly to us are afflicted and harassed on this account over and
above the vexations they suffer from the Spaniards themselves.
A third effect was the tremendous increase in the burdens laid by the
government on the native population. Large numbers of able-bodied men
were frequently withdrawn for long periods from their families and
ordinary occupations, organized into labor corps under the supervision of
overseers, and sent to fell logs in the forests, haul them to the shipyards,
and work in the construction of the ships themselves. This labor draft fell
most heavily on the Pampango and Tagalog provinces of central Luzon,
because of the shipyards located at Cavite; however, similar drafts were
imposed on the Bicol region to supply the Pantao and Bagatao shipyards
and on Leyte and Samar to supply that of Panamao.
The laborers thus drafted were paid their wages by the government, but
due to the chronic embarrassment of the fisc, these wages were small and
almost always in arrears. Alonso Sanchez informed the king that in the
1 580 's the base pay of a shipyard worker was fixed at 4 rials (50 cents) a
month, and that this was generally regarded at the time as far below the
just minimum. 23 Archbishop Vasquez Mercado, writing in 16x4, adds
the important detail that the wage did not begin to be paid until the
laborer arrived at the shipyard, and ceased the moment he was dismissed.
344 Th e Jesuits in the Philippines
Nothing therefore was given him for the journey to the shipyard or back
to his town, although he might be recruited from as far as 80 leagues
(180 miles) away. For this reason many arrived at the shipyard already ill
from hunger and the hardships of the journey. 24 By 1619 the base pay had
been raised to eight rials (one peso) per month and a daily ration of one-
half celemm (about two-fifths of a bushel) of rice. Skilled workers received
as much as twelve rials, while master carpenters were paid three or four
pesos a month and double rations. It was a commonly accepted fact, how-
ever, that at least 40 rials a month was required by the average laborer to
keep body and soul together. Hence it became the practice for the towns
and villages where the labor gangs were recruited to contribute what was
required to raise the government wage to the minimum requirement.
Sometimes, not always, the government recognized these contributions
as loans made to the state. 25
Hernando de los Rios Coronel, a secular priest who served as agent for
the city of Manila at Madrid, states that it took 6,000 laborers three
months to haul the masts of one of Governor Silva's galleons from the
mountains of Laguna to the Lake of Bai, whence they were transported by
water to Cavite. They were paid forty rials a month by their own villages,
and had to purchase their own rations out of that sum. We may reasonably
suppose that due to the concentration of so many people in one locality,
food became very scarce and prices rose accordingly, for Rios Coronel adds
that many died, others fled to the hills, and still others killed themselves
to escape further suffering. 26
In 1619 Captain Sebastian de Pineda reported that whenever a fleet was
being readied to go out against the Dutch, the Cavite shipyard employed,
on the average, 1,400 workmen. He gives no figures for the other ship-
yards, but they could not have been much less, for he notes that when the
Stilus raided the Pantao shipyard in 1617, they killed more than 200
workmen and carried off to captivity more than 400. This lack of security,
added to the fact that their wages wxre already five years in arrears, made
it extremely difficult to retain them even by force. Whenever they saw the
chance, they fled, so that by the time the galleons left for Acapulco in
1618, there were not 200 workmen left in the Cavite shipyard. It should
be pointed out that the reason why they failed to get their wages was not
always because the government failed to release the funds ; sometimes the
funds released were pocketed by dishonest overseers, as we learn from a letter
of Archbishop Garcia Serrano to the king in 1622. 27
In addition to paying the wages, in whole or in part, of the laborers
recruited from their own population, the native towns and villages were
subjected to other extraordinary levies as a result of the annexation of the
Moluccas and the Dutch war. One of these levies was the handala , that is,
the requisitioning of foodstuffs by the government at the government
The Sun of Holland 345
price, which was always much lower than the market price. In 1629, for
instance, 50,000 fanegas (125,000 bushels) of rice were requisitioned to
feed the shipyard workers at Cavite at the rate of one peso per fanega.
This worked so much hardship on the people that Governor Tabora pro-
posed to the king that the government be permitted to grow its own rice
by leasing public land to Chinese farmers ; we shall see later how Governor
Corcuera took up this suggestion, and with what result. 28 Other commodi-
ties besides rice were requisitioned to provision the fleets and the garrisons
in the Moluccas. Sometimes a town would be required to fill a requisition
for a product not locally produced ; the townspeople then had to go else-
where and purchase the article demanded, often at prices much higher than
the government paid them for it. Moreover, they had to pay cash, whereas
the government bought on credit.
This is brought out in a report submitted in 1617 to the government,
apparently at the government's own request, by the Jesuit provincial,
Valerio de Ledesma. 29 Ledesma certified that for requisitions made during
the period 1610-1617, the government owed the Tagalog towns spiritu-
ally administered by the Society, namely, Antipolo, Santiago, Taytay,
San Miguel, Silang, and Indang, the sum of 8,083 P esos * To this must be
added 6,643 p esos > which was what the same towns spent to pay the wages
of laborers drafted by the government, and to purchase requisitioned
articles which they did not themselves produce. Ledesma explains why the
towns had to pay these wages in addition to the wages fixed by the govern-
ment ; the reason is ‘ ‘ because no one can be found to come and work for the
wages which the royal treasury has fixed for native labor. Hence the native
to whom your Majesty pays one peso per month is usually paid four pesos
in addition by the town from which he comes, in order that he might be
able to maintain himself and his family during his period of service."
Reports of this nature could not but cause concern to the central govern-
ment ; concern which found expression in a series of royal cedulas ordering
that military and naval expeditions be provided for without imposing un-
due hardship on the native population. In one of these, Philip III stated
that, according to information supplied by the agent of the colony (Rios
Coronel), natives were compelled to serve in the shipyards and lumber
camps precisely at the time when they had to plant or harvest their crops ;
that their wages were often left unpaid because there was no money in the
treasury; and that even when there was money, the cahe^as de harangay
(village headmen) to whom the payroll w r as entrusted kept it for themselves
instead of paying their men. In view of this he ordered that statute labor
be limited to the months when the people were not busy on their farms,
and that the laborers be paid promptly and directly, not through the
headmen. 30 This was in 1608; ten years later Governor Fajardo reported
pretty much the same abuses as those enumerated by Rios Coronel, and
346 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Philip III in reply ordered him to find out whether the necessary ships
could henceforth be built outside the Philippines ; for instance, in Indo-
china. 31 This suggestion was actually carried out in 1629 when Governor
Tabora commissioned a galleon in Cambodia. 32 But such commissions were
rare, and the danger of the finished vessel being wrecked or captured on its
way to the Philippines was so great that most of the galleons continued
to be constructed by Filipino labor, with all the attendant circumstances
of unpaid wages, peculation, and requisitioned supplies.
What effect did the war have on the colonists themselves ? The recurrent
blockade of Manila Bay undoubtedly caused some damage to the trade
which was their principal source of income. If we are to believe the numer-
ous appeals to the king for “a great armada ” to save the colony from
* Total extinction” by the Dutch, some of which we mentioned earlier,
this damage was well nigh irreparable. The cathedral chapter of Manila, for
instance, writing on behalf of the city in 1622, claimed that “we are at
present so impoverished, so oppressed, so afflicted, so miserable, that we
may well despair of our being able to maintain ourselves, did we not derive
encouragement and support from the certain hope that the powerful arm
of your Majesty will assist us by means of the armada which we look for
every day from Spain.” 33 The armada never came, but the colony somehow
held together. Not only that, but there are indications that while the
colonial treasury was almost continually empty, while valiant men, both
Spaniard and Filipino, were dying at Playa Flonda and Formosa to keep
the sea lanes open, while successive labor drafts and requisitions were caus-
ing widespread suffering in provincial towns and villages, private fortunes
in Manila were prospering as never before.
From a petition of the attorney-general, Rodrigo Diaz Guiral, we learn
that in 1606 there were 24 cattle ranches in the environs of Manila owned
by its citizens. Some of them had as many as 4,000 head. The cattle, left
to roam the countryside at will, did great damage to the adjoining farms ;
for this reason Guiral petitioned that the ranch owners be compelled to
fence in their property, and that the local farmers be permitted to capture
or kill any cattle which they found on their lands. 34 Another indication of
the continued prosperity of Manila during this period is the volume of the
galleon trade. In 1593 the central government fixed the maximum pur-
chase value of the annual cargo consigned to Acapulco at 250,000 pesos,
and the maximum sale value in New Spain at not more than twice that
amount. Now it is evident from contemporary sources that throughout
the seventeenth century, even during the period of Dutch attacks, the
actual goods shipped and returns received far exceeded the legal maxi-
mum. 35 But our most explicit piece of evidence is a passage from the
Annual Letter of 1627, in which the anonymous Jesuit chronicler makes
the following reflections :
The Sun of Holland 347
Although we frequently complain that the economy of this commonwealth and
realm is on the decline, either because there is some truth in the assertion, or
because we tend to look upon the past as always better than the present, neverthe-
less it is quite certain that from the time the Philippines was conquered it has
never been as prosperous and opulent as it is today. Consider how to the buildings
of this city are continually being added splendid churches and imposing and
costly residences of stone, not only within the walls but outside them, where the
country villas which have been built, principally along the banks of its deep-
flowing river, are almost without number. The land which for many leagues
around Manila used to produce nothing and could almost be bought for a
song because it was used only to pasture cattle has been turned into intensely
cultivated farms yielding handsome revenues to their owners. It is so valuable
that people enter into litigation for a span of it as though it were a field of the
richest Spanish loam . . . The churches are hung with silks and selected fabrics,
and in almost all of them the altars have beautiful and costly frontals of silver.
As for the table service in the houses of the rich, not only is it of silver, but some
of the pieces are now being made of gold. Even gold stirrups are coming into
fashion, although gold has been better employed in fashioning chalices, of which
there are now in certain churches some of that metal . . . The servants and slaves
who compose the domestic staff of many households are not inferior in number
to those of baronial establishments. Some of them are said to include over a
hundred male and female slaves, and it is common knowledge that there are as
many as twenty thousand natives and slaves in domestic service in Manila. This
is over and above the Chinese, who practice every kind of trade, and the Japanese
too do not lack employment . . .
It is true that Manila has suffered great loss because of the diminution of the
heavy trade with China, which used to be much greater in volume than today.
This diminution has been caused not only by the Dutch privateers who infest
these waters, but by the Chinese themselves who sally forth from those coasts to
plunder the merchants of their own nation on their voyage hither. The consequence
is that commodities which used to be dirt cheap have risen in value; clothing, for
instance, for there is less cloth on the market, and food, because of the reduced
number of farm laborers coming in from China . . .
There is no doubt that the natives have had their full share of the trials which
the wars, succeeding one another almost without interruption, have brought with
them, and that many of them are poor; but they are much better off today than
they have ever been . . . Their dress is very similar to that of the Spaniards (whom
the Filipinos, like natives everywhere else in the New World, strive to imitate in
this as well as in other things) ; that is to say, many of them wear silk with collars
and chains of gold ; which means that they are not as needy as they are commonly
thought to be, especially those who live in the vicinity of Manila . . , 36
It is clear from this that the burdens of the war with the Dutch and the
Moros did not fall equally on all sections of the population of the Philip-
pines. Some, Filipinos as well as Spaniards, suffered less than others, and
may even be said to have prospered in spite of the tremendous strain
12*
348 The Jesuits in the Philippines
imposed on the economy of the colony as a whole. In fairness to these more
fortunate individuals and families it should be said that they did not fail
to make the sacrifices demanded of them at certain moments of crisis ; for
instance, in the unexpected attack of 1616. Moreover, it was such accumu-
lations of wealth that made possible the pious gifts, foundations, and
bequests which in large measure financed the missionary work of the
church and its educational and social-service institutions.
As an example of the latter, we may mention the hospitals which were in
existence in Manila during this period. Inside the walled city was the
hospital for Spaniards, which ordinarily took care of from 70 to 100
patients, mostly army and navy personnel. It had an administrator appoin-
ted by the governor of the colony and a staff composed of a physician, a
surgeon, a druggist, a barber, and other salaried officials. It should be noted
that in the seventeenth century barbers not only acted in a tonsorial
capacity but performed minor surgical operations. Franciscan friars acted
as chaplains and nurses. As a royal foundation, the hospital was supposed
to be supported by the government, but shortage of public funds made it
largely dependent on private benefaction. Also inside the walls was the
hospital of the Misericordia, wffiich took care of the Filipino servants and
imported Negro and Indian salves of the colonists. It had separate men
and women's wards, and registered between 80 and 100 patients. Attached
to the main wards was a charity ward with a 20-bed capacity for poor
Spanish women. The institution was supported by the Misericordia and
administered by the Franciscans. Outside the walled city were two other
hospitals, one for Filipinos and another for Chinese. The Filipino hospital
stood east of the city, about fifty paces from the wall. Average occupancy
ranged between 100 and 150 patients. Admission was free. Support was
assured partly by government subsidy and partly by an endowment built
up from private benefactions. Franciscans administered the institution. The
Chinese hospital of San Gabriel was located on the north bank of the river
in the suburb of Bmondo. It was administered by the Dominicans and was
open to all Chinese irrespective of religion. A fifth hospital was conducted
by the Franciscans in the town of Los Banos, so called because of the hot
springs there wffiose medicinal value was known to the Tagalogs even
before the coming of the Spaniards. It was (and is) located on the south
shore of the Lake of Bai. 37
The Confraternity of the Misericordia now 7 had a membership of 200
and constantly increasing funds for its numerous charitable works. The
members took turns soliciting alms twice a week, after the example of their
founder. Many citizens left legacies to the confraternity in their wills. In
1621, the annual income from its investments was 3,600 pesos, but a large
proportion of the alms collected was spent immediately instead of being
invested, for the annual expenditure amounted to 12,000 pesos. To its
The Sun of Holland 349
original charities, such as the maintenance of the College of Santa Poten-
ciana and the hospital for domestics and the support of pohres vergon^antes ,
the confraternity added some new ones, such as the feeding of prisoners
awaiting trial and grants-in-aid to poor scholars in the two colleges of
Santo Tomas and San Jose. 38 But perhaps its most dramatic activity, and
that which fixed it in the popular imagination, was the burial of those who
died penniless, of corpses abandoned in the streets, and of those executed
for heinous crimes, whose bodies were exposed to public view for a speci-
fied period. On such occasions the brethren of the Misericordia would
appear, dressed in their long robes and with hooded faces, to give Christian
burial to the dead. It was thus, one early morning in May 1621, that they
bore off the bodies of Doha Catalina, the governor's lady, and Juan de
Mesa, her paramour, whom Governor Fajardo slew the previous night with
his own hand after surprising them at an assignation. 39
In short, although almost every year during the first half of the seven-
teenth century was "ushered in with the sound of martial trumpets,”
as Colin says of the year 1611, this did not prevent the Philippines from
making steady progress in various fields of constructive endeavor. By 1610,
the civil administration of the colony had assumed the form which it
would retain, with only a few minor modifications, until the middle of the
nineteenth century: the central government with its governor, audiencia,
and treasury officials, the chartered cities with their cabildos, the settled
provinces with their alcaldes may ores, the frontier provinces with their
corregidores, and the encomiendas everywhere. Following the suggestion of
the Synod of Manila, a measure of self-government was granted to the
native towns and villages under the supervision of the parish priest or
missionary. Heads of households met annually to elect the town’s petty
governor and constables. Datus were maintained in their privileged position
as cabe^as de barangay or village headmen, and while they had the onerous
responsibility of seeing to the collection of the tribute, they were also given
such privileges as exemption from statute labor. In general it may be said
that while Spanish written law was introduced and constantly extended in
scope, native customary law was recognized and respected, especially as
regards property, inheritance, and slavery. 40
Preoccupation with Jesuit affairs should not blind one to the fact that
the Jesuits were responsible for a relatively modest share of the vast enter-
prise at which priests and brothers of other religious orders, and the
secular clergy, labored with at least equal zeal and success. Given the
limited scope of this narrative, I can only refer to this vaster canvas
occasionally, whenever it has particular relevance to the work of the Society
of Jesus; but it might not be amiss to quote here Archbishop Garcia
Serrano's description of the system of ecclesiastical administration which
had been developed in the Philippines by 1622:
350 The Jesuits in the Philippines
In the benefices of secular priests and the convents and residences of the
religious, spiritual administration and religious instruction are carried on in the
following manner. Some have only one town; others (and they are the majority)
have, besides the capital or principal town, two, three, four, five small towns,
and in some cases more. From all of these the people come for services to the
church of the principal town, if they are close at hand and within easy reach, and
this is true of most of them, for they are not far away and water transport is easy
by river and lake. But when the distance is great, there are in the said towns or in
some of them chapels, in which two or more priests from the principal town
celebrate Mass for them on feast days and other occasions, teach catechism and
administer the sacraments. If there is only one priest, as happens in the secular
parishes and in some of those administered by the religious, the priest says one
Mass in his principal town and another in another town or visit a of his territory,
so that all or most of the people are able to attend in this way. In certain sections
where the distance between towns is greater still, the priest stays for two or
three months in one town of his territory, two or three in another, and thus makes
a circuit of his benefice . . .
It cannot be denied that the people would be better instructed and lead more
civilized lives if these little towns were merged with the center, in such wise that
each parish could consist of one or two large communities. But they take it so
ill to leave the little dwellings where they were born and near which they have
their farms and other sources of livelihood that it w r ould be difficult to achieve and
little would be gained by it. Experience has taught us this in the “congregations”
of New Spain and in a few similar projects which were attempted here . 41
Thus it would seem that the Jesuits of Leyte, Samar, and Bohol were not
alone in their protracted struggle to persuade the reluctant Visayans of the
advantages of town life. Whenever one walks across the plaza of a Philip-
pine town (named, as often as not, after a Dominican or Franciscan or
Augustinian saint), with the shadow of a venerable church tower lying
across it, it would be well to reflect on the patience, the toil, and the
vision that went into its making. And, above all, the endurance; precisely
the same kind of endurance that sent bubbling to the bottom of Playa
Honda — if only for a time — the Sun of Holland.
Chapter Fifteen
FAIR, WITH OCCASIONAL SHOWERS
Unlike the stormy chronicle of the Visayan missions during this period,
that of the Jesuit establishments in Manila and the Tagalog region is one
of relatively undisturbed and fairly steady progress, and may be described
in the familiar terms of the weather report which heads this chapter.
When Pedro de Montes succeeded Gregorio Lopez as rector of the
College of Manila, his first care was to lay the foundations of the College
library by ordering from Spain a set of commentaries on canon law and a
collection of printed editions of the Fathers of the Church. These books,
added to those donated by the good Bishop Salazar, became with successive
accretions one of the finest libraries of its kind in the Philippines ; until it
was dispersed beyond all possibility of reconstruction when the Society of
Jesus was expelled from Spain and her colonies by that enlightened mon-
arch, Charles III.
In 1607 Montes began a new cycle of the arts course and added a third
chair of theology to the two already in existence, namely, the professorship
of dogmatic and the professorship of moral theology. The new professor
divided the matter of scholastic theology with the original dogma pro-
fessor, holding classes in the afternoon while his senior taught in the
morning. Following the medieval nomenclature derived from the canonical
hours, the morning course was called the chair of prime, the evening
course the chair of vespers. This brought the theological studies in the
College of Manila into conformity with the Jesuit educational code of
1599, which prescribed that theology should be taught in a four-year
cycle by at least three professors, two of dogma and one of moral. That
same year Acquaviva, replying to a query by Miguel Gomez, one of the
professors, directed that all candidates for degrees should undergo compre-
hensive examinations in exactly the same way as their European counter-
parts. In view of this he reminded the provincial (at that time Gregorio
Lopez) to make sure that the Jesuit scholastics were given enough time to
prepare for these examinations, and not employed in extraneous work, such
as the writing and copying of reports and annual letters. The following year
Acquaviva sent another reminder that the prescriptions of the Ratio
Studiorum should be followed in all respects. However, he left one point to
the discretion of the provincial. He had been informed that in the Philip-
pines an unusually large number of holidays, both official and ecclesiastical,
351
352
The Jesuits in the Philippines
was observed. Let the provincial therefore prudently decide whether in
certain cases, when a holiday occurred during the week, the usual Thursday
vacation should be omitted. 1
Public disputations in philosophy and theology were important events
not only in the academic life of the college but in the city's social calendar
as well. The highest civil, military, and ecclesiastical authorities of the
colony and the most prominent citizens were invited to them, and they
usually came; what is more, they seem to have enjoyed them, at least at
times, and even took part in them. In 1610 one theological and four
philosophical disputations w^ere held. At one of them two army officers got
up and proposed objections to the defender in good school Latin and
rigorous syllogistic form, “gracing thus," says the Annual Letter of that
year, “no less the field of letters than the field of arms." At another
Governor Silva, then engaged in his vast projects for the conquest of the
Moluccas and the utter discomfiture of the Dutch, felt moved to make a
brief gratulatory speech, in which he said that “were it not for the martial
occupations to which I am compelled to devote myself in virtue of my
office, I w^ould make it a point not only to attend such public presentations
as this one, but even the ordinary circles held in class." 2
In 16 1 1 eight Jesuits — three priests and five scholastics — completed the
theology course. The scholastics were ordained by Archbishop Vasquez
Mercado the following year. There were at this time twenty-seven stu-
dents, both lay and clerical, in the arts course. The logic specimen was
given by a San Jose scholar and the grammarians staged several academies.
That same year (28 April 1611) the Dominican College of Santo Tomas
was founded. 3
For some reason or other no reply had as yet been received to the
petition submitted by Chirino to the king that the College of Manila be
authorized to confer degrees in theology and arts in accordance with the
papal privileges of the Society. In 1612 Archbishop Vasquez Mercado
urged the matter, certifying that the courses given at the college fulfilled
the necessary requirements and adding as an argument that it would be a
great saving in time and money if students could obtain their degrees in the
colony instead of going abroad for them, especially since the Jesuits
charged nothing for tuition. 4 This recommendation was warmly seconded
by the city corporation in 1616. Incidentally, we learn from their letter
that the faculty of the college at this time was composed of two professors
of dogmatic theology, one professor of moral theology, one professor of
arts, and two masters of grammar. 5 Still no reply from Madrid; until
finally, on 8 August 1621, Pope Gregory XV issued a brief authorizing
the archbishop of Manila to confer degrees on the candidates presented to
him by the rector of the Jesuit college. This brief obtained the royal
exequatur from Philip IV (cedula of 30 July 1623) and was received with
Fair , with Occasional Showers 353
great rejoicing at Manila in 1623. A parade on horseback was organized;
at the head of it came the trumpets and kettledrums of the city ; then the
day scholars of the college, riding three abreast; then the scholars of San
Jose, each flanked by two patrons chosen from among the citizens and a
liveried page leading his steed by the bridle ; then the city corporation and
the cathedral chapter; and finally the precentor of the cathedral, Don
Miguel Garcetas, bearing a standard of white silk on w r hich was sewm the
papal brief and the royal cedula. The procession wound its way through
the principal streets of the city to the archbishop’s palace, where all dis-
mounted and went in. There the documents were read in the presence of
the archbishop, Don Miguel Garcia Serrano, who pronounced the conse-
crated formula that he heard, obeyed, and would faithfully execute what
they contained. 6
The first graduate of the College of Manila to obtain a degree under this
dispensation would seem to be Juan de Cevicos, a diocesan priest who
completed his course several years previously and was appointed to the
cathedral chapter in 1621. The same year that the authorization to confer
degrees was received a fourth chair was added to the faculty of theology,
that of canon law and sacred Scripture. The first occupant of this chair
was Pedro Chirino, who taught a two-year cycle of canon law followed by a
two-year cycle of Scripture. Before the foundation of the professorship
these tw'o disciplines were taught as integral parts of the courses in dog-
matic and moral theology. Three years later the Jesuits scholastic Diego de
Cartagena gave the first public disputation in canon law 7 as part of his
grand act. The so-called grand act was a privilege (and an ordeal) given only
to exceptional students. It was usually held in the college church and
consisted of a morning and an afternoon session, each two or three hours
in length. During that time the “ defender” maintained theses selected
from the entire corpus of theology not only against the appointed and
invited disputants but against all comers. 7
In 1626 the college conferred its first doctorate on a student of San Jose
whose name, unfortunately, we have been unable to trace. The annual
letter of that year describes the ceremonies that accompanied such gradua-
tions. The night before graduation day San Jose w r as festively illuminated
w-ith lanterns. The actual ceremonies began at noon, when the doctor andus ,
along wdth several others who w 7 ere receiving their master’s degrees, were
led in state by their fellow students to the college church. A joyful flourish
of trumpets — tub arum laetissimo reboatu — announced their entrance. Then,
on a stage erected for the purpose, and before an “ innumerable throng/’
the graduates gave brief formal disputations (they had already passed the
real examinations for eligibility), after which the degrees were conferred.
On this occasion it was not the archbishop but the rector of the college,
acting as chancellor, v T ho conferred them. The ceremonies ended with the
354 The Jesuits in the Philippines
usual cavalcade through the city, preceded by the city band and with the
students of the college and many citizens taking part in the parade. 8
Besides teaching their ordinary classes, the theology professors of the
College of Manila were frequently asked by the authorities, by their fellow
Jesuits laboring in the missions, and by private persons for an expert
opinion on actual moral problems. Some of these cases and the solutions
given to them have been preserved in a volume of transcripts deposited in
the archives of the Jesuit province of Tarragona. They belong to the period
1602— 163 6. 9 Some of the opinions are given as commonly arrived at after
consultation by the entire theological faculty. Others are signed by the
moral professor alone. The names that occur most frequently are those of
Juan de Ribera and Diego de Bobadilla. These cases give an interesting and
instructive sidelight on contemporary economic and social conditions.
The Moro raids, for instance, gave rise to a number of moral problems.
In 1603 the government addressed an inquiry to the faculty of the college
and to the theologians of other religious orders as to whether it was permis-
sible to reduce Moro raiders captured in battle to slavery. The college
faculty replied that, according to the law of nations, prisoners taken in a
just war may justly be enslaved. The Spanish Crown, however, had
renounced its right in this matter with reference to the natives of the
Spanish dominions. In his instructions to Governor Gomez Perez
Dasmarihas, for instance, Philip II forbade the Philippine colonists to
retain their Filipino slaves or to enslave them in the future. This was con-
firmed by a brief of Gregory XIV (18 April 1591), issued at the petition
of Alonso Sanchez. Since these prohibitions said nothing about slavehold-
ing among the Filipinos themselves, the current practice was that the
enslavement of Filipinos by Spaniards was held to be unlawful but not
the enslavement of Filipinos by Filipinos.
The government raised the question of whether certain circumstances
attendant on the Moro raids had been envisaged by the law. One was that,
since the Moros possessed nothing of value except their own persons, it was
extremely difficult to organize expeditions against them unless those
taking part in the expedition were permitted to enslave their prisoners.
Another was that the Moros professed the Moslem religion, not the
common paganism of the other Filipinos, and hence they did not seem to
come within the purvue of the law. The college faculty agreed with the
theologians of the other religious orders that the government was perfectly
justified in condemning captured Moro raiders to six or eight years of hard
labor in the galleys. They differed, however, from those who asserted that
they could be enslaved. This was a doubtful point, which could only be
resolved by asking the Crown to declare explicitly whether or not it
renounced the right which it had from the law of nations specifically with
regard to the Moros.
Fair , with Occasional Showers 355
It would seem that the Crown urged its right to enslave Moro prisoners
of war, for in 1608 it was queried further whether slaves bought from the
Moros by the Filipinos of Dapitan could be bought in turn by the
Spaniards. The reply to this was yes, in view of the fact that it was current
practice in other regions, for instance, on the Barbary coast.
The organization of local defense against the Moros in the Jesuit
missions gave rise to an interesting question in 1630. Sometimes the most
effective defense against a raid, provided advance notice of it could be had,
was to set up an ambush and decoy the raiders into it. Could a missionary
priest, as the leader of his community, organize such an ambush without
incurring irregularity ? Yes, was the reply; it was a measure of lawful self-
defense.
It has been noted that slaveholding among the Filipinos themselves was
tolerated by the Spanish government. This policy was based on the prin-
ciple of colonial law that native customs of long standing which were not
clearly and directly contrary to the natural law should not be suppressed.
This principle was applied by the theologians of the College of Manila to
the solution of a question proposed in 1607: Whether, in determining
servile status among the Filipinos, that dictum of Spanish law should be
observed, namely, partus sequitur ventrem . Their answer was that it ought
not to be, for the native custom ruled otherwise. Among the Filipinos, the
children of a marriage in which one of the parties was free, the other slave,
did not automatically follow the status of the mother, but were alternately
free and slave.
Can a Filipino sell himself into slavery to another Filipino ? This ques-
tion gave the fathers an opportunity to inquire more closely into the exist-
ing custom. Strictly speaking, they said, one may in a case of extreme
necessity or for a very serious reason sell oneself into slavery. Among the
Filipinos, however, this condition is very seldom verified; hence, as a
general rule, missionaries and parish priests should advise against it.
On the other hand, it sometimes happens that someone in need of ready
cash will contract with another to work for him for a certain period in
consideration of a loan. This is a perfectly legitimate contract. But what is
to be said of the contract whereby a man who receives a loan agrees to
become the half slave or the one-quarter slave of his creditor, in the sense
of placing at his disposal one half or one quarter of his labor for an indefi-
nite period ? This, the moralists of the college declared, was unlawful,
because it was usury; the creditor, in effect, deriving from his loan an
interest far beyond what he was entitled to.
It sometimes happened that Visayan slaves captured by the Moros would
make good their escape. Were they in that case bound to return to their
former state of servitude ? Or could their former masters lawfully compel
them to return, on the principle that res clamat domino ? To a certain extent,
356 The Jesuits in the Philippines
indeed, a slave was res , the property of his master ; but on the other hand,
he was not in his essential nature a thing but a person; a human being,
whose connatural state was liberty. Hence “it seems to me ( salvo meliori
iudicio ) that they ought to remain free and not be held to their former
servitude ... for since there are authorities, laws, and customs for one
and the other side of this question, it seems more fitting to incline to that
which is more favorable. This is liberty; for lihertas omnibus rebus favora-
bilior est — liberty is more favorable than all things else/'
Another principle which the moralists of the college insisted on was that
accused persons should be held innocent unless proven guilty, even in cases
of witchcraft where popular opinion tended to take the opposite view and
demand that the accused show cause why he or she should not be put to
death as a witch. They readily conceded that there were cases of witchcraft
in the Philippines where the evidence adduced was conclusive; they con-
ceded further that a real witch could produce effects at a distance through
the mediation of the devil ; but they warned officers of the law that no one
ought to be condemned as a witch merely because of popular clamor. Let
careful inquiry be made, and judgment delivered on the basis of objective
evidence.
Does one break the law of fasting by drinking chocolate ? No ; for accord-
ing to the common opinion of theologians, chocolate (if not compounded
with corn flour and similar solid foods) is a liquid, and liquids do not
break the fast. Neither does smoking tobacco, “for it is neither food nor
drink; and while it is commonly, in many cases at least, a vice and the
trademark of a ‘ tough’ [ bellaqueria ], it does not break the fast.” As for
betel, “it would seem that to chew two or three preparations [buyo] does
not break the fast, due to insufficient quantity. They claim that it
invigorates; but when all is said and done, only a small fraction of the
betel is swallowed; the rest is saliva and uncleanness.”
Some idea of the current value of money is given by what the fathers of
the college considered grave matter in cases of theft, that is, the amount in
terms of money wdiich it would be a mortal sin to steal. After considering
the opinions of various authors as to what was grave matter in Old Spain
and New Spain, they considered that it w 7 ould ordinarily be a mortal sin
to steal two rials (25 cents) from a native, six rials from a Spaniard of the
middle class, and ten or twelve rials from a rich man. “This, however,”
they added, “is to be taken as more or less, and without applying it to
particular cases, which circumstances of great poverty or serious damage to
the neighbor may modify / 9
A moral case which attained a measure of celebrity because of the
controversy to which it led occurred in October 1620. 10 One day, in some
dark alley near the building of the Misericordia, a man was set upon by
his enemies and fell mortally wounded. Several passers-by came to his
Fair , with Occasional Showers 357
assistance in time to hear him ask for a priest to hear his confession ; after
which he lost consciousness. A secular priest was fetched, but when he
could get no word or sign from the wounded man, he refused to give him
absolution. Shortly afterward, the man died. A Jesuit, Domingo de Penal-
ver, who happened to be passing by, asked what had happened, and when
he was told, expressed regret that the man was not given absolution. Two
Dominicans who also arrived on the scene begged to differ; the secular
priest, they said, did exactly right, for no absolution could be given in such
a case.
The question apparently aroused a lively interest in the city, for some
months later the fathers of the College of Santo Tomas scheduled a public
disputation for 13 January 1621, in which the principal thesis to be
defended was that “in the sacrament of penance it is necessary for the
priest to hear the sins of the penitent from the penitent himself, insomuch
that if a priest comes to absolve a penitent already at death's door and
finds him so deprived of the use of his faculties that he [the priest] is
unable to obtain from him any manifestation of his sins, he may not
absolve such a penitent merely on the strength of what others say [that is,
that he asked to go to confession, was duly penitent, etc.] To hold the
opposite in theory is temerarious ; to act upon it in practice is a grave sin
of sacrilege/'
According to Archbishop Garcia Serrano, the thesis came as a surprise
to many people, for the actual practice in the archdiocese was precisely the
opposite. The fathers of the College of Manila held a consultation on the
matter and decided to hold a public disputation of their own on the day
previous to that of the Dominicans, that is on 12 January. Since there was
no time to coach a student, the professor of moral theology, Diego de
Bobadilla, was to take the stand himself and defend the following thesis,
namely that “it is not absolutely necessary to the sacrament of penance
for the priest to hear the sins of the penitent from the penitent himself.
Hence, in the case when a priest comes to absolve a penitent already at
death's door and finds him so deprived of the use of his faculties that he
[the priest] is unable to obtain from him any manifestation of his sins,
he may absolve such a penitent on the strength of what others say, namely,
that the man asked to go to confession and with this intention lost
consciousness. The opposite opinion is probable in theory, but a grave sin
in practice."
To avoid scandal and possible disturbance in the city if these dispu-
tations were held as scheduled, the archbishop prudently decided instead
to call the superiors of the religious orders, the members of the cathedral
chapter, and other canonists and jurists to a conference in his palace on
12 January. He opened the conference by saying that its sole object was
to arrive at the truth of the matter under dispute; or, failing that, to
358 The Jesuits in the Philippines
determine at least on a practice which could be uniformly followed in the
archdiocese until the matter could be decided by Rome, He then appointed
a committee from among those present to decide these questions after
hearing both parties, the Dominicans first and then the Jesuits, The
committee was composed of three diocesan priests, three Franciscans, three
Augustinians, three Recollects, and one doctor of civil law.
It would be wearisome to rehearse the learned and lengthy arguments
both oral and in writing which passed back and forth during the week-long
conference. Suffice it to say that at the final meeting on 18 January, the
committee of experts declared it to be their unanimous verdict ‘ * that both
the opinion which denies that the dying man in the case proposed can be
given absolution, and the opinion which affirms it, are probable. However,
it seems more fitting to permit the practice, use, and exercise of the
affirmative opinion in this archdiocese until His Holiness or whoever has
authority in the matter decide and ordain otherwise.” The archbishop
approved the verdict.
The number of resident students in the College of San Jos6 remained
small during the early years of the century. In fact, it decreased from
twenty in 1603 to thirteen in 1618, and may have been even less in the
years immediately preceding 1618, for we find Valerio de Ledesma, who
succeeded Gregorio Lopez in the provincialate, seriously thinking at one
time of closing down the institution, or asking the government or the
archdiocese to take it over. One of the first acts of Vitelleschi when he
became general in 1616 was to encourage the Philippine Jesuits to per-
severe despite the lack of visible results in the highly meritorious work of
giving * * a solid education and upbringing in all virtue and the holy fear of
God to the youth of that land/’ 11 They did. Greatly daring, they borrowed
9,400 pesos — an enormous sum for those times — to build a new and
enlarged physical plant, which was completed in 1624. Enrollment rose
slowly but steadily from thirteen in 1618 to nineteen in 1621 and twenty-
four in 1624,* then it jumped suddenly to forty-one in 1630 and remained
constant at forty through 1636. The reason for the sudden rise was in part
financial. The troublesome and unprofitable ranch in Panay had been
liquidated and the investment transferred to San Pedro Tunasan, which
devoted lay brothers built up into a dependable source of income. As a
result, San Jose was not only able to write off its building debt, but to
increase the number of foundation bursaries, of which there were fifteen
in 1630 and twenty-four in 1636. In 1624 Father General Vitelleschi
separated San Jose from the College of Manila administratively by consti-
tuting the vice-rector of San Jose an independent rector. 1 *
The daily life of the institution continued to be pretty much as Diego
Garcia organized it. There are a few interesting additions. 13 In the 1 620's
the custom developed of the scholars' assembling after evening study hall
Fair , with Occasional Showers 359
for an exercise similar to that already noted in the Visayan boarding
schools. Someone previously assigned would get up and relate an ejemplo,
in effect a bedtime story, but with a definite moral At San Jose, however,
the storyteller of the evening was followed by two other students, one of
whom discussed a punt 0 de erudition, some interesting and doubtless edifying
piece of information he had encountered in his reading, and the other a
punto de urbanidad , or precept of good manners. After this they made their
usual spiritual exercises of preparing the points for the morning medi-
tation and making the examination of conscience. Another practice
mentioned in the documents of this period is that of mutual admonition ;
on certain days during the noon recreation each student was informed by
his assigned ‘‘admomtor” of the external faults which had been observed
in him. Some of the older students, especially those planning to take holy
orders, regularly made an annual retreat of eight days and went to holy
communion every week or oftener. It is not surprising that in an atmos-
phere so favorable to piety many should be attracted to the priesthood or
the religious life, not only in the Society of Jesus but in other congre-
gations and the diocesan clergy. In 161 1 three josefinos joined the Augus-
tinians ; in 1630 three were ordained priests and four others received minor
orders; in 1632, two more joined the ranks of the secular priesthood.
There were undoubtedly others during the intervening years of whom our
documents make no mention. It is interesting to note that, besides the
regular students, San Jose boarded a number of late vocations,” that is,
men in middle age who had decided that they could serve God better in
the priesthood, and for this purpose were pursuing the required ecclesias-
tical studies in the College of Manila.
It should be borne in mind, however, that San Jose was not a clerical
seminary, as it is now. Many, and in fact the majority of its residents were
not thinking of an ecclesiastical career. Sons of oidores and other profes-
sional people, like those who were in the college in 1624, intended to
follow in their fathers* footsteps; others, to acquire the mental and moral
discipline which the society of that time expected gentlemen to possess;
while a few were doubtless dragged in by distracted parents in order that
the Jesuits might knock some sense into them,” even as parents do today.
As far as studies are concerned, the resident students in San Jos6 had
certain advantages over the day scholars with whom they attended classes
in the College of Manila; besides having stated study hours, they held a
daily conjerencia , the students of arts and theology in the morning and the
grammar school boys in the afternoon. The conferencia, a practice which
the Jesuit educational system took over from the colleges of the University
of Paris, was a tutorial session in which the resident students reviewed and
discussed, under the supervision of a master, the lectures they had
listened to during the day. For this reason there was always a grammar
360 The Jesuits in the Philippines
master resident at San Jos£, and, at least from 1630 on, one of the
philosophy or theology professors. Studies pursued the josefinos even into
the dining room, where the ordinary reading or sermon frequently gave
way to a specimen lecture by a student on a subject he was currently study-
ing. We learn from the Annual Letter of 1627 that closing exercises were
held at the end of each academic year, at which the grammar school boys
who had passed their examinations were given certificates entitling them
to go to the next form. During these exercises they also staged a play for
the delectation of their parents and friends.
In 1618 an unpleasant incident occurred with the newly founded College
of Santo Tomas. That institution had apparently adopted as part of the
uniform of its scholars a scarlet hood similar to that of the josefinos. When
this was called to his attention, the rector of San Jose, Adriano de las
Cortes, filed a suit with the governor of the colony to restrain Santo Tomas
from using hoods of the aforementioned color, alleging prior right.
Governor Fajardo took time out from fighting the Dutch to consider this
remarkable complaint. After due deliberation he handed down sentence
(31 October 1619) maintaining the scholars of San Jos£ in the exclusive
possession of their scarlet hoods, and directing the scholars of Santo Tomas
to choose hoods of any other color. The rector of Santo Tomas appealed
this decision to the audiencia, which confirmed it. While it seems
undeniable that a scarlet hood formed part of the academic gown of San
Jose since its foundation in 1601, one is bound to question the prudence
of Father Cortes in thus having recourse to the courts to deprive the stu-
dents of Santo Tomas of their bit of scarlet. Surely a more amicable settle-
ment with the Dominican fathers could have been arranged, or, failing that,
some other item could have been added to the San Jose gown to make it
sufficiently distinctive. As it was, the small victory injected a sour note
into the relations between the two colleges which would have more serious
repercussions in the future. 14
Mention is made as early as 1609 of an elementary school attached to
the College of Manila. The annual letter for that year states that the school
children had a sodality of their own which included boys from the lowest
form of grammar and numbered about 70. The little sodalists were given
little exhortations ( [hortatiunculas ) scaled down to the level of their under-
standing and went to confession every month. A lay teacher taught them
their catechism and first letters. According to the annual letter of the
following year they presented a play to welcome Archbishop Vasquez
Mercado which pleased the prelate so much that he asked for the script;
and in subsequent annual letters we catch glimpses of these small but
tireless infants marching at the head of processions, lustily singing hymns
and chanting the catechism, keeping vigil with lighted tapers before the
Blessed Sacrament during the carnival days, or suddenly popping out of
Fair , with Occasional Showers 361
contrivances on platforms to recite verses at some newly arrived governor
or archbishop. 15
By 1630 the enrollment of the elementary school had reached the
amazing figure of 600, and it became necessary to put a Jesuit priest in
charge as headmaster. It is undoubtedly in this sense that the annual letter
of that year is to be understood when it says that the direction of the
elementary school had been 4 'newly assumed' ' by the college. With the
new administration came the inevitable Ratio Stuiiorum , for we are told
that in addition to learning their prayers and watching their p's and q's,
the schoolboys now had to ‘'exercise themselves in declamation and
dramatics, whereby they acquired skill in public speaking.” During the
Christmas holidays eight schoolboys, all of them less than eight years old,
staged a play in honor of the newborn Christ which won golden opinions
from everyone present. The only difficulty was that the Jesuits invited only
men to the various academies and disputations of the College of Manila,
and no exception was made at first with regard to the presentations of the
nitics. There were loud protests against this ruling from the doting mothers
and other womenfolk of the city who alleged that, while they might not
be able to follow a philosophical argument, they ought at least to be
considered worthy of viewing their own children enact the part of an angel
or a holy innocent. They finally appealed to the governor's lady, who
succeeded in persuading the fathers to stage the schoolchildren’s play in the
church rather than in the college hall, in order that women might be able
to attend. Thus the Christmas pageant of 1632 was attended not only by
Archbishop Guerrero and Governor Cerezo de Salamanca, but by “noble
ladies in the entourage of the governor's wife.” Needless to say, everyone
was enthralled by “the unbelievable wit, grace, agility, and understanding
of the children.” 16
The number of Jesuits in the community of the College of Manila
climbed slowly during the years preceding 1620, when it reached thirty-
six ; thereafter it remained stationary at forty or so, except in years when
new missionaries from Europe stayed there before receiving their assign-
ments. The proportion of priests to lay brothers was roughly three to two —
about fifteen priests and ten lay brothers, the rest scholastics. Before 1 622
and after 1630 one wing of the residence was occupied by the novices and
tertian fathers. As many as four or five of the priests were assigned full time
to the ministries of the college church. These have been previously des-
cribed, but a number of interesting developments during this period may
be noted. One was the rapid growth in the number and variety of people
who approached the Jesuit confessionals. With the development of Manila
as a commercial center and the consequent increase in the wealth of its
citizens, men and women of all races from almost every country of the
East flocked to the city, either as slaves, domestics, or tradesmen. Andrea
362 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Caro, writing to a friend in Rome in 1611, enumerates them as “ Chinese
without number, Japanese, East Indians, people of Malacca and Java, a
great many Portuguese, French, Dutch, Flemings, immigrants from
Italian, Greek, and Sicilian cities; all these in addition to natives of
various tongues, tribes, and islands, and the Spaniards, both men and
women, who come frequently to confession. It adds up.” 17 It certainly did,
and while many of these doubtless acquired enough Spanish to be able to
tell their sins, the confessors of the college church were nevertheless at
pains to learn as many languages as they could in order to be able to impart
the spiritual direction which was part of their office.
The Dutch mentioned by Caro belonged to a special category ; they were
prisoners of war. Ninety altogether were taken at Playa Honda in 1609,
twenty of whom were badly wounded. Fortunately one of the college
fathers, Andres de la Camara, had been born and lived as a child in Ghent,
and hence spoke Dutch fluently. He made the care of the prisoners his
particular apostolate, attending personally with great gentleness to the
wounds of the stretcher cases, which had become gangrenous and * ‘ exuded
a smell so foul that it was unbearable even from afar.” Father Camara
found the grace to bear it from close at hand. Those who were unhurt he
strove to convert to Catholicism, and spent long hours replying as best as
he could to their objections. As we saw earlier, Spanish policy toward the
Dutch captured in naval actions was ruthless ; they were looked upon not
as prisoners of war but as pirates and apostates, and hence summarily and
without exception condemned to death. Even those who recovered from
their wounds had to pay this penalty, nor did conversion to Catholicism
avail them a reprieve. We may therefore suppose that those whom Father
Camara succeeded in converting before their execution (among whom were
two senior pilots, three factors, and two surgeons) returned to the faith
of their fathers from true conviction and not in the hope of escaping the
hangman’s noose. 18
The Japanese quarter of the city was located in the district of Dilao
(now Paco), a Franciscan parish. However, many of the Japanese Christians
who had known the Jesuits in their homeland frequented the college
church, and there were close ties of affection between the Manila Jesuits
and the Japanese community. This enabled Pedro de Montes while he was
rector of the college to avert a Japanese uprising which might have had as
bloody an aftermath as that of the Chinese. In 1616, during the absence of
Governor Acuna and a large part of the Manila garrison in the Moluccas, a
Spaniard killed a Japanese in a brawl. A raging mob came together in
Dilao and demanded that the killer be delivered up to them. When the
authorities refused, the Japanese started to arm themselves and would
certainly have started a riot had not Montes, hastily summoned to the
scene, succeeded in calming them down and persuading them to let the
Fair , with Occasional Showers 363
law take its course. The following year, however, the Japanese did take
up arms against the government. After the rebellion was put down, it was
decided to raze the Japanese quarter at Dilao to the ground and disperse
its 1,500 residents among the other suburbs. 19
In spite of this the Japanese Christians maintained cordial relations with
the Jesuits, and these ties were further strengthened by the arrival of a
group of exiles from Japan. In 1614 Japanese trading vessels brought the
news that the Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu, had begun a new and severe
persecution of Christianity, with the declared purpose of exterminating or
expelling from the country not only the foreign missionaries, but the
native leaders of the Japanese church. Valerio de Ledesma, who had just
entered upon his duties as provincial, called a meeting of his consultors
and decided with their advice to offer hospitality in Manila to any of the
Jesuits and their converts who might be exiled from Japan. The invitation
was gratefully accepted, and in December 1614 Manila welcomed with a
charity approaching veneration a fragment of the heroic church of Japan.
The group included seven European Jesuits (one had died during the
voyage), fifteen Japanese Jesuits, fifteen catechists, a community of reli-
gious women called the heatas of Miyako, consisting of the mother superior
and fourteen sisters, and the two noble households of Justo Takayama and
Juan Saito.
The Jesuits were distributed between the College of Manila and the
residence of San Miguel. Houses were found and furnished near the
latter for the sisters and the lay exiles. The Japanese Jesuits, some of whom
were priests, devoted themselves with great zeal to the instruction and
spiritual direction of their countrymen. One of the European Jesuits,
Father Francisco Calderon, was appointed to make a visitation of the
province, but died (4 December 1618) without completing it. 20
Another ministry to which the Manila Jesuits devoted themselves was
that of the Negroes, Kaffirs, and other slaves whom the Spaniards imported
from Portuguese India. The treatment which many of these wretches got
from their masters, alternately cruel and indulgent, made them specially
worthy of attention. Liberty did not visibly improve their lot, for those
who were manumitted usually joined the lowest dregs of Manila's popu-
lation, eking out a miserable existence as bravoes, cutpurses, and bawds.
At about this time, a custom (prevalent in South American cities) was
introduced in Manila of permitting both slaves and freedmen to parade the
streets during the carnival days, tricked out in various outlandish costumes,
shouting, singing, dancing, and contributing to the general licentiousness
of the pre-Lenten festival. To counteract the wilder orgies to which
Manilans (and not only the slaves !) gave themselves during these three days,
and in order to make some reparation for the sins committed, the Jesuits
introduced the practice, originating in Italy, of gathering as many as they
364 The Jesuits in the Philippines
could in the college church for prayer and exhortation before the Blessed
Sacrament exposed. It would seem that this “Devotion of the Forty
Hours’ * contributed significantly to confining the celebrations of the
Manila mardi-gras within reasonable limits. But the man who really gave
himself to the ministry of the slaves was Alonso de Arroyo. He won for
himself, though to a lesser degree than Saint Peter Claver, the proud title
of father of the slaves. He even succeeded in organizing a sodality among
them, for wffiich he requested affiliation with the Roman prima primaria in
1634.21
The following year still another sodality was organized for the morenos
or half-breeds, thus bringing the total number of these organizations in
Manila to six. Their membership, however, continued to be restricted to
men. Women tried to charm their way in, but to no avail. A petition from
the provincial congregation of 1 609 for permission to organize a sodality of
Spanish women met with the following stiff reply: “We have no authori-
zation from the supreme pontiffs for such an organization, nor is it desir-
able for the Society to have it. Let there be no more talk of founding
congregations for women, but let us simply assist them with the other
ministries which ours are accustomed to exercise/’ There was, however,
mere talk of it eighteen years later. In 1630 Encinas, the Philippine
procurator, represented that “those who are most assiduous in attending
the exercises and devotions of the sodality of Our Lady are the women, so
that they regard themselves and are regarded as members thereof. This
being the case ... it seems suitable that they should obtain through your
Paternity^ a share in the indulgences of the sodality/’ But, although there
was another general at headquarters, the view taken of women sodalists
was as dim as ever. “The same request has reached me from other places,”
Vitelleschi replied. “My answer has always been to enjoin that women
should under no circumstances be admitted to the sodalities under our
charge, and that anything done to the contrary should be undone. I trust
that the Philippine province will comply with this/’ It did, to the best of
its ability ; but later in the century, feminine persistence prevailed. 22
Considerable space is devoted in the annual letters to a description of
the various festivals and celebrations which occurred during this period.
In June 16 1 1 the papal brief beatifying Ignatius Loyola (3 December 1609)
was received in the Philippines. A tremendous celebration took place on
20—2 1 June, and again on the feast day of the new Blessed (31 July) and
during the entire octave. A life-size statue of Ignatius was solemnly instal-
led above the main altar of the college church and literally covered with
flashing jewelry for the duration of the festival by the devout Manilans.
Fireworks were set off from the church tow'er; there was a parade on
horseback by the students of the college ; and the boys of the elementary
school presented a bucolic dance in the manner of the Basques. A
Fair y with Occasional Showers 365
dance group from the parish of San Miguel matched this with a ballet
which began as a dance of the halt, the maimed, and the blind. They came
on stage falling all over one another and staggering about to the appropriate
music; then, falling on their knees, they appealed to the heato to cure them,
and their prayers being answered they leaped to their feet and performed
a Tagalog sword dance with great skill and agility. But the most interesting
feature of the celebrations was the literary contest, in which no less than
250 entries competed for the prize. These compositions in Greek, Latin,
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, Mexican, Tagalog, and Visayan were
inscribed on illuminated scrolls and displayed to the public. On the last
day of the octave a board of judges consisting of the lieutenant-governor
of the Moluccas, the vicar-general of the archdiocese, the chief-of-staff of
the armed forces, and the commissary of the Holy Office selected the
winners. Unfortunately, the prize compositions have been lost to pos-
terity. 23
Occasion was given for a similar celebration in 1619, when the approval
given by the Holy See to the public celebration of the feast of the
Immaculate Conception became known in Manila. Two years later, the
faculty and students of the College of Santo Tomas, magnanimously for-
getting the unpleasant affair of the hoods, helped the College of Manila
celebrate the beatification of Francis Xavier by staging a play on the con-
version of the Jesuit beato . This series of festivals reached its climax in
1623, when the dispatches arrived announcing the canonization of Saints
Ignatius and Francis and the beatification of Aloysius Gonzaga. Manila, as
the Spanish saying goes, 4 ‘threw the house out the window” to celebrate
the event. Xavier’s statue in the college church was covered by the citizens
with more than 15,000 precious stones, of which 1,000 were diamonds;
that of Ignatius with more than 20,000 stones, of which 800 were
diamonds. Plays in Spanish were presented by the resident students of
San Jose, the day scholars of the college, and the students of Santo Tomas;
and one in Tagalog by the parishioners of Taytay. The city corporation
contributed a bullfight. It also petitioned the archbishop that *‘in view of
the many and great favors which these islands have received from God our
Lord by means of the sacred order of the Society of Jesus, and in recog-
nition of the great debt of gratitude which they owe to the same holy
order, both by reason of the valuable education and training which it
imparts to their sons as well as many other sendees rendered,” the feasts
of Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis be made holy days of obligation for all
the Spaniards of the archdiocese. On 14 October 1623 Archbishop Garcia
Serrano granted the petition, not only for the archdiocese of Manila but
for the diocese of Nueva Caceres; later, Bishop Juan de Renteria of
Nueva Segovia and Bishop Pedro de Arce of Cebu made the same ruling
for their respective dioceses. 24
366 The Jesuits in the Philippines
In the account given earlier of the finances of the College of Manila, we
noted that when Archbishop Diego Vasquez Mercado was dean of the
Manila cathedral, he donated some land which he had in the district of
Quiapo to the Jesuits. The Jesuits derived an income from the land by
leasing it to the Chinese truck gardeners and fruit growers, of whom there
were about 250 in 1603. Archbishop Benavides, reporting to the king on
6 June of that year, transmitted a complaint made by certain natives of
Quiapo that the Jesuits were not the true owners of the land in question,
but had usurped it from the heirs of Raja Soliman. On 4 July 1605 Gover-
nor Acuna defended the Jesuits from this accusation. He said that they had
received the land as a gift from Vasquez Mercado, who had purchased it
from its native owners. 25
In 1609 further complaints against the Jesuits were sent to Madrid by
the then datu of Quiapo, Don Miguel Banal. 26 Banal alleged that what
the Jesuits received from Vasquez Mercado was nothing so extensive as
what they laid claim to, but merely " a garden lying in back of our village" ;
that they acquired the said garden not as a gift but by purchase ; and that
ever since they acquired it they "have been insinuating themselves more
and more into our lands and taking more than what was assigned them by
the dean," so that they now had "scarcely any land remaining in the
village for our fields, and even for our houses." To illustrate the land-
grabbing propensities of the Jesuits, Banal related how he himself built a
house on his own property, and how a Jesuit, Brother Nieto by name,
"came with a numerous following of Negroes and Indians, armed with
halberds and catans ; and of his own accord, had with absolute authority,
razed my house to the ground." When this was reported to the alcalde
mayor, Pedro de Chaves, he came and personally saw to it that Banal's
house was rebuilt. The Jesuits, however, Banal says, "threatened me that
as often as I should build a house there they would return to raze or burn
it. 9 For this reason he decided to appeal to the king himself, as the only
one capable of protecting him against the Jesuits.
For I fear that I can find no one to aid me in the suits which the fathers are
about to begin against me, or who will appear for my justice, since I have even
been unable to find anyone who dared to write this letter for me. This letter is
therefore written by my own hand and in my own composition, and in the style
of an Indian not well versed in the Spanish language. But I confide my cause to
your royal Majesty's great kindness, and, prostrate at your Majesty's royal feet,
implore you to protect me with your royal protection by ordering the royal
audiencia and the archbishop to inform your royal Majesty anew, and to summon
me in order that I may inform them of my claims to justice. Also in the meantime
will you order the fathers not to molest me in the ancient possession that I
have inherited from my fathers and grandfathers, who were chiefs of the said
village.
Fair , with Occasional Showers 367
We have not been able to discover what the audiencia or the archbishop
did in this matter* Of the Brother Nieto mentioned by Banal we know
that his first name was Francisco ; that he entered the Society at Manila in
1599; he made his novitiate in the College of Manila; and that he
pronounced his final vows as a temporal coadjutor in the same college in
1610* We know too that he acted as procurator of the college, for he
is mentioned as such by the personnel catalogue of 1614* Hence, he could
have perpetrated the deed of which Banal accused him, but we have no
evidence that he actually did so except the statement of Banal himself.
Doubtful light is thrown on the business by a letter of Acquaviva to
Lopez dated 28 March 1612. 27 It had been called to his attention, the
general said, that the College of Manila ''has lost, these past years, I know
not what lands, and that a certain native is at present encroaching on I
know not what property. I thought I might urge your Reverence to look
into the matter and take the necessary steps to protect our rights, so that
property might not be lost through the negligence of those who are respon-
sible for their preservation. No injustice will be done to anyone if a simple
account of what is taking place is given to the governor.” If this is a
reference to the Quiapo estate, then it would seem that the Jesuits lost
the suit which Banal was certain their supposedly overwhelming influence
would win for them. At the same time Acquaviva, or his informant in
Manila, was not quite convinced that the Society ought to have lost the
case, hence Acquaviva' s suggestion that it be appealed to the governor.
Again, we have no definite information as to whether this appeal was made
or not, Probably not, or if made, the previous sentence was confirmed, for
statements of the College of Manila's financial situation subsequent to this
date make no mention of the Quiapo property.
The annual income of the College of Manila increased from 4,400 pesos
in 1618 to 12,700 pesos in 1636. The increase is accounted for by the
acquisition in the 1620's of land near Binan (later transferred to San Jose
to form part of its San Pedro Tunasan estate) and San Mateo (a town about
twenty miles northeast of Manila) ; additional urban property in the walled
city and suburbs; and money gifts and bequests which tvere invested in
building loans. 28 During the same period the debts of the college increased
from 8,459 to 41,800 pesos. This was because the church and residence
built by Sedeno, portions of which had collapsed and others rendered
unsafe by age and successive earthquakes, had to be replaced almost in
their entirety".
The new church, planned on a more imposing scale than the old, was
begun in 1626. It was cruciform, baroque in style, with a central octagonal
dome and two towers on the fagade, and oriented northwest-southeast with
the mam portal facing northwest. It was 204 feet long, 90 feet along the
transept, and 1 1 1 feet from the ground to the tope of the dome. The outer
368 The Jesuits in the Philippines
walls, built of Antipolo adobe and brick, averaged 9 feet in thickness* The
central nave was divided from the collateral naves by two courses of
12 columns supporting galleries above semicircular arches at a height of
40 feet. The galleries connected with the choir loft, likewise supported by
columns and elliptical arches.
Above the main altar was a statue of Saint Ignatius, to whom the church
was dedicated (Sedeno's church was dedicated to Saint Anne). There was
an altar at each end of the transept ; on the epistle side was the altar of the
Crucifix and on the gospel side the Lady altar, under the invocation of
Our Lady of Loretto. Each of the collateral naves terminated at the tran-
sept in a chapel, the one dedicated to Saint Joseph and the other to Saint
Francis Xavier. Near the main entrance under the choir loft were smaller
altars. There were two side doors, one opening on Calle Real, the other
leading to the ground floor corridor of the college.
The dome, ribbed with wood, had eight windows and an accessible outer
gallery running round it. The church bells were hung in one of the
facade towers and a clock installed in the other. The main portals opened
on a quadrilateral plaza flagged with stone and surrounded by a breast-high
wall ornamented by stone lions. An Italian Jesuit, Gianantonio Campioni,
directed the construction. 29
Since this new church was built on the site of the old, construction must
have proceeded in sections while the old church was still standing. In
1628 an earthquake underscored the need for a new church by bringing
down considerable portions of the old roof and walls. Three years previous
to this the king had contributed to the building fund by appropriating
1,000 ducats a year for the next ten years. The citizens of Manila added
generously to this grant, in spite of which money had to be borrowed, for
by 1630 65,000 pesos had been spent on the church and the college
building and both were still unfinished. The church was finally completed
in 1632 and the college building some time later. This last seems to have
been the tallest residential building in the city at the time ; it consisted of
a ground floor and three upper storys enclosing an interior patio. The front
of the building faced in the opposite direction from the church, that is
southeast, looking over the San Jose buildings and beyond the east wall of
the city with its royal gate to the suburbs of Ermita and Malate, On the
ground floor were the classrooms, the largest of which, that of the
theologians, also served as an auditorium for public disputations and
academies. The upper storys contained, besides the living rooms of the
community, the domestic chapel, the library, a recreation room (on the
west wing, facing the sea), and a rooftop azotea. 30
The mission of Antipolo consisted of Antipolo itself, where the Jesuit
residence was located, and two subordinate towns, Taytay and Santiago.
In 1627 the missionaries succeeded in persuading more of the wandering
Fair , with Occasional Showers 369
Aetas to settle down, like their domesticated brethren of Santiago; the
new settlement was given the name of San Ignacio, Too many of them,
however, still felt from time to time the urge to drift away after wild boar
and deer. To counteract this the fathers hit upon the happy solution of
asking the Christian families of Santiago to adopt” each one a family of
new settlers, and to help it over the rough spots in the transition from a
food-gathering to a sedentary way of life. The people of Antipolo suffered
a great deal from the labor drafts and requisitions of supplies occasioned
by the Dutch war, but they managed in spite of all to contribute generously
to the support of their church. Their money gifts averaged 150 pesos
yearly, no small sum, considering the value of the peso in those days;
besides, which, when Father Juan de Salazar decided to build a new stone
church in 1630, they formed labor battalions to obtain the lumber and
stone for the construction. The church was completed in 1633, a year
after that of Manila, and became the shrine of a little wooden image of the
Blessed Virgin which Governor Tabora brought with him from Acapulco
in 1626. This statue was to symbolize in a special way the deep affection
of the Tagalogs for the Mother of God. It became known as Our Lady of
Antipolo, and when later in the century it was borne across the Pacific by
the galleons as their tutelary patroness, it also acquired the title of Our
Lady of Peace and Happy Journeys — Nuestra Senora de Pa^y Buen Viaje .
The people of Taytay weathered the war economy much better than
those of Antipolo, doubtless because of the abundant rice harvests they
reaped from their well watered land. In 1632 they contributed 3,000 pesos
toward the repair of their church, which still stands today in an excellent
state of preservation. The more wealthy citizens were even able to afford
East Indian slaves, as we learn from a somewhat rueful note in the Annual
Letter of 1626, to the effect that the accession of these slaves compelled
the missionary to add a few more languages to his repertoire. Another
indication of Taytay' s prosperity was that the well-born women, instead
of offering votive candles, brought braziers with incense to burn them
before their favorite saints when they came to Mass in the morning. It
was all the more admirable, then, that when their turn came to sweep the
church according to the system organized by the fathers, they attended to
this chore themselves instead of sending their slaves to do it. 31
Silang, like Antipolo, had two other towns attached to it, Indang and
Maragondong. Silang itself was a populous crossroads, where the various
trails from the provinces of Batangas and Cavite merged into a highway to
Manila. The account given by the Annual Letter of 1614 of the devotional
life of the people of Silang seems typical of the Tagalog missions :
Every day at dawn the church bell rings for all the children to come to church.
Thence they go in procession through the town, chanting the catechism in their
37 o The Jesuits in the Philippines
native tongue. The passing of the procession, so numerous (there are as many as
200 boys) and so devotional, is a constant delight to the beholder. They return to
the church, where they recite the principal points of Christian doctrine and answer
questions on them. Then they hear Mass, after which they betake themselves to
school. Some learn their first letters, others are further exercised in the catechism;
no one is permitted to work on the farm or help his parents until he is first
solidly grounded in the faith. On Sundays all the people, young and old, attend a
catechism lesson in the church. 32
The parish of San Miguel was very probably Lagyo where the Jesuits kept
the chapel of their first Manila residence open as a visit a of the college. The
chapel was destroyed during the Chinese uprising of 1603, along with
most of the district. Both Archbishop Benavides and Governor Acuna, how-
ever, insisted on the college fathers retaining its spiritual administration,
so a stone church was built on a different location, apparently on the river
bank near the southern approach to the present Ayala Bridge, that is,
across the river from the present suburb of San Miguel which is on the
north bank. In 16 1 1 Archbishop Mercado constituted San Miguel a parish
and confirmed its assignment to the Society, which was thereby obliged
to build a residence near the church and appoint a resident pastor. This
was a blessing in disguise, for w T hen the Japanese exiles came in 1615 there
was a church and house ready for them, which became thereafter a center
for the Japanese Christians of the city. The procurator of the College of
Manila apparently tried to retain control of the parish and its revenues,
but in 1624 he was told by Vitelleschi in no uncertain terms that San
Miguel severed all connections with the college when it became a parish ;
and any revenues it might have were to be spent on the parish itself A 3
In 1623 Archbishop Garcia Serrano received a letter from the Catholics
of Nagasaki, requesting his help in founding a Japanese college in Manila,
similar to the English colleges in Rome and Spain, where Japanese young
men could be sent to be trained as priests for the persecuted church of
Japan. The archbishop favorably endorsed the request to Governor Alonso
Fajardo, who issued an ordinance on 29 January 1624 committing the
project to the Jesuits and designating as the site of the future college a
piece of public land in the parish of San Miguel. The site is described as
fronting the placet &e arm as of the district of Lagyo, so it cannot have been
very far from the first Jesuit house in the Philippines, which stood near
the street which is known even today as Plaza Militar. To provide the
institution with a regular income, Fajardo gave it the exclusive right to
ferry passengers and freight from Manila to Cavite, and established for its
benefit a government monopoly of betel and tobacco. This was unfortunate,
for it aroused the bitter opposition of everyone in Manila who smoked,
chewed betel, or transacted business at Cavite; that is to say, practically
everyone. Sermons were preached against the project from the city pulpits,
Fair , with Occasional Showers 371
and as usually happens in such cases, reasons of state were found to dress
up the low-level but decisive argument that it doubled the price of cigars.
It was alleged, for instance, that a Japanese college in Manila would simply
stir up the Tokugawa dictatorship to new severities and result in the com-
plete extinction of Christianity in Japan; in other words, an urgent actual
need should not be attended to because of possible adverse consequences. 34
Be that as it may, it is regrettable that no better method was found to
finance the proposed college, for barely ten days after Fajardo's death on
1 1 July of that same year, the audiencia rescinded the ordinance. Nothing
more was said of a Japanese college until twelve years later, when a good
friend of the Jesuits decided to do something about it on his own account.
On 20 June 1636, Juan de Bueras, provincial, and the Licentiate Pedro de
Tarapilla Salcedo, secular priest, jointly signed a legal instrument whereby
the latter promised to endow the residence of San Miguel as a college. 35
The endowment was to consist of 16,000 pesos payable within six years
after the general of the Society signified his acceptance of the foundation.
Part of it was to be used for the support of priests who would labor prin-
cipally in the suburbs; for, says the document, “in the environs of Manila
there are opportunities for great employment in dealing with and gaining
souls both of Spaniards and of natives who there resort in great numbers .’ 9
But the main purpose of the endowment was to maintain a seminary of
the kind requested by the Nagasaki Christians.
And whereas [Tarapilla Salcedo continues] colleges of the Society of Jesus must
in accordance with the institute of the same Society maintain some professorship
or school, and Our Lord fills the undersigned with a great desire to help with his
poor mite the new church of Japan, so persecuted by tyrants and lacking in
ministers, he declared it to be his will that in the said house and college of the
Society a wing should be set aside which may be a kind of seminary where
Japanese [young men] may be supported and taught the disciplines and sciences
which may be necessary in order that they may be ordained and return to Japan,
there to cultivate the vineyard which the excessive rigor of the ban against the
entry of Europeans has rendered so destitute of laborers. For if those who are thus
raised, educated, and ordained are natives of the country, it will be easier for
them to enter it without being challenged, after the fashion of what is now being
done in Rome, Spain, and other parts of European Christendom, where in divers
seminaries under the care and teaching of the Society there are being raised and
educated young men from Ireland and England in order that they might return
to their native countries, so deeply infected with heresy, and there devote them-
selves to preserving the Catholics who remain in those realms, as well as reclaim-
ing many to our holy Catholic and Roman faith ; and for this reason large sections
of those realms have remained Catholic in spite of the fiercest persecutions.
Unfortunately, this splendid project failed once again to see the light
of day. The closure of Japan by the Tokugawa was by this time so effective
and their suppression of Christianity 7 so nearly complete that the seminary
37 2 The Jesuits in the Philippines
could not be opened for lack of students. Hence the foundation was used
instead to take care of the Japanese in the Philippines and to finance the
efforts of members of the dispersed Jesuit mission of Japan, both Japanese
and European, to return to that country. Curiously enough, the idea never
seems to have occurred of training Japanese priests for the service of their
compatriots outside the homeland, although there were sizable communi-
ties of them both in Manila and Macao. Later in the century the San
Miguel house became the residence of the provincial and his staff.
The Jesuit establishment at Cavite may be said to have begun with the
Lenten missions which the fathers of the College of Manila were invited to
give there in 1613 and 1614. Cavite was not much different from other
seaports either then or today, so that we may reasonably assume that the
sailors, marines, dock hands, shipyard workers, wineshop keepers, and
prostitutes to whom the missionaries addressed themselves did not
antecedently possess an overwhelming interest in the things of the spirit;
or, for that matter, in the Ten Commandments. But God's grace was not
to be denied. The two missions resulted in so definite an improvement of
the moral tone of the community that the people themselves — ‘ ‘the sailors
and other inhabitants of the town," as Ledesma is careful to specify —
begged the fathers to stay. Ledesma, newly appointed provincial, jibbed
somewhat at this, remembering Acquaviva's warnings against over-
expansion. Stoutly protesting that he was not going to be rushed into any-
thing, he gave his consent to a prolonged — but still temporary mission.
A certain Juan de Caraballo promptly produced a small house with a chapel
attached and the fathers took up their residence there, in time to do
yeoman's service with the regular navy chaplains during the fitting out of
Silva's great armada.
Meanwhile two employees at the navy yard, a Genoese named Giulio
Lombardo and an Irishman who had taken the Spanish name of Lrancisco
Bautista, had been eyeing the Jesuits enviously for some time. They
finally worked up enough courage to come forward and say that they wished
to become lay brothers. They were gladly accepted, and when it came time
for them to renounce their wordly goods, they said that they would like
nothing better than to devote them to the construction of a stone church
in the port, to be dedicated to Our Lady of Loretto. This was done, and
on 2 December 1632 the Jesuit church of Loretto was inaugurated, with
Don Lucas de Castro, a secular priest who had also contributed to it,
celebrating the first Mass. It stood at the water's edge on the western side
of the hook itself. No trace of it now remains, but its location is indicated
in Murillo Velarde's map of 1734. Some years earlier, Archbishop Garcia
Serrano fairly anchored the Jesuits to the place by assigning to them the
administration of one of the three Cavite parishes, that of the old native
settlement of Kawit, which was for that reason called by the Spaniards
Fair, with Occasional Showers 373
Cavite el Viejo. Cavite el Viejo stood at the base of the hook, on the
eastern side where the anchorage was. This made it the principal resort of
sailors on shore leave, with the consequences that may be expected. As
Murillo Velarde put it drily, the parish was "‘less a flock of sheep than a
herd of goats / * The Jesuits tried to cope with the problem in every way
they could think of; perhaps not the least effective of these was to dedicate
the church they built there to Saint Maty Magdalen, and to pray that its
bell tower, ringing mellowly at dawn and dusk and marking the beginnings
and endings of our mortality, might now and again bring to the feet of
Christ some nameless sister of the "woman who was a sinner/' 36
The good Lucas de Castro not only helped to build the church of
Loretto but offered to endow it as a college. The provincial congregation
of 1627 recommended to Vitelleschi that the offer be accepted; which he
did, instituting a college of the same kind as that of Cebu and Iloilo, that
Is, where the resident fathers and brothers devoted themselves in part to
the ministry and in part to the conduct of an elementary school. The
document of foundation, signed at Manila on 2 1 August 1637, runs in
part as follows :
In the name of God almighty and of his blessed Mother . . . The licentiate
Lucas de Castro, secular priest resident in this city . . . declared that forasmuch
as the founding of colleges is productive of great good, besides being a work
pleasing to God our Lord ... he has conceived a desire to found in the port of
Cavite of this city a college of the religious of the Society of Jesus where the holy
sacraments may be administered, the holy gospel preached, and the children of
the said port taught and shriven. To this end he gave fourteen thousand pesos in
rials, according to the gold standard [de oro comun ], to Father Juan de Bueras, then
provincial of this holy order, with which the said Father Provincial established
the said college and proceeded to put into execution the pious intention of the
undersigned, to the very great glory of God. And although at the time he bestowed
the aforesaid moneys, he [Bueras] gave him a receipt for them, a legal instrument
of this foundation was not drawn up; whereupon he besought Father Juan de
Salazar, the present provincial of the Society of Jesus, to issue said instrument,
that it might not be lacking to so memorable a work, This his Paternity, here
present, consented to do in the following terms, to wit:
That he [Salazar] declared that he fully acknowledged the said fourteen thousand
pesos to have been well and truly delivered to his predecessor Father Juan de
Bueras, and the foundation of the college therefrom well and truly made; and
that he approved and ratified it fully and without reservations and according to all
the requirements of law . . . 37
Until 1619 the Chinese tenants of the Jesuit lands in the districts of
Santa Cruz and Mayhaligi formed part of the parish of Quiapo. On 20
June of that year the secular parish priest of Quiapo, Don Gregorio Catena
de Mesa, signed a document conceding the spiritual administration of these
374 r he Jesuits in the Philippines
tenants to the Jesuits, in accordance with the wishes of the administrator
of the archdiocese sede vacante , Bishop Arce of Cebu, who authorized the
transfer the same day. 38 A year later, on 20 October 1620, the new
archbishop of Manila, Fray Miguel Garcia Serrano, confirmed this dis-
position, stating the reasons for it:
Whereas, it has come to our notice that in Santa Cruz and Mayhaligi, lands and
properties which at present belong to the Society of Jesus, there are a number of
Christian sangleys and other newly arrived sangleys who desire to be baptized
and adopt our holy faith, and that in view of this it is necessary to assign them a
priest and missionary who will assist them and take care of their spiritual needs ;
considering that the order of the Society of Jesus may well take charge of this
ministry, We do hereby lay upon them this charge [namely] the ministry of the
said sangleys who are at present residing and will in future reside in the said lands
and properties of Santa Cruz and Mayhaligi of the said Society, and any others
who may settle on the . . . little island in the middle of the river between the
Parian and Quiapo; and We authorize them to found and construct a church
either on the said island or in Santa Cruz . . . wherein they may administer the
holy sacraments to the said sangleys and preach and give instruction to them in
Christian doctrine and the law of the gospel , 39
The "little island” referred to is clearly that on which the Hospicio de
San Jose now stands ; it was then known as la isleta del rio ) or simply Isleta.
On 8 August 1625 Acting Governor Fernando de Silva gave the govern-
ment's consent to the move, in accordance with the laws of the royal
patronage; this was ratified by the new proprietary governor, Don Juan
Nino de Tabora, upon his arrival the following year. 40 These details are
necessary for an understanding of the troublesome controversy which arose
later on regarding the administration of the parish of Santa Cruz. At the
time of which we speak, however, no one grudged it to the Society, for
the Chinese tenants in question were not very numerous — about 400
altogether in 163 1 — and all but 30 of them were still pagans. One of the
first missionaries assigned to the post was Father Pedro Parrado, of whom
we are told that he became quite fluent in the Fukien dialect; but the
same may be said, to a greater or less degree, of his successors, for they
quickly found that while the garbled Spanish which the sangleys picked
up in the market place might be good enough for purposes of haggling, it
did not quite serve to convey a proper understanding of the Creed. They
must have been greatly aided in their work by the Chinese catechism which
the Dominicans published at about the same time as their Tagalog cate-
chism, that is, in 1593 ’ an d which has recently been edited by Father
Gayo de Aragon of the University of Santo Tomas. 41
At the request of Bishop Diego de Guevara of Nueva Caceres two Jesuits,
Father Juan de Torres and Brother Francisco Martin, were sent on a
temporary mission to the Bondoc peninsula, which formed part of that
Fair , with Occasional Showers 375
diocese. The mission lasted from 1620 to 1626, during which time Torres
and Martin were able by ceaseless journeying and tactful dealing to
organize the scattered clans into stable settlements; or, as the delighted
bishop wrote to Ledesma in his cadenced Latin, “gregatim vivere, socie-
tatem amare, et in formam oppidorum tranquillam agere vitam.” 42
Another temporary mission, but one which like Cavite became a perma-
nent establishment, was entrusted to the Society in 1621. This was the
island of Malinding, hispanicized into Marinduque, where it may be
recalled Chirino stopped on his way to found the mission of Tigbauan,
and his ship’s company had a marvellous time catching deer with their
bare hands. It belonged to the archdiocese of Manila, and when the secular
priest stationed there died, Archbishop Garcia Serrano asked the Jesuits
to take it over until he could find a replacement. He never did find one,
so the Jesuits stayed and founded three towns: Boac, Santa Cruz, and
Gasang, with a smaller settlement or visita attached to the last named. The
special problem here was the prevalence of debt slavery, to the gradual
extirpation of which the fathers devoted themselves. Among the most
zealous of the missionaries of Marinduque was Father Juan de las Misas,
whose death at the hands of the Camucones was mentioned earlier. Another
was Domingo de Penalver, who, not finding enough scope in little Marin-
duque, crossed over to the neighboring island of Mindoro in 1626 and gave
a mo-month mission during which he heard 1,500 confessions. 43
Mindoro, like Marinduque, belonged to the Manila archdiocese. Its
principal town at this time was Naujan, whose pastor, a secular priest, had
invited Penalver to give the mission, Tagalogs had settled on the seacoast,
but the thickly forested interior was occupied by a more primitive people
called the Mangians, about whose conversion nothing had as yet been done.
Penalver’s successful mission gave the diocesan clergy of Mindoro the idea
of asking the Jesuits to establish themselves permanently in Mindoro for
the purpose of evangelizing the interior while they took care of the more
settled Tagalog towns. This arrangement was put into effect in 1631. Juan
de Bueras, the provincial at the time, constituted Mindoro and Marin-
duque a single mission, with three priests in residence at Naujan and two
in Marinduque. 44 The Mindoro fathers, after a preliminary survey of
their field of operations, estimated that there were about 6,000 Mangians
altogether. The Annual Letter of 1632 stated:
They wander through the forest fastnesses naked, save that nature prompts
them to cover their private parts with the bark of trees . . . Gold and silver coins
they esteem as nothing worth, but consider themselves wealthy if they own knives
and cooking pots ... If fortune smiles on them and they bring down a buffalo
[the tamarau or wild carabao native to Mindoro], they spread a feast in which they
piously make libations to their dead forbears, for being barbarians they consider
all the good things that they receive to be a gift from their ancestors. If anyone
376 The Jesuits in the Philippines
falls sick, the others, to effect his cure, cook a chicken and other foods and
assemble the clan. The native who has power over the ancestral spirits [qui avorum
animis praeest ] summons them with strange cries and bids them to the feast, in
order that they might make the sick man well again. The banquet over, they
collect the choicer morsels which remain, take them to the river, and wading
waist-deep into it plunge the morsels into the water. They then stir up the sand
[of the river bed] this way and that, for so they think— poor misguided people —
to restore to the sick man the health which the spirits had taken away . 45
The Mangians had two big objections to becoming Christians. One was
that up to that time whenever a Mangian became a Christian he invariably
wound up as a slave of one of the seacoast Tagalogs. The fathers solved this
problem by keeping their converts as much as possible from the Tagalog
towns and having them form their own communities. The second was that
the white priests were obviously complete strangers to their tribe; they
seemed to mean well, but how could one be sure ? For, in the experience
of the tribe, the stranger was ever the enemy. One of the fathers stumbled
upon an answer to this which was touching in its simplicity. He was trying
one day to persuade an old matriarch of great influence to become a Chris-
tian, but none of his carefully marshaled arguments impressed her very
much. Finally, wearying of the effort and merely in order to make conver-
sation, he remarked that the old lady should bear in mind he was her
relative, and that she could well take the place of his mother, who was of
the same age. He saw her perk up with interest, and proceeded to trace her
ancestry and his, with the aid of a tome of Cornelius a Lapide on his desk,
back to the patriarchs of Genesis and through them to Adam and Eve. She
listened enthralled, and when he finished cried out that since he was a
member of her clan and no stranger, there was no reason why she and her
household should not become Christians. By 1636 seven Mangian reduc-
tions had been organized by the fathers. 46
Thus, in spite of the sudden shocks and recurrent crises to w T hich the
Dutch subjected Manila and its hinterland during this period, the Jesuits
managed not only to continue but to expand their educational and
missionary work over a large portion of that extensive archdiocese.
Chapter Sixteen
THE LAST CONQUISTADOR
Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, knight of the Order of Alcantara,
former governor of Panama and governor of the Philippines by royal
appointment, arrived at Cavite with the Acapulco galleons of 1635 and
took possession of his office on 24 June of that year. He was an excellent
soldier. He was also, in the words of the Augustinian historian Diaz,
“rigid and austere, tenacious of will and stubborn in his judgments.” 1
He was particularly stubborn in maintaining the rights of the royal
patronage, which he suspected ecclesiastics of continually trying to whittle
down. He drew up for himself a list of guiding principles entitled:
“Memorandum which I must read every day and keep as far as possible.”
Among these reminders was the following: “To take particular care of the
royal jurisdiction and patronage, with which bishops and friars are trying
to interfere in many ways. Giving in to them even a little in this matter is
the reason why they refuse to obey the orders of his Majesty until they are
compelled by main force.” 2 Unfortunately for all concerned, Corcuera had
in the archbishop of Manila an antagonist equally resolute in maintaining
what he considered to be the immunities of the church. The result was that
less than a year after his arrival, Corcuera had banished the archbishop to
the small island of Corregidor at the entrance of Manila Bay, while the
archbishop in turn had placed him under the ban of major excommuni-
cation and the entire city of Manila under an interdict. How this unpre-
cedented situation came about may be briefly told.
The archbishop of Manila at this time was Fray Hernando Guerrero,
an Augustinian of long residence in the Philippines. Corcuera' s first
brush with the prelate was over the attempt of a certain Fray Diego
Collado, a Dominican, to divide the Philippine province of his order into
two parts, with himself superior of one of them. His plan was to use the
houses over which he claimed jurisdiction as a base for missionary expedi-
tions to China and Japan. For this purpose he brought letters of authoriza-
tion from Rome and a group of fellow Dominicans from Spain, who,
because of the long beards they wore, were dubbed by the frivolous
Manilans los barbados . Collado and his barbados sailed to the Philippines in
the same vessel as Corcuera and succeeded in convincing him of the
excellence of their project. As soon as they reached Manila, Corcuera
authorized the division of the Dominican houses demanded by Collado,
377
378 The Jesuits in the Philippines
a move which the Philippine Dominicans very naturally opposed. They
appealed to Archbishop Guerrero and the Dominican bishop of Nueva
Segovia, Fray Diego de Aduarte, both of whom vigorously took their part.
Corcuera, with some reluctance, gave way. 3
This was followed by a dispute concerning the right of sanctuary. 4 An
artilleryman named Francisco de Nava owned a slave girl for whom he
conceived such a passion that he offered to marry her if she would consent
to him. This, however, she would in no wise do and, escaping his vigilance,
fled to the house of a noble lady who promised to protect her. Nava,
maddened by her rejection of him, saw the girl one day riding in a carriage
behind her new mistress, and leaping into the carriage stabbed her to
death. Then he ran into the Augustinian convent nearby and demanded
the right of sanctuary, which was accorded him. Corcuera did not think
that sanctuary could be involved in such a case, and demanded the
surrender of the fugitive. The Augustinians refused, and the archbishop
supported them. In spite of this Corcuera sent a detachment of soldiers
into the Augustinian convent, forcibly extracted Nava and delivered him
to the officer of his unit for summary court martial. Sentence of death
having been passed, Corcuera pointedly had him hanged in a special
gallows erected in front of the Augustinian church.
The third in this mounting series of controversies was occasioned by
Corcuera’s attempt to execute a decree of banishment against the vicar
general of the archdiocese, Don Pedro de Monroy. Monroy, who had been
in office a long time, seems to have spent a considerable part of it in
defending the right of sanctuary. In 1623, and again in 1629, he harbored
fugitives from the royal justice, fulminating excommunications against
the officials who tried to take them away. He became so troublesome that
Governor Fajardo signed a decree banishing him from the realm, but for
some reason or other the decree was never executed. Corcuera saw no
reason why there should be any further delay; he ordered Monroy arrested.
The archbishop, however, and with him a considerable number of the
Manila clergy, were immediately up in arms. Corcuera then tried to per-
suade the archbishop at least to remove Monroy from office. But the arch-
bishop was adamant; Monroy had given him no reason for complaint.
Certain Jesuits who tried to intervene as peacemakers in this deadlock met
the not unusual fate of peacemakers; they were rebuffed by the archbishop
and his partisans, and some even voiced the suspicion that they sympa-
thized with Corcuera s view of the matter. Possibly they did; in any case,
their efforts came to nothing.
At this juncture Corcuera received a report from the officer in charge of
the Spanish garrison in Formosa loudly complaining of the friar attached
as military vicar to his command and urging his recall. This gave Corcuera
the opportunity he was looking for. Thinking to kill two birds with one
The Last Conquistador 379
stone, he ordered Monroy to leave at once for Formosa and relieve the friar.
While Monroy merely declined the appointment, alleging poor health,
Archbishop Guerrero went further. He called a meeting of superiors and
other representatives of the religious orders for the purpose of deciding
whether or not the governor's action constituted a violation of ecclesiastical
jurisdiction. All agreed to come except the Jesuits, whose provincial, Luis
de Pedraza, replied to the archbishop's invitation in the following terms:
Very illustrious Lord: It seems that the more the Society tries to be of service
to your illustrious Lordship and your vicar general by promoting peace in the
commonwealth and harmonious relations between its ecclesiastical and civil heads,
so much the more do certain parties (I do not know whether with the same good
intention) persist in misinterpreting our efforts, extracting, as the saying goes,
poison from the antidote. I therefore fail to see what useful purpose will be
served by our attendance, or what difference it will make if our views are not
heard ; for whatever may be said is bound to be received in the same spirit as our
recent well-intentioned attempts at mediation . 5
Those who did attend the meeting heartily endorsed the archbishop's
decision to inform Corcuera that Monroy was not available for the Formosa
post and to warn him that “to appoint a vicar or to confer ecclesiastical
authority and jurisdiction or the [power of] administering the sacraments
belongs exclusively to the prelates of the church and not to the secular
government." Corcuera' s reply to this is one of the clearest statements of
the powers of the patronato as they were understood by the colonial adminis-
trators of the period. He recognized, he said, the right of diocesan prelates
to approve the appointment of their subjects before they could exercise
jurisdiction or administer the sacraments. But the right to make the
appointment belonged to the government. This was the case with the pre-
lates themselves, who were appointed by the king and confirmed in their
appointment by the pope ; while in the case of parish priests and assistant
parish priests the procedure in the Philippines was for the diocesan prelate
to submit three names for each post from which the governor in the king's
name chose one. In the case of canonries, prebends, and military chap-
laincies, it was the governor who had the exclusive right to make the
appointment, the appointees merely obtaining from the competent prelate
confirmation of their appointment afterwards. To follow any other pro-
cedure would be to contravene the royal patronato.
Nevertheless Monroy did not go to Formosa. All that Corcuera could
get from the archbishop was his reluctant consent to deprive Monroy of
the vicarship ; but this was, after all, what he wanted in the first place.
Archbishop Guerrero now turned on the Jesuits for not supporting him
against the governor and with the approval of the junta from which they
absented themselves deprived them of the faculties to preach and hear
confessions in the archdiocese. Corcuera immediately intervened in favor
13*
380 The Jesuits in the Philippines
of the Jesuits, the commissary-general of the Inquisition intervened in
favor of the archbishop, and there was general unpleasantness. The city
pulpits rang with fiery denunciations of tyrannical government, prompting
Corcuera to write into his private memorandum a reminder that he ought
“to suffer preachers with patience, for they are bound to criticize and
revile even an angel.”
He did not, however, intend to yield an inch, even for the sake of peace,
where he believed his royal master’s patronal rights to be in question. His
resolution was now put to the test. In 1636 the dean or senior prebendary
of the cathedral, Don Francisco de Valdes, who was ailing, submitted his
resignation to the archbishop. Guerrero refused to accept it, for Corcuera
would be sure to make a test case out of the new appointment. But Valdes
was determined to retire, and so made a renunciation of his prebend
directly to the governor as vice-patron. The fat was now in the fire.
Corcuera accepted the renunciation and appointed as successor — or, in the
legal terminology of the time, '‘presented” to the diocesan prelate — the
parish priest of La Ermita, Don Andres Arias Giron. The archbishop
rejected the presentation on the grounds that the post was not yet vacant.
At the same time he reminded Valdes that his resignation had not been
accepted and warned the cathedral chapter not to recognize Giron. To
make assurance doubly sure he subjected Giron to an episcopal visitation
and ordered him out of city.
Giron appealed to the audiencia, which at that time consisted of only
one oidor, Marcos Zapata. When Zapata sustained Giron’s contention he
was promptly excommunicated by the archbishop for interfering in
ecclesiastical affairs. Corcuera then appointed three lawyers to take cog-
nizance of the case. This commission found that in excommunicating
Zapata the archbishop had committed faer^a, that is, had exceeded his
jurisdiction. Summoned to lift the censure on Zapata, Guerrero complied,
but he still stoutly refused to confirm Giron’s appointment, nor tvould he
show cause wffiy he refused. The audiencia, that is, Corcuera and Zapata
then began to issue a series of injunctions calling upon him to submit or
suffer banishment from the realm and sequestration of his goods.
The archbishop stood his ground. Corcuera and Zapata now had to make
good their threat. On 9 May 1636 they decided to take Guerrero into
custody; but after nightfall, so as to avoid a commotion in the city.
Guerrero got wind of the plan. Vesting in full pontificals he sent for the
blessed Sacrament to be brought to him in a pyx. He took it, and holding
it before him he sat down in his reception hall, surrounded by his priests,
to await his captors. This was the scene that met the soldiers sent to execute
the arrest when they arrived. They saw the frail old man who was their
Lord Archbishop holding before him, like a shield, God. Struck with awe,
they refused to carry out their orders. One of the officers in command
The Last Conquistador 381
pushed a soldier forward, calling on him to lay hold of the prelate. The
priests intervened. A scuffle ensued, during which the pyx slipped from
the archbishop's hands to the floor. There was a gasp of horror, and the
soldier who thought himself responsible for the sacrilege unsheathed his
sword and tried to kill himself.
There was nothing the officers could do but order the priests off the
premises and the men to wait until the archbishop should get tired and
relinquish the blessed Sacrament. Meanwhile, just before ten o'clock, the
bells of the cathedral began to toll cessatio a divinis , the dread interdict
which stopped all public worship in the city and forbade the rites of
Christian burial to the dead. The bells of the other churches followed.
People in their amazement began to pour out of their houses and mill
about until Corcuera joined the night watch in person and ordered the
streets cleared. All this while the bells tolled over the darkened city and
filled the silence in the hall where soldiers watched a tired old man and
waited. At one o'clock in the morning the archbishop could hold out no
longer. He gave the pyx to the solitary Franciscan who had been allowed
to keep vigil with him, and surrendering himself to his captors, was taken
to the island of Corregidor. 6
The temporary administrator of the archdiocese elected by the cathedral
chapter, Bishop Zamudio, absolved Corcuera and Zapata from excommuni-
cation and raised the interdict in time for the city to celebrate the feast of
Pentecost (xi May). Corcuera sent four of the chapter priests to Arch-
bishop Guerrero with an offer of restoration to his see on three conditions :
first, that he would confirm all the acts of jurisdiction performed by
Zamudio as administrator of the archdiocese ; second, that he would con-
firm the appointment of Giron; third, that in the government of his see
he would accept the advice of an asesor or legal expert who would be
appointed for the purpose. Guerrero accepted these terms, but in a private
protestation declared that he did so “ in order to free himself from restraint
and to procure the peace of his church and the quiet of his flock while
awaiting the decision of the royal and supreme Council of the Indies." 7
What that decision was we learn from a marginal notation on a trans-
cript of the sentence passed on Corcuera after his residencia. It said, with
reference to the controversy, that " in a paragraph of his letter of 17 Feb-
ruary 1639, his Majesty ordered this whole matter to be forgotten." The
finding of the jue^ de residencia on the charge that Corcuera's proceedings
in ecclesiastical affairs had been irregular was that "fraud is neither
charged nor proven; on the contrary, the royal ministers of justice certify
that all this w 7 as necessary and demanded by the service of God and of the
king our lord and the glory of the royal arms." 8 The king himself put it
much more strongly in a communication which he addressed to Arch-
bishop Guerrero on 30 May 1640:
382 The Jesuits in the Philippines
It has been called to my attention that you have engaged in disputes and shown
a lack of cooperation with the president as well as the oidores and other officials
of the audiencia [of Manila] as a result of certain grudges and resentments you
have conceived with no reasonable foundation save that the measures taken by the
said audiencia to protect my patronage and royal authority did not seem to you
very appropriate. If you had borne in mind what was advantageous to my service
and conformable to the dignity of your person and office, you might well have
avoided all this. I therefore deem it necessary to inform you (as I now do) that I
consider myself to have been uncommonly ill served in this whole affair, especially
by what has been noted and proved against you, namely, your refusal to cooperate
as you ought with the said my audiencia, and to respect it as a tribunal which
represents the supreme authority of my person, and upon which depends the
administration of justice in so distant and extensive a portion of my dominions . . .
You will do well in future to conduct yourself with greater circumspection and
restraint, extending toward all officials and especially to the president and oidores
of the said audiencia the cooperation and deference which is due, and treating
them in general and in particular with the respect and courtesy to which their
quality and the nature of the office which they hold obliges you . . . And rest
assured that if this my admonition does not suffice to restrain and moderate your
behavior, I shall be forced to take stronger measures in your regard, having
recourse if necessary to his Holiness for the execution of whatever may be most
convenient for my service and the good government and welfare of the realm. You
will recognize from its effects the severe indignation with which I shall proceed ;
for it is not fitting that that republic should be put in such imminent risk of
being lost because of your rash and imprudent way of acting . 9
Seldom if ever has so stinging a rebuke been administered to a prelate by
the most Catholic king of Spain. Whether it was deserved or not, it is an
excellent indication of the extreme sensitivity of the Crown to anything
that might seem to abridge its rights of patronage. We shall indeed do well,
as Philip IV advised his archbishop, to remember this in future.
As mentioned earlier, the establishment of the Zamboanga garrison was
not very popular either with the troops or with the citizens of Manila. For
the troops it was too remote and exposed a post; for the citizens it was a
drain on the colonial finances which yielded, to them at least, no particular
advantage. Almost from the moment of his arrival in the Philippines
Corcuera was plagued with petitions that the garrison be withdrawn, on
the grounds that it did not perform, and was incapable of performing the
function for which it was intended, namely, to prevent the Moslem cor-
sairs from making their annual incursions on the Visayan islands. 10 Some
color was given to this argument by the fact that in April 1636 a powerful
Magindanau armada did succeed in breaking past Zamboanga. It had been
organized by Kudrat, now undisputed lord of the Great River, and
commanded by his most trusted officer Tagal. Tagal led the armada to
Cuyo in the Calamianes, where he captured the corregidor himself of the
The Last Conquistador 383
region, Diego de Alabes, and three Recollect missionaries. He then pro-
ceeded to Mindoro where he put Alabes ashore in order that he might go
to Manila for his ransom and that of the Recollects. The ransom demanded
was 2,ooo silver pesos and 30 taels of gold for each person. On his home-
ward voyage Tagal encountered a flotilla of Camucones returning from a
raid on Samar and Albay ; he fell upon them with fine impartiality, stripped
them of their booty and slaves, and sent them scurrying to their hiding
places on the Palawan coast. 11
The Zamboanga garrison had indeed failed badly. Corcuera, however,
seems to have suspected a certain indifference in the officers stationed there
as to whether it succeeded or not, for his first move was to replace them,
sending Major Bartolome Diaz Barrera as governor of the fort and Major
Nicolas Gonzalez as his second in command. His second move was to put
three companies of Spanish and one company of Pampango troops, about
400 men altogether, in eleven sampans, and with this small force to
attempt what his predecessors had never got around to doing properly:
the conquest of Magindanau. As chaplains of the expedition he appointed
two Jesuits, Father Juan de Barrios, his confessor, and Father Marcello
Mastrilli.
Mastrilli had had an unusual experience w 7 hile stationed at the College of
Naples. 12 He was dismantling an altar which had been set up in the palace
of the viceroy for the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1633 when a
carpenter accidentally dropped a hammer from a height and struck him
on the head. He was taken to the college unconscious. Three days later he
developed a high fever, and three weeks later lockjaw and paralysis of the
left arm. The doctors confessed that they could do nothing more with him.
He received extreme unction but could not be given the viaticum because
of the state of his jaw. He managed to convey by signs that he wanted a
painting of Saint Francis Xavier to be placed beside his bed. During his
illness he had made a promise with his provincial's consent that if God
should deign to cure him through Xavier's intercession, he would spend the
rest of his life as a missionary in the East. The morning after his anointing
he was able to receive holy communion without any difficulty, and the
morning after that, completely cured, he went down to the church to say
Mass. That same afternoon the cardinal archbishop of Naples sent
notaries to the college to take down testimonies regarding his recovery,
which was considered miraculous. Mastrilli declared that on the night
after he had asked Xavier's picture to be brought to him (2-3 January),
the saint appeared to him in a vision, reminded him of his promise to go
to the Indies, and told him he was cured.
Mastrilli readily obtained permission from Father General Vitelleschi
to fulfill his promise by going to Japan. On his way there, however, his
vessel was driven by a storm into Manila Bay, and he and the four Italian
384 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Jesuits with him stepped ashore at Cavite on 3 1 July 1636. His story attrac-
ted a great deal of attention in Manila and great crowds came to the college
church to hear him preach. He was about to resume his journey when
Corcuera asked him to put it off in order to accompany the Magindanau
expedition as chaplain. He agreed.
The expedition left Manila on 2 February 1637 and stopped briefly at
Iloilo for supplies.* 3 Good news was brought to Corcuera there by
Gregorio Belin, one of the Jesuit missionaries stationed at Zamboanga.
TagaFs armada, laden with spoils, had sought to avoid an encounter with
the Zamboanga garrison by sailing around the southern shore of Basilan
island instead of through the strait. They were, however, sighted by Iba, a
Lutau datu friendly to the Spaniards, who flew to Zamboanga with the
news. Major Gonzalez at once set out to lay an ambush for Tagal at a point
of land midway between Zamboanga and the Great River called Punta
Flechas. The naval squadron at Zamboanga had by this time added to the
heavy galley of Mediterranean design a number of light fast caracoas,
similar to those of the Magindanaus. Gonzalez and his force therefore
had no difficulty in reaching Punta Flechas before TagaFs fleet.
The local name for Punta Flechas was Panaon ; the Spaniards gave it the
name they did because of the arrows which bristled on the cliff face of the
headland. For the Magindanaus and other peoples of the area it was the
habitation of a divinity, and whenever they set out on a voyage, it was their
custom to cruise past it to discharge a flight of arrows. If their arrows buried
themselves in the cliff, they would have good fortune ; if they struck aslant
or fell off, bad. On their return, if successful, they would pass by again;
but this time, besides saluting the god with arrows, they would come
ashore to lay a thanks-offering at the foot of the cliff. It was for this reason
that Gonzalez was fairly sure Tagal would fall into his trap.
And fall he did. Caught completely unawares and hampered by their
booty, the Magindanaus were decisively defeated. Tagal was killed. So was
one of the three captive Recollects, who received three bullets in the chest.
The surviving raiders managed to get away with the other two. TagaFs
treasure chest, containing 6,000 pesos in gold, was captured; 300 of the
enemy taken prisoner; 120 Christian captives liberated; many sacred
vessels and vestments recovered. The action took place, propitiously
enough, on Christmas day 1636. This was the news which Belfn brought
to Corcuera at Iloilo. The expedition left immediately, reached Zamboanga
on 22 February, got under way again on 4 March, and reached the mouth
of the Great River on x 3 March. Kudrat’s defenses consisted of a flotilla
of 300 warboats based on the fortified town of Lamitan. Corcuera swept
the warboats off the water and captured in the process two large merchant
craft from Java, full of merchandise and slaves. He then effected a landing,
stormed Lamitan and took it. Kudrat, however, was able to retire in
The Last Conquistador 385
passably good order to his second and main line of defense, the hill fortress
of Magindanau.
On 1 6 March Major Gonzalez arrived with reinforcements from Zam-
boanga. Corcuera set up camp before Magindanau and scheduled an attack
for the next day. His plan called for a two-pronged assault : Gonzalez with
120 Spaniards, 30 Pampangos, and 80 Visayan service troops to take the
stronghold from the rear while the rest of the force under Corcuera' s
personal command attacked frontally. Gonzalez and his force left camp at
six in the morning. He was to sound a trumpet as soon as he was in
position, in order that the two attacks might be made simultaneously. He
reached his area without incident, but before giving the signal sent out the
usual patrols to protect his flanks and feel out the enemy's lines. One of
these, disobeying his orders, attacked prematurely. Gonzalez was obliged
to come to its support, and the signal was never given. Kudrat, able to
give Gonzalez his undivided attention, threw him back with heavy loss.
Gonzalez dug in at the foot of the hill, and when night fell Kudrat
withdrew his forces.
Kudrat, realizing that Gonzalez led only a part of the attacking force,
must have divined Corcuera' s intentions and prepared for a frontal assault
on the following day. Corcuera, outguessing him, scrapped the plan and
sent word to Gonzalez to attack as soon as it was light, without bothering
to sound a signal. Corcuera was at Mass when the guns at the rear of the
stronghold went into action ; Gonzalez had engaged. Retaining only a small
holding force to simulate a frontal attack, he sent the the bulk of his
troops around to Gonzalez and ordered him to drive home the assault in
that sector. The plan succeeded. In spite of the desperate resistance of
Kudrat’s men the stronghold was taken. Kudrat himself, badly wounded,
was barely able to escape. His principal wife and other women, caught
inside the citadel, killed themselves to escape capture. 14
On 20 March Mastrilli went up to the captured stronghold with Cor-
cuera ; but so great was the stench of the unburied dead that they did not
stay long. Corcuera ordered all the defenses razed to the ground and
returned to his base at Lamitan. There he learned that Kudrat had been
taken by his retainers to a remote inland village and that his life was
despaired of. He at once sent Major Pedro Palomino and Father Melchor
de Vera with xoo Spanish troops to Bwayan, where Mongkai, Kudrat's
nephew, was lord. They were to offer him the rule of the Great River
under a Spanish protectorate; if he agreed, he was to send envoys to
Corcuera at Zamboanga with powers to ratify a treaty of peace under
Corcuera' s conditions. On 25 March Corcuera left for Zamboanga. Three
hours out of Lamitan he was met by a squadron of 40 vessels bringing
l,2oo Visayans who had volunteered for service against the Magindanaus.
They were accompanied by Pedro Gutierrez, the Jesuit rector of
386 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Dapitan. Corcuera told them to report to Palomino and continued on his
way,
Mongkai sent his brother to Zamboanga to accept Corcuera’s terms.
They were: immediate release of all Christian captives in the Great River;
payment of tribute to the Spanish government; freedom for Jesuit mis-
sionaries to preach Christianity; establishment of a Spanish fort in the
area; and an offensive and defensive alliance between the Magindanaus
and the Spaniards, in virtue of which Mongkai was obliged to deliver
Kudrat to the Spaniards. Raja Bungsu of Jolo was quick to realize that the
new Spanish governor meant business, made decisions quickly, and moved
the moment they were made. He made immediate preparations for a major
war and, in order to gain time to complete them, sent his prime minister,
Datu Ache, to make peace overtures. Corcuera gave the wily datu little
opportunity for protracted negotiations. He demanded as a preliminary
condition even for the discussion of a treaty the surrender by Jolo of all
claims to the island of Basilan and its outright annexation by Spain. With
that, he sent Datu Ache back to his master and, disdaining to wait for a
reply, asked two Jesuits, Gregorio Belin and Francisco Angel, to go to
Basilan, receive the submission of its datus to the Spanish government, and
establish a mission station. He then set sail for Manila and stepped ashore
at Cavite on 19 May, after an absence of a little more than three months.
Manila prepared a Roman triumph for the conquistador. The vessel in
which he made the crossing from Cavite was met by gaily decorated sam-
pans which escorted it not to the usual landing place near the river gate
but to one specially prepared on the beach near the southern or royal
gate. A suburb had sprung up here, populated chiefly by Spaniards who
preferred to live in the open countryside rather than within the city wall ;
and because of its recent development it was called the New Town —
Bagumbayan. Here, then, the triumphal procession was formed, and,
passing through the royal gate, marched up Calle Real, past the Jesuit
college, to the cathedral. First came Nicolas Gonzalez’s company, that
had won the battle of Punta Flechas, carrying the captured standards of
Tagal. Then came the seamen of the expedition, marching in two lines,
with the Chinese and Filipino captives who had been liberated in the
campaign marching between them. Then came the Magindanau prisoners,
the women and children walking free, the men in chains, and after them
service troops carrying stacks of captured weapons. Next in order marched
the Pampango troops, followed by a great rumbling and clattering as the
horses of Corcuera s artillery dragged the guns captured at Lamitan and
Magindanau. But even the noise they made was drowned in the cheers that
went up from the crowds that lined the street and filled the windows, for
after them came Corcuera himself, preceded by six boys dragging in the
dust in front of him the captured standards of Kudrat.
The Last Conquistador 387
Opposite the College of Manila the Jesuits had erected a tremendous
triumphal arch, and as Corcuera approached it the provincial, Juan de
Salazar, stepped forward to offer his congratulations and the church choir
and orchestra struck up a rousing song which nobody heard because of the
pealing of the bells in the tower immediately above them. Corcuera finally
reached the cathedral, where the members of the audiencia, the cathedral
chapter, and the city corporation waited to welcome him. There was one
pointed absence. The archbishop was not there.
Word came of warlike preparations in Jolo. 15 War bands not only from
the other Sulu islands but from as far away as Macassar and Melayu were
flocking to Raja Bungsu's capital. Elaborate fortifications were being
built, under Datu Ache's direction, around the hilltop citadel. To Cor-
cuera' s demand for Basilan a short reply was returned: who demanded
Basilan from the Sulus demanded war, not peace. Corcuera accepted the
challenge. On 4 January 1638 he appeared before Jolo with 80 vessels of
all types, 600 Spanish and 3,000 Filipino troops. Accompanying the
expedition were five Jesuits : Pedro Gutierrez, Juan de Barrios, Melchor de
Vera, Francisco Martinez, and Gregorio Belin. A sixth, Alejandro Lopez,
joined them later. Before commencing hostilities, Corcuera sent Belin to
the citadel with a summons to submit. Bungsu refused him entrance, but
sent an emissary to ask for time to consider the terms of surrender.
Corcuera considered this a delaying tactic and proceeded to encircle the
Sulu stronghold.
The hill which the Sulus had chosen for their stronghold stood about
two and a half miles from the coast. It had an almost level top on which
was a spring of fresh water. Its sides rose so steeply from the level ground
that it did not measure much more at the base than at the summit. To these
natural advantages Datu Ache had added a formidable system of defenses.
There were only two places at which an assault by the forces at Corcuera's
disposal had any chance of success: the approach to the main entrance
of the citadel on the east, and on the north the bed of the little stream
formed by the spring. Corcuera built a ring of eight blockhouses com-
pletely around the stronghold, but concentrated the bulk of his forces at
the two more accessible points. He wanted to see whether he could take
it by storm. On 19 February he ordered a general assault. It was repelled
with great carnage. Corcuera now fell back on standard siege operations.
He ordered five mines dug against Datu Ache's principal defenses.
Three were exploded successfully. One blew up a rampart with 5° men
on it. But it was Admiral Pedro de Almonte who broke the spirit of
the defenders. Working with incredible speed, he managed to push
a masked bastion to a slight rise of ground outside the citadel's
defenses. The operation was screened so successfully that it was com-
pleted before the Sulus could take counter measures. When Almonte
388 The Jesuits in the Philippines
finally unmasked his batteries, dismay and dissension took possession of
the citadel*
On 5 April a Lutau warrior stole from the fort, hailed the Spanish lines
and asked to be taken to Father Pedro Gutierrez. If the Lutaus made a
separate peace, would their lives be spared ? Corcuera authorized the Jesuit
to give them this assurance. The following day, envoys from Raja Bungsu
himself came to ask for terms. Corcuera told them that a safe-conduct
would be extended to the Lutaus, the Macassars, and any other allied
troops who surrendered; but as for the Sulus, they must surrender at
discretion. The Lutaus and the Macassars now began to abandon the
citadel, apparently without hindrance from the Sulus. Raja Bungsu asked
for a personal interview with Corcuera under a flag of truce. The request
was granted, but Corcuera answered him as he had answered his envoys;
the Sulus must surrender unconditionally. Bungsu doubted if he could
persuade his datus, but promised to try. The truce was extended to give
him time.
The next day Bungsu, relying on the chivalry of the Spaniards, sent down
his principal wife, the Lady Baluka, and the other women of his household.
He was not mistaken; they were kept prisoner but treated well. Some of
the Sulus now took advantage of the truce by escaping from the fort under
cover of darkness. When Corcuera expressed his displeasure at this to the
Lady Baluka, she said that if she was permitted to return to the citadel she
would put a stop to it. Corcuera agreed. The next thing he knew, both
Raja Bungsu and Tuan Baluka, with a considerable number of their
retainers, had slipped through his lines and escaped into the inaccessible
interior of the island. He lost no time in occupying the citadel, which the
remaining Sulus made no move to defend. It was in this unsatisfactory
fashion that Corcuera's Jolo campaign ended.
Still, what he had won was not inconsiderable. Bungsu's capital and
citadel were his, and with them all the artillery on which much of the
power of the Sulus depended. All portable property was confiscated, and
after the troops had taken their share of the booty, what was left to the
Crown netted 28,345 pesos, which was 2,03 1 pesos more than the cost of
the entire campaign. Corcuera took surprisingly few prisoners, only 192
altogether, men, women, and children. We do not know under what
formality these were chosen; but they were taken to Manila and sold at
public auction, bringing into the treasury 20,815 pesos more. We must,
however, record Archbishop Guerrero's comment on this transaction. He
said that when Corcuera could not unload all his prisoners on the public, he
forced them on the troops at 150 pesos per head, deductible from their
pay, when in the open market they were worth, at most, 60 or 70 pesos. 16
Having left a garrison of 200 Spanish and 200 Pampango troops at Jolo,
with Captain Gines Ros de Aviles as governor and Fathers Francisco
The Last Conquistador 389
Martinez and Alejandro Lopez as chaplains, Corcuera returned to Manila
and was received with the wildest enthusiasm. On 31 May 1638 he was
given a second triumph, even more splendid than the last. In two successive
years he had planted the banner of Spain on the two principal strongholds
of the predatory power that had for almost half a century brought death
and destruction to all the islands of the Visayas and almost to the very
gates of Manila itself. He had done it, moreover, with a calm assurance
of power, a supreme self-confidence, that captivated the imagination of
the colonists, dispelling their late fears of going under before the repeated
assaults of the heretic Dutch with a breath from the spacious age of the
conquistadors. Boys at their games, faithfully reflecting the preoccupations
of their elders, fell to playing Espanoles and Mindanaos, with a Corcuera,
wooden sword in air, leading the charge against the defiant ranks of a
Kudrat. Juan Lopez, one of the Cavite Jesuits, relates with amusement that
school having been dismissed early the day before the town celebrated the
victory of Jolo, a band of boys went to the new fort under construction,
there to re-enact the battle of Magindanau on the unfinished ramparts.
The two “armies” went at each other with such conviction that “Kudrat”
refused to do what was expected of him, standing his ground instead of
fleeing. He was pushed over a parapet by the outraged “Spaniards” and
had to have five stitches sewn on his scalp; but Lopez saw him at the
parade the next day, as lively as ever, though his head was swathed in
bandages. 17
On the night of 20 November 1639 a courier galloped into Manila with
the news that the Chinese of Calamba, a state settlement project on the
south shore of the Lake of Bai, had risen in revolt and were marching to-
ward the city. 18 Corcuera at once dispatched a cavalry unit of 30 men
under Captain Martin de Aduna to find out the strength, location, and
intentions of the rebels. He then opened the city gates to permit the
Spaniards resident outside the walls to come in with their families and
valuables, shut them again, and began hasty preparations for defense.
Governor Tabora’s plan of compelling a part of the Chinese population
of Manila to cultivate public land in Calamba under government auspices
was put into execution by Corcuera soon after his arrival in the Philippines.
The Chinese, who had emigrated not to farm but to trade, were thoroughly
opposed to the project, but they were given no option. Forcibly transported
to Calamba they were assigned plots of land for which they were expected
to pay rent to the government at the rate of 25 pesos a year. The land was
fertile but poorly drained and malarial; in 1639 more than 300 of the
settlers fell sick and died. As the year drew to a close the alcalde mayor of
La Laguna and supervisor of the Calamba project, Don Luis Arias de
Mora, began to press for the land rent and, as Diaz suggests, added
numerous other exactions of his own which finally drove the settlers to
390 The Jesuits in the Philippines
desperation. Arming themselves with brush knives, mattocks, and pikes
improvised by lashing scythes and sickles to the end of poles, they rushed
the town of Calamba, cut Arias up into little pieces, killed the two priests
of the parish, and set out, 3 ,000 strong, toward Manila.
Aduna’s cavalry made contact with the advanced units of the rebels in
the vicinity of San Pedro Tunasan. In the ensuing skirmish Aduna was
killed and his men fell back on Paranaque. The rebels, pressing steadily on,
reached San Pedro Makati on 22 November. The community of the Jesuit
residence there consisted of one priest, Francisco Vicente, and two lay
brothers, Stefano Oliverio and Raymundo Alberto. When they saw the
Chinese approach, they took refuge on the roof of the church together
with the servants of the hacienda, while 500 frightened refugees from the
surrounding countryside barricaded themselves inside the church itself.
The rebels had no difficulty battering down the doors. They overpowered
the people within and set fire to the woodwork in the church and the
residence. The Jesuits and their companions managed to keep them off the
church roof with bricks but, tortured by thirst and suffocated by the smoke
from the burning buildings, they shouted to the rebels that they would
come down if their lives were spared. The rebels consented, and the three
Jesuits surrendered with fifteen of the servants. The others preferred to
wait; they were wise. The rebels treated Father Vicente well, for he was a
valuable hostage ; the two lay brothers they bound ; the servants they put
to death.
At this juncture one of the flying columns sent out by Corcuera came
upon them and promptly opened fire. It was a small but well disciplined
force consisting of 80 Spanish cavalry, 200 Spanish infantry, 100 Pampan-
gos, 400 Tagalogs, and two field artillery pieces, with Major Julio de
Arceo in command. The Chinese, hard-pressed, sent Father Vicente across
the lines to ask for terms. Negotiations were still in progress when a
Spanish patrol boat came up the river behind the Chinese, landed a small
force and attacked. Caught by surprise, the Chinese panicked, and instead
of securing the church and residence abandoned it to the marines. The
rebel commander hurriedly loosed Brother Alberto from his bonds and
ordered him across the line of fire to tell the marines that a parley was in
progress. Alberto did so, but having gone half way he looked back and
saw that the Chinese were preparing to retire from the field. Whereupon
waving his arms wildly, he shouted at the top of his lungs: " Spaniards I
Up and at them ! They flee ! ” Arceo and the marines sprang to the attack
on the instant. The rebels streamed wildly through both ends of the
closing pincers. In the confusion, Brother Oliverio managed to free him-
self. 300 rebels were left dead on the field and 300 more were taken
prisoner.
The panic was contagious. The main body of the rebels new broke up
The Last Conquistador 391
into two parts. One, consisting of about 1,500 men, backtracked to
Calamba and fortified themselves on a hill. Two Spanish columns wiped
them out ; only 3 00 were able to break through the lines to safety. The
other rabble of rebels (for by this time it was nothing more than that)
streamed northward, bypassing Manila, toward San Mateo and the Sierra
Madre foothills. Taytay and Antipolo lay across their path. The people of
Taytay put up a spirited resistance but were overwhelmed by numbers.
At Antipolo the defenders were also swept aside by that stampeding
human herd. The rector of the residence, Father Alonso de Arroyo, barely
had time to hide his church's most precious treasure, the statue of Our
Lady of Peace, and the crucifix above the altar in the neighboring wood of
Ginapau. A band of rebels found them there, thrust their lances in the
statue, and threw it along with the crucifix into a bonfire. When Spanish
troops arrived on the scene, the bonfire had reduced itself to ashes and
consumed the wood of the crucifix. But the corpus of the crucifix and the
Lady statue, which were also of wood, though charred, were unhurt. Our
Lady of Antipolo returned in triumph to her church ; but Corcuera asked
for the crucifix and placed it for a perpetual remembrance in the royal
chapel which he built in Fort Santiago for the troops of the garrison.
While these actions were taking place in the field, Corcuera at Manila
took desperate measures which are difficult to justify. He ordered all the
Chinese inside the walled city to be put to the sword without mercy. An
oidor of the audiencia and the two alcaldes ordinarios, accompanied by a
detachment of troops, went from house to house, took out all the Chinese
they could find, and executed them on the spot. The Chinese in the Parian,
hearing of this, took equally desperate measures to protect themselves. To
understand what followed it must be borne in mind that in the Parian
those who belonged to the same trade tried as far as possible to set up their
shops on the same street, and doubtless had a guild of their own. Thus the
streets came to be known after the tradesmen who had their shops on it ;
one of these, Arroceros, Rice Vendors Street, survives today, though the
rice vendors have long since gone.
On Friday, 2 December 1639, the sangleys of Pork Sellers Lane raised
the standard of revolt. They were joined by their neighbors the ink
manufacturers, and, a mob forming, a kind of madness seized them, so
that they began to pull down and burn their own quarter over their heads,
starting from the street of the armorers. Soon the entire Parian was in
flames, and in the livid glare of the conflagration the sangleys ran scream-
ing and yelling around the city. But finding that they could neither force
the gates nor scale the walls, they soon tired of this sport and drew off to
join the rebel encampment near San Mateo. This was exactly what
Corcuera hoped they would do, for he wanted to deal with them in the
open, away from the populated suburbs. He set off in pursuit, fanning out
392 The Jesuits in the Philippines
his cavalry patrols as far north as Bocaue and as far south as Baras in order
to ride herd on the fleeing sangleys and keep them together so that they
could be the more easily cut down or captured. Large numbers were
massacred in flight, but the survivors managed to effect a juncture with the
Calamba rebels, forming a multitude of about 6,000. Crossing the San
Mateo River, they fell back southeastward before Corcuera until they
found a strong position between Lumban and Cabinti, on the eastern
shore of Bai. Here they dug in for a last stand, for they expected no mercy
either from the Spaniards or from the surrounding Tagalog population.
And, indeed, Corcuera’ s first intention was to exterminate them. He had
already sent couriers to all the provinces ordering a general massacre of
the Chinese. At Cavite the commander of the naval station, Alonso Garcia
Romero, rounded up all the Chinese residents, squeezed them into the
town hall, and took them out in batches of ten to be shot. As the grim
carnage proceeded, the prisoners left in the town hall made a wild break
for their lives. Troops held in readiness nearby mowed them down. Eleven
hundred perished. In Pampanga, 1,800 were beheaded at the orders of the
alcalde mayor, Santiago Gastelu; in Bulacan, 5 00; in Tondo (the present
province of Rizal), 300; in La Laguna, 200; in Pangasinan, 500; in
Ilocos, 100; and so in the other provinces. It is estimated that by March
1640 a total of 22,000 Chinese had perished as a consequence of the
uprising. At Cabinti, however, wiser counsels prevailed, whether Cor-
cuera’s own, or that of his advisers. We know at least that Father Onofre
Esbri, the Jesuit parish priest of Santa Cruz, who spoke fluent Chinese,
was sent for and authorized to offer terms of surrender to the rebel com-
manders. They accepted, and the residue of the Chinese population of
Manila — 6,000 out of an estimated 33,000 — laid down their arms. They
were escorted back to the city under heavy guard, more to protect them
from the civilian population than to prevent their escape. There they were
divided into two classes, Christian and pagan. The Christian Chinese were
permitted to reside in the Jesuit parish of Santa Cruz; the pagan Chinese
were assigned a stockaded enclosure in the Dominican parish of Binondo
and forbidden under heavy penalties to go more than half a mile outside
of it. No sangleys were permitted in the provinces at all, either as residents
or as itinerant peddlers, and the Calamba project was given up. But both
Spaniards and Filipinos were too dependent on them as skilled workers,
suppliers of commodities and sources of income for these restrictions to
last. Within a few years the Spanish owners of the Parian lots had rebuilt
the shops on them (with Chinese labor) and were collecting rent (from
Chinese tradesmen); while the peddlers’ barges were once again on the
move, bringing up to the fall line of the rivers the myriad products of
Chinese ingenuity, from crowbars to combs, from pistols to porcelain.
On his way back to Manila from Jolo, Corcuera stopped at Zamboanga
The Last Conquistador 393
and made the following dispositions. He appointed Admiral Almonte
governor of Zamboanga and commander-in-chief of all the Spanish forces
in the Mindanao and Sulu area. Captain Cristobal Marquez he dispatched
to Magindanau with orders to establish a fort at Bwayan and enlist
Mongkai’s help to reduce Kudrat to submission. The conquest of the
territory around Lake Lanao, in the center of the island, he entrusted to
the alcalde mayor of Caraga, Captain Francisco Atienza. At Jolo he left
Ros Aviles in charge, as we have seen. By previous arrangement with the
Philippine provincial, Jesuits were to act as chaplains to all these expedi-
tions and wherever possible begin the evangelization of the local popu-
lation.
At Bwayan, Marquez fell out with Mongkai over the question of who
was to control the fort. 19 The breach was widened by a disputed succession
among the pagan tribesmen of the hills. Mongkai favored Balatamai, a
minor; Marquez gave his support to Balatamai’s uncle, Manakior. Mongkai
thereupon declared open war, denying Bwayan to the Spaniards. Manakior
mustered his highland clans and joined Marquez in devastating Mongkai’s
territory. Meanwhile, word was received at Zamboanga that Kudrat was
recruiting in the vicinity of La Sabanilla (Pollok Harbor), some distance
north of the Great River. Almonte immediately sent a force there to keep
Kudrat in check and prevent him from effecting a juncture with Mongkai.
Major Pedro del Rio commanded the expedition; Father Melchor de
Vera went in the double capacity of chaplain and engineer, for Almonte
wanted a fort built there to command both the harbor and the hinterland.
On 22 March 1639 Almonte took over additional troops and assumed
personal command.
Leaving a token force at La Sabanilla to demonstrate against Kudrat and
keep him occupied, he rushed his main body to Marquez’s assistance.
Mongkai prepared to resist by cutting the dikes along the river near
Bwayan and flooding his fields; but after an arduous campaign Almonte
took the town and razed it to the ground while Mongkai and his men
scattered to the hills. He turned the territory over to Manakior with the
promise that if he was able to keep Mongkai at bay the Spanish government
would recognize him as the legitimate lord of Magindanau.
Kudrat, however, still had to be reckoned with. He had been gaining
steadily in strength, and soon had the Sabanilla fort encircled. He enticed
one of the brigs of the naval patrol stationed there out of range of the
fort’s guns, fell upon it with a squadron of seven large caracoas, killed
some of the marines aboard and took the rest prisoner. When Pedro
Gutierrez, who had replaced Melchor de Vera as chaplain, went to nego-
tiate their release under a flag of truce, Kudrat detained him as hostage.
However, Gutierrez remonstrated with him so persuasively that he even-
tually agreed not only to release the prisoners but to make peace.
394 r he Jesuits in the Philippines
Meanwhile, Manakior and the small Spanish force that Almonte had left
with him were having their troubles with Mongkai. Mongkai had returned
with enough troops to invest Bwayan, and the Spanish commander, Juan
Lopez de Lucero, did not have enough to raise the siege. When, therefore,
Mongkai invited him to a conference outside the fort to discuss terms of
peace, he readily and most unwisely agreed. Accompanied by the Jesuit
chaplain of the garrison, Father Pedro Andres de Zamora, and a small
escort, he walked out of range of the fort's guns to meet Mongkai' s envoys.
Only the heroic fidelity of his personal bodyguard enabled him to escape
from the ambush with his life. Father Zamora, left for dead by the
Magindanaus, was carried back to the fort, lingered for three days, and
died on 28 December 1639.
The straits to which Mongkai now reduced the Spaniards at Bwayan
induced their ally, Manakior, to reconsider his position. The result of his
heart-searching was that he quietly disappeared from Bwayan. Several
months later he turned up again — in Kudrat's camp, married to Kudrat's
sister. This was not quite treason, since Kudrat was now, nominally at
least, at peace with the Spaniards; it was, however, more than a little
disquieting. For Kudrat had by this time returned to the Great River;
his forces straddled it below Bwayan, so that he could at any moment cut
off the life line of the Spanish garrison there.
This ticklish situation was most distasteful to the Spanish officers in the
area, accustomed as they were to the unambiguous submission of the
northern provinces; and to no one more distasteful than to Agustin de
Marmolejo, a junior-grade officer in the colonial navy. In the early part
of June 1642 he was put in charge of a transport convoy taking supplies
to the Bwayan garrison. His command consisted of two sampans and a
smaller vessel called a cho , with a total crew of fifty. The chaplain of the
expedition was Father Bartolome Sanchez. Because of the peace with
Kudrat, the transports went unarmed and without escort. It was impressed
upon Marmolejo that he was simply to deliver the supplies at Bwayan, and
under no circumstances to take any action that could be interpreted by the
Magindanaus as hostile.
But Marmolejo did not subscribe to this soft policy. As soon as he
reached the Great River, he dispatched a courier to Kudrat with a message.
The message was, in brief, that if Kudrat was as valiant as he was reported
to be, he would come out in the open and fight, instead of weaving subtle
plots in the background ; only thus could he prove himself to be a cock and
not a pullet. Kudrat vouchsafed no reply. He let the transports alone for a
week, during which Marmolejo's crews had to strain at the oars to make
any headway against the current. But during those seven days, day and
night without interruption, he followed the Spanish ships with the sound
of war drums, now faint and far away, now booming suddenly close; but
The Last Conquistador 395
with never a flash of a spear blade or rustle of thicket to show where his
warriors were. In this way, besides tiring out MarmolejVs men, he forced
them to keep on the alert, to stay in midstream where they had to row,
and to spend their nights practically without sleep. On the seventh day,
judging them to be sufficiently weakened by the nervous tension and their
exertions against the current, he attacked suddenly and with overwhelming
force. His new brother-in-law, Manakior, joined in for the kill. As the
Magindanaus swarmed up the deck of the leading sampan, Kudrat shouted
to them that the priest was to be spared. But the crew, valiantly defending
themselves, killed one of Manakior’s sons, and Manakior, blind with rage
and grief, sought Father Sanchez out and slew him with his bare hands.
Only six Spaniards yielded in time to be spared and taken prisoner.
Among them was Marmolejo.
When news of the disaster reached La Sabanilla, the commander of the
naval squadron there, Don Pedro de la Mata, at once sent envoys to
Kudrat to explain that Marmolejo had acted against explicit orders and to
request that the prisoners be released. Kudrat accepted the explanation
and readily handed over Marmolejo and his five surviving men. At Mata's
orders Marmolejo was taken under guard to Zamboanga, where a court
martial made him pay for his disobedience with his life.
It was now clear that with Manakior's defection and Kudrat’s return to
power the fort at Bwayan had become untenable. Mata ordered it demol-
ished and abandoned. Corcuera, reviewing the situation at Manila,
approved this move and had La Sabanilla also demolished and abandoned.
Having thus shortened the Spanish lines, he ordered an all-out attack on
Kudrat. This was done ; the Spaniards swept all before them ; but when they
withdrew to their base at Zamboanga, Kudrat returned from the hills, and
all was as before. Worse, for now Kudrat began to stir up the peoples along
the southern coast of Mindanao who had submitted to Spanish rule. The
Jesuit missionary who had been stationed among the Iranuns of Sibuguey
narrowly escaped drowning and had to be recalled to Zamboanga. The
attitude of the Lutaus of Basilan became so threatening that the Jesuits
there also had to be withdrawn. By 1644 the gains of Corcuera's Magin-
danau campaign had for all practical purposes been wiped out.
Corcuera's instructions to Ros, the governor of Jolo, was to complete the
reduction of the island, capture Raja Bungsu or compel him to submit,
and draw up a tribute list of the inhabitants. 20 Bungsu, who had taken
refuge in an inaccessible part of the island, sent a secret agent named
Kaapitan to work himself into Ros's good graces and allay his suspicions
while the resistance was being organized. Kaapitan hoodwinked Ros
completely. When the two Jesuit chaplains, Martinez and Lopez, sug-
gested that the Sulu was playing a double game, Ros rebuked them sharply,
complaining that they were putting obstacles in the way of his policy of
396 The Jesuits in the Philippines
attraction in order to hog the credit of pacifying the island for themselves.
Even an attempt to poison him which nearly succeeded, and an unprovoked
attack on some workers at a stone quarry, failed to shake Ros's faith in
Kaapitan. Seeing that he was determined to be a dupe, the Jesuits sent an
urgent message to Almonte asking him to come and see for himself.
Almonte came in June 1639, quickly sized up the situation and overruled
Ros. The policy of attraction was scrapped and more vigorous measures
adopted. Raja Bungsu' s plans to regain control of the island soon became
clear. He had established a new stronghold in the interior, and his son,
Prince Pakian Baktial, was busily organizing an invasion force in the other
islands of the archipelago.
Sending to Zamboanga for additional troops, Almonte took personal
command. He ordered Admiral Pedro de la Mata's squadron to patrol the
coasts of Jolo and permit no strange craft to land. Strong detachments were
dispatched to the three principal ports of the island for the same purpose.
Having determined the location of Bungsu's stronghold, he sent 600 men
under Captains Agustin de Cepeda and Gaspar de Morales to make a night
attack on it and take Bungsu dead or alive. All went well until an accidental
shot from an arquebus gave the Stilus warning of the attack. The strong-
hold was stormed and taken, but Bungsu once more gave the Spaniards the
slip and succeeded in fleeing the island. Enraged by this, the captains of
the attacking force put all their prisoners to the sword. Meanwhile,
Almonte sent a second column under Major Luis de Guzman on a circuit
of the island. All the inhabitants were to swear allegiance to Spain. It did
not matter whether they did so willingly or not. Submission, and the
release of all Christian captives, were demanded at the sword's point.
When Guzman returned from his mission, he brought back 1 12 liberated
slaves and left behind him, hanging conspicuously from the branches of
trees, the severed heads of 500 Sulu recalcitrants. As for Prince Pakian
Baktial, faulty communications left him in ignorance of what was happen-
ing in Jolo. The invasion fleet set sail from Tawi-Tawi as arranged; Mata
met it and destroyed it utterly. Then, to prevent all such attempts in the
future, Almonte himself took a force to Tawi-Tawi, burned all the vessels
he could find, landed, slew 500 who resisted, and received the submission
of the rest. On 12 July he returned to Zamboanga in triumph and reported
to Corcuera that the Sulus had now been “pacified."
Ros was succeeded by Morales, one of the two captains who had taken
Bungsu's stronghold and massacred its defenders. Unlike Ros, Morales was
anything but naive. One of his first acts as governor was to open a post
exchange and oblige all army personnel to make their purchases from it.
He made a handsome profit on all articles sold, especially on the clothing
and other equipment issued by the government for free distribution to the
troops. The chaplains protested in vain, so they tried to help the soldiers
The Last Conquistador 397
out by quietly giving them the supplies they were too poor to buy. When
Morales heard of this he issued orders that no one, solider or civilian, was
to receive anything from the fathers under pain of death. He fell out with
them on another matter also. Salibansa, the datu of Tandu, had a twelve-
year-old daughter whom he coveted. He demanded her as hostage. Sali-
bansa, fearing for his daughter, offered to take her place. Morales agreed,
sent him to Manila, and after his departure took his daughter. The Jesuits
denounced this flagrant violation of a father’s trust, but Morales was
unmoved. News of what had happened overtook Salibansa at Iloilo. He
managed to elude his guards and returned to Jolo, vowing to kill Morales.
Eighty of his clansmen made the attempt but failed. He took to the hills,
a life-long enemy of the Spaniards.
To make amends for the injury done to Salibansa, Corcuera deprived
Morales of his post and instructed his successor, Major Juan Ruiz de
Maroto, to be as conciliatory as possible. But the Sulu datus were past
being conciliated. When their sons, who had been taken as hostages to
Manila, were returned to them, they treated the youngsters with contempt
for having acquired Spanish ways. The island seethed with disaffection,
and Admiral de la Mata had to be sent to restore order. He did so with
fire and sword, destroying villages and farms both in Jolo and the other
islands and taking 3,000 captives. As part of this policy of frightfulness,
Morales was sent with 150 Spanish arquebusiers and 450 Visayan spear-
men to effect the “pacification” of Parang. The Parang warriors led them
on a breathless chase across difficult terrain until they were exhausted.
Then they fell upon them. Morales stood his ground valiantly, crying,
“You dogs! Come, here is Morales,” thinking to terrify them with his
name. But they were not terrified; they slew him.
Some time later, Captain Agustfn de Cepeda avenged his fellow officer.
Appointed governor of Jolo in place of Maroto, he took 300 men to
Parang and put to death all its inhabitants, thus completely depopulating
the island. Obviously, no missionary work among the Sulus could be
undertaken amid these conditions. The only conversions Alejandro Lopez
could report were those he made on the little island of Pangutaran. He
made several excursions there and found the people to be heathen, not
Moslems. They were a simple, unwarlike fisherfolk, and Lopez was able
to instruct and baptize almost all of them.
A glance at the map will show that east of the Zamboanga peninsula
the island of Mindanao narrows down to a waist about ten miles wide be-
tween the bays of Panguil and Pagadian. East of this again, in a fertile
bowl-like depression at the foot of the central table land, lies Lake Lanao.
The people of this region, the Maranaus, were pagans, with a social
organization similar to that of the Visayans, except that their datus
had adopted the Moslem faith and were related by marriage to the
398 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Magindanaus. At the time that Corcuera ordered their effective reduction
to Spanish rule they numbered some 8,000, settled around the lake in four
large towns and about fifty villages. 21 Early in 1639 Atienza set out from
Caraga with a force of 50 Spaniards and 800 Caraga warriors. Before
entering Lanao territory he wisely called at Butuan to avail himself of the
advice of a famous Recollect missionary stationed there. Caraga and
Butuan had been assigned to the Recollects, and among the fathers sent to
Butuan Fray Agustm de San Pedro distinguished himself not only for his
zeal but for his martial qualities. In order to enable them to defend them-
selves against the Moslem raiders, he trained his Christian converts in the
art of war, and even, on occasion, led them against their enemies, thereby
earning the appellation of El Padre Capitdn . Upon learning of Atienza's
enterprise, Fray Agustin made the excellent suggestion that he order war
boats built which could be transported overland in sections and assembled
at the lake. He believed that it was perfectly feasible to construct such
vessels capable of carrying up to a hundred men, and showed Atienza how
to do it. Atienza took up the suggestion. Landing his force at Bayug, near
the present town of Iligan, he had six collapsible boats built according to
Fray Agustin's specifications and carried overland to Lake Lanao.
The sudden appearance of a Spanish squadron on their lake, capable of
striking anywhere along its shores, took the wind out of any resistance the
Lanao datus might have been prepared to offer. They sent envoys to
Atienza and asked for terms of peace. Atienza asked for hostages, tribute,
and the free preaching of the Christian religion. The datus agreed. When
the tribute lists were completed, it was found that 2,009 families had been
added to the colony without a blow. This was almost too good to be true.
Almonte, in fact, fearing that Atienza would run into difficulties, dis-
patched Major Pedro del Rio with part of the garrison at La Sabanilla to
reduce Butig, in the south of the Lanao country, and from there effect a
juncture with Atienza. The two Spanish commanders met in the vicinity
of Dansalan.
By an ordinance of 5 September 1637, Corcuera had committed the
evangelization of Lanao, if and when annexed, to the Jesuits. On 20 April
1639 Major del Rio formally notified this charge to the Jesuit chaplain of
his company, Father Pedro Gutierrez, who accepted it on behalf of the
Society. But since Gutierrez w T as obliged to return to his post at La
Sabanilla, two other Jesuits, Diego Patino and Antonio Abarca, undertook
the actual establishment of the mission.
These auspicious beginnings were deceptive. Kudrat, ever on the watch
against Spanish aggression, sent agents to stiffen the courage of the Lanao
datus. When Atienza started to build a fort at Dansalan, they invested it
by land and sea and succeeded in cutting it off from its base at Iligan. Hard
pressed, Atienza decided to withdraw and build his fort at Iligan instead,
The Last Conquistador 399
where his communications could not be so easily severed* The difficulty
with this, of course, was that Iligan stood at some distance from the lake,
so that the sovereignty imposed on Lanao could not be effectively enforced.
Troops sent from Iligan to patrol the territory, if lacking in vigilance, were
likely to be ambushed. In 1642 Father Francisco de Mendoza accompanied
one of these patrols. He was a zealous missionary who distinguished him-
self particularly in the care of the sick, and had learned as much practical
medicine as he could the better to help them. He thought that by being of
service to the Maranaus in this way they might be disposed to give the
gospel a hearing. On 7 May, between Iligan and Dansalan, he accompanied
the commander of the patrol on a short reconnaissance. They were am-
bushed, and Father Mendoza was killed.
In 1 644 the peace that Kudrat had been persuaded by Father Gutierrez
to make still held. But it was an uneasy peace, and the very fact that it was
negotiated, not imposed, proved that the conquests of Corcuera were by
no means definitive. Moreover, Corcuera may with justice be called the
last of the Philippine conquistadors. Spanish expansion in the Far East
ceased with his Mindanao campaigns; indeed, it had already begun to
contract before he finished his term as governor.
In 1640 the Dutch, having taken Malacca from the Portuguese, renewed
their attacks on Spanish shipping. Four warships were dispatched to San
Bernandino Strait that April to await the incoming galleon. This was
brought to the attention of the Jesuit provincial, Francisco Colin, who
happened to be on a visitation of Samar. Because of previous attempts to
capture the galleon, the Jesuit mission stations on the northern coast of
Samar had been assigned the duty of lighting signal fires during the season
when she was expected, in order to inform her commander that the entrance
was clear. Colin, therefore, ordered the signal fires to be extinguished and
sent swift sailboats to warn the galleon. The plan succeeded ; the galleon
swung north and reached Manila by way of Cape Bojeador. 22
When the same thing happened the following year, the Dutch gave up
the attempt and devoted their attention to dislodging the Spaniards from
Formosa. In this they succeeded. On 24 August 1642 the garrison at
Tanshui surrendered. With Malacca and Formosa lost, Manila prepared to
defend itself. 23 It was not, however, until 1646 that the Dutch appeared.
Meanwhile, in August 1644, Diego Fajardo arrived to replace Corcuera
as governor. He subjected his predecessor to a residencia, as was customary ;
but did so with such rigor that Corcuera was unable to pay the fine which
was imposed upon him. He was cast into prison at Fort Santiago and kept
there in close confinement for several years. The Council of the Indies,
when it was finally persuaded to look into the matter, acquitted him of
most of the charges brought by Fajardo. The king ordered his release and
rewarded him with the governorship of the Canaries. 24
400 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Both king and council, however, looked with complete disfavor on one
of his official acts. This was the foundation of the College of San Felipe de
Austria, which came about in the following manner. 25 On 1 5 November
1640 the city council of Manila petitioned Governor Corcuera to endow
eighteen gentlemen's scholarships and two servants' scholarships in either
the College of San ]os 6 or the College of Santo Tomas out of the revenues
derived from the residence tax of the Chinese. The gentlemen's scholarships
were to be filled by descendants of the conquistadors of the Philippines,
the servants' scholarships by sons of Filipinos who had distinguished
themselves in the royal service. On hearing of this petition the Dominican
fathers proposed that all of the twenty scholarships be assigned to the
College of Santo Tomas, for they were willing to waive the government
subsidy and support them entirely on the endowment of the college. This
proposal seems to have angered Corcuera, for he declined it stiffly, saying
that it did not befit the majesty of the crown to create scholarships without
paying for them. Accordingly, on 23 December of the same year, he signed
an ordinance granting the petition of the city.
A royal college, to be known as the College of San Felipe de Austria,
was created in the king's name. Its student body was to consist of twenty
Spanish gentlemen and six Pampango servants, chosen in the manner pro-
posed by the city and supported by an annual government subsidy of
4,000 pesos. The college was to be under the direction of the Jesuits and
until a separate building could be provided, the scholars were to reside in
the College of San Jose. The statutes of the new college were drawn up by
the oidor Diego de Ribera Maldonado, an alumnus of San Jose, and
approved by Corcuera on 19 January 1641. The first scholarships were
awarded on the following day before an assemblage of the most prominent
citizens. The Jesuits accepted the charge, but not without serious mis-
givings. The older and more experienced fathers warned Corcuera to expect
the most determined opposition to the project. They were not mistaken.
On 16 April 1643 Fray Mateo de Villa, the procurator of the Philippine
Dominicans at Madrid, presented a petition that Corcuera's foundation of
the College of San Felipe be reviewed in council, alleging that the founda-
tion was motivated by a desire “to discredit the instruction given in our
College of Santo Tomas of Manila, of which your Majesty is the patron
and to which your Majesty has given university status," and that it was “a
measure calculated to prevent any person of quality from enrolling in our
college." The petition was accompanied by three informes or declarations,
one by three of the oidores, another by the royal treasury officials, and a
third by seven prominent citizens of Manila. According to the oidores,
Corcuera proposed the plan at an administrative session of the audiencia.
All present except two (presumably, Corcuera and Ribera) were of the
opinion that its execution should be postponed until the king's wishes on
The Last Conquistador 401
the matter could be consulted, especially since the royal treasury was
empty, the college superfluous, and the Dominicans had offered to main-
tain the scholarships at their own expense. The other declarations expressed
substantially the same opinion.
The council gave Fray Mateo's petition prompt consideration, and on
22 May 1643 recommended that the foundation of the new college be
declared null, void, and of no effect, and that if any government funds had
already been spent on it, they were to be restored to the treasury. The
king decreed as recommended, entrusting its execution to the new
governor, Fajardo. 26 When Fajardo arrived in the Philippines, he dis-
covered that 12,000 pesos had already been disbursed to the Jesuits on
account of the College of San Felipe. He ordered them to refund this
sum in full. The Jesuits represented that, since it had all been spent for
the board and lodging of the San Felipe scholars, they had in no wise
benefited from it and so ought not to be made to pay it. Fajardo failed to
see the force of this argument. He repeated his order, specifying com-
pliance within three days. The Jesuits, not having the necessary cash on
hand, borrowed 4,000 pesos from Manual Estacio Venegas and 8,000
pesos from the Recollects and brought the money to the treasury before
the term expired. They then took their case to Madrid and won it. On
17 March 1647 the king directed the treasury at Manila to return the sum
in question. Since by that time the debts to Venegas and the Recollects
had apparently been paid, the 12,000 pesos were used to repair the damage
caused to the College of Manila by the earthquakes of 1645 and 1646. 27
It cannot be denied that Corcuera showed himself extremely partial to
the Jesuits on this and other occasions. One reason may have been that
they were the only religious community in Manila which did not take a
stand against him in his controversy with the archbishop. But the reason
which he himself gave was that they gave him the fullest possible coopera-
tion in matters pertaining to their ministry. Moreover, the Jesuit ideal
of unquestioning obedience to the commands of superiors appealed to
his soldierly temperament. Writing to Philip IV on 19 June 1636, he
says:
Sire: The Society of Jesus serves your Majesty with great zeal and never refuses
what is asked in your royal name, whether it be chaplains for the galleons, garrisons,
and expeditions, or any other matter that is entrusted to its members. They do
not complain if it becomes necessary to make deductions on the usual stipends,
and are vassals of proven loyalty (“para bien y mal tratar”). They do not admit
applicants in these islands because there are not many who fulfill their require-
ments. On the other hand, as your Majesty well knows, they are quick to dismiss
those who stray from the royal path of duty. For this reason your Majesty’s
governor feels that by simply asking for a Jesuit to undertake a matter pertaining
to the royal service, he has fulfilled all that conscience requires, without making
402 The Jesuits in the Philippines
any further inquiry as to the qualifications of the individual assigned, because the
superior knows his subjects inside out and can replace them as required . 2 8
After his release from prison he gave his friends another generous testi-
monial. The Jesuits, he told Philip IV, had been of special service during
his administration by acting as chaplains in the shipyards within their
mission territory. As such, they showed themselves fearless in defending
the rights of the native workmen, seeing to it “that they were not over-
burdened, oppressed, or ill-treated by the overseers appointed to supervise
their work/' and doing this not by turning everything topsy-turvy, but
with prudent moderation, “ teaching, preaching, giving counsel, and when-
ever necessary reporting abuses to the government/ * He also had a warm
word for the educational work of the Manila Jesuits, not so much at the
rarefied levels of philosophy and theology, as among the boys of elementary-
school age. These the fathers and brothers sought out not only in their
own houses but in the streets and plazas to teach them the catechism;
besides which they taught reading, writing, and arithmetic “to a great
multitude of boys who come morning and afternoon to their residence.”
He added that the training given in this elementary school needed no
official recognition or support ; it was enough for parents that ‘ ‘ a member
of the said order is in charge of it, even though he be a lay brother.” He
reiterated his satisfaction at the conduct of the Jesuits as military and naval
chaplains, especially in the Mindanao campaigns and the operations against
the Chinese rebels, singling out for particular commendation Father Onofre
Esbri, who negotiated the surrender of the rebel army near Cab inti. 29
Unfortunately, as in the case of the short-lived College of San Felipe,
Corcuera tended to express his high regard of the Society in ways that
caused it acute embarrassment. In 1636, for instance, when the parish of
Quiapo fell vacant, he presented a Jesuit for the post and imposed confir-
mation of the appointment on the archbishop as one of the conditions for
his recall from exile. So at least Archbishop Guerrero gives us to under-
stand, for after granting canonical collation of the parish to the Jesuits, he
informed the king secretly that the act was invalid as having been extracted
from him by force. It is difficult to see how the Manila Jesuits could have
been unaware of this ; or, if they were aware of it, why they did not decline
the appointment. At any rate, they accepted it, with the result that on
8 April 1639 Philip IV ordered it revoked and Quiapo returned to the
secular clergy who had always administered it. This was only justice, apart
from the fact that the administration of an organized parish like Quiapo
would have been difficult to reconcile with established Jesuit policy. How-
ever, the new parish priest of Quiapo contended that the king meant not
only to give Quiapo to the secular clergy but Santa Cruz as well ; this the
Jesuits opposed, and both Governor Fajardo and the king found in their
favor. 30
The Last Conquistador 403
There was, however, one disposition which Corcuera made regarding
San Jose which the Jesuits could and did accept without embarrassment,
because it did not benefit them so much as the colony at large. At the same
time that he founded the royal chapel at Fort Santiago, of which mention
has already been made, he made sure that a chaplain to serve it would
always be available by creating twelve scholarships in the College of San
Jose whose beneficiaries would be bound to accept the chaplaincy if and
when appointed. These royal scholars — or, as we should now say, govern-
ment pensionados — wore a distinctive gown of blue. They kept the scarlet
hood of San Jose, but had the royal arms embroidered on it. The income
from an encomienda in Calamianes was assigned to their support. 31 I have
not been able to discover how long these scholarships remained in existence.
Not very long, for they do not occur in subsequent lists of becas de donation.
Chapter Seventeen
A SUCCESSION OF SHOCKS
Manila in 1645 was no longer the dismal collection of huts which Governor
de Vera found so contemptible in 1584. The accumulated riches of the
galleon trade had enabled her fully to justify her grand official title ; she was
indeed a “ noble city.”
The Spaniards [says Diaz] began to build for the sake of comfort; but, losing
their fear of earthquakes in the course of time, and becoming more audacious
with the increase of leisure and wealth, they turned their houses into palaces, and
within a few years Manila became one of the most beautiful and showy cities of
the Indies. What vanity did to private homes, piety did to churches and convents,
which now lift their heads to the clouds crowned with vaults, domes, towers, and
spires . . . Not content with having a town house, [the Manilans] took to building
summer homes on both banks of the river even more sumptuous than those in
the city, with spacious swimming baths in the river strongly fenced in with
decorative enclosures to keep out the crocodiles with which the rivers of this
country abound. Because it is much cooler in these houses, being so near the
water, people escape to them from the summer heats, taking frequent baths. But
self-indulgence soon led to sin, its next-door neighbor, and these houses and pools
became the occasion of many offenses against God . 1
Most of the private houses inside the walls had two storys above the
ground floor, with an azotea on the roof and the balconies of the first
story overhanging the sidewalk, thus giving grateful shade to the passerby
and a convenient refuge to the unwelcome serenader. What happened to
these imposing residences in that fateful year of 1645 will serve to explain
why later generations of Manilans built closer to the ground. St. Andrew's
day, 30 November, was one of Manila's red-letter days; on that day the
senior alderman of the council took out the great embroidered standard of
the city and paraded it in state, accompanied by his peers, in memory of
the glorious stand which the first settlers made against the hordes of the
pirate Limahong; everyone, young and old, put on their holiday clothes
and gave themselves up to rejoicing. So they did on this particular St.
Andrew's day, until with the coming of night they retired to their homes
for supper. The clear starlit sky and the calm sea gave no hint of disaster
when, at about eight o'clock, the city was rocked by one of the most
violent earthquakes it had ever experienced. According to an account of
it printed in Madrid four years later,
404
A Succession of Shocks 405
. . . the first savage tremors lasted as long as it would take to say the Credo four
times . ♦ . In that brief interval all that was comely and fair in this city was
brought to the ground. Stone walls swayed and swung as though they were paper
or vellum shaken by the wind; towers trembled and bent like trees, and the
largest trees themselves like the masts of a vessel in the midst of a furious storm.
The air was filled with confused crashing noises and the shouts and screams of
those who cried to heaven for mercy. The very beasts added their howls to the
fearful din. Heaps of stones from wrecked houses fell across the streets, blocking
the flight of those who rushed wildly out of their doorways . 2
The scene, says Diaz, was like a preview of the day of judgment, or like
the night Troy town was taken:
Quis cladem illius noctis , qnis funera fando
explicet ant poterit lachrymis aeqnare laboresp
Urbs antiqua ruit mitltos dominata per annos .
One hundred and fifty buildings fell in that first shock, burying 450
people in the ruins ; the total number of dead as afterward determined was
600. Among the public edifices destroyed were the governor’s palace, the
hall of the audiencia, the cathedral, the Spanish hospital, the church and
hospital of the Misericordia, the church and convent of the Dominicans,
the church and convent of the Recollects, the College of Santa Potenciana,
and the College of Santo Tomas. The recently completed Jesuit church
remained standing, but the portions of the college building which had not
yet been remodeled, especially the classrooms, were damaged, as well as
one entire wing of the College of San Jose. Outside the walls, the Jesuit
church and residence of San Miguel collapsed, killing Father Juan de
Salazar and seriously injuring the provincial, Father Francisco de Roa.
“Thus,” Diaz concludes, “ was laid low the city of Manila, which until
then had been the wonder of all Asia.” When he came to the Philippines
later in the century, a wiser generation had replaced the proud palaces of
their fathers with one-story frame boxes awkwardly perched on bulgingly
buttressed walls; but between these lowly structures, ugly and safe, still
stood the broken arches of a more splendid age. 3
Manila still lay prostrate from this disaster when the Dutch made their
most determined effort to bring the Philippines to its knees. A squadron
of five ships took its station off the Ilocos coast to intercept the junk fleets
from China, while another squadron of seven ships went to waylay the
Acapulco galleons near the entrance to San Bernardino Strait. A third
squadron of twelve ships was held in reserve in order that it might join the
other two when, their missions accomplished, they combined for the
knockout blow on Manila itself. 4
The Ilocos squadron landed agents to stir up the natives to revolt, but
without success ; a detachment of Spanish infantry drove the landing party
406 The Jesuits in the Philippines
back to their ships* At that time, the only ships Governor Fajardo had
at his disposal were two superannuated galleons, the Encarnacion and the
Rosario , which had just returned from Acapulco. Without waiting to make
any but the most essential repairs, he mounted as many guns as the two
ships could hold, lashing them to their carriages with carabao hide for
lack of metal cables, and dispatched them against the Dutch. They had a
complement of 400 men between them, and were commanded by Lorenzo
de Ugalde and Agustin de Cepeda.
Ugalde and Cepeda dealt with the Ilocos squadron first, engaging it off
the Cape of Bolinao and putting it to flight. Then, taking advantage of the
last northerlies (it was now July), they rounded Luzon and bore down its
eastern coast on the other Dutch squadron off San Bernardino. But this
squadron was no longer there, for its commander, upon learning that the
Spanish ships had sallied forth against the northern squadron, wanted to
take advantage of their absence to prey on the shipping in Manila Bay.
Ugalde and Cepeda took off in hot pursuit and overhauled the Dutch off
Marinduque. The Dutch, relying on their overwhelming superiority in
numbers and fire power, confidently turned to give battle. They fell into
line and proceeded to encircle the two galleons. The Spanish commanders
made no attempt to interfere with this maneuver, for they realized that
they had at all costs to prevent the Dutch from attacking Manila, which
was all but defenseless. They placed their hopes of survival on the fact
that the two ships, though old, had hulls of molave , that prince of Philip-
pine woods ; and their hopes of doing damage to the Dutch on the accuracy
and courage of their gun crews. Calling upon Our Lady of the Rosary to
favor their cause, they waited until the Dutch came within range and
opened fire. The ensuing battle far exceeded their expectations. The Rosario
and the Encarnacion shivered and shook under successive salvos, but
remained afloat, while their guns, magnificently served, battered the Dutch
ships so badly that they were forced to withdraw out of range.
The Dutch commander now resorted to a desperate but deadly tactic,
which had wrought great havoc with the ships of the Great Armada oft
Gravelines. He climbed to windward of the galleons, emptied two of his
ships, set them on fire, and cut them loose. Belching flames, the fire ships
drifted inexorably toward the galleons, but Ugalde and Cepeda, with great
presence of mind and consummate seamanship, managed to draw aside in
time to let them pass harmlessly by. His plan failing, the Dutch comman-
der sailed away with his five remaining ships, and the galleons returned in
triumph to Cavite.
The Manilans, who thought the Dutch had gone away for good, now
made haste to refit a third galleon, the San Diego , for the annual voyage to
Mexico. But the Dutch had not quite finished yet. Units of the two
defeated squadrons had remained in hiding off Mindoro, and the San Diego
A Succession of Shocks 407
had no sooner emerged from the bay than they fell upon her. Fighting
pluckily, she tacked back into port, and once again the two battle-scarred
veterans, the Rosario and the Incarnation, sallied forth against the enemy.
The victor^ 7 which they won at Play Honda was definitive. This time, the
Dutch did not take in sail until they reached Java.
Thus, in the course of one year, two old pieces of junk had won three
battles, one after the other, against vastly superior forces, and that at a time
when only their molave hulls stood between Manila, half reduced to
rubble by the earthquake of 1645, and almost certain capture. The lack
of proportion between the human means employed and the result con-
vinced the Manilans that they owed the salvation of their city to the
Mother of God, whom the galleons , crews invoked so fervently at the
moment of their greatest need under the title of Lady of the Rosary. This
is why from that year to the present the feast of the Holy Rosary is cele-
brated in Manila with a procession that surpasses all others in splendor,
and the statue of Our Lady carried in that procession, the most precious
treasure of the Church of the Dominicans, bears the proud name of La
Naval.
On 10 June of the following year the Dutch returned to the attack with
the twelve ships that had been held in reserve. They boldly entered Manila
Bay, for the Incarnation and the Rosario were no longer there to meet them.
The Spaniards at Cavite were thrown into wild consternation, for they
did not expect the enemy so soon, and very few of their shore batteries were
in position. The Dutch, however, instead of getting down to business at
once, thought they would have some fun first, so they spent the day
parading in front of Cavite and Manila, flying flags, blowing trumpets,
and beating drums. Then they drew off to Bataan for consultation. It is
said that Corcuera, immured in a dungeon in the Cavite fort, seeing the
Dutch admiral leading away his ships, could not refrain from crying out,
* ‘Unskillful soldier! You have lost your opportunity/ ’ He was right.
When the Dutch returned to the attack three days later, Cavite was ready.
Its shore batteries replied with vigor to the continuous bombardment to
which the attacking squadron submitted them all that day ; and they were
still firing when at seven o’clock in the evening the Dutch retired with their
decks strewn with wreckage and their commander badly wounded. Not
daring to attack Manila itself, they sent landing parties into Bataan and
Pampanga. But they did not receive from the native population the
cooperation they expected, and when they failed to take the town of
Abucay they regained their ships and sailed away, this time for good. The
treaties of Westphalia, concluded in 1648, finally put an end to the
prolonged and bloody struggle between Spain and the Netherlands, not
only in Europe but in Asia.
We must now turn our attention to a conflict of a different kind, which
408 The Jesuits in the Philippines
developed at the very height of this last phase of the Dutch wars. In 1646,
during the funeral obsequies held in Manila for Isabella of Bourbon, the
wife of Philip IV, the functionary who acted as master of ceremonies gave
precedence to the College of San Jose over the College of Santo Tomas, on
the grounds that it was the older institution. The faculty of the Dominican
college took this ill, and soon afterward its rector, Fray Francisco de Paula,
filed a complaint with the audiencia alleging that San Jose had no right
whatever to precede Santo Tomas in public functions. The reason was that
Santo Tomas had the king himself for patron, as evidenced by a c£dula
dated 23 November 1623, and hence, being a royal college, it should take
precedence over all others not similarly favored, in accordance with the
established custom of the realm.
The rector of San Jos6 replied that the royal patronage expressed in the
cedula brought forward had no greater force nor weight than the universal
patronage extended by the Crown to all the educational institutions it
recognized. That San Jose had this recognition was implicit in several docu-
ments earlier than that presented by the rector of Santo Tomas, notably the
original permission to open the college granted in 1601 by Governor
Tello in the king's name and never revoked, and two cedulas of 1608 and
1614 ordering the governor of the Philippines to safeguard the endowment
of the college. Since, therefore, San Jose and Santo Tomas stood on an
equal plane as far as the royal favor was concerned, the question of prece-
dence could only be resolved according to seniority ; in which case it could
not be denied that San Jose was the older institution by a full ten years.
The audiencia decided in favor of this contention, and on 16 May 1647
declared that the College of San Jose ought to precede the College of
Santo Tomas in all public functions. On appeal by the complainant the
sentence was reviewed and confirmed on 29 July of the same year. 5 Not
long afterward a bull of Pope Innocent X was received in Manila erecting
the College of Santo Tomas into an academy, that is to say, an institution
empowered to grant degrees in arts and theology. In this document, dated
20 November 1645, the pope stated that he had been informed by the king
of Spain of the existence in Manila of a college called Santo Tomas, con-
ducted by the Dominicans, in which thirty lay students were being taught
grammar, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, and scholastic theology. He had been
informed further that Manila was more than 3,000 leagues from the
nearest universities of general studies, namely, those of Mexico and Lima.
In view of this the king had requested him to establish an academy in the
said college, a request he was only too happy to grant. Wherefore,
... in virtue of the apostolic authority and according to the sense of the present
document, without prejudice to anyone, we erect and establish in the buildings
of the aforesaid college in which these courses are at present being given, in the
A Succession of Shocks 409
city of Manila, an academy, in which the religious of the said order may publicly
profess grammar, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, and scholastic and moral theology,
and teach them to young people of whatever quality* This academy shall continue
in existence only until such time that a university of general studies shall be
established in the said city of Manila by the same apostolic authority. The same
academy, thus erected and established, shall be under the care, direction, and
administration of the said order and its master general . 6
On 7 August 1648, the rector of the College of Santo Tomas, Fray
Martin Real de la Cruz, presented this document to the audiencia and
petitioned that the College of Manila be forbidden to grant academic
degrees, on the grounds that any authorization it may have had to do so
ceased upon the erection of Santo Tomas into a papal academy. Hence-
forth, he contended, the exclusive power to confer degrees was reserved
within a radius of 3,000 leagues to that academy, which should moreover
be styled, because it was, a royal and pontifical university. The audiencia
upon receipt of this petition forthwith ordered the rector of the College of
Manila, Father Francisco Colin, to suspend the graduation ceremonies
then about to take place and to reply to the allegations of Fray Martin.
Colin complied. He submitted that the power to confer degrees both on
Jesuits and extern students had been granted by the Holy See to the
colleges of the Society of Jesus in general in 1552 and 1578, to Jesuit
colleges in the Indies in 1621, and to the College of Manila in particular
in 1634. All the papal documents conferring these privileges had received
the royal assent, and had been put into execution by the governors of the
Philippines. Hence the College of Manila was, and had been for many
years, in peaceful possession of an undisputed right. Did the bull of
Innocent X revoke this right ? It did so neither explicitly nor implicitly.
There was no explicit mention of revocation; on the contrary, it was
explicitly stated that the privilege being granted to Santo Tomas was
without prejudice to the rights of any third parties — sine tamen cuiuscumque
praeiudicio . Nor was a revocation implied in the fact that by erecting Santo
Tomas into a university the pope meant to give it the exclusive right of
granting degrees within a certain area* This monopoly was indeed possessed
by certain universities of the period technically known as studia generalia ,
or universities of general studies. But Innocent X did not erect Santo
Tomas into a university of this type. What he erected was an academy,
and to show that this academia was not at all the same thing as a stadium
generale , he stipulated that the academy established at Santo Tomas was to
cease the moment the Holy See saw fit to establish in Manila a university
of general studies : dumtaxat donee et quousque aliqua publica studii genet alis
universitas in dicta civitate Manilana sea illius provincia apostolica auctoritate
erectafuerit. In other words, the pope had merely granted to Santo Tomas
the privilege of conferring degrees in arts and theology without being a
4io The Jesuits in the Philippines
university in the technical sense of a studium generate ; But since this was
exactly the privilege which the College of Manila already possessed from
the same source, no more and no less, and since it was granted to Santo
Tomas explicitly without prejudice to any third parties, it was difficult
to see how it could be interpreted as revoking the privileges of the College
of Manila.
Nevertheless, the audiencia did manage to interpret the bull of Innocent
X in favor of Fray Martin's contention. On 28 June 1649 the oidores
declared that “with the erection of the University of Santo Tomas de
Aquino the power of conferring degrees granted by the sovereign pontiffs
to full-fledged colleges [colegios form ados] of the Society of Jesus has ceased
in these Islands, except in the case of its own members [that is, Jesuit
scholastics], poor students [those unable to pay the graduation fees], and
solvent students whom the said university shall refuse to graduate." How-
ever, the oidores rejected the further claim that Santo Tomas be styled a
royal university; it was not, they said, a royal foundation.
This sentence satisfied neither party, and both appealed it to the Council
of the Indies. In addition, the College of Santo Tomas appealed the sen-
tence of the Manila audiencia of 1647 awarding the right of precedence
to the College of San Jose. On 12 August 1652, the Council handed down
the following decision:
The lords of the royal Council of the Indies, having examined the documents,
memoranda, reports, and other papers relative to the case heard in the city of
Manila in the Philippine Islands and referred to the Council . . . stated that they
ought to reverse and do reverse the final sentence passed on the said case by the
president and oidores of the royal audiencia of the said city of Manila on 28 June
of the year 1649, in which they judged that with the erection of the University of
Santo Tomas the power of conferring degrees granted by the sovereign pontiffs
to full-fledged colleges of the Society of Jesus had ceased in those Islands, excepting
in the cases mentioned in the said sentence. Further, the said Lords declared and
do declare that as of now, for the time being, and until there is founded in the
said city of Manila a university of general studies, both the said colleges of San
Ignacio and Santo Tomas may make use of the power to confer degrees and may
give such degrees to those who shall study and take courses in the faculties of
arts, philosophy, and theology, or in anyone of them, in each of the said colleges.
And with reference to the question of precedence, let seniority be observed
between the said colleges of San Jose and Santo Tomas, in virtue of which let the
College of San Jose have and enjoy precedence, as being the older.
The representatives of the College of Santo Tomas at Madrid now
requested the council to reconsider this decision. It did, and on 25
November confirmed it in its entirety and in every respect thereof as
contained and set forth" in the document quoted above. To make
assurance doubly sure, the procurator of the Jesuit Philippine province,
A Succession of Shocks 4x1
Miguel Solana, asked the king to give this administrative and judicial
declaration of the council the force of an executive order. This was granted.
On 12 March 1653, Philip IV ordered his governor in the Philippines “to
observe, comply with, and execute” the decision of the council, “and to
cause it to be observed, complied with, and executed in its entirety and in
every respect,” under pain of the royal displeasure and a fine of 100,000
maravedis. As soon as the conciliar decision and the executive order were
received in Manila, the Jesuit provincial, at that time Juan de Zarzuela,
presented them to the governor, Don Sabiniano Manrique de Lara, and
requested that they be officially notified to the rector and faculty of the
College of Santo Tomas.
Although the Peace of Westphalia ended Dutch attempts to dislodge the
Spaniards from the Philippines, the need of the latter for ships continued
to be as great as ever, not only for the Manila- Acapulco run, but for the
naval units stationed at Zamboanga and the Visayas and for the protection
of the Chinese junks plying between Manila and Canton. Hence the
drafting of labor for the shipyards and lumber camps did not lessen during
this period. On the contrary, it was more widely extended ; for, in order to
relieve the Tagalog and Pampango provinces which had for so long supplied
the Cavite navy yard, the government decided to tap the manpower
resources of the Visayas. In 1649 the alcaldes mayores of the region were
ordered to call up a muster of able-bodied men for service at Cavite. A
quota was fixed for each province which, according to Murillo, was not
unreasonable, for it would have amounted to no more than one laborer
from each village ; moreover, the wages offered were more than fair, and
the necessity was after all a public one, to which all good citizens should
feel obliged to contribute. The Visayans, however, did not look upon it in
this light. Such a levy had never been imposed on them before, and to
many Cavite was at the ends of the world ; how could they be sure that they
would ever see their families again ? 7
The missionaries, fearing an outbreak if the draft was carried out, made
urgent representations that it be suspended; but Governor Fajardo, w T ho
had never set foot outside Manila, looked upon this as only one more
instance of clerical opposition to the government, and issued stringent
orders for the levy to be raised without further argument. The resentment
of the Visayans found a focus in the town of Palapag, on the northern coast
of Samar. Here the people were more knowledgeable, and having seen the
Spaniards occasionally beaten by their enemies and always in fear of them,
they had lost much of the awe with which their simpler brethren still
regarded the mailed fist and shining breastplate of the conquistador.
There was a small fort at Palapag wffiich the Jesuits of the mission had
built as a defense against the Moros. To command its garrison of local
militia they chose a man named Sumoroy. Daring, intelligent, and
14*
412 The Jesuits in the Philippines
dependable, Sumoroy had on several occasions ventured far out to sea to
give an incoming galleon timely warning of the presence of the Dutch ; the
fathers trusted him implicitly. But he had a roving eye, and one day he left
his wife and took up with another woman. The rector of the residence,
Father Miguel Ponce, admonished him to cut short this adulterous union,
and when he failed to do so ordered the woman taken away from him to
another village. Sumoroy raged inwardly, but since he was obviously in
the wrong there was nothing he could do about it except take to drink,
which he did.
The deep popular feeling against the labor draft gave him a splendid
opportunity to settle his score against Father Ponce. As pastor of Palapag,
Father Ponce was given the unpleasant duty of notifying the ordinance to
the people and assembling the town's quota of draftees. This drew upon
him much of the indignation with which the measure was regarded, an
indignation which Sumoroy was at pains to cultivate in various clandestine
gatherings where the potent palm brandy of the region gave rise to hot
words and rash counsel. Thus disaffection grew, until Sumoroy had behind
him a considerable following determined to rise in revolt rather than be
herded like carabaos to labor in some distant shipyard. The fathers were
told that Sumoroy was up to something, but they did not think it could be
anything serious. He was sulking, naturally, because his woman had been
taken away from him; but he would get over it in time and become his
old self again.
On i June 1649, at about eight o'clock at night, just after the church
bell had rung the dnimas , a reminder to pray for the dead, Sumoroy knocked
at the door of the mission house and was admitted. He carried his spear in
his hand. There was nothing unusual in his visit, for as commander of the
fort he had sometimes to make a report to the rector. Father Ponce waited
for him at the head of the stairs. Sumoroy walked up and without a word
plunged his spear through the priest's heart and killed him instantly. Then
he called out, and all of a sudden the entire compound was full of fighting
men. There were three other Jesuits in the house; Father Giulio Aleni,
Ponce's assistant, Father Vicenzo Damiani, a visitor from Catubig, and a
lay brother. Sumoroy ordered that they should be spared, for they had
nothing to do with the levy; but they were to leave town at once. When
they had gone, the rebels sacked the compound and took to the hills.
Stirred by this example, a wave of disorder swept through the Visayan
missions. Rebels at Catubig killed a Spanish resident, sacked the church,
and burned it. Similar outrages occurred at Pambuhan, Catarman, and
Bobon. The superior of the Franciscan convent of Sorsogon was hustled out
of the town by a mob. A Spanish ensign was killed on the island of
Masbate. There were disturbances in Cebu. The Recollect pastor of the
island of Camiguin was bound and roughly handled. Manobos razed the
A Succession of Shocks 413
town of Cagayan de Oro to the ground. At Linao, in the upper reaches
of the Agusan, another Recollect missionary was put to death.
The alcalde mayor of Samar led the local militia against the rebels, but
he could not rely on his troops, for many of them had relatives and friends
in the enemy camp. He sent for help to Manila, and Andres Lopez de
Azaldigui, the commander of the galley fleet, was dispatched to take
charge of operations. By this time the rebels had established themselves
in a strongly fortified camp near the inland town of Catubig. Anxious to
avoid bloodshed, Father Damiani asked Azaldigui's permission to go to
the rebel camp and secure its peaceful surrender. Azaldigui consented, and
the Jesuit set out, unarmed and unescorted, for Catubig. Shortly after he
got there Sumoroy came down from the camp with 100 of his followers.
He gave Damiani no chance to talk, but ordered him killed forthwith, for
Damiani was well liked, and might have shaken his people's resolution.
It was now October. Azaldigui was called away to salvage the silver cargo
of a galleon that had run aground at Camarines. Sumoroy, growing in
strength, advanced his camp to a hill near Palapag. Samar levies laid siege
to it, but their Spanish officers did not trust them sufficiently to mount an
attack. The problem was finally solved by Governor Fajardo ordering the
squadron stationed at Zamboanga to take a force of Christian Lutaus to
Palapag. They arrived in May 1650. On the night of z July they scaled a
cliff behind Sumoroy' s camp and took the stronghold by storm the follow-
ing day. The rebels fled in all directions. Organized resistance was at an
end. The Lutaus mopped up ruthlessly. They captured Sumoroy' s mother
in a highland village, dragged her through brambles and hurled her over a
precipice. Trapped rebel remnants, to win a measure of mercy for them-
selves, cut off Sumoroy's head and presented it to their pursuers.
The related outbreaks in other parts of the Visayas were put down with
the same severity. However, they accomplished their purpose at least to
the extent that the labor draft was abandoned. In 1652 Governor Fajardo
reverted to Tabora's policy of building ships outside the colony. A galleon
was constructed at Cambodia with local labor and materials for 100,000
pesos. Father Francesco Messina, who had been parish priest of Santa Cruz
and spoke Chinese, was sent as chaplain. But when the completed galleon
perished in a storm on its way to Manila, the policy was once again
abandoned, and the burden of supplying labor to the Cavite shipyard and
the lumber camps of the Sierra Madre fell as crushingly as before on the
Tagalog and Pampango provinces. 8
It would seem that even the payment of wages to drafted laborers, which
was largely a fiction in any case, was temporarily abandoned. The fiction
was retained in the case of requisitioned foodstuffs and supplies; the
colonial government continued to ‘‘owe" the towns and villages for them.
By 1657 this debt amounted to more than 200,000 pesos, and the total
414 T he Jesuits in the Philippines
indebtedness of the colonial treasury had reached the enormous figure of
1,000,125 pesos. What was the reason for this alarming state of affairs ?
In 1658 a Jesuit, Magino Sola, appeared at Madrid to represent the plight
of the Philippines and to seek a remedy. He had been chosen by the
colonists to act in their behalf, exactly as Alonso Sanchez had been chosen
eighty years earlier; and the fact that there was no objection this time from
the Jesuit general is an indication of the seriousness and urgency of the
crisis.
The memorial submitted by Sola to the king in council 9 was based on
the assumption, which did not need to be stated at the time, that the
finances of the Philippine government were completely dependent on the
galleon trade. Anything which interfered with the normal functioning and
gradual expansion of that trade had an instant adverse effect not only on
private fortunes but on the stability of the colony itself and hence on the
proper administration and evangelization of the natives. Now during the
two decades since 1635 the trade had been subjected to a series of shocks
which had reduced both it and the Philippines to the last extremity.
In 1635 Don Pedro de Quiroga, who had been sent as royal visitor to
Mexico, impounded 900,000 pesos' worth of merchandise which the
galleon of that year had landed at Acapulco. The ostensible reason for this
was that the cargo of the galleon exceeded by that amount the maximum
value of the perrniso; the real reason was that the home government was
badly in need of funds. Unfortunately, while Quiroga did indeed enrich
the royal treasury by 900,000 pesos, he impoverished the Philippines by
over 2,000,000 pesos, which was what the sale of the merchandise would
have brought. And ever since then, the losses suffered by the trade had
been continuous and drastic, for the Mexican officials insisted on keeping
it down to a limit which it had far outgrown and which no longer sufficed
to maintain the expenses of the colony. Worse still, the year previous to
Quiroga s visitation the trade between the Philippines and Peru via
Acapulco was suspended for five years, and at the end of that period banned
indefinitely, despite repeated protests of the viceroys of both Mexico and
Peru. In this way a branch of the trade which was beneficial to the two
vice-royalties as well as the Philippines was abandoned; and abandoned to
foreigners, for merchant ships of other nations brought to the Atlantic
coast of South America and sold at high prices goods which Manila could
have supplied much more cheaply.
The strait jacketing of the galleon trade by the home government through
these unreasonable restrictions must, then, bear a large share of the
responsibility for the ruinous state of Philippine finances. The ruin was
completed by a series of natural calamities. In 1636 no ships could be sent
to Mexico. In 1638 the Concepcion , returning to the Philippines from
Mexico, was lost in the Ladrones. In 1640 a large part of the junk fleet
A Succession of Shocks 415
from China was intercepted by the Dutch. In 1643 one of the two galleons
bound for Acapulco was compelled by bad weather to return to port.
In 1645 Manila was destroyed by an earthquake, and the incoming galleon
was lost at Cagayan. In 1647 and 1648 no ships came from Mexico. In
1652 no ships came from Mexico. In 1654 and 1655 they were lost, and a
brand-new galleon constructed at Cambodia was likewise lost. In 1657 the
outgoing galleons were forced to return. In view of these disasters, was it
any wonder that the colony’s debt should amount to over a million pesos,
that it should be unable to pay for the labor and supplies it requisitioned
from the natives, and that even the wages of army and navy personnel
should be in arrears ?
What, then, was the remedy ? That proposed by Sola in behalf of the
Philippine colonists may be summarized as follows. In the first place, the
galleon trade on which the Philippines was wholly dependent must not
only be maintained but allowed to expand. To this end, it should be
subjected to as few restrictions as possible. The interrupted commerce
between the Philippines and Peru by way of Mexico should be restored.
Goods from the Philippines landed at Acapulco should not be subject to
customs inspection by Mexican officials. (In other words, the permiso
should in practice be repealed and Manila merchants allowed to ship as
much as the trade will bear, though Sola does not make this explicit.)
Participation in the trade should be extended to Mexican merchants. The
ban against carrying spices on the Manila galleon, originally imposed to
favor the Portuguese, ceased to have any basis when Portugal seceded from
the Spanish monarchy in 1640 ; it should be abolished. The alcabala or sales
tax on the merchandise conveyed by the Manila galleon should be reduced
from 5 to 3 per cent ; the 2 per cent tax introduced to defray the expenses
of convoying the Windward Fleet should be remitted; the foodstuffs and
gifts moving in both directions of the Manila-Acapulco run should pass
duty-free. No new duties should be imposed on the trade except at the
express order of the king in council, and before any such duty goes into
effect the procurator of the city and commerce of Manila resident in Mexico
should be notified, in order that he might make suitable representations.
Secondly, the galleon service should be improved. If the ships of the line
were better constructed and better handled, losses could be cut down
considerably. Hence naval architects should be sent from Spain to super-
vise the work in the shipyards, and the galleons should be entrusted only
to trained pilots and seamen.
Thirdly, the annual subsidy from Mexico is absolutely essential if the
colonial government is to meet its obligations from year to year. Hence the
viceroy of Mexico should be instructed to dispatch it without fail even if
no galleons arrive from Manila, for many causes may conspire to prevent
them from making the voyage.
41 6 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Finally, since the good estate of any colony depends in the last analysis
on the quality of the colonists, emigration from the homeland to the
Philippines should be stimulated and encouraged. Good officers and troops
are especially needed, for those being currently sent from Mexico are either
mere boys or half-breeds of various kinds (exactly as in Alonso Sanchez's
time!). There is also great need for professional men: doctors, lawyers,
and notaries. The establishments at Ternate and Zamboanga, for instance,
do not have a single resident physician or surgeon. * * In Manila the Chinese
make up for the lack to some extent, but at great risk to the sick."
The labor and sacrifices required to extricate the Philippines from its
present difficulties will doubtless make that colony appear to be more
trouble than it is worth. This is an error. Let the facts be candidly
examined, and they will show that "the Philippines are neither as costly
as some would make it out to be, nor as unprofitable as they seem to
imagine." Properly administered, it has a great future before it.
Such were the proposals which Magino Sola laid before the central
government in 1658. Very little was done about them, for the economic
reforms on which they were premised ran counter to powerful vested
interests which could not be ignored. The textile manufacturers and expor-
ters of the Peninsula were convinced that the cheaper and more attractive
China goods brought by the Manila galleons threatened their very existence,
and so they fought bitterly, and on the whole successfully, any attempt to
release the trans-Pacific trade from the strait jacket of governmental
restrictions. All that Sola and later colonial agents were able to accomplish
was to persuade the government to make each successive straitjacket a little
bigger than the last. This is undoubtedly one of the principal reasons for
the "momentous change," as Schurz puts it, 10 which came over the
Philippines in the latter half of the seventeenth century, a change whereby
"it gradually drew within itself and vegetated in glorious obscurity."
The observation is just; but the reason was not so much that the colony
had been "exhausted by the efforts of the heroic age," as that further
progress was rendered impossible by the repression of its expanding
commerce, which, as the mercantilist theory of the age directed, ought
never to be permitted to compete with the industries of the mother
country.
The king and council took a much greater interest in another problem
which came to a head in the 1650'$, and shook the body politic quite as
much as the various other shocks we have been chronicling in this chapter,
though at an entirely different level. It had been preceded by a series of
minor seismic disturbances which we must briefly review the better to
appreciate the conflict which now developed.
Reference has been made earlier to the patronato conceded by the
sovereign pontiffs to the Spanish monarchy relative to the church in its
A Succession of Shocks 417
overseas dominions, and to the fears entertained by Jesuit and other
missionaries in the Philippines that the actual exercise of this patronage
might conflict with their respective religious institutes. On I 3 September
1589 that industrious and painstaking autocrat, Philip II, addressed a long
cedula to Gomez Perez Dasmarinas in which he stated in great detail what
he understood to be the force, extent, and implications of his patronal
rights. 11
First of all, he said, let it be clearly understood that the patronato
belonged to the crown “unico e y^cLdum'* — solely wholly — and was
inalienable. Hence, there was no other patronal right or privilege that
could exist or be exercised in the Indies independently of the king. Let no
one, said Philip, upon any pretext whatever
. . . dare to intervene in any matter touching my royal patronage, or stand in the
way of its exercise, or invest anyone with any church, benefice, or ecclesiastical
office, or acknowledge him to be invested with the same, throughout the whole
realm of the Indies, unless he has been presented for such investiture either by
Us or by whomsoever We have delegated for that purpose either by law or letters
patent. Anyone who contravenes this mandate, if he be a lay person, incurs the
loss of all the favors he may have received from Us in the whole realm of the
Indies and becomes incapable of holding or obtaining any others, and he shall be
banished perpetually from all our realms and possessions. If an ecclesiastic, he
shall be regarded as a stranger and alien [estrano y ageno] to all our realms and may
neither hold nor obtain any benefice or ecclesiastical office and shall incur all the
other penalties provided for in such cases by the laws of these My realms. Let Our
viceroys, audiencias, and royal justices proceed with all severity against those who
stand or act in this fashion against our royal right of patronage.
It was this solemn anathema which Governor Corcuera invoked when he
sent Archbishop Guerrero to exile on the island of Corregidor; and it was
to be invoked again against another archbishop of Manila with far more
serious consequences. Philip II then proceeded to enumerate the various
cases in which the royal right of patronage must be enforced.
In general : without the consent of the Crown or the competent Crown
official, no cathedral church, parish church, monastery, hospital, votive
chapel, or any other pious or religious institution may be erected, founded,
or built ; nor may any archbishopric, bishopric, prelacy, canonry, prebend,
half-prebend, benefice, curacy whether simple or otherwise, nor any other
ecclesiastical or religious office be created or appointment thereto made.
In particular : appointments to archbishoprics and bishoprics are made by
royal presentation to the Holy See. Appointments to cathedral posts, that
is, canonries and prebends, are made by royal presentation, coursed through
the Council of the Indies, to the archbishop or bishop concerned, who
thereupon bestows canonical collation of the office to the royal nominee.
41 8 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Appointments to other benefices such as parishes or charitable founda-
tions are to be made in the following manner. As soon as the vacancy
occurs, the diocesan prelate should make a public announcement of it and
assign a sufficient period of time for those who wish to present their
candidacy or take the competitive examinations for the post. He should
then select from among the number of candidates the two whom he con-
siders most suitable and submit their names to the competent royal
official, who chooses the one upon whom the prelate is to confer the post
canonically. The same procedure is to be followed with regard to nonbene-
ficed posts, such as missions among the natives, wherever such missions
are customarily given to the secular clergy.
Philip was well aware, however, that most of the missions in his over-
seas dominions were administered by religious who were not, like the
secular clergy, wholly subject to the diocesan prelate but had superiors of
their own who held their authority from the Holy See directly and who
governed according to certain special institutes or constitutions framed to
meet the exigencies of the religious life. Hence the exercise of the royal
patronage in their regard had to proceed on a somewhat different basis,
and a section of the cedula is devoted to fixing this procedure.
First of all, no commissary general, visitor, provincial, or other religious
superior may go to the Indies without first presenting his credentials to the
Council of the Indies and receiving the king's permission to exercise his
commission. Secondly, all newly appointed or elected religious superiors
in the Indies must, before taking office, give notice of their appointment
or election to the viceroy, governor or other competent royal official.
Thirdly, provincial superiors must every year submit to the same official a
detailed list of the houses, missions and members of their respective
provinces. Fourthly, * "provincials, every time that they appoint a religious
to a mission or a post involving the administration of the sacraments or
remove one from such a post, must give notice of it to our viceroy,
audiencia president, or governor, whoever holds supreme authority in that
province, and to the diocesan prelate; and they must not remove anyone
from such a post without appointing another in his place."
One can immediately observe the difference between this procedure and
that previously indicated for filling a secular parish. In the case of missions
administered by religious all that Philip required was that the religious
superior notify the government of all new appointments, and see to it that
no post is left vacant. Bishop Salazar objected strenuously to having to
obtain the governor's approval for his parish appointments, but aside from
that these directives found fairly general acceptance. In 1603, however,
Philip III added a further requirement. Reports had apparently been
received in Madrid that priests were being appointed to parishes and
missions in the Philippines who had no acquaintance with the native
A Succession of Shocks 419
language, or were otherwise unsuited to the post. Whether or not there
was any truth in the report, the king ordered (14 November 1603) that
before any priest, secular or religious, could be appointed to a native
ministry, he should first be examined by the diocesan prelate both as to his
general suitability and as to his familiarity with the language of the
locality" to which he was being assigned. Moreover, if the diocesan prelate
finds any religious parish priest or missionary in his diocese unsatisfactory
either as to his conduct or the performance of his duties, he may require
the religious superior to remove him and appoint another in his place. 12
This directive coincided with a claim which the bishops of the Philip-
pines had been urging for some time, namely, that according to the decrees
of the Council of Trent, they had full jurisdiction over religious engaged
in the ministry in their dioceses no less than over the secular clergy, to the
extent of being able to examine, inspect, and correct them if necessary.
Against this claim the mendicant orders alleged that the sovereign pontiffs,
notably Adrian VI, had exempted them from such jurisdiction, while the
Jesuits put forward the added objection that their centralized organi-
zation could not be reconciled with it. When Philip Ill's cedula was
received at Manila in 1605, they represented these difficulties to the
government; although the Jesuits, and doubtless the other orders also, said
that they were perfectly willing to be examined by the bishops as to their
ability to hear confessions and speak the native language.
In 1610 the newly arrived archbishop of Manila, Don Diego Vazquez
Mercado, decided to put the question to the test. He called together the
provincials of the religious orders and informed them that he intended to
make a visitation of all the parishes and missions of his archdiocese, as he
was empowered to do both by canon law and the royal statutes. He did not,
however, put forward the full claim; he would limit his visitation to
strictly administrative matters, such as the proper maintenance of the
parish and mission churches, conduct of liturgical sendees, administration
of the sacraments, and the general religious state of the faithful. The
provincials returned the expected reply: their papal privileges exempted
them from such a visitation, it had never been done before and they could
not agree to it. The archbishop then appealed for support to the govern-
ment; but Governor Silva, having considered the matter with the
audiencia, requested him to suspend the visitation. It is not difficult to see
why. The religious orders had served notice that if the archbishop pressed
his claim they would resign all their parishes and missions, and since they
constituted the overwhelming majority of the clergy in the colony, and in
many localities were the sole representatives of Spanish authority, civil as
well as ecclesiastical, it would have created an impossible situation.
Archbishop Vazquez Mercado agreed to drop the matter, but wrote a
full report of it to the king and in subsequent letters pressed him to obtain
420 The Jesuits in the Philippines
from the Holy See the revocation of the religious' omnimoda faculties.
These faculties, he argued, were granted by Adrian VI before the Council
of Trent, and when the newly discovered Indies were still being opened up
to missionary enterprise; under such conditions they were perfectly valid
and necessary. But now that conversion had been largely completed, even
in the Philippines, and the regular hierarchy of the Church established,
these faculties were not only an anachronism but positively interfered with
the proper exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; they should therefore be
abolished. 1 ^
No action seems to have been taken on this proposal; on the other hand,
the cedula of 1603 remained in the books and could be enforced at any
time. In 1622 Archbishop Miguel Garcia Serrano decided to make the
attempt. On 2 and 3 April he notified the provincials of his intention to
make a visitation and on 24 June actually began it in the Franciscan parish
of Dilao, where he caused the following announcement to be read from the
pulpit during high Mass :
We, Don Fray Miguel Garcia Serrano, by the grace of God and the holy apostolic
See archbishop of Manila and member of his Majesty's council . . . to you, faithful
Christian citizens and inhabitants residing in the town of Dilao, of whatever
state, quality or preeminence you may be, health in our Lord Jesus Christ. Know
that the holy Fathers, inspired by the Holy Ghost, have piously and justly ordained
in their sacred councils that all the prelates and pastors of the universal Church
are obliged either personally or through their visitors to make each year a general
visitation and inquisition of their subjects and clergy, both secular and regular,
who have charge of the administration of souls, with reference to their office as
parish priests, and the churches, shrines, hospitals and confraternities [under their
care], in order that all may be directed to the spiritual good of souls, which con-
sists in being in the state of grace with God our Lord and removed from sin,
especially those public and scandalous sins with which his Majesty is so much
offended. In accordance with this our obligation We admonish and command all
those who have known or heard say anything about the father your pastor who has
charge of you relative to the administration of the sacraments, or about any other
person, which cannot and ought not to be tolerated by the citizens and inhabitants
of the said town of Dilao, of whatever nation and condition they may be, to
communicate and reveal the same to Us, especially if they have committed what
shall be enumerated and explained to you further on in this edict, in whole or in
part, or anything else of like nature ; all of which you shall declare and manifest
before Us within the three days immediately following that in which this edict
is promulgated and read to you. 14
This is followed by the list of defects and transgressions which should be
reported to the archbishop by those who had observed them in the parish
priest. For instance, did the parish priest charge more for the administra-
tion of the sacraments than was set down in the scale of stole fees of the
archdiocese ? Did he neglect to punish public sins and scandals, or did he
A Succession of Shocks 421
punish them by the unlawful method of imposing pecuniary fines ? Did
his fiscales or sextons vex the parishioners by purchasing rice, chickens, and
other commodities from them at less than the market price, or by forcing
them to contribute money under the guise of alms for the church ? Were
there any public sinners in the parish, or persons who kept in their houses
slaves, or men and women of evil life ? Were there any usurers who lent
money on interest, or sold on credit at a higher price than they would have
got in cash, or bought for less than the just price because they paid cash
down? Were there any persons who practised witchcraft, worshipped the
devil, cast lots, or obtained forbidden knowledge by incantations ? In
short, what Archbishop Garda Serrano proposed to do was not only an
inspection of the parish, but a public inquiry into the personal conduct and
administrative acts of the parish priests, in which the parishioners would
be invited to testify and their depositions taken down by notaries*
If the religious had balked at a simple visit of inspection without such
publicity, they were certain to resist this one; and they did* The parish
priest of Dilao, Fray Alonso de Valdemoros, was ordered by his provincial
not to submit to the visitation* The archbishop thereupon declared him
excommunicated. Valdemoros denied that he had incurred excommunica-
tion and took part in a religious procession a few days later* He was haled
to the ecclesiastical court after the procession and sentenced to imprison-
ment in some convent ; the archbishop graciously permitted him to choose
the convent, as long as he did not choose one of his own order. Valdemoros
of course refused to submit, and the archbishop was thus compelled to
request the government for aid in enforcing the sentence of his court. The
audiencia arrived at the same conclusion as in the time of Archbishop
Vazquez Mercado: to support the diocesan prelate in the face of the deter-
mined opposition of the orders was highly inopportune. On 4 July the
oidores declared "that there was no occasion for the time being to grant to
the archbishop of these islands the royal aid requested by him." Thus
Garcia Serrano fared no better than his predecessor, and like his pre-
decessor was compelled to report his failure to the king* He concluded his
dispatch with the following reflections :
I have made this report to your Majesty in order to . . . make of record the
lack of restraint with which the religious conduct themselves in this land, relying
on the fact that they constitute the greater part of the commonwealth, and that
since their power is so great in all these provinces which they administer they are
certain of accomplishing whatever they may put their mind to. This is true to
such an extent that they have bruited it about in Manila that if the archbishop
had gone ahead with the visitation they intended to excommunicate him publicly
and not absolve him until he went to beg for it in the convent of Santo Domingo.
Sire, I could very well have insisted; but I prefer to be reprimanded for laxity
than for letting loose the grave scandals which I have been assured will follow
422 The Jesuits in the Philippines
from engaging in litigation with these religious ; for to be quite frank, they think
less of that than that everyone, Spaniard and native, should acknowledge no
power to be greater than theirs in these realms. 15
It should be noted that the archbishop, influenced by a very natural
feeling of resentment, considerably oversimplifies the case. The religious
were not being merely obstructive or striving to maintain themselves at all
costs in a privileged position to which they had no right. As they saw it,
there was a real problem in reconciling the claims of the diocesan prelate
with their distinctive status in the Church as religious. Unlike the secular
clergy, they carried on their ministry not as individuals but as members
of an organization; they had their own superiors, to whom they were
responsible, and these superiors in turn were responsible directly to the
Holy See, which had placed its seal of approval on their rules and regula-
tions. If they admitted the bishops' claims, there were sure to be conflicts
of jurisdiction; contradictory orders; irreconcilable directives; how was a
missionary to attend to his work under such circumstances ? A religious
had quite enough superiors as it was; it surely could not be necessary to
transform the organization to which he belonged into a monster with two
heads. 16
But even while Archbishop Garcia Serrano wrote his report to the king,
the Holy See moved slowly toward a solution. Similar conflicts had been
brought to its attention from other parts of the Spanish Indies ; in view of
which Pope Gregory XV addressed a constitution to the archbishop of
Mexico (‘ Tnscrutabili Dei providentia," 1622), wherein he ruled that
religious engaged in the ministry were subject to the “jurisdiction, visi-
tation, and correction" of the diocesan prelate in all matters concerning the
administration of the sacraments and the performance of their parish
duties. 17 This was a definite step forward, for it sketched out the area in
which the episcopal authority was necessary and admissible, and by
implication excluded from that area what pertained to the religious as
such, as members of a religious order. It was this that the religious felt
they could not possibly concede, since to do so would be, equivalently,
to cease being religious.
The instructions sent by Philip IV to the archbishop of Manila on
14 August 1624 followed the course indicated by the papal constitution. 18
The diocesan prelate, he declared, was authorized to subject religious
parish priests to a visitation in what concerned their parish duties and
nothing more: “en lo tocante al ministerio de curas y no en mas." This
meant that he had the right to look into the proper maintenance of the
parish churches, reservation of the blessed Sacrament, upkeep of the
baptistry, management of parish confraternities and their funds, and in
general “all that pertained to the mere administration of the sacraments
A Succession of Shocks 423
and the said parish ministry.” If he found the religious parish priest
negligent in these matters he could of course impose the necessary penalties.
In what concerned the personal conduct of the religious, however, the
diocesan prelate had no authority to take direct action. If he found any-
thing objectionable in this particular he was to notify the supreme civil
head of the colony, who as vice-patron would then take the necessary steps
to remove the parish priest in question. Note that it was the governor, not
the priest's religious superior, whom the diocesan prelate was to notify;
this, said the king, was in order that the religious orders might not consider
themselves to have acquired by prescription a right in perpetuity to their
missions. The Crown in virtue of the patronato could always take back
these missions and give them to others; an ominous caveat.
On the other hand, the king reprobated by implication Archbishop
Garcia Serrano's attempt to subject the religious parish priest to a public
inquiry. This should not be done, he said, even though the inquiry bore
on matters within the scope of the visitation. If there were any complaints
against the priest, let the bishop receive them privately, without legal
apparatus. If he found anything that needed correction, a simple admonition
would in most cases suffice ; if not, let the bishop talk the matter over with
the religious superior ; only when these measures proved inadequate should
the formal notification to the governor mentioned above be made.
So much for the question of episcopal visitation. But this was not all
that the cedula contained. It also directed that in the appointment and
removal of religious parish priests and missionaries, the authorities in the
Philippines were henceforth to observe the procedure followed in Peru.
This forbade religious superiors to transfer their subjects from one parish
or mission station to another, or withdraw them from the ministry alto-
gether, without the consent of the vice-patron. To obtain this consent, he
had to make known his reasons for doing so. and the vice-patron was to
be the judge of the cogency of these reasons. Only two exceptions to this
rule were recognized : the death of the religious concerned or his promotion
to a super iorship. If this requirement was not complied with the stipends
attached to the office would be stopped.
Such was the polity-making document issued by Philip IV in 1624.
In 1626 and 1627 its provisions regarding episcopal visitation were con-
firmed by the Sacred Congregation of the Council, replying to two queries
of the archbishop of Manila. According to the congregation, “the bishop
may exercise over religious having the pastoral care of souls the same
authority as over secular parish priests in what concerned the said pastoral
care and the administration of the sacraments.” And, again, “religious
having the pastoral care of souls are subject to the jurisdiction, visitation
and correction of the archbishop, but only in what pertains to the said
pastoral office.” 19 This seems to have encouraged Philip IV to add another
424 The Jesuits in the Philippines
turn of the screw in the elaborate mechanism of patronal control. Philip II,
it will be recalled, merely required religious superiors to notify the vice-
patron of any new appointments to parishes and missions. Philip IV now
demanded that before making any such appointment the superior should
submit to the vice-patron a tern a or list of three of his subjects whom he
considered suitable for the post, out of which the vice-patron would choose
the one to be appointed. In effect, he took away from the religious superior
the right of appointment as far as parishes and missions were concerned
and transferred it to the governor. These instructions were embodied in a
cedula dated 6 April 1 629. 20
When it and the preceding cedula of 1 624 were notified to the heads of
the religious orders in the Philippines, the Dominican provincial, Fray
Francisco de Herrera, replied that “in accordance with his general's
instructions and the constitutions of his order he is unable to comply with
what is herein commanded ; so much so that in the forty years and more
during which his order has been in these islands the like has not been
practiced, because it is incompatible with the religious state." The Jesuit
provincial, Juan de Bueras, declared that “the Society of Jesus desires to
serve his Majesty in what he commands, as long as it does not go counter
to its rules and constitutions and the orders of its general." The Augus-
tinian, Franciscan, and Recollect superiors excused themselves from mak-
ing any comment. 21 It seems reasonable to suppose that they would have
had no difficulty in submitting to the king's instructions regarding epis-
copal visitation, especially since they had been confirmed by the Holy See.
Unfortunately, these instructions were bound up in a single policy state-
ment with other demands which they could not possibly accept, and so
they felt compelled to register their protest to the whole. This was in 1632,
and again, the colonial government did nothing beyond calling the two
cedulas to the attention of the religious orders; it made no attempt to
enforce them. This calls for an explanation.
I have described two major attempts to impose episcopal visitation on
the religious. They failed because the archbishops were unable to obtain
the backing of the government. One reason for this has already been given,
namely, the fear of the civil authorities that the religious orders if pressed
would carry out their threat of abandoning their missions. Another reason
was that, while the diocesan prelates were perfectly willing to help the
government impose the requirements of the patronato on the religious
orders, they were not themselves noted for their meekness in submitting
to those requirements. Not only Bishop Salazar but almost all of his
successors carried on a running battle with the governors and audiencias
on various questions involving the exercise of the royal patronage, culmi-
nating in the Corcuera— Guerrero imbroglio. If the religious orders were
able to go their own way in peace, it was undoubtedly because the civil and
A Succession oj Shocks 425
ecclesiastical heads of the colony were so often at loggerheads. But what
would happen if, setting aside their differences for the moment, governor,
audiencia, and archbishop combined to enforce observance of the patronato
on the religious orders ? In 1654 this very situation was realized. 22
The attorney-general of the colony, Don Juan de Bolivar, fired the open-
ing gun of the government's campaign by presenting the cedulas of 1624
and 1629 to the audiencia and petitioning their enforcement. The audien-
cia notified the petition to the heads of the religious orders and asked them
to state their reasons why it should not be granted. Fray Juan de Abarca,
replying in behalf of the Augustinians, prayed that the attorney-general's
petition be set aside until the orders could appeal to “the king better
informed." Fie gave three reasons. First, the cedulas were contrary to
constant and unvarying practice both before and after they were issued, and
hence to prescriptive right. Secondly, the requirement of submitting a
terna for each parish and mission post was impossible of execution; the
order had great difficulty as it was in finding one man for each post.
Thirdly, the cedulas had been issued without the orders, as parties preju-
diced thereby, being permitted to state their case, contrary to equity in
both canon and civil law. 23
The other religious orders joined the Augustinians in interposing an
appeal to the king. Fray Francisco de San Jose, the provincial of the Recol-
lects, noted in particular that for a religious superior to make known to the
governor his reasons for removing a subject from his post, as the cedulas
prescribed, was to violate the right of the subject to his reputation, since it
might result in the publication of defects which ought to remain con-
fidential. 24 Miguel Solana, the Jesuit provincial, stated that as far back as
1620, when the requirement regarding the submission of a terna to the
government for each appointment was being considered, the general had
issued instructions that if the requirement was insisted on, all parishes and
mission stations entrusted to the Society in the Philippines should forth-
with be resigned. These instructions were submitted to the Council of the
Indies in the usual way, and the council, far from taking exception to them,
continued to call upon the Jesuits to undertake new missions. This proved
that the council at any rate did not consider the Society's objection to the
terna requirement to spring from any reluctance to be of service to the
king in whatever he might legitimately command. He would like to stress
this point once again, Solana said. If the cedulas were enforced, the Jesuits
of the Philippine province would have no choice but to abandon their
present establishments; but they would always be ready at the king's
behest to undertake new missions wherever circumstances permitted their
doing so without injury to their institute. 25
Attorney-general Bolivar, having examined these replies, submitted that
they offered no grounds for postponing enforcement of the cedulas. Fie
426 The Jesuits in the Philippines
therefore renewed his petition and prayed that in case of noncompliance
the issuance of missionary stipends should be stopped, and any parishes
resigned by the religious should immediately be given to the secular clergy.
On 22 February 1655 the audiencia approved Bolivar's petition. The
government had thrown down the gage, and it was now up to the orders
to make good their threat of mass resignation.
They began to do so by recalling the men from their most distant and
difficult missions. This was highly embarrassing to the government, for
there were no secular priests in the colony who could speak the language of
these remote outposts ; and in any case, few if any secular priests had either
the inclination or the training for pioneer mission work. Fortunately for
the government, it was at this juncture that the archbishop of Manila
chose to enter the lists. Don Miguel Millan de Poblete took possession of
his see in 1653. A Mexican born of Spanish parents, he had risen from the
ranks of the secular clergy to become doctoral canon of the cathedral of
Puebla and rector of the University of Mexico, and came to the Philippines
determined to make the religious orders submit to the episcopal jurisdic-
tion. 26 His conception of how far this jurisdiction extended, however,
went considerably beyond that of the Holy See and the Crown, for he
claimed authority to inquire not only into parish affairs, but the private
lives of the religious parish priests — de tnoribus et vitae — and in this sense
proceeded to make a visitation of the archdiocese.
He began his visitation at the opposite end of the scale from that where
the religious began their withdrawal, that is, not in the outlying mission
territories, but in the vicinity of Manila, where the most prosperous and
flourishing parishes were located. He presented himself at the Dominican
parish of Binondo, and when as he expected the Dominicans resigned the
parish rather than submit to the visitation, he immediately handed it over
to the diocesan clergy. Thus he proceeded, picking out for special attention
those city suburbs where the religious orders had invested most heavily
in men, money, buildings, and equipment. 27
The shoe was now on the other foot. In great distress the five provincials
hastened to seek relief from the only authority in the colony that could
give it to them, namely, the audiencia. "It is not reasonable," they com-
plained in their petition, "to take away our best and most desirable parishes
to give them to the secular clergy, and leave to us religious those which
have only exile, sufferings, and perils to life and limb to offer; advantages
must be counterbalanced with disadvantages, and vice versa." Nor was it
merely a question of comfort and ease. These prosperous parishes were a
necessary complement to the more needy missions, for it was from the
surpluses of the former that they supplied the necessities of the latter.
Moreover, it was these better endowed houses which served as places of
rest and recuperation for superannuated missionaries or those broken in
A Succession of Shocks 427
health by their labors. The religious, after all, deserved some consideration
for the great sendees they had rendered and were rendering to the crown
in the Philippines. They were, in fact, indispensable to the security of the
colony, and it would be disastrous to the entire body politic if they were
forced in this manner to abandon all their establishments. Hence,
... we beg and beseech your Highness [the governor in his capacity as president
of the audiencia] to order the royal treasury officials to release our stipends as
before ,* and not to permit us to be deprived of our better parishes unless we are
relieved of all of them; and to command the said archbishop, beseeching and
charging him in the prescribed form to desist from the aforementioned edicts and
visitations ; and if not, then to transfer all our parishes and missions to the secular
clergy, for the reasons previously set forth . 28
When the audiencia vouchsafed no reply to this petition, the provincials
took the final step which everyone dreaded. They submitted not only to the
audiencia and the archbishop of Manila but to the three suffragan bishops
a formal resignation of all their parishes and missions, requesting that
secular priests be sent at once to take their places, for the resignation was
effective immediately.
Toward the end of June 1655 Attorney-general Bolivar submitted the
following figures to the audiencia. The religious orders in the Philippines
had under their care 252 parishes and mission stations with their attached
villages, in which were employed (until recently) 254 priests. To take the
places of these 254 religious, the archbishop of Manila had available 54
secular priests, of whom 39 knew Tagalog, 3 Visayan, 3 Pampango,
I Bicol, 1 Japanese, and the rest no native language. No reports had as yet
been received from the other three dioceses, but it was fairly certain —
“ es publica voz y fama" — that there were scarcely 1 5 secular priests in all
of them together who did not already have a parish. Having produced these
figures, he washed his hands of the whole affair with the cheerful remark
that “your Highness w r ill command to be done what you shall judge to be
most appropriate/' 29
“Most appropriate/' indeed! The situation was impossible. Yet, the
government had gone too far to take the first step towards a restoration of
the status quo. Someone else had to do it, and— to their great honor be it
said — it was the Franciscans who did. It was some time now since the
stipends had been stopped, and some of their missionaries in the provinces,
who had no other income, were in dire straits. There was a forthright and
touching humility in the brief petition which their procurator, Fray Jose
de los Santos, submitted to the governor: “I beseech your Highness for
the love of God to order that the fathers stationed both in the encomiendas
of his Majesty as well as those of private individuals be given at least rice,
in order that they may have something to eat/' 30
428 The Jesuits in the Philippines
This gave the authorities the opportunity they needed to back down
gracefully. The Franciscan petition was endorsed to the attorney-general
for comment, and he returned it with another of his pious but not particu-
larly helpful reflections. “ Let right be done/ 1 he said; though he did add
a gentle hint, noting that the petition was for an alms to relieve poverty,
and was not based on any other claim. The adversary had sued for mercy ;
the audiencia could now afford to be generous. But as a further face-saving
device, the oidores declared themselves in deadlock and co-opted an
associate justice to break the tie. On 25 October the following majority
ruling was reached: “Let the royal treasury officials disburse to the
missionaries of the Order of Saint Francis their stipendiary rice, and let
the encomenderos give them the customary stipends of wine and rice;
so ordered/* 31
The other religious orders now petitioned for a similar resumption of
their stipends. The audiencia allowed the attorney-general to nudge them
further toward a restoration of the status quo. On 4 January 1 6 5 6 he begged
the court to take official notice of the fact that due to the lack of a sufficient
number of secular priests it was impossible to accept the renunciation
made by the religious orders of their parishes and missions. They must
therefore remain where they are. But they could not do so without the
necessary sustenance. Might it please the court, then, to order “what shall
be most appropriate** ? The court was pleased, and on 17 February 1656
ended a year of petitions and injunctions, marches and countermarches,
excursions and alarms by restoring all missionary stipends to the religious
orders “as long as they administer the parishes and missions committed
to their charge.** 32
This did not mean, of course, that the audiencia had come to recognize
the justice of the religious orders* cause. They merely recognized the
impossibility under the circumstances of enforcing the claims of the Crown,
and referred the whole question to the Council of the Indies. The dossier
was accompanied by an interesting minority opinion from the pen of the
oidor Salvador Gomez de Espinosa. He pointed out several errors in the
conduct of the case, the most serious of which was that both the attorney-
general and the audiencia assumed that the religious orders could validly
resign their parishes and missions. They could not ; or at least the audiencia
had no authority to accept such a resignation. What it should have done
was to direct the orders to present their resignation to the king as the only
competent authority, and in the meantime forbid them to leave their posts ;
in this way all that trouble might have been avoided. 33
The Council of the Indies was at first inclined to take a strong line with
the Philippine religious. Its attorney-general observed that the cedulas of
1624 and 1629 were being enforced in the rest of the Spanish dominions ;
why, then, should the missionaries in the Philippines alone be permitted
A Succession of Shocks 429
to exempt themselves from them? However, even the Council of the
Indies could not change the terms of the problem. Whatever the conditions
might be in the rest of the Indies, there were not enough secular priests in
the Philippines to take the places of the regular clergy. Hence the Crown
had no choice but to accept the services of the latter on their own terms.
The dossier remained in the council's case-pending file for ten years. On
23 October 1666 it was rubricated “visto” — seen — and transferred to the
archives. 34
BOOK THREE
The Livery of Christ
The Province,
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The Western Visayas
Showing the principal Jesuit
Mission Stations
l«m*]
Chapter Eighteen
RECOIL AND ADVANCE
In 1655 the Jesuit province of the Philippines completed fifty years of its
existence, and the following year was the seventy-fifth since Sedeno and his
companions established the first house of the Society at Lagyo. The pro-
vince now had five colleges, of which the principal one, the College of
Manila, conducted an elementary school, a grammar school, and higher
studies leading to degrees in arts and theology ; the second, accredited to it
but with its own rector and endowment, was the residential College of
San Jos£; and the other three, at Cebu, Cavite, and Arevalo, were colleges
only in the sense that they were endowed and conducted free elementary
schools. In 1659 t ^ ie Zamboanga residence, though not endowed, began
to be classified as a college, apparently because it had acquired some land
from which it derived a small but stable income. A novitiate and tertian-
ship had been founded at San Pedro Makati, but as we have seen the
novices and tertians after a brief sojourn there were moved back to the
College of Manila and San Pedro used merely as a villa house and house of
retreats.
There were five other Jesuit residences in the archdiocese of Manila:
Santa Cruz, San Miguel, Antipolo, Silang, and Boac on the island of
Marinduque. In the diocese of Cebu there were seven: Loboc on the island
of Bohol, Carigara and Dagami on the island of Leyte, Catbalogan and
Palapag on the island of Samar, Dapitan and Zamboanga on the island of
Mindanao. Each of these residences, except the suburban parishes of San
Miguel and Santa Cruz, had the spiritual administration of several towns,
to which were attached a number of villages as visitas. In 1656 there were
79 towns altogether under Jesuit care, with approximately 17,931 families
or an estimated population of 71,724 (see Table 5). Jesuit chaplains were
stationed at the garrisons of Iloilo, Iligan, and Zamboanga, and a small
band of missionaries had been sent to take the place of the Portuguese
Jesuits in the Moluccas. 1
Three other seventeenth-century statistical tables have been preserved
giving the names of the towns under Jesuit care and their respective Chris-
tian populations for the years 1659, 1675, and 1696. 2 They are too lengthy
to be reproduced in full, but the demographer will find them of consider-
able interest. The figure for each town is itemized according to the various
classes of the population. The Latin labels for the seven classes given are :
433
434 The Jesuits in the Philippines
uxorati , soluti } ephehi , virgines , pueri, puellae , mancipia; which we may trans-
late as: Married Persons, Single Adults, Unmarried Males between the
Table j. Parish and Mission Residences of the Philippine Province in l 6 j 6
Residence
No. of
towns
No. of
families
Population 3
Archdiocese of Manila:
Santa Cruz
1
600
2,400
San Miguel
X
140
560
Antipolo
5
500
2,000
Silang
3
1,000
4,000
Boac
4
450
1,800
Diocese of Cebu :
Loboc
6
1,200
4,800
Carigara
10
2,000
8,000
Dagami
9
2,000
8,000
Catbalogan
6
1,400
5,600
Palapag
8
1,600
6,400
Dapitan
I I
1 , 75 °
7,000
Zamboanga
n
4,251
17,004
Mandaue b
I
40
160
Ilog and Oton c
7 .
1,000
4,000
Total
79
17.931
71,724
a. Estimated on the basis of four persons per family, the asumption made in the statis-
tical reports of this period.
b. Not strictly speaking a residence, but a pastoral charge attached to the College of
Cebu.
c. Ilog in Negros and Oton, the native town which with the Spanish settlement of
Arevalo formed the city of Iloilo, were pastoral charges attached to the College of Arevalo.
Source: Colfn-Pastells III, 792-802.
ages of puberty and majority, Unmarried Females between the same ages,
Boys, Girls, and Slaves (male and female). The 1659 figures for the Bohol
towns are given as a sample in Table 6.
Note that unlike Colin’s appendix of 1656, these tables enumerate only
the Christian population; that is why the 1659 table shows a grand total
of only 52,265, as against Colin’s 71,724. In 1675, however, the Christian
population totaled 70,561, in spite of the loss of Zamboanga; and in 1696
it stood at 97,000. Because of the loss of Zamboanga the number of towns,
which was 82 in 1659, was reduced to 78 in 1675, but was up to 81 in
Recoil and Advance
435
Table 6. The Population of Bohol: A Sampling from the Catalogus Christianorum
of 1659
Town
Uxorati
Soluti
Ephebi Virgines
Pueri
Puellae
Mancipia
Total
Loboc
350
150
no
125
200
235
100
1,270
Baclayon
360
170
150
165
230
251
150
1,476
Malabohoc
170
100
53
69
80
100
65
637
Inabangan
90
5 °
20
3 °
40
50
31
311
Panglao
130
40
35
62
71
5 °
429
Total
1,100
510
368
430
612
707
39 6
4* lz 3
Source: ARSI Phtl. 2, 3 14-3 17V.
1696 due to the expansion of the Negros mission. An interesting detail is
the fluctuation in the number of slaves: 3,135 in 1659, 170 in 1675, and
2,857 in 1696. I can offer no explanation for this, except that when the
colonial government recovered sufficiently to strike back at the Moros, war
prisoners were undoubtedly sold into slavery, as the laws permitted.
The succession of provincials during the second half of the seventeenth
century
i6 53
was as follows: 3
Diego Patino
1671
Andres de Ledesma
1654
Miguel Solana
Simon Bautista
1675
Luis Pimentel
1658
1675
Javier Riquelme
1659
Francisco de Roa
1678
Giovanni Pallavicino
l66l
Ignacio Zapata
1681
Tomas de Andrade
1663
Rafael de Bonafe
1683
Francisco Salgado
1665
Ignacio Zapata
1687
Luis Pimentel
l666
Domingo Ezquerra
1690
Jose Sanchez
1667
Rafael de Bonafe
1693
Magino Sola
1668
Miguel Solana
1696
Antonino Tuccio
1670
Luis Pimentel
x6 99
Luis de Morales
In Chapter 10 dates were given of the first seven congregations of the
Philippine province, the seventh of which was held in 1651. Eight more
were convoked during the second half of the seventeenth century, although
the proceedings of all of them have not yet been located. Of the fourteenth
congregation in particular we know only that it was held, presumably
during the interval between 1687 and 1696, and possibly in 1691. The
list below gives the number of the congregation, the year it was held, and
the name of the procurator elected to go to Europe.
VIII 1659 Antonio Abarca
IX 1665 Andres de Ledesma
X 1671 Juan de Landa
436 The Jesuits in the Philippines
XI 1675 Pedro de Espmar
XII 1681 Jeronimo Ortega
XIII 1687 Antonio Jaramillo
XIV 1691? ?
XV 1696 Juan de Irigoyen
Diego Patino, the procurator elected at the seventh congregation (1651),
did not leave until after 1654, for we find him acting as provincial in the
interval. Moreover, he died at Tenerife in the Canaries in 1657, before
reaching Rome. His place was taken by Miguel Solana, who was also
commissioned as the agent at Madrid of the entire colony, as we have
already seen. Antonio Abarca, the procurator elected by the eighth congre-
gation, was unable to go; Luis Pimentel went instead. Juan de Landa
(1671) died on his way to Rome; no one seems to have taken, his place.
Pedro de Espinar (1675) was accompanied by his alternate, Francisco
Salgado, and it was Salgado who returned to Manila with the mission
expedition of 1 679 while Espinar remained behind as resident procurator
at Madrid for all the Jesuit provinces of the Indies. Jeronimo Ortega
(1681) was prevented from leaving the Philippines by his involvement in
a court case ; his alternate, Luis de Morales, went instead. It is interesting
to note that soon after Antonio Jaramillo (1687) had left the Philippines
his appointment as provincial arrived. He was doubtless informed of this
at Mexico, but decided to continue on his way. Such contingencies were
provided for by including alternates with all appointments sent from
Rome; in this case, Jose Sanchez was the alternate choice. Juan de
Irigoyen (1696) died at Monaco in 1699 while on his way to Rome. The
question of episcopal visitation was revived at this time by Archbishop
Camacho, and the religious orders were obliged to carry their case to
Rome. They entrusted the conduct of this business to a Jesuit also named
Juan de Irigoyen (I mention it here in order to avoid confusion between
the two). 4
The total membership of the province in 1655-1656 was 108: 74
priests, II scholastics, and 23 lay brothers. Sixty-three of the priests were
actively engaged in ministry among the natives; the others were in
administration or school work, or dealt principally with the Spanish
population; all, however, were qualified for the native ministry, as it was a
policy of the province to require each of its members to learn at least one
native language. The membership fell to 94 in 1665 but rose again in
succeeding years until it stood at 135 in 1693, the highest figure attained
in the second half of the seventeenth century (see Table 7). It should be
noted, however, that 10 or 12 of these were regularly stationed in the
Marianas Islands, which became a mission of the Philippine province in
1668.
Recoil and Advance
437
It was noted earlier that, because of the increasing inability of the
Spanish provinces to provide the Philippines with the missionaries it
needed, the Philippine procurators sought volunteers in other European
provinces of the Society; there were 20 non-Spaniards, for instance, in the
expedition of 1643 headed by Diego de Bobadilla. Some time before 1651
this practice was forbidden by the government, which directed the religious
orders to limit their recruitment of missionaries for the Indies to Spain
itself* The Philippine provincial congregation of that year requested the
general to negotiate the revocation of this prohibition, but the general was
apparently unsuccessful, for on 15 June 1654 the prohibition was
reaffirmed* Because of this the Philippine procurators had the greatest
difficulty in filling their quotas, that is, the number of men they were
allowed to take back with them at government expense. In 1652 Miguel
Solana, driven to desperation by the reluctance of the Spanish provincials
to part with their men, asked the general to exempt all volunteers for the
Philippines from obedience to their provincials and put them under his,
Solana's jurisdiction. The general, Goswin Nickel, wisely rejected this
drastic measure, w T hich would have created more problems than it solved. 5
However, he and his successor, Gian Paolo Oliva, continued to press
the Spanish government to allow Jesuits from other countries to come to
the aid of their Spanish brethren overseas, and in 1664 their efforts were
finall y crowned with success. On 10 December of this year Philip IV con-
sented that one-fourth of the number of Jesuits in each missionary expedi-
tion to the Indies be recruited outside Spain, ‘ 'provided that they are my
vassals [that is, citizens of Spanish-held territory, such as Naples], or
belong to the hereditary realms of the House of Austria ; provided further
that they are approved by their general and have from him letters-patent
in which are indicated their place of birth, the place of their entrance into
the Society, and the colleges where they have resided, and that they are
already ordained priests. Furthermore, I ordain that having arrived in this
country they remain for one year in this province of Toledo before pro-
ceeding to the Indies, in order that their attitudes and behavior may be
observed at close quarters; the provincial shall submit a report on them,
and on the basis of this information the said mv Council Co f the Indiesl
j ^ j
shall issue them their visa.” 6
Not a very generous concession, but wonderful news for the Society,
which Oliva hastened to share with the provinces where volunteer
missionaries waited for an answer to their prayers. In his eagerness, in fact,
he seems to have anticipated the official publication of the cedula, for his
letter is dated 29 November. 7 The royal decree, he said, now opened the
American and Philippine missions to Jesuits of the provinces of Austria,
Bohemia, Upper Germany, and Upper and Lower Belgium. Applicants
were to submit their names to their respective provincials, who would pass
438 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Table 7 . Distribution of Personnel of the Philippine Province , 1639-1696
Establishments
1659
1665
1675
1687
1693
1696
Colleges :
Manila
17
37
44
31
41
4 ^
San Jose
6
3
5
6
7
8
Cavite
5
3
4
5
7
4
Cebu
7
4
2
3
3
4
Arevalo
6
5
6
7
4
5
Zamboanga
4
_a
-
-
-
“
Residences :
Santa Cruz
2
__b
2
3
1
2
San Miguel
1
I
I
3
1
I
Antipolo
3
4
4
3
3
3
Silang
4
4
4
4
6
3
Boac
2
2
2
2
2
3
Loboc
3
3
4
5
5
5
Carigara
4
5
5
8
7
8
Dagami
4
5
5
8
7
8
Catbalogan
?
3
3
6
4
5
Palapag
5
5
5
5
5
5
Dapitan
3
2
4
5
4
3
Missions :
Moluccas-Siao
3
2
3
_c
-
-
Marianas
-
-
13 d
9
13
12
Special assignments 6
5
2
3
II
9
8
Unaccounted for f
9
3
3
2
5
2
Total
96
94
124
I24
135
131
a. Closed when the garrison was retired in 1 662 ; reopened in 1718.
b. Demolished during the preparations for Kogseng's expected invasion; rebuilt some
time before 1675.
c. Moluccas mission closed when the garrison was retired in 1662, but another mission
established on the island of Siau, which in turn was closed 1 677 when the Dutch annexed
the island.
d. Mission founded 1668.
e. These include procurators of the provincial congregations still in Europe or on their
way there, procurators of the province resident in Mexico, and their lay-brother com-
panions.
f. These almost certainly include the provincial and his socius (companion and secretary);
probably also the procurator of the province resident at Manila; and possibly those placed
under confinement for serious offenses against the rule, according to the custom of the
period.
Source: “Catalogi triennales ARSI Phil 2 . In the second half of the seventeenth
century these " triennial ” catalogues had become sexennial, and not all have been preserved.
Recoil and Advance
439
them on to Rome along with all pertinent information regarding each
applicant, in order that those most fit for the arduous life of the missions,
both physically and spiritually, might be chosen. Oliva mentioned in
passing that there was hope of obtaining a more generous concession, but
this hope was not realized until ten years later. On 12 March 1675 Marie
Anne of Austria, regent of Spain during the minority of Charles II, gave
permission for one-third of Jesuit missionary expeditions to consist of non-
Spaniards. She also revoked the requirement of one-year residence in the
province of Toledo before proceeding overseas. The foreign missionaries
could await embarkation in any of the Spanish provinces, and as long as the
provincial of that province vouched for them they could sail as soon as the
fleet was ready. 8 This wise move brought to the Philippines a number of
saintly and learned Jesuits from central and northern Europe, of whose
varied achievements I shall have occasion to speak later in this narrative.
The provisioning and transportation of all missionaries from Spain to
the Indies continued to be generously undertaken during this period by the
royal government in spite of increasing financial embarrassment. An
anonymous Jesuit pamphlet of 1687 presents an itemized computation of
what this subsidy amounted to annually. 9 The grand total for the Jesuit
provinces in Spanish America and the Philippines, including not only the
transportation of missionaries but the yearly stipends given to those engaged
in the ministry of natives, was 2x9,250 pesos a year. For the Philippine
province and its mission of the Marianas Islands alone, it was 42,500 pesos
a year, itemized as follows :
For 4 priests in the College of Manila engaged in the
ministry of natives, at the rate of 100 pesos and 100
fanegas of rice per year 500
For the missionaries in the Visavan islands and Mindanao,
at the same rate 6,500
For the missionaries in the Tagalog provinces, at the same
rate 4,000
For the missionaries in the Marianas islands, including the
subsidy for the boarding school at Guam and the main-
tenance of the garrison there 22,000
For the annual supply ship sent to the Marianas from the
Philippines 4,000
For oil to keep the sanctuary lamps burning perpetually
before the Blessed Sacrament in all these mission churches,
and for Mass wine 2,000
For the provisioning and transportation of missionaries
from Europe (about 50 or 60 every six years); yearly 4,000
Total 42,500
440 The Jesuits in the Philippines
The duration, discomforts, and dangers of the voyage from Seville or
Cadiz to Manila remained pretty much what they were earlier in the
century. The expedition of 1663 landed at Apam in northern Luzon,
where they were very hospitably received by the Dominicans, to whom the
missions of that entire region belonged. Because of the lack of roads
through the interior of the island they had to proceed from that point by
dugout and on foot around Cape Bojeador and down the western coast;
a long and painful journey as a result of which one of their number died
soon after reaching Manila. 10 As previously noted, non-Spanish members
of the expeditions either assumed or were given Spanish names. The
Austrian superior of the expedition of 1681, Karl von Boranga, writing
home to a fellow Jesuit, informs him of some of these changes among his
companions. He himself was henceforth to be known as Juan Bautista
Perez de Calatayud; Andreas Mancker had become Alonso de Castro de
Viena; Johannes Tilpe, Luis Turcotti de Niza; Augustin Strobach, Carlos
Javier Calvanese ; and Theophilus de Angelis, Juan de Loyola de Azpeitia. 11
As was to be expected, minor misunderstandings occasionally arose
between the Spaniards in the expeditions and their German or middle-
European brethren. Much of it was due simply to the barrier of language,
and disappeared as soon as the foreigners were able to make themselves
understood in Spanish. As the Czech Jesuit, Adam Kaller, explained :
With regard to the complaints which certain individuals have written back
from Spain or the Indies to Prague, they are well founded, but the causes which
produced them are now almost nonexistent. The fault has been corrected and we
have nothing to complain about at present, although in the beginning we were
made to suffer a little. The principal reason for these difficulties was language,
for we understood no Spanish at first, and they [the Spaniards], in order to oblige
us to learn their native tongue, would not talk to us in Latin; for the Spaniards
in the two Indies [eastern and western], like the Romans, are convinced that their
language should be conterminous with their sovereignty. But as soon as we ac-
quired a certain ease in speaking it — which we had reason to do quickly, not only
in order to communicate with them but to hear confessions and perform our
priestly duties in this language — they have gone out of their way to pamper us,
so to speak, and anticipate our every wish . 12
Once the language barrier was surmounted, the foreign missionaries had
little difficult} 7 in winning the respect and affection of the Spaniards. We
saw above that Von Boranga was appointed superior of a mixed expedition
to the Philippines, in spite of the fact that he was an Austrian. But it was
the German and Austrian lay brothers who were particularly appreciated.
The Philippine procurators were kept busy warding designing Mexican
rectors away from them, because of their skill as druggists and infirmarians.
The Spanish doctors had, of course, nothing but contempt for their
“ German remedies”; but the fact remained that the remedies worked,
Recoil and Advance
441
even in cases which the doctors had pronounced incurable. Kaller, in the
letter cited above, reports triumphantly that he and his companions had
safely got aboard the Manila galleon, out of the clutches of the Mexican
Jesuits, a certain Brother Georg Kamel of whom we shall hear more.
In spite of the difficulty of bringing missionaries from Europe, there is
no appreciable increase in the number of candidates locally admitted to
the Society during this period. This may be gathered from the data supplied
by the extant catalogues of the period. During the six years from 1659 to
1665, nine applicants were received, five as scholastics and four as lay
brothers, and an equal number pronounced their first vows at the com-
pletion of the noviceship. In 1671-1675, three were received for the lay
brotherhood; one pronounced his first vows. In 1682-1687, nine were
received, two scholastics and seven lay brothers; two pronounced their
first vows. 1687-1693 were fat years; nine scholastics and seven lay
brothers w r ere received for a grand total of seventeen, and thirteen com-
pleted their noviceship. But that was exceptional; from 1693 to 1696 only
four pronounced their first vows, and of the six applicants received two
had to be dismissed, leaving only one scholastic and one lay-brother novice.
The unusually lean years from 1671 to 1675 find their explanation in a
memorial of the provincial Rafael de Bonafe dated 1665. In this memorial
he asks for “several lay brothers of proven virtue who know something
about the management of affairs, especially farming, because for several
years now the governors have refused permission for soldiers to cut short
their term of service in order to enter religion ; as a result the brothers are
getting fewer and fewer and the farms, having no one to take care of them,
are being ruined. " Oliva said he would do his best, but did not hold out
much hope ; for, he said, such brothers were at a premium in Spain itself. 13
There is no record of full-blooded Filipinos being admitted to the
Society during the second half of the seventeenth century, but a Chinese-
Filipino mestizo was. The proposal to admit him was made by Juan de
Irigoyen, who spent several years in China as a missionary. Upon his
return to Manila in 1686 he wrote to the general recommending the
admission as a lay brother of Julian Cruz, who had accompanied him to
China as a servant or, more probably, a donado. 14 Cruz, Irigoyen said,
was “a youth of rare virtue, modest, pious, devout, and extremely able in
the management of affairs/' He had already taken a private vow of chas-
tity, but wished to complete his dedication to God by becoming a Jesuit.
However, he has not yet gained admission “ because he is a mestizo, that
is, born of a Chinese father and an Indian mother, and it is not the custom
in this province to admit such persons without your Paternity's approval/'
The general's actual reply to this proposal is not known but Julian Cruz
was received into the Society at Manila on 3 1 December 1689.
As for criollos, the reservations made earlier in the century regarding
442 The Jesuits in the Philippines
their fitness for the religious life disappeared completely. One of the
petitions submitted by the procurator Andres de Ledesma in 1669 was
that the general urge the provincial of Mexico to be more generous in
sharing his Mexican-born subjects with the Philippines, '‘for of the
criollos born in New Spain and admitted to the Society there, those who
were sent to the Philippines did splendid work, being exemplary religious
and ready for anything/' 15
We must now resume our narrative of events in the Magindanau and
Sulu area, starting from where we left off at the end of Corcuera's adminis-
tration in 1645. By that time Corcuera's brilliant conquests had been to a
large extent nullified by the stubborn resistance of Kudrat and Bungsu.
The garrisons stationed at Bwayan and La Sabanilla had had to be with-
drawn, and, while Jolo remained in Spanish hands, it was practically
beleaguered by a hostile population.
Governor Fajardo quickly grasped the essential fact about this situation
which his predecessor was either too busy to realize or too proud to admit,
namely, that with the forces at his disposal he could not defend the
Philippines from the Dutch and at the same time maintain a state of war
against the Magindanaus and Sulus. It was essential then to stabilize the
situation in the south by arriving at a peace settlement as quickly as
possible and on the most advantageous terms with the two Moslem poten-
tates. The man Fajardo chose for this task was the rector of the Jesuit
residence at Zamboanga, Alejandro Lopez.
Lopez decided to sound Kudrat out before starting formal negotiations.
Kudrat sent one of his nobles to Zamboanga with an encouraging letter.
"The Sultan of Magindanau," it ran, "writes to pay his devoir to Father
Alejandro Lopez, Rector of Zamboanga, who understands the things of
this world, who can distinguish the true from the false, who perceives the
reality behind the appearances, and whose fame, because of this, has
spread throughout all my realm ... I send this embassy vfith Orangkaia
Datang that he may bring the Father Rector back wfith him, and that he
may convey my affection for, and my wholehearted desire to be a friend
and brother to, the King of Spain." 16 Lopez made the voyage in Datang’s
ships to Simuai, Kudrat's capital, and was soon able to send back to the
governor of Zamboanga, Don Francisco de Atienza, the draft of a treaty
which Kudrat w r as willing to sign. Atienza found it similarly acceptable to
the Spanish government. It was duly ratified on 24 June 1645, Atienza
going in person to Simuai to sign it on behalf of the Crowm. 17
The principal terms of what may properly be called the Lopez Treaty
were as follows. First, between Kudrat, Sultan of Magindanau, and his
successors, and Philip IV, King of Spain, and his successors, there was to
be perpetual friendship and alliance, both defensive and offensive. Any
breaches of the peace were to be settled by arbitration between the con-
Recoil and Advance
443
tr acting parties. Secondly, any captives and spoils taken in joint military
operations were to be equally divided between the contracting parties,
except that Christian captives were to be released and slaves belonging to
either party were to remain the property of that party. Third, the Spanish
government recognized the inhabitants of the territory “from the Iho
River, in the interior, and the middle of the Bay of Tagalook to the
Sibugai River* * as vassals of Kudrat. The highland clans of Cotabato and
the people of Magolabon, though not yet completely reduced by Kudrat to
his obedience, were similarly recognized as being his vassals. Kudrat, for
his part, recognized the territory around the Lake of Lanao as belonging
to the Spanish sphere of influence. Fourth, the contracting parties were
to help each other reduce their rebellious vassals. Fifth, commercial
intercourse between the contracting parties and their subjects was to be
free and unrestricted, save that Magindanau traders were to pay a 5 per
cent duty on all merchandise they brought to Zamboanga. Converts from
Islam to Christianity could enter Magindanau territory for purposes of
trade without being compelled to return to their original religion. Sixth,
the Jesuits were permitted to establish a church and residence in Kudrat* s
capital, “in order that they may minister to the residents thereof who are
already Christian, or whom they may openly persuade to become Chris-
tians; and the said Christians, if they be slaves, are automatically to be
released by their owners as soon as they are able to ransom themselves at
the rate of 40 pesos for a healthy adult, male or female, 30 pesos for boys
and girls, 20 pesos for old or sick people, and 10 pesos for infants.**
Finally, Manakior, lord of the highland clans and Kudrat* s brother-in-law,
was to be forgiven all the offenses he might have committed against the
Spaniards, and admitted to their full friendship.
At the very moment that the signing of this treaty was being joyfully
celebrated at Simuai, the garrison at Jolo, unknown either to the Spanish
authorities or the Magindanaus, was suddenly and without warning placed
in the gravest danger. Some time before this. Prince Sarikula, one of Raja
Bungsu*s sons, had gone to Batavia to seek the aid of the Dutch against the
Spaniards. His application was favorably received. Two warships were
detailed to reduce the three small forts with which the Spaniards held Jolo.
They arrived before the town in June 1645 and succeeded in landing a
force, building trenches, and mounting a shore battery. They commenced
operations against the Spanish positions on 27 June. The defenders,
commanded by Esteban de Ugalde Orella and encouraged by their chap-
lain, Father Adolf Steinhauser, gave a good account of themselves. When
the Sulus perceived that the Dutch were getting the worst of it, they with-
drew their support and stood by to watch the Europeans fight it out;
whereupon the Dutch commander, utterly disgusted with the whole affair,
sent his men back to their ships and sailed away. 18
15*
444 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Although the attack was unsuccessful, Governor Fajardo realized that if
it was repeated under slightly more favorable circumstances — and there
was every reason that it 'would be — a garrison of the size he could afford
to maintain at Jolo, no matter how r valiant, would not be able to hold it.
He therefore decided to withdraw from Jolo while he could; but at the
same time he did not want the withdrawal to be taken by the Sulus as an
indication of weakness. This impression could be avoided, he thought, by
making the abandonment of Jolo one of the consequences of a treaty of
peace, and so Lopez was hurriedly instructed to begin negotiations with
Raja Bungsu for such a treaty.
Lopez shrewdly prepared the way by asking Kudrat to use all his
influence in persuading Bungsu to come to terms with the Spaniards,
judging correctly that Kudrat would be more than willing to do this, since
the Sulus if uncommitted to a Spanish alliance like his own would have a
considerable advantage over him. When, therefore, Lopez went to confer
with Raja Bungsu at Jolo, it was in the company of Kudrat’ s nephew,
Kechil Batiokan, and the admiral of his fleet, Orangkaia Datang.
The terms of the treaty were quickly agreed upon, and Atienza w T as
already on his way to Jolo for the signing when news was received of the
approach of a powerful Dutch squadron. At this, Raja Bungsu left the
conference and retired with his entourage to the hills among the warlike
Gimba people. In this unexpected crisis, with the Spaniards caught
between a Dutch invading force and the Sulus mustering in the hinter-
land, Lopez took the audacious step which saved the situation. Unarmed
and unaccompanied, he took the trail after Bungsu, overtook him, and
persuaded him to return and conclude the peace. Atienza, without waiting
for them at Jolo, met them halfway, and the treaty was signed at Lipir on
14 April 1646. 19
This second Lopez Treaty was substantially the same as that negotiated
with Kudrat. It too was a treaty of perpetual friendship and an offensive
and defensive alliance. The respective territorial limits of the contracting
parties were defined: the jurisdiction of Raja Bungsu, designated in this
treaty as sultan, was recognized as extending from Tawi-tawi to Tutup and
Bagahak, while it was understood that Spain would have a free hand in the
islands of Tapul, Balangingi, Siassi, and Pangutaran. As a token of con-
tinuing friendship, the sultan was to send to Zamboanga every year three
joangas, each eight fathoms in length, filled with rice; and the Spaniards,
not to be outdone in generosity, were to withdraw their garrisons from
Jolo. Arrangements were made for joint expeditions against the Camucones
of Borneo, in which all booty would be divided equally. Jesuit missionaries
could preach Christianity freely anywhere in the sultan’s dominions and
any of his subjects could embrace Christianity without let or hindrance.
Spain recognized Prince Pakian Baktial as the legitimate successor to the
Recoil and Advance
445
sultanate. Bungsu engaged to obtain the consent to the treaty both of
Prince Pakian and Prince Sarikula.
Two days after the withdrawal of the Spanish garrison from Jolo had
been completed the Dutch squadron, four warships, arrived. But Bungsu
meant to keep the terms of the treaty he had just signed and the Dutch
had no option but to retire a second time without accomplishing anything.
The two princes at first refused to ratify the peace their father had made,
but when Prince Pakian Baktial was worsted in a naval engagement with
the Zamboanga squadron, Prince Sarikula sent for Father Lopez and
declared his formal adhesion to the treaty. Lopez then went to Manila to
report to Governor Fajardo personally. His success in carrying out the
difficult task committed to him helped to dispel the initial disfavor with
which Fajardo regarded the Jesuits because of the affair of the College of
San Felipe and won his wholehearted cooperation in Lopez's plans for the
development of the Zamboanga mission. The usual stipends were granted
for the support of six priests to be stationed at Zamboanga: one to serve
as chaplain of the garrison, another as chaplain of the naval squadron, a
third as missionary among the Lutaus, a fourth to evangelize Basilan
Island, a fifth to take care of the Subanun settlements along the western
coast of the Zamboanga peninsula, and a sixth to preach the gospel to the
Sulus. 20
The Lutaus, who had not fallen under the influence of Islam to the same
extent as the Sulus, took to Christianity much more readily. They
migrated in increasing numbers to Zamboanga and formed three settle-
ments around the tow r n : Bagumbayan on the beach, Kagangkagang beside
the river, and Buayabuaya in the mangrove marshes. It was to the Christian
Lutaus of Zamboanga, as we have already seen, that Governor Fajardo
assigned the task of putting an end to the Palapag rebellion of 1649.
Lopez went with them as chaplain on this expedition. Governor Atienza of
Zamboanga and his successors helped the fathers provide the town with
much-needed sendees, among them a hospital, chapels for the Lutau
settlements, and a refuge for fallen women. 21
Francisco Lado, the missionary assigned to Basilan, succeeded in winning
the friendship of the Lutaus of the coastal settlements. They expelled the
Moslem panditas or preachers who were among them and built Lado a
church and house. The Yakans of the interior, however, proved more
recalcitrant ; not until their rebel chieftain Tabako was killed in a skirmish
with Spanish commandos was Father Lado able to undertake mission w r ork
among them. In 1649, Pedro Duran de Monforte, commander of the
naval squadron and later governor of Zamboanga, undertook two successful
expeditions against the Camucones of Borneo. He put several of their
villages to the sack, took 200 captives, burned more than 30 vessels, and
thus smothered a slaving expedition which w r as being readied for the
446 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Visayas at its source. The Zamboanga Jesuits who accompanied succeeding
expeditions made a vigorous start in the evangelization of that great island.
It was slow work taming the barbarous ferocity of the Camucones ; but by
1660 the missionaries had made 700 converts among them. 22
The Subanuns will be discussed in detail when the Dapitan mission is
mentioned. They were most numerous on the northern coast of the
Zamboanga peninsula, but their clan villages were strung out along the
beaches and at the river mouths of its western seaboard all the way down
to Zamboanga itself. Hence missionary work among them was divided
between the two residences of Dapitan and Zamboanga, with a floating
demarcation line in the neighborhood of Sindangan Bay. In 1648 one of
the Dapitan Jesuits lost his life in this ministry, and in 1650 one of the
Zamboanga Jesuits. It was usual for the Dapitan missionaries to take with
them while on tour an escort of Christian warriors for their personal protec-
tion. In the beginning young Francesco Palliola conformed to this practice,
but, fearing that the presence of an armed guard might make him less
approachable to the Subanuns, he abandoned it, going on his missionary
excursions accompanied only by two boys as Mass servers. He also made it
a point to learn the Subanun language. He was in fact the first Jesuit to do
so, for previously the Dapitan missionaries preached to the Subanuns in
Visayan, which the Subanuns understood after a fashion.
Because of his great devotion to the Mass, he demanded regular atten-
dance at it from his converts, and probably used the method of roll call
and public reprehension then in universal use for checking absentees.
Irked by this, certain women of the town of Ponot, just above Sindangan
Bay, incited their warriors against the priest. A band was formed, led by
an apostate Christian named Huana and a pagan named Tampilos. They
broke into the house where Palliola was staying at Ponot, clove his skull
with a kris and left him dead. He died on 29 January 1648. 23 The Chris-
tians of Ponot took his body to Dapitan, where it was buried. His mur-
derers fled the region and some of them settled further south, in the village
of Siukun.
Siukun lay within the mission territory of the Zamboanga Jesuits. It was
a difficult mission because the Subanuns had a deep-rooted conviction that
the principal purpose of the Spaniards in coming there was to reduce them
to slavery. In spite of this Father Juan del Campo, to whom the Subanun
circuit was assigned, succeeded by dint of unremitting labor to win a
measure of confidence. He persuaded some of the highland clans to take
up a more settled mode of existence and their datus to dismiss their super-
fluous wives. However, it was on the next generation that he placed his
hopes. On his mission journeys he kept a lookout for the most intelligent
and spirited boys, and whenever he found one he would send him to
Zamboanga to be raised and educated in one of the Christian households
Recoil and Advance
447
there. The apostates from Ponot who had settled at Siukun used this to
poison the minds of the Subanuns against the priest, saying that he was
really sending the boys into captivity as hostages to keep their families
in subjection. The suspicions engendered by this rumor were further
aroused by the labor draft of 1649 and the uprising in Samar against it.
A band of warriors gathered around a certain Imutum and descended on
Siukun at a time when Del Campo was engaged in building a new church
there. Wounded by a lance thrust, the priest had enough strength to
stagger to the river bank, where a navy patrol boat was moored. However,
the conspirators overtook him as he was trying to climb aboard and
finished him off. The Spanish corporal and five Pampango troopers who
were with him were also killed. It was 27 January 1650. In the confusion,
no one thought of retrieving Del Campo's corpse, which was carried out to
sea by the tide and never recovered. 24
Meanwhile, on the other side of the island, the peace with Kudrat had
been placed in grave jeopardy by the Spaniards of the Caraga fort. There
too the Palapag rebellion had had its repercussions, and the Caraga
commander while in pursuit of rebels made several raids into Kudrat' s
territory and took prisoners. Aroused by this, and possibly because he was
getting bored with the peace, the old Magindanau warlord began to
assemble a raiding fleet, calling for assistance on the warriors of Sangil,
past masters in the art of piracy. At Governor Fajardo's request Father
Lopez turned once again from mission work to diplomacy. He went to
Simuai and succeeded in calming Kudrat down. The raid was called off,
much to the disgust of the Magindanau and Sangil warriors. However,
this did not deter Lopez from making a side trip to Bwayan, where Bala-
tamai was now lord, and winning his adhesion to the treaty. It may be
taken as a measure of the great personal charm of this saintly priest that
before leaving Simuai for Zamboanga he had converted to Christianity two
of the most important members of Kudrat's household: Prince Guadin,
Kudrat' s second son, and Orangkaia Ugbo, one of his most trusted
ministers. The hopes which the Spanish government placed on Guadin as a
possible Christian successor to Kudrat were disappointed by the prince's
untimely death ; but Ugbo after his catechumenate was solemnly baptized
at Zamboanga and left Kudrat' s service to accept command of the Lutau
troops in the Spanish service. 25
The prospects for the eventual Christianization of the Moslem south
never looked more fair, and when the provincial congregation of 1651
convened at the College of Manila, Lopez proposed as a postalatum that
the general request the Holy See to create an episcopal see at Zamboanga.
The fathers did not think the time was quite ripe for this ; but they did
ask the general to obtain for the missionaries among the Moros the faculty
of administering the sacrament of confirmation in the absence of a bishop. 26
448 The Jesuits in the Philippines
The cheerful confidence in the future which presided over these delibera-
tions was destined to be rudely dashed to the ground in the next decade.
When Don Sabiniano Manrique de Lara succeeded Fajardo as governor
in 1653, he sent envoys to Kudrat to announce this fact and to declare his
intention of abiding by the Lopez Treaty* Kudrat received the embassy
with every sign of cordiality, affirming that he too meant to abide by it,
in spite of the flagrant violation of its terms by the Caraga garrison and
the attractive offers which the Dutch of Batavia were constantly making to
win him over to their allegiance* Spanish agents in Lanao and the Moluc-
cas, however, told a different story* They reported great and increasingly
vocal discontent in the towns and villages of the Great River, where the
younger warriors chafed at the enforced idleness to which the Lopez Treaty
had reduced them; the prevailing opinion was that Kudrat, in order to
retain his ascendancy, would have to yield to pressure and tear up the
treaty.
These indications were confirmed in 1655, when Kudrat suddenly sent
an embassy to Manila headed by one Ranua. The choice of ambassador
was significant, for whereas previous Magindanau envoys had been
noblemen, this Banua was a household slave, the son of a Tagalog captive.
He was also a boor, and at the various stops which he made in the course
of his leisurely progress, he went out of his way to affront the Spanish
officers who gave him hospitality* At Tungauan he referred insultingly to
an image of Saint Francis Xavier and struck the resident missionary there,
Father Miguel de Pareja, a blow on the face. At Zamboanga he told the
Lutaus plainly that the days of the peace were numbered. The message
which he delivered at Manila was a provocative one. Kudrat demanded the
instant release of all Magindanau prisoners, whom he accused the Spanish
government of retaining in contravention of the treaty, and the return of
all the artillery captured by Corcuera in his Magindanau campaign.
Lara agreed to these demands, although he knew very well that the
prisoners referred to, having become Christians and released, had no wish
to return to the Great River; and that the artillery captured by Corcuera
had long ago been melted down for metal. He did so apparently to give
himself the opportunity of making counter-demands, which he asked
Father Lopez to present in the hope that that accomplished diplomat
would be able once again to avert a crisis. Lopez went. At Zamboanga,
where he arrived in the beginning of November, the Lutaus tried to
dissuade him from going any further, telling him that he was going to his
death. Lopez probably suspected as much, but he set his face steadfastly
towards Simuai and the accomplishment of his mission. A young priest
recently assigned to Zamboanga went to keep him company: Father Juan
Montiel.
The embassy was received at Simuai without the usual demonstrations
Recoil and Advance
449
of welcome. Kudrat stayed in his house, and Lopez was obliged to notify
him of his arrival by messenger. Kudrat sent back word that he could
deliver his message in writing. Lopez protested that his instructions were
to see the sultan personally, and demanded audience. Kudrat consented
with bad grace. Governor Lara's counter-demands were not very concilia-
tory, and Lopez could not tone them down without falsifying them. They
were prefaced by a long bill of particulars in which Kudrat was accused of
violating the terms of the treaty, among them the fact (which was undeni-
able) that he had never bothered to fulfill his promise of allowing a
Christian mission to be established at Simuai. Kudrat fell into a rage.
Lopez tried to calm him down, and in the course of doing so let fall what
was doubtless uppermost in his mind and heart, namely, that all these
quarrels and crises went back to one prime root, the difference in their
faiths, and that by far the simplest way to put an end to them was for
Kudrat and his people to embrace Christianity* The missionary had got
the better of the diplomat.
Kudrat shouted at him to say no more, or he would have him killed.
Lopez replied that he would not in the least mind being killed, as that
would make him a martyr. “What then?" said Kudrat. “Is it as ambas-
sador, or as martyr that you have come?" As ambassador, the priest
replied, but no matter what the message he brought from men, he was
above all and always God's ambassador, ordained for the teaching of the
true law, so that by teaching that law he was fulfilling his embassy. At that,
Kudrat dismissed him.
Although the blame for Lopez's subsequent death has always been attri-
buted to Kudrat, it was actually in Balatamai's house at Bwayan that the
deed was done. Balatamai sent w 7 ord to the Jesuit that Kudrat' s queen, who
was sojourning at Bwayan, wished to see him. Lopez went, and while
Balatamai engaged him in conversation, assassins entered the hall where
they were and felled him with a lance thrust. As he sank to the ground,
they dealt him two more blows with the kampilan on the head. Thus he
died on 13 December 1655. Montiel, his companion, was killed at the
same time, and of his entourage only the Lutau crew of the vessel in which
he came and two Spaniards escaped. 27
War was now inevitable. While Kudrat assembled an armada and sent
his agents ranging widely through the Moluccas and the Sulu islands for
additional ships and troops, he excused himself to the Spanish authorities,
claiming that it was Balatamai who had put the ambassadors to death.
Lara returned no reply to this, but ordered the forces at Zamboanga to
mobilize against Magindanau as soon as possible. The naval commander
there, however, kept putting off the expedition, because he felt that with
Lopez dead he could no longer rely on the Lutaus who manned his ships.
Encouraged by the apparent impotence of the Spaniards. Balatamai set
450 The Jesuits in the Philippines
out with a raiding fleet in 1656, sailed round the far side of Basilan, struck
at Marinduque and Mindoro, and returned unscathed. The following year
Sarikula of Sulu followed suit, cutting a wide swath of destruction across
the Visayas and taking 1,000 captives. The expedition against Kudrat
that was being mounted at Zamboanga finally got under way in 1658, but
inflicted little real damage. On the other hand, the Sulu cruisers once again
evaded the Spanish naval patrols and raided Bohol, Leyte, Samar, Masbate,
and the Luzon coast as far as the entrance to Manila Bay. Thus, after an
uneasy existence of a decade, the treaty system that Alejandro Lopez had
built up died with him. 28
But the series of Spanish reverses had not yet run its full course. In
May 1662 a delegation of Chinese, accompanied by a Dominican friar
named Vittorio Ricci who acted as interpreter, presented itself at Manila
to deliver a message from a certain Cogseng or Koxinga, which was how
the name Cheng Ch’eng-kung sounded to Spanish ears. Some eight years
previously the Manchus had put an end to Ming rule in north China by
taking the capital, Peking. In the southern provinces, however, the last of
the Mings kept up a stubborn resistance, and among their partisans was
a dynasty of robber barons whose most energetic representative was this
same Koxinga. Koxinga seems to have fought just as much if not more for
his own hand as for his sovereign, for whatever he took he held in his
own name. In 1653 he took Amoy and in 1656 Ch’ungming Island. In
1656 he attacked Nanking but failed to take it; whereupon he turned on
Formosa, and by taking Fort Zelandia from the Dutch (1662) made him-
self master of the island. His attention was called to the fact that there were
still more islands to the south for him to grind under his victorious heel ;
whereupon he sent the embassy of which we speak, with a letter which said
in part:
Y our small kingdom has ill-treated and oppressed our sampan traders in a manner
not very different from that of the Dutch, thus giving rise to double dealing and
discord. Further ; the affairs of the island of Formosa have now been settled satis-
factorily, and the trained troops under my command number hundreds of
thousands, my warships many thousands. Further; only a narrow strip of water
separates the island of Formosa from your small kingdom, so that by setting sail
in the morning, one may reach there by nightfall. My first thought was to go at
once in person with a fleet to punish your evil ways ; but then I called to mind
that although you have given me ample reason to be displeased with you, you
have in recent years shown some signs of repentance ... I have therefore decided
to detain the fleet at Formosa and send instead the Father Ambassador [Ricci ]. 29
Briefly, what the Spaniards now had to do was to acknowledge his
sovereignty and send tribute, otherwise he would destroy them all. Gover-
nor Lara sent back Ricci and the Chinese envoys with a defiant reply and
immediately set in motion defense preparations of the most drastic kind.
Recoil and Advance
45i
One of these measures was the recall to Manila of all the garrisons dis-
persed throughout the Philippines and the Moluccas. It was vigorously
opposed by the Jesuits, particularly Francisco Combes, the historian of
Mindanao and for many years a missionary there; but to no avail. On
17 June 1662 orders were received at Zamboanga to abandon the fort to
the Christian Lutaus. The withdrawal was not achieved without difficulty.
Pakian Baktial, who had by this time succeeded to rhe sultanate of Sulu,
tried to take it before the Spaniards could dismantle its artillery. He was
repulsed. One of the officers, Ensign Nicolas Garcia, offered to betray it to
Kudrat. The plot was discovered ; Garcia fled to Basilan ; the Lutaus there
cut off his head and sent it back to the fort.
In April 1663 the governor of Zamboanga, Don Fernando de Bobadilla,
delivered the fort to the datu of the Christian Lutaus, Don Fernando
Makombon, and sailed away with the entire garrison. The Jesuit mission-
aries went with him. Thus was extinguished this flourishing mission, not
to be reestablished until the second decade of the following century. 30
The Dapitan residence on the north coast of the island was not, however,
abandoned. As mentioned earlier, Dapitan was founded by Visayan
colonists from Bohol shortly before the arrival of LegaspFs expedition.
They were led by Datu Pagbuaya who allied himself with the Spaniards
and whose descendants embraced Christianity. His son and successor,
Pedro Manuel Manook, a great soldier, fought side by side with the
Spaniards at Camarines, Jolo and Caraga. Manook's daughter, Maria Uray,
was a fervent Christian. Upon the death of her husband, Gonzalo Maglinti,
she ceded her property and rule to her two children and retired to a house
apart to lead a life of prayer and penance. She applied for admission to a
convent of nuns in Manila. When her application was refused because she
was a native woman, she asked if she could be admitted as a slave. The
Jesuits of Dapitan, however, persuaded her to stay and be an example to
her people. She led a quasi -conventual life in her house, following an order
of time which included several hours of mental prayer, daily Mass,
examination of conscience, rosarv and other devotions, weekly confession,
and the weaving and sewing of vestments and altar linen for the mission
church. 31
The Dapitan mission was founded by Pedro Gutierrez in 1629. Depen-
dent at first on Cebu, it was transferred in 1639, along with the Iligan
mission, to the Zamboanga residence; then, in 1643, to the Loboc
(Bohol) residence; and finally, in 1645 or a little later, it was made a resi-
dence in its own right with Iligan as a dependency. 32 Its jurisdiction
extended eastward from Iligan along the coast of Zamboanga to Sindangan
Bay. This was the country of the pagan Subanuns, to whose conversion the
Dapitan Jesuits devoted themselves. It is mountainous country, for the
Zamboanga peninsula is really a heavily forested mountain range with
452 The Jesuits in the Philippines
foothills folding down almost to the water s edge and few patches of level
ground anywhere save at its marshy tip. Hence it was at the mouths and
banks of the mountain streams that the Subanuns built their villages;
from this they derive their name, which means in their language river-
dwellers.
Their economy and social organization differed little from that of the
Visayans of Bohol, Leyte, and Samar. Each clan was governed patriarchally
by a timuai , whose authority depended largely on the consent of the clan
and whose chief function was to lead the clan in war and settle disputes
according to customary law. The anthropologist Christie has this to say
about the administration of justice among the Subanuns :
Trials among the Subanuns, like all other public business, were conducted by
bichara or conference. The interested parties would go to the headman's house
either of their own motion or on receipt of a summons, where they would be
assigned a mat on which to sit, and would be passed the betel box. There was no
appearance of unseemly haste. Ordinarily all concerned would chew for some
moments in silence before they proceeded to business. Then one or the other
would start the argument, either personally or by deputy, and talk almost inter-
minably, with endless repetitions, trying to convince the headman that custom
was on his side. If the case was important, the headman would send for the most
influential men of the region to assist him. The Subanus enjoy argument, both
as speakers and as listeners, and a debate is often spun out for hours and fre-
quently taken up again at intervals for weeks in succession. On the whole, though
. . , the final decision, laid down by the headman with the concurrence of his
assistants, was, if I may be allowed to judge from one or two trials which I
witnessed, almost sure to be a fair one. 33
It had to be, for the timuaf s ascendancy was based not so much on birth
as on the tacit acceptance of his rule by the community. As Christie says
elsewhere,
... it was rarely possible for him to commit great abuses. If he showed himself
to be harsher in his punishments than the community believed was allowable
under . . . custom, he found his followers drifting away from him ; this occurred
by the simple process of their going into another district and placing themselves
under the orders of another headman. 34
But this same mobility of the Subanun clans, while protecting their
freedom from oppression, created the usual difficulties for the missionaries,
who had to pursue them from hill to hill and stream to stream, as Gutierrez
ruefully reported, 'Tike wildcats.” Once overtaken and their affection won,
however, they were easily “domesticated.” Gutierrez himself became so
dear to them that when another missionary came in his place the Subanuns
said they wanted Gutierrez back and were prepared to purchase him from
the government. Surely the governor would be willing to sell, in order that
Recoil and Advance
453
the Subanuns might have their "first Father" permanently. Only rough
estimates are extant of the size of the Subanun population at that time;
the annual letter of 1632 hazards the figure of 2,000 as a minimum. 35
Like the Visayans, the Subanuns worshipped spirits; those of forest,
field, and stream, and those of their ancestors. Their shamans offered
sacrifice before the planting of the rice, before the weeding of the grown
rice, and at the time of the first fruits just before the harvest. Each sacrifice
was followed by a buklug or feast, a tremendous spread at which much was
eaten and much drunk. The Subanuns did not have the Tagalogs’ capacity
for holding their liquor; but they developed certain prudent practices to
prevent their doing anything when drunk which they would afterward
regret. According to Christie,
. . . the men are commonly relieved of their spears on arrival, and certain men are
appointed to be custodians of the weapons, which, of course, are returned to the
owners when, the drinking being over, they are in their right minds . . . Just
before it [the drinking] begins, one of the leading men present, at the request of
the host, warns all present against any infraction of decorum. He hangs from the
roof beam or other conspicuous timber of the house pieces of rattan with knots
tied in them representing the number of fathoms of cloth or number of brass
cannon, gongs, etc. which will be the amount of the fine if anyone commits one
or more of a series of offenses which he enumerates in a loud voice. The two
delinquencies against which he warns the men especially are quarreling and
making improper advances to any of the women present. The most careful hosts
arrange that there shall always be a small number of men not drinking — men who
relieve each other in abstinence on successive days — who shall act as a sort of
friendly police. 36
As will be gathered from the above, the buklug lasted several days, at
the end of which the principal shaman present offered a final sacrifice.
On a wooden altar set across the path leading to the hall of feasting he
placed a bowl of rice, some eggs, tobacco, betel, and a cup of rice beer,
intoning over these offerings the ponolud or chant of farewell : ; ‘ Return
from whence you came, O spirits, for the feast is ended. All the sacrifices
have been performed; the rice beer has been offered." 37
Because of the wildness of the country and the dispersal of the popula-
tion, Dapitan was a particularly difficult and lonely mission. The mission-
aries on their tours had to go coasting in dugout canoes or small sailboats
along an irregular shore line whose headlands were so difficult to navigate
that at certain times of the year it might take a month to round them,
whereas in good weather it might take no more than half an hour. Where
the mountain torrents formed swampy pools near the sea they were infested
with man-eating crocodiles which took great toll of life. The funeral
books of the mission stations would often contain such items as : " On such
a day burial was given to the head of So-and-so, this being the only part
454 Jesuits in the Philippines
of his body that was recovered after he was torn to pieces by a crocodile.”
Each member of the Dapitan community might be assigned ten or twelve
villages to take care of, so that he was kept continually on the move. Nor
could he limit his activity to his purely priestly functions, for as the
Subanuns became Christians, they tended more and more to have recourse
to the missionary instead of the timuai in all their difficulties and disputes.
They did so, of course, using the time-honored process of the leisurely
bichara, which must have taken up untold time the missionary could ill
afford, 38
But while the Subanuns were in general peace-loving and even timid,
they had their outbursts of blind, headlong violence, as the murders of
Francesco Palliola and Juan del Campo attest. Hence the missionaries
thought it more prudent to bring an armed escort with them on their
circuits, usually of reliable Boholano warriors from Dapitan. This was all
the more necessary after 1663, for with the abandonment of Zamboanga
the Subanuns of the west coast began to swing away from the Spanish
allegiance and attach themselves to the Sulus. Josef Zanzini, who took
Palliola' s place, wrote in 1670 that they were becoming increasingly restive
and rebellious, and that some of them were going off to enlist in the Sulu
armadas. As for the Lanao country, it was by this time completely lost to
Spain. 39
Another mission field which was lost to the Philippine Jesuits because of
Governor Lara's decision to recall the southern garrisons was that of the
Moluccas. 40 It should be noted that after Portugal broke away in 1640
from the dynastic union of the two Iberian crowns effected by Philip II,
Spain managed to retain the Moluccas. Its civil government therefore
passed to the jurisdiction of Manila, although the missions there continued
to be administered by the Jesuit province of Goa. The loss of Malacca to
the Dutch, however, made it practically impossible for the Portuguese
Jesuits to continue sending men to the Moluccas. Because of this Lara, soon
after he became governor in 1653, requested the Philippine provincial to
take the mission over, wffiich he did, sending three priests, Vicente Chova,
Francisco Miedes, and Diego de Esquivel to Ternate. In 1658 Miedes was
transferred to the island of Siao, whose Christian ruler had asked for
missionaries; he was joined soon afterward by Jeronimo Cebreros. The
Ternate mission was closed when the garrison was withdrawn in 1662, but
Miedes and Cebreros stayed on at Siao and were still there in 1670 when
Father Miguel de Pare j a toured the area at the request of Governor
Manuel de Leon. The Dutch, of course, lost no time in establishing a
protectorate over the sultan of Ternate as soon as the Spaniards withdrew.
Pareja found hardly any Catholics in the islands within the Dutch sphere
of influence. In contrast, tiny Siao, which had steadfastly repelled all
offers of Dutch protection” and refused to part with its two Jesuits, was
Recoil and Advance
455
a flourishing Catholic community. The Dutch resident at Ternate, who
was a Catholic himself, told Pare j a that he had orders from Batavia to take
Siao by force, but was resolved to shelve them indefinitely.
Miedes and Cebreros seem to have accompanied Pare j a to Manila for a
short furlough. They returned to their mission with two other Jesuit priests
and the crown prince of Siao, Don Francisco Javier, who had just com-
pleted his education in the College of San Jose. Don Francisco duly
succeeded his father, but lost his kingdom when the Dutch attacked and
conquered the island in 1677. The first thing the conquerors did was to
cut down all the clove trees, for their principal interest was to protect their
monopoly of this product. However, they were sufficiently zealous for the
spread of Protestantism to intern the Jesuits in Melayu and replace them
with a dominie. Murillo, writing in 1 749, tells us that by his time
Catholicism had been completely wiped out in the island. He had this on
the testimony of the Siaos themselves who came to Manila to trade, and
who were, to a man, stout Protestants.
More permanent than the Moluccas mission was that of the Marianas
Islands, founded by Diego Luis de Sanvitores in 1668. Ever since Magellan
named them the Ladrones because of the inhabitants" inadequate grasp
of the distinction between mine and thine, they had been a welcome half-
way house on the long westward voyage across the Pacific. Because of their
isolation and poverty of natural resources, however, there was little interest
in colonizing them, except among missionaries who regretted that the
islanders should be for so long deprived of the knowledge of Christianity.
It was Sanvitores who finally decided to do something about it. He was
born in the city of Burgos on 12 November 1627 of noble parents; his
mother" s family, in particular, claimed descent from the great Cid him-
self. While making his grammar studies in the Imperial College of Madrid,
he came to the conclusion that there was no life like that of his Jesuit
teachers, and in 1640, at the tender age of thirteen, he was admitted as a
novice. After the usual course of studies he was assigned to teach philo-
sophy in the College of Alcala, but having volunteered for the missions
was assigned to the Philippines in 1660. Incidentally, Sanvitores is one of
the few Jesuits in our narrative of whom we are vouchsafed a physical
description. Murillo tells us that he was of medium height and very fair,
with blue eyes and a long hooked nose on a long face. 41
He made his first acquaintance with the Marianas when the dispatch
boat which was taking him to the Philippines in 1662 made the usual
stopover at Guam. 42 His proposal to open a mission there met with no
enthusiasm at Manila. For the Jesuit authorities, it meant another drain on
their limited manpower ; for the civil government, the prohibitive expense
of establishing and maintaining a garrison on the island. Sanvitores was
not, however, a man easily discouraged. He applied to the queen regent
456 The Jesuits in the Philippines
herself, Marie Anne of Austria, through her Jesuit confessor, Everard
Nithard. On 4 June 1665 Marie Anne issued a cedula approving the
project, whereby she not only conferred on the tiny archipelago the benefits
of Christianity, but substituted for Magellan's ungracious appellation her
own more charming name; henceforth, men would call it las islas Marianas,
On 7 August 1667, Sanvitores, with Tomas Cardenoso for companion,
left the Philippines to start the mission. They went to Acapulco first, for
it was at Mexico that the queen regent directed the necessary funds to be
released. Here they were joined by three other priests, Luis de Medina,
Pedro de Casanova, and Luis de Morales, and a scholastic, Lorenzo Bustil-
los. On 23 March 1668 the little band left for the Mananas and reached
their destination on 16 June of the same year. They established their main
base at Agana, on the island of Guam. This w r as the biggest of the group ;
according to Sanvitores it had a population of 20,000 distributed among
no less than 180 little villages. 43 He mentions twelve other populated
islands in the group, to each of which he gave a Christian name. The native
names have proved more hardy, but a parallel list of the native names and
Sanvitores' Christian names may be of interest:
Native name
Christian name
Guam
San Juan
Rota
Santa Ana
Agiguan
San Angel
Tinian
Buenavista
Saipan
San Jose
Anatayan
San Joaquin
Sarigan
San Carlos
Guguan
San Felipe
Alamagan
La Concepcion
Pagon
San Ignacio
Agrigan
San Francisco Javier
Asoncon
Asuncion
Maug
San Lorenzo
Although the Marianas mission was a dependency of the Philippine
province, its detailed history is outside the scope of the present work, and
should be undertaken separately. Here I shall merely add that, although
the Philippine government provided a small garrison of mixed Spanish and
Filipino troops for the protection of the missionaries, the Marianas re-
mained for many years one of the most dangerous mission fields in the
annals of the Society of Jesus. On 21 January 1671, Luis de Medina met
his death at the hands of the natives of Saipan. Sanvitores himself was
killed by an apostate Christian on 2 April 1672. Other missionaries put to
death by the islanders m subsequent years were the following :
Recoil and Advance
457
Francisco Ezquerra, priest; 3 February 1674
Pedro Diaz, lay brother; 9 November 1675
Antonio Maria de San Basilio, priest; 17 January 1676
Sebastian de Monroy, priest; 6 September 1676
Manuel Solorzano, priest, 23 July 1684
Balthazar Dubois, lay brother; 23 July 1684
Teofilo de Angelis, priest; 24 July 1684
Augustin Strobach, priest; August 1684
Karl von Boranga, priest; August 1684
Pierre Coemans, priest; July 1685
As the dates indicated suggest, these missionaries perished in two native
insurrections, 1674-1676 and 1684-1685* Beginning in 1695, the military
government of the Marianas adopted the policy of transporting the
population of the smaller islands to Guam, Rota, and Saipan, and eventu-
ally the population of Saipan to the other two islands, where they could
be better administered and kept under surveillance. This put a stop to the
frequent revolts of earlier years* Christianity made rapid progress there-
after, and by the 1740*5, paganism had been reduced to the vanishing point.
Chapter Nineteen
THE LONG HAUL
What was it like to be a Jesuit missionary among the Visayans in the
second half of the seventeenth century? if we expect any revolutionary
changes in the situation as it was earlier in the century, we shall be disap-
pointed. The work of transmuting a collection of primitive pagan clans
into civilized Christian communities is necessarily a slow process, with
almost imperceptible results save at very great intervals; a long haul in
which the audacity and enterprise of the pioneer must yield pride of place
to the patience and endurance of his more pedestrian but no less dedicated
successors. An intimate glimpse into the daily life and labors of the latter
is vouchsafed us by a precious document of 1660. It is a long letter written
by Ignacio Alcina, a veteran of the Visayan missions, to Juan Marin, the
general's assistant for the Spanish provinces. 1
He begins by saying that ordinarily 25 or 30 priests were employed in
the Jesuit missions of the Visayas, but because of lack of replacements
there were at present barely 16. Hence, since there was no reduction in
the number of mission stations, each missionary had to do the work of two.
Each father has under his care at least two towns ; some have three, others four
and even five. I myself, this Lent of 1660, visited and heard confessions in four.
Thus we are always on the move, carrying our houses on our backs like the
tortoise, for wherever the missionary goes he must bring with him his domestic
effects, and in many places his church equipment too. This is one of the heaviest
burdens of this ministry. But over and above that is the fact that the missionary
must be forever raveling and unraveling his work. What he accomplishes by a
sojourn of 19 or 20 days (sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the size
of the town), he finds when he returns one or two months later to be altogether
undone and forgotten. Thus we are continually starting all over again.
The same complaint had been voiced fifty years earlier by those who
preferred residential mission stations to the system of mission tours. They
gained their point, but the difficulty was back again, this time because
there simply were not enough men to cover all the mission stations.
Another major problem remained largely unsolved; many of the towns
were still towns on paper.
For the most part there is nothing in the towns except the priest's house and
the chapel, small or big according to the number of people, and a few huts which
458
The Long Haul 459
the natives use when they come to town. This they do only when the father is
there, and they do not come every day but only on Sundays. The only ones who
stay are the boys who are still learning their catechism, for we insist on their
being there as long as the father is ; the old folks too and the sick stay for a while.
But even this much requires a great deal of persuasion, for they are scattered all
over the countryside, wherever they have a mind to dwell. There they make the
clearing from which they derive their sustenance, for they have neither store nor
barn to draw on save forest and stream and their little rice field. Even the rice
lasts them for only a small part of the year; the rest of the time most people
manage with edible roots and leaves and an occasional fish or wild pig when they
can catch it, for there is nowhere to buy these things even if they wanted to.
These clearings are some of them two leagues, others three, four, five and six
leagues from the town; few are any closer, for the Visayans have no love for town
life. Thus it takes them a day or more to come to town, and if the weather is bad
and the seas rough they cannot come at all. When they come they must bring
their food, pots to cook it in and plates to eat it out of, for there is nothing to be
had in the town but weeds . . . Most of the people do not even bother to go to
their town huts, but proceed directly from their canoes to the church, both men
and women, and from church back to them again, so that Sunday Mass over not a
soul is left in town.
It seems clear from this that neither the missionaries nor the government
had succeeded in making the town a viable economic unit, capable of
supporting a permanent population. As pointed out earlier, merely to
direct or oblige the clans to settle down in one place without providing
them with the means of survival in that situation could not have any lasting
effect. A change in the social structure demanded of necessity a change in
its economic base. But to effect such a change would have meant agricul-
tural planning and organization similar to that undertaken by the Jesuits
of Paraguay, and it does not seem to have occurred to the Philippine
Jesuits to attempt this. Not that they had no interest in the temporal
welfare of their people. Alcina points out, for instance, that the mission-
aries considered it part of their regular duties to see to it that the clearings
were made and the fields planted in season. The land was fertile enough ;
anyone willing to do a reasonable amount of work was certain not to starve ;
but the Visayans, at any rate during this period of their development,
were more akin to the grasshopper of the legend than to the ant.
They have so little foresight that they never put by anything for the future or
save for a rainy day. As long as they have anything they eat it with both hands —
a dos llenas — or give it away or sell it or pay the tribute, so that it is a rare man
among them who has any rice, aside from what they keep for sowing, two months
after the harvest, and one in a hundred makes his rice last him all year. For this
reason it is an exceptional year in which they do not suffer four months of
hunger . . . with the result that during most of this period they are up in the hills
460 The Jesuits in the Philippines
grubbing for roors and other edible plants, and as likely as not finding little even
of these; all of which prevents them from coming to Mass and the sacraments.
Did this amazing improvidence argue to a lack of natural capacity in the
Visayans, as some contended ? By no means, Alcina asserts. Missionaries
who say such a thing should examine their consciences carefully to see
whether the difficulty lies in the people or in themselves; one naturally
hates to admit one's lack of zeal ; far easier to accuse the natives of being
unreachable. But "it is false; they have more than enough ability; they
simply do not make use of it. They are intelligent enough, if they will
only apply themselves. They know very well the difference between good
and evil, and are veritable lynxes when it comes to settling disputes and
casting up accounts; so that in matters spiritual and supernatural they
ought not to be inferior to the most enlightened and cultivated nations."
The difficulty is that, having lived in darkness for so long, like moles,
they are unused to the light, and so need continuous and close direction
until they become accustomed to it. But this is precisely what the mission-
aries cannot give them, or give them only to a very limited extent, in their
present scattered state. And there are other difficulties as well.
Many evils result from the distance and inaccessibility of their settlements,
such as, in the temporal order, the complete lack of human intercourse and
refinement, and in the spiritual order, the undisciplined manner of life, the
survival of their ancient usages and superstitions, the drunken feasts they indulge
in whenever they are able to lay their hands on a little wine (to which they are
greatly attached), the frequent extramarital relationships, the crimes of violence
and rapes committed without witnesses, in a word, the fact that they leave their
faith and their Christian principles the moment they leave the church. The
majority die without the sacraments, for even if the priest were a man of iron he
cannot be everywhere at the same time. Moreover, they w r ait until the very last
minute before sending for the missionary or bringing the sick man to him, with
the result that when the priest arrives the man is already dead, or else if they
undertake to bring him to the priest he dies on the way. This being the case we
may be sure that 70 per cent die without the sacraments, and this even if the
father is in town, for if he happens to be out of town no one, naturally, gets the
sacraments. That is, unless he takes the precaution of visiting all the sick of
the area before leaving, a very difficult thing to do because of the distance of
the settlements mentioned above. Your Reverence shall judge whether even Hector
or Hercules can be equal to the labor this involves.
The Jesuits in the Visayas, then, clearly grasped their particular mission-
ary problem, but saw no way of coping with it save to multiply themselves
by working twice as hard. The government was no help. The alcaldes
mayores visited the towns of their jurisdiction only when they wanted
something from the natives. Having got it they left as quickly as possible,
like a cat walking on live coals." Thus, the organization of the missions
The Long Haul 461
into central residences and subordinate stations remained unchanged. Of
the superior or rector of a residence Alcina says that he has the authority
commonly granted to local superiors, which, "in good Spanish/' came
down to this, that he was a good provider.
His job is to collect the stipends due to the missionaries and supply them with
all they need in the way of food, clothing, Mass wine, hosts, candles, etc. Upon
his greater or less care and diligence depends whether the missionaries carry on
their work in straitened or easy circumstances . . . The fathers meet in their
central residence four times a year, twice for a period of eight days and twice for
fifteen. At these times they perform their religious duties and devote themselves
exclusively to their personal sanctification [a lo formal de la religion ]. During the
rest of the year each one takes care of his stations and the spiritual needs of his
communities, having recourse to the superior in all cases of special importance or
difficulty. The missionary is by himself in his station, and so is all things to all
men, and bears in himself the reputation of the entire order. This means that he
must be a man of prayer, for here it is difficult to live as one ought without great
intimacy with God.
Here Alcina takes up the observation sometimes made that there were
an unusual number of defections among the Visayan missionaries especi-
ally in the matter of chastity". He admits that such defections occurred,
although the greater number remained faithful to their vow. One reason
was that superiors, either because of lack of men or because of lack of
sufficient knowledge of their men, assign some to the missions who "are
physically in the order, but in their affections already out of it." Men of
this sort were an easy prey to the temptations and opportunities afforded
by life in a lonely mission station. But, he adds, "take it from one who
knows ; if a man does not go out of his way to look for an occasion of sin,
no one will solicit him to it." There were far greater temptations — s in
comparacion — in a Spanish community than in a native village, for the first
missionaries had trained their converts so well that the women will not
even look a priest in the face, much less permit themselves to deal familiarly
with him. Thus, when you came down to cases, there were really not very
many who had been guilty of this particular offense relative to the total
number of missionaries. During Alcina' s twenty-six years in the Visayas it
had been necessary to expel fourteen from the Society, and not all of these
for offenses against chastity 7 .
The stipend allowed each missionary by the government at this time was
100 pesos and 100 fanegas of hulled rice yearly for every 7 500 families or
"tributes" in his area. Out of this stipend the superior of the residence
gave to the missionary 7 , as needed, provisions for himself and the four
companions he usually 7 took with him on his mission tours : two sacristans
and two domestics. Out of it also came the money to buy 7 equipment
for houses, chapels, and portable Mass kits. But by far the biggest item of
462 The Jesuits in the Philippines
expenditure in the missionary's operating budget was the food and wages
of the oarsmen or pack carriers without whom he could not go on the road
at all. The government stipend, intended as a subsistence allowance for the
missionary personally, did not cover this expenditure ; hence the superiors
of residences had to look for other sources of income. This was not a
problem in the Tagalog missions, where the settled population of the towns
gave generously to help support their pastors; but in certain areas of the
Visayas it could assume serious proportions. One way in which the
superiors tried to make up their deficits was by buying beeswax which the
natives gathered in the forest and sending it to the procurator of the pro-
vince for sale in Manila. Some of the fathers objected to this as falling
under the canonical ban against clerics engaging in trade. Alcina did not
think so; first, because most of the beeswax was bought for their own use,
to provide candles for the churches and residences which they would
otherwise have to buy. Only the surplus from this was sold. Secondly, the
income derived from its sale was not spent by the fathers on themselves
but on the needs of their missions.
There was one reform which Alcina asked Marin as Spanish assistant to
urge on the general, and that was that missionaries of advanced age or
broken health should be retired to Manila, instead of being left to die at
their posts. Otherwise they ran the grave risk of dying not only without
medical assistance but even without the sacraments and the consolation of
having a brother Jesuit to ease their last hours. Alcina' s estimate was that
during his quarter century in the Visayas about half of the missionaries
who died did so without a priest. He gives the names of all he could
remember, thirty-five priests in all, not counting lay brothers. He adds,
with a touch of malice, that one way to remedy the situation was for some
of the good fathers who criticized the methods of the Visayan missionaries
from their comfortable Tagalog parishes be made to change places with
some poor, broken-down Leyte or Samar missionary for five or ten years.
Whoever did so would then be able to speak with some authority on the
subject.
It would seem that some of the Luzon Jesuits actually wrote to Rome
suggesting that the Visayan missions be given up, for ten years later we
find Alcina protesting vigorously against such a move. He had just been
transferred to Manila after a term as vice-provincial of the Visayas and
rector of the Catbalogan residence, and he writes to comply with the
general's request, transmitted through Marin, for his opinion as to the
desirability of retaining the Visayan missions. 2 These missions, he said,
were the most glorious that the Society possessed in the Philippines ; the
ones which employed the greater number of its members; the ones in
which they did the most good to the greatest number of people. Why on
earth should we give them up ? It was argued that the faith made very
The Long Haul 463
little progress in the Visayan missions. Alcina retorts the argument. Would
it make any more or any faster progress if the Jesuits abandoned them ?
Could the handful of secular priests who would have to take their places
cover a thousandth part of the territory which the Jesuits were covering
now ?
Moreover, if these critics were really sincere, and it is the desire of the glory of
God and the salvation of souls that moves them, as it moved Saint Francis Xavier
and other apostolic workers of the Society, they would first make trial of this
ministry and experience at first-hand what it costs and how much is accomplished
. . . But what do we see ? We see that these men do not even know the native
languages, have not seen the missions or do not wish to see them; and if one or the
other of them has been to the missions he did not stay there very long, giving as
his excuse for getting out the little good that could be done. Was this the real
reason ? Was it not, perhaps, the fact that the missionary is very often by himself,
often in peril of his life, often deprived of the most ordinary comforts ?
And even if it were necessary for some reason to give up the Visayan
missions, this was absolutely the worst time to do it. The government in
recent times had placed such crushing burdens on the Visayans that if they
were poor before, they are practically destitute now. At no time in the past
did they need the support, encouragement, and protection of their pastors
as badly; if we pulled out now, what would they say? What would the
Spaniards and the other missionaries say? They would say that “the
fathers of the Society took care of the Visayans when they were rich and
had gold and other things of value ; but now that they are poor they leave
and abandon them to seek for booty elsewhere / 9
Well, then, if the Visayan missions were to be retained, how could the
work of the Society in them be improved ? For Alcina did not deny that
there was room for improvement. The objections of the critics were valid
to this extent, that there had been a great falling off of zeal for the missions ;
and the remedy was obviously to revive this zeal, not to give up the mis-
sions. As to the means; first,
... let all the fathers zealous for the salvation of souls, the advancement of faith
and good works, and the reputation and good name of the Society seek to be
assigned to those missions and labor in them . . . putting aside new, doubtful,
and possibly imprudent enterprises . . . This is why it is so necessary, as I have
often written to our Father [Generali, that his Paternity ordain that everyone
without exception who is sent here be assigned for a number of years to that
ministry and get to know the language and know it well, for on this depends the
preservation of those missions.
Secondly, let superiors see to it that the language is learned, if not exceptionally
well (for this is given only to a few) at least sufficiently well ; enough to be able to
explain the teachings of Christianity in such a way that the natives will under-
stand what is said and what is meant; for as Saint Paul says, qiicmcdo aiidiant sine
464 The Jesuits in the Philippines
praedicante ? There is much remissness in this, and there is no increase of faith for
this reason. The fault does not lie with those who learn but with those who teach.
Let the teachers look to their ability to teach, for the natives have more than
enough ability to learn, as we know very well who have lived among them for
many years.
Thirdly, let our foremost, our greatest and our best care be to teach them the
faith, preach to them its lessons, and encourage them to good works more by
example and deeds than by words. It was thus that our first fathers converted
all the Visayans of our missions to Christianity in so short a time that in a few
years there was not a single pagan in them, whereas in other areas there are large
numbers even now. They accomplished much, they who completed the work of
conversion. Today we are merely keeping alive what they taught, and in some
places even that has been forgotten, because we do not concentrate as much as they
did on the essentials of our ministry. Today we are more solicitous about collect-
ing beeswax, civet, rice, and other commodities. In former times there was not as
much of these things collected in all the missions together as is collected today
in a single residence. This causes talk among the Spaniards, hardship to the
natives, resentment and discredit to our profession. True, we are obliged to seek
what is necessary to sustain life, and missionaries need many things, especially in
remote regions where they must exercise greater foresight and care, but let us
content ourselves with the simple requirements of Saint Paul: habentes aliment a et
quilus tegimur , his content i simns . The frugality, or, more accurately, the abstinence
and mortification of the first missionaries was great and all-embracing; a little
was more than enough for them. Today, much no longer suffices. A single
missionary today spends more than three did then, whereas a single missionary
then did more work than four today. Thus, excessive solicitude for the temporal
prevents us from devoting the necessary time and effort to the spiritual. The
natives are decreasing in number, becoming poorer and losing their respect for us,
for how can they bear our increasing demands with patience ? It should cause no
surprise if the natives say that the missionaries of today are not like those of
yesterday, seeing how different are the tasks which we assign to them. In the past,
they were required, first and foremost, to learn what they were taught; at present
this is a minor consideration, and our chief care is to buy and sell and collect. If,
then, there is so little faith, if charity has grown cold, if good works are neglected,
the reason is simple: we have failed to teach these things.
Fourthly, to prevent any further loss of the disinterestedness and austerity of
life which we ought to have as apostles and religious, we must put a stop to
excessive buying and selling. Let us limit to our current needs the quantity and
price of the commodities we buy and sell, 3nd let the natives see that all we want
is a sufficiency, not superfluities; in this way complaints and abuses will be
checked.
Such were the reforms which Alcina proposed with regard to the
missionaries themselves. With regard to the natives, he urged further
efforts to gather them into larger communities, but offered no new sugges-
tions as to how this could be accomplished. In view of Alcina's obvious
sincerity and the authority of twenty-six years of missionary experience
The Long Haul 465
which stands behind his assertions, there is no reason why we should
question the fact that a slackening of missionary zeal and an increasing
preoccupation with temporal matters had taken place among the Jesuits
in the Visayas. Indeed, it is to be expected that a certain fatigue should set
in at this stage of the “long haul/' after the unremitting labors of the
period of expansion and before the enterprise caught what might be termed
its second wind* Later, when the Tagalog parishes are discussed, it will
become evident that these doldrums affected not only the Jesuit missions
in the Visayas but other areas of the Philippines as well* However, one
must be careful not to generalize beyond the evidence. There are other
indications that the primitive spirit of selfless dedication to the missionary
task was kept up in many places.
There is Alcina himself, for example ; both as simple subject and as local
and regional superior, he must have exerted a wide influence in main-
taining the high standards set by his predecessors. In the unpublished
book which he wrote on his beloved Visayans, he mentions quite inciden-
tally an example of cooperative effort which goes far to show that the
estrangement between priests and people which he notes and regrets above
was by no means general. One of the Leyte churches of which he had the
supervision lacked a monstrance and lunette. He proposed to the towns-
people that they help him sow four fields of rice, each of 25 gantas; any
income derived from the harvest the Jesuits would match from their
stipends, peso for peso; thus they would pay for their monstrance and
lunette. The people readily agreed. The crop failed in two fields, but the
other two yielded 250 pesos* Alcina duly added the counterpart fund (the
yearly cash stipend of 2.5 missionaries) and placed an order through
the province procurator of Manila for a gold ostensorium to be executed
according to his design. When the procurator mildly remonstrated that it
was too rich, and more suited to a cathedral in Spain than to a village church
in Leyte, Alcina returned a memorable reply. Let the monstrance be made
as ordered, he said, for the Blessed Sacrament of the Visayans was just as
much God as that of the Spaniards. 3
We need not read too much into Archbishop Poblete’s report to Pope
Innocent X of 12 July 1654, in which he says of the Society in the Philip-
pines that apostolicae charitatis igne exaestuans ad innumera se objicit
vitae discrimina, quo saluti et conversioni ethnicorum consulat, nihil ei
mtentatum aut inaccessum existit ; novas in dies indefesso studio missiones
sudore ac sanguine exaugendas ad majorem Dei gloriam ubique dissemi-
nandam aggreditur ; ” etc. 4 These courtly Latin phrases may be largely
formal compliment; although it is quite true that Jesuits in the Visayas
continued to bear witness to Christ not only by their sweat and tears, but
when the occasion offered by their blood. On 10 April 1645, Father Dome-
nico Aressu, missionary of Cabalian, was killed by a Leyteho whom he
466 The Jesuits in the Philippines
reproved for not reporting the illness of his mother and thus allowing her
to die without the sacraments. On 17 February 1659, Father Esteban
Jayme, the founder of the mission of Ysui in Negros, was killed by a brave
whose concubine he had persuaded to leave him. In 1663 Father Ventura
Barcena, recently arrived from Spain, was captured by Moro raiders on his
way to his station and died of hunger and exposure in Tawi-Tawi. 5
Another reliable indication that progress had been and was being made,
in spite of occasional defections and deficiencies, is the steady increase in
the number of Christians as recorded in the statistical tables mentioned
earlier. That this increase kept pace with the increase in population is
brought out by a report of Rafael de Bonafe, provincial, to Father General
Oliva. Oliva had instructed all provincials in the missions to send a yearly
statement of adult baptisms to the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda.
In acknowledging this directive Bonafe stated that ever since the Spanish
withdrawal from Mindanao and Sulu, where the Philippine Jesuits were
doing most of their convert work, there were hardly any adult baptisms to
record, 'Tor in the other missions of these islands Christianity is already
well established and all the hill people brought into the fold, so that
baptism is very rarely conferred on adults. All the baptisms are of children,
as in the towns of Europe. If it is your Paternity's wish that a Latin report
of these baptisms be drawn up for submission to the Sacred Congregation
of Propaganda, it is easily done/’ 6
Finally, Alcina himself bears witness that in the island of Panay the
Jesuits had by no means lost their reputation of being sincerely and exclu-
sively interested in the welfare of the communities under their charge. In
the letter of 1670 previously alluded to he mentions the fact that recently,
the people who had fled in considerable numbers from the settled areas of
that island to the jungle fastnesses of the interior in order to avoid the
burdens of taxation and other demands made upon them by the authorities
had sent tvord to Iloilo that they would return to their allegiance if they
were allowed to form towns of their own under the direction of the
Jesuits. It would seem that these mundos (for so the runaways were called)
presented their request to Bishop Juan Lopez of Cebu in 1668, when he
was visiting the island, and that the bishop gave verbal assent to the
project. 7 The two envoys of the mundos then approached the alcalde mayor
and obtained a similar permission, this time in writing (22 August 1 668),
and confirmed by the audiencia of Manila (23 October and 3 November
of the same year). Having completed these arrangements the mundos, of
whom there were an estimated 3,000, began to come down from their
hiding places to Suaraga, the former site of the cattle ranch bequeathed by
Figueroa to San Jose, and Bongol, where the Jesuits had in the meantime
acquired another cattle ranch.
The resettlement project was proceeding serenely when it was thrown
CoI.McU Comp* (leJhjr.'lj Casa del 3 .^ 07 ^ de a^ua Attire.
Quaneks S/Jfosyitnl . 9, pueblo tie CutaoS- Iq.E'lJlto* -jfx/o/o.
Indio can lamb on e India con India con chinwaytapn q
| lob t) a para i r a l dip l efia true guayabasfru ta Jtlvejlrc
XI. Christian Filipinos
con b alar ao
J?* fritz iU_ *
XII. The College ot Cebu
The Long Haul 467
into confusion by an unexpected decree of Bishop Lopez declaring that the
Jesuits had no permission whatever to administer the sacraments to the
mundos (20 April 1670). It would seem that he quite forgot the permis-
sion he had granted two years previously, and since no one had thought
of getting it in writing, there was no way of effectively reminding him of
it. Moreover, he apparently resented the audiencia’s ordering the establish-
ment of the Bongol and Suaraga communities without coursing the matter
through him. Finally, the Augustinian missionaries, who had charge of
most of the towns of the island, had represented that the mundos origi-
nally belonged to their communities, which was quite true, and therefore
should be made to return to them. The preference of the mundos to live
in communities by themselves was apparently not thought worth con-
sidering.
In any case, the Jesuits obeyed the bishop's orders, as they were bound
to do, but appealed the case to the audiencia. Friction developed, which
led to various unpleasant incidents narrated in detail in the various con-
temporary accounts extant. The dispute dragged wearily on for over two
decades, becoming involved in other controversies, until it was finally
settled extrajudicially in 1696 by the Augustmians and the Jesuits coming
to an amicable agreement
between them.
Alcina died in 1674. If he had been permitted a decade later to revisit
the missions he loved so well and served so faithfully, he would surely
have been delighted by the progress they had made since his time. Much,
of course, still remained to be done; but in many aspects of organized
Christian living the Visayan missions were now much closer to being
established parishes than they were in the middle of the century 7 . Here is
what an Austrian Jesuit, Andreas Mancker, had to say of them in 1682:
They [the Visayans] have a cheerful disposition and are wide-awake mentally;
they are loyal subjects of the king and for the most part sincere Christians . . .
Most of them have two houses, one in the country where they reside on working
days, and another in the town or market village, near a church, where they go on
Sundays and feast-days . . . Like other Asian peoples they are sexually precocious,
for this reason the fathers see to it that they marry young ... On Sundays every-
one comes to town, some on foot, others on the backs of cattle or carabaos; very
rarely on horseback. When most of the people have arrived the boys form a
procession, carrying banners, ringing hand bells, and chanting the catechism.
Then the church bells are rung and holy Mass is celebrated to the accompaniment
of music. 8
Mancker stops to explain to his Austrian correspondent that almost every
town and market village in the Philippines had a band of sixteen or seven-
teen musicians who were exempted from tribute for providing music at
the church services. Among their instruments were “ lyres, harps, cornets,
16* 4-
regarding all the differences that had arisen
468 The Jesuits in the Philippines
and flutes" — by lyres and harps he meant, of course, guitars and bandurrias .
Mancker thought their playing quite respectable; in fact, he ventured to
say that many European towns had never heard music comparable to that
produced by these village bands ; a fine compliment, coming as it does from
a countryman of Mozart.
Mass over, the young girls line up in the middle of the church and sing the
Salve Regina , followed by the catechism, while at stated intervals the whole congre-
gation, men and women, old and young, answer in chorus. Then a sermon is
given or a catechism lesson conducted in which anyone present could be asked
to answer questions. The service ends with a roll call in which absentees were
noted. Those who were absent the previous Sunday without a good excuse are
either beaten with rods or otherwise punished. The youngsters are similarly
penalized for the same faults during the special class held for them in the after-
noon. The duty of inflicting this punishment is committed to two vergers or
beadles who are high born natives of great standing in the community, who take
care of the mission house by turns and who are also charged with supervising the
affairs of the community and seeing to it that everyone lives in a manner worthy
of his Christian profession.
The priest was summoned to the bedside of those seriously ill, to whom
he imparted the sacraments of penance and extreme unction. However,
the viaticum was never taken to the sick ; the sick had to be brought to the
church to receive it. This practice, which was general throughout the
Philippines, caused some concern at Rome, and had to be explained, as we
shall see later. Besides the church and the priest's house every town or
market village had two other mission buildings, one the residence and
schoolhouse of the master who taught the boys their first letters, and the
other that of his female counterpart who conducted school for the girls.
Both were Filipinos. Mancker makes no mention of boarding schools,
which seem to have been discontinued when their original purpose, that
of training catechists to instruct adult converts, had been outgrown.
What is particularly to be noted in this account is the characterization of
the mission stations as market centers, which suggests that the Visayan
town was finally acquiring an economic life of its otvn as a place of
exchange. This meant that, although the bulk of the population still lived
for the most part in the country, the town was now able to support a
resident population, as is evidenced by the schools which were functioning
at this time not only in the central residences but in the mission stations.
The number of missionaries have increased from Alcina's sixteen to sixty,
but Mancker probably included the Tagalog Jesuits in this total ; moreover,
the population had increased to such an extent that each mission station
now had three or four villages of its own. There was one priest, rarely two,
residing in each station. Mancker makes no mention of lay brothers ; their
The Long Haul 469
lack was probably the biggest handicap on the Visayan missions at this
time as compared with earlier in the century.
Alcina's observation that the Jesuits engaged in the ministry among the
Tagalogs had a much easier time of it than those in the Visayas is true as
far as living conditions and travel were concerned. The population was
more settled and more prosperous; the towns and villages were closer
together ; travel was mostly by land ; the capital of the colony was within
easy reach. For this reason towns like Antipolo, Taytay, and Silang, which
began as missions just as much as Dulag and Loboc, developed much more
rapidly, and were now almost indistinguishable from parishes. To Sanvi-
tores, at least, they were parishes, and he raised the question of whether the
time had not come to turn them over to the diocesan clergy according to
the policy laid down by Acquaviva. He had been asked by Oliva to report
on precisely this matter, and on 23 July 1663, one year after his arrival in
the Philippines, he wrote as follows:
The missions here [that is, the Tagalog missions; he had not been to the
Visayas] ... are essentially towns in which we impart the instruction and dis-
charge the duties of parish priests. Doubtless your Paternity has already been
informed of this. I do not feel competent yet to express a firm opinion on this
subject, as I probably need somewhat more experience to see in their proper
perspective certain things which appear to me to be out of focus. Still, if we are
to administer towns in this fashion, I do not see why the directive given by our
Father Claude of holy memory when he erected this province should not now be
put into execution. As I understand it from Father Miguel Solana, this directive
is to the effect that we accept the administration of towns on the understanding
that they shall be under our care for 25 years or so, or until the knowledge of
our holy faith and the practices of Christianity are well established therein, at the
end of which period they are to be turned over to his lordship the Archbishop, in
order that we may go further afield to open new missions under the same con-
ditions or restore run-do w r n parishes. The excellence of this policy consists in that
it not only leaves us free to go where we are most needed, but that it avoids certain
drawbacks connected with permanent curacies in towns which are already very
much like those of Spain ; as a matter of fact, in some of them the fathers have
even less work for souls to occupy them than some parish priests over there. Only
recently the archbishop gave us an opportunity to put the policy into effect,
offering us the territory of Mindoro, where the missions are more difficult and
less settled and where I believe there are still pagans, if we give him in exchange
the parish of Silang, which is near Manila and has a w T ell instructed community
and is more suitable in other ways for his clergy. But this as well as other matters
pertain more properly to the Father Visitor whom I understand this province has
asked your Paternity to send. 9
The provincial congregation of 1659 had indeed asked for a visitation
of the province; Oliva granted the request but for some reason or other
the visitor was never sent. Sanvitores went on to say that there seemed to
47 ° The Jesuits in the Philippines
be little interest among the members of the province in extending the
frontiers of Christianity to neighboring islands, such as Borneo and the
Ladrones, still populated by Moslems or heathen. He thought that this
was either because the colonial government was not very enthusiastic about
it either, or because “ there are not among the religious many like Saint
Francis Xavier/ ’ or because subjects were too deeply involved in parish
work and superiors in the administration of parishes to realize that
although the Philippines had been conquered and settled so long ago
there were still islands close by where Christianity had never been
preached*
One reason actually given was the lack of men ; but Sanvitores thought
this could be easily remedied precisely by surrendering some of the
established parishes in order to free a number of priests who could then
be sent as itinerant missionaries just as Xavier was* And, even if the
parishes w r ere retained, surely they could be taken care of by the old and
infirm in order that the younger and more robust could be employed in
the more arduous work of real missionaries ! Clearly, Sanvitores did not
think parish work very demanding* Nothing was done about giving up
the parishes at the time, for the problem was somewhat more complex
than he put it, as was discovered when it was subjected to a thorough
going-over in the x 690*5* However, the province did, slowly but even-
tually, rise to his challenge of conquering new worlds for Christ* At con-
siderable cost to itself it provided him with men and materials to found
the Marianas mission, and after his death expanded and maintained it in
spite of formidable difficulties.
Sanvitores himself, unlike the armchair critics mentioned by Alcina, did
not confine his zeal to finding fault. During the five years before his
departure for the Marianas he became the acknowledged leader of a
movement which put new life into the Tagalog parishes and did an incalcul-
able amount of good: the popular mission* It will be recalled that the
popular or parish mission was the only kind of mission in which Saint
Ignatius and his first companions, except Xavier, engaged in; and that it
was what Acquaviva wanted his sons in the Philippines to confine them-
selves to until they were able to convince him that it was not feasible at
the time. The parish mission consists of a Jesuit or a group of Jesuits work-
ing in a parish for a few days or weeks to help the parish priest effect a
revival of Catholic faith and practice through preaching, teaching,
administering the sacraments, settling feuds, solving personal and group
problems, and taking selected groups through the spiritual exercises. This
obviously presupposes a parish and a parish priest needing or willing to
accept such help ; conditions not verified in the early days of the mission
and province. Now, however, they were, both in the Jesuit parishes and
in some secular parishes in and near Manila. Moreover, there had been
The Long Haul 471
shortly before this a great revival of the popular mission in Spain, begun
by Jeronimo Lopez, and in this revival Sanvftores had taken part. Finally,
the need and opportunity was present, for soon after the arrival of Sanvf-
tores and his companions in 1662, Archbishop Poblete asked the provin-
cial for several fathers to give popular missions in various parts of the
archdiocese; especially, he said, "in the cattle ranches, where there were
ordinarily many vagrants whose idle and undisciplined manner of life led
them to commit a thousand sins and excesses, and who were badly in need
of religious instruction.” These vagamundos were a hard-bitten assortment
of all races and conditions of men: Spaniards, mestizos, negroes, Kaffirs,
and Filipinos from all over the islands in whom the cowpunchers,
wranglers, and cattle rustlers of the great American West would immedi-
ately have recognized kindred souls.
Sanvftores, assigned to the task, prepared for it by an intensive study of
Tagalog at Taytay, in the course of which he translated Jeronimo Lopez’s
famous acto de contrition . Lopez had found in the course of giving in-
numerable missions to the simple folk of the Spanish countryside that one
of the most effective means of drawing them to a better life was to march
through the streets of a town or village carrying a crucifix and crying out
the act of contrition in a loud voice, varying this with short extempore
ejaculations expressive of sorrow for sin, and wherever a crowd collected,
at street corners or in the squares, expanding the formula into passionate
exhortations to repentance. Usually people who merely stopped to stare
stayed to pray, and soon the mission er was being followed by a vast
procession singing hymns and shouting the act of contrition with him,
often with sobs and tears. He led them in this manner to the church,
where, after a brief instruction on how to make a good confession, he sent
them to the priests waiting in the confessionals. It must all have been very
much like a Protestant revivalist meeting, but it was extremely effective.
Moreover, we must not forget that the Catholic Church does not disdain
such manifestations of religious enthusiasm, as long as they bring people
closer to God. Indeed, the Church had been making use of them in the
Middle Ages and even earlier.
What Sanvitores rendered into Tagalog, then, was not merely the
familiar short formula of the act of contrition, but the more powerful
paraphrases used by Lopez, which had been taken down and were widely
circulated in the Society. Armed with these and with the ample faculties
for lifting censures and regularizing marriages conceded by the arch-
bishop, Sanvftores and his companion, Tomas de Andrade, set out on
their mission tour late in 1662. They spent the advent season of that year
and the lenten season of 1663 working their way from cattle ranch to
cattle ranch east of Manila, making a sweep through the Aeta town of
Santa Ines, a dependency of the Antipolo residence, and going as far as
47 2 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Maralaya Mountain near the Lake of Bai. The tour was a triumphant
success. Not only did they bring many old and hardened sinners to repen-
tance, but at Santa Ines pagan Aetas who had come down from the hills
stayed to begin their catechumenate. The most spectacular mission, how-
ever, was that at the foot of Maralaya ; for Maralaya was the hide-out of a
large band of outlaws and of others who owed money to the Spanish
treasury or their heads to Spanish justice. The government seems to have
guaranteed immunity from arrest to those who came to hear the missioners,
for they came down in large numbers accompanied by their women and
children. The two missioners had their hands happily full hearing con-
fessions, solemnizing marriages, and teaching catechism to children as
untutored as the wild creatures of the forest among which they were born.
After the mission this strange community melted back into the jungle
out of reach of the law, although the missioners were able to persuade
many whose lives were not forfeit to return to the more settled if less
exciting life of the ordinary taxpayer. 10
This first mission was followed by another, equally successful, held
that same year of 1663 in the city of Manila itself. After Lent of 1664,
in April, Sanvitores was sent once more to the same general area as that
of his first mission. This time, however, he seems to have concentrated on
the agricultural towns and villages rather than the ranches. Nicolas Cani,
his companion and fellow missioner on this occasion, is probably the
author of the account which we have of it. 11 Although they chose the time
when the rice harvest had usually been taken in and the people free from
their usual occupations, they started rather early, and so were obliged at
least in the beginning of their tour to hold the mission in the early evening
after work in the fields. The people came in great numbers to hear them,
forming huge, torchlit act-of-contrition processions and throwing them-
selves wholeheartedly into its hymns and recitatives.
It brought tears of devotion to see this spectacle, and to hear echoing through
those valleys, fields, and forests the voices of these rational turtle doves. A halt
was called near a shelter of boughs erected for the purpose. There Christian doc-
trine was taught, especially those truths which are necessary for salvation. Prizes
were distributed to those who gave a good account of themselves, in order to
encourage the others to learn. They were also taught how to make a good con-
fession. The horrible sacrilege of concealing sins in confession was emphasized by
narrating, crucifix in hand, fearful examples and considerations. They were also
taught how to assist a dying person in the absence of a priest, for in those hills,
farms, and villages they do not ordinarily see a priest more than once or twice a
year . . . They were further taught how to administer baptism in case of necessity.
In fact, we left in each town and stock farm wooden tablets on which was written
in Spanish and Tagalog what had to be done in such cases. The fathers ended
each mission after thoroughly instructing the people in this way, and appointing
The Long Haul 473
a trustworthy person to gather them together on certain days for a reading of the
instructions and recitation of the rosary. Many pairs of beads were distributed to
those who had none, and as a closing exercise the act of contrition was recited. It
was usually ten or eleven at night by the time the mission broke up.
The fruit of the mission was gathered the morning after, when confes-
sions were heard in the church and holy communion distributed at the
Mass. The priests kept hearing confessions sometimes until one or two
o'clock in the afternoon, after which they took up marriage problems and
administered baptisms. The account notes as worthy of special mention
the conversion during this mission of the exiled prince of Tidore, a
Moslem, who was solemnly baptized in the college of Manila after his
catechumenate ; and that of a number of Calvinists and Lutherans, who
may have been Dutch merchants from Batavia.
The parish mission movement was now fairly launched. In 1665-1666,
between the June sailings of the galleons, five missions were undertaken,
the first among the Aetas of Santa Ines, the second in Manila, the third in
the port of Cavite, the fourth on the island of Mindoro and the fifth
again in Manila. 12 The second of these missions, held in the walled city,
received unexpected assistance from an earthquake which took place
between six and seven in the morning of 19 July 1665. Nine persons were
killed and many buildings suffered considerable damage. The fervor with
which the people took part in the mission held that night may well be
imagined. The mission at Cavite was memorable in that Archbishop
Poblete himself was the principal giver of it, and the Dominicans, Fran-
ciscans, and Recollects, who all had parishes in the town, took part.
The Jesuits who went to Mindoro were led by the ubiquitous and tireless
Sanvitores. In their company was a Filipino donado whose name the
chronicler of the mission unfortunately fails to mention, though he gives
him credit for doing as much as the priests to bring estranged Catholics
back to the sacraments. From October 1665 to the end of Lent 1666 they
gave missions in the three parishes of the island administered by the secular
clergy: Baco, Naujan, and Calavite. Besides the usual effects on the
Catholic population, the fathers were able to instruct and baptize about
500 Mangians, whom they helped to settle down near the existing Tagalog
and Visayan villages. Thus the mission resulted in the establishment of
three new Mangian villages : Santa Maria, San Ignacio, and San Francisco
Javier. A fourth settlement, Burgos, was formed of cimarrones , that is,
Christians who for various reasons had fled to the hills and were now
persuaded to return to civilization.
The principal obstacle to the conversion of the Mangians, as the mis-
sioners soon found out, was that the Christians of the coastal towns did not
particularly want them to settle down, since they were much more useful
474 The Jesuits in the Philippines
as ignorant tribesmen whom they could send into the forest for wild
beeswax or employ as slaves in their farms. Thus the missioners had to
start by convincing the old Christians of the error of their ways. Their
exhortations were so effective that the Christians tramped to the hills,
sought out their Mangian serfs, brought them down to be instructed by
the fathers, and fed and housed them while they were being prepared for
baptism. This newly found fervor led to an amusing incident during the
baptism of a poor wretch who did not even have a rag to cover his naked-
ness. Seeing this, the Tagalog datu who had probably been ruthlessly
exploiting him for many years took off his own coat and trousers and
ordered the Mangian to put them on. Fortunately, he had a shirt long
enough to cover his nakedness.
The following year another band of missioners led by the rector of San
Jose, Gian Andrea Pallavicino, toured Mindoro, while other bands
resumed the cattle-ranch and Marikina Valley circuits. 13 Thereafter
parish missions became a regular summer assignment of the teaching
fathers in the two Manila colleges. The year 1677 was particularly notable
in the number and quality of the missions given. 14 That held at Cavite in
the beginning of the year was an elaborate one lasting five days, in which
Pallavicino, now rector of that college, put not only priests but some of
the scholastics of the College of Manila to work. The scholastics made
themselves particularly useful in preparing the galley slaves for confession.
Pallavicino was also fortunate in obtaining the assistance of two zealous
Dominicans, Fray Juan de Paz and Fray Domingo Samper, the former a
distinguished moralist and a great friend of the Jesuits. The Cavite mission
was followed by another in the suburbs of the north bank of the Pasig, in
which more than 1,200 communions were distributed, and a third in the
eastern suburbs, with over 1,300 communions. The mission in the walled
city itself lasted from Passion Sunday to Easter Sunday. It was followed
by a fifth mission in Silang, which brought 1,200 persons to the holy table.
Later in the year the provincial, Javier Riquelme, introduced the move-
ment to the Visayan towns, and missions were held at Dagami (Leyte),
Guiuan (Samar), Catbalogan (Samar), Cebu, Inabangan (Bohol), and
Baclayon (Bohol).
Thus, while the Jesuits in the Tagalog houses were not, as Alcma
observed, subject to the same privations and hardships as those in the
Visayas, they were by no means idle, nor could their work be considered
less important or fruitful. Moreover, the terms of the problem regarding
the retention of the Tagalog parishes, as stated by Sanvftores, must be
modified by the consideration that without them the popular mission
movement would have been impossible, or at least would have been much
more limited in scope.
The establishment of several new houses and mission stations in the
The Long Haul 475
archdiocese of Manila must be recorded at this point. 15 When the mission
of Ternate was closed in 1663, the Jesuit stationed there, Diego de
Esquivel, brought with him to the Philippines a group of Christians who
preferred exile to the almost certain loss of their faith. These stouthearted
Moluccans, who bore the proud name of merdekas (free men), were allowed
to settle by the government near Maragondong, on the south shore of
Manila Bay. They have long since been absorbed into the local population,
but the memory of their origin survives in the name of their town, which
is called Ternate to this day. Because of their proved loyalty and valor the
merdekas of Ternate were charged with the defense of the bay shore
against marauding Moros and the custody of merchant vessels riding at
anchor near Cavite. Their spiritual administration was naturally entrusted
to the Society, and Ternate became a dependency of the Silang residence
along with Maragondong. In 1692 the merdekas completed a fine stone
church, built under the direction of a descendant of the illustrious Borgia
line, Father Antonio de Borja. There they enshrined the image of the
Child Jesus which they had brought with them from their homeland. The
church still stands, though much weathered ; and the Child is still there.
Very probably as a result of the missions given at Santa Ines by Sanvi-
tores and others, two new, predominantly Aeta villages took root in the
area. It is not known exactly when they were founded. Like Santa In 6 s,
they were attached to the Antipolo residence. In 1684 Antipolo was further
augmented by the town of Binangonan, due south of it on the shore of the
Lake of Bai. In 1696, the population of Binangonan had grown sufficiently
to justify a resident parish priest. In the same year the town of Cainta was
restored to the Society after having been in the hands of the Augustinians
for eight years.
In an account of the Tagalog parishes of this period it would not be fair
to pass over in silence certain documents in which a number of abuses are
laid at the door of the parish clergy by the civil authorities. Ex-Governor
Corcuera, for instance, in returning to the Council of the Indies a report
on the state of the Church in the Philippines which had been referred to
him for comment, observed that the report failed to stress two out-
standing abuses, namely, the practice of parish priests having the sick
brought to the church for the last sacraments instead of their bringing the
sacraments to the sick, as they were in duty bound, and the exorbitant stole
fees charged in some parishes for marriages and funerals. He was careful to
state that these abuses were by no means universal; nevertheless they
existed, and were sufficiently widespread to require some appropriate
action by the central government. He suggested that the king write a letter
to the provincials of the religious orders requesting them to look into the
matter, and another to the archbishop of Manila proposing that a table of
stole fees be published, taking into consideration the modest means of the
476 The Jesuits in the Philippines
natives and inflicting grave penalties on anyone who demanded more than
the prescribed fees. 16
It was not until thirty years later, in 1677, that the royal government
took action with reference to the first of these charges. On 22 August of
that year Charles II decreed that the last sacraments should be brought to
the sick in their houses, instead of the sick being carried to the church to
receive them, as had been the practice hitherto in the Philippines. Upon
receipt of this cedula the diocesan prelates represented the difficulties that
made it impracticable, but on 28 July 1681 the king insisted that means
be found to overcome these difficulties. The archbishop of Manila at the
time, Fray Felipe Pardo of the Order of Preachers, thereupon called a
meeting of representatives of the religious orders and asked them to sub-
mit their opinions on the matter.
The spokesman for the Dominicans, Fray Cristobal Pedroche, stated
that it was the practice in the Philippines as everywhere else to bring the
viaticum to the sick in their houses whenever this could be done with
decency* In the majority of cases, however, especially outside the larger
towns, this was not possible for many reasons, such as the dispersal of the
population, the absence of roads, the poverty and peculiar structure of the
native dwellings, and the shortage of priests. The Augustinians concurred
in this opinion. The Jesuit provincial, Francisco Salgado, admitted that it
was the general practice in the Philippines to have the sick brought in
litters to the church to receive the viaticum. This was required, however,
only if there was no danger of aggravating the illness. If the sick person
could not be moved, then the parish priest or missionary brought him the
viaticum, often at great inconvenience, hardship, and even danger to life.
Assuming that the sick could be brought to the church by litter without
prejudicing their chances of recovery, the practice had this advantage, that
the parish priest or missionary, whose people were usually scattered over
an extensive territory, could administer the sacrament to five or six at one
time when it would have been physically impossible for him to do so if he
had to bring it to them singly over rough country at widely separated
points of the compass. He suggested that under the circumstances the
practice should be tolerated for the time being ; although priests engaged
in the ministry should be instructed that they ought to bring the viaticum
to the sick whenever and wherever possible, even if the solemn accompani-
ment prescribed by the ritual for normal conditions could not be
observed. 17
In the minds of Archbishop Pardo and his clergy this problem con-
cerned only the viaticum, not all the sacraments imparted to the sick. They
saw no difficulty in the priest visiting the dangerously ill in order to hear
their confessions and administer extreme unction; the difficulty was in
exposing the Blessed Sacrament to possible profanation by carrying it over
The Long Haul 477
long distances under the most primitive conditions of travel. This is
brought out in a memorandum submitted by the auxiliary bishop of
Manila, Fray Gines Barrientos O.P., to the Sacred Congregation of
Propaganda. Commenting on a paper attacking the Philippine practice
which had been filed with the congregation by his fellow Dominican
Fray Alonso Sandin, and which the congregation referred to him for
comment, Bishop Barrientos reiterated the arguments of Archbishop
Pardo's commission in favor of tolerating the practice regarding viaticum,
but added that “ with regard to confession, I can state, because I have seen
it with my own eyes, that the priests engaged in the ministry do not excuse
themselves from this act of charity when the sickness or infirmity is
serious, for they go in person to the houses of the sick and hear their
confessions there." 18 These explanations apparently satisfied both Madrid
and Rome, at least for the time being.
Corcuera’s second charge, that parish priests exacted exorbitant stole
fees, was more often repeated by other observers. It is one of the principal
accusations brought against the parish clergy of the Philippines by Don
Salvador Gomez de Espinosa in the Discurso parenetico or Hortatory Dis-
course which he published in 1657. 19 We have already made the acquaint-
ance of this gentleman; he was one of the oidores of the audiencia of
Manila during the controversy regarding episcopal visitation and the royal
rights of patronage in 1655-1656. This suggests that he might not be an
altogether objective and uncommitted witness. Still, there is a judicious
restraint in his observations and a circumstantial ring to some of the evi-
dence he produces that entitles his treatise to serious consideration.
Francisco Combes, the Jesuit historian of Mindanao, was moved after
reading it to write an encomium in the most involuted baroque style, but
sufficiently clear to convey his unreserved admiration:
I have read the Hortatory Discourse which Piety dictated to the noble spirit of
your Excellency, withdrawing your pen from themes of greater moment in order
to heed the groans of these wretched natives, who saw themselves being swept
past the uttermost limits of misfortune into the uncharted desert of despair . . .
We, all of us, were aware of the truth, but no one dared to speak out in her
behalf , . . The cries of those most concerned, that is to say the natives, are too
weak to be heard ... If , now and again, they catch the attention of those who
govern, vested interest gives them the lie, and contempt buries them in silence . . .
All-powerful here is that tyrant, Avarice, for it is able not only to quell the clamors
of the afflicted, but even to set at naught the fatherly solicitude of the sovereign . 20
And so on for several printed pages. Gomez de Espinosa sent a copy of
the Discurso together with this encomium to Bishop Rodrigo de Cardenas
of Nueva Segovia. The bishop in his letter of acknowledgment said that
he would be a better friend than Combes, for he would tell Gomez de
Espinosa the plain truth, instead of merely paying him compliments. He
478 The Jesuits in the Philippines
was absolutely certain that the Discurso would be suppressed by the
Inquisition, not because it contained erroneous doctrine, but because it
defamed the religious, upon whose good repute depended the reformation
of those very abuses which its author described. If its free circulation were
allowed, it was sure to fall into the hands of the Moslem Malays and Dutch
and English Protestants trading in China and Japan, who would not hesi-
tate to use it to prejudice the Chinese and Japanese against Catholic
missionaries. Was it necessary to give a work of this kind such publicity ?
Would it not have been sufficient to bring these abuses to the attention of
the governor, the king and the pope, who alone can do something about
them ? 21
Note that Bishop Cardenas did not deny that the abuses existed, any
more than Combes did. What he objected to was giving them an indiscrimi-
nate publicity which might preclude or delay their being remedied, given
the political and social organization of the colony and the empire. He
seems to have been proved right, at any rate as far as the suppression of the
treatise is concerned. It was published in printed form, but, although
there are a number of references to it in other works, I have encountered
only one copy of it, and that an incomplete manuscript version.
Gomez de Espinosa did not limit himself to a criticism of the parish
clergy. He took a broader view, and subjected the civil government of the
colony and even the social organization of the natives themselves to a
searching examination. We shall postpone consideration of these portions
of the Discurso to a later chapter, for we are here concerned only with the
parishes, and specifically the parishes on the island of Luzon. It should be
borne in mind that these were the only parishes of which Gomez de
Espinosa had any first-hand knowledge. There is no record of his having
traveled in the Visayan islands.
One of his criticisms was, as we have said, that previously made by
Corcuera regarding stole fees. Here it is in his ow T n words :
The obventions and subventions which are ordinarily demanded for funerals,
weddings, baptisms, and other sacramental and ecclesiastical functions are
generally held to be extremely burdensome. I do not overlook, on the contrary,
I freely acknowledge with admiration the fact that many of the religious orders
and many of their members not only do not accept these fees, but even supply the
wax candles and other paraphernalia used in funerals and in the rites of baptism
and marriage. I have several times called attention to the fact that this Hortatory
Discourse is not addressed to those apostolic, observant, just and holy men who
strip themselves in order to clothe the natives and fast in order to give them food,
but to those lax religious who dress daintily by reducing the Indian to naked
misery, and dme delicately by depriving him of his sustenance. Such men are to
be accounted persecutors rather than pastors of their flocks — no scran curas sino
enjermeiaies.
The Long Haul 479
If we put aside the rhetorical flourishes, this seems to be a fair enough
statement of the fact. Fray Alonso Sandin, in the memorial to Propaganda
already mentioned, confirms it, going so far as to say that because of the
excessive marriage fees charged by some parish priests, many Filipinos pre-
ferred to live in concubinage. He also makes the astonishing statement
that many parish priests, both secular and regular, did not bother to assist
in person at burials in distant villages, but sent their sacristans and
choristers instead, while demanding the usual stole fee. I think we can
safely say that the Jesuits were among those to whom these strictures did
not apply, for the simple reason that they charged no stole fees whatever.
Saint Ignatius ruled — and the ruling is still in force — that the members of
his order “are to give freely what they have freely received, neither
demanding nor accepting any stipend or alms whereby Masses, confessions,
lectures, consultations, or any other office which the Society according to
its institute can exercise may seem to be recompensed/' 22 Only since the
restoration of the Society have there been any dispensations granted in this
matter, and these had to be obtained from the Holy See.
The other abuses listed by Gomez de Espinosa fall under three main
headings : obligatory contributions, forced labor, and corporal punishment.
Under the first heading may be classed the pasalamat (literally, thank-
offering), which must have been originally a gift of rice brought by the
people to their priest at harvest time, but which, according to Gomez de
Espinosa, had degenerated in his time to the priest planting himself at the
door of the church and telling the farmers as they came out how big a
“gift” was expected of them. Other contributions similarly enforced
were those to defray the expenses of the town fiesta, and to construct or
repair parish buildings, churches, monuments, and so on. Under the
heading of forced labor, Gomez de Espinosa enumerates the drafting of
rowers and carriers when the priest went on a journey, the appointment of
young men to a stated number of days or weeks of work in the mission
compound, the custom of giving the girls of the village the task of keeping
the church clean and the women that of furnishing the sacristy with linen
and keeping the vestments in repair. Finally, Gomez de Espinosa objected
to some of the forms of corporal punishment inflicted by some parish
priests or by their fiscales, such as heavy beatings, the cutting off of
women's hair, and the use of stocks and cangues.
For a parish priest to get his people to contribute to the expenses of the
parish or to share in its common tasks is not in itself an abuse. By doing
so, he is merely urging on them their ordinary obligation as Catholics.
Nor, in fairness to Gomez de Espinosa, does he anywhere suggest that he
thought otherwise. What he considered objectionable was that some
parish priests urged the obligation in a manner difficult to distinguish
from extortion. Were the Jesuits in the Tagalog parishes guilty of any of
480 The Jesuits in the Philippines
these abuses ? It is difficult to say. I have not come across any specific
instances in the documents I have been able to examine; but, since they
were human, there is no reason to claim for them a greater exemption from
such occasional lapses than for the other religious and diocesan priests
engaged in the same ministry. On one item of the indictment they may,
however, plead not guilty. It was the Visayan rather than the Tagalog
fathers who had occasion to employ rowers and bearers on their mission
tours, and these they did not impress but paid, their wages being a major
item in the missionary's expense account.
The question of inflicting corporal punishment for breaches of divine
or ecclesiastical law is more of a problem, whose elucidation is better left
to Fray Alonso Sandin. In a printed pamphlet of his published in 1685, he
has this to say:
It is true that there are parish priests who punish them [the natives] corporally
when the need arises. They do so for the most part as fathers, and in matters
which pertain to their spiritual welfare, for otherwise they would neither attend
Mass of obligation, nor come to confession, nor perform their other Christian
duties. This is because they pay little heed to reprimands, and would pay no
heed whatever if they did not fear a moderate amount of corporal punishment.
They are not, however, perturbed by such punishments, as long as they are within
reason ; for, although they are of limited intelligence, they know enough not to
resent being punished if they deserve it; indeed they will freely admit that the
father is quite right to punish them. Everyone who has any understanding of the
native character considers these punishments to be absolutely necessary, otherwise
they would hardly be Christians at all ; as it is, they are preserved from committing
many faults ... I doubt not but that there are some parish priests who punish
immoderately. But you may be sure that if he has no influence with the alcalde
mayor, he will be pulled up short at the least complaint of the native. However,
this is also true, that if parish priest and alcalde mayor are of one mind, and if
they are not zealous for the honor of God, then the native has no choice but to
suffer in silence, or join the pagans in the hills. 23
At the end of his JDisctitso Gomez de Espinosa proposed a number of
reform measures. First, not only provincial officials but parish priests and
missionaries as well should be forbidden to demand personal services of
the natives or to requisition commodities except in accordance with law.
Secondly, if it is necessary for them to employ native labor, they should
pay for it in cash, in person, and in the presence of witnesses. Third, that
the wage scale for such labor should be fixed not by the alcaldes mayores as
hitherto but by the central government. Fourth, the hierarchy should be
requested to enforce a definite schedule of stole fees. Fifth, in legislating
about these matters, the governor should seek the advice of virtuous
priests who ha\e first-hand knowledge of what goes on in the provinces.
The Long Haul 481
Finally, a strict accounting on all such matters should be demanded of
officials at their residencia .
The general impression that emerges from this brief survey is surely that
of men who, whatever their faults, continued with courage and perse-
verance the work of their pioneering predecessors; continued it often at
the peril of their lives, in lonely outposts, for interminable desert stretches
of seemingly barren years; stumbling occasionally, yet never faltering or
turning aside from that long haul which drew the people of the Philippines
from the darkness of paganism to the broad daylight of Christianity. It is
against the background of this humdrum but enduring achievement that
we must see the more lurid events that were taking place in the capital.
Chapter Twenty
THUNDER AND LIGHTNING
The great earthquake of 1645 was followed by others in 1654 and 1658,
but these did relatively little damage to the new, thick-walled, low-slung
buildings with which Manilans had replaced their more ambitious pre-
1645 mansions. By the l66o’s hardly any trace was visible of these disas-
ters. Manila was once again the Pearl of the Orient ; smaller, less costly, but
nonetheless, at least in the eyes of its citizens, a pearl. A Franciscan
traveler, Fray Bartolome de Letona, has left us a physical description of it
as he saw it at this time.
Half of the city, that on the north and west, is surrounded by water ; and the
other half, toward the east and south, by land and a ditch. It is entirely surrounded,
almost circular in form, by a rampart wall of stone; this is high and strong and
so thick that in some parts it is more than three varas wide, and one can walk on
top of it everywhere. It extends three quarters of a legua , and is adorned and
furnished with battlements and merlons in modem style, with towers, cavaliers,
and flankers at intervals, and with two castles and some bulwarks. It is furnished
with excellent artillery, and a force of six hundred Spanish soldiers (sometimes
more), with their master-of-camp, sargento mayor , captains, wardens, and other
military officers. There are five gates and several posterns.
The streets of the city are beautifully laid out, and level, like those of Mexico
and Puebla. The main plaza is large, rectangular, and well-proportioned. Its
eastern side is occupied by the cathedral; the southern, by the government
building, which is a splendid palace, large, handsome, and very spacious. It was
built by a merchant [Manuel Estacio Venegas], the favorite of the governor, for
his own use. The northern side of the plaza opposite the palace contains the
cabildo’s house, the jail, and other buildings that belong to private persons ; these
also occupy the western side.
The houses in the city, before the earthquakes of the years '54 and "58,
numbered six hundred. Many of them must be rebuilt by this time [1662]. Most
of them are of hewn stone with handsome iron balconies and rows of windows,
and built in costly style. In them resided various gentlemen and nobles, and two
hundred citizens who were merchants and who form a commonwealth by them-
selves [the “city and commerce”]. There were also soldiers, royal officials,
prebends, and other citizens. Much of its material grandeur and beauty was
destroyed by the earthquakes abovementioned, but it lost not the essential great-
ness which it has and always had as a court and an illustrious commonwealth.
In the villages of Bagunbaya [Bagumbayan] and others of its suburbs there are
probably six hundred houses more, not counting those of the Parian, which
482
Thunder and Lightning 483
number many more than those of the city and suburbs together. Along the river
are a great many country houses for recreation — some very costly, and all very
convenient and pleasant, with gardens, orchards, and baths. . . .
On the eastern side of the city but outside of it and in front of its walls, at the
distance of a musket-shot, is a silk market which they call the Parian. Usually
15,000 Chinese live there; they are sangleys , natives of Great China, and all are
merchants or artisans. They possess, allotted among themselves by streets and
squares, shops containing all the kinds of merchandise and all the trades that are
necessary in a community . . . They have a governor of their own nation, and a
Spanish alcalde mayor and other officers of justice and a notary; also a jail. They
have a parish church where the sacraments, the word of God and burial are
administered to the 4,000 Christians among these sangleys . The rest of them are
heathen. 1
For a few anxious days in 1660 it looked as though this jewel of a city,
so newly restored, might be reduced to rubble once again ; this time by a
social rather than a physical upheaval. The people of Pampanga, driven to
desperation by the repeated demands of the shipyards on their labor and
by the continued inability of the government to pay for the goods it
requisitioned, rose in revolt. It was an extremely dangerous revolt, for the
Pampangos were perhaps of all the peoples of Luzon the best organized
socially, and large numbers of them, having seen service in the colonial
army, were familiar with Spanish methods of warfare. Governor Manrique,
however, showed great coolness and resolution in this grave emergency.
There was only one road running south from Pampanga which could be
used to move any considerable body of troops. By immediately dispatching
a cavalry squadron to straddle this road near Arayat, its most defensible
section, he sealed off the south of the island, at least by land, and thus at
one and the same time localized the rebellion and saved the capital from
any immediate danger of attack.
He followed up this military stroke with skillfully developed diplomatic
moves, whereby he prevented the rebels from decisively using their vastly
superior forces, and eventually enticed their leaders to come to Manila to
negotiate. While entertaining them with promises of a full settlement, he
speedily regained control of the principal towns of the province. Mean-
while, disaffection had spread further north, into Pangasinan and Ilocos,
but although it took some hard campaigning to deal with the rebellion
there, the safety of Manila was no longer at stake. As soon as he had the
situation under control, Manrique stopped negotiating with the rebel
leaders and had them executed instead. 2
It is strange that so capable if ruthless a governor as Manrique showed
himself to be on this occasion should be thrown into a veritable panic by
Koxinga's threatened invasion of 1662. Yet such was the case. No sooner
had he dispatched Fray Vittorio Ricci back to Formosa with his defiant
484 T he Jesuits in the Philippines
reply than he took a number of hasty measures which were, to say the
least, unwise. The recall of the Moluccas and Mindanao garrisons, which
involved the loss of these islands both to Spain and to Christianity, has
already been noted. These troops, concentrated at Manila, could not have
contributed very much to his effective fighting strength ; whereas if they
were free to operate outside it they might at least have created a diversion.
Worse still: fearing that the Chinese in the Philippines might make
common cause with the invader, Manrique issued an ordinance banishing
all but the Christians among them. It soon appeared that there was not
enough shipping to take away all that multitude, so he followed this up
with another ordinance directing those who remained in the country,
wherever they might be, to betake themselves without fail to the Parian or
the suburb of Binondo. Anyone found outside these internment areas after
the impossibly short term allowed for compliance would be put to the
sword. This ordinance was broadcast in the city and the provinces and
once again as on earlier occasions mobs thirsting for loot taunted and
harried the Chinese into providing them with some excuse for anticipating
the ordinance. A demonstration of the Parian residents before the city gate
was mistaken by the garrison for a general uprising. Without more ado
they subjected the entire quarter to an artillery bombardment, causing
great carnage and sending the survivors, along with the Chinese of the
other suburbs, fleeing into the country. Governor Manrique had succeeded
in producing precisely what he was trying to prevent : a Chinese rebellion.
While roving bands of sangleys terrorized the provinces around Manila,
a large concentration of them fortified themselves in the San Mateo hills.
Nor could any considerable body of Spanish troops be sent against them,
for Koxinga was expected at any moment, and all hands were needed in
the breathless race against time to put the city in a posture of defence. In
this desperate situation it was the Pampango troops, ironically enough,
who covered themselves with glory. Brilliantly led by Don Francisco
Laksamana, they smashed the sangley bands that had penetrated into
Pampanga, then hurled themselves at the San Mateo stronghold and
leveled it to the ground, taking no prisoners. Thereafter it was merely a
matter of extermination. In recognition of this feat, guard duty over the
entire circuit of the city walls was turned over to the Pampanga units for
twenty-four hours ; an astonishing act of confidence and, as Murillo rightly
observes, one of the most exceptional privileges ever conferred by the
Spanish government on its native subjects.
Meanwhile, the massacre ordered by Manrique of all Chinese who had
failed to intern themselves in time was executed with the greatest rigor
even in the most distant provinces. This needless tragedy was followed by
other measures almost as ill conceived. In order to obtain ready-cut stone
as quickly as possible for the elaborate additional fortifications planned by
Thunder and Lightning 485
his staff, Manrique ordered the principal suburban churches torn down.
Thus, in one stroke, the churches of Bagumbayan, Ermita, Malate, Para-
haque, Dilao, Binondo, and Santa Cruz, which had taken years to build,
were demolished. With reason could the Jesuit chronicler Spinelli exclaim,
What more might that heathen barbarian Pumpuan [Koxinga] have done,
if he had actually come ? M The withdrawal of the garrisons in the south and
the consequent loss of the Moluccas, Mindanao, and Sulu to Spain and
Christianity has already been noted. Practically the entire native popu-
lation of Manila and its suburbs, not excluding women and children,
were called away from their ordinary occupations to dig ditches and build
breastworks. Requisitioning agents scoured the provinces of Luzon for
rice and other foodstuffs to stock the city for a siege. As the Cavite ship-
yards clamored for more lumber, more masts, more cables, huge gangs of
drafted laborers hacked their way painfully deeper and deeper into the
Sierra Madre jungles, lashed furiously on by their overseers. The stock
farms of the island were emptied of all their horses to provide mounts for
the cavalry companies stationed at all the likely invasion beaches. This
would not have been so bad if the volunteer cavalrymen confined them-
selves to their military duties. They preferred, however, to take advantage
of the immunity given them by the emergency to plunder the helpless
civilian population. 3
In calling these measures ill-conceived, I do not mean to imply that they
were not to some extent necessary ; but they were plunged into in so head-
long a fashion, with such appalling wastefulness, and with no care being
taken to distribute the burdens equally, that, although the invasion never
materialized, the country was left almost as prostrate as though it had.
They also had the effect of lowering the prestige of the gubernatorial office
in the eyes of the colonists themselves. Hitherto the authority of the
governor as the king's personal representative was as unchallenged as that
of the king himself. Now, men began to question whether an absolute
power which could be exercised so irresponsibly ought not to be placed
under some kind of control by the community. The Spanish colonial
system, however, provided no machinery for such control. The governor
acted in the name of the king ; he bore, for all purposes of rule, the very
person of the king ; and who in that age of royal absolutism was to say nay
to the king ? There was only one other power in the colony which might
possibly check the governor with impunity. That was the Church. And
there was one agency of the Church which possessed a recognized power of
physical coaction. That was the Inquisition. It was in this perilous direc-
tion that the colonists groped for a system of checks and balances of which
they felt the need, but for which they had no precedent. The results were
well nigh disastrous.
Governor Diego Salcedo, who succeeded Manrique de Lara in 1663,
486 The Jesuits in the Philippines
apparently came to the Philippines with the sole, or at least the para-
mount interest of enriching himself and his personal adherents. In an
economy such as that of the Philippines, based chiefly on the limited
lading space of the galleons, he could not do this save at the expense of the
“city and commerce.” At no time in the past, therefore, did the hand of
the governor lie so heavily on the citizens of Manila as during the first
five years of Salcedo’s administration. The commissary of the Inquisition
at the time was an Augustinian, Fray Jose de Paternina. There seems to be
little doubt that he was prevailed upon to do what he did on the grounds
that it was demanded by the common good and safety.
On the night of 9-10 October 1668, between midnight and one
o’clock in the morning, he broke into the governor’s palace, surprised
Salcedo in his bed, and with the assistance of the two Franciscans and the
familiars of the Inquisition who were with him, took him prisoner to the
Franciscan convent. The charge was heresy; but the real purpose of the
arrest became clear enough that very morning when Paternina, enthusias-
tically aided by the leading merchants, proceeded to a wholesale search and
confiscation of the governor’s goods. These amounted, according to one
report, to half a million pesos.
At the same time the junior oidor of the audiencia, Don Juan Manuel de
la Pena Bonifaz, who seems to have been privy to the plot, occupied the
government buildings with his faction, declared the governorship vacant,
and without bothering to consult his colleagues proclaimed himself acting
governor and captain general. The other two oidores, Don Francisco
Coloma and Don Francisco de Montemayor, and the attorney-general,
Don Francisco Corvera, were not disposed to recognize this high-handed
seizure of power. They could not, however, meet at the hall of the audien-
cia for fear of arrest, and so, on 16 October, decided to establish them-
selves in the College of Manila.
Javier Riquelme, the rector of the college, was most reluctant at first
to allow them to do this, as he had every right to be. The oidores, however,
insisted that, since Bonifaz was clearly a usurper, the king’s authority in
the islands devolved on themselves ; it was therefore in the king’s name
that they sought admittance. Your reverences would not deny sanctuary
to a felon in order to assure him of a just trial,” Coloma added. “You
ought not, then, to deny to the king what you would not deny to a felon.”
They were admitted, and from that moment on the library of the college
became, from one point of view at least, the hall of the audiencia. Not
only that, but Miguel Solana, the provincial, gave permission to some of
the fathers to assist the oidores in strengthening their authority against
Bonifaz by summoning to their side the most influential citizens of the
city. Solana himself undertook to see Bonifaz and invite him to a con-
ference at the college with a view to regularizing the transfer of authority.
Thunder and Lightning 487
Meanwhile, Bonifaz had stolen a march on the other oidores by assuring
himself of the allegiance of the troops inside the city. Solana found the
government house surrounded by armed men and the anterooms filled with
officers. When Bonifaz heard what he had to say, he upbraided him bitterly
for giving asylum to his colleagues, and vowed that had he not been such a
devoted friend of the Jesuits he would have ordered the college leveled to
the ground by artillery. Solana tried to persuade him, for the sake of peace,
at least to come and hear what the other oidores had to say. Bonifaz
insisted, however, that they should come to him. Solana* s companion,
Tiburcio de Zifuentes, one of the college professors, pointed out that the
palace, teeming as it was with the military, was hardly the place for peace-
able negotiations. But Bonifaz would not be moved; in his view, negotia-
tion was out of the question; submission was what he required of the
oidores and the attorney-general. What they were doing was completely
illegal and treasonable. “It is mutiny,* * he shouted. “A tumult, a tumult ! **
The officers around him vigorously assented, and the two Jesuits had per-
force to return to the college with this reply.
The oidores, who had been joined by a number of prominent citizens,
made another attempt later in the day to come to an understanding with
Bonifaz. This time their messenger was one of the professors of theology,
Jeronimo de Ortega. But Ortega was even less successful than Solana and
Zifuentes had been, for he had no sooner returned than the college was
surrounded by troops. Bonifaz respected the ancient right of sanctuary to
the extent of not breaking in and summarily arresting his adversaries ; but
after permitting servants to bring supper to the laymen besieged within,
he gave strict orders that no one was thereafter to be allowed to go in or out.
Fortunately, the siege did not last too long. What the wit of man could
not encompass, the women quietly achieved by their own methods. The
worried wives of those inside the college met at Coloma*s house the next
day. That afternoon Coloma* s wife went to the college church, where she
was joined by her husband. They sat conferring quietly for a few minutes,
after which Coloma went to the lobby of the residence, where a sedan chair
was waiting for him. It was dusk, and the officers and men stationed at the
entrance were studiously looking the other way. Without saying anything
to his colleagues, the fathers, or anyone else, Coloma stepped into the
sedan chair and was borne, first to the palace and then to his house.
That was the end of it. Whatever pretensions to being the legitimate
government the original faction in the college might have had, Monte-
mayor and Corvera by themselves could not possibly make good that
claim. Moreover, Bonifaz sent word to assure all those still within of life
and liberty if they dispersed quietly to their homes. They did so. That
night (midnight, 17-18 October), Bonifaz had Montemayor arrested and
banished him out of the city.
488 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Further arrests followed of citizens known or suspected to be sympathe-
tic to the stand taken by the two senior oidores. Attorney-general Corvera,
who for some reason or other was permitted to function, kept protesting
with rare courage against these arrests, but in vain. No one felt safe in his
house; wakeful men listened anxiously to the stroke of midnight, and
ruefully reflected that if Salcedo had scourged them with whips, Bonifaz
was scourging them with scorpions. Their ordeal ended in July 1669, when
word reached Manila that a new governor had landed at Palapag. Bonifaz
lost no time in seeking sanctuary in a church, where he died soon after-
ward. But such was the fear inspired by the Inquisition that even the new
governor, Don Manuel de Leon, a hard-bitten veteran of innumerable
campaigns in Flanders, Germany, and Galicia, did not dare demand
Salcedo at Paternina’s hands. The hapless ex-governor was put aboard the
galleon of 1670, to be dealt with by the tribunal of the Inquisition at
Mexico. He died at sea. The tribunal took up his case anyway, and decided
the following year that he had been illegally and unjustly arrested. Pater-
nina was arrested in his turn and sent to Mexico for trial (1672). He too died
at sea; at approximately the same latitude, it is said, as his victim Salcedo. 4
In Governor de Leon the city and commerce of Manila found a man who
not only did not interfere with their interests but took steps to promote
them. One of his first official acts was to send an agent to Macao to revive
the Canton-Manila trade, which Koxinga's depredations and the massacre
of 1662 had disrupted. To assist the agent, Don Juan Enriquez Losada,
De Leon requested and obtained the services of Father Francesco Messina,
last seen as acting chaplain of the shipyard workers who built the Cam-
bodia galleon. As an old China hand, Messina was of considerable help
to Losada in negotiating fresh trade agreements with both the Portuguese
and Chinese Governments, and opening not only Canton but Ning-p'o to
Spanish commerce.
Governor de Leon unhappily failed to maintain the same harmonious
relations with the ecclesiastical authorities. His views on the royal rights
of patronage were, if possible, even more extreme than those of his
predecessor Corcuera. When, for instance. Monseigneur Francois Pallu,
titular bishop of Fleliopolis and vicar apostolic of Sima, being on a voyage
to China, w^as driven by storms to seek refuge in Manila, he was promptly
deposited by the governor and audiencia in the Jesuit residence and told to
consider himself under house arrest. When he inquired for what reason,
the startled bishop was told that he had violated the patronato by permit-
ting wind and wave to cast him on patronato territory. He w r as subse-
quently placed on the next galleon and sent back to Rome via Mexico and
Madrid. This astonishing act justifiably drew vigorous protests from the
Holy See, but, curiously enough, received the blessing of the royal
government.
Thunder and Lightning 489
Archbishop Poblete having died in 1667, Bishop Juan Lopez of Cebu was
promoted to the archdiocese of Manila, of which he took possession in
1672. He was soon at loggerheads with the militant governor, chiefly on
account of the chaplain of Fort Santiago, Master Jeronimo de Herrera,
Herrera apparently believed that as such he was ex officio the military vicar
of the colony and exempt from the jurisdiction of the diocesan prelate.
He was supported in this contention by Governor de Leon, who stoutly
repelled all the archbishop's efforts to bring Herrera to order. The arch-
bishop took this so ill that it gravely affected his health, and after only a
year and a half in Manila succumbed to a fever on 12 February 1674. He
was succeeded in 1677 by a Dominican, Fray Felipe Pardo. 5
Fray Felipe Pardo was 67 years old and in his second term as provincial
of the Philippine Dominicans when the official notice reached him of his
presentation by the Crown to the Holy See for the archdiocese of Manila.
Since his arrival in the colony in 1648, he had taught philosophy and
theology in the College of Santo Tomas and held various positions of
distinction and responsibility in the order. He did not receive episcopal
consecration until 1 681, when the papal bulls of appointment reached
Manila ; but the cathedral chapter turned over to him the government of
the archdiocese immediately. He thus entered upon his duties as arch-
bishop-elect on 11 November 1677; whereupon a new cycle in the
recurrent jurisdictional conflict between Church and State in the Philip-
pines began. 6
Governor de Leon died that same year; his successor, Don Juan de
Vargas, a knight of the Order of Saint James, arrived the following year.
In 1681, the arrival of new appointees brought the audiencia of Manila to
full strength, as follows : Diego de Calderon, Juan Antonio de Viga, Cristo-
bal de Grimaldos, and Pedro Sebastian de Bolivar, oidores; Esteban
Lorenzo de la Fuente Alanis, attorney-general. In order to prevent the long
vacancies which often intervened between the death of a Philippine
bishop and the arrival or appointment of his successor, the Holy See and
the Spanish government had agreed that some at least of the dioceses in
the islands should be provided with auxiliaries. Thus it was that two
prelates arrived in Manila at the same time as the new oidores : Fray Gines
Barrientos, Dominican, titular bishop of Troy and auxiliary to the arch-
bishop of Manila, and Fray Juan Duran, Mercedarian, titular bishop of
Zenopolis and auxiliary to the bishop of Cebu. Further, the mail that
came with them brought official notice of the presentation to the vacant
see of Nueva Segovia of the archdeacon of the Manila cathedral, Don
Francisco Pizarro de Orellana. All these names will figure prominently in
our narrative. 7
Some time before this, while the diocese of Nueva Segovia was still
vacant, a minor conflict had already arisen between Archbishop Pardo and
49° The Jesuits in the Philippines
the civil authorities. The administration of the vacant diocese had
devolved on the archbishop as metropolitan, and to represent him he
appointed a vice-administrator named Arqueros. Between Arqueros and
the parish priest of Vigan, Maranon, a violent dispute arose ; and when
Arqueros tried to impose a visitation on Maranon, the latter appealed to
the audiencia on the grounds that his rights as a subject of the king were
being violated — the so-called reatrso it fuer^a. The audiencia ordered
Arqueros to cease and desist from his visitation until the case could be
investigated. At this, Archbishop Pardo politely but firmly informed the
audiencia that since he was the administrator of Nueva Segovia, any
instructions it thought fit to issue to his delegate should be coursed through
him. The oidores, recognizing their mistake, remanded the entire case to
the archbishop's court; but it was with some resentment that they did so.
Meanwhile, tensions were developing between Archbishop Pardo and his
chapter. The fact that the new prelate was a friar predisposed the cathedral
priests to see in his every move a tendency to favor his fellow friars at the
expense of the secular clergy. They noted for future reference that even
after his consecration he continued to reside in a Dominican house, the
hospital of San Gabriel on the north bank of the Pasig, instead of trans-
ferring to the archiepiscopal palace in the walled city; and that his most
trusted adviser was a Dominican, Fray Ramon Berart. What brought this
undercurrent of hostility to the surface was Archbishop Pardo's decision
to do something about the anomalous parish of Santiago de Bagumbayan.
This was the secular parish to which all the Spaniards resident outside
the walled city belonged. It was constituted when most of them lived
together in the suburb of that name, which lay, as previously noted, south
of the city. In the course of time, however, many of them found it more
healthful and convenient to reside on the north bank of the Pasig, within
the territorial limits of three other parishes, Tondo, Binondo, and Santa
Cruz. But since these were Filipino or Chinese parishes, they continued
to belong to the Spanish parish of Bagumbayan. It was from the pastor of
Bagumbayan that they were supposed to receive the sacraments and at the
church of Bagumbayan that they were expected to attend religious func-
tions.
There seems to have been considerable dissatisfaction with this arrange-
ment. For a resident of Tondo or Binondo it was obviously more convenient
to hear Sunday Mass in a nearby church than to go across the river to
Bagumbayan, over a mile away. But a more serious inconvenience was that
it was difficult for the pastor of Bagumbayan to answer sick calls promptly
or even for the calls to reach him, especially on dark and stormy nights.
When this was called to his attention, Archbishop Pardo decided to
attach all the parishioners who had left Bagumbayan to the parishes in
which they now resided. Before giving effect to this decision he took care
Thunder and Lightning 491
to obtain the government's approval and consent. To the ordinary observer
this may appear to be an eminently sensible solution; but not, alas, to the
cathedral chapter. They looked upon it as a dark device drastically to reduce
the income of the secular parish of Bagumbayan for the purpose of fatten-
ing the stipends of the regular parishes of Tondo (Augustinian), Binondo
(Dominican), and Santa Cruz (Jesuit).
At the instance of the aggrieved pastor the capitulars drew up and
published a vigorous protest in which they assumed the challenging title
of “head of the clergy." They refused to recognize the partition of
Bagumbayan, called on the archbishop to cease favoring the religious at
the expense of the seculars, and demanded the dismissal of his adviser
Berart, whom they considered the "grey eminence" behind the arch-
bishop's proceedings. Pardo replied with an equally vigorous pastoral
letter in which he summoned the capitulars to submit, sharply reminding
them that the only “head of the clergy" in the archdiocese was the
archbishop. When the chapter defiantly refused to comply, he applied for
aid to the governor and audiencia. The answer they gave him was an
evasive one, for they too had little liking for the archbishop's learned and
lynx-eyed legal expert. Emboldened by the government's attitude, the
capitulars filed suit against their own archbishop, alleging that his arbitrary
measures against them and against the secular clergy in general constituted
fuerza. To lift this fuerza they demanded the dismissal of Berart.
The audiencia now decided to take the bull by the horns. On 16 and 17
May 1681 they issued two injunctions, one addressed to Archbishop Pardo
and the other to the Dominican provincial, Fray Baltazar de Santa Cruz.
Pardo was asked to dismiss Berart ; Santa Cruz, to send him to the missions.
Both naturally refused to do anything of the sort. Pardo flatly asserted that
the improvements which Berart was introducing into the functioning of
the ecclesiastical tribunal made him indispensable ; ‘ ‘ and if certain parties
are disturbed by these reforms and your archbishop deserves to be deprived
of an adviser who tells him what to do according to the law, then it would
be preferable to deprive him of his archbishopric altogether, for it is a
lesser evil that justice should fail to be administered in a community with-
out a head than with one." 8 Unwittingly prophetic words !
Tempers being now thoroughly ruffled on all sides, almost every action
taken by either side was interpreted as a challenge by the other. To fill the
post of archdeacon vacated by the promotion of Orellana to the see of
Nueva Segovia, the government nominated Herrera, the man who sent
Archbishop Lopez in sorrow to his grave. Pardo not only ignored the
nomination but summoned Herrera to his tribunal to answer for his con-
duct toward his predecessor. Herrera appealed to the audiencia, alleging
fuerza. The audiencia admitted the appeal and enjoined Pardo to suspend
proceedings. At about the same time, Bishop-elect Orellana took a sudden
492 The Jesuits in the Philippines
interest in the case of Arqueros versus Maranon. It was, after all, a case
radicated in what had now become his jurisdiction, and on this ground he
asked Pardo for the pertinent papers* Pardo refused, alleging that, since
he had already commenced the inquiry, he had a right to finish it* Orellana
appealed to the audiencia on the familiar plea of fuerza, and again the
audiencia admitted the appeal, issuing the customary injunction. To none
of these injunctions did Archbishop Pardo pay the slightest heed, though
he was well aware that according to the royal statutes, a series of three such
injunctions unheeded could bring a fourth “ sword in hand,” that is,
decreeing banishment and sequestration of goods; extrafie^ay tempor alidades.
Such was the state of affairs when Fray Francisco Villalba, the Domi-
nican vicar provincial, ascended the cathedral pulpit to preach the sermon
at the solemn Mass coram episcopo on the feast of the Epiphany, 6 January 1682.
Clad in full pontificals, the archbishop sat on his throne beneath the
purple canopy on the gospel side of the high altar. On the epistle side,
facing him across the wide sanctuary, the oidores of the audiencia in their
sober gowns and bonnets set off the governor in their midst, resplendent
in the cross and colors of the military order of Saint James. The gospel had
just been chanted, and the congregation was settling down to listen to the
sermon. Villalba took for his text Matthew ii, 1-6, the account of Herod’s
dealings with the Wise Men who sought a newborn king of the Jews. We
can readily imagine the electric stillness that greeted his opening remarks
when it became clear that he intended to apply certain details of the sacred
narrative in a rather pointed manner to current events.
Apropos of the consnlta which Herod proposed to the chief priests and
learned men of the Jews regarding the birthplace of the Savior, Villalba
pointed out that the prince — or the president, as the case may be — does
well to seek the advice of his ministers, but the ministers do very ill
indeed if they permit their passions to becloud their counsel. This was a
little too much for Calderon, the senior oidor, who leaned toward Governor
Vargas and suggested that someone be sent across to the archbishop to request
that the sermon be stopped. The chaplain of the audiencia took the message
and was instructed to inform the gentlemen that the preacher was merely
doing his duty. By this time, Villalba had really warmed up to his subject.
Let all considerations of human respect that the world can muster be arrayed
against us [he cried], the cause of God and of his Church must at all costs be
maintained. Allowing for all legitimate jurisdiction, giving to God what is God's
and to Caesar what is Caesar's, holding fast to this principle, we must fear neither
sequestration of goods nor death itself, but only God. 9
Tempor alidades; the fatal word was uttered. Villalba underscored it.
Turning to the episcopal throne he addressed Pardo directly: “ My Lord,
pay no heed whatever to temporalities; look only to God.” Instantly
Thunder and Lightning 493
Vargas was on his feet, shouting to the preacher to come down from the
pulpit and to the priests at the altar to go on with the Mass. It would seem
that the language he used was of the kind more often heard on the parade
ground than in church. There was an answering roar from the officialdom
in the front pews and violent gestures to the sanctuary calling upon the
canons to be quick with the Credo . They complied perhaps more hastily
than the rubrics permitted. Mass was concluded without any further
disturbance, but there must have been quite a lot of talk about it afterward
on the cathedral steps.
Three days later gendarmes arrested Villalba at the Dominican priory of
Binondo where he resided, hustled him out “in his white habit, just as
he was, minus cloak, hat and staff/ * and put him aboard a vessel which
took him to Catbalogan, Samar. There he was kept in close confinement
until picked up by the galleon Santa Rosa , outward bound. When typhoon
weather forced the Santa Rosa to turn back, the audiencia sent word that
Villalba should be set down at Romblon. Villalba protested that he was
ill and needed medical attention ; whereupon he was taken, not to Manila,
but to the Franciscan hospital at Naga. There he remained until the next
galleon sailed for Acapulco. Archbishop Pardo 1 s counter to this was to
excommunicate the officer who executed Villalba' s arrest as vitandus , a man
to be avoided by all God-fearing Christians.
The conflict which had bubbled out of nothing more momentous than
a small-town feud among the petty officialdom of a distant diocese now
bade fair to sweep the whole colony into its turbulent stream. One by one
cathedral canons, secular priests, Dominican friars, and Manila citizens
had been drawn into the maelstrom as passionate partisans of either
audiencia or archbishop. The Jesuits were next. Direct conflict between
Archbishop Pardo and the Jesuits was preceded by a recurrence of the
tiresome dispute between the two colleges of Santo Tomas and San Jose.
Which of the two should precede the other in processions and similar func-
tions ? It was by this time an almost wholly academic question ; for, as
Diaz points out, they were very seldom seen together in public anyway.
However, it need cause no surprise that academic questions should gene-
rate so much heat — in academic circles.
It happened that among the royal cedulas received in 1682 there was one
dated 17 May 1680, wherein the king graciously consented to be the
patron of the College of Santo Tomas. The Dominicans very properly gave
wide publicity to this signal favor, set up the royal arms over the main
entrance to the college, and faculty and students held high festival. While
these celebrations were in progress the Jesuits of the rival College of San
Jose filed a petition with the audiencia alleging that the rector of Santo
Tomas, using the royal concession as a pretext, had in certain of his cere-
monial acts clearly implied that Santo Tomas now took precedence over
494 The Jesuits in the Philippines
San Jose. This, they claimed, was in direct contravention of a royal cedula
of 12 March 1653 which had settled the question definitively in favor of
San Jose. They prayed, therefore, that this cedula be enforced. On 1 1 May
1682 the audiencia granted the petition, ordering that the cedula referred
to “be kept, observed, and executed, and its entire contents be notified to
the father rector, masters, and doctors of the College of Santo Tomas in
cloister assembled.' *
When the clerk who was sent to serve the writ failed to find the rector
of Santo Tomas, he resorted to the somewhat unusual expedient of posting
copies of the document at all the city gates and principal street comers.
He even went so far as to have it translated into Tagalog for publication in
the suburbs. This was indeed to serve notice with a vengeance, and we
cannot help suspecting that the Jesuits of San Jose had a hand in the
business, moved by the ungenerous desire, as one contemporary pamphlet
put it, of throwing cold water on the Dominican triumph : * * aguarnos la
fiesta."
One of the posters had in fact been plastered opposite the very entrance
to the College of Santo Tomas. But it had not been there long before there
appeared a paper squarely pasted over the text with a scrawl to the effect
that “if anyone wishes to buy CROCKS, POTS, and DISHES, let him
apply to the Jesuits." 10 The implication of course was that the Jesuits were
deeply involved in mercantile operations ill-suited to their vow of poverty ;
a pleasantry which the Jesuits did not find very amusing. The Santo Tomas
authorities, for their part, felt that the proximity of the defaced proclama-
tion to their premises called for some explanation. It was found upon
inquiry that the lay brother who was porter of the college was responsible.
Some unknown soldier, he confessed, had approached him with the paper
in his hand and requested that it be posted beside the proclamation. The
lay brother, who must have been completely illiterate or else an unusually
trusting soul, affixed it not merely beside but right on top of the official
poster. He was immediately punished by being removed from his post and
sent out of Manila; and this, the writer of the pamphlet mentioned
above concludes with a pardonable smile, “ is the sum and substance of the
tragedy."
Archbishop Pardo, however, did not treat the charge of unlawful
commerce made against the Jesuits quite so lightly. According to Fray
Cristobal de Pedroche,
. . . the reason for the ill will borne by the fathers of the Society towards the
archbishop is that his Illustrious Lordship, moved by a holy zeal, by the complaint
of two prominent citizens, and by the scandal being caused in these lands; and
knowing what was contained in the cargo of the galleon Santa Rosa, which by the
just judgment of God and because of our sins failed to complete her voyage in the
year '82 ; and considering the very great injury done to the people of Manila,
Thunder and Lightning 495
many of whom were prevented from lading their bales, whereas it is common
knowledge that the said fathers took up a great part of the hold of the galleon
with their merchandise, bales and cakes of wax; and considering likewise that
their whole province shared in the guilt, especially their provincial, who failed
consistently to put a stop to it ; considering all these things, his Illustrious Lord-
ship decided, so it is said, to institute an inquiry into the matter with all secrecy,
in order to remedy the situation, not by independent action, but by reporting it
to his Holiness, to their general, and to his Majesty, for what was going on was
not only a violation of numerous bulls and apostolic letters but was also to the
detriment of his Majesty’s vassals and the whole realm ; for it is common know-
ledge that they deprive the Crown by this method of many millions, which they
send to the general . 11
Fray Cristobal might have qualified that last remark by saying that it was
indeed common knowledge, save to the general who received these millions
and the Jesuits who sent them. At any rate, as soon as the archbishop’s
secret inquiry became generally known — for what could be kept secret in
seventeenth-century Manila? — the Jesuit provincial, Francisco Salgado,
filed a protest claiming exemption from Pardo’s jurisdiction on two counts :
the privileges of his order, and the known partiality of the judge. Disre-
garding this protest, the archbishop completed his inquiry and on the basis
of his findings sent a notary aboard the Santa Rosa with a search warrant
and authority to impound whatever he should find belonging to the Jesuits.
Between 150 and 180 bales and cakes of wax were thus set aside as for-
bidden merchandise belonging to the Jesuits. In vain did the Jesuits
protest that these were not merchandise but supplies intended for the
houses of the order in Mexico and the Marianas. Pardo remained uncon-
vinced until the Dominican bishop of Cebu, Fray Pedro de Aguilar, and
his auxiliary, Fray Pedro Duran, succeeded in persuading him to proceed
no further in the matter.
At the same time, he found another bone to pick with the Jesuits ; or,
more precisely, with a Jesuit. A secular priest named Nicolas Cordero,
whose estate included several trusteeships, died leaving a will in which he
designated as his executor the Jesuit Jeronimo de Ortega. The Constitutions
of the Society of Jesus direct that its members “ should abstain, as far as
may be, from all secular business,” and specifically from “the making of
wills, the being executors and proctors in civil matters, and other such
offices,” and that “they must not be led by any entreat) 7 to undertake them
or suffer themselves to be employed in them.” 12 The Jesuit canonist and
historian Murillo put it more briefly: “In the Society no one may accept a
private commission or an executorship without the permission of our
general.” 13 We do not know whether Ortega obtained this permission or
not. We know simply that he accepted the executorship ; as it turned out,
much to his regret. The commission included, of course, the trusteeships
496 The Jesuits in the Philippines
which were part of the estate ; a veritable legal and financial tangle which
Ortega had considerable difficulty in straightening out. However, when
one of the parties interested in the estate demanded an accounting, he was
ready with the accounts and duly presented them to the audiencia; but
before the audiencia could complete the case, the interested party suddenly
changed its venue to the archbishop's court.
Pardo now demanded the accounts from Ortega, and Ortega was forced
to reply that he was unable to submit them because they were already in
the audiencia's possession. This reply did not satisfy Pardo, who apparently
wanted to force the audiencia, through Ortega, to transfer the case to him.
Ortega, in short, was neatly caught between the upper and nether mill-
stone; a most uncomfortable position from which we hope he obtained a
deeper insight into the wisdom of the Constitutions of the Society. Three
more summonses were served on him by the archdiocesan tribunal, the
last of which threatened excommunication if he failed to comply. He
failed, and was excommunicated (8 March 1683). Poor Ortega! It is not
difficult to sympathize with his anguished complaint :
How comes it that this party is commanded under pain of excommunication
to deliver what is not in his possession, since he cannot get it back from the
audiencia s power save by scaling its archives or breaking down its doors to with-
draw his papers ? And if major excommunication presupposes not only the
commission of a mortal sin but contumacy on the part of him who is to be
excommunicated, on what grounds does the archbishop threaten with this sort of
excommunication one who is guilty neither of mortal sin nor of contumacy in
failing to give what is not in his power to give r 14
The audiencia, having allowed Ortega to be wiped out like an expend-
able outpost in order to draw out the enemy, now launched a major
offensive. It declared the case to be a purely civil suit and not only disal-
lowed the change of venue but summoned the archbishop to surrender all
the documents in his possession pertinent to the case. Pardo yielded to the
extent of sending his chief notary to appear before the audiencia, but when
the oidores discovered that he brought no documents, they dismissed him
in high dudgeon. Writs and injunctions now began to flow in a steady
stream and in both directions between the two tribunals, so that Arch-
bishop Pardo was moved to complain that the oidores w r ere sending them
m barrowloads <x tnontones deliberately to wear down and bring to his
grave this old man of more than seventy-two years." The upshot of it all
was that the audiencia ordered the arrest of one of the archbishop's lawyers
and the disbarment of two others from pleading in the civil courts; to
which Pardo replied by ruling that no suit could be filed in his court unless
countersigned by the disbarred lawyers. "With this," says Diaz, "the
mine w r as charged and fused w r hich forthwith exploded with rum
Thunder and Lightning 497
irreparable, and a detonation that struck all Christendom with terror
and amazement.” 15
On 28 March 1683, the audiencia met and signed the fateful decree of
extranezay temper alidades, to wit, that the archbishop of Manila “be taken
and banished to one of the Babuyan islands, or the province of Cagayan,
or that of Pangasman, whichever he shall choose, and that all his goods be
confiscated and deposited in the royal warehouses, saving only the ponti-
fical paraphernalia.” 16 At two o'clock in the morning of 31 March, just
as the friars of San Gabriel were filing out of the choir after matins, a band
of soldiers came to execute the decree. Since no one would admit them,
they forced open the front door. Pardo himself offered no resistance, though
he would not get up from the chair in which he sat, so that they had to
carry him out, chair and all, to the brigantine that was to take him to
Pangas inan. When morning dawned, Manila found itself without its
archbishop.
Knowing full well that his banishment was a distinct possibility,
Archbishop Pardo had taken the precaution of appointing Bishop Barrien-
tos administrator of the see if it should actually take place. Bishop Barrien-
tos now presented his appointment to the audiencia, duly signed and
sealed, but the audiencia informed him that "for reasons of state
[super lores motivos ] ... it is not expedient for the bishop of Troy to make
use of this appointment, nor on the strength of it exercise jurisdiction in
this archdiocese.” 17 Instead, it directed the cathedral chapter to “make
use of its right” to administer the archdiocese as though it were vacant.
The capitulars were most reluctant to do this, because, for one thing, it was
extremely doubtful whether they had any such right; the see, after all,
was not “vacant” in the usual sense. At the audiencia' s insistence, how-
ever, they consented, justifying their assumption of authority by a
declaration in which they endeavored to prove that the see was “quasi-
vacant” — an unfortunate term which earned them much ridicule after-
ward.
At this, Bishop Barrientos retired to the Dominican convent of San Juan
del Monte, some distance from the city. Before leaving, however, he
circulated a message to the provincials of all the religious orders. This was
to the effect that, in spite of what the audiencia and chapter had done,
he was still the sole legitimate representative of the exiled archbishop.
Hence, in virtue of the delegated powers he possessed, he granted to the
fathers provincial and to the priests they wished to appoint faculties to
absolve all who had taken part in the arrest and banishment of the arch-
bishop from the censures which they had incurred, under the usual con-
ditions. He excepted the ringleaders and those who by reason of their
office had the power to revoke the decree of banishment. For some
reason or other this communication became so distorted in its progress
498 The Jesuits in the Philippines
through the streets of Manila that when it reached the ears of the governor
and audiencia it had taken the following form : that Bishop Barrientos and
the Dominicans had called upon all the religious orders, except the Jesuits,
to join them in a general revolt, the signal for which would be the bells of
Santo Domingo tolling an interdict immediately after the evening angelus.
Without stopping to check the accuracy of this report, the audiencia
acted at once. The dean of the cathedral chapter, Miguel Ortiz de
Covarrubias, was dispatched to Santo Domingo with an armed guard to
arrest the man who was supposed to have been commissioned by Bishop
Barrientos to declare the interdict, a secular priest named Francisco
Gonzalez. When Dean Ortiz was refused admittance by the friars, troops
were sent to surround the convent and to prevent its bells from being rung.
The friars, however, stoutly persisted in their refusal to surrender
Gonzalez; whereupon the oidor Calderon in a towering rage ordered
powder and shot to be issued to the troops. This had the desired effect.
Fray Juan de Paz came out to parley, and it was agreed that if Gonzalez
gave himself up he would merely be placed under house arrest.
But although the “ siege” of Santo Domingo was lifted, the audiencia
had not quite finished with the Dominicans. A formidable inquiry was
instituted into their life, customs, and proceedings, at the end of which
(18 May 1684) several friars were sentenced to banishment as disturbers
of public peace. Fray Juan Ibanez and Fray Francisco de Vargas were to
be sent to the Cagayan missions, while Fray Ramon Berart, Fray Bartolom^
Marron, and Fray Cristobal de Pedroche were to be banished from the
Philippines altogether and sent to Mexico. This sentence was executed on
Ibanez and Vargas, but Berart and Marron had apparently vanished into
thin air, and even a second siege of the Dominican convent, this time last-
ing four full days, failed to start them from cover. Finally, the thoroughly
exasperated audiencia proscribed the Dominican provincial himself, Fray
Antonio Calderon, and together with Pedroche put him aboard the out-
going galleon. Relief from this intolerable situation came when on 9 July
1684 the church bells of Manila rang out the news that the galleon Santa
Rosa , back from Acapulco, had been sighted, and that she had on board a
new governor : Don Gabriel Curuzelaegui y Arriola, knight of the Order
of Saint James, veinticuatro of Seville, and sometime general of the Wind-
ward Fleet.
Curuzelaegui took formal possession of his office on 22 August. After
acquainting himself with the situation he decided that the first step to any
settlement was to recall the archbishop from exile. The oidor es were
naturally very much against this, but he put them under such strong
pressure that they finally agreed on 24 October to revoke their sentence.
That same night, the capitulars thought it prudent to appear in a body
before Bishop Barrientos, acknowledge their error in assuming the interim
XV. Diego Luis do Sanvftores
Thunder and Lightning 499
government of the archdiocese, and humbly beg to be absolved from any
censures they might have incurred. Bishop Barrientos gave them absolution,
but subject to confirmation by Archbishop Pardo.
On 16 November the archbishop returned to Manila in triumph. As the
coasting vessel which bore him entered the Pasig, all the guns of Fort
Santiago boomed in salute, followed by the guns of each bastion of the
wall as he sailed past them. He disembarked hard by Santo Domingo gate
to the pealing of bells and the cheers of the populace ; chanted the Te Deum
in his cathedral; paid a brief state visit to the new governor; and then
retired to his old quarters at San Gabriel, where he found all his furniture
and effects carefully restored exactly as he had left them.
“All now looked forward to an Augustan peace/' wrote the anonymous
author of the Relacion curiosa , rather naively. He failed to realize that the
archbishop was not the kind of man to let bygones be bygones. On 29
November, he declared ex-Governor Vargas, the oidores, and Attorney-
general Alanis publicly excommunicated in virtue of the canon ‘ * Si quis
suadente diabolo" and the bull “In coena Domini / 9 which impose this
penalty on those who lay violent hands on a cleric. This immediately
created an impossible situation for Governor Curuzelaegui ; he could
hardly run the government with an audiencia entirely composed of persons
with whom Christians were forbidden to hold intercourse. After days of
pleading — “with tears in his eyes,” according to one account — the
archbishop relented and absolved the oidores and the attorney-general from
the ban.
Not, however, Vargas, who was now merely a private citizen. In his
case, Pardo demanded as a condition for his being absolved that he should
expose himself to the public gaze at the entrance to the cathedral, dressed
in penitential garb and with a halter around his neck, every Sunday and
holy day for a month; and for a month each thereafter, in the same
manner, outside the churches of Santo Domingo, Bmondo, and San
Gabriel. Vargas not only refused to submit to this humiliation, but acted
as though he had not been excommunicated at all. His conscience, he said,
was clear ; he had merely done his duty as he saw it. As for the archiepis-
copal censure, he had appealed it to the Holy See ; besides, he could pro-
duce two distinct papal documents exempting a knight of the Order of
Saint James like himself from excommunication by any ecclesiastic
inferior to a papal legate. Thus he retired with every appearance of content-
ment to the sumptuous residence he had built for himself on Isleta, the
little island in the middle of the Pasig River, sallying forth occasionally
to take the air, stopping to engage people in affable conversation as he
crossed the bridge or even under the very windows of the archbishop's
chambers; and in all his comings and goings his private and personal
trumpeter sounded a trumpet before him, while the guards at the city
500 The Jesuits in the Philippines
gates presented arms for all the world as though he were still governor.
Despite the fulminations hurled at him from the city pulpits, he continued
to attend bullfights and theatrical presentations, to receive visitors, and
even to hold trumpet concerts (he apparently had more than one trumpeter)
in his house.
The capitulars were in a very different case. They had no medieval privi-
leges to invoke, no cozy retreat in which to find refuge. They were com-
pelled to comply with whatever conditions the archbishop chose to impose
upon them before he confirmed the absolution imparted to them by
Bishop Barrientos. They were subjected, first of all, to a full-dress trial. At
the end of it they were arraigned before the archbishop on a stage erected
for this purpose in front of the cathedral, and made to retract all the acts
against their lawful superior of which they had been found guilty. Only
then were they definitively absolved from all censures and irregularities.
And what of the Jesuits ? Ortega, wdio had been elected procurator by
the provincial congregation of 1681, left for Europe during Pardo's exile
and died at sea ; it was thus at a higher tribunal that he finally submitted
his accounts. However, two complaints were filed against the Jesuits after
the archbishop's return of which he took cognizance. One was submitted
by certain leading citizens of the town of Cainta, who desired that their
Jesuit parish priest be removed; the other by the Augustinians, who
claimed that the Jesuit stationed at the Jesuit estate of Jesus de la Pena,
which was within the territorial limits of two Augustinian parishes, was
usurping the functions of a pastor. As in the earlier case the Jesuits when
summoned refused to recognize the competence of the judge on the grounds
of notorious partiality. They appealed to the audiencia, which, after two
years of litigation, decided against them. On 23 February 1688, it found
that the archbishop had not exceeded his jurisdiction in restraining the
Jesuit at Jesus de la Pena from acting as a parish priest, and ordered the
church which had been built on the property to be torn down. Three days
later, Governor Curuzelaegui approved Pardo's proposal that Cainta be
transferred to the Augustinians. 18
All this time, of course, the official packets were bringing to king and
council in Madrid a flood of reports on the astounding events in the
Philippines. The first step they took was to call the case to Madrid. On
2 July 1685, Charles II instructed governor and audiencia that
... if it is true that a fixed place [of exile] was indicated and assigned to this pre-
late at the said convent of the Dominicans in Pangasinan, according to reports
received, they should immediately take the necessary measures to set him at
liberty and permit him to go where he pleases outside the limits of the territory
of the said archdiocese, choosing the place which seems good to him, until a
decision should be arrived at after examination of the documents transmitted by
that royal audiencia which I await . 19
Thunder and Lightning 501
The sentence which the council recommended and the king pronounced
two years later was almost entirely favorable to Archbishop Pardo.
I declare by these presents that the banishment to a fixed place of exile \eon-
jinarion ] of the said archbishop of Manila and other religious and ecclesiastical
persons, and the suspension [embargo] of the spiritual jurisdiction of this prelate,
and the violent manner in which the arrest of the above-mentioned persons was
carried out by the orders of the said president and oidores of the audiencia referred
to, were unjust. In consequence of which it is my present will to relieve these
persons of the sentence of banishment and sequestration imposed by the said
president and oidores, with full restitution of the goods and revenues which had
been taken away from them by reason of the sequestration . 20
Accompanying this sentence were strict orders to Governor Curuzelaegui
to send to Spain by the first available transportation Dean Miguel Ortiz
and Fray Ramon Berart, “this being necessary to my service and the
peace and tranquility of those islands/' To see that the sentence was faith-
fully executed, a jue^ pesquisidor or special commissioner, Don Francisco
Campos Valdivia, was dispatched to the Philippines. Pending the arrival
of the commissioner, Vargas and Calderon were to be sent prisoners to
the same place where they had banished Pardo, the other two oidores and
the attorney-general to the other places where the Dominicans had been
exiled.
Valdivia arrived in July 1689 to find that three of the oidores had
escaped him by death: Grimaldos in 1683, Calderon in 1686, and Viga
in 1687. Viga and Bolivar had been placed under arrest in 1687 on
charges of attemped conspiracy against the government, or, more precisely,
against the governor. Viga, banished to Lal-lo in Cagayan, had died
there; Bolivar was still being held at Tuao in the same province. Ex-
Governor Vargas was sent by Valdivia first to Pangasinan and then to
Mexico; but he died on the voyage. Bolivar, summoned to Manila, died
before he could comply. This left Attorney-General Alanis, whom
Valdivia took back with him to Mexico, along with Ortiz and Berart.
Thus, no one can say that the king did not tty to make honorable
amends for the excesses of his officials. However, he looked with little
favor on the manner in which Archbishop Pardo proceeded against his
persecutors after his return from exile. Besides the rigors mentioned above,
it was reported at Madrid that Pardo had ordered the church of the College
of Manila closed on the grounds that it had been desecrated by the burial
in it of the oidor Grimaldos. Since Grimaldos received the last sacraments
from Dean Ortiz, Pardo held his absolution to have been invalid. He
ordered the remains disinterred, but they could no longer be distinguished
from other bones turned up by the clumsy searchers, and Pardo had per-
force to desist and reopen the church to the faithful. But what gave
502 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Charles II and his councillors the most concern was Pardo's continued
hostility to the audiencia. In a cedula of 20 June 1692, the king informed
Cruzat y Gongora, Curuzelaegui's successor, that he was sending a letter
to Pardo in which
I beseech and charge him to keep within the limits of his jurisdiction and not
meddle in affairs pertaining to my royal patronage nor impede the exercise of my
royal prerogatives. He must understand that just as I favor him in that no one
should interfere with what is his concern, so I will not permit him to intervene in
anything pertaining to my royal patronage. ... I am likewise charging him to
absolve, if he has not already done so, all the principals and accomplices found
guilty in all the above-mentioned cases in those islands, both living and dead, in
accordance with the brief issued by the papal nuncio with the delegated authority
of his Holiness Innocent XI. If not, he should restore their reputation, mindful
of the clemency which our holy mother the Church uses in such cases, and which
his Holiness Innocent XI enjoins in his brief. I hope by these means to facilitate
the reconciliation of the faithful, the union of minds, the peace of those realms,
and the good example of all those missions . 21
This admonition never reached the archbishop, who died in December
1689, in the seventy-ninth year of his age, thus bringing to a close what
may certainly be regarded as one of the most eventful decades in the history
of the Philippines. However, one must not allow the abundance of docu-
mentation on this and the other disturbances recorded in this chapter, and
the amount of space devoted to them, to distort one's perspective on this
period. In the intervals between these sudden alarms ordinary folk were
doing their best to attend to their ordinary duties ; and who shall say that
what they accomplished was not in the long-run more important than these
admittedly spectacular but rather sterile controversies ?
The College of Manila and the College of San Jose quietly continued to
supply the colony with a small but steady stream of educated men who led
useful lives as diocesan priests, army officers, and civil administrators. Now
and then, it is true, an Old Boy would bring shame to his preceptors by
acquiring notoriety rather than fame, as did that brash bishop-baiter,
Master Jeronimo de Herrera. But by and large, the alumni of the two
colleges brought credit to themselves and to the Jesuits who had some
small part in their formation. In 1654, for instance. Bishop Antonio de
San Gregorio of Nueva Caceres mentions the following sons of San Jose
who had in his time distinguished themselves in the service of the Church
in the colony: Dr. Juan de Velez, bishop-elect of Cebu; Fray Alonso de
Carvajal, provincial of the Augustinians ; Don Gregorio de Escalona, dean
of the cathedral chapter of Manila; Dr. Jose Cabral, canon of the same;
and Dr. Jose de Salazar, chaplain of the royal chapel of the Incarnation
TFort Santiago]. 22
Thunder and Lightning 503
The Annual Letter of 1701 furnishes us with an interesting list of the
graduates of the College of Manila who were resident at that time in or
near the city, and hence ipso facto members of its claustro or academic
senate. Of the twenty- two in the list, seven were doctors and fifteen
masters ; all but three were alumni of San Jose. Three of the masters were
still residents of San Jose, possibly because they were candidates for the
doctorate. The majority (nineteen) were priests, and included the vicar-
general of the archdiocese of Manila, two canons and three prebends of
the same, three parish priests, two curates, the chaplain of the Misericordia,
the chaplain of the audiencia, two military chaplains, and Fausto Cruzat y
Gongora jr., son of the governor, who obtained his master's degree in 1699
and his doctorate in theology in 1701. The letter adds that some of the lay
alumni whom San Jose had graduated as masters of arts were currently
holding government posts, some as alcaldes mayores ; it does not, however,
give their names. 23
During the war scare caused by Koxinga in 1662, most of the students of
the wo colleges volunteered for service ; only seven residents were left at
San Jose. However, by 1665 sixteen had returned to resume their studies,
and by 1672 the number of scholars had risen to thirty. The average enroll-
ment of the college during the closing years of the seventeenth century
was between thirty and fifty. The Annual Letter of 1701 gives us a
breakdown of the thirty-one students that year which was probably typical :
four theologians, six philosophers, sixteen grammarians, and five graduate
students, three clerical and two lay. Because of wars, rumors of wars,
earthquakes, and other calamities, the wolf was never very far from San
Jose's door. However, it scraped through somehow, and even managed to
maintain six foundation scholarships, although the Annual Letter of 1665
says that by that time the original Figueroa endowment had practically
vanished. Vanished, that is to say, as a significant source of income, not as
the juridical element which gave the institution its permanent personality.
However, the hand of Providence was not shortened, as we have had
occasion to point out earlier, and the Annual Letter of 1672 strikes this
cheerful note : ' * At present, there is good hope of increasing [the revenues
of the college] through the development of an agricultural estate which an
extremely capable lay brother is administering with great care and
assiduity; and another which was donated to the college and is being
managed by a donado.” The first of these estates was that of San Pedro
Tunasan; the second that of San Juan Bautista in the town of Lian, pro-
vince of Batangas, which Alumnus Jose Cabral bequeathed to the college
by the terms of his will, dated 22 November 1666. 24
There is little change in the regular order of time of the college, save
that studies seem to have encroached somewhat on prayer ; for instead of the
period originally given to meditation in the morning we find a study
504 The Jesuits in the Philippines
period. Here is the distribution as indicated by the Annual Letter of
1696 : 25
A.M.
5 :oo Rise
5:30 Morning prayers ; Mass
6 : 00 Study
7 : 00 Breakfast ? Classes in the College of Manila
P.M.
1 : 00 Study
2 : 00 Classes
5:30 Study
6:30 Free time
6:45 Rosary in common
7:00 Supper; recreation
8:00 Litanies; examen
8:30 Review
9 : 00 Bed
I put a question mark after breakfast because our anonymous chronicler
fails to give even a hint that such a meal existed. He does mention dinner,
but not the dinner hour ; one presumes it was as before, around 1 o or 1 1 in
the morning, which would have given the scholars time for siesta before
the one o'clock study period. We are given to understand, incidentally,
that they were now furnished with individual rooms, instead of living in a
dormitory as earlier. The specimen lecture by a student continues to be a
feature of the dinner hour three times a week. In fact, it has now been
expanded to include a question period at the end; for this reason the
student's professor comes to dinner from the College of Manila at this
time, in order to see how well — or ill — his disciple fares. The grammarians
read at supper four times a week under the watchful eye of the grammar
master, who ordinarily resided in the college. A daily exercise not
previously mentioned is the half-hour “review" period at 8:30 in the
evening, during which theologians, philosophers, and grammarians fore-
gathered with their respective professors for a quick run-through of the
day's work. The object was apparently to make sure that each one had
completed his themes, assigned reading, etc., and was ready for the next
day's classes.
Besides taking part in the regular academies and disputations of the
College of Manila, the San Jose scholars occasionally held their own on a
Sunday, which alumni and religious from the various convents of the city
were invited to attend. All the scholars came to a doctrinal exhortation
given by the rector on Saturday evenings, and to a spiritual conference on
505
Thunder and Lightning
the eve of all the feasts of Our Lady. Everyone took the discipline in
common five days a week during Lent. Frequent communion was encour-
aged. The older students made the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius
every year. In 1671 the provincial congregation requested the general for
permission to change the long vacations from June-July to May -June,
because the latter was the season of the greatest heats; the request was
granted. 26
That there was a continuing need for a residential college of the type of
San Jose during this period, even for students whose families resided in
Manila itself, is brought out by the Annual Letter of 1701. Experience
shows that * ‘ very few of our students who are not boarders of this college
turn out satisfactorily, because their homes are so noisy that they do not
have the necessary quiet to apply themselves properly to their studies. This
is due to the fact that families here have a much larger staff of servants
than in Europe or America ; and so the best people of this city have learned
to part with their sons and put them to board in this college, realizing that
otherwise they will make little progress in their studies.” 27
What has been said so far applies to the regular scholars of the college,
who were all Spaniards during this period. The Annual Letter of 1665
informs us, however, that in that year or possibly a year or so earlier, the
college opened its doors to a second category of boarding students, recruited
chiefly from prominent Pampanga families. This may have been in recog-
nition of the signal sendees rendered by the Pampango troops during the
Chinese uprising of 1662; possibly, too, the government saw in it an
excellent means of strengthening the loyalty of the people of that province,
so badly shaken by the abortive rebellion of 1660. Whatever the reason,
in 1665.
. . . there are also being educated in the same residential college of San Jose,
besides the scholars, a number of youths of the Pampango nation, who have the
status of domestics but are not paid servants, for they devote their attention and
energies to the study of reading, writing, and Christian doctrine. For this reason
one of our priests devotes himself to their spiritual formation, encouraging them
by his teaching and exhortation to the frequent reception of the sacraments and
the practice of every virtue, so that when they go back to their homeland they
may serve as an example to the other Pampanguenos. They usually number more
than sixty, counting their slaves. Some of them are from the first families of the
region, whose parents send them here to receive a Christian education, paying
generously for their sustenance . 28
The Annual Letter of 1 672 clarifies the status of these unpaid and even
paying domestics by saying that they performed the duties of Mass servers,
butlers, waiters, and porters. We have already mentioned another non-
Spanish alumnus of San Jose — Don Francisco Javier, the ill-starred king
506 The Jesuits in the Philippines
of the island Siau. Upon his return to his kingdom he immediately sent his
younger brother, who was to succeed him according to the laws of Siau,
to receive the same education that he did. 29
The elementary school for boys attached to the College of Manila was
in a flourishing state in 1701. It had an enrollment of 200, in spite of the
fact that there were many private pedagogues in the city willing to teach
children their first letters in their own homes for a fee. A lay brother was
in charge of the school. It is worthy of note that although the oidores of the
audiencia and other high officials sent their boys to it, it was open to all
boys without distinction of race. 30
Certain weaknesses of administration and instruction in the College of
Manila are brought out in a memorandum of 1690 submitted to the
general by Antonio Jaramillo, its former rector. 31 With regard to the
faculty, he notes that some were appointed to teach theology without first
having taught in the arts course; that the provincials changed the profes-
sors too often — as often, in fact, “as hot compresses applied to a stomach
ache” — with the result that very seldom did a member of the faculty teach
three years running; that appointments were made at the last minute,
sometimes only three days before the beginning of term; that some
professors, instead of coming to class, simply sent down their lecture notes
to be read aloud by one of the students and taken down verbatim by the
others. Modern Jesuits will perceive in some of these criticisms a vaguely
familiar ring.
With regard to the curriculum, Jaramillo would like to see it made more
practical and suited to the needs of the times and the region. There were,
for instance, two professors of dogmatic theology, both of whom expatiated
at great length on “scholastic metaphysics of a purely speculative kind.”
Would it not be better if one of them at least taught the theoretical part
of moral theology ? There was, of course, a separate class of moral theology ;
but apparently this was devoted chiefly to the solution of moral cases, or
casuistry. Nowhere in the course did a professor analyze and expound the
principles of moral science as a consistent body of doctrine. Because of
this lack, it was not unheard of for a student to go into parish work after
four full years of theology with a mind completely blank as far as the
principles of moral guidance were concerned. Even the conferences on
moral cases could be made more practical. Let the problems proposed for
solution be those that were most likely to occur in the Philippines;
problems connected with trade, profits, interest, loans, investments, the
duties of colonial officials, native usages governing contracts and family
relations, the obligations of parish priests, and so on. Moreover, the
solutions given should be written down and preserved in the college
library for future use. This was formerly the practice, but it had been
discontinued; let it be resumed. Finally, a word of advice to superiors:
ihunder and Lightning 507
After the example of a virtuous life, nothing will make the Society better known
and loved in Manila than a man truly eminent in the solution of cases of con-
science, or a man who expounds the word of God from the pulpit with grace,
vigor, and learning. Such men are universally esteemed and listened to. And yet,
why is the Philippine province commonly referred to among Jesuits as the burying
place of talents ? Because its superiors lack the will and the foresight to cultivate
such talents ; because they fail to provide the necessary means to bring them out ;
because those who show promise along these lines are continually being changed
from one and assignment to another, now as pastor of a native parish, then as
professor of theology for a year or two, then giving a course of sermons or a
Lenten mission, with the result that a really great opportunity is missed. One
example will suffice. Consider Father Paul Klein. He is a German by birth ; forty
years old, more or less; health, fair; intellectual ability, outstanding; capacity for
work, vast; and with no small fund of information in a wide variety of fields.
This father knows the native language well ; he has seen service in a native parish ;
he is at present teaching theology; for one whole year he presented the solution
in the moral conferences to the satisfaction of everyone. Now, why couldn't we
keep a man of this sort teaching for several years, and devote him particularly to
the study of moral theology ? I truly believe that if we do this, all Manila will
beat a path to his door . 32
It is a pleasure to record that his superiors did give Klein the oppor-
tunities to devote his great gifts to the service of God, and that he took
full advantage of these opportunities. He remained a professor of theology
at the College of Manila from 1687 through 1696 and possibly later; was
concurrently prefect of studies of the College of San Jose from 1690 to
1696 and its vice-rector for a term beginning 1701. He seems to have
acted as provincial for a year (1708), and was back as professor of theology
in 1716. 3 3 In 1712, drawing upon that amazing fund of encyclopedic
information noted by Jaramillo, he published a book entitled Remediosjdciles
para diferentes mjermedades (Simple Remedies for Various Complaints). It
achieved immediate success in a country where physicians were few and
far between, and was still very much in demand in the nineteenth century,
for the University of Santo Tomas Press put out a second edition in 1857.
His second book appeared in 1713, and was a series of considerations in
Tagalog on an unpleasant but salutary subject: Ang infiernong nabubucsan sa
tauotig Christiano, at nang houag masoc doon (Hell Laid Open to the Christian,
that He may be Advised Not to Enter Therein ,313 pages. And in 1714,
a Tagalog translation of a book of meditations by the French Jesuit
Bohours, entitled Pensamientos Christianas, sa macatouid manga panimdimin nang
tauon christiano (Christian Thoughts ; or, Reflections of a Christian Soul). A
second edition of this w^ork appeared in 1748.
But Klein will perhaps be best remembered as the spiritual director of
the saintly woman who founded the Philippines' first religious congre-
gation of women, Ignacia del Espiritu Santo. In 1684 — at the very height
17*
508 The Jesuits in the Philippines
of the disturbances caused by the exile of Archbishop Pardo — young
Ignacia, a mestiza of Binondo, decided to form a religious community to
which not only mestizas like herself but pure-blooded native Filipinas
would be eligible for admission. Klein helped her and her first companions
to draw up their rule of life, modeling it closely on the Spiritual Exercises
and the Constitutions of Saint Ignatius. Because of this, and because they
used the college church for their devotions, having established themselves
in a house nearby, they came to be known as the Beat as it la Comp am a it
Jesus . No official or administrative connection was ever established between
the congregation and the Society, for the institute of the latter expressly
forbids assuming the permanent direction of religious women. However,
the fathers did help the heatas as much as they could, both spiritually and
materially. We learn from Murillo that in the 1740^ the community
numbered fifty, and that their most important works were the education
of girls and the holding of closed retreats for women. In Murillo’s time
their boarding school included twenty Spanish girls, and several groups of
Spanish ladies made the spiritual exercises in their house under Jesuit
directors. Madre Ignacia died, full of years and good works, on 10 Sept-
ember 1748. Her congregation flourishes today under the name of
Religious of the Virgin Mary. 34
Closed retreats for men continued to be held both in the College of
Manila and at San Pedro Makati. The participation of the college fathers
in the parish mission movement initiated by Sanvitores has already been
mentioned. It should be noted, however, that long before Sanvitores popu-
lar missions both in Spanish and Tagalog were a regular feature of the
services in the college church. These were usually held during Lent, or on
the occasion of the publication of a plenary indulgence (jubileo) granted by
the pope. One such jubileo, published in Lent of 1655, resulted in over
20,000 confessions in the college church alone; that is, not counting those
in the other churches of the city. 35 But even outside of such occasions the
Jesuit confessionals were much sought after during this period. During
Lent and Eastertide especially there was an almost continuous stream of
people coming into the college church to fulfill their Easter duty. Confes-
sions were heard from dawn to dusk in order to take care of all who came
not only from the city itself but from the Tagalog provinces and from as
far away as Pampanga. Four distinct series of Lenten sermons were usually
given : one to the negroes and slaves on Sundays, a second to the Tagalogs
on Fridays, a third to the Spaniards on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and a
fourth to the troops of the garrison. 36
An interesting mission of which we happen to have a detailed account
was that given in 1698 to the convicts of the government foundry. This
grim establishment, where the colony’s artillery was forged, stood for
many years beneath the bastion of Nuestra Senora de Guia, at the angle of
Thunder and Lightning 509
the city wall back of the college. Those condemned to its blazing forges
were “ordinarily the most desperate felons from Mexico: sex criminals,
habitual drunkards, murderers, city gangsters, highwaymen. Some of them
who had been condemned to death there but for one reason or another
had escaped both the hangman r s noose and the headman's axe, were first
remanded to the dungeons, workhouses, and galleys of New Spain; but
when even these institutions could not stand them, were sent here to be
hammered into shape."
The mission was conducted by Fathers Joaquin Asm and Ignacio Cap-
devila and lasted for a week. Work at the furnaces and anvils was stopped
half an hour earlier in the afternoon to allow the missioners to give their
talks. Every day a dozen convicts in leg irons were led to the college church
to make their confessions. On the last day the director of the foundry
made a remarkable act of confidence in the efficacy of the mission. He
sent all his convicts to the college church for Mass and communion
escorted by their usual guards, but without any leg or wrist irons whatever.
When they returned to the foundry, a banquet was waiting for them,
sent down by Governor Cruzat himself, and even a bull calf with which
to stage a mock bullfight as a boisterous close to the festivities. The writer
of the account of the mission probably had his tongue in his cheek when
he noted that right afterward it was unanimously voted to hold another
mission the following year. 37
Toward the end of the century the magnificent church built by Cam-
pioni was further embellished with frescoes by Brother Manuel Rodriguez,
whom the Annual Letter of 1701 calls an outstanding painter. Unfortu-
nately, none of Brother Rodriguez's work has survived, at least to my
knowledge. The college fathers also made full use of another art, that of
music, to give splendor to the liturgy ; too full a use, at times, as we learn
from a memorandum of Father Provincial Bonafe to the general in 1665.
In it he says :
His Excellency the Governor and the gentlemen of the royal audiencia are
most reluctant to attend our feast days because at the solemn Mass two villancicos
are usually sung, lasting almost half an hour ; and now, by order of your Paternity,
the creed, the preface, the paternoster, and all the other parts of the Mass so
designated by the rubrics must be sung too; all of which, added to the sermon,
which is usually of some length, they find it very hard to sit through. In the cathe-
dral they intone the creed, but they go on with the Mass without waiting for the
choir to finish singing. They do not sing the paternoster nor the Pax Domini nor
even the Preface, because it is very hot in this country. . . .
The rest of the passage is difficult to read because of a patch on the
manuscript; but enough is legible to make it clear that Bonafe wanted
permission to adopt the short cuts of the cathedral. Father General Oliva's
510 The Jesuits in the Philippines
laconic reply would have rejoiced the heart of Saint Pius X: 4 'The solution
is simple; omit the villancicos or make them very short/' 38
So much for the ministries of the college fathers ; now for a few fleeting
glimpses of the domestic life of the community. And first, what of the
training given to the scholastics and novices ? As pointed out earlier, the
admission of candidates to the Society in the Philippines continued to be
severely limited. My information, admittedly incomplete and limited to
five six-year periods (see Table 8), shows that during those thirty years
Table 8. Candidates admitted to the Noviceship and Novices admitted to first vows in the
Philippine Province during Five Six-Year Periods , 1639-1696
Years
Admissions
First Vows
Scholastics
Brothers
Total
Scholastics
Brothers
Total
1659-1665
?
9
5
4
9
1671-1675
0
3
3
0
I
1
1682-1687
2
7
9
—
—
2
1687-1693
9
8
17
-
-
13
1693-1696
1
3
4
-
-
4
Total
42
29
Source : “Catalog! triennales,” ARSI Phil. 2, passim.
only 42 were admitted to the novitiate and only 29 novices were permitted
to pronounce their first vows. Included in this number, however, is at least
one extraordinary vocation : Doctor Don Lorenzo de Avina y Echavarrfa,
oidor of the royal audiencia, aged 32, who disappeared from his chambers
one fine day in October 1693. In the note which he left for his colleagues
he told them that after mature deliberation he had decided to resign his
post and apply for admission to the Society of Jesus, The other oidor es
hurriedly met in extraordinary session and agreed that they could not
allow Avina to take a step so completely without precedent. They dis-
patched the clerk of court to w’oo the absconding jurist from the Jesuits;
but Avina, who had already exchanged his robes for the simple cassock of
a novice, refused to be wooed. The clerk of court returned with Avma's
last dissenting opinion : that he knew of no statute or ordinance, either of
Spam or the Indies, which would prevent a man of his age and condition
from entering the religious life. 39
Sanvitores noted a regrettable tendency to be lenient toward the scholas-
tics in the matter of studies. Writing to the general in 1663, he reported
Thunder and Lightning 511
that the scholastics who came to the Philippines with him were all pro-
moted a year without undergoing the usual examinations, and this in spite
of the fact that their previous course, having been taken in bits and pieces
during the voyage from Spam to Mexico, in Mexico for a few weeks, and
again during the Pacific crossing, was sadly incomplete. The reason given
was that the poor things were exhausted by their long journey and had
arrived just as the school year was about to start. Sanvkores did not think
this was a very cogent reason. 40 Here too, as in the matter of parish
missions, Sanvitores seems to have started a movement, for two years later
the provincial congregation itself underscored the importance of exami-
nations. Besides the examinations at the end of each year of philosophy and
theology, Jesuit scholastics who take the “long” or extended course must
undergo comprehensive examinations on the matter of the entire three
years of philosophy and four years of theology before a board of four
examiners. However, the scholastic appointed to hold the public dis-
putation known as the “ grand act” was ordinarily exempted from the
comprehensives, since he was required during his act to explain and defend
his views on any philosophical or theological question proposed. The
fathers of the congregation of 1665 proposed that this exemption be
abolished, because the dignitaries invited to present objections at a grand
act and even those who got up to argue from the audience, not being
Jesuits themselves, were too polite. They did not press the attack on the
disputant with sufficient ruthlessness — “non omnino nervose sed plane
remisse argumentanda oppugnant.” Hence the faculty sometimes lacked a
sufficient basis for judging whether the man deserved to pass or not.
Father General Oliva agreed entirely; “placet quod petitur; omnino
fiat.” 41
The comprehensives at the end of the theology course are common to the
whole Society. An additional requirement informally introduced in the
Philippine province almost since its foundation was that every member
should be able to understand and speak at least one native language. In
1664 the practice received the formal approbation of Oliva, who ruled
that no member of the province was eligible for any teaching, parish,
mission, or administrative post unless he fulfilled this requirement to the
satisfaction of superiors. 42
Mancker, the Austrian Jesuit whom we encountered earlier, found the
residence of the college a comfortable house to live in. Philippine archi-
tects had discovered by this time that by providing living rooms with high
ceilings and insulating them by means of a galena or enclosed balcony, they
could be made tolerably cool for Europeans; the Jesuit quarters were so
constructed. Cassocks of thin black cotton had replaced the dark brown
habits of the last century. The fare was plain but plentiful; wine was
provided at table but taken sparingly, because of the heat. 43 Chocolate
512
The Jesuits in the Philippines
continued to be looked upon with suspicion, although a more sensible
attitude toward it was beginning to prevail. In 1690, the procurator of
the province, Alejo Lopez, came right out with it and told the general that
the ban against chocolate should either be made less strict or, better still,
abolished altogether. Everyone, high and low, now took chocolate as a
matter of course, and Jesuits could not possibly scandalize anyone by
doing the same. On the other hand, people were scandalized to see some
Jesuits taking it on the sly. Because it was so commonly used, it was no
longer particularly expensive; in fact, cacao was so plentiful in the Ilog
mission on the island of Negros that it could be had for nothing. Finally,
it was the most convenient breakfast so far discovered, especially for busy
missionaries : substantial enough to last one until lunch, and yet not so
heavy on the stomach as rice. 44
Another convenience hitherto forbidden to Jesuits in the Philippines
was sea or river bathing. It will be recalled that the early missionaries
thought this practice to be injurious to health, viewing with alarm the
propensity of Filipinos to take daily baths. By the middle of the century
they had been won over completely to the Filipino point of view, and the
general was asked to soften the prohibition. Oliva’s reply was cautious:
let it be done with the physician’s advice, the provincial’s permission, and
in a bathing machine. 45
As Mancker observed, external religious discipline was strictly, even
rigorously observed. One example of what seems to be excessive rigor was
the proposal of the provincial congregation of 1659 that the lay brothers,
scholastics, and novices of the college community should make the morning
meditation together, either in the choir loft of the church or in an ascetory.
Father General Vitelleschi was very reluctant to approve this, pointing out
that Saint Ignatius preferred his sons — after their first few years in the
religious life — to make their mental prayer in private. However, he left
the matter up to the fathers provincial, and the practice was adopted,
though for how long we cannot say. 46 On the other hand, Jaramillo noted
in 1690 that the fathers could well afford to tighten up on one important
particular. The college had entirely too many servants, and almost every
father with an office had his personal and private amanuensis. Let the rector
and procurator decide how many of these domestics were really necessary
and dismiss the rest ; and let the fathers do a certain amount of their own
writing themselves, especially confidential correspondence, which ought
not on any account to be given to an amanuensis. 47
But by far the most important problem which exercised the Philippine
Jesuits during this period was what to do with the missions they had
developed into parishes; an old problem, but given a new urgency by
recent events.
Chapter Twenty-One
CROSSROADS
The farms on the north bank of the Pasig which Sedeho had purchased
toward the end of the sixteenth century to provide an income for the
College of Manila had, by the end of the seventeenth, become a large and
flourishing parish: the parish of Santa Cruz. Chapter 15 described how
the ecclesiastical administration of this district came to be entrusted to the
Society. It originally belonged to the secular parish of Quiapo, but in 1619
the Quiapo parish priest requested the Jesuits, as a measure of convenience,
to take charge of the tenants on their estate, which had grown to include
the districts of Mayhaligi and Santa Cruz. This arrangement was approved
and rendered mandatory by the archdiocesan and civil authorities. In 1634
another parish priest of Quiapo, Don Jeronimo Rodriguez de Lujan,
petitioned that the Jesuits be put in charge not only of the tenants on their
estate, but of all the Filipinos and Chinese in the districts of Mayhaligi
and Santa Cruz and on Isleta, the little island in the middle of the Pasig.
Furthermore, since the diocesan priests of Quiapo ordinarily knew no
Chinese, whereas the Jesuits of Santa Cruz did, he asked that the Christian
Chinese of Quiapo, while continuing to reside therein, be considered
parishioners of Santa Cruz. This petition was approved by Cerezo de
Salamanca, then acting governor.
The next proprietary governor was Corcuera, and we have already seen
how embarrassingly friendly he was to the Society. In 1635 or thereabouts,
at the instance of certain Jesuits (I cannot now identify them positively,
but the historian Colin, then rector of the College of Manila, was very
probably one), Corcuera transferred the entire parish of Quiapo to the
Society. The diocesan clergy very strongly objected to this, and quite
rightly too. Their representations to the central government were success-
ful; on 8 April 1639, and again on 8 July 1645, cedulas were issued
ordering the restoration of Quiapo to them. The Jesuits offered no objec-
tions, and everything was once more serene.
In the years that followed Santa Cruz developed under Jesuit care into a
well-organized and prosperous parish consisting chiefly of Chinese and
Chinese mestizos. Because of the composition of the parish, the fathers in
charge of it had of necessity to be proficient in the Chinese language, like
the Dominicans in charge of the similarly constituted parishes of Binondo
and the Parian. For this reason there was a tendency on the part of the
513
514 The Jesuits in the Philippines
authorities to attach all the Christian Chinese of Manila to one of these
three parishes. In 1648, for instance, Governor Fajardo ordained that all
hitherto unattached Chinese in the farms and truck gardens of the north
bank should be considered parishioners of Santa Cruz; and in 1666 Arch-
bishop Poblete definitely partitioned the Chinese population of Manila
among the two Dominican parishes and the Jesuit parish.
As time went on, the parish priests of Quiapo found these arrangements
less and less to their liking. Aside from the fact that the Chinese were
usually among the most solvent and generous of parishioners, the free and
frequent intermarriage between Chinese and Filipinos and the various
degrees of mesti^aje resulting therefrom must have created interminable
conflicts of jurisdiction. Furthermore, there was a growing conviction
among the secular clergy that the religious orders had no business adminis-
tering parishes at all. Their mandate was to convert the heathen, to be
missionaries ; let them go to the missions, then, and leave the developed
parishes to the increasing number of secular priests — whom they them-
selves, incidentally, were turning out in the two colleges of Manila and
Santo Tomas.
Such, undoubtedly, were the motives behind the action taken by the
cathedral chapter of Manila, at the instance of the parish priest of Quiapo,
Don Juan de Rueda, in 1670. In a petition to the queen regent, the chapter
put forward the claim that the cedulas of 1639 and 1648 not only restored
the parish of Quiapo to the secular clergy, but gave them Santa Cruz as
well; hence they had never been fully enforced. The queen regent's reply
referring the petition to the local authorities reached Manila soon after
Bishop Lopez of Cebu had been transferred to the archdiocese. On 28
May 1673 Archbishop Lopez decided in favor of the cathedral chapter,
and on 29 September 1675 the queen regent confirmed his decision. The
Jesuits appealed the case, which was now referred to the Council of the
Indies. On 9 May 1678 the council reversed Archbishop Lopez's decision.
Charles II accepted this reversal and issued an executive decree on 13
December of the same year confirming the Jesuits in the possession of
Santa Cruz. On 24 February 1684 Governor Vargas duly published the
decree. 1
Archbishop Pardo did not challenge this decision, but he did issue an
unusual ordinance to the effect that no Chinese convert could be baptized
and no Chinese Christian permitted to go to confession unless he had first
been examined by the Dominican parish priests of Binondo and the Parian.
The Jesuit provincial represented that the incumbent pastor of Santa Cruz,
Francesco Messina, was a priest in good standing and knew Chinese
perfectly; would the archbishop consider permitting him to administer
the desired examination to the parishioners of Santa Cruz ? If the arch-
bishop so desired, Messina was perfectly willing to submit to a previous
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5*5
examination by the Dominican fathers on his proficiency in the language.
The archbishop turned down this suggestion. He also forbade the Jesuits
to conduct parish missions in his archdiocese and refused to renew the
faculties of three of them because they had applied for a similar renewal to
the cathedral chapter during his exile. At the repeated insistence of Gover-
nor Vargas the Jesuit provincial Pallavicino had accepted the pastoral care
of a portion of Mindoro island; this Archbishop Pardo now took away. His
decision to transfer the administration of Jesus de la Pena and Cainta to
the Augustmians has already been mentioned. The diocesan clergy had
filed suit with the Crown to obtain possession of pastoral charges attached
to the colleges of Cavite, Iloilo, and Cebu. 2
On top of all this came the decision of the Philippine bishops, arrived
at in late 1686 or 1687, to make a concerted effort to impose on religious
engaged in parish or mission work the full extent of episcopal jurisdiction,
including canonical collation and visitation de vita et morihus . The new
Jesuit general, Tirso Gonzalez (elected 6 July 1687), took a very serious
view of the situation. On 3 January 1688 he wrote as follows to the Philip-
pine provincial, Francisco Salgado:
All this has me suspended in a state of doubt, unable to decide one way or the
other ; and so ... I order your Reverence as soon as possible to call into consul-
tation not only the regular and extraordinary consultors but any others in whose
maturity of judgment and experience your Reverence places confidence. Exhort
them in my name by the blood of Jesus Christ to express their views without
passion or human respect. This is the question your Reverence must propose to
them: Do they think that the renunciation of our parishes and missions can be
delayed for the length of time it will take to send me a full report and await my
decision ? If the consensus of opinion is that it will be gravely inconvenient to
retain the said parishes and missions for that length of time, then let them be
given up at once, with the sole exception of Bohol. If not, then your Reverence
will ask each consul tor to state his opinion as to whether they should or should not
be given up at some future date. All these opinions and the arguments on which
they are based are to be carefully taken down and sent to me, and afterward all
those present at the consultation must write out their opinion and send it to me in
a separate letter . 3
Three months later, on 17 April, he wrote as follows to Luis de Morales,
the procurator of the Philippine province at Madrid:
It is imperative that your Reverence make every effort there to oppose this
project of the most Reverend Bishops, because it is not only injurious to the
welfare of those missions, but altogether incompatible with religious observance
and the subordination whereby the superiors of the Society are able to remove
subjects from those missions and send others in their place if and when they judge
it to be for the greater service of God. Your Reverence may represent how much
the Society has labored to develop these missions ; that it has spared no effort in
516 The Jesuits in the Philippines
developing them ; that it has watered them with the sweat and blood of its sons ;
and that the service it has rendered for so many years does not deserve an impo-
sition so contrary to the welfare of those missions and the religious observance of
our brethren. If all this, put forward with all due humility and modesty, fails
to prevent the project of the most Reverend Bishops from being favorably con-
sidered there, then your Reverence must state that the Society is ready to resign
all its parishes and missions in that province rather than be brought into sub-
jection in this way. In fact, if the project of the most Reverend Bishops finds no
opposition in that court, and there is no likelihood of the missions being left with
the same independent form of government they have hitherto possessed, your
Reverence will write to the father provincial of the Philippines, enjoining him in
my name to make the same representations, with the same humility and modesty,
to the most Reverend Bishops, asking them to abandon the project. If notwith-
standing they insist on carrying it through, then let the father provincial resign
the parishes and missions and immediately recall all the fathers stationed in them.
I fully realize that great harm to the parishes and missions will follow from such
a renunciation ; but equal harm will follow from the projected subjection, and
more and ever more harm from the relaxation [of religious discipline] which we
have good reason to fear will result if our members cease to be entirely dependent
on their religious superiors . 4
A year later, when Morales was already in Mexico on his way to the
Philippines, Gonzalez modified his stand to some extent in fresh instruc-
tions issued to the procurator of the Indies provinces at Madrid, Pedro de
Espinar. He now believed that before resigning their parishes and missions,
the Philippine Jesuits should first find out whether the other religious
orders there were willing to do the same. If they were, then they should
all act in concert; if they were not, then the Jesuits at Madrid should try
to obtain an exemption for the Philippine Jesuits on the grounds of the
different, more centralized form of government of the Society. If they fail
in this attempt, then the provincial of Toledo should call a consultation
and decide whether to make the renunciation at once or refer it once more
to Rome. Espinar was to pass these instructions on to Morales. They were
dispatched from Rome on u June 1689; Morales received them in
Mexico on 16 July 1690. 5
Meanwhile, mo new procurators, elected by the provincial congregation
of 1687, had arrived in Europe. One of them, Antonio Jaramillo, stopped
at Madrid to set the record straight regarding the part played by the
Philippine Jesuits in the banishment of Archbishop Pardo. The wildest
rumors were being bruited about that the Jesuits were chiefly if not solely
responsible for that deed. The Jansenists, whose controversy with the
French Jesuits was at its height, eagerly pounced on the reports which had
begun to come in and rushed to press with a garbled version of the affair.
Published with an equally slanted account of the controversy between the
Jesuits of Paraguay and Bishop Cardenas, it had a wide sale as the fifth
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5i7
volume in the series Morale pratique des Jesuit es. Its title sufficiently indicates
the spirit in which it was written: Histoire de la persecution de deux saints
eveques par lesjesuites.
The other procurator, Ale jo Lopez, seems to have gone straight to Rome.
There the general made him sit down and write a detailed statement of
the reasons for and against abandoning the parishes and missions of the
Society in the Philippines. The result was a lengthy but extremely interest-
ing paper which I shall attempt to summarize . 6
Four alternative courses, Lopez said, had been proposed. First: give up
all the parishes and missions (the colleges were not in question). Second :
give up the Visayan establishments, retain the Tagalog. Third: give up
the Tagalog establishments, retain the Visayan. Fourth: retain them all.
His own opinion was the fourth. He would therefore take that up first,
giving the arguments in its favor. Then he would present the arguments
in favor of the first alternative and his answers to them. The second and
third alternatives he would treat in the same way.
The first argument in favor of retaining all our parishes and missions in
the Philippines is the incalculable amount of good that is being done in
them. This good is at least equal to that being done in other areas in the
Philippines, and it far exceeds the occasional abuses and scandals which
creep into the lives and activities of the missionaries, as they will creep into
any work carried on by human beings. To abandon a good work because
those assigned to it might possibly do it badly, or be led into sin while
doing it, is hardly a sensible solution. Superiors are obliged not to expose
their subjects to occasions of sin, yes, if such occasions are likely to be too
much for them. But all apostolic work necessarily exposes the apostle to
occasions of sin. What is the remedy for this ? Withdraw him altogether
from the apostolate ? Certainly not ; but prepare him both naturally and
supernaturally either to avoid or to overcome such occasions. Instead of
abandoning our parishes and missions, let us devote more care to the
selection and training of our missionaries.
The second argument is that by far the greater number of our establish-
ments in the Philippines are not parishes at all but true missions, and
hence perfectly compatible with the missionary spirit and institute of the
It is true that among the Tagalogs it has been possible to form towns whose
population lives near the church for the greater part of the year. But in most of the
Visayas — in Dapitan, on the islands of Negros and Cebu, and in many towns of
Panay — this has not been nor ever will be feasible, because of the difficulties
arising from the nature of the soil. The earliest towns to be founded chose the
best sites, amid land which can be tilled by the plow, and is uniformly fertile
over an unbroken area. But in our Visayan missions every fourth or half league of
good land is interrupted by a stretch of barren soil ; so that for everyone to have a
8 The Jesuits in the Philippines
farm on which he can grow what he needs to live, families are compelled to live at
some distance from each other. In the Tagalog region, on the other hand, they
can all settle in one place, because there is hardly a patch of land that is uncultiv-
able.
This is what principally gives the Visayan establishments the character
of real missions. What can be more of a mission than Borongan, where the
priest is by himself for six months of the year, without even a fellow priest
to hear his confession ? What can be more of a mission than that of the
Subanuns, where the missionary lives in a different * town every fifteen
days ? What can be more of a mission than to make a two or three hours
journey on foot in order to hear one confession ? “ Whether these are
parishes or missions in the sense understood by the institute of the
Society, I confess I am not competent to judge; but this I will say, that
they are missions at least as far as the sacrifices, the risks, the never ending
toil, and the results are concerned/ ’
The third argument is that, if we abandon these establishments, who
will take our places? Secular priests might perhaps be found for the
Tagalog parishes; but neither they nor the other religious orders can
possibly give as many men as we are giving to the Visayas. If our mission-
aries complain because they cannot cover three or four towns satisfactorily,
what kind of a job can any other priest do with six or eight ?
The fourth argument is that we cannot devote ourselves to parish
missions (which is considered to be more conformable to our institute)
unless we have our own parishes and missions. We simply cannot meet the
transportation and living expenses of such mission tours unless the parish
priests pay for it, and only our men will be willing to do this ; nor can we
reasonably ask others to do so.
The last argument is that after so many years of continuous experience,
we have come to understand and appreciate the Visayans of our territory
pretty thoroughly, and they in turn to understand and appreciate us. They
regard our fathers for the most part with affection and respect, and are
willing to do what they say; it is extremely doubtful whether others will
be able for many years to come to win from them the same degree of
loyalty and devotion.
The principal reasons advanced for giving up all our establishments are
the following. First, because they are no longer missions but parishes. This
has already been answered. Secondly, because the solitary life in a parish
or mission station necessarily leads to laxity in religious observance. This
is simply not true. My own observation and that of others has been that
most of our men engaged in the ministry faithfully perform their daily
exercises of piety. All the priests celebrate Mass daily, and most of them
make their hour of meditation before Mass. Most keep their vow of
chastity inviolate, and to do this amid circumstances in which it is so easy
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5i9
to be unchaste is practically impossible unless one is quite strict in observ-
ing the rules of the religious life. Thirdly, because our living and working
in these establishments has led not only to laxity but to many serious
defections which are the cause of grave scandal not only within but outside
the Society,
Lopez’s reply to this argument deserves to be given in greater detail.
First of all, such defections (he is concerned almost entirely with grave
external sins against chastity) should certainly not be tolerated or excused ;
and they are not. The Philippine province, by God’s grace, has always
dealt severely and even harshly with those whose guilt in this matter has
been established. They have been either dismissed from the Society out of
hand, or, in the case of those who cannot be expelled without recourse to
Rome, withdrawn altogether from the ministry and kept in close confine-
ment in one of the major houses until the general decided what was to be
done with them. Full satisfaction is given in this way to any justifiable
scandal caused by such falls. The operative word here is “ justifiable” ; for
much of the scandal which causes so much concern to the more timorous
of our brethren is either hypocritical or malicious, based on downright
falsehoods invented by enemies of the Society. The actual transgressions,
those that really happened, are far less, and far less heinous, than the
scandalmongers would have people believe. There are some, yes, undeni-
ably ; there are bound to be, over a period of time, in so large a group as
ours. We may guard against them, we may regret them when they do
occur; but our most sleepless vigilance, our deepest regret will not do
away with them altogether ; priests are men, not angels. But there are far
too many, say those who want to close all our provincial houses. What is
“many” ? It is a relative term. “ Many” in relation to what ? How many
of these serious defections suffice to prove that parish and mission work,
in the Philippines at least, is not for Jesuits ? That is for superiors to
decide ; the facts are as follows.
During the quarter of a century that Lopez had been in the Philippines
(1666-1690), there had occurred five certain cases of seriously sinful and
scandalous behavior among the fathers and brothers stationed in the
Tagalog houses, and two doubtful cases. Among the Visayan Jesuits there
had occurred during the same period two certain and five doubtful cases ;
while two others which caused a great deal of talk turned out upon
careful investigation to have no truth to them whatever. All those involved
in the certain cases — four priests, two lay brothers, and one novice — were
either summarily dismissed or, if they were solemnly professed, asked to
transfer to some other religious order after having performed the penance
imposed on them.
The following are some instances of what is here classified as a doubtful
case. One : the commander of Fort Santiago, out late at night, thought he
520
The Jesuits in the Philippines
saw three Jesuits prowling about the streets. He did not recognize them,
but felt pretty sure they belonged to the community of the college. The
rector had a secret watch kept on all the doors of the residence for several
nights. No one ever turned up with a private passkey. Two: a Visayan
missionary journeying to Manila stopped at a beach where a woman lay
seriously wounded by her husband in a quarrel. He took her and her mother
in his sailing vessel to Manila for treatment. She recovered and returned
home. Unsavory gossip developed connecting her name with the Jesuit's.
The Jesuit stoutly denied having had anything to do with her, except
possibly save her life ; and nothing was ever proved against him. Superiors
dismissed him anyway. Three : the rector of the College of Manila inter-
cepted a love letter written by a priest of his community. Some time later,
it was reported to him that this priest, while spending the holidays at the
villa house of the college in Meisilo, spent the night outside the house
with the woman to whom the letter was addressed. The rector investigated
thoroughly but could not verify the report. It is out of such thin material
that gossip has woven so vast a tissue of scandal. Let it be noted, moreover,
that quite a number of both the certain and the doubtful cases did not
involve those in the parishes and missions, but those in the colleges.
The fourth argument in favor of withdrawing altogether from the pro-
vincial ministry is that it entangles the Jesuit in temporal cares to such an
extent that he is sooner or later betrayed into unlawful commercial transac-
tions. Lopez s answer to this is that we must carefully distinguish between
the management of temporal affairs and undue solicitude for things apper-
taining to the body. Every form of apostolate necessarily involves some
temporal management, and missionary work is no exception. We are not
obliged to pay any attention to those who are shocked at seeing a missionary
prudently providing for the temporal needs of himself and his mission.
We are obliged to see to it that this necessary management of affairs does
not insensibly turn into greed and avarice, and does not lead us into ways
of providing for our needs which are forbidden by ecclesiastical or civil law.
Does this happen sometimes? Certainly; but abuse does not invalidate
lawful use.
Finally, it is argued that the attempt to retain some of our parishes has
involved us in so many and such troublesome lawsuits that we would do
better to give them up. This is a very poor argument. Are we to abandon
every work we undertake as soon as it leads us into difficulties or arouses
opposition ? Rather, let us consider whether the work is good in itself,
whether it is for the greater glory of God. If it is not, then by all means
stop it; if it is, then no amount of persecution should frighten us away
from it.
Ought we at any rate to give up our Visayan stations ? The reasons in
favor of this alternative are : that it seems impossible to support them
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521
financially without doing a certain amount of buying and selling in contra-
vention of canon law; that we seem to have made very little progress in
making the people really Christian in spite of the length of time we have
been their pastors ; that they are too far away to be effectively administered
by superiors ; that the missionary there is too much alone and has too much
time on his hands for his own good; and that they provide too many
occasions for sinning against chastity* With regard to the first argument,
Lopez shows in some detail, adducing facts and figures, that the Visayan
missions can support themselves on the government stipends alone, with-
out engaging in any commercial transactions whatever, even those allow-
able under the laws, provided the colleges assume the general expenses of
the province, such as the support of the provincial and his staff and the
sending of procurators to Europe, which they can easily do. To the next
three arguments he gives pretty much the same answers as Alcina did on
an earlier occasion* As for the last argument, he simply calls attention to
the facts given above*
What about giving up the Tagalog parishes ? The Jesuits there are cer-
tainly much more in the public eye, and hence the scandal of a fall is much
greater. Moreover, it cannot be denied that they are fully developed
parishes, no different from those served by the secular clergy. Thirdly,
they do not even serve as bases for expansion into mission territory.
Fourthly, we can do the same amount of good by performing our ministries
from our colleges. Finally, if we must make a choice between the Tagalog
parishes and the Visayan missions, surely it is the Visayan missions that
we should retain, as being the more needy and difficult. Lopez’s answer to
the first argument is that if the scandal is more public, so is the satisfaction
given by swift and condign punishment; so that as long as the Society
continues its present policy of severity in these matters it need not fear for
its good repute. He admits the second argument, but contends that there
is much to be gained in retaining these parishes, for they constitute a
challenge to the Society to run parishes which shall be models of their kind.
And, while they do not serve as bases for pagan missions, they do serve as
bases for parish missions, which have been and are immensely fruitful. The
rourth argument can be retorted; for, if an equal amount of good can be
done from the colleges as from the parishes, surely a double amount of
good can be done from both. As for the final argument, he would be the
first to concede it; “but,” he adds, “whether this will be to the greater
glory of God and edification of the neighbor, someone else can judge more
objectively who has less love than I have for the poor Visayans.”
Thus far Alejo Lopez. His fellow procurator, Jaramillo, was of exactly
the opposite persuasion ; and when he arrived in Rome, submitted a point-
by-point refutation of Lopez’s memorial . 7 He begins by laying down cer-
tain propositions as fundamental to the whole question and not subject to
522
The Jesuits in the Philippines
dispute. The first is, that not the Society alone but all the religious orders
in the Indies recognize the very great dangers to religious observance
involved in parish work. The second is, that all the religious orders,
including the Society, have accepted the care of parishes only because there
was no one else to do so. They did this with extreme reluctance, and on
the express condition that they would be relieved of the charge as soon as
there are secular priests to take their place. The third is, that the consti-
tutions of the Society expressly forbid accepting parishes as a permanent
responsibility, and that the constant practice of its generals is to accept the
responsibility temporarily only when forced by circumstances, and only
as long as the necessity exists. The fourth is, that the prototype of all Jesuit
missionaries, Xavier, never engaged in parish work himself nor allowed
his subjects to do so. If these presuppositions are admitted, and they must
be, then all that is required is to show that it is now possible to resign our
parishes m the Philippines. But this hardly needs demonstration. Not
only are there secular priests willing to take over from us, they can hardly
wait to do so.
Jaramillo now takes up the principal arguments propounded by Lopez.
First: We are doing a great deal of good as parish priests. Reply: We
could do a great deal of good as parish priests in Europe, too; why aren't
we parish priests in Europe ? If we make such good parish priests, we ought
to make good bishops; why don't we accept the episcopal office? The
reason is clear; these are indeed excellent works, productive of great good,
but it does not follow that therefore they are for Jesuits.
Second : Scandalous defections do no harm to the Society as long as they
are severely punished. Reply: The Society is not only obliged to punish
faults when committed but to prevent them from being committed, and
hence to remove its sons from the occasion of committing them. Nor is it
an argument to say that we should be willing to expose ourselves to some
danger in order to help others ; that to do any work for God we must take
risks. This particular risk is too great to take; our first duty is not to our
neighbor but to ourselves, in the sense that we must first attend to our own
salvation before attending to that of others.
Third: Many of our so-called parishes, especially in the Visayas, are not
parishes at all but missions. Reply : The principal proof of this assertion
is that the Visayan missionary must be continually traveling from place to
place in order to attend to the spiritual needs of his scattered flock. There
is a great deal of exaggeration in this. On the admission of the Visayan
fathers themselves, their people come to town for Mass on Sundays and
holydays; that is to say, the people travel, not the missionary. The mission-
ary does have to go out on sick calls; but how often does this happen:
Is it not true that they follow the general practice in the Philippines of
requiring the people to bring their sick to the church for the last sacraments ?
Crossroads
5^3
Fourth: There are not enough priests in the Philippines to take our
places in the Visayas. Reply: It is at least admitted that there are a
sufficient number to provide every eight towns with a priest. That is just
about all we can do now in some of the Visayan areas, so that the Visayans
will not be much worse off. Besides, why must we always assume that
other priests cannot possibly do as much or more work than we can ?
They have at least as much zeal and energy as we have.
Fifth: If we give up our parishes, the cost of parish missions will be
prohibitive. Reply: This holds only for the Visayan parishes where water
transportation is necessary; and we rarely give parish missions there
anyway for this very reason. As for the Tagalog provinces, there is abso-
lutely no difficulty in our giving parish missions there, even if the parishes
are not ours.
If it is absolutely necessary to retain some parishes, then, says Jaramillo,
let them be the Tagalog parishes. They are the ones in which we can do
the most good. The population is settled, more numerous, and more
highly concentrated. Popular missions, our ministry par excellence, are
more feasible. The work and the men can be more easily supervised by
superiors. The teaching fathers in the college will have an opportunity to
engage in ministerial work and to learn a native language. The old and
infirm can be sent to the more commodious houses.
Archived with these two memorials are several shorter memoranda on
the same question by various fathers of the province. 8 All were opposed to
abandoning the parishes and missions, especially those of the Visayas; but
none of them considered the important question of what to do about the
project of the bishops if the parishes and missions were retained. Doubt-
less they looked upon it as the generaFs problem. The decision which
Gonzalez finally arrived at was submitted to the Spanish Crown by Jara-
millo in the form of a memorial published in 1691, We have referred to
the narrative portion of this memorial earlier. It concludes as follows :
In view of what has been said . . . The Society is obliged to present a petition
to your Majesty . . . The petition concerns its parishes and missions in the
Philippines, which the Society of Jesus, with the utmost humility prostrate at
your Majesty's royal feet, by command of its general superior Tirso Gonzalez
and through me in the name of the said general and of the province of the Philip-
pines, hereby returns to your Majesty in order that your Majesty may entrust
them to others . . . And since by resigning the care and administration of the said
parishes and missions . . . the Society will not have the means to support the
religious who lack employment in those islands, it petitions your Majesty to
issue the necessary orders that some of them may proceed either to China or to
the Marianas or to New Spain or to their respective provinces of origin, where they
shall be able to serve God and your Majesty without the worries and hindrances
which compel them to return the said parishes and missions to your Majesty.
524 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Jaramillo then proceeds to summarize the causes that produced these
“ worries and hindrances/' which he had described in detail in the body
of his memorial. The recent proceedings of Archbishop Pardo had made it
abundantly clear that the Society in the Philippines possessed no effective
means of safeguarding its most essential rights. It could not have recourse
to the audiencia against any dispositions of the archbishop by making use
of the appeal known as the recurso de fuer^a, for the archbishop had
declared this appeal to be “ contrary to the integrity of the faith" ; in fact,
"a heretical innovation." Nor could the Society appoint a jue^conservador
or judge advocate with legal powers to repel any invasion of its rights, for
to do so required the permission of the other bishops, and they did not
see fit to grant it. Finally, the transfer of the Jesuit parishes of Cainta and
Marikina to others brought home the fact that the Society had no security
whatever in the administration of its other parishes and missions, and so
would be well advised voluntarily to resign them all. 9
The king refused to accept this resignation, and the Philippine Jesuits,
ordered to remain at their posts, complied. Meanwhile, the other religious
orders were having their troubles with Archbishop Pardo. In 1686 and
1687 he notified them that in his view their omnimoda faculties had long
been abrogated by the Holy See, and hence that they were obliged to sub-
mit all parish and mission appointments to the diocesan prelate for
approval. This move, and the subsequent agreement of the Philippine
bishops to act in concert in the matter of episcopal visitation, served to
bring the religious orders together to take common action for the defense
of their threatened rights and privileges. Although with the death of
Archbishop Pardo in 1689 the project of the bishops seems to have been
held in abeyance, it was the prevailing sentiment among the religious
that the question would be reopened sooner or later, and so they had
better be ready for it. On 5 May 1697, the religious superiors or their
accredited representatives met in the convent of the Augustinians and
signed an agreement or concordia , the principal terms of which are as
follows. 10
First, whenever a papal brief or royal cedula affecting the religious
should be presented for their compliance by the ecclesiastical or civil
authorities, they would hold one or more conferences on the matter, "in
order that all may consider and deliberate upon the manner and form
whereby the said dispatches may be put into execution without prejudice
to the apostolic privileges granted to our sacred orders and without contra-
vening the royal statutes decreed by his Majesty for the universal gover-
nance of the Indies." The decisions taken at these conferences were to be
by majority vote, one vote to each religious order, to be cast by its provin-
cial or his delegate. Provision was made to break a deadlock by means of
arbiters. The decision voted was to be binding upon all.
Crossroads
5 2 5
Secondly, the same common action would be taken with reference to
ordinances of the Philippine hierarchy and civil government affecting
religious.
Thirdly, with regard to episcopal visitation, “we are resolved, now and
for the future, that in case a diocesan prelate should wish to make a visi-
tation in whole or in part of any parish or mission under our care, or of any
religious parish priest or missionary subject to us, all the superiors of the
aforesaid provinces must and will consider such a cause to be proper to
each and common to all, holding the necessary meeting or meetings to
adopt the most efficacious measures to the end that the said diocesan pre-
late may proceed no further, either in whole or in part, in the intended
visitation/' If, however, the bishop did proceed, then the signatories of
the agreement engaged themselves, now and for the future, to resign all
their parishes and missions.
Fourthly, if any religious order resigned a parish or mission, no other
religious order would accept the charge of it without the resigning order's
consent. The same held good if a parish or mission was taken away from a
religious order.
Fifthly, all disputes, past, present, and future, between the signatories
of the agreement were to be decided by arbitration.
One good effect of the consciousness of a common cause which led to this
concordia was that, shortly before it, the Augustinians and the Jesuits
came to an amicable settlement of their outstanding differences. By two
cedulas dated 3 1 March 1694, Charles II had ordered Cainta and Marikina
restored to the Society; but instead of simply standing on these decrees,
the Jesuit provincial offered to exchange Binangonan in Luzon and Suaraga
in Panay for these two parishes. The offer was accepted. 11
The religious orders were soon given an opportunity to test the efficacy
of their concordia. In September 1697 the new archbishop of Manila,
Don Diego Camacho y Avila, arrived to take possession of his see. One
month after his arrival he announced his intention of making a visitation
of all the parishes of his archdiocese, and in spite of the protests of the
religious orders, proceeded to do so, starting with the Dominican parish
of San Gabriel. 12 The heads of the orders immediately resigned their
parishes and notified Governor Cruzat. The archbishop proceeded from
San Gabriel to the other suburban parishes on the north bank of the Pasig,
replacing the religious with temporary appointments from his diocesan
clergy. In less than a week, however, the provincials had withdrawn their
men from over a hundred towns of the archdiocese; and since the arch-
bishop had only fifty-three secular priests altogether, he was confronted
with the same impossible situation as Archbishop Poblete on an earlier
occasion. Two days before Christmas he suspended the visitation, removed
his temporary appointees, and restored the parishes to the religious. At the
526
The Jesuits in the Philippines
same time he gave notice to the provincials that he was referring the
question to the Holy See.
Shortly thereafter the same provincials who had challenged his right to
subject them to visitation were compelled to appear before him as suppli-
ants in another matter. A special Crown commissioner, Don Juan de
Sierra y Osorio, had come to the Philippines in 1692 for the purpose of
verifying the title deeds of all lands allegedly held by royal grant. The
religious orders contended that their lands, being church property, were
immune from such inquiry, and refused to present their title deeds. Sierra
set them a term for compliance ; no one came forward. The term expired
at just about this time, whereupon Sierra declared the estates of the orders
forfeit to the Crown as having no valid title. This sent the provincials to
the archbishop, as the supreme ecclesiastical authority in the colony, to
request that their immunities be maintained. It was hardly a propitious
time to make such a request, but they apparently trusted that Archbishop
Camacho would be sufficiently dispassionate to distinguish between their
refusal of his jurisdiction and their need for his protection.
The archbishop did not quite succeed in making this difficult distinc-
tion. He declared that none of the estates of the religious orders were
covered by ecclesiastical immunity except the endowments of the Poor
Clares and the colleges of Santo Tomas and San Jose; a decision that
satisfied no one. The orders appealed to Bishop Gonzalez of Nueva Caceres,
who had the powers of apostolic delegate, and Sierra directly to the Holy
See. Bishop Gonzalez came to Manila to inquire into the matter. Arch-
bishop Camacho considered this to be unwarranted interference and asked
the bishop to return to his diocese. A lively exchange of firm notes between
the two prelates resulted in their excommunicating each other. Partisans
of one and the other party" roamed the streets in bands, put up provocative
posters, and engaged in brawls. Wisely, Governor Cruzat intervened.
Through his good offices, a meeting between the prelates was arranged,
and, after they had absolved each other from censure, Bishop Gonzalez
peaceably returned to his diocese. Meanwhile, Sierra left for Mexico,
having been promoted to the bench there. His successor in the royal
commission, Don Juan Ozaeta, quietly quashed his order confiscating the
estates of the religious orders and notified the provincials that the Crown
would be satisfied if they showed him their title deeds informally out of
court. This the provincials willingly did, and Ozaeta, having verified them,
confirmed the orders in their possession. Thus was this unpleasant affair
brought to a satisfactory conclusion.
There remained the thorny question of episcopal visitation. Archbishop
Camacho decided to try again. His previous attempt had come to grief
because of the solid front presented by the orders. If he could detach one of
them from their concordia, all might yet be well. He would try the Jesuits.
Crossroads
5 2 7
He considered himself, and was, a good friend of their general, under
whom he had studied theology at the University of Salamanca. If the
Jesuits gave in to his claims, the other orders would be placed in a highly
embarrassing position, for if they persisted in refusing to submit, he could
threaten to divide their parishes between his own clergy and the Jesuits.
The attempt failed. Wherever he put in an appearance — at San Pedro
Tunasan, at Lian, at Silang — the resident Jesuit politely turned over to
him not only the parish or chapel records, but the entire parish or chapel,
and left for Manila forthwith. The concordia held; it was not in the Philip-
pines but in Rome that the question was finally to be settled.
In 1698 the orders had sent two procurators to plead their cause at
Madrid and Rome: the Dominican Fray Jaime de Mimbela and the
Recollect Fray Juan Antonio de San Agustin. The climate at Madrid being
extremely favorable to the archbishop, the two procurators decided to stay
there and asked a Jesuit at Rome, Juan de Irigoyen, to act for them at the
papal curia. From the voluminous correspondence which passed between
Irigoyen, Mimbela, and San Agustin 13 we gather that it was decided to
brief a lawyer of the curia, Girolamo Meloni, to argue the case of the
religious orders before the commission of cardinals appointed by Clement
XI. Meloni seems to have conducted the case competently enough; he at
least had the foresight to warn Irigoyen that the decision was likely to be
adverse. Irigoyen at once sent a hurry call to the two procurators to come
and attend to the case personally, but they replied that they did not think
it was necessary.
The decision was adverse. On 19 January 1705 the special commission
of the Sacred Congregation of the Council issued the following rescript :
The archbishop of Manila and the other bishops of the Philippine Islands have
the right to make a visitation of the religious in what pertains to the pastoral
care of souls and the administration of the sacraments ; nor may the said religious
resign the parishes and missions in question under pain of censure, forfeiture of
goods, and other penalties . 14
The generals of the religious orders, upon being presented with this
rescript, declared that they accepted it and would cause their respective
subjects to give it prompt and unqualified obedience. When this decision
reached the Philippines, however, Archbishop Camacho had already been
transferred to the see of Guadalajara.
The significance of the events related in this chapter would seem to be
this. As the seventeenth century drew to a close, the Philippine Jesuits
became more or less aware that they were approaching a crossroads. Several
exasperating lawsuits and disputes had arisen over the possession of some
of their parishes. A number of priests and brothers stationed in provincial
houses had been guilty of grave immorality; their transgressions came to
528 The Jesuits in the Philippines
the notice of the public, and the prurient inferred a great deal more than
the fact. The Visayan missions were so hard up that some of the mission-
aries had resorted to sending local commodities such as beeswax to Manila
in order to obtain needed supplies. This was done in a manner that,
rightly or wrongly, was considered by many — even by influential religious
of other orders — to be contrary to canon law. All this was deeply disturbing
and some of the fathers began to wonder whether it would not be better
to give up their parishes and missions, or at least their more developed
parishes, and devote themselves to less troublesome ministries. The prob-
lem did not appear to be an immediate one until it was posed in concrete
and urgent if slightly different terms by the events of Archbishop Pardo's
administration and the subsequent decision of the bishops to subject the
religious to episcopal visitation. The provincial congregation of 1687, after
discussing the question thoroughly, took the unusual but very prudent step
of dispatching two procurators to present to the general the two principal
opposing views in the province.
The general, Gonzalez, decided that whatever might be the merits of
the arguments proposed by the two procurators, this at least was certain:
that the Philippine Jesuits should withdraw altogether from parish and
mission work rather than submit to episcopal visitation. This decision was
based on Gonzalez's understanding that that visitation, at least in the form
projected by the Philippine bishops, would automatically deprive the
superiors of the Society of the free disposal of their subjects which was so
much a substantial part of its institute that it could not function without
it. It will be recalled that Acquaviva took precisely the same stand. Gon-
zalez was not framing a new policy but merely reaffirming an old one,
although never before had it come to the point of proposing the alterna-
tives so sharply to the Spanish government.
The policy of the Society coincided with that of the other religious
orders, for they were in exactly the same case. This community of interests
led to the formation of the concordia, which ought not to be regarded as a
conspiracy to defy legitimate authority, but rather as an attempt on the part
of the orders to provide themselves with a measure of protection during
the long interval between an appeal to Rome or Madrid and the return of a
decision.
The decision of the Holy See in this particular case is in many ways an
admirable one. It affirmed the right of the diocesan prelate to make a visi-
tation, but it also set very definite limits to it ; he was to concern himself
only with “what pertains to the pastoral care of souls and the administra-
tion of the sacraments. If this was to be the sum and substance of an
episcopal visitation, there was no longer any reason why the religious
orders should not submit to it. But they had made trial of a weapon, the
mass resignation of parishes, which had proved most efficacious ; danger-
Crossroads
529
ously so ; they would be sorely tempted to use it again. It was therefore
removed. This had the subsidiary effect of rendering nugatory the intra-
mural question among the Philippine Jesuits of whether or not they should
voluntarily give up their parishes. For good or ill they had taken their turn-
ing at the parting of the ways and must now follow the road to the end.
Chapter Twenty-Two
DOORS OPENING
The Jesuit historian Murillo has left a description of the typical Jesuit
parish as it was in the first half of the eighteenth century. 1 The parish
consists of a town, or poblacion , which is the market, social, and administra-
tive center of several barrios or villages (Tagalog nayoti) of the surrounding
countryside. The most important building in the town is the church,
invariably of adobe stone, with a bell tower and the parish residence beside
it. In front of it is the town square or plaza, at the center of which there is
usually a tall wooden cross. Around it are the houses of the townspeople,
each with its garden or orchard ; some are of wood with adobe foundation
walls, the majority of bamboo and nipa. Although Murillo does not men-
tion it, we know from other sources that most towns had their town hall or
casa real, which was not used for much except as a hostel for travelers, since
it was really from the parish residence that the town was administered.
Every morning the school children — the boys are called escuelas and the
girls rosaries — come to Mass. After Mass they hold classes until io,
when they troop back to church at the sound of the bell to pay a visit to
the Blessed Sacrament and recite the Salve Regina and Alabado sea el
santtsimo sacramento del altar . Then they go in procession to the town cross,
chanting the prayers of the catechism, and are there dismissed. They come
back to school at z in the afternoon, hold classes until 4, and repeat the
closing exercises of the morning, except that they recite the rosary during
their visit to the Blessed Sacrament. On Saturdays they are joined at Mass
and morning prayers by the young men (baguntaos) and maidens ( dalagas )
who are not yet of an age to pay tribute. The Mass celebrated on this day
is invariably that of the Blessed Virgin. In the afternoon the whole town
comes to church for the recitation of the rosary. The mystery corresponding
to each decade and the litany of Loretto at the end are chanted by the
parish choir. Thursday is the weekly school holiday.
On Sundays the school boys take the parish standard in procession
through the principal streets of the town in order to summon the people
to Mass. The parish priest celebrates a sung Mass, with choir and orchestra,
and preaches a sermon. After Mass the entire congregation recites the
prayers of the catechism. This is followed by a question period called
toksohan , in which those present are examined on the principal truths of
the faith and the method of administering baptism in case of necessity.
530
Doors Opening 531
Before the congregation is dismissed, the padron or list of parishioners is
read and absentees noted down. In the afternoon the parish priest holds a
catechism class in the church for the children and young people of both
sexes, after which he administers baptisms.
Every parish has a men's and a women's sodality. They hold regular
meetings and devote themselves to charitable works. The women sodalists
make themselves responsible for keeping the church clean and decorating
the altar w 7 ith flowers. The more devout parishioners go to confession and
communion on the principal feast days of the year, especially those of the
Blessed Virgin and that of their patron saint. It is customary for those who
receive communion in the morning to return to church in the afternoon
for a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Another widespread custom is that of
praying the rosary at home in the evening, with all the members of the
household present ; or when starting off on a journey. An increasing number
are joining the school children for daily Mass.
Women about to give birth are advised to come in from the barrios to
receive the sacraments and to have the baby in town, in order that in case
of danger of death they may be promptly attended to. Mothers bring
their newly born infants to the Lady altar, usually on a Saturday, to offer
them to the Blessed Virgin; and they are churched at the same time. Far-
mers bring their seed rice to church to be blessed during the planting
season, and their first fruits likewise before starting to harvest the crop.
Three times a week during Lent the menfolk gather in the church in the
evening to take the discipline. Murillo says, however, that this custom was
much better kept in the preceding century 7 ; in his time it was rapidly falling
into disuse or had become a mere formality.
Not so, however, the custom of going on pilgrimages to various shrines
in order to pray for special favors or simply to join in the merrymaking of
the shrine festival. One of the most popular of these shrines was Antipolo,
the home of Our Lady of Peace and Happy Journeys. The devotion of
Filipinos to the blessed Mother of God is indeed one of the most marked
characteristics of their Catholicism. At this time, and almost to the end
of the nineteenth century, Our Lady's beads, worn around the neck, was
part of the formal attire of both men and women. Another detail worthy
of remark is the omnipresence of music, both instrumental and choral, in
their religious life. Prayers and even catechetical formulae were not only
recited but chanted. The parish choir and the parish orchestra were
indispensable and honored institutions, their members being exempted
from tribute and statute labor. Even during the elevation of host and
chalice at Mass, it was the custom in some parishes for the congregation to
sing a motet. A band played gay tunes at the burial of infants, who were
brought to their graves dressed in their baptismal robes and sometimes
with tiny wings attached to their shoulders. This is based on the Catholic
532 The Jesuits in the Philippines
belief that children who die without losing their baptismal innocence go
straight to heaven, and may therefore be considered, without putting too
much of a strain on theology, angelitos.
Even before the coming of the Spaniards a definite distinction existed
among the Tagalogs between an upper class consisting of the datus, their
families and the wellborn ( maharlika ) generally, and the rest of the people
free or less-than-free* This class distinction was preserved and to some
extent deepened by Spanish rule* The upper class became the principales or
leading citizens of each parish, through whom, as village headmen (cahegas
de harangay ) or as petty governors of towns (gobernadorcillos) the colonial
government administered the provinces, collected tribute, requisitioned
supplies, and drafted labor for public works* Certain privileges went with
these responsibilities, such as exemption from taxation and statute labor,
and the acknowledged right to demand certain personal services of their
villagers or townsmen (Tagalog kabansd ), a right which, as we have seen,
was already theirs by customary law* It was not unknown for principales
to demand more from their kabansa than they were entitled to, as Gomez
de Espinosa had occasion to note in the seventeenth century; but even
apart from such abuses their privileged position gave them numerous oppor-
tunities to broaden their lands, part of which they let to tenants for a share
of the crop. 2
It was from this relatively leisured class, not subject to the daily grind of
subsistence farming, that the colonial government recruited a rudimentary
civil service — amanuenses, clerks, interpreters, and even provincial
notaries, who added to their ability to read and write an increasing familia-
rity with Spanish law and literature* Devotional books composed by the
clergy or translated into Tagalog by them from European originals consti-
tuted by far the greater portion of the people’s ordinary reading matter;
indeed, Murillo makes no mention of anything else. However, it is almost
certainly to the early eighteenth century that we must trace the beginnings
of Filipino literature; that is to say, written (as opposed to oral) pieces
composed by Filipinos either in the native languages or Spanish. The matter
has not been sufficiently investigated, but the earliest corridos — Spanish tales
of strange adventure (‘ ‘ ocurridos ’ ’ ?) freely rendered into Tagalog verse-
can probably be traced to this period. The same may be said of the Tagalog
theater, that engaging mixture of Spanish and native elements so charm-
mgly described by Martinez de Zuniga at the close of the century. 3
Although each province had its alcalde mayor, the parish priest provided
the link between him and the town officials. He it was who supervised
them in the performance of their duties, and he doubtless had a great deal
to say about who was to occupy which post. Nevertheless, it should be
noted that until the end of the seventeenth century all town officials were
elected, usually for a term of one year, by all the householders of the
Doors Opening 533
parish. In 1696 Governor Cruzat ordained that in the provinces of Tondo,
Laguna, Bulacan, and Pampanga only the village headmen, to the number
of at least twelve, should have the right to vote in the election of a petty
governor. This change is made necessary, he says, by the fact that the
system of popular elections ‘ ‘ has led to the formation of factions among
the natives, resulting in lawsuits, disturbances, and secret deals [negocia-
ciones]” In the other Tagalog provinces, presumably less sophisticated
politically, the old system was retained. 4
The parish priest received invaluable assistance from the principalia of
his parish, for it was they who acted as his fiscales , supplied bearers or
oarsmen when he went on a journey, assigned the young men of the town
in rotation to do the parish chores, managed the festivals, and in general
set the tone of the community. It was they, too, who collected and managed
the funds of the community chest, by which the charitable works of the
parish as well as public improvements were financed. 5 On the other hand,
they could occasionally be a thorn in his side, as Murillo ruefully observes.
In almost all the towns there are usually certain individuals who have clerked
for the Spaniards in Manila, and there familiarized themselves with pleadings and
actions at law. They have no difficulty in persuading the natives to make a
thousand false affidavits, for their intimate association with the Spaniards has
given them a great fondness for stamped paper. And if the father tries to restrict
their activities, a meeting is organized on the instant, and a petition drawn up
against the priest is fairly covered with signatures and crosses. . . .
Natives who wish to file a suit against the priest go to one of these quondam
clerks, who carefully keeps a number of old dossiers, complaints, and bills of
particulars for just such a purpose. The higher the fee, the more outrageous the
accusations, which he prepares in much the same way as a purgative, the dosage
being increased in the measure that a more complete evacuation is desired.
Signatures are affixed to the petition by people who have no idea of what it con-
tains; instead of its being read to them, a convivial glass of wine is drunk instead.
The document, covered with flourishes and crosses, is now brought to the
appropriate official, to wit, the official who has the least love for the priest; for
they are most expert in this. No navigator can tell how the wind blows better
than these natives can predict where their petition will be received with approval.
And if the official to whom it is presented happens to be of some importance, a
great deal of suffering lies in store for the innocent father until the truth is
finally revealed . 6
We might add that the converse was also true; if the natives had justice
on their side, they were not entirely destitute of the means to obtain a
redress of grievances. Indeed, the character of unrelieved tyranny and
oppression given to Spanish rule in the Philippines by historians whose
inspiration derives from the Revolution of '96 needs to be drastically
revised. To be sure, the tyranny and oppression existed; it would be
completely naive to deny it in the face of the repeated affirmations of the
534 The Jesuits in the Philippines
colonial officials themselves. Nevertheless, in fairness to the Spanish
administrators we should recognize, first, that they were often aided and
abetted in their abusive practices by the native principals; second, that
effective representation and petition were by no means denied to the
natives; third, that in the Spanish colonial system clergy and officials,
Church and State, provided a mutual check and balance which operated,
on the whole, in favor of the subject population; and finally, the very
cumbersomeness and inefficiency of Indies administration before the
Bourbon reforms of the middle eighteenth century left the people pretty
much to their own devices. This last point is well brought out by Crawfurd
in his well known History of the Indian Archipelago . The compliment he pays
the Spaniards is a left-handed one at best; but it is something for an
Englishman roundly to affirm that “almost every other country of the
[Indian] Archipelago is, at this day, in point of wealth, power, and civi-
lization, in a worse state than when Europeans connected themselves with
them three centuries back. The Philippines alone have improved in civi-
lization, wealth, and populousness . . . Upon the whole, they are at present
[1820] superior in almost everything to any of the other races. 7
Superior or not, they were probably happier, on the whole, than the
Indonesians under the Dutch “culture system . 99 The idyllic picture
painted by Martinez de Zuniga of Philippine provincial life in the
eighteenth century is, we suspect, somewhat touched up; but other
contemporary sources suggest that it was not far from the truth.
The native who works for the fourth part of the year can take his ease during
the rest of it in the assurance that the land will supply him with what he needs
to support his family in comfort. Remote from the rest of mankind, they live in
villages — called nayon in their language — where vice seldom takes root, because
there is not the opportunity for it. They neither gamble nor get drunk, for the
taverns and gaming tables are too far for them to indulge in these excesses at the
price of so long a journey. In each nayon there are six, eight, or more households.
One of the inhabitants, either because of his age, his lineage, or the benefits he
has conferred on the rest, is obeyed and respected by all, and preserves the harmony
of the community. When they have nothing in particular to do— which is the
greater part of the year — they go out of doors and pass the time of day under
some shady tree. In a word, theirs is the life of the Old-Testament patriarchs.
True enough, they have an alcalde mayor ; but if they pay him the tribute, which
is no more than five rials and a half, he usually leaves them alone. The abuses
which are related of the alcaldes mayores are usually committed against those
wealthier and more prominent persons with whom they do business. Each town
also has a native as petty governor. This functionary sees to it that everyone per-
forms the body service which they are bound to by statute ; but whoever does his
one week's stint is not bothered thereafter. The gobernadorcillo settles their
disputes in accordance with custom, assisted by two elders who act as his legal
advisers. His decisions are generally respected. 8
Doors Opening 535
A sturdy Augustmian, but no stranger to the ideas of the Enlightenment,
Martinez de Zuniga concludes from this that Spanish rule had added
considerably even to the purely temporal felicity of the Filipinos ; “1 say
nothing of the advantages of knowing the true God and being in a position
to gain the soul's eternal happiness, for I am writing now not as a
missionary but as a philosopher/ '
The Jesuits in the Tagalog parishes may not have been subjected to the
privations of the Visayan fathers, as hard-bitten veterans like Alcina and
Alejo Lopez loved to point out, but it should be clear from the parochial
activities enumerated by Murillo that theirs were no sinecures either. This
is brought home to us by an informal obituary which seems to have sur-
vived quite by accident. 9 Neither Murillo nor Delgado mentions Barto-
lommeo Gavanti, a Ferrarese who volunteered for the Philippines and died
at Antipolo in 1729. He was first assigned to the Aeta town of Paynaan,
where he learned Tagalog; then to Santa Cruz for two years, where he
learned the Fukien dialect; and finally to Cainta for seven years until his
death. His death came about in this way. He had gone to Antipolo to help
out with confessions before Corpus Christi when a sick call came from
Taytay. He called for a horse and set out at once at a gallop. He found
the sick man in no particular danger. He was about to return to Antipolo
when the alcalde mayor sent word that he wanted to see him at Cainta ;
so thither he went. Late that afternoon they asked him to come back to
Taytay, saying that the sick man was much worse. Again he took to the
road, and when he finally returned to Antipolo, it was by riding, dripping
with perspiration, through the sudden coolness of the tropic night. He
caught pneumonia. After Mass the next morning he took to his bed and
sank swiftly. As soon as they heard about it in Cainta, his parishioners
rushed over and pressed into his room, weeping, to receive his last blessing.
He gave it to them, and then asked them, very gently, to forgive him for
any shortcomings of which he might have been guilty. Then he died.
What had endeared him to the people as well as to his fellow Jesuits was
that he lived as he died, responding to the demands made upon him to the
utter forgetfulness of himself. He also tried to supply for the complete
absence of country doctors by answering sick calls not only with pyx and
stole but with a medicine kit strapped to his saddle bags. The fact that
he is not even mentioned in any of the standard Jesuit annals suggests that
his career was not considered in any way exceptional; and in any case the
qualities singled out for praise by the manuscript obituary to which we
refer give us an idea of the kind of priests he and his brethren tried to be
according to their lights.
Another Jesuit who combined medical assistance with his priestly
ministrations was Paul Klein, whose manual of household remedies has
already been mentioned. When he was appointed rector of the College of
536 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Cavite in the first years of the century, his first care was to try to induce the
port authority to do something about the appalling living conditions of the
shipyard workers* The Annual Letter of 1706 tells us that
. . . they are drafted from the four provinces of Tondo, Bai [Laguna], Bulacan,
and Pampanga. His Majesty has enacted laws for the relief of these vassals of his,
but since the execution of such laws lies with men who are more concerned with
their private gain, the poor natives are most grievously oppressed on the pretext
that the royal service requires it. While the skimpy rations given them are
scarcely sufficient to sustain life, the work demanded of them is heavier than
bodies more robust than those of these natives can bear. They are turned out for
work at three o'clock in the morning and are given no rest until almost eleven.
They are back to work at one and do not stop until ten at night. There is neither
Sunday nor holyday for these wretches, and their quarters are some ruined sheds
open on all sides to wind and weadier. They sleep on the hard ground, and matters
are not mended by their natural lack of foresight, for they bring with them not so
much as a piece of matting on which to lie. Little food and hard work cause many
of them to fall sick, and then they have nowhere to go but this college for the
good of their souls and the relief of their suffering. It is sometimes necessary to
keep them in the college for some time to get them back on their feet again.
Father Rector has asked the commandant to make somewhat better provision for
the sick, and a sort of shelter has been put up as a result, but it is so unsuitable
that they cannot be treated there without danger. So we have found it more
convenient to keep the sick here at home to undergo treatment and be taken care
of do
Klein's tireless charity found scope not only in the navy yard but in the
town. A priest of the college came back from a sick call to report that it
was a woman with several children and no visible means of support. This
was apparently standard procedure, for Klein then went himself, diagnosed
the woman's illness, and left her medicines and money to buy some food.
But at his next visit, Klein found out that instead of buying food for her-
self she had bought it for her children. At this, the annual letter says, ‘‘he
felt obliged to send her two chickens and money every day to take care of
every body, mother and children both," until she got well. 11
One would expect the college to go into receivership after a few months
under so prodigal a rector; but as often happens, God saw to it that the
money spent on his poor came back with interest. By investing shrewdly in
a row of shops which he rented to some Chinese, Klein was able to increase
the college revenues appreciably. He used the added income on a project
which had needed doing badly for many years, but the college never seemed
to have the funds for it. This was the construction of a sea wall to protect
the foundations of the church and house, which were constantly being
eaten away by the sea. He even had enough money left to finish the church
tower, and with the help of a Dutch lay brother, Jakob Xavier, to put a
Doers Opening 537
clock on top of it. Thereafter Klein's clock regulated the activities of port
and town. 12
This is the Philippine Jesuits' great age of church building, finishing,
and decorating. The following list, compiled from available sources, of the
dates of completion of the stone churches in the residences and mission
indicated, is almost certainly incomplete:
Guiuan, Samar
ca .
1700
Borongan, Samar
before
1710
Indang, Cavite
1710
Santa Cruz, Marinduqi
lie ca.
1714
Dagami, Leyte
ca.
1714
Tanauan, Leyte
ca.
1714
Umauas, Samar
ca.
1714
Santa Cruz, Manila
ca.
1715
Cainta, Rizal
ca.
1715
San Mateo, Rizal
ca.
1715
Abuyog, Leyte
17x8
Loboc, Bohol
1734
Catbalogan, Samar
1760
The new residence at San Miguel was completed around 1703 and that
at Cebu in 1730. The lay brother Manuel Rodriguez who painted the
church and residence of the College of Manila was active in the Tagalog
and Visayan churches until 1714. 13
One of Ale jo Lopez's arguments against retaining the Tagalog parishes
in preference to the Visayan missions was that the Tagalog parishes could
not because of their location serve as bases for further missionary expansion
into unevangelized territory. This was not quite exact. True, Luzon was
the most settled and Christianized of all the islands; but there were still
considerable areas of it, principally the uplands of the Cordillera and
Sierra Madre ranges, which awaited the missionary pioneer. The Annual
Letter of 1716 records requests from Camarines to come to the aid of the
Franciscans there, and from the governor to send Jesuits to evangelize the
Igorots of the present Mountain Province. Lack of men compelled the
provincials to refuse them. 14 In 1750, however, two German Jesuits pene-
trated further into the Sierra Madre jungles than any European ever had
before. The exploration, partly ethnological and partly missionary, was
jointly sponsored by the Society and the colonial government. They
encountered some wandering tribes either of Aetas or proto-Malays whose
way of life they were able to observe ; but they reported that to get them to
settle down long enough to missionize them would be a very difficult
and costly proposition. 15 However, had there been time, the Tagalog
538 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Jesuits would probably have done something in this direction, using
Antipolo as a base and continuing the work begun by Almerici over a
century earlier.
The Visayan Jesuits carried on in the eighteenth century pretty much
as they were doing when we last saw them. The Christian communities
continued to grow not only with the natural increase of population but
with the conversion of the remaining tribesmen in the hills. During the
four years from 17x1 to 1714, for instance, besides the 8,546 infant
baptisms registered in all the missions, about 15,000 or 16,000 adult con-
verts were added to the four Leyte residences alone. 16 New mission stations
were established on the smaller islands which had had to be bypassed
earlier. In 1719 the Cebu fathers w r ere taking care not only of Mandaue
but also of Poro Island, between Cebu and Leyte. Moreover, the grammar
school which had been discontinued early in the seventeenth century was
now reopened with a priest in charge, while a lay brother continued to
teach in the elementary school which had never been closed. 17
But the mission which made the greatest advance at this time was that
of Negros. It was also that which gave the greatest promise for further
progress; like the Sierra Madre range in Luzon, Negros was one of the
doors that now began to open to Jesuit enterprise. 18 Negros Island is
divided by a mountainous spine into an eastern and western part, which
are today two provinces: Negros Oriental and Occidental. Not many
years after the foundation of the Cebu residence, the fathers there went on
temporary missions to eastern Negros; its permanent administration,
however, remained with the diocesan clergy. It was the uncultivated field
of western Negros that the Society claimed for its own, the Iloilo Jesuits
establishing their first mission station there (at Ilog) in the 1630’s. Lack
of men allowed them to do little more than hang grimly on to this beach-
head until the flow of volunteer missionaries from the northern European
provinces in the eighteenth century enabled them to develop it.
In 173 0 or thereabouts Ilog was entrusted to Bernhard Schmitz, a
German Jesuit born in Holland who entered the province of the Lower
Rhine in 1708 and came to the Philippines in 1721. In 1732 he was joined
by two Czechs from the old Jesuit province of Bohemia: Anton Malinsky
of Prague and Lorenz John of Leitmeritz. Instead of trying to cover a lot
of territory, they concentrated their efforts on the southern part of the
island. Schmitz took Ilog and nearby Himamaylan; John, Kabankalan and
Buyonan; and Malinsky, Kauayan (formerly Isiu), Inayauan, and Sipalai.
When the Spaniards first came to the Philippines the pygmy Negritos still
had pretty much the run of the island, and this suggested its name; but
by the eighteenth century the ethnic pattern had become that of the rest
of the Visayas, with Visayan settlers occupying the lowlands and the
Negritos the mountainous country inland.
Doors Opening 53 9
The task of the Negros Jesuits, then, was essentially that of the founders
of the Leyte mission a century earlier: to convert the lowland people
wherever they were; then, slowly, to organize them into larger communi-
ties ; and, finally, to establish contact with the elusive Negrito tribes and
persuade them to settle within reach of the older centers, as a preliminary
to their conversion. This process did not, of course, take place in clear-cut,
successive stages, but overlapped a great deal, the fathers going into the
brush to missionize the Negritos whenever they had the leisure or the
opportunity. The methods they used differed in no essential respect from
those of the Spanish Jesuits. Neither did the hardships and obstacles they
encountered. However, there is not a word of complaint or discouragement
in their chatty letters home. They fared, Malinsky said, as their people
did ; well if the harvest was abundant, badly if there was a Sulu raid or if
the locusts ate up the crop. They ate what their people ate, boiled rice
without salt or spices, drank river water like everyone else, and lived in a
nipa house. Nevertheless they kept W'ell, thanks be to God; and, John
adds, “One would hardly have believed that a European can keep healthy
without bread, without wine and without beer ; but I do, in great joy and
contentment, without feeling the lack of these things/'
Negros Occidental today is the great sugar province of the Philippines ;
but sugar-cane cultivation did not begin until later. At this time the
people grew rice as a subsistence crop and cacao and tobacco as export crops.
They seem to have been as sober and industrious then as they are now, and
would have been more prosperous were it not for the marauding Sulus,
against whom they were too unwarlike to put up effective resistance. The
Jesuits stayed with them in all their vicissitudes, fleeing inland with them
when the raiders struck, and staying to nurse them during the recurrent
smallpox epidemics. No wonder Malinsky could say that his Christians
kept watch over him day and night as though their lives depended upon it.
As soon as they saw him go out his door, they leaped out of their huts,
armed, to accompany him wherever he went.
I always have near me as my bodyguard one of three men whom the king [datu]
has given me as a pledge of his loyalty and as a kind of acknowledgment of my
services. His duty is to protect me, my house, and my church, and to keep watch
at night. At stated times he rings a bell to make known that he is very much alive
and flourishing. In my travels from one place to another one of the headmen of the
village from which I set out keeps me company, along with others, marching to
the sound of drum and agun, The agun is a kind of bell, in shape like a brass basin,
but with a silvery sound. As we draw nigh the next village they announce my
arrival with a great din on the drum and agun and with joyous shouts. At this the
people of the village range themselves along the path, receive me from my escort,
lead me to the chapel and then to my hut. I spend the next few days or weeks
with them, according to the circumstances. 19
540 The Jesuits in the Philippines
The Philippine Jesuits began to agitate for the restoration of the Zam-
boanga garrison and mission almost as soon as the threat of Koxinga’s
invasion had been lifted* In fact, some of the fathers, Sanvitores among
them, regretted the fact that the mission had ever been closed at alh 20
They felt that the Zamboanga missionaries could have stayed and carried
on their work even after the garrison had been withdrawn* Superiors, how-
ever, thought that the risk to their lives was too great, and consistently
followed the policy of making the re-establishment of the Mindanao
missions contingent on the return of Spanish power. They got little
encouragement from the Manila authorities* The project was too expensive ;
and few officers relished the idea of being stationed so far from the capital
and so close to the enemy. The Jesuits took their petition to Madrid. The
same reasons, they argued, that had justified the original establishment of
Zamboanga still held good. It was the only way to prevent or at least to
cut down the destructive Moro raids on the Visayas, and it served as an
excellent outpost from which to keep watch over the movements of the
Dutch in Indonesia. They succeeded in convincing the queen regent, who
issued a cedula in 1666 ordering the restoration of Zamboanga. 21
Nothing happened, for inconvenient royal orders of this sort could under
the Hapsburgs be pigeonholed by an unwilling viceroy or governor with the
formula “obedezco pero no cumplo; ” that is to say, the command would
indubitably be complied with if it were feasible, but since it was not
feasible, it was still inwardly obeyed, though outwardly unrealized. The
orders were repeated in 1672, but again the governor " obeyed without
carrying out.” 22 Manila apparently hoped that without extending its
military frontier to Zamboanga it could settle the problem of the raids on
the Visayas by negotiation. The Moslem Malays were, after all, interested
m Spanish trade, and this could be used as a bargaining counter. An em-
bassy sent by the Sultan of Brunei in 1679 to negotiate a trade agreement
provided an opportunity to discuss the fixing of a clear boundary between
Brunei and the Philippines. The conversations begun at Manila were
concluded in Brunei by a Spanish mission headed by Juan Morales de
Valenzuela. By the terms of the Valenzuela treaty the sultan not only
ceded the island of Palawan to Spain, but paid indemnity for the damage
done by the Camucon pirates who had their bases there* 23
This signal diplomatic victory made the possibility of a restoration of
the Zamboanga garrison more remote than ever, and the opinion gained
ground among the Philippine Jesuits that they should “go it alone.”
In 1690 Alejo Lopez proposed to Father General Gonzalez that the
Philippine province be permitted to re-establish the Zamboanga mission
\\ ithout military protection or financial support from the colonial govern-
ment. He pleaded that the Lutaus there, who had embraced Christianity
through the preaching of the Jesuits, were doing their best to keep the faith
Doors Opening 541
m spite of strong Moslem pressure, but could not be expected to hold out
indefinitely without priests* The danger that missionaries might be killed
existed but was grossly exaggerated* Many of the Sulus were disposed to be
friendly to the fathers, as Lopez himself could testify from his own experi-
ence as a missionary in Dapitan. As for financing the enterprise, the pro-
vince could easily do it if every house contributed according to its means —
a point which Lopez proceeds to prove by examining the financial status
of each of the principal establishments. Finally, there was no problem as
regards personnel. Once the project was approved, there would be more
than enough volunteers not only for a mission at Zamboanga but for a
second one at Siao. 24
This proposal did not find favor at Rome, for the existing policy of work-
ing for a simultaneous restoration of garrison and mission was continued.
In 1712 Philip V issued a third cedula to this effect, and this one succeeded
in being not only obeyed but executed. In 1718 an expedition consisting
of 140 Spanish troops set sail from Manila for Zamboanga, and in Feb-
ruary of the following year the standard of Spain floated once more over the
fort of our Lady of Pilar. 25
During the fifty years and more of Spain's withdrawal from the south the
Magindanaus and Sulus had made considerable advances in the direction
of centralized government. The semifeudal confederacies with which
Acuna and even Corcuera had to deal were now full-fledged sultanates
with a fiscal administration, courts of justice, and a bureaucracy of a rudi-
mentary kind. Internal disturbances were still possible and frequently
occurred, but they were not so much contests between barons of roughly
equal power as struggles for a throne admittedly supreme. The two sultans
were beginning to treat each other as heads of state, and a quarrel between
them in 1704 assumed the aspect of an "international" incident, which
had to be submitted to arbitration if war was to be avoided. Curiously
enough, it was to Manila that they applied for an arbiter. Governor
Zabalburu sent a Jesuit priest, Antonio de Borja, who must have had the
same irenic charm as Alejandro Lopez, for his decision was accepted by
both sides and saved the peace. 26
Even the Dutch and the English treated the sultan of Magindanau with
respect. In 1689 the Dutch East India Company sent Lieutenant Meindert
de Rot with an offer of 2,000 rix dollars for permission to build a fort on
Magindanau territory. The offer was refused. In 1694 the English made a
similar request and were likewise refused. That these rebuffs were not
followed up by threats or the actual use of force suggests a recognition by
these powers that they were dealing not with a tribal aggregate but with a
stable and functioning government. Doubtless the fact that the sultan was
well provided with artillery was also a consideration; they could not rail
to notice that “the king's house is built on two hundred large piles, with
542 The Jesuits in the Philippines
a grand stair, and fifteen or sixteen guns regularly mounted on carriages/* 27
Certain aspects of Magindanau government are described for us by the
English naval officer Forrest. He visited the Great River in 1775, but his
remarks are probably applicable to the early part of the century also.
The form of government at Magindanao is somewhat upon the feudal system,
and is in some feature monarchical. Next to the Sultan is Rajah Moodo [Mura:
the young raja], his successor elect. Then Mutusingwood, the superintendent
of polity, and captain Laut, overseer of the Sultan's little navy, are both named
by the Sultan. There are also six manteries, or judges named by the Sultan, and
six amba Rajah, or asserters of the rights of the people: their office is hereditary
to the eldest son . . .
The vassals of the Sultan and of others who possess great estates are called
kanakan. Those vassals are sometimes Mahometans, though mostly Harafooras
[Tirurays ?] . . . They pay a boiss, or land tax. A Harafoora family pays ten battels
of paly (rough rice), forty lb. each; three of rice, about sixty lb.; one fowl, one
bunch of plantains, thirty roots called clody, or St. Helena yam, and fifty heads
of Indian corn. I give this of one instance of the utmost that is ever paid. . . .
The boiss is not collected in fruits of the earth only. A tax gatherer who arrived
at Coto Intang when I was there gave me the following list of what he had brought
from some of Rajah Moodo's crown lands, being levied on perhaps 500 families,
2870 battels of paly of 40 lb. each; 490 Spanish dollars; 160 kangans [a piece of
coarse Chinese cloth, 6 yards by 19 inches, used as a unit of currency]; 6 tayls of
gold, equal to 30 1. ; 160 malons, cloth made of the plantain tree, three yards long
and one broad. 28
Although there must have been several Jesuits working in the Zamboanga
area in the first years after the restoration of the fort, we know the name of
only two of them. One was Franz Maerckl, originally of the province of
Bohemia, who came to the Philippines in 1729 and worked for several
years as a missionary in Zamboanga until he was assigned to teach canon
law at the College of Manila. The other was Bernhard Schmitz, who spent
eight years in Mindanao before being appointed superior of the Negros
mission. In a letter written at La Caldera in 1730, he informs his corres-
pondent that he had recently assumed the duties of rector of the College
of Zamboanga. All of the fathers were kept extremely busy, for the harvest
was great. It was not unusual for him to administer as many as 50 baptisms
in one day and to solemnize as many marriages. The previous year, during
the month of September alone, he had 272 baptisms. We gather from the
rest of the letter that in the division of labor he had reserved to himself the
most laborious of all, that of resuming Juan del Campo*s work among the
Subanuns of the west coast. Jose Calvo, procurator of the Philippine pro-
vince, reporting to Philip V in 1742, stated that there were 6,000
Christians in the Zamboanga mission when it was closed in 1662. By 1740
the restored mission had half that number 2 9
Doors Opening 543
The re-establishment of Zamboanga did not appreciably reduce either the
number or the destructiveness of the Moro raids* In 1721, the Christian
settlements on the northern coast of Mindanao were ravaged; in 1723,
Negros; and in 1730, a powerful Sulu armada harried the Visayas for
almost a whole year. In 1734 Sulus made a daring attempt to take the
Zamboanga fort itself, and were repulsed only through the prompt action
of a sentinel. Thus the opponents of the project had ample material to sup-
port their contention that it should be abandoned as a useless drain on the
colony’s treasury and manpower. It could reasonably be argued that the
garrison was too small and too ill equipped to be effective. Its naval patrol,
for instance, consisted of only two joangas; what could these do against
armadas of thirty or forty cruisers ? Such explanations, however, made
little impression on the Manila merchants, who could only see that any
addition to the Zamboanga item in the colonial budget meant a corre-
sponding reduction of the available funds for the maintenance of the
Acapulco trade. 30
Efforts to supplement military weakness by treaty arrangements similar
to those negotiated by Alejandro Lopez in the seventeenth century were
likewise unsuccessful. A dynastic struggle among the Magindanaus in the
173 o’s seemed to provide an excellent opportunity. Spanish troops were
dispatched to support the * 'legitimate aspirant to the throne, in the hope
that if successful he would ratify the desired treaty. Unfortunately, they
backed the wrong man. The negotiations with Jolo were more promising.
With a Chinese trader named Ki Kuan acting as intermediary, a treaty was
actually signed in 1725 establishing trade relations, providing for the
ransom and exchange of captives, and ceding the island of Basilan to Spain.
It did not, however, put an end to the raids. 31
Hopes of a more effective peace were entertained with the accession of
Alimuddin to the Sulu sultanate in 1735. This young man gave promise
of being an enlightened monarch. He had received a more liberal education
than his predecessors, had traveled widely in Southeast Asia, spoke both
Arabic and Straits Malay fluently, and was well versed in Koranic law.
According to Saleeby, he did actually introduce a number of salutary
reforms. He revised the Sulu code of laws and improved the administration
of justice. He tried to restore the religion of his people to its primitive
purity by causing parts of the Koran and Arabic legal and religious texts
to be translated into the Sulu language. He stimulated trade by issuing a
standard coinage. He organized a standing army and navy to keep law
and order, and especially to suppress private piratical expeditions. So
Saleeby tells us ; but he fails to mention whether these forces were used for
any other object, as for instance an “official” raid. 32
At any rate, he showed himself much more cordial to Spanish overtures,
and in 1737 he signed an improved version of the Ki Kuan treaty. This
544 rta Jesuits in the Philippines
version, which we may call the Valdes Tamon treaty after the incumbent
Spanish governor, added to the earlier convention two important articles.
It was to be an offensive-defensive alliance, and the signatories made them-
selves responsible for infractions of the peace by their respective subjects.
This second provision nullified the excuse so often used by sultans in the
past, that the raids on Spanish territory were carried out by obstreperous
subjects without their knowledge and consent. 3 3 What should be noted,
however, is the absence from the Valdes Tamon treaty of one of the
principal articles of the Lopez treaty of 1646, namely, the freedom
granted to Spanish missionaries of preaching and to Moslem Sulus of em-
bracing the Christian religion.
Partly in order to remedy this defect, and partly also to neutralize the
efforts of the anti-Zamboanga lobby at Madrid, the Philippine Jesuits sent
Jose Calvo as special procurator to Spain. His representations resulted in
Philip V's addressing a letter to Ahmuddin, dated 12 July 1744 * anc ^
another, couched in similar terms and of identical date, to Pakir Maulana
Kamza of Magindanau, who had in the meantime subscribed to the
Valdes Tamon treaty. He informed the two sultans that he had ratified the
treaty, and expressed the hope that besides preserving the peace it might
help them and their subjects to realize that the Catholic faith was the only
true religion, and thus be led to embrace it. To this end he exhorted them
to admit the Jesuits of the Zamboanga mission into their dominions and
allow them to preach freely therein under their protection. 34
Jesuits were charged with delivering the royal letters; Francisco Zassi to
Sultan Kamza and Sebastian Ignacio de Arcada to Sultan Alimuddin.
Kamza' s reply (23 May 1747) was that he was glad to grant the king s
request, and both his council and his subjects approved of it. As for giving
the missionaries protection, "it is hardly necessary to remind me of this,
as I have always done so. All your subjects who come to my kingdom
receive my full protection." Alimuddin's reply (12 September 1747) was
even more encouraging. He said that he had already informed the Jesuits
that they could come to establish churches and residences in his kingdom,
and that his subjects were perfectly free to listen to their teachings and
embrace their faith if they so desired. In fact, his own son, Prince Israel,
was already under instruction by one of the fathers. He had been moved
to do this, he said, not only by the royal request, but
. . . because of the edifying and virtuous life of these priests, who are regarded by
all in our kingdom as dedicated men. Many of my subjects who have journeyed
on their laivful occasions to the islands of your Majesty have been so graciously
and hospitably received by these fathers that they cannot but show them the most
respectful consideration. Your Majesty invites me to look upon the Catholic
religion as the only true one. I shall endeavor to follow this suggestion insofar as
God gives me the time, the grace, and the light for it . 35
545
Doors Opening
Saleeby states that Alimuddin scrupulously observed the treaty of 1737,
and there is no reason to doubt this statement. In fact, he seems to have
antagonized some of his datus for that reason, and in 1742 he was obliged
to go to Zamboanga to seek the aid of the Spaniards in putting down a
rebellion led by Datu Sab dull a. He returned to Jolo with a Spanish force
which helped to prevent any actual outbreak, but the discontented datus
drew up a list of grievances and asked the governor of Zamboanga to arbi-
trate between them and the sultan. The governor, after hearing both sides,
decided in favor of Alimuddin. 36
During the several sojourns at Zamboanga which Alimuddin had to
make in connection with this affair, he became quite friendly with the
Jesuits, particularly with Father Josef Wilhelm, formerly of the province
of the Lower Rhine, who was assigned to Zamboanga in 1745. 37 It was
Alimuddin’ s custom to drop in at the college and engage the fathers in
conversation on matters pertaining to religion. They used Visayan, which
Alimuddin could speak, as a common language. Wilhelm relates that one
day, after one of the fathers had endeavored to explain to the sultan the
first commandment of the Christian law, the latter made a comment
which they did not quite expect: “Our very nature directs us to love
our friends and do them good/' he said. “Is it, then, necessary for us
to be commanded to love God, from whom we have received so many
benefits V 9
Clearly, Alimuddin needed to be told about Original Sin and its effects.
The better to be able to do this, Wilhelm set himself to learn not only the
Malay of the Sulus but Arabic, which was their learned language. The
Dominican commissary of the Inquisition at Manila, a very good friend of
his, sent him a thoughtful present in the form of an Arabic Book of Hours
lavishly printed at Rome in 1725. Alimuddin was very much taken with
it. Turning the pages, he came upon the creed, and asked Wilhelm if that
was a summary of the Christian belief. Wilhelm said yes, and made a few
comments upon it. Recalling the incident in a letter to his brother Johann,
Wilhelm wrote that he could not be sure what impression it had made on
the sultan, who said nothing, though he was quite thoughtful and
abstracted at the dinner to which the fathers invited him afterward. Later
many of the datus in Alimuddin’ s entourage came to inspect the book of
hours, and one of his panditas asked permission to copy out sections of it.
Young Israel, the crown prince, also began to frequent the college.
True to his word, Alimuddin joined the Spaniards in a joint expedition
against the Camucones of Borneo, taking with him a considerable force
of 8,000 men. The expedition was highly successful and returned in
triumph to Zamboanga after destroying 17 Camucon villages and 200 of
their raiding cruisers. Israel, who was not above pulling a Jesuit’s leg, told
Wilhelm tall tales about the enemy which the latter gravely transmitted
546 The Jesuits in the Philippines
to his brother, such as, that the Camucones ate human flesh and were
provided by the Creator with tails*
When Governor Caspar de la Torre died in 1745, the acting governorship
was taken by the senior bishop of the colony, Bishop Juan de Arechederra
of Nueva Segovia. This was in accordance with a new policy which came
into effect in the eighteenth century, and it was fortunate for the Zam-
boanga Jesuits, for the new governor-bishop took a great deal of interest in
their work and was enthusiastic about pushing forward the conversion of
the Moros. Upon receiving the encouraging replies of the two sultans to
Philip V’s letter, he decided that no time was to be lost in founding a
mission at Magindanau and another at Jolo. He personally selected the
Jesuits who were to found these missions: Juan Moreno and Sebastian
Ignacio de Arcada for Magindanau (or, more precisely, Tamontaka, further
up the Great River), and Juan Angles and Josef Wilhelm for Jolo. To be
held in reserve as replacements at Zamboanga were Patricio del Barrio and
Ignacio Malaga* Accompanying each group was a staff of servants and
artisans who had had some military training, and so could serve as some
protection for the missionaries in case of need.
The bishop’s instructions to the missionaries are interesting. 38 They
were to persuade the sultans and their principal datus to send some of their
sons to Manila “in order that they become familiar with Spanish culture,
learn the Spanish language, and acquire other accomplishments suitable
to their age.” The sultans themselves should be invited to pay Manila a
visit. The fact should be stressed that the sole aim of the Crown in sending
the missionaries was the spread of Christianity, “not to obtain any tem-
poral advantage whatsoever*” Let the missionaries closely supervise their
respective staffs, in order to avoid friction between them and the local
population. This should be called to the attention of the sultans, “that
the colonial government, relying on their royal word to protect the lives
of the missionary fathers, has refrained from sending with them the usual
escort of one or two companies of Spanish troops, and has no intention of
establishing any forts.” In all other things not covered by these instructions,
the fathers were to act according to their good judgment, regularly report-
ing to Manila on their progress and needs.
Since Arcada and Wilhelm were already in Zamboanga, Moreno,
Angles, Del Barrio, and Malaga left Manila in October 1747 to join them.
Or so they hoped; but when they reached Zamboanga on 2 1 January of the
following year, both were dead. An epidemic had broken out and they
perished taking care of the plague-stricken. It was Malaga, therefore, who
accompanied Moreno to Magindanau. Kamza had been succeeded by
Muhammad Amiruddin, who was having difficulty establishing his right
to rule against Muhammad Malinug. He therefore sent word to the gover-
nor of Zamboanga that he could guarantee the safety of the fathers only
Doors Opening 547
if they came with troops to help him against Malinug. Two armed galleys
were detached from the Zamboanga squadron, and with these Moreno and
Malaga gained Amiruddin' s side at Matiling. They were coolly received,
for Amiruddin had begun to realize that he could not carry Magindanau
with him as long as he showed himself friendly to the Spaniards and
favorable to Christianity. Ugly rumors reached Zamboanga that Amiruddin
planned to surprise the Spaniards and take possession of the galleys. When
Moreno confirmed these rumors, the governor recalled both the mission-
aries and the galleys to Zamboanga. They had been at Magindanau only
six months. 39
It was also being brought home to Alimuddin that he had gone too fast
and too far in the matter of admitting Christian missionaries to Jolo. A
powerful faction led by his brother Bantilan openly announced that they
would never allow it. Nevertheless, Alimuddin sent for Angles and Del
Barrio to come. He did not dare give them a house and church in the town,
as originally planned, but kept them in his palace and seldom permitted
them to leave it. They were safer thus, but they also could do little of the
work they came to do. Meanwhile the attitude of Bantilan and his faction
became more and more threatening. What exactly Alimuddin' s reaction
was, what passed between him and Bantilan, what his real intentions were
in the actions that he subsequently took, are far from clear. The Spaniards
accused him of double-dealing, for reasons we shall presently see ; but it
is difficult to be certain of this. We can only be certain of the facts, which
were as follows. 40
As we saw earlier, Prince Israel had been taking instructions as a cate-
chumen, with his father's consent, first under Wilhelm and then under the
Jolo missionaries. Alimuddin now sent him away from Jolo and Angles
subsequently learned that he had been placed under the tutelage of Moslem
panditas. Next, Alimuddin suddenly announced his intention of going to
see the governor at Manila. He confided to the Jesuits that it was to obtain
military and financial aid to meet the situation at Jolo, which he described
as extremely critical. Some color is given to this by the fact that he left at
night, without his usual state, almost as a fugitive; but Angles noted that
among those who carried torches to light him to his ship were Bantilan and
other datus of his faction.
As soon as Alimuddin had left, Bantilan took over the government
without opposition. He did not send away the Jesuits, but he gave them
no opportunities for accomplishing their mission, and as sultan he took
the regnal name of Mu'izzuddin — Defender of the Faith. Angles and
Del Barrio took the hint and retired to Zamboanga.
Alimuddin landed at Cavite on 2 January 1749 an< ^ was gi yen a ro y a 1
reception by Governor Arechederra. But instead of immediately getting
down to what he said was the main purpose of his visit, he told Arechederra,
548 The Jesuits in the Philippines
to the great joy of that good prelate, that he wanted to be instructed
in the Christian faith preparatory to receiving baptism. This task was
assigned to Father Fulcher Spilimberg and other Jesuits of the College of
Manila. After almost a year of instruction, the royal catechumen formally
asked to be baptized (i December 1749). Spilimberg, asked by Governor
Arechederra for his opinion, replied rather unexpectedly that he did not
think the sultan had the proper dispositions to receive the sacrament. The
governor-bishop refused to believe this, anxious as he was to see a Christian
on the throne of Jolo, and appointed a board of experts to examine Ali-
muddin. After the examination all but the two Jesuits on the board
recommended that he be baptized. Arechederra now requested the newly
arrived archbishop of Manila, Pedro Martinez de Arizala, to confer the
sacrament ; but this prelate, after consulting Spilimberg, refused. Where-
upon the governor took the bold step of sending Alimuddin to Pangasinan,
which was within the limits of his own diocese of Nueva Segovia, and
having him baptized there (28 April 1750). Alimuddin returned to Manila
as Fernando I of Jolo, and the city gave itself to four days of fireworks,
bullfights, masques, and other festivities.
Three months later, in July, the new governor of the Philippines, Don
Francisco Jose de Obando, Marquis of Obando, arrived. He decided to
send an expedition with Alimuddin to help him recover Jolo from Bantilan.
Whether he demanded as a condition that Alimuddin swear allegiance to
the Spanish Crown as a vassal, is not certain. The fact is that he did, and
afterward, either at Obando* s request or dictation, wrote to Amiruddin of
Magindanau exhorting him to do likewise. At least, this was what the
Spanish text of his letter said. As for the Arabic text, it occurred to Gover-
nor Zacarias of Zamboanga to have it translated before transmitting it.
It reproduced the Spanish version, but at the end were the following
words : I wish to give you to understand . . . that I write under pressure,
being under foreign dominion, and am compelled to obey whatever they
tell me to do and to say whatever they tell me to say.” Was this proof of
treasonable intent ? Zacarias thought so.
Alimuddin and his retinue left for Zamboanga on 19 May 1751 aboard
the frigate San Fernando . Convoying it were the seven warships of the Jolo
expedition under the command of Field Marshal Ramon Abad. The Jesuit
chaplain on the San Fernando reported later that AlimuddiiTs conduct
during the voyage was hardly that of a Christian. He consented to be
present at Mass, but did not kneel at the consecration nor show any signs
that he recognized God in the sacrament. Arrived at Zamboanga, he
waited there while Abad proceeded with his warships to Jolo. After a token
resistance Bantilan retired inland and the datus he left in command capitu-
lated. It was agreed that Datu Astn would go to Zamboanga with a suitable
retinue to escort Alimuddin back to his kingdom.
Doors Opening 549
Meanwhile, Zacarias’ suspicions had been thoroughly aroused by Ali-
muddin’ s Arabic letter and by what he considered other indications of
duplicity. The sultan, as an honored guest, had the free run of the fort and
stayed within it with a considerable entourage; and now still another
entourage was coming from Jolo to join him. As soon as Datu Asin and his
followers had landed, he had their boats searched. It was as he had feared;
they were loaded with arms and ammunition. He immediately placed
Alimuddin and all his household under arrest. A search of their quarters
turned up more arms, and among Alimuddin’ s personal effects were found
a number of Islamic books and writings. That same year the man who had
left Manila a king returned to it a prisoner.
War without quarter was declared against the Sulus. Abad, who had
retired to Zamboanga, now returned to reduce Jolo in earnest. He landed
after a seventy-two-hour bombardment, but was flung back on his ships in
disorder. The Sulus retaliated with heavy raids on the Visayas, making
1753 lrL Saleeby’s judgment the bloodiest year in the whole history of the
Moro wars. The following year the people of Lanao began to muster against
the re-established fort of Iligan. The garrison, reinforced by troops from
Bohol and Manila, marched against them and won a number of resounding
victories. Commanding one of the columns was the Jesuit chaplain of
Iligan, Father Jose Ducos. But Jolo remained unconquered, and the Sulus,
growing bolder every year, struck further and further north until they
were steering their raiding cruisers right into Manila Bay. The Manila
government attempted to negotiate with Bantilan, even releasing Ali-
muddin’s daughter, the Lady Fatimah, for this purpose; but to no avail.
When the English occupied Manila in 1762, they found Alimuddin still a
prisoner in Fort Santiago. They set him free and restored him, apparently
with Bantilan’s consent, to the sultanate; in return for which he ceded to
them his territories in North Borneo and the adjacent islands of Tulayan
and Balambangan. Thus the door of the Moslem south which had begun
to swing open so promisingly to the Jesuits at Zamboanga swung shut
again. But at least they were now at its threshold, and there they intended
to remain until, with God’s help, they could find a key to fit its complicated
lock. 41
Still another field of missionary enterprise which beckoned to the Philip-
pine Jesuits at this time w r as that of the Palaus, or what are now the Caro-
line and Marshall Islands. 42 The people of this archipelago, sailing from one
atoll to another in their primitive dugouts, would occasionally be blown
off their course either to the Marianas or to the eastern Yisayan islands.
In 1671, for instance, the galleon Buen Socorro picked up some of them,
half dead from hunger and exposure, near Capul. In 1696 a larger group of
tw T enty-nine men, women, and children were cast ashore at Guiuan, Samar,
and nursed back to health by the people of that Jesuit mission. By arranging
55 °
The Jesuits in the Philippines
sea shells on a table they were able to convey to the missionaries the num-
ber and disposition of their island homes. Paul Klein, that man of wide-
ranging interests, embodied all the information he could extract from them
regarding these “new Philippines” in a report to the general. In 1697 the
Dutch clockmaker of Cavite, Brother Jakob Xavier, set out in a sailing
galley to search for them, but was wrecked on the coast of Samar.
However, the interest of the province was aroused, and in 1705 its
procurator, Andres Serrano, obtained Pope Clement XTs endorsement of a
plan to open a mission there. 43 With this, and with cedulas from Philip V
ordering the Manila authorities to give him all the assistance he required,
he returned to the Philippines in 1708. Some months before his arrival
three Jesuit priests and a lay brother had set out on their own in a galley
provided by Governor Zabalburu, but were forced to return without
finding anything. Another expedition set out in 1709 and was again
unsuccessful. Finally, in 1710, Serrano himself set out with two ships and
four Jesuit companions. His vessel foundered near Palapag, and he and his
shipmate, Father Jose de Bobadilla, had to remain behind. Father Jacques
Duberon, Father Joseph Cortil, and Brother Etienne Baudin went ahead
in the other vessel, a small dispatch boat. On 30 November 1710,
St. Andrew's day, they sighted Sonsorol, one of the Palaus. The two priests
landed with some of the crew, but left Baudin behind, much to his disgust.
Before they could get back aboard a stiff offshore breeze swept the ship out
of sight of the island. Despite all the efforts of those left on board, they
could not get back to retrieve their companions, but were compelled to run
before the wind until they landed, on 3 January 1711, at Lianga on the
eastern coast of Mindanao.
In October of that same year the pertinacious Serrano tried again — for
the last time. His ship ran into a storm off Marinduque and sank with all
hands except one seaman who staggered ashore at Tayabas. With Serrano
died his two companions: Father Ignacio Crespo and Brother Etienne
Baudin.
It was now decided to make Guam the base for further efforts to reach
the Palaus and re-establish contact with Duberon and Cortil. Expeditions
sent out in 1712 and 1722 were unsuccessful. Finally, Fathers Juan
Antonio Cantova and Victor Walter, setting out from Guam in a small
ship with a crew of twenty, were able to make the island of Mogmog on
2 March 173 There they found out that Duberon, Cortil, and their
companions had been clubbed to death by the natives of Sonsorol. Un-
daunted by this, Cantova stayed to begin the mission while Walter sailed
back for more men and supplies. Walter returned in 1733 with Brother
Lewin Schrevel and a crew of forty-four. They discovered the island of
Falalep. The inhabitants fled at their approach, but they were able to
capture one of them. Up and down that empty waste of waters they
Doors Opening 551
sailed without catching sight of Mogmog, until they were forced at last to set
their course for Manila, where they cast anchor on 14 July* When the man
they had captured on Falalep was finally able to make himself understood,
he told them what had happened to Cantova. Some of the Mogmog people
enticed him with a summons to baptize a dying man. When he came, they
told him that “he was always preaching to them against their ancient
customs and law, and teaching them a different law and customs, which
they had no mind to follow, being content with that of their ancestors.”
For this reason they had decided to kill him ; which they did. Then they
killed the rest of the expedition, fourteen persons in all, sparing only a
Tagalog named Domingo Lizardo, whom the tamol or chief of the island
had adopted as his own son.
FI ere again a door had opened. Blood was the price of admission; but in
the Marianas and the Philippines, other Jesuits waited on wind and
weather for the opportunity to set up once more the crosses that had fallen
with Cantova, Cortil, and Duberon.
Chapter Twenty-Three
A DOOR IS CLOSED
During the last ten years of the seventeenth century and the first five or so
of the eighteenth no Jesuits joined the Philippine province from Europe*
This was partly because of the doubt which existed during this period as
to whether the province could, or should, retain its parishes and missions.
True, the Crown had not accepted the resignation of them which the
general, Tirso Gonzalez, had made in 1691; but immediately thereafter
came the controversy between Archbishop Camacho and the religious
orders, which was not definitely settled by the Holy See until 1705* The
principal reason, however, was the lack of men under which the Spanish
provinces continued to labor, with the result that the Jesuit missions in the
Spanish Indies became even more dependent in the eighteenth century
than in the seventeenth on volunteers from other European provinces. As
has been shown, most of the volunteers for the Philippines came from the
Hapsburg dominions in northern Italy and Central Europe. But, when the
accession of the Bourbon Philip V in 1700 brought about the War of the
Spanish Succession, this source w*as cut off until the restoration of peace
in 17x4.
Thus, with only Mexico to depend on for replacements, the Philippine
province declined steadily in number, until in 1706 there were only 26 left
in the community of the College of Manila : 1 3 priests, 2 scholastics, and
1 1 lay brothers. However, the procurators dispatched by the provincial
congregations of 1701 and 1706 were able to send back a number of
expeditions, and in 17x3 the total membership of the province stood at
145, of whom 101 were priests, 7 scholastics, and 37 lay brothers. As may
be seen in Table 9, it rose in subsequent years to 165, and even 172, for
with the end of the war the Spanish government once again permitted
non-Spanish Jesuits (except Italians from the kingdom of Naples and the
duchy of Milan) to volunteer for the Indies. 1
We may say, in general, that a very high degree of harmony was main-
tained among the various nationalities that composed the Philippine
province during the eighteenth century. The preceding chapter showed
Spaniard and German, German and Czech, Frenchman and Italian working
closely and effectively together at various enterprises. Nor was there any
appreciable distinction made in selecting men for the more important and
responsible posts. Fink and Maerckl succeeded Murillo Velarde in the
552
A Door is Closed 553
Table 9. Number of Members oj the Philippine Province in the Eighteenth Century
Year
Priests
Scholastics
Brothers
Novices
Total
1713
IOI
7
37
145
1719
1 10
7
35
13
165
1725
I X
32
? a
157
1737
122
H
3 6
172
1768
I l6
2
2 9
I
K
00
a. It is not certain whether or not the novices were being computed with the scholastics
and brothers, as was sometimes done in earlier catalogues.
Sources : Annual Letters, ARSI Phil. 8.
chair of canon law; Serrano succeeded Klein as rector of San Jose. Of the
ten rectors present at the provincial congregation of 1724, three were
Italians; of the twenty-eight fathers present, thirteen were non-Spaniards.
Between 1703 and 1768 the province was administered by one French,
three German- Austrian, and three Italian provincials.
There was friction, naturally. The general was kept informed of it in
great detail by a young Italian named Bartolommeo Lugo, who was, we
suspect, somewhat deficient in a sense of humor. 2 When his expedition
arrived in the Philippines, all were made to turn in the books and other
equipment they brought from their respective provinces in order that they
might be more equitably distributed. This was most unfair, says Lugo, for
the non-Spaniards w^ere simply loaded with all kinds of things, whereas
the Spaniards had hardly anything at all to contribute. Again, when he
was assigned to the College of Cavite, it was a sore trial for him to come
to the recreation after meals, for his three Spanish companions teased him
unmercifully. One of them who had been to Rome, kept making dispar-
aging remarks about Italian cooking, while the others poked fun at the vile
Spanish of Father Antonio Tuccio, even though he had been twice
provincial and was now dead, having died in the odor of sanctity. At the
renovations of vows, the non-Spaniards were always being tagged with
certain defects, such as that of “ seeking one's own comfort." And what
do they consider comfort ? Why, simply trying to be neat and to keep one's
room in order — composte^a et agiustate^a di camera l One day, nine or ten
of the fathers were in the barber shop of the College of Manila having their
beards trimmed, Lugo among them, when one of the Spaniards present
had the incredible gall to affirm that Italians were inclined to sensuality;
and if you don't believe it, he said, look at the kind of books they write !
Everyone laughed at this, and Lugo had great difficulty in restraining
himself from giving them all a piece of his mind. However, he says
554 The Jesuits in the Philippines
virtuously, silence was supposed to be kept in the barber shop, so he held
his peace.
Remarks of this sort were undoubtedly faults, all the more inexcusable
as they are explicitly forbidden in the Jesuit rules of conduct; still, the
general and his assistants probably realized that Lugo had somewhat
magnified the malice behind them. What gave them greater concern were
certain more serious defects to which Lugo also called attention. One was
that the provincial and the rector of the College of Manila were apparently
served a different, and better meal than the rest of the community. At
least, Lugo says, they seemed to have chicken much more frequently. This
may conceivably have been for reasons of health ; but, if not, then it was a
violation of that common life which Saint Ignatius wanted the superiors
of the Society to share with their subjects. Again, there was a noticeable
lack of enthusiasm for the Marianas mission among some of the younger
fathers, and a certain amount of maneuvering went on to avoid being sent
there. The ministries of the college church, such as preaching and the hear-
ing of confessions, were not being attended to as well as they used to.
There was even opposition, when Tuccio was provincial, to such a charac-
teristically Jesuit apostolate as the giving of lay retreats. The chapels in
some of the outlying mission stations in the Visayas were reportedly being
allowed to go to rack and ruin. In some places the fathers dealt too harshly
with the people ; in others, too familiarly. Certain rubrics of the Mass and
other liturgical functions were not being kept, either through ignorance
or carelessness. But most serious of all, scholastics were being put to
study philosophy without having completed their juniorate. Lugo even
mentions the case of five novices who were considered as having had their
• ♦ * O
novicesnip during the voyage from Mexico and were then assigned to the
first year of philosophy without having any juniorate whatever. And then
there was the lay brother who was sent to help take care of one of the
estates while still a novice. Superiors, worried by a rapidly dwindling
personnel, doubtless felt justified in taking these short-cuts; but they
were dangerous short-cuts nevertheless. Lugo felt that a visitor was needed
to put a stop to these irregularities and reorganize the affairs of the province
after a thorough inspection.
Some of these observations are confirmed by other reports. In the
memorial of his visitation of the College of Manila which the provincial,
Jose de Velasco, drew up in 1705, he noted that the doors of the college
church were being closed earlier than they used to be, thus turning away
many people who would otherwise have come to confession. He ordered
the former practice to be restored. Some of the missals in the sacristy
lacked the more recently approved Masses, while in others they were
inserted helter-skelter, so that it was no easy task to find them. Let the
father prefect of the church take the trouble to look through all the
A Door is Closed
555
missals and remedy this defect* Many books were missing from the pro-
vincial's library and from that of the college; let them be returned, and
returned to the right shelf and section, for there was great disorder in this
respect. Also, there was some remissness in keeping the libraries up to date.
The provincial's library was supposed to have a complete collection of
all the books in the native languages published either by Jesuits or others ;
this should be attended to, “even if it should be necessary to buy such
books." 3 Schmitz, in one of his letters, deplores the low estate to which
the study of Latin had fallen in the province. 4 Exsulat enim hie latinitas> he
said; “some are admitted to the Society who cannot even decline a noun,
and anyone who can translate Thomas a Kempis is considered ready for
philosophy ; which, incidentally is taught here in Spanish, while the text-
book to which our theologians have recourse most often is a Spanish
translation of Busembaum [a Jesuit moralist]." Schmitz wrote this in
1730, after he had been away from Manila eight years. Matters improved
considerably during his absence, for in 1721 Father General Tamburini
sent a visitor to the Philippines.
The visitor was Juan Antonio de Oviedo, a criollo of Santa Fe de Bogota.
He had had considerable administrative experience as rector of three
separate colleges in Mexico, secretary to the provincial there, and pro-
curator of the province. A sharp-eyed biographer describes him as
. . . above average in height, heavy-set, big-boned, and muscular. His complexion
was choleric, fiery and resolute. There was an air of distinction about his baldness,
for the little hair he had left was iron-grey and his skull was extremely hard
[< durissimo ]. His countenance was full-faced and grave; his eyebrows, thick and
overhanging; his eyes, small and bloodshot; his nose big, with mouth in propor-
tion; his hands thick, sinewy, and powerful; his bearing active and alert. 5
A thoroughly formidable person ; or at least, as our biographer notes, he
looked formidable until he spoke ; and then it became apparent that here
was a strong but very gentle priest. One of his first acts after receiving his
appointment as visitor was to approach a wealthy friend of his, the Marquis
of Villapuente, and obtain from him a gift of 5,000 pesos for the mission
of Bohol, which needed it badly. He set sail from Acapulco on 10 March
1723, his companion being a young priest whose name must by now be
familiar to those who have taken the trouble to glance at the notes to this
narrative: Pedro Murillo Velarde. They spent a month in the Marianas
and on 30 June arrived in Manila, where they were welcomed by the
scholars of San Jose with orations — Latin ones, pace Schmitz — and a play
in which the principal characters were Francis Xavier, Idolatry, Glory of
God, and Society of Jesus, while a wit playing the part of a donado pro-
vided comic relief.
After spending some time in the College of Manila, the visitor spent
556 The Jesuits in the Philippines
seven months touring the Visayan missions and discussing problems and
policies at a general conference of the missionaries which he held at
Carigara. He did as much for the Tagalog parishes and missions upon his
return to Luzon, and on 14 May 1724 published the ordinances of his
visitation. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find these ordinances. All
that we know for certain is that he suppressed the category of donados,
ordaining that those who performed domestic service in Jesuit establish-
ments should either be lay brothers or paid employees. He also abolished
the last vestige of any practice which might be interpreted as engaging in
trade. 6
It is regrettable that we have so little definite information regarding the
results of Oviedo's visitation. However, we may reasonably suppose that
he introduced whatever reforms were needed in the religious and academic
life of the College of Manila, for the practices and procedures in force in
that institution thirty years later suggest a much more vigorous spiritual
life and educational standards far more demanding than those which, if
we are to believe Lugo and Schmitz, existed earlier in the century. But
before we take up the Costumhres del Colegio de nuestro Padre San Ignacio de
Manila of 1752, it might be well to give the reader some idea of the
physical plant of the college as it was in the eighteenth century. 7
As mentioned earlier, the general plan of the main building w r as that of a
quadrilateral with an inner patio open to the sky. Around this patio was a
paved corridor, separated from it by a low wall and pillars. Opening on the
corridor were the classrooms of theology, canon law, civil law, philosophy,
and grammar ; the aula general or assembly hall in which public disputations
and other academic functions were held; the offices of the province and
college procurators ; and two establishments which deserve a closer look :
the pharmacy and the printing press.
We do not know the exact date when the printing press was founded,
but it was certainly in operation during the eighteenth century. Murillo
proudly makes the claim that it produced work “as neat as any in Spain,
and often with misprints less gross and more tolerable/' After examining
some of its extant publications, such as Murillo's own history and his
deservedly famous map of the Philippines, we can confidently endorse the
claim. The master printer and engraver in Murillo's time was a Filipino,
Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay, about whom nothing, unfortunately, has sur-
vived except the silent testimony of his work that he was a skilled and
conscientious craftsman.
We do not know either when exactly the college pharmacy was started, but
we do know who started it— the very capable and very kind Brother Georg
Josef Kamel. 8 Brother Kamel was born in 1661, a native of the city of
Brunn in what is now Czechoslovakia. He entered the Society in 1682 and
came to the Philippines in 1688. He had studied pharmacy before
A Door is Closed
557
becoming a Jesuit, and his superiors, realizing the value of such a skill,
assigned him to the College of Manila and gave him every opportunity to
develop and use it for the benefit not only of the community but of the
colony. As Murillo tells us, the pharmacy which he established in the college
. . . turned out to be of a great service to the whole neighborhood of Manila and
to all the islands, because of the supply and variety of remedies it offered for every
kind of illness. The citizens began to come to him with great confidence, and
much more so when they saw his great ability. It happened occasionally that
someone committed a slip of the pen, or that the ctiratideros [practitioners without
professional training] — of whom there are plenty here without science or art —
prescribed a bigger dose than the case required. At such times the brother would
alter the prescription, reducing it to the proper dosage, with very good results . . .
The doors of the pharmacy were always wide open to the poor, toward whom the
brother always exercised the most generous charity. He not only gave them various
medicines but administered these medicines himself and cured their ills and
ailments . . . During an epidemic which broke out in those days, the care which
he lavished on the sick was extraordinary. He saw Christ in his patients and gave
himself to their service with such alacrity that anyone could see it was God who
was the moving force of his ministrations. Nor did he limit his charity to those
nearby in Manila or its environs. He sent medicines and drugs even to the natives
and poor people of the Visayan islands, for whom he always had a special affection,
for in their case charity was exercised with greater disinterestedness. 9
All this must have kept Brother Kamel very busy; indeed, we know that
in 1705 the rector of the college, with the unanimous approval of his con-
suitors, gave him three lay assistants, one as an apprentice in the pharmacy
itself and the other two to help take care “of the garden which Brother
has planted, consisting entirely of rare and medicinal herbs / 1 Nevertheless,
he found the time to make botanical, entomological, and zoological
observations which won him an international reputation. He corresponded
with botanists in Batavia, Madras, and London, sending them meticulous
descriptions and drawings of Philippine plants. Having got in touch with
the English zoologist John Ray, he wrote a Philippine supplement to the
latter's Historia plantarum . It was divided into three books, the first and
third of which were published entire by Ray himself, and the second piece-
meal by his colleague James Petiver. The drawings which he sent to illus-
trate his notes have not, however, been published; about 300 of them are
preserved in the British Museum and the Jesuit archives at Louvain.
Brother Kamel seems to have been the first to call the attention of
European pharmacologists to the Saint Ignatius bean (strychnos Ignat ii Berg.),
one of the plants from which strychnine is derived. The “bean" is really
the seed of a vine known to the Visayans as igasnd , and probably got its
Spanish name from the Jesuits of Catbalogan, where it was common. Post-
Linnaean botanists are sometimes inclined to look down upon Brother
558 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Kamel as an amateurish and inaccurate observer, but this is in part the
fate of all pioneers, and in part a consequence of the fact that only his
published notes, not his drawings, are generally available as a basis for
judgment. His contemporaries, who had access both to his notes and his
drawings, had a great admiration for him; and the great Linne himself
thought it eminently fitting to name an oriental flower, thea japonica , after
this humble Jesuit savant. Today, everyone is familiar with the camellia,
but few remember after whom it was named.
But to return to my description of the college building. Part of the inner
patio was devoted to Brother Kamel's plots of medicinal herbs ; the rest of
it was a rose garden. Two stairways, one on the north wing and the other
on the south wing of the house, led to the first story ; a third staircase led
from the lobby at the northeast corner to the choir loft of the church.
The western and northern section of the first story was occupied by the
community recreation room, which thus had windows overlooking the
bay on one side and the city on the other. The view from the bay side was
usually a lively one, for there, as Murillo tells us, one could watch “all the
galleons, dispatch boats, galleys, junks, and vessels of every rig imaginable
coming in from or sailing out to America, China, Coromandel, Batavia,
and other ports of the East, and the provinces of these islands/' The depar-
ture of the Acapulco ship must have been a particularly stirring sight.
Schurz reconstructs it from the documents as follows :
On the day when the galleon cleared from Cavite the final ceremonies and
official formalities were performed. From her anchorage under the headland of
Cavite she was brought up the bay as close to the walled city as her draught
allowed. Here the governor consigned the ship's papers and the royal ensign to
her officers and delivered over the galleon to her commander. From the church of
Santo Tomas a procession of chanting friars carried the effigy of the Virgin
Patroness of the galleon along the walls and then to a salvo of seven guns delivered
it on board. Prayers were offered up in all the churches of Manila for a happy
voyage, while the archbishop blessed the galleon from the ramparts as her sails
filled and she moved heavily away toward Mariveles and the open sea. 10
The walls of the recreation room, as well as those of the corridor outside,
were decorated with portraits, maps, and landscapes, many of them the
work of the gifted Brother Rodriguez. Next door to the recreation room
was the college library, of which Murillo says that “it has not its like in
the islands, either in the number or the quality of its books." Besides
which, in many of the fathers' living rooms, there were “considerable
collections." No wonder Father Provincial Velasco did not find as many
books as he thought the library possessed ! On the same floor was the
community dining room, the domestic chapel, the infirmary with a
smaller chapel for the convenience of the sick, and an entire wing reserved
A Door is Closed
559
for the laymen and clerics who came to make closed retreats. In this
connection Murillo mentions the fact that the Brothers of Saint John of
God, who had charge of the hospital of the Misericordia, regularly make
their annual retreat in the college in two groups under Jesuit direction.
On the second story were living rooms and probably also the section
reserved to the novices. There was a third story before the earthquake of
1645, but this had been tom down and replaced by an azotea . East of the
college building and contiguous with it was the college church, running
parallel to Calle Real and with a paved plaza in front of it. West of the
college building, that is, between it and the city wall, was a garden and
orchard, at the far end of which were the quarters of the college servants.
Besides living rooms, they had a chapel of their own and a hall for their
sodality. In the garden were seven wells which supplied the house with
water ; one of them was potable. South of the college building and church,
on the next block, was the College of San Jose. The street now called Calle
San Jose, which runs at right angles to Calle Real, originally separated the
two blocks until it was closed to traffic. Thus, for all practical purposes,
the two colleges and the church occupied a single compound. Where
exactly in this compound the elementary school was located is not clear,
though it was probably in the same block as San Jose. The architectural
style of this complex building was baroque — insofar as it could be said to
have any style at all. The French astronomer Le Gentil, who damns it
with faint praise, prefers to call it “rustic.”
The College of Saint Ignatius [he says] is a fairly presentable edifice. Despite
its shortcomings, it is without a doubt the best and most correctly constructed in
Manila. The exterior of the church, which stands on Calle Real, presents a rustic
type of architecture fairly well conceived. The main doors, on the other hand, are
frightful, belonging to no recognized order and all out of proportion. The interior
of the church is quite intelligently planned, although die main altar does not
come up to the rest of the building, for all that it is overloaded with gilt. It is as
much in poor taste as the portals. 11
The Custom Book of 1752 12 gives us the order of time in which the
Jesuits of the college performed their principal community duties. It may
be summarized as follows:
A.M.
4:00
Rise
4:3°
Meditation
5:30
Mass
10:15
Examen
10: 30
Dinner, recreation
12:00
End of recreation
560
The Jesuits in the Philippines
P.M.
7:00
Litanies
7:15
Supper, recreation
8 : 30
Points
8:45
Examen
9 : 00
Retire
Breakfast was presumably taken immediately after Mass. The two
“examens” refer to the examination of conscience enjoined by Saint
Ignatius. “ Points” is the preparation of the matter for the next morning’s
meditation, usually divided into a number of considerations or “points.”
After breakfast in the morning and after the noon recreation, the priests
and lay brothers went to the several duties, for which, being diverse, no
special order of time was prescribed. This was not the case, however, with
the novices, the junior scholastics (that is, those studying grammar and
humanities), and the fathers in their third probation (tertians). Their
schedules, outside of the times when they followed the rest of the
community, were as follows :
NOVICES
6:00
Reflection on the meditation. Make up bed ;
put room in order.
6 : 30
Breakfast
7:00
Private devotions
7:3°
Conference by novice master
8:00
Review of conference
8:15
Manual work in the refectory and kitchen
10:00
Free time
1:15
Spiritual reading
2 :oo
Manual work
2:15
Memory lesson
3 :oo
Penmanship
3:30
Little Office of Our Ladv
4:00
Manual work
4:30
Rosary
5:00
Walk in garden
5:30
Spiritual reading
6:00
Free time
6:15
Meditation
6:45
Reflection
A Door is Closed
JUNIORS
561
6 : 00 Reflection, etc* (as novices)
6:30 Breakfast
6:45 Private study
8 : 00 Class
9:00 Review of class matter
9:30 Private study
10:00 Free time
1:30 Spiritual reading
2 : 00 Rosary
2:30 Private study
3:30 Class
4:30 Review of class matter
5 : 00 Walk in garden
5:30 Extra reading under professor's direction
6:00 Free time
TERTIANS
5:30 Reflection on meditation. Little Hours*
6:15 Mass
7:15 Breakfast* Make bed; put room in order*
7:45 Conference by tertian director
8:15 Scripture study
8:45 Free time
9 : 00 Study of Institute of the Society
10:00 Free time
2:00 Vespers and compline
2:30 Rosary
3 : 00 Matins and lauds
3:45 Study of the Spiritual Exercises
5 : 00 Walk in garden
5:45 Spiritual reading
6:15 Meditation
6:45 Reflection
The little hours" are those of the breviary; they, as well as the other
hours indicated — vespers and compline, matins and lauds — were recited
by the tertian fathers at the same time, but privately* It will be noted that
novices and tertians made an extra half hour of mental prayer in the after-
noon* The scholastics in philosophy and theology had an hour or so of
private study before the morning and afternoon classes in these faculties*
562 The Jesuits in the Philippines
To these we now turn. The daily class schedule according to the custom
book of 1752 was as follows:
THEOLOGY
8:00
Moral theology or canon law
8:45
Recess
9:00
Dogmatic theology
10:00
Recess
3 :oo
Dogmatic theology
4:00
Recess
4 :1 5
Conferencias or cases of conscience
5:00
Recess
ARTS
8:00
Lecture
9:00
Recess
9 :I 5
Recitation; exercises
10:00
Recess
3 :oo
Lecture
4:00
Recess
4 :1 5
Conferencias
5 :oo
Recess
Since no textbooks were used, the first part of each lecture period con-
sisted in the professor's dictating the lesson while the student took notes.
The rest of the period was devoted to explaining or expanding the more
difficult points. During the recess those who wished could go out to the
corridor for a breath of air, but the professor was to remain at his desk to
answer any questions the students might have, leaving only when the next
class was ready to begin.
The custom book does not elaborate on the conferencias scheduled for
the last period in the afternoon. It does say, how r ever, that on Tuesdays
the period was devoted to the discussion of a practical moral case, or
“case of conscience," in the theological curriculum. All the priests of the
community were obliged to join the theology students for this discussion.
The case was posted one or two days in advance, and several students or
priests were told off to look up the opinion of some recognized authority.
The period began with a brief review of the case discussed the previous
Tuesday. This was followed by a statement of the case under discussion.
Then those assigned presented the solutions of the authorities they had
consulted, one after the other. Finally, the Padre Resultor , the priest
appointed to solve the case, explained and defended his solution.
A Door is Closed
563
We also learn that it was during this period of conferencias that the
candidates for the Bachelor of Theology degree fulfilled one of the degree
requirements. This was a series of specimen lectures during which the
candidate, after giving a brief exposition of some assigned topic, was sub-
jected to questioning by three other students designated as objectors. We
can only guess at what other forms the conferencia might have taken. The
Professor of Moral Theology and the Professor of Canon Law were
supposed to take charge of it by turns, which suggests that they did not
lecture but merely presided over a class conducted by the students them-
selves, either as a review or as a discussion period. It would also be the
appropriate time, both in the philosophical and the theological curriculum,
for short lecture series or seminars in what we would call special or auxiliary
disciplines.
The second morning period in the arts curriculum was apparently
devoted to various forms of student activity, such as individual recitations,
informal disputations, and quizzes, whereby the professor could make sure
that his lectures were assimilated. It is, in fact, surprising how much time
this plan of studies gave to classs exercises not only in the lower grades of
grammar but even in the university disciplines. At practically every turn
we find the student giving an account of what he has learned, or whether
he has really learned it.
The philosophical or arts curriculum as prescribed by the Ratio Studiontm
of 1599 took three years. Completion by the student of the humanities
curriculum (one year of Poetry and one of Rhetoric) was a prerequisite.
The first-year subjects were Logic and Introduction to Physics, with the
professor basing his lectures on Aristotle's logical treatises. The second-
year subjects were Cosmology, Physics, Psychology, and Mathematics.
Aristotle’s Physics , De Coelo , and De Generations (Book I) were the texts on
which the lectures were based. Mathematics was studied from Euclid. The
third-year subjects were Psychology, Metaphysics, and Moral Philosophy,
expounded from Aristotle’s De Generatione (Book II), De Anima , Metaphysics f
and Ethics .
The theological curriculum took four years, with courses in Dogmatic
Theology, Moral Theology, Sacred Scripture, and Hebrew. In the Moral
Theology course a weekly discussion of practical moral cases was pres-
cribed. Canon Law was treated in this course before it was taught as a
separate subject. The Sentences of Peter Lombard and the Summa Theologica
of St. Thomas Aquinas formed the basis of the course in Dogmatic
Theology.
Moral Theology and Canon Law were two-year courses. The Custom
Book implies that they were taught by separate professors; early in the
seventeenth century, however, there seems to have been only one professor
for both. There were two professors of Dogmatic Theology. The professor
564 The Jesuits in the Philippines
who lectured in the morning was said to occupy the chair of prime; the
one who lectured in the afternoon, the chair of vespers. Since these two
courses ran for four years, and since no separate course in Sacred Scripture
is indicated, it must have been in one or the other of these courses that
the subject was covered. There was never more than one class of theologians
and one class of philosophers in any one year. The beginning student merely
joined the cycle as given.
Formal disputations in philosophy and theology were held every month.
These took place on Saturdays from 3 to 5 in the afternoon. A defendant
was appointed to explain and prove a thesis against two or more objectors.
Objections and replies had to be framed in the rigorous syllogistic form
developed by the medieval schools. At least once a year a public disputation
or act in philosophy was held, and another in theology. Invitations
were issued for these disputations and the theses to be defended were
printed and distributed in advance. Anyone in the audience could dispute
with the defendant after the appointed objectors were finished. We have
already mentioned the “ grand act/' in which an exceptionally capable
student was appointed to defend against all comers a list of theses covering
the entire field of philosophy and theology. A grand act was usually
scheduled to coincide with the provincial congregations, which brought
Jesuits from ever} 7 part of the province to Manila every five or six years.
The custom book of 1752 specifies the degree requirements of the
college. A student became eligible for the degree of bachelor of arts after
one and a half years of course work in the faculty of arts. He was required
to pass an oral examination before three examiners, each of whom would
cover three areas or topics. The first examiner covered terms, propositions
and oppositions, and syllogisms. The second covered predicables, predica-
ments, and the matter of Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytics . The third
examiner covered physics, the matter of Aristotle's De Generatione , and the
definition of the soul.
Completion of the philosophical curriculum (three years) was required
for eligibility for the licentiate in arts ; in addition to this the candidate
seems to have been expected to spend a year in preparation for his exami-
nation, although the Custom Book is somewhat obscure on this point.
The first degree requirement was a repetition, that is, the delivery of a pre-
pared lecture on a text of Aristotle selected by the candidate himself. This
was to be done in the presence of the rector of the college and the pro-
fessors and students of the faculty of arts. It was to last one full hour by the
hourglass, after which the candidate was to answer a number of questions
proposed by the students, with no subsumptions allowed. The second
degree requirement was a lection , that is, a quasi-extempore lecture on a
subject assigned to the candidate. The procedure was as follows. At the
end of the repeticion the Aristotelian corpus was opened before the rector
A Door is Closed
565
at three places at random. Of the questions treated in the pages that fell
open, the candidate selected one, and was then given forty hours in which
to prepare a dissertation on it, to be delivered before the same audience
and for the same length of time. At the end of the hour he was to answer
three or four arguments, that is, questions with subsumptions, or “lines,”
proposed by the professors of the faculty. After this ordeal the faculty cast
a secret vote, and if it was one of approval the candidate was awarded his
license to teach on the spot. The licentiate in arts could obtain his master's
degree at any time thereafter by presenting a minor act ( actillo ) or a philo-
sophical question treated with a measure of originality. After a brief
exposition of the question he was to answer arguments proposed first
by the rector of San Jose, then by a master of arts, and lastly by a
student.
The requirements for the bachelor's degree in theology were two years
of course work and three specimen lectures given during the afternoon
conferencias, as described above. After two more years of course work the
bachelor was permitted to try for his licentiate. As in philosophy he was
first asked to give a repeticion. This was to be the exposition of a scriptural
text in such a way that its dogmatic implications were made clear. At the
conclusion of the lecture the dogmatic sense of the text was to be framed
scholastically in the form of theses. Three arguments by student objectors
were to be answered without subsumptions. Note that this is the same
directive as that given by the custom book relative to the philosophical
repeticion; it is not clear whether the intention was to save time, or to
prescribe that the candidate's replies were to be definitive, that is, admit
of no subsumptions.
Next came the quodlibetal disputation. The candidate posted twelve
theses which he was prepared to defend against any student in the faculty.
Six of these theses were in scholastic and six in positive theology. During
the morning session of the disputation three student objectors asked the
candidates to explain and prove one of the six scholastic theses, after which
each presented his “line” of argument. The same procedure was followed
in the afternoon session, with three other students attacking one of the
positive theses. At the end of the session the three points for the leccion
were chosen at random in the presence of the rector, in the same way as in
the faculty of arts, except that this time the selection was made from the
first three books of the Sentences of Peter Lombard. The same term of forty
hours was given to the candidate to prepare, but instead of one leccion, he
was required to give two: one of an hour's duration on one of the three
points and the other of three quarters of an hour on another. He was then
subjected to questioning by four doctors of the faculty, after which his fate
was decided by secret ballot. The doctorate of theology was obtained in
the same manner as the master's degree in arts — by presentation of a minor
566 The Jesuits in the Philippines
act on a cuestion curios a, that is, one in which the candidate's ability for
original thought could be examined*
In 1717 Philip V founded three professorships of law in Manila: one of
canon law, another of civil law, and a third of Roman law* The purpose
of this foundation was to provide the colony with qualified attorneys,
because up to that time much of the pleading and legal work had been
conducted by ‘ * men ignorant of the law, who not only had not taken any
course in jurisprudence, but lacked even a nodding acquaintance with
grammar." Indeed, some of these so-called lawyers, solicitors, and legal
advisers were mestizos, native Filipinos, and even Negroes. Because of this
lack of trained men, priests were sometimes forced to take briefs and
appear in court*
The three professorships were independent of the two existing colleges
of Manila and Santo Tomas, and constituted a third institution under the
supervision of the audiencia. The first professors were sent specially from
Spain and given a salary of 1,000 pesos a year each* Their lecture halls
occupied one of the most commodious buildings of the city. There was
only one drawback. They had no students* In 1725 the three professors had
not managed to train a single graduate to succeed them* In view of this the
audiencia attached the professorships to the College of Manila, requesting
the Jesuits to provide the professors. Pedro Murillo Velarde was appointed
professor of both canon and civil law.
The College of Santo Tomas protested this action of the audiencia and
proposed to the king that the professorships should be abolished. The fact
that after eight years and the expenditure of 100,000 pesos they had not
produced even one jurist was clear proof of their utter uselessness* As a
consequence of this proposal the king ordered the foundation abolished*
However, the audiencia, suspending the execution of the order, represented
that with the professorships incorporated with the College of Manila, the
desired results were being obtained. By that time, the Jesuits had been able
to separate the mo chairs of canon and civil law and provide a professor for
each. While Murillo continued to teach canon law, a lay graduate of the
college, Don Domingo Neyra, who had offered his services free of charge,
occupied the chair of civil law. The authorities of the College of Manila
added their representations to those of the audiencia, suggesting that all
would be well if the king were to establish similar professorships in the
College of Santo Tomas.
Both these proposals were adopted. On 23 October 1733 Philip V issued
a cedula directing that the mo professorships in the College of Manila
should be maintained and two similar chairs should be established at Santo
Tomas. A salary of 400 pesos a year was to be attached to the two civil law
professorships* Some years later, Pope Clement XII authorized both
institutions to grant degrees in law. 13 The custom book of 1752 does not
A Door is Closed
567
give the degree requirements for canon or civil law. It may be that since
these courses were taken under regius professorships, it was the audiencia
that prescribed the requirements. However, Murillo himself informs us
that several public disputations on canonical subjects were held in his
time: one on betrothals and marriages, another on ecclesiastical court
procedure, a third on wills, and a fourth on contracts. 14 Later on, Murillo
expanded his lectures into a treatise, Cursus iuris canonici hispani it indici ,
which was published at Madrid in 1743* ^ was re-edited at least twice:
Madrid, 1763, and Madrid, 1791, both editions in two volumes. He also
published a short, popular treatise on how to draw up a will, Prdctica de
testamentos , which went into numerous editions. The one I have examined
is the second, Mexico, 1765.
Murillo was, like Klein, a man of many parts. He was not only a
canonist and historian, but a cartographer of some distinction. His interest
in the subject must have been well known in Manila, for, when a royal
order came in 1733 calling for a map of the Philippines which would incor-
porate the latest available information, it was to him that Governor
Valdes Tamon entrusted the project. The completed map was engraved the
following year in the college printing press by Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay.
Up to the end of the eighteenth century it was the standard map referred
to in admiralty proceedings, and later cartographers reproduced it
with only minor changes and often without acknowledgment. For this
reason copies of it are now quite rare. There is one in the Bioliotheque
Nationale, Paris, and another in the Library of Congress in Washington.
It was undoubtedly Murillo's interest in scientific studies which led him
to suggest that there was no particular point in having two chairs of civil
law in Manila. The Philippines would be better served, he said, if one of
them were converted into a professorship of medicine. This would remedy
the deplorable situation whereby the only qualified physicians in the
colony were to be found in Manila. Even such populous centers as Cavite
and Cebu had only herb doctors and quacks. A professorship of mathe-
matics would also be of great utility ; that is to say, mathematics as then
understood, which included not only mathematics proper but its various
practical applications, such as navigation, geography, architecture, and
military engineering.
Murillo made this suggestion in his Historia , which was published in
1749. 15 The very next year it was taken up, at least in part, by Governor
Obando, who founded a chair of mathematics in the college, and that
without suppressing the chair of civil law. His principal interest was to
provide trained pilots for the galleons. Le Gentil says that there was great
enthusiasm for the course while Obando was alive, but that interest in it
declined rapidly after his death in 1754* This cannot be quite accurate, for
we know from other sources that public disputations in mathematics were
568 The Jesuits in the Philippines
held at the college in 1758, 1759, 1 7^ 2 > and probably other years as welh
The rector of San Jose, writing to a friend in 1757, says that ‘‘the chair of
mathematics which Senor Obando founded continues to prosper — estd harto
hoyante ... It is occupied by Father Francisco Ortiz Zugasti, who was my
grammar master. He is the very man for it — made to order for the bag-
wigged gallants who are his students/' In the public disputation of 1762.
Don Jose de Sousa y Magallanes defended certain “ mathematical theses
relating to astronomy for the computation of the planets, and for the
calculation, prediction, and observation of eclipses of the moon and earth
(the sun does not suffer eclipse)/' Father Pascual Fernandez, professor of
mathematics, presided at the disputation. 16
Le Gentil's poor opinion of the mathematics taught at the College of
Manila may have been partly due to pique. He came in 1767, a savant
commissioned by the French government, to observe the transit of Venus
and Mercury across the face of the sun. He set up his instruments on the
flat tower of the building right across the street from the college. Yet never
a visit did he receive from the Jesuits l This made him quite indignant.
The very ladies of Manila, he said, showed a more lively curiosity in
scientific matters, for they w r ere always pestering him to show them around
his observatory. But the Jesuits did pay him a visit one day, and it must have
been a rather uncomfortable one, though he tries to pass it off lightly. A
remark which he had let fall, to the effect that the transit of Venus would
be impossible to explain in the Ptolemaic system, had gone the rounds of
the city. The two Jesuits who came to see him had heard of it, and they
asked him innocently to prove it. This is, of course, no easy thing, for
there are many ingenious ways of making the Ptolemaic system fit the
facts. So Le Gentil merely told them to go and read their fellow Jesuit,
Christopher Clavius, especially his commentary on John of Holywood's
treatise on the Sphere. They frankly admitted that they did not have a copy
of Clavius; this gave Le Gentil the opportunity to be superior, and, his
self-assurance restored, he advised them by all means to send for it, either
to Spain or Mexico. As it turned out, they did not have to. They were soon
given the opportunity, rather unexpectedly, to consult Clavius in the
libraries of his native Italy. 17
We have, for the sake of convenience, retained the original name of the
College of Manila throughout this narrative. It should be noted, however,
that it had other names. Some time after the canonization of Saint Ignatius
Loyola in 1622, it began to be called the College of San Ignacio. In the
second half of the seventeenth century it w*as also occasionally referred to
as a university, in the sense of being an institution empowered to grant
university degrees. This appelation became more frequent in the eighteenth
century, especially after the addition of the chairs of law and mathematics.
So much for higher studies. Let us now turn to the bottom rung of the
A Door is Closed 569
academic ladder and see how the elementary school was faring. According
to the custom book of 1752, its morning order was as follows:
At six-thirty the boys go to school. From six-thirty to seven they sharpen their
pens. At seven they form two rows and chant the Hail Mary and other prayers.
They go to the church where they hear Mass. After Mass they return to school in
good order. They begin class by reciting a cadenced prayer on their knees. Thus
by eight o'clock those who are learning to read are reading and those who are
learning to write are writing their copy, and this shall be until nine o'clock.
From nine to ten the written copies are corrected; first, the copies of those who
write large, who shall have finished first, then the copies of those who write
medium, and after that, the copies of those who write in small letters. While
the copies are being corrected they are to chant the catechism beginning with
Todofiel cristiano [Every faithful Christian].
Nothing else was scheduled for the morning. In those days Manila
lunched at eleven, because this enabled everyone to take a siesta and still
have enough daylight left to wind up the affairs of the day. The pens that
had to be sharpened were, of course, quill pens ; pencils had not yet come
into use. Apparently all the boys in the reading and writing class occupied
one large classroom, but were divided into several sections. There was a
lowest section of those who were just learning to read. Then three writing
sections, composed respectively of beginners those who write large”),
boys who have progressed sufficiently to form medium-sized letters, and
the proficient who could write a small, probably cursive hand. There was,
as we shall see presently, a fifth section composed of those who were
learning sums. The following was the afternoon order.
The boys come to school at two o'clock. Pens are sharpened from two to two-
thirty. A two-thirty class begins with a prayer as in the morning. Then those who
are learning to write are given lessons in continuous or letter writing; first, those
who write small in order that they may have more time to do their copies, then
those who write large ; and these latter shall be assigned the model that they are
ready for. From two- thirty to three-thirty those who are learning to read do their
reading assignments; at three-thirty they begin to recite in order and without
confusion. Those in writing are to work on their copies until they finish, which
shall be until four-thirty. From four o’clock to five, as in the morning, while
correction is going on, they chant the table [of prayers] and recite the catechism.
At five o'clock they say the holy rosary on their knees for the space of a quarter of
an hour. . . . During the morning and afternoon sessions attention shall be paid
to those who do sums at the time most convenient.
It seems clear from this that graded models were given to those in the
writing sections. The Spanish expression here translated as ’’model” is
primer renglon ; I take it that the teacher wrote a line of script at the top of
each boy’s sheet for him to copy, adapting the script to the boy’s abilities.
570 The Jesuits in the Philippines
The more proficient boys were given as models several lines of continuous
script and eventually a specimen letter. While those in the writing sections
were being set their tasks, those in the reading section were preparing the
lesson which each one was later to recite to the teacher. Each writing boy,
as soon as he finished his copy, presented it to the teacher for correction.
While individual correction was going on, those who had finished their
tasks chanted in unison the questions and answers of the catechism, which
they were supposed to know from memory. All this probably sounded like
bedlam to the casual passerby, but it was organized bedlam, in which
everyone was kept continuously occupied, without so much as half a
minute in which to fashion a spitball. Or so it was fondly hoped. Busiest of
all, perhaps, was the teacher, who was advised not to try to do everything
himself, but to share the work with his assistant. This assistant, probably
a layman, helped him to correct copies and hear lessons ; he also supervised
the pen-sharpening period ; but his main function was to apply the rod of
chastisement in due measure to the proper place.
The weekly holiday was probably Thursday, as in the upper classes.
On Saturday afternoons there were no regular lessons in reading and
writing. Instead, some of the boys committed the catechism to memory
while others answered questions on it. Toward the end of the period
teacher told a story from the Bible or an anecdote to illustrate devotion to
the Blessed Virgin. At four o’clock the boys went to the church to take
part in the Saturday devotions to Our Lady, after which class was dis-
missed.
As may be seen from Table 10, the number of resident students in the
College of San Jose dropped to 26 in the beginning of the century but rose
steadily thereafter until it stood at 49 in 1753. The figures under “Jesuits”
include the rector of the house, professors of the College of Manila resident
at San Jose, and lay brothers, some of whom resided in the house while
others administered the estates of San Pedro Tunasan, Lian, and Calatagan.
Besides the scholarships provided by the college endowment (hecas de
fundacion or founder’s burses), other scholarships were endowed from time
to time by citizens interested in the education of youth (hecas de donation).
There were fifteen of the latter in 1740; we know the donors of nine of
them. The number of founder s burses varied with the income from the
college properties ; in 174 0 there were nineteen. Students who did not hold
scholarships continued to pay a yearly fee which remained pretty constant
at between 100 and 125 pesos a year until 1768. 18
Only fragments of the registers of the college survive. A brief historical
account written in the nineteenth century places the total number of
students registered at San Jose at 992. Father Repetti in his larger and
more reliable work has identified 221 of them. His list of alumni includes
one archbishop, 8 bishops, 40 members of the secular clergy, 1 1 Augus-
A Door is Closed
Table 10. Jesuits and Students in the College of San Jose , l6oi~lj68
57 1
Year
Jesuits
Students
1601
2
12
1603
2
20
1612
2
12
1618
2
17
162 I
2
J 9
1624
4
2 4
1630
5
4 1
1643
3
44
165 I
5
3 °
1656
5
20
1659
6
26
1665
3
l6
1672
5
3 °
1675
5
22
1687
6
32
1694
7
32
1701
6
26
1719
8
3 °
1737
8
40
174°
8
40
175 3
8
49
1768
6
4 i
Sources: Annual Letters and Catalogues in ARSI Phil.; Colin- Pastells III, “ Appendix”;
Expulsion Proceedings, 1768, in Archives of the Philippine Vice Province.
tinians, 1 1 Recollects, 3 Dominicans, 8 Franciscans, 46 Jesuits, and 93
laymen. 19
Although San Jose was founded primarily for the education of “ Spaniards
of good birth/’ no difficulty seems to have been made in admitting
students of mixed parentage who met the scholastic requirements. As
early as 1599 bishop Benavides noted that “the fathers of the Society of
Jesus admit into their classes mulattoes and mestizos/’ There were mestizo
bursaries in 1690, as we learn from Ale jo Lopez, and in 1768 four of the
scholars were Chinese mestizos. Pure-blooded Filipinos began to be
admitted in the early i66o’s, but only in the capacity of domestics who
were not taught much more than the three R’s, Christian doctrine, and
deportment.
19*
572 The Jesuits in the Philippines
When did natives, as distinct from either criollos or mestizos, begin to
be admitted to studies leading to the priesthood, either as resident students
of San Jose or as day scholars of the College of Manila ? It could not have
been earlier than 1680, when the secretary of the Sacred Congregation of
Propaganda, Urbano Cerri, in the course of a report on conditions in
mission lands, stated of the Philippines that
. . . notwithstanding the great number of Monks in these Islands, and the pro-
gress of the Catholic Faith, there are some faults; particularly the neglect of many
conversions, which might be attempted without great Labor ; and want of Charity
toward the Sick, who are obliged to get themselves carried to Church, to receive
the Viaticum, and the Extreme Unction. Besides, no care is taken to make the
Natives study; and Holy Orders are never conferred on them, though they have
the necessary qualifications to be Ordained . 20
This is borne out by a letter of Archbishop Pardo to the king written in
the same year. It was a strongly worded protest against a cedula issued in
1677 which tried to encourage the formation of a native clergy. Blair and
Robertson gives the following summary of it :
The archbishop stated the little inclination that the Indians have for theological
and moral studies, and that there was the additional difficulty of their evil
customs, their vices, and their preconceived ideas — which made it necessary to
treat them as children, even when they were fifty or sixty years old. He considered
even the sons of Spaniards, born in the Islands, unsuitable for priests, since they
were reared by Indian or slave women, because of their defective training and
education in youth. Finally, on account of the sloth produced by the climate, and
of effeminacy and levity of disposition, it was evident that if they were ordained
priests and made ministers to the Indians when they were not sufficiently qualified
therefor, through the necessity there was for them, they did not again open a book,
and with their vicious habits set a very bad example to their parishioners. That
which should be done was to send from Espana those religious who were most
zealous for the conversion of souls . 21
It is clear from this that in Archbishop Pardo’s time there were criollos —
"sons of Spaniards born in the Islands” — among the clergy, but that many
of them were in the archbishop’s opinion unworthy of their calling; a
fortiori, if natives — "Indians” — were ordained, they would be even more
unworthy; hence, they ought not to be. The implication, clearly, is that
natives w 7 ere not yet being ordained. Any remaining doubts are removed by
an inquiry from the central government in 1697 as to whether there existed
in the Philippines any seminary for the native clergy. On 13 June 1600,
Governor Cruzat replied that there was not and never had been any such
institution in Manila, adding that he himself saw no necessity for it. 22
The first king of the Bourbon line, Philip V, took the matter up with
the Council of the Indies soon after his accession. A number of bishops
were consulted, and in April 1702 Philip decided, against the recommen-
A Door is Closed
573
dation of his governor, that “since it has been ordained by the sacred
canons and by pontifical bulls that there should be a seminary for young
men attached to all cathedral churches, that they may assist at the divine
service and at the same time be trained in the sciences there should be
founded in the city of Manila a seminary for eight seminarians, 23
While this cedula was on its way, the legate sent by the Holy See to settle
the dispute concerning the Chinese rites, Archbishop (afterward Cardinal)
de Tournon, stopped briefly at Manila, In his entourage was a zealous
priest named Gianbattista Sidotti, who conceived the ambitious project of
establishing a regional seminary in Manila, where natives from all the
countries of the Far East could be trained for the priesthood. He immedi-
ately began to collect contributions for a plant which would take care of
seventy-two seminarians. A site for the building was chosen — to one side
of the postern gate, between the governor's palace and the city wall. It
would even seem that construction was actually begun; but before the
project could be completed De Tournon continued on his way to China,
taking Sidotti with him. It got no further, for Philip V, looking upon it
as officious interference by a foreigner in the administration of the royal
patronato — interference, moreover, which would bring into the colony all
sorts of other foreigners — forthwith commanded whatever Sidotti had
succeeded in constructing on the site of the proposed seminary to be torn
down. In its stead, a much smaller seminary should be erected, one for
eight seminarians, no more, and those recruited only from the Philippines,
all as specified in the cedula of 1702. But any enthusiasm for the training
of native priests which Sidotti might have generated seems to have evapo-
rated with his departure. The royal orders were quietly pigeonholed; or,
to use the ritual formula, “obeyed without being put into execution/'
The Crown did not insist. In 1720, it inquired, with an air of resignation,
whether the foundations of the building intended for a native seminary
could be used instead for “the erection of a building for the royal
exchequer, the royal treasury, and an armory with lodgings for the
infantry/' 24
But if a temporary quietus was thus given to the idea of a seminary under
government sponsorship and exclusively for natives, there still remained
the possibility of admitting native candidates for the priesthood in the
existing Dominican and Jesuit colleges. Was this possibility considered ?
It was. When the Jesuit provincial congregation of 1724 met at the College
of Manila in May of that year, the assembled fathers were presented with
an extremely interesting plan which they were asked to endorse as a
postulatum to the general. 25 The author of the plan was Diego de Otazo,
of whom Lugo had written to Tamburini some years earlier that he was
one of those whom he would choose without hesitation as visitor of the
province.
574 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Otazo prefaced his proposal with an analysis of the existing situation.
Most of the establishments of the province, both in Luzon and the
Visayas, were already parishes in the full sense. Consequently, most of the
members of the province were engaged in what was, strictly speaking,
parish work. Now parish work was the proper work of secular priests for
which they were peculiarly fitted. For this reason it had always been, and
was, the policy of the Society of Jesus to develop its missions into parishes,
and having done so, to transfer them to the secular clergy, in order that
Jesuits might devote themselves to other works for which they were
properly and peculiarly fitted. The time to do this in the Philippines was
at hand.
However, it should be recognized that this transfer of parishes to the
secular clergy was a delicate operation. Earlier efforts to do so had failed.
Moreover, there seemed to be no clear notion as to precisely what type of
work the Philippine Jesuits should take up in place of parish work. The
problem, then, was twofold. First, what was the most prudent and conven-
ient method in the existing circumstances of effecting the transfer of the
Jesuit parishes to the secular clergy? Second, in what particular field of
endeavor could the Philippine Jesuits make the greatest contribution, and
how should they reorganize the province so as to cultivate this field most
efficiently ?
The approach to the first problem would be a simple one had it not
been confused and bedeviled by the various controversies on episcopal
visitation and royal patronage. The cumulative effect of these contro-
versies was to set up a false dilemma : either all the religious gave up all
their parishes all at once, or else they retained them all permanently. But
was there no other, no feasible alternative? Certainly there was. One
simply had to detach the problem from its unfortunate historical setting
to see it. The secular clergy in the Philippines were obviously too few to
take over all the parishes all at once from the religious; but they could
certainly take over some of them now and the rest later. Moreover, because
of language difficulties, they could take over now the parishes nearest
Manila, but not yet those further away. Then why not do precisely this ?
Why not make the transfer of our parishes to the secular clergy a gradual
process, paced according to the ability of the secular clergy to take charge
of them ?
This, then, was Otazo’s first proposal. Let the consent of the hierarchy
and the Crown be obtained to a carefully planned transfer of the Jesuit
parishes to the secular clergy, step by step, in the following order: first,
the suburban parishes of Santa Cruz and San Miguel ; next, those in the
province of Cavite — Silang, Indang, Maragondong; third, the other Tagalog
parishes ; finally, such of the Visayan towns as were already parishes, begin-
ning with those nearest the city of Cebu.
A Door is Closed
575
What of the Jesuits who would thus be released from parish work?
Where would they go and what would they do? What, in short, was
Otazo’s solution to the second of his two problems ? In his view, there
were three apostolates of the highest importance which needed to be
undertaken in the Philippines and for which Jesuits were specially fitted
by their training and organization to undertake. One was the conversion
of the remaining non- Christian population. Another was the giving of
parish missions and the performance of ministries supplementary to the
work of the parish clergy. The third — and most important — was education.
All three works were already being undertaken to a certain extent, but they
could be greatly expanded and intensified if the province were reorganized
so as to concentrate its members in ten or eleven strategically situated
colleges. From these colleges the Philippine Jesuits could sally forth to
found new missions in pagan or Moslem territory, or go on regular parish
mission circuits; but above all, in them they could establish the schools
which should from this time forward be their principal care.
What Otazo envisioned was a whole new educational system, which
would have for its aim not the limited one hitherto pursued in the College
of Manila of educating Spaniards, but the training of a native elite : laymen
to assume the leadership in their respective communities, and priests to
swell the ranks of the secular clergy. Unlike the earlier boarding schools for
natives founded by Garcia and Humanes, they would not be merely elemen-
tary schools for the training of catechists, but would impart as much of the
entire range of studies of the Jesuit ratio studiorum as their students could
absorb, exactly as it was imparted to Spaniards in the College of Manila.
Moreover, these colleges would not be disparate and unrelated units, but
would constitute a true system of schools. The instruction given in
them would be so organized that primary or intermediate studies made
in one w 7 ould be acceptable as a preparation for higher studies in
another.
What students would these colleges have ? They would be native Fili-
pinos of the region in which the college was situated, and they would be
selected on the basis primarily of ability, but with social position as a
secondary consideration. For, other things being equal, a young man from
a more cultivated and influential family would make a more effective lay
leader or priest. Mestizos and Europeans would also be admitted as students
in these schools, but would in nothing be treated differently from the
Filipinos and would have to mix freely with them.
Otazo’s second proposal, then, w 7 as this. Let the existing colleges
(Manila, San Jose, Cavite, Cebu, Arevalo, Zamboanga) be continued. Let
the physical plants (church and residence) of four or five of the parishes
transferred to the secular clergy be retained and constituted into additional
colleges. Possible new colleges would be Santa Cruz (Manila), Santa Cruz
576 The Jesuits in the Philippines
(Marinduque), Catbalogan (Samar), and Carigara (Leyte)* Thus, the Philip-
pine province would consist of ten or eleven colleges, each with a commu-
nity of ten or twelve, with the exception of Manila which would have
more.
The provincial congregation discussed this plan at great length. No one
seemed to have any objection to the plan as such. The idea of training
native Filipinos for the priesthood was accepted without argument. But
many of the fathers were pessimistic about so radical a project’s being
accepted by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Moreover, how was it
to be financed? To give up the parishes was necessarily to give up the
stipends attached to them. How, then, would the colleges be supported,
since the tuition given in them would have to be free, as prescribed by the
constitutions ? Otazo’s reply to this was that the government should be
approached for a subsidy. Almost everyone present must have shaken his
head at this. When the plan came to a vote, the fathers decided, by the
narrow margin of one vote, not to submit it as a postulatum of the
congregation, although Otazo could if he wished submit it as a private
postulatum ; which he did.
We do not know what reply, if any, the general made to it. In any case,
it could not have been an immediate approval, for no change was made in
the organization of the province. But Otazo’s proposal seems to have
achieved at least this much: it opened San Jose to Filipino candidates for
the priesthood. I say “ seems,” because the most our evidence can tell us
is that the first Filipino scholars of San Jose entered at about this time,
either a few years before or a few years after 1724. The first piece of evi-
dence is that by 1750, the Jesuit historian Juan Jose Delgado could point
to two Filipino priests, alumni of San Jose, as particularly outstanding
examples of the rest. They were Eugenio de Santa Cruz, a native of
Pampanga, provisor of the diocese of Cebu, and Bartolome Saguinsin, a
native of Antipolo and curate of Quiapo. There were in 1750, therefore,
these two and others besides; for Delgado adds that for the sake of
brevity he omits mention of “many others, living and dead, who are
worthy of having their names mentioned in this history*” 26
A second piece of evidence is a casual remark made by Murillo in his
Geographia historical, to the effect that “there are in the Philippines, as in
other parts of the world, many who are stupid and ignorant ; but there are
not wanting some who have wit and ability, sufficient for the study of
grammar, philosophy, and theology, in which they have made some pro-
gress, though not much.” 27 Now, while the Geographia was published in
1762, Murillo left the Philippines, never to return, in 1749. remaf k,
then, was in all probability based on his personal experience at the College
of Manila before 1749. Note th at he says Filipinos had made “some”
progress in seminary studies, though “not much.” This suggests that we
A Door is Closed
577
ought not to take Delgado's “many others, living and dead," as running
into the hundreds, or even fifties.
My third piece of evidence is a vehement protest against ordaining
Filipino priests written in 1720 by Fray Caspar de San Agusrin. Here is
what he says :
It does not seem good that I should refrain from touching on a matter which is
most worthy of consideration, and that is that if God because of our sins and theirs
should desire to chastise the flourishing Christian communities of these islands by
placing them in the hands of natives ordained to the priesthood — which seems likely
to happen very soon [italics mine] — if, I say, God does not provide a remedy for this,
what abominations will result from it! 28
Thus, although direct evidence is at present lacking, it can be said with
some confidence that the first native Filipinos were ordained a few years
after 1720, and that among these, or certainly among those ordained
immediately after them, were alumni of San Jose. It might be interesting
to know why San Agustfn was so much opposed to the ordination of
Filipinos. His objection was based chiefly on the Filipino character, which
he considered thoroughly unsuitable for the priestly office. Ordination will
not change this character; on the contrary,
. . . their [the Filipinos'] pride will be aggravated with their elevation to so sub-
lime a state; their avarice with the increased opportunity of preying on others;
their sloth with their no longer having to work for a living; and their vanity with
the adulation that they will necessarily seek, desiring to be served by those whom
in another state of life they w r ould have to respect and obey. Thus, the malediction
of Isaias , 24, will fall upon this nation: “It shall be, as with the people, so with
the priest/ ' For the indio who seeks holy orders does so not because he has a call
to a more perfect state of life, but because of the great and almost infinite advan-
tages which accrue to him along with the new state of life which he chooses.
How much better it is to be a reverend father than to be a yeoman or a sexton !
What a difference between paying tribute and being paid a stipend! Between
being drafted to saw logs and being waited on hand and foot l Between rowing a
galley and riding in one ! All of which does not apply to the Spaniard, who by
becoming a cleric deprives himself of the opportunity of becoming a mayor, a
captain, or a general, together with many other comforts of his native land, where
his estate has more to offer than the whole nation of indios. Imagine the airs with
wfiich such a one will extend his hand to be kissed ! What an incubus upon the
people shall his father be, not to mention his mother, his sisters, and his female
cousins, when they shall have become great ladies overnight, while their betters
are still pounding rice for their supper I For if the indio is insolent and insufferable
with little or no excuse, v 7 hat will he be when elevated to so high a station ? . . .
What reverence will indios themselves have for such a priest, when they see that
he is of their color and race ? Especially w T hen they realize that they are the equals
or betters, perhaps, of one wfio managed to get himself ordained, when his proper
station in life should have been that of a convict or a slave ? 29
578 The Jesuits in the Philippines
Twenty-five years later, this tirade came to the attention of Delgado, and
he decided to write a reply to it as devastating as it was urbane . 30 With
reference to the charge that Filipino candidates for the priesthood will have
no standing in the community, being congenital slaves or potential jailbirds,
he says:
Those [natives] who are being educated in any of the four colleges in Manila
which are devoted to the formation of the clergy are all sons of the better class,
looked up to by the natives themselves . . . These boys are being educated by the
reverend fathers of Saint Dominic or of the Society ; they instruct them in virtue
and letters, and any of the bad habits of the indio which may cling to them are
corrected and removed by the teaching and conversation of the fathers. Moreover,
their lordships the bishops, when they promote any of them to holy orders, do
not go about the matter blindfolded, ordaining anyone who is set before them.
On the contrary, they gather information with great care and prudence regarding
their purity of blood, their character and morals ; they examine them and put them
to the test before making them pastors of souls; and to say otherwise is injurious
to these illustrious prelates to whom we owe so much respect and reverence.
This was not to say, of course, that all Filipino priests without exception
lived up to expectations. To demand as much from the priesthood of any
nation was to show complete ignorance of human nature.
It is possible, no doubt, that some have not justified the high regard which has
been shown them in entrusting to them the dispensation of the divine mysteries ;
but it is bad logic to argue that because one or many are bad, therefore all are bad.
And it is to be noted that if any cleric or parish priest among them is bad or gives
scandal, their prelates, who are holy and zealous, correct and chastise them and
even remove them from their posts and deprive them of their ministry. Often, as
I myself have seen, they summon them and cause them to say Mass and perform
their spiritual duties under their eye, until they are certain of their reformation and
amendment. Thus they do not permit that '‘it shall be, as with the people, so
with the priest. Moreover, it is a gratuitous assertion to say that the indio seeks
holy orders, not because he has a vocation to a more perfect state of life, but
because of the great and almost infinite advantages which accrue to him along
with the priesthood the advantages, that is, of being a parish priest over being a
yeoman, or a sexton, or a galley slave, or a jailbird. For it is common knowledge
that there are also many in Spain who seek the ecclesiastical state for the sake of a
livelihood; and others enter religion for the same reason. Nor may we conclude
that therefore such persons do not have a true vocation, for, if the Church does not
judge the hidden intention, such judgment being reserved to God whose gaze
penetrates even unto the inmost heart of man, much less is it permitted to any
private writer to pass judgment on this matter.
Delgado clinches his argument by examining the supposition on which
San Agustin s whole thesis is based, namely, that there are certain sections
of the human race the Filipinos among them — which are by nature unfit
for the priestly state.
A Door is Closed
579
Finally, I shall answer the example brought forward by the reverend author of
this hyperbolical letter to prove that it is impossible for the indios to divest
themselves of their racial traits, even though they be consecrated bishops, etc.
I say, then, that this was precisely the practice of the holy apostles, namely, to
ordain priests and bishops from among the natives of those regions where they
preached, whether they be Indians or Negroes. And it is a historical fact that
when Saint Francis Xavier arrived in India, he found many Comorin clerics, who
are Negroes, already preaching the gospel in those newly founded Christian
communities. And so likewise there were in Japan many Japanese priests
belonging to religious orders, and in China there are [Chinese priests] today, as
we read in the printed accounts of the venerable martyrs of Saint Dominic and
the Society of Jesus.
We may say, then, that at least by 1750 the Philippine Jesuits, along
with their colleagues in higher education, the Dominicans, were fairly
launched on a new and fruitful enterprise : the training of native priests
for the parish ministry. There was another apostolate peculiar to the
Society which was not new, but which received a new impetus during this
period. This was the direction of closed retreats for lay people. I have
already mentioned that a section of the college residence was reserved for
men retreatants. The Annual Letter of 1730 informs us that these retreats
were given to groups of twelve at a time, and that the groups succeeded
each other almost without a break —frequentissime — throughout the year.
This is repeated by the Annual Letter of 1737, which adds the further
detail that each retreat lasted eight full days, and that the retreatants were
most numerous during the months of September to February — that is,
after the dispatch of the galleon and before the arrival of the junk fleet.
Similar eight-day closed retreats were given to lay women — Spaniards,
mestizas, and Filipinas — in the house of the Beatas de la CompaniaA 1
Nor were the ordinary ministries of the college church neglected, at least
after Oviedo's visitation. The falling-off of zeal remarked by Velasco and
Lugo was no longer in evidence in Murillo's time. The doors of the church
were open from dawn to 1 1 in the morning and from 2 in the afternoon to
sundown. During these times several priests were always available to hear
confessions, for the professors of the college were not exempted from this
task or from that of preaching and giving popular missions. Murillo
complains somewhat about this in a charming passage which I cannot
resist quoting:
The professor’s chair in the Philippines is not much different from an oarsman’s
bench in a galley, though somewhat more respectable ... Its occupant has all the
work of his counterpart in other countries, without his encouragements and
compensations. Dullness is so connatural to the country that, like a regional com-
plaint, one breathes it into the system, where it rapidly infects all humors. To this
indisposition of mind must be joined the manifold ills of the body. One perspires
580 The Jesuits in the Philippines
copiously from the heat, and along with the perspiration the vital spirits are
dissipated, leaving the body defenseless against a thousand fluxes, pains, and
infections which weaken the stomach, the sight and the brain, and thereby inspire
a deep-seated horror of all study as of a mortal foe. The atmosphere of the class-
room, which in other places not only lightens the labors of scholarship but
encourages one to undertake them, is like the doldrums here, or at best breathes a
spiritless languor. And on top of all this, the professor must at the same time
be a preacher, a confessor, a prison chaplain, and what have you ! 32
Our hearts need not bleed too much for Murillo, for in spite of his
manifold ills and fluxes, he did his full stint in classroom and confessional
and still found the time to draw an epoch-making map and write a
sprightly, if somewhat garrulous history. Indeed, the general impression
given by the Philippine Jesuits in the annals and documents of this
period is one of expansive and cheerful vigor. The works they had in
hand — the colleges, parishes, and missions — were running smoothly.
Vistas were opening on vast new fields of missionary enterprise: the Sierra
Madre, the Palaus, the still unconverted Moslem south. Inquiring minds
like Otazo's were re-examining old objectives and techniques to see how
they could be better adapted to the changing patterns of Philippine society.
Volunteers from the provinces of Italy and northern Europe — a Tuccio, a
Klein, a Kamel — were bringing new skills and fresh approaches to old
problems.
Relations with the other religious orders, the hierarchy and the govern-
ment were never more satisfactory. The long and occasionally bitter
rivalry between the College of Santo Tomas and the College of Manila had
been transmuted by mutual charity and respect into a friendly emulation.
In 1702 Santo Tomas dedicated a public theological disputation to Saint
Ignatius Loyola. The rector himself, Fray Juan Ibanez, presided at the
colorful gathering of the assembled faculties, alumni, and students of the
two colleges, while Paul Klein, rector of San Jose, had the honor of
presenting the first objections to the defender, Fray Andres Gonzalez. In
1706, during the provincial congregation, the College of Manila dedicated
a similar disputation to Saint Dominic. The Dominicans placed no
obstacles to the College of San Jose s obtaining a royal charter similar to
theirs, and, accordingly, on 3 May 17-2, Philip V awarded to the Jesuit
institution the title of royal/ * in virtue of which the royal arms were
placed over its portals with great solemnity on 1 8 December of the follow-
mg year. 33 Even the Recollect historian, Fray Juan de la Concepcion,
whose view of the Society of Jesus and its works was habitually dim,
condescended to attend the academic functions of the College of Manila,
and had the magnanimity to say that they were m no wise inferior to
those splendid acts of Alcala, where I made my theological studies ; for
here also are expounded the most extensive, diffuse, and difficult of cano-
A Door is Closed 581
nical questions with the high standards of scholarship demanded by this
branch of learning.” 34
When Governor Fernando de Bustamante (1717-17x9) managed to get
himself so cordially hated that a raging mob rushed his palace and struck
him down, it was a Jesuit — Diego de Otazo — who broke through to his
side, gave him absolution, and commanded enough respect to prevent his
being torn to pieces. 35 The reliance placed on various Jesuits or on the
Society as a whole by Governor Valdes y Tamon (1729-1739), Areche-
derra (1745-1750), and Obando (1750-1754), has already been indicated.
The recommendations of Jesuit procurators from the Philippines relative
to the general advancement of the colony continued to be favorably received
at Madrid. Jose Calvo, for instance, the procurator of the congregation of
1736, in addition to submitting an extremely penetrating analysis of the
situation in Mindanao, offered constructive suggestions for the economic
development of the colony which anticipated those of the most enlightened
ministers of the Bourbon regime. 36
In fact, the Madrid officials and the king himself merely had to glance
at the statistical reports filed by the procurators every six years to see that
the Philippine province amply justified whatever support the government
was giving it. In 1737, it had the spiritual administration of x 33 towns in
the Philippines and the Marianas with a total Christian population of
173,928; in 1743, 134 towns with a population of 177,098; in 1755*
130 towns with a population of 212,153. Particularly worthy of note is
the reduction in the number of those registered as slaves: 105 in 1737,
77 in 175 5. 37 When the British captured and occupied Manila in 1762, the
Jesuits bore their share of the general misfortune, contributing 48,628
pesos to the "ransom” imposed on the colony by the victorious comman-
ders.
With reason, then, might the Jesuits in the Philippines have claimed that
they were the king's good servants ; that by simply doing God's work, they
were advancing the interests of the Crown. Thus, it must have come as
something of a shock when on 19 May 1768, troops having surrounded the
College of Manila, an officer of grenadiers presented himself at the door
and told the fathers that they were henceforth to consider themselves
prisoners of the state.
Chapter Twenty-Four
THE KING’S GOOD SERVANTS
It is outside the scope of this narrative to rehearse the complicated series of
events that led to the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain and the Spanish
dominions. That has been done elsewhere. In his decree of expulsion King
Charles III stated that he was getting rid of the Jesuits for “ weighty
reasons . . . which he was locking away in his royal breast/' There was
hardly any necessity for this. It was quite evident that the Jesuits, who did
not trouble to conceal their devotion to the papacy, had become an
intolerable nuisance to the enlightened despot and to the regalist ministers
who had a vested interest in enlightened despotism. The Philippine Jesuits,
remote though they were from the center of the storm, must have been
uneasily aware of the way the wind was blowing, particularly after the
arrival in July 1767 of a new archbishop of Manila, Don Basilio Sancho de
Santa Justa y Rufina. For Don Basilio had been a member of the junta de
conciencia or “conscience committee" which assured Charles III that he
was morally justified in expelling the Society of Jesus from his realm; he
had left Madrid only a few weeks before the decree of expulsion was
actually signed; and his attitude must have made it plain to the Jesuits in
Manila that they were in serious trouble. Yet, they could hardly have been
prepared for so shattering a blow.
The decree of Charles III, dated 27 February 1767, was addressed to the
Count of Aranda, his minister of state.
In accordance with the recommendation of the members of my Royal Council
for Extraordinary Affairs . . . and in virtue of the supreme administrative
authority vested by the Almighty in my person for the protection of my vassals
and the honor of my crown, I have decided to expel from all my dominions of
Spain and the Indies, the Philippine Islands and other adjacent territories, the
religious of the Society [of Jesus], priests as well as coadjutors or lay brothers who
have made their first vows, and such of the novices as desire to share their fate ;
and to confiscate all the properties of the Society in my dominions. I grant you full
and exclusive powers to see to it that this decree be uniformly executed in all my
said dominions, and to issue the instructions and orders which have been communi-
cated to you, or which you shall deem necessary to ensure the most effective,
prompt and peaceful compliance . 1
All royal officials were to give instant obedience to Aranda's commands,
and all troops, whether regular, volunteer militia, or rural levies, were to
582
The King s Good Servants 583
come to their aid wherever necessary, without reluctance or tergiversation,
under pain of incurring the royal wrath. The superiors of the Society were
summoned to submit unconditionally ; if they did, the expulsion would be
carried out ‘ ‘ with all due decency, consideration, humanity, and co-opera-
^ ■ a
tion.
To make sure that the decree reached the Philippines as quickly as
possible, Aranda sent one copy of it by the regular Spanish route via
Mexico, and another by a special courier who took the Dutch route via
the Cape of Good Hope, Batavia, and Canton. In his letter of transmittal
to the Governor, Don Jose Raon, dated 1 March, Aranda expressed his
reliance on that official's perspicacity and prudence to arrange that the
decree was peacefully complied with. A moderate show of force would
help to ensure this; but in any case, “if, contrary to expectation, the
religious concerned should offer resistance, or an inclination or determina-
tion to oppose develop among their partisans. Your Excellency will make
use of the decisive force of arms as in cases of open rebellion." 2 Thus, while
holding themselves in readiness for all contingencies, the king and his
ministers depended chiefly on the disciplined obedience of the Society of
Jesus to help them dissolve it without fuss. They were not disappointed.
The dispatches sent by way of Mexico arrived first. The ship bearing
them entered Manila Bay at nightfall on 17 May 1768. This was unusually
early in the season, and the rumor at once spread that some important
communication from the central government had arrived. The following
evening Governor Raon summoned one of the oidores of the audiencia,
Don Manuel Galban, and empowered him as special commissioner to put
the royal decree into execution. 3
The next morning, Thursday, 19 May, at nine o'clock, Galban pro-
ceeded to the residence of the Jesuit provincial, which was at that time the
College of San Ildefonso in the district of Santa Cruz. He was accompanied
by a military escort and a government notary. It is from the careful record
kept by the latter official that our account of the proceedings is based. 4
The rector of the house, Father Bernardo Martin, came down to meet
the distinguished visitor. After the customary greetings, Galban asked
that the entire community be assembled, not excepting even the lay
brother who acted as cook. Father Martin complied by ringing the bell at
the head of the main staircase. Four other members of the community
answered the summons. The provincial, Father Juan Silverio Prieto, was
absent, having gone to the College of Manila. On the other hand, the
rector of that college, Father Bernardo Pazuengos, was in the house
temporarily as a guest. Galban requested Pazuengos to return to his
community and inform Father Provincial that he was wanted at San
Ildefonso immediately. Pazuengos went off with this message.
While they were waiting for the provincial, the vicar-general of the
584 The Jesuits in the Philippines
archdiocese and several prominent citizens, whom Galban had asked to be
present as witnesses to the proceedings, arrived. Then Prieto came. The
community was once again assembled, and Galban ordered the fateful
documents he had brought with him to be read. Whereupon, the record
goes on to say,
I, the notary, read in a loud and clear voice the royal orders and the governor's
commission. The Reverend Father Provincial Juan Sil verio Prieto answered in the
name of all, in terms expressive of obedience and humility, that he was ready to
comply with whatever His Majesty ordained and that no subordinate of his would
go against it or contradict it in any manner whatever . 5
This took place in the main sola or common room of the house. Galban
ordered the fathers and brothers to stay in it and not to leave it until
further orders. He then inquired whether there was anyone else who
belonged to the community although habitually residing elsewhere. Prieto
replied that there were one priest and one brother in the Hacienda de
Calamba, and one priest and one brother in the Hacienda de San Pedro
Makati. They were taking care of these estates which were attached to the
provincial's residence. Galban decided that they should remain at their
posts for the time being.
Galban now asked for all the keys of the house and church ; those of the
living rooms, the store rooms, the library, the archives; and all chests and
strongboxes. They were given him. He had the church doors closed and
locked. It was now two o'clock in the afternoon. Before leaving, he
stationed a guard detail at the front door with orders to allow no one in or
out.
Meanwhile, Governor Raon had taken effective steps to secure the Jesuit
communities of the College of Manila and the College of San Jose. At the
same time that Commissioner Galban was knocking at the door of San
Ildefonso, two companies of grenadiers fully armed, were marching down
the Calle Real from Fort Santiago. They surrounded the Jesuit compound,
guards took their stations at all the entrances, and the officers in command
demanded and obtained the keys to the church and the two colleges. The
fathers were told to await an authorized official who would inform them
of the reason for these proceedings ; meantime, they were not to communi-
cate with anyone outside the compound. At three o'clock that afternoon
the College of Cavite was similarly sealed off and placed under guard.
Copies of the royal decree of expulsion were posted throughout the
walled city and suburbs, together with an ordinance of the governor
summoning under pain of grave penalties all who held any Jesuit property
m trust, or who owed anything to the Jesuits, to present himself to the
authorities within three days. Archbishop Sancho also published an edict
imposing major excommunication latae sententiae on all who failed to com-
ply with the governor's ordinance. 6
The King s Good Servants 585
Galban's notary reported to Raon on the morning s work at San Ilde-
fonso. Raon directed that the Jesuit provincial and his community be
transferred to the College of Manila, with the exception of Brother Tomas
Sancho, the lay-brother assistant of the province procurator. He was to be
“ deposited under house arrest with one of the parishioners of Santa
Cruz, in order that Commissioner Galban might avail himself of his
services in inspecting and making an inventory of the funds, papers, and
effects in the provincial's residence. The keys of the church were to be
handed over to Don Vicente Arroyo, the diocesan priest whom the arch-
bishop had designated to take over the parish.
Father Prieto and his companions were taken across the river to the
College of Manila that very night. They had been told to pack the clothing
and other personal effects which they needed, but to leave them all behind.
The following morning Galban had all this baggage thoroughly searched,
but finding that it contained nothing but “boxes, linen, tobacco, choco-
late, and other effects of that nature, breviaries, diurnals, books, and
portable altars for their devotional exercises," he had them sent to the
College.
There was a primary school for boys attached to the church. Galban
summoned the schoolmaster, Lazaro Antonio Beltran, and in the presence
of many of his pupils commanded him to continue conducting the
school “in the same place and in the same manner that he did under the
direction of the Jesuits." He also summoned Don Jose Francisco and Don
Gregorio Alonso, petty governors of the natives and the Chinese mestizos of
the parish, and ordered them to respect and obey their new parish priest,
Father Arroyo.
Furthermore, he exhorted them to constant attendance at divine worship and
the frequent reception of the sacraments, and that they should zealously see to it
that all the townspeople perform their Christian duties and send their children to
school to learn and be educated in the holy fear of God. He informed them that
His Majesty for reasons of his own had ordered the withdrawal of the Jesuits ; but
that it was the royal will that these [the Jesuits] should continue to be respected,
venerated, and well thought of by them, for they owed them this regard as their
former pastors and ghostly fathers. And so he warned them not to be lacking in
this respect, nor to murmur or indulge in vain and idle gossip among themselves
with reference to these events and dispositions of His Majesty, for if they should
be reported as doing so they would be publicly chastised for it.
The following day, 21 May, Galban transferred his attentions to the
College of Manila, where he went through the same process of promul-
gating the decree of expulsion to the assembled community, sealing the
offices and archives, and taking possession of all keys. 7 The 22nd was a
Sunday; on the 23rd came the turn of the College of San JosA The rector,
Francisco Javier Ibero, informed Galban that there were forty-one resident
586 The Jesuits in the Philippines
students registered in the college, thirty-seven of them Spaniards and four
Chinese mestizos. Since it was vacation time, however, they were not in
residence but were spending the holidays at San Pedro Tunasan, the
estate by which the college was supported.
A lay brother, Jose Rodriguez, had the management of the estate. As in
the case of Calamba and San Pedro Makati, Galban decided that San Pedro
Tunasan should continue under its Jesuit administrator for the time being,
since the government had no one to take his place. A letter to this effect was
sent to Brother Rodriguez. He replied that he would much rather join his
fellow Jesuits interned in the College of Manila, but if he was to stay at
his post, then he needed money for expenses during the planting season,
which was imminent. Galban at once authorized the release of 1,000 pesos
for this purpose. Rodriguez acknowledged receipt in the following terms :
Dear Father Rector, Pax Christi . I received Your Reverence's letter and that of
Senor Galban, as well as the one thousand pesos which His Excellency sends for
the work of the estate. I shall enter this sum in the book of receipts and expendi-
tures with the care which Your Reverence recommends.
It looks as though my coming to join Your Reverence is being postponed
indefinitely. Please pray God that here and wherever I may be I may conduct
myself as a true Jesuit. I suppose Father Provincial will leave orders so that we
may go to the College occasionally to visit the Fathers and perform our religious
duties.
I am writing to Senor Galban requesting him to investigate the calumnies
about me which certain rascals of this estate are spreading there in the city of
Manila.
May God keep Your Reverence many years as I desire. Tunasan, 5 July 1768. 8
The calumnies to which Brother Rodriguez refers were, mainly, that
he was defrauding the estate by distributing its property among the natives
employed in it, in anticipation, presumably of the government confiscating
it. This charge was apparently found to be without merit, as nothing more
is said about it in the record.
On 12 June, Galban permitted the students of San Jose to come to the
college with their parents in order to identify their personal belongings
and take them away. Some of them had already been admitted to the
College of Santo Tomas, others to the College of San Juan de Letran, both
of these Dominican institutions. Galban took note of this and of the fact
that there were other schools to which the San Jose scholars could transfer
if they wished. One was the archdiocesan seminary which had recently
been opened by a member of the archbishop's household, the Piarist
Father Martin de San Antonio. Another was a private institution con-
ducted by a certain Don Clemente Bermudez, which offered courses in
moral theology. There were also by this time a number of private grammar
schools in the city. Thus Galban did not think it necessary to keep San
The King's Good Servants 587
Jose open. He was later overruled because the government decided that the
San Jose endowment could not be used for any other purpose than that
specified in the instrument of foundation. Moreover, Archbishop Sancho
succeeded in persuading the authorities to allow him to transfer his
seminary to the Jesuit compound. These dispositions will be treated in
greater detail in the history of the restored Society of Jesus in the Philip-
pines.
On 5 June, Galban took Brother Sancho from the house of Captain Jose
Salumbide, where he had been “deposited,” and brought him to the office
of the province procurator in San Ildefonso. They went through the
account books first, twenty-nine folio volumes in all, one for each of the
Jesuit residences and missions which obtained supplies, made deposits, or
borrowed money from the procure. The examination of these books took
them until eight in the evening of the following day, when Galban ordered
Brother Sancho to close all the accounts, writing the date, 6 June 1768, and
his signature at the end of all the books.
With the assistance of Brother Sancho Galban devoted the rest of June
and the early part of July to the meticulous cataloguing and evaluation of
the furniture and other contents of the church and residence of San Ilde-
fonso. Occasionally he called in artisans, tradesmen, and professional men
to act as expert assessors, as when the question arose of determining the
money value of the church bells. On 16 July he came to the bodega or store-
room where the province procurator kept his supplies. These consisted
chiefly of those items which were likely to be required by the various resi-
dences and missions. Thus he found several bales of cloth; 23 pounds of
paper imported from Europe ; two large tins of tobacco in powdered form ;
two chests which contained 3 64 brass spitoons and 14 dozen spoons, each
with its fork, also of brass.”
There were firearms too: “20 ordinary muskets, new,” worth seven
pesos each, and 3 1 pairs of Dutch pistols worth five pesos a pair ; grim
reminders of the Moro raids which forced the Visayan Jesuits to arm them-
selves and their people. Another reminder of a different sort was a bag of
jewels with a note which said: “List of jewels which I, Dona Josepha de
Castro, am placing on deposit against whatever may be paid to ransom my
son, Luis Marquez, whom the Jolo Moros took captive inside the bay of
this city.” The list follows: a rosary of pearls, another of the same with
four diamonds, a double chain of gold, two bracelets; then a receipt by the
Jesuit procurator, Father Juan Francisco Romero, dated 20 July 1767.
More interesting, at least to the historian, were four chests of Chinese
workmanship containing papers and manuscript books “in Portuguese,
Chinese, Japanese, and other languages which it was impossible to tell of
what region they were ; and in each chest was found a note in Portuguese
which says that they are papers belonging to the Province of Japan.” They
588 The Jesuits in the Philippines
were, in fact, the archives of that Jesuit mission and province covering the
years 1549 to Galban took them away for further examination; and
that is the last we hear of them.
Here, if anywhere, the legendary wealth of the Jesuits should have been
found. The bodega and the adjoining offices had been sealed and placed
under guard on the very first day of the expulsion proceedings; no one
could have had the opportunity to take anything out. But if the king’s
commissioner had expected to find a hoard, he was disappointed. The cash
funds in the procure amounted to only 3,728 pesos altogether, and when
the contents of the store room had been completely inventoried, they were
found to be worth in the neighborhood of 30,000 pesos. On 24 July,
Galban, having no more use for Brother Sancho, sent him to join his
companions in the College of Manila. 9
Since the middle of June all the Jesuits within the jurisdiction of the
archdiocese of Manila had been collected and interned in this college.
When Raon issued the orders for their arrest he had reason to fear that the
Tagalog parishioners of the Jesuits might not be disposed to give up their
pastors without a struggle. He therefore took the precaution of having
Father Prieto write to his men stressing the supreme importance of pre-
venting all public demonstrations or plans to protest the government’s
action. The Jesuits co-operated wholeheartedly, and while the parting
between them and their people was undoubtedly difficult on both sides, it
was effected without disturbance. Filipino and mestizo secular priests took
their places in the fifteen parishes of southern Luzon and Marinduque
administered by the Society. 10
It was decided that sixty-four of the fathers and brothers interned in the
College of Manila should be sent to Mexico and thence to Spain on the
Acapulco galleon of that year, the San Carlos . One of the priests in this
group has left us an unsigned diary of this voyage.
On the 29th of July of the same year, 1768, they took us out of the College of
Manila and brought us in carriages to the river of Manila [the Pasig], those of us
who had been picked to go into exile this year by way of New Spain. We were
64 in all, including Father Provincial. Having embarked at the river in three small
boats we left for the port of Cavite, three leagues distant, where the king's ship
in which we were to make the voyage to Acapulco rode at anchor. Although we
cast off at 5 o clock that morning, we spent the entire day without receiving a
favorable wind from God nor (by I know not what failure in the arrangements)
any food or drink from men. Thus we were not able to reach the ship until sun-
down, after being exposed all day to the burning rays of the sun. 11
There was no food for them on the ship either; in fact, there was no
place on board for them to stay. At this juncture the port commander came
to their rescue and brought most of them to his own house, distributing
the rest among his friends. The following day they boarded the San Carlos ,
The King s Cood Servants 589
but the portion of the poop deck to which they had been assigned still had
to be cleared of the bales of merchandise piled high upon it. Thus they
passed the night of the 3 oth without sleep ; as the anonymous diarist wryly
remarks, “we had perforce to keep the vigil of our holy father [St.
Ignatius] whether we liked it or not.” The following day was, in effect, the
feast of the founder of the Society of Jesus ; his sons kept it as best they
might by attending the only Mass which was allowed on board that day,
and which the ship’s chaplain celebrated.
On the 1st of August they weighed anchor; but we had barely sailed one mile
when they dropped anchor again because part of the provisions for the voyage had
not yet been taken aboard. I ought to explain that the king’s ship which sails every
year from Manila to Acapulco during the season of winds favorable to that
navigation goes laden and ordinarily overladen with the goods and merchandise
of the Manila traders, citizens of that city, at whose disposal the king places the
hold of the ship, as this is the means of providing for and preserving that realm.
Now on this particular voyage the cargo was so great and the passengers so nume-
rous that for the 64 of us Jesuits who went there was not more space than what
would be absolutely necessary to accomodate 20 persons decently. And even this
space, after a few days at sea, had to provide room also for 25 soldiers who came
as the ship’s guard, and had been left out in the open without any place being
assigned to them. These quarters, besides being narrow, were so close to the cattle,
swine, and other animals on board that we were obliged to be on the alert day and
night, for when we least looked for it the beasts came to share our little cots,
especially on rainy nights. At four o’clock in the morning of the 3rd, having
taken in the provisions, we hoisted sail, reaching the mouth of the great bay of
Manila at sundown. 12
The San Carlos now began to thread its way eastward through the islands
to San Bernardino Strait, the gateway to the Pacific. On 9 August she called
briefly at the port of San Jacinto on the island of Ticao, in order to take in
fresh water and firewood. Here the fathers learned that the Manila-bound
galleon, having encountered heavy weather, had stopped at Palapag, on the
north coast of Samar Island, to make repairs before proceeding to the
capital. This caused them to be apprehensive lest the people on that vessel
should spread wild rumors of the kind that were already gaining currency
in the remoter districts of Luzon, such as, that the king had ordered all
Jesuits to be put to the sword. Once the people of Samar got an idea of this
sort into their heads, they would almost certainly take up arms against the
government, and there was no telling what might ensue. Thus, says our
diarist,
... in order to prevent a serious disturbance among that people, who are not as
completely submissive to the Spaniards as those closer to Manila, but walder and
more warlike, and also in order to spare the feelings of those unfortunate Jesuit
missionaries who ministered to those natives at the cost of untold labor, and who
590 The Jesuits in the Philippines
were as yet unconscious of the blow that had fallen upon us, we decided to send
them word secretly by means of an accomplished, loyal, and intelligent native
whom we met at San Jacinto. This man brought our letter as he promised to the
father rector of the nearest residence, who in turn communicated it to all the
missionaries of all those islands of Pintados or Visayas. In the letter Father
Provincial gave a true account of what had happened to us, and how 64 of us were
already on our way to exile as prisoners, God giving us the grace to submit our-
selves wholly to his designs ; adding that with the aid of the same grace they also
ought to await and receive the same blow, imitating the meekness of our eternal
captain and king Jesus, who as a most gende lamb allowed himself to be taken
prisoner, bound, and crucified. He charged them with great earnestness to keep
the natives quiet and peaceful, and to prevent that so unprecedented a measure
and one they could hardly conceive to be possible should drive them to rebellion
and turn them against God and their sovereign. This letter did much to forewarn,
encourage, and guide the missionary fathers in those islands, of whom there were
more than 60, enabling them to observe a uniform exemplary behavior when the
time came for each one to be taken into custody, in spite of the fact that they
were scattered throughout that wild region, living among the natives at great
distances from one another. It was particularly helpful in that it gave the fathers
enough time to prepare the minds of the natives for so great a shock and thus to
prevent disorderly tumults and uprisings. Even so, the fathers had need of all the
prudence and persuasiveness at their command to do this, for there was hardly a
town in which the native chieftains did not press their pastor with great insistence
to allow them to resist by force of arms those who came to take him prisoner. 13
It may be asked how our informant aboard the San Carlos , which by
19 August had made the passage through San Bernardino Strait and stood
outward bound, could have learned what happened subsequently in the
Visayan missions. The explanation is simple; he came back. On 8 Septem-
ber, when in the judgment of the pilots they were only a hundred leagues
short of the Marianas, they were struck by a typhoon of such exceptional
ferocity that for three continuous days and nights “we seemed to feel with
our very hands the dark and sorrowful shades of death." The ship was dis-
masted in a few hours, and thereafter was at the mercy of wind and wave.
In our quarters, which were on the same deck as the ship's cabin although out-
side it, there was so much water that the violent rolling of the vessel caused waves
which at times swept over us in our bedsteads. Moreover, owing to the sudden
jolting as the ship swung from one side to the other, most of the bedsteads
splintered, bundles and chests, stoutly bound and lashed together though they
were, burst open, and we began to slide from port to starboard (if I may use
nautical phraseology) along with all that baggage and filth and the ship's cattle,
whose instinct for self-preservation drove them to seek what protection they could.
Thus, one of the Fathers suddenly found himself with three pigs in his cot, and
being unable to get them out, was forced to get out himself. Another pig joined
Father Provincial himself, and was of such generous proportions that if one of the
ship's officers who happened to be passing by had not hauled it off the cot by main
The Kings Good Servants 591
force, it would have smothered the Father* Such are the effects which terror at
the approach of death causes, even in the very beasts l 14
As the ship began to split, some of the Jesuits who were still on their
feet helped the crew to man the pumps* Others went among the 400
passengers, exhorting everyone to prepare for death. But the typhoon
claimed only two lives altogether* When it first struck, a seaman was flung
from the masthead into the sea, and as it roared away from the battered
vessel, at about eight in the morning of the 1 ith, Father Provincial Prieto
died of exposure. Later that day, the rest of the ship's company knew they
were saved. “We had four pilots on board,” our diarist observes, “one of
them an Englishman and the other a Dane who had been raised from his
earliest years on salt water and had sailed the stormiest seas of the world.
All of them swore they had never in their lives experienced winds of equal
fury.” This was expert testimony indeed.
It was decided to return to the Philippines. About 50 leagues from their
estimated landfall another typhoon overtook them, no less violent than
the first, and claimed the life of another Jesuit* This was Father Baltazar
Vela, aged 64, who came to the Philippines in 1723 and was parish priest
of Cainta at the time of the expulsion.
On 22 October the San Carlos slipped anchor before Cavite. The Jesuits
were interned once more in the College of Manila. They found Commis-
sioner Galban disposed to be much stricter with them than he was before
their departure. Possibly he had found out about the letter which they had
managed to send to the Visayan Jesuits from San Jacinto. At any rate he
would not allow the sorry remains of their luggage to be sent up to their
rooms until he had carefully searched every bundle. He also removed Father
Pazuengos, who became acting provincial at Father Prieto's death, from
the college and kept him a close prisoner in a cell in the Dominican convent.
He did the same with the procurator of the college, Father Bernardo Bruno,
and the procurator of the province, Father Juan Francisco Romero,
“depositing” one in the College of Santo Tomas and the other in the
College of San Juan de Letran. He probably wanted to interrogate them
separately on the finances of the province and took this precaution to pre-
vent collusion. In March of the following year he allowed Bruno to rejoin
his companions, and the other two in May. 15
As far as we can gather from the extant records, 16 the first Jesuit mission
in the Visayas to be closed in accordance with the decree of expulsion was
that of Bohol. An infantry lieutenant, Don Juan Llorens, was commissioned
to execute the decree. He rounded up the eleven Jesuits in the island and
put them aboard a coasting vessel bound for Manila, where they arrived on
3 July 1768. Their places were taken by eight Augustinian Recollects.
A commander of the royal navy, Don Pablo Verdote, took charge of
592 The Jesuits in the Philippines
collecting Jesuits stationed in Leyte and the eastern coast of Samar and
conveying them to Manila. There were eighteen of them altogether.
Verdote started with Ormoc. The procedure which he followed here, as
he himself describes it in his report, may be taken as typical.
On 4 October I sailed the transport under my command into Ormoc Bay. On
the 5th I went ashore at the town of Ormoc. I had with me the Reverend Father
Fray Francisco Martinez of the Order of St. Augustine, Upon reaching the
residence of the reverend father missionary of the town, I sent for the petty
governor, his officials and the principal citizens. When they were all assembled in
the house in the presence of the said Jesuit father [Luis SecanelL I read to them
the royal decree of the king our lord (whom may God keep) and caused it to be
translated in their language. Their unanimous reply was that they obeyed and
accepted the royal orders of His Majesty. I then proceeded to make an inventory
of the gold and silver vessels and the arms belonging to the church of the said
town in the presence of the above-mentioned persons, who have affixed their
signature below. 17
Father Secanell then turned over the mission to Fray Francisco, and
having packed his few personal belongings followed Commander Verdote
to the waiting transport vessel. There were other Augustinians on board,
and as they coasted southward, touching briefly at each mission, the
Augustinians went ashore while the transport gradually filled with Jesuits.
At about the same time Commander Francisco de la Rosa of the sloop
San Francisco de Ash was gathering together the Jesuits of northern and
western Samar, eleven altogether. There should have been twelve, but in
the case of Father Juan Esandi, missionary stationed on the little island
of Capul, the long arm of Charles III was not quite long enough. Moro
raiders took him captive before Commander de la Rosa could get to him.
Shortly afterward it was reliably reported that he had been put to the
sword. Franciscans took the place of the Jesuits in these missions.
Later that same month came the turn of the Jesuits of Panay and western
Negros. Leiutenant-Governor Francisco Leres of Panay acted for the
government. Dominicans were the replacements here. The Jesuits of
northern Mindanao were taken into custody the following month, with
Don Gaspar Ilagorri, corregidor of the district, proclaiming the decree of
expulsion at Misamis on the 5th. Six Augustinian Recollects stepped into
the posts vacated by as many Jesuits. The two Jesuits stationed at Zam-
boanga, Fathers Vicente Aleman and Giuseppe Aressu, were not notified
of the expulsion until 1 5 January of the following year.
Finally, in July 1769, the expulsion papers went out to the Jesuit vice-
province of the Marianas Islands aboard the schooner Nuestra Senora de
Guadalupe , Captain Jose Sorda, and reached their destination on 25 August.
They were communicated to the Jesuits by the governor, Don Enrique de
The Kings Good Servants 593
Olavide y Michelena, who arranged for them to return to the Philippines
on the schooner. The following November the entire personnel of the
Marianas Vice-Province, Father Franz Xaver Stengel, vice-provincial,
Father Rafael Canicia, and Brother Placido Lampurdanes, were taken
ashore at Manila, along with all the portable worldly goods which had
been confiscated from them, namely, 547 pesos and two and one-half rials
in cash, and two boxes of books.
The members of the Philippine Jesuit Province were shipped to Spain
in four groups: twenty-one on board the San Carlos , which negotiated a
successful voyage to Acapulco in 1769; sixty-eight on board the Santa
Rosa ) which sailed for Cadiz by way of the Cape of Good FI ope in 1770;
twenty-four on board the Venus , which sailed by the same route in the same
year; and eight on board the Astrea , which sailed by the same route the
following year. Nineteen were certified by government physicians as too
sick to travel ; they were interned in various religious houses in Manila. Of
these, twelve were dead by 16 July 1772. The seven survivors were:
Father Giovanni Condestabile, interned in the Dominican convent of
Santo Domingo; Father Francisco Javier Ibero and Brother Mateo Rubin,
interned in the Hospital of San Juan de Dios; Fathers Miguel Quesada,
Juan Fernandez, and Andres Rodriguez, and Brother Jose Ambrosio,
interned in the convalescent home of San Andres conducted by the
Brothers of St. John of God. We know that Brother Rubin died on 10
January 1775; we have no information about the others. Only this: that
after Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus throughout the
world in 1773, a ro y a l decree went out from Madrid commanding that the
survivors of the Philippine Province in Manila who might still be alive
were to put aside the Jesuit habit and dress themselves henceforth in the
soutane of the secular clergy. On 20 December 1774 the Manila govern-
ment reported that the decree had been obeyed. 18
What happened to the establishments of the Philippine Province? We
have already seen how the parishes and missions were taken over by the
diocesan clergy in the Tagalog provinces, and by the remaining four
religious orders in the Visayas islands and Mindanao. Mention has also
been made of the fact that the colonial government acceded to Archbishop
Sancho's request that the College of San Jose be transferred to the Fathers
of the Pious Schools to be run as the archdiocesan seminary. In 1771, how-
ever, the king rescinded this transfer as being contrary to the character of
San Jose as a pious foundation which must be maintained in accordance
with the wishes of the founder. Accordingly, it was reconstituted as a
separate educational institution in 1777 with a canon of the Manila
cathedral as rector and the king himself as patron. The archdiocesan
seminary was given instead the church and buildings of the College of
Manila.
594 rta Jesuits in the Philippines
Archbishop Sancho also asked for the printing press of the last named
institution. The king agreed, “but on this condition, to be strictly
observed, namely, that it must never be established, located, or operated on
ecclesiastical property, and all its printers and workmen must without any
exception whatever be laymen who cannot invoke any privileges under
canon law and who will be bound in all things to observe, keep, and obey
the laws, ordinances, and regulations of their craft under pain of incurring
the penalties therein provided/ ' The implication of this is clear. Rightly
or wrongly, Charles III believed that the Jesuits had used their press to
criticize the government, protecting their right to do so by invoking
ecclesiastical immunity; he was determined that no churchman would
ever be able to do the same again. The state must have complete and
unlimited control of the media of public communication. The archbishop
agreed to this, and on 4 July 1773 the press was formally awarded to
him.
The pharmacy of the College, Brother Kamel's pride and joy, was com-
pletely inventoried with the assistance of Fray Jose del Rosario of the
College of Santo Tomas, and transferred in 1772 to the Hospital of San
Juan de Dios. The bishop of Cebu, following the example of the archbishop
of Manila, petitioned the government that the Jesuit church and residence
in his city, and the estates attached to them, be given to him for the pur-
pose of opening a diocesan seminary. The request was granted, although
the government stipulated that the church be used as a parish church.
On 23 October 1782 a representative of the bishop formally took posses-
sion of the church, residence and properties.
A jue^ comisionado de temper alidades, or Jesuit Property Custodian, was
appointed to administer those estates which the government did not see
fit to assign to the ecclesiastical authorities. The holder of this office in the
early 1770 s, Juan Francisco de Anda, did not find it an easy one. “The
haciendas which are still under government management/' he reported
to the king in 1773 , “have so far yielded nothing but trouble and expense."
For this reason he was continually on the lookout for an opportunity to
lease them to some private entrepreneur until they could be sold outright.
He was eventually successful in his quest. That same year, Don Francisco
Javier Norona leased the San Pedro Makati Estate for 1,200 pesos a year;
Don Francisco Javier Ramirez the Calamba Estate for 1,400; Don Juan
Ramirez de Arellano the estates of Mayhaligi, Piedad, and Meisilo for
2,400; Don Fernando de Araya the estates of Nasugbu, Lian, and Cala-
tagan for 1,900; and Don Felix Sousa the Nagtahan Estate for 375.
Montero y Vidal 1 9 cites a curious document" by an author whom he
does not name, but whom he affirms to be “not unfriendly to the Jesuits,"
in which an estimate is given of the total value of the property confiscated
by the government from the Philippine Jesuits. It is itemized as follows:
The Kings Good Servants
595
Cash funds, interest on invested capital, and pious foundations
Proceeds from the sale of estates and buildings
Proceeds from the sale of the furniture and effects of colleges,
residences, and missions
Printing press awarded to the archdiocesan seminary and
valued at
Pharmacy, awarded to the royal hospital and valued at
Total
PESOS
463,882
7 ^ 1,553
128,735
4>°35
2,660
1,320,865
This sounds like a large sum, but the comment of Father Burrus is brief
and to the point:
How they [the Philippine Jesuits] could have managed eight colleges, more than
a score of churches, several score of mission stations among the most impoverished
natives and distributed free medicines, all on an amount that would scarcely
suffice to finance one moderate American college is a miracle of economy, possible
only through the generous contribution of their service and a standard of living
which not one of their critics would have dared attempt to share . 20
Thus, 187 years after Sedeno first set foot on Philippine soil, his succes-
sors were expelled from it. A king of Spam had opened this door to them ;
a king of Spain now shut it in their faces. What had they done ? They did
not know. They knew only this: that the king's command, no matter how
unjust, lay within the range of a temporal ruler's authority. If the Most
Catholic King saw fit to expel them from his dominions, they were pre-
pared to obey without protest. This, then, is the last clear picture we have
of them: the scene in the sala of San Ildefonso where the little community
stood together before the king’s commissioner to hear the king's decree.
And after it had been read, “the Reverend Father Provincial Juan Sil verio
Prieto answered in the name of all . . . that he was ready to comply with
whatever His Majesty ordained and that no subordinate of his would go
against it or contradict it in any manner whatever/' So might St. Ignatius
himself have answered. No more fitting words can be found to close this
history of a group of men w r ho, like St. Thomas More, tried their best to be
the king's good servants — but God's first; God's above all.
20 +
APPENDIXES
SOURCES AND REFERENCES
NOTES
INDEX
Appendix A
REGNAL YEARS
The following tables are offered to help the reader place the events of our narrative
in their proper chronological framework.
1572
Gregory XIII
1621
Popes
Gregory XV
1691
Innocent XII
1585
Sixtus V
1623
Urban VIII
1700
Clement Xt
159°
Urban VII
1644
Innocent X
1721
Innocent XIII
1590
Gregory XIV
1655
Alexander VII
1724
Benedict XIII
1591
Innocent IX
1667
Clement IX
1730
Clement XII
1592
Clement VIII
1670
Clement X
174°
Benedict XIV
1605
Leo IX
1676
Innocent XI
1758
Clement XIII
1605
Paul V
1689
Alexander VIII
1769
Clement XIV
1556
Philip II
Kings of Spain
1665 Marie Anne
1700
Philip V
1598
Philip HI
(regent for
1746
Ferdinand VI
1621
Philip IV
Charles II)
1759
Charles III
1676
Charles II
Generals of the Society of Jesus
1573
Everard Mercurian
1682
Charles de Noyelle
1581
Claudio Acquaviva
1687
Tirso Gonzalez
1615
Muzio Vitelleschi
1706
Michelangelo Tamburini
1646
Vincenzo Carrafa
173°
Franz Retz
i6 49
Francesco Piccolomini
1751
Ignazio Visconti
1652
Alessandro Gottifredi
1755
Luigi Centurione
1652
Goswin Nickel
1758
Lorenzo Ricci
1661
Gianpaolo Oliva
Governors of the Philippines
1 580
Gonzalo Ronquillo de Penalosa
1602
Pedro Bravo de Acuna
1583
Diego Ronquillo, acting
1606
Audiencia, interregnum
1584
Santiago de Vera
Gomez Perez Dasmarmas
1609
Juan de Silva
159°
1616
Audiencia, interregnum
1593
Luis Perez Dasmarmas, acting
1618
Alonso Fajardo de Tenza
1596
Francisco Tello de Guzman
1624
Audiencia, interregnum
599
600
Appendix A
1625
Fernando de Silva, acting
1717
Fernando de Bustamante Bustil-
1626
Juan Nino de Tabora
lo y Rueda
1632
Audiencia, interregnum
1719
Archbishop Francisco de la
1633
Juan Cerezo de Salamanca, act-
Cuesta, acting
ing
1721
Toribio del Cossio, Marquis of
1635
Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera
Torre Campo
1644
Diego Fajardo
1729
Fernando Valdes y Tamon
1653
Sabiniano Manrique de Lara
*739
Gaspar de la Torre
1663
Diego Salcedo
1745
Bishop Juan de Arechederra,
1668
Audiencia, interregnum
acting
1669
Manuel de Leon
1750
Francisco Jose de Obando, Mar-
1677
Audiencia, interregnum
quis of Obando
1678
Juan de Vargas
1754
Pedro Manuel de Arandia
1684
Gabriel de Curuzelaegui
1759
Bishop Miguel de Espeleta,
1689
Audiencia, interregnum
acting
1690
Fausto Cruzat y Gongora
1761
Archbishop Manuel Rojo, act-
1701
Domingo de Zabalburu
ing *
1709
Martin de Ursua y Arizmendi,
1764
Francisco de la Torre, acting
Count of Lizarraga
1765
Jose Raon
1715
Audiencia, interregnum
Archbishops of Manila
(The dates given are those in which the incumbents took possession of the
archdiocese, not necessarily those in which they were consecrated.)
1581
Domingo de Salazar, O.P.,
1674
Vacant see
bishop
1677
Felipe Pardo, O.P.
1594
Vacant see
1689
Vacant see
1598
Ignacio de Santibanez, O.F.M.
1697
Diego Camacho y Avila
(28 May to 14 August)
1705
Vacant see
1598
Vacant see
1707
Francisco de la Cuesta, Hierony-
1603
Miguel de Benavides, O.P.
mite
1605
Vacant see
1723
Vacant see
1610
Diego Vasquez Mercado
1728
Carlos Bermudez Castro
1616
Vacant see
1729
Vacant see
1618
Miguel Garcia Serrano, O.S.A.
1736
Juan Angel Rodriguez, Trini-
1629
Vacant see
tarian
1635
Hernando Guerrero, O.S.A.
1742
Vacant see
1641
Vacant see
1747
Pedro Martinez Arizala,
1645
Fernando Montero (died on
O.F.M.
arrival)
1755
Vacant see
1645
Vacant see
1759
Manuel Antonio Roio
1653
Miguel Millan de Poblete
1764
/
Vacant see
1667
Vacant see
1767
Basilio Sancho de Santa Justa y
1672
Juan Lopez, O.P.
Rufina, Piarist
Appendix A 601
Provincials oj the Philippine Province
1580 Antonio Sedeno, superior oj
mission
1590 Antonio Sedeno, rector
1595 Antonio Sedeno, vice-provincial
1596 Ramon Prat, vice-provincial
1599 Diego Garcia, visitor
1601 Diego Garda, vice-provincial
1605 Gregorio Lopez, provincial
1613 Valerio de Ledesma
1618 Frandsco Calderon, visitor
1621 Alonso de Humanes
1627 Juan de Bueras
1637 Juan de Salazar
1639 Francisco Colin
1644 Francisco de Roa
1646 Diego de Bobadilla
1648 Francisco de Roa
1650 Ignacio Zapata
1653 Diego Patino
1654 Miguel Solana
1658 Simon Bautista
1659 Francisco de Roa
1661 Ignacio Zapata
1663 Rafael de Bonafe
1665 Ignacio Zapata
1666 Domingo Ezquerra
1667 Rafael de Bonafe
1668 Miguel Solana
1670 Luis Pimentel
1671 Andres de Ledesma
1675 Luis Pimentel
1675 Javier Riquelme
1678 Giovanni Pallavicino
1681 Tomas de Andrade
1683 Francisco Salgado
1687 Luis Pimentel
1690 Jose Sanchez
1693 Magino Sola
1696 Antonino Tuccio
1699 Luis de Morales
1703 Jose de Velasco
1707 Antonino Tuccio
1708 Paul Klein
1710 Francisco Diaz
1713 Nicolas Alonso
1713 Jose de Velasco
1716 Francisco Alonso
1719 Marcello Valdivieso
1721 Juan Antonio de Oviedo, visitor
1722 Jose Hernandez
1726 Pedro de la Hera
1730 Gilles Wibault
1734 Jose Astudillo
1738 Juan de Eguia
1739 Fulcher Spilimberg
1744 Pedro de Estrada
1748 Jose de Samaniego
1749 Leonhard Fink
1750 Juan Moreno
1754 Pi etro Tavarnieri
? Juan Moreno (in office 1760-
1761)
? Bernardo Pazuengos (in office
1763-1764)
? Jose de Torres (in office 1767)
? Juan Silverio Prieto (in office
1768)
Appendix B
CATALOGUE OF THE MEMBERS OF THE PROVINCE
OF THE PHILIPPINES AT THE TIME OF THE
EXPULSION, 1768
This Catalogue is compiled from lists and other data in Arag. E-I-b-6, E-I-d -5
and E-II-b-90. The men are listed according to the residence or house to which
they were attached, with the exception of the provincial and his staff ( [socii ). These
habitually resided in the College of San Ildefonso in the town of Santa Cruz,
across the Pasig River from Manila. Each man's office or principal employment
is given after his name.
1. Juan Silverio Prieto, provincial.
2. Michel Perearneau, priest socius to the provincial.
3. Tomas Sancho, lay-brother socius to the provincial, assistant procurator of
the province.
College of Manila
Priests
4. Bernardo Pazuengos, rector.
5. Francesco Badiola, minister.
6. Alessandro Mayneri, master of novices.
7. Andres Rodriguez, engaged in the ministry.
8. Bernardo Bruno de la Fuente, procurator of the college.
9. Manuel Aponte Rodriguez, professor of canon law.
10. Manuel Barrio, engaged in the ministry.
1 1 . Franz Buchelt, prefect of the church.
12. Francis co Ortiz Zugasti, engaged in the ministry.
1 3 . Francisco Puche, engaged in the ministry.
14. Guillermo Moral, engaged in the ministry.
15. Ignacio Sata, moderator of the Sodality of Our Lady.
16. Juan Fernandez, valetudinarian.
17. Juan Francisco Romero, procurator of the province.
18. Miguel Quesada, valetudinarian.
19. Pascual Fernandez, professor of mathematics.
20. Felipe Solis, valetudinarian.
21. Salvador Busquets, professor of theology.
Scholastics
22. Antonio Memije, student of theology.
23. Manuel Garcia, student of theology.
602
Members of the Province , lj68
603
Lay Brothers
24. Augusto Podda, manager of the Nasugbu Estate.
25. Alonso Almonacid, tailor, in charge of the clothes room.
26. Alonso Gonzalez, in charge of the pantry and dining room.
27. Juan Di castillo, manager of the Mariquina Estate.
28. Juan Rabanal, manager of the Nasugbu Estate.
29. Juan Riquet, sacristan.
30. Jose Ambrosio, valetudinarian.
31. Jose Azcon, assistant procurator of the college.
32. Giuseppe Martinelli, engaged in house work.
33. Mateo Fortich, pharmacist.
34. Mateo Rubin, infirmarian.
35. Olegario Llorensi, porter.
36. Pedro Arostegui, engaged in house work.
37. Salvador Correas, manager of the Payatas Estate.
Novice Brother
38. Antonio Palomera.
College of San Jose
Priests
39. Francisco Javier I bero, vice-rector.
40. Giovanni Condestabile, valetudinarian, of the Province of Japan.
41. Juan Miguel Lazorda, grammar master.
42. Miguel Heredia, professor of philosophy.
43. Pedro Zia, professor of theology.
Lay Brothers
44. Francisco Ripoll, in charge of the pantry and dining room.
45. Jose Rodriguez, manager of the San Pedro Tunasan Estate.
46. Pedro Marin, manager of the Lian Estate.
College of San Ildefonso
Priests
4 7. Bernardo Martin, vice-rector, parish priest of Santa Cruz.
48. Anton Raucher, minister.
49. Manuel Arenas, engaged in the ministry.
50. Manuel Catarroja, valetudinarian.
5 1 . Manuel Viegas, of the Vice-Province of China, procurator of the same.
52. Francisco Liebana, engaged in the ministry.
53. Jose Leon, engaged in the ministry.
54. Mathaus Stiller, engaged in the ministry.
55. Miguel Bernardo Arana, parish priest of San Miguel.
20*
Appendix B
604
Lay Brothers
56. Antonio Ortiz, manager of the Calamba Estate.
57. Antonio Torres, manager of the San Pedro Makati Estate.
58. Ramon Burrullan, in charge of the pantry and dining room.
College of Cavite
Priests
59. Manuel Zuazua, rector, parish priest of San Lucas.
60. Fernando Haro, valetudinarian.
61. Juan Manuel Alonso, parish priest of Cavite el Viejo and Binakayan.
62. Joaquin Ramos, engaged in the ministry.
63. Sebastian Zwerg, of the Province of Japan, engaged in the ministry.
64. Tomas Ron, engaged in the ministry.
65. Francisco Hereter, manager of the Naic Estate.
Antipolo Residence
Priests
66. Miguel Roldan, rector, parish priest of Mariquina.
67. Antonio Miguel de los Reyes, parish priest of Taytay.
68. Baltazar Vela, parish priest of Cainta.
69. Eugenio Carrion, parish priest of Antipolo.
70. Francisco Ortiz, parish priest of Bosoboso.
71. Juan Izquierdo, parish priest of San Mateo,
72. Joaquin Pueyo, assistant parish priest of Mariquina.
Silang Residence
Priests
73. Hernando Ibanez, rector, parish priest of Silang.
74. Anton Guasch, assistant parish priest of Maragondon.
75. Antonio Urtezabal, parish priest of Maragondon.
76. Ignacio Monroy, parish priest of Indang.
Marin duque Mission
Priests
77. Francisco Polo, superior, missionary at Boac.
78. Bartolome Avellan, missionary at Santa Cruz de Napo.
79. Valerio Noguera, missionary.
College of Cebu
Priests
80. Domingo Inchausti, vice-rector.
81. Daniel Josef Geltel, engaged in the ministry.
Members of the Province, ij68
605
Priests — contd.
82. Jose Salvador, parish priest of Mandaue.
83. Lorenz John, engaged in the ministry*
84. Ramon Barnadas, engaged in the ministry.
85. Silvestre Puigvert, parish priest of Inabangan and Talibong on the island of
Bohol.
Lay Brother
86. Miguel Marcos, physician and infirmarian.
Bohol Residence
Priests
87. Ignacio Descallar, rector, parish priest of Dauis.
88. Andres Borrego, parish priest of Loon.
89. Carlos Barberan, parish priest of Loay.
90. Ignatz Agras, valetudinarian.
91. Johann Baptist Jaulen, valetudinarian.
92. Juan Soriano, parish priest of Malabohoc.
93. Jose Berenguer, parish priest of Baclayon.
94. Jose Molo, engaged in the ministry.
95. Marcos Marquinez, parish priest of Tagbilaran.
96. Pedro Pazos, parish priest of Hagna.
97. Salvatore Guirisi, parish priest of Loboc.
College of Iloilo
Priests
98. Alonso Jimenez, rector and chaplain of the Iloilo garrison.
99. Gabriel Oliver, parish priest of Molo.
100. Pedro Berrojo, parish priest of Mandurriao and Guimaras.
Mission of Negros
Priests
10 1. Francisco Garcia, superior and missionary at Ilog.
102. Antonio Victoria, missionary at Guilhungan.
103. Domingo Mallo, missionary at Cabangcalan.
Catbalogan Residence
Priests
104. Gianbattista Medici, rector and parish priest of Catbalogan.
105. Ignatz Gosner, parish priest of Paranas.
106. Juan Esandi, parish priest of Capul and Calbayog.
107. Jean Antoine Toumon, parish priest of Calbiga.
108. Jose Gomez, parish priest of Bangahon.
109. Jose Valero, engaged in the ministry,
no. Miguel Alustiza, engaged in the ministry.
Appendix B
606
Palapag Residence
Priests
111. Roque Corbinos, vice-provincial for the Visayas, rector and parish priest of
Palapag.
1 12. Luis Lopez, parish priest of Sulat.
1 13. Charles O'Dwyer, parish priest of Tubig.
1 14. Ignatz Frisch, parish priest of Guiuan.
1 15. Jose Anda, parish priest of Catubig and Lauan.
1 16. Joseph Bremont, parish priest of Catarman and Bobon.
1 17. Jose Vazquez, parish priest of Borongan.
Dagami Residence
Priests
1 18. Juan Miguel de la Cuesta, rector and parish priest of Palo.
1 19. Aloys Knapp, parish priest of Dagami.
120. Juan Tronco, parish priest of Burauen.
1 21. Jose Paver, parish priest of Basy.
122. Giuseppe Silvestri, parish priest of Dulag.
123. Pedro Caseda, parish priest of Balangigan.
124. Pietro Patelani, parish priest of Tanauan.
Carigara Residence
Priests
125. Pedro Nicolas Garcia, rector and parish priest of Carigara.
126. Jerome Ketten, parish priest of Alang-alang.
127. Rafael Rivera, parish priest of Jaro.
128. Richard Callaghan, parish priest of Barugo.
Hilongos Residence
Priests
129. Bernabe Limia, rector and parish priest of Hilongos.
130. Luis Secanell, parish priest of Ormoc and Baybay.
1 3 1 . Hilario Balza, parish priest of Palompong.
132. Joaquin Romeo, parish priest of Sogod, Hinundayan and Cabalian.
133. Pedro Baeza, engaged in the minis try,
134. Tomas Monton, parish priest of Maasin.
College of Zamboanga
Priests
I 35 * Vicente Aleman, rector, chaplain of the Zamboanga garrison and parish
priest of Zamboanga.
136. Giuseppe Aressu, engaged in the ministry.
Memhers of the Province , lj68
607
Dapitan Residence
Priests
13 7. Josef Maurer, rector and parish priest of Dapitan.
138. Francisco Capilla, parish priest of Bayog.
139. Francisco Zarzoso, parish priest of Lubungan and Dipolog.
140. Juan Mencerreg, parish priest of Iligan and Initao.
141. Juan Antonio Munoz, parish priest of Uaya.
142. Sebastian Sanz, parish priest of Misamis.
Vice-Province of Marianas
Priests
143. Franz Stengel, vice-provincial, parish priest of Agana.
144. Franz Reitemberg, rector of the College of Agana.
145. Rafael Canicia, missionary at Umata, Merizo and Inarahan.
Lay Brother
146. Placido Lampurdanes, physician.
On Overseas Assignments
Priests
147. Ignacio Malaga, procurator of the Province, in Rome.
148. Joaquin Mezquida, procurator of the Province, in Madrid.
149. Patricio del Barrio, assistant procurator of the Province, in Rome.
Lay Brothers
150. Ignacio Coma, manager of the Textuco Estate, Mexico.
1 5 1 . Gioacchino Santacilia, in Mexico.
152. Joseph Demesain, manager of the Del Molino Estate, Mexico.
153* Giuseppe Fontanedda, manager of the San Borja Estate, Mexico.
154. Miguel Ferrer, manager of the San Nicolas Estate, Mexico.
Appendix C
CATALOGUE OF MEMBERS OF THE MISSION,
THE VICE-PROVINCE, AND PROVINCE OF THE
PHILIPPINES, 1581-1768, MENTIONED IN THE TEXT
The principal sources for the biographical data in this list are the personnel
catalogues in ARSI, the histories of Colin (in Pastells* edition), and Murillo
Velarde, Sommervogeh and Huonder. I have usually followed ARSI as against
later authorities where there is a discrepancy in date. The principal abbreviations
employed are: an. — arrived in the Philippines (or the Marianas); b . — born;
d. — died; dioc. — diocese or archdiocese; dm.— dismissed from the Society;
e. — entered the Society; miss. — sent as a missionary to; prof. — took the final vows
of the profession; ret . — returned to Spain (or Mexico, as the case may be); spir.
coadj. — took the vows of a spiritual coadjutor; temp, coadj . — took the vows of a
temporal coadjutor.
Abarca, Antonio: priest; b. Vili alba, dioc. Cuenca, Spain, 13 Sep. 1610;
£.23 Mar. 1628; an. 26 May 1632; prof. 21 Jan. 1649; d. at sea near Acapulco
21 Jan. 1660.
Acuna, Pascual de: priest; b . Funchal, Madeira, 1573; e. prov. Mexico 1596;
an. 1603; d. Manila 3 Mar. 1643.
Aguirre, Juan de; priest; b. Toledo, Spain, 31 Aug. 1586; e . 11 JuL 1607;
d. Manila 13 Jun. 1632.
Alberto, Raymundo: brother; b. Barcelona, Spain, 7 Jan. 1604; e. prov. Aragon
4 Jan, 1622; temp, coadj. 12 Oct. 1636; d. Manila 16 Sep. 1650.
Alcina, Ignacio: priest; b. Gandia, Spain, 2 Feb, 1610; e. 15 Feb. 1624; arr.
26 May 1632; prof. 15 Feb. 1643; d. 30 Jul. 1674.
Aleni, Giulio: priest; stationed at Palapag 1649.
Almerici, Francesco: priest; b. Pesaro, March of Ancona, Italy, 1557; e. 29 Sep.
1576; arr. 26 May 1584 ;prof. 12 May 1593; d. 2 Dec. 1601.
Alonso, Domingo: brother, b. Guardia, Galicia, Spain, 1574; e. Manila 20 Nov.
1596; temp coadj. 4 Oct. 1604; date of death unknown.
Andrade, Tomas de: priest; b. Toledo, Spain, 2 Dec, 16x9; e. 27 Feb. 1636;
arr. 1643 ; prof. 29 Sep. 1654; d. Manila 15 May 1689.
Angel, Francisco: priest; b. San Clemente, Spain, 14 Jan. 1603 ; e. 14 Apr. 1618;
arr. 1626; prof . 1 Nov. 1637 ; d. Catbalogan, 24 Feb. 1676.
Angelis, Teofilo de: priest; b. Siena, Italy, 15 Jan, 1652; e. 6 Nov. 1673;
arr. (Marianas) 1681 ; killed by natives, Rota, 24 Jul. 1684.
Angles, Juan: priest; no information available.
Arcada, Sebastian Ignacio de : priest ; no information available.
Aressu, Giovanni Domenico: priest; b. Cagliari, Sardinia, 6 Feb. 1606; e. 4 Nov.
1622 ; arr. 1643 ; spir. coadj. ; killed by natives, Cabalian, 10 Apr. 1645.
608
Members Mentioned in the Text 609
Armano, Angelo: priest; b. Lucca, Italy, 1572; e. prov. Rome 10 June 1593;
arr. 19 May 1601; L Manila 10 Jan. 1612.
Arroyo, Alonso de: priest; b. Malaga, Spain, 22 Apr. 1592; e. 27 Oct. 1610;
arr. 1621 ; prof . 8 Sep. 1629; miss. Japan 1643 ; date of death unknown.
Asm, Joaquin: priest; b. Saragossa, Spain, 19 Jul. 1653; e. 11 Jul. 1673; prof.
15 Aug. 1696.
Aunon, Pedro de: priest; b. Pareja, dioc. Cuenca, Spain, 1 575 > e * 1 594 * arr *
21 Jun. 1603; prof. 5 Feb. 1612; d. Loboc, Bohol, 2 Jul. 1655.
Avina, Lorenzo de: priest; b. Seville, Spain, 13 Nov. 1661; e. Manila 10 Oct.
1693.
Ballesteros, Juan de: brother; b. Albuera, dioc. Badajoz, Spain, I 577 » Manila
26 Apr. 1620; temp, coadj. 2 Feb. 1637; d. Carigara, Leyte, 6 Aug. 1646.
Barcena, Ventura: priest; b. 1634; e. prov. Castile 1653; d. in captivity, Tawi-
Tawi, Sulu, 1663.
Barco, Alonso del: brother; b . Plasencia, Spain, 1576; ^ prov. Toledo 23 Jan.
1594; arr. 5 Aug. 1596; dm. 1603.
Baroncini, Gregorio: priest; b. Lucca, Italy, 1569; e. prov. Rome; arr. 19 May
1601; d. Dulag, Leyte, 8 May 1602.
Barrio, Patricio del: priest; no information available.
Barrios, Juan de: priest; no information available.
Baudin, Etienne: brother; b. Marseilles, France, 1673; e. Manila 1702; d. at sea
near Marinduque 18 Oct. 1711.
Bautista, Francis: brother; b. Ireland 1581; e. Manila 8 Sep. 1612; temp, coadj.
12 Oct. 1625; d. Manila 28 Oct. 1630.
Bautista, Simon; priest; b . Lerida, Spain, 10 Dec. 1599 * e * p rov * Aragon 27 Dec.
1619; arr. 1626; prof. 26 Apr. 1637; d. Cebu 28 Oct. 1661.
Belin, Gregorio: priest; b. Madrid, Spain, 15 Mar. 1607; t. 7 Oct. 1625; arr.
18 Jun. 1626; dm. Nov. 1640.
Bertarello, Sebastiano Roderigo: brother; b. Belfonte, Dukedom of Mantua,
Italy, 1569; e. Manila 14 Jul. 1608; temp, coadj . 14 Nov. 1621.
Bilanci, Giovanni Domenico: priest; b. Licii, Kingdom of Naples, Italy, 1573 *
e. zj Sep. 1589; arr. 1 May 1602; prof. 10 Aug. 1611 ; d . captive of the Sulus,
Jolo, 1633.
Bobadilla, Diego de: priest; b. Madrid, Spain, 19 Sep. 159°* P rov * Castile
1 Jan. 1606; arr. 1615; prof. I Nov. 1623; d. Carigara 6 Feb. 1648.
Bobadilla, Jose de: priest; no information available.
Bonafe, Rafael de: priest; b. Palma de Mallorca, Spain, 6 Nov. 1606; c. prov.
Aragon 16 Jul. 1622; arr. 26 May 1632; prof. 31 Jul. 1642; d. Manila 27
Sep. 1668.
Boranga, Karl von: priest; b. Vienna, Austria, 8 Jul. 1640; e. prov. Austria
7 Oct. 1656; arr. (Marianas) 1681 ; prof. 2 Feb. 1674; killed by natives, Rota,
Marianas, 1684.
Borja, Antonio de: priest; l. Valencia, Spain, 30 Jan. 1650; e. 13 Sep. 1668; left
for Philippines 1671 ; prof. 2 Feb. 1687; d. Manila 27 Jan. 1711.
Bosque, Juan del: priest; b. Oaxaca, Mexico, 1568; e. 28 Aug. 1586; arr. 10 Jun.
1595; dm. Aug. 1600.
610 Appendix C
Bueras, Juan de: priest; b. Pantaleon de Aras, dioc. Burgos, Spain, Apr. 1583;
e. prov. Toledo 1602; prof . 17 Mar. 1620; arr. 1622; visitor prov. Mexico
1645; d . Mexico 19 Feb. 1646.
Bustillos, Lorenzo: priest; b . Valle de Carriedo, dioc. Burgos, Spain, 10 Aug.
1642; e. 2 Jul. 1664; arr . (Marianas) 15 Jun. 1668; spir . coadj . 15 Aug. 1681;
d . Guam, Marianas, 2 Mar. 1716.
Calvo, Bartolome; brother; b. Toledo, Spain, 1 574; t. Manila 9 Jun. 1594;
i. in sea-fight with Dutch off Nasugbu, Luzon, 14 Dec. 1600.
Calvo, Jose: priest; d. Cuzco 17 Apr. 1707?
Camara, Andres de la: priest; b. Ghent, Belgium, 7 Mar. 1574; c. 24 Jun. 1594;
prof, 10 Aug. 1611; d. Silang 1624.
Campioni, Gianantonio: priest; b . Genoa, Italy, 13 Dec. 1592; c. 26 Dec. 1608;
arr . 1622; prof 26 Aug. 1629; d . Cebu 1 Jan. 1651.
Campo, Juan del: priest; b, Salamanca, Spain, 1563; e. prov. Castile 1588;
arr . 10 Jun. 1595; d, Tampakan, Mindanao, ix Aug. 1596.
Campo, Juan del: priest; b . Villaneuva, dioc. Plasencia, Spain, 18 Feb. 1620;
e. iz Mar. 1636; arr . 1643 ; killed by natives, Mindanao, 27 Jan. 1650.
Cani, Niccolo: priest; b . Iglesias, Sardinia, 25 Mar. 1611; e , prov. Sardinia
27 Mar. 1628; arr . 1653 ; prof 8 Sep. 1648; d . Manila 4 Jul. 1696.
Cantova, Gianantonio: priest; b . Intra, Italy, 1697; left for Philippines 1717;
miss. Palaus 1722, 1731; killed by natives, Mogmog Island, 9 Jun. 1731*
Capdevila, Jacinto: priest; b. Graus, Spain, 16 Aug. 1654; c. 15 Nov. 1673;
spir . coadj. 2 Feb. 1691.
Cardenoso, Tomas: priest; ri Paredes, dioc. Palencia, Spain, 22 Dec. 1635;
e . 27 Sep. 1664; arr. (Marianas) 23 Mar. 1668; spir . roai/. 15 Aug. 1681.
Caro, Andrea: priest; L Trapani, Sicily, 1569; e. 29 Apr. 1579; arr. 1603;
prof. 2 Jul. 161 1.
Carpio, Juan del: priest; b. Riofrio, dioc. Avila, Spain, 1583; e. prov. Mexico
19 Mar. 1614; arr. 16x5; spir . coadj . 2 Dec. 1624; killed by Moros, Ormoc,
Leyte, 3 Dec. 1634.
Cartagena, Diego de: priest; b . Valladolid, Spain, 17 Apr. 1602; e . 17 Jan. 1619;
Jm. 31 May 1637.
Casanova, Pedro de: priest; ri Velez del Blanco, dioc. Almeria, Spain, 26 Aug.
1641; e. prov. Toledo 1658; arr . (Marianas) 23 Mar. 1668; came to Manila
1671 ; prof. 2 Feb. 1676; d. at sea near Manila 3 Jul. 1694.
Cebreros, Geronimo: priest; b . Mexico 5 May 1631; e. 5 Jul. 1649; arr. 1653;
spir . roirij. 2 Feb. 1666; d. 15 Aug. 1713.
Certelli, Cristoforo: scholastic; b. Siena, Italy, 1577; e. 1590; arr. 21 Jun. 1603;
d. Manila Aug. 1606.
Chirino, Pedro: priest; b. Osuna, Spain, 1558; e. prov. Andalusia 1 Feb. 1580;
arr. zo Jun. 1590; prof 28 Aug. 1595; d. Manila 16 Sep. 1635.
Chova, Vicente: priest; b. Gandia, Spain, 17 May 1624; *. 26 Apr. 1641;
prof l Jul. 1663.
Coemans, Pierre: priest; b. Antwerp, Belgium, 30 Jan. 1638; <?. 19 Sep. 1656;
arr * (Marianas) 16 Jun. 1674; prof. 2 Feb. 1675; killed by natives, Saipan,
Jul. 1695.
Members Mentioned in the Text
611
Colin, Francisco; priest; l. Ripoll, dioc. Vich, Spain, 1592; e. prov. Aragon
22 Dec. 1606; arr. 18 Jun. 1626; prof. 7 Aug. 1627; d. San Pedro Makati,
Luzon, 16 May, 1660.
Combes, Francisco: priest; h. Saragossa, Spain, 5 Oct. 1620; c . prov. Aragon
25 May 1633 ; arr . 7 Jul. 1643 ; prof. 2 Jul. 1654; A Acapulco 29 Dec. 1665.
Cortes, Adriano de las: priest; b. Tauste, dioc. Saragossa, Spain, 1580; e. 3 May
1596; arr . 22 Jun. 1605 ; prof . 16 May 1613 ; d . Manila 6 May 1629.
Cortil, Joseph: priest; b . Belle, dioc. Ypres, Belgium, 5 Feb. 1675; e . prov.
Flemish Belgium 1 Jan. 1693; arr . 1709; killed by natives, Palaus, 1710.
Cotta, Simone: priest; b. Genoa, Italy, 15 Dec. 1590; e. 2 Jan. 1608; prof. 26
Aug. 1629.
Crespo, Ignacio: priest; b . Argente, Aragon, Spain, 1681; e. prov. Aragon;
arr. 1709; d. at sea near Marinduque 18 Oct. 1711.
Damiani, Vincenzo: priest; b . Messina, Sicily, 17 Oct. 1613; e. 7 Mar. 1630;
arr. 1643; killed by natives, Catubig, Samar, 11 Oct, 1649.
Delgado, Juan Jose: priest; b. Cadiz, Spain, 23 Jun. 1697; e. 15 May 1714; left
for Philippines 1718; d. Carigara, Leyte, 24 Mar. 1755.
Diaz, Pedro: brother; b. Avila, Spain, 1574; £. 25 Aug. 1592; d. Aug. 1605.
Diaz Carlos, Pedro: priest; b. Huelva, dioc. Seville, Spain, 9 Oct. 1619; e . 26
Jun. 1634; arr. 1643; prof. 8 Sep. 1654; d. Cebu 11 Dec. 1701.
Duberon, Jacques: priest; b. Lille, Belgium, 30 Dec. 1674; e. prov. French
Belgium 1691; arr. 1709; prof. 18 Oct. 1710; killed by natives, Palaus, 1710.
Dubois, Balthazar: brother; b. Tournai, Belgium 15 Mar. 1654; e. prov. Flemish
Belgium 29 Jun. 1675; arr . (Marianas) 1679; killed by natives, Marianas,
23 Jul. 1684.
Ducos, Jose: priest; no information available.
Encinas, Francisco de: priest; b. Avila, Spain, 18 Jul. 1572; e. 24 Jun. 1587;
arr. 1596; prof. 26 Sep. 1610; d. Manila 10 Jan. 1633.
Enriquez, Martin: priest; b. Navarre, 1565; arr. 3 May 1592; d. Taytay, Luzon,
5 Feb. 1593.
Esbri, Onofre: priest; b. Tortosa, Spain, 16 Aug. 1611; t. 3 Apr. 1627; arr .
26 May 1632; killed by Chinese pirates, Sancian Island, June 1647.
Espinar, Pedro de: priest; b. Toledo, Spain, 27 Mar. 1630; e. prov. Castile
7 Mar. 1645; arr. 1653; prof. 2 Feb. 1664; d. Madrid 31 Aug. 1695.
Esquivel, Diego de: priest; b. Manila 11 Nov. 1625 ; e. 27 Nov. 1648; d.
Manila 6 Jun. 1665.
Estrada, Pedro de: priest; b. La Rambla, Cordoba, Spain, 15 Jul. 1680; e . 1695 ;
left for Philippines 1707; d. Manila 16 Nov. 1748.
Ezquerra, Domingo: priest; b. Manila 1601; e. 1618; d. 29 Apr. 1670.
Ezquerra, Francisco: priest; b. Manila 4 Oct. 1644; e. 12 Jan. 1661; miss .
Marianas 1 1 Jun. 1671 ; killed by natives, Guam, 1 Feb. 1674.
Fink, Leonhard: priest; b. Bregenz, Austria, 2 Apr. 1688; e . prov. Upper
Germany 3 Oct. 1713; art. 1718 ; living in 1755.
612 Appendix C
Flores, Cosme de: priest; b . Zacatecas, Mexico, 1569; e. 1 Sep. 1587; arr. 10
Jun. 1595; d. Alangalang, Leyte, 8 Sep. 1597.
Gallardo, Nicolas: brother; b, Valladolid, Spain; arr . 1581; temp . foai/. 29 Dec.
1588; d. Mexico City 8 Jun. 1614.
Garay, Caspar: brother; b. Triana, Seville, Spain, 1540; e. Manila 6 May 1591;
temp coadj . 8 Aug. 1 599.
Garcia, Diego: priest; b. Las Berlanas, dioc. Avila, Spain, 2 Jul. 1552; e. 31 Mar.
1572; prof. 22 Jul. 1591; arr . 17 Jun. 1599; d. Manila 12 Sep. 1604.
Garda Pacheco, Juan: priest; b. Leon, Spain, 1560; e . Manila 24 Dec. 1585;
d. Mexico City 6 Dec. 1595.
Gavanti, Bartolommeo: priest; see text.
Gomez, Gaspar: brother; b. Ocana, Spain, 8 Sep. 1552; e . prov. Toledo 10 Aug.
1570; arr. 9 Mar. 1584; temp coadj. 12 May 1593 ; d. Manila 9 Feb. 1622.
Gomez, Luis: priest; b. Toledo, Spain, 1569; e. 15 Aug. 1588; arr. 23 May
1598; d. Manila 1 Mar. 1628.
Gomez, Miguel: priest; b. Villaluenga, near Calatayud, dioc. Tarazona, Spain,
1564; e. prov. Castile 15 Apr. 1582; prof. 26 Jul. 1603; d. Manila 18 Dec.
1622.
Gonzalez, Francisco: priest; b. Torrijos, dioc. Tarragona, Spain, 1568; e. 1 1 Apr.
1592; arr. 17 Jun. 1599; d. Cebu 1 Feb. 1614.
Gutierrez, Francisco: b. Segura de la Sierra, dioc. Cartagena, Spain, Aug. 1583**
e. Mar. 1601 ; arr. 22 Jun. 1605 ; prof. 1 Sep. 1618.
Gutierrez, Pedro: priest; b. Colima, dioc. Michoacan, Mexico, 24 Apr. 1593;
e. 14 May 161 1 ; arr. 1622; prof. 30 Oct. 1633 ; d. Iligan 25 Jul. 1651.
Herrera, Juan de: brother; b. Medina Sidonia, dioc. Cadiz, Spain, 9 May, 1570;
e. prov. Toledo 29 May 1595; temp, coadj. 12 Oct. 1625; d. Manila 10 May
1632.
Humanes, Alonso de: priest; b. Pozuelos, dioc. Toledo, Spain, 1362; e. 15 Jun.
1588; arr. 10 Jun. 1595; prof. 26 Feb. 1600; d. Loboc, Bohol, 26 Aug. 1633.
Hurtado, Melchor: priest; b. Toledo, Spain, 1571 ; e. 20 Apr. 1591 ; arr. 17 Jun.
1599; prof. 15 Oct. 1606; d. Ot on, Panay, 1607.
Ignacio, Miguel: priest; b. Requena, Spain, 1580; e. prov. Aragon 18 Jul. 1596;
arr. 21 Jun. 1603; prof. 26 Aug. 1615.
Irigoyen, Juan de: priest; b. Pamplona, Spain, 11 Apr. 1646; e. 19 Mar. 1662;
arr. 1667; prof. 15 Aug. 1679; d. Monaco 13 Oct. 1699.
Jaramiilo, Miguel: priest; b. Zafra, Spain, 26 Feb. 1648; e. 16 Jan. 1665; miss.
Marianas; prof. 2 Feb. 1695; red. College of Manila 1687; d. Ocana, Spain,
30 Dec. 1707.
Jayme, Esteban: priest; b. Ordis, dioc. Gerona, Spain, 26 Dec. 1602; e. 25 Feb.
1619; arr. 1626; prof 1 Jan. 1638; killed by natives, Isiu, Negros, 17 Feb.
1659.
Members Mentioned in the Text
613
Jimenez, Cristobal: priest; b. Prexamo, dioc. Palencia, Spain, 1573; e. prov.
Castile 2 May 1588; arr. 1596; prof. 3 Oct. 1610; d. Alangalang, Leyte, 3
Dec. 1628.
John, Lorenz: priest; b. Leschen, Bohemia, 10 Aug. 1691; e . prov. Bohemia
21 Oct. 1710; arr. 1723; living in 1772.
Kahl, Adam: priest; b . Eger, Bohemia, 25 Feb. 1657; e. prov. Bohemia 27 Ocr.
1673; arr. (Marianas) 1688; d. Manila 5 Nov. 1702.
Kaller: see Kahl, Adam.
Kamel, Georg Josef: brother; b . Brunn, Moravia, 21 Apr. 1661 ; e. prov. Bohemia
12 Nov. 1682; arr . 1687; temp, coadj. 15 Aug. 1696; d. Manila 2 May 1706.
Klein, Paul: priest; b. Eger, Bohemia, 25 Jan. 1652; e. prov. Bohemia 16 Sep.
1669; arr. 1678; prof. 2 Feb. 1685.
Lado, Francesco: priest; b. Alghero, Sardinia, 2 Jun. 1617; e. 2 Jun. 1633;
arr. 1643; prof. 19 Apr. 1654.
Landa, Juan de: priest; b. Havana, Cuba, 5 Jun. 1617; e . 20 Jun. 1643 ; arr . 1643 ;
d. at sea near Acapulco 9 Jan. 1674.
Laurencio, Diego: priest; b. Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, 1562; e. 21 Apr. 1594 1
arr. 19 May 1601 ; prof. 25 Feb. 1607; d. Manila 13 May 1645.
Ledesma, Andres de: priest; l . Yeste, dioc. Cartagena, Spain, 15 Jun. 1610;
e. 6 Dec. 1627; arr. 26 May 1632; prof. 27 Dec. 1648; d. Manila 16 Feb. 1684.
Ledesma, Valerio de: priest; b. Alaejos, Spain, 23 Mar. 1556; e. 16 Oct. 1572;
arr. 1596; prof. 4 Jan. 1604; d. Manila 15 May 1639.
Lombard, Jules: brother; b. Monton, Savoy, 1580; e. Manila 21 Mar. 1614;
temp . coadj. 8 Sep. 1627; d. Manila 23 Oct. 1643.
Lopez, Alejandro: priest; b . Jaca, Spain, Jul. 1604; e. Manila 28 Aug. 1631;
prof. 2 Dec. 1643; killed by Magindanaus, Bwayan, Mindanao, 13 Dec. 1655*
Lopez, Alejo: priest; b. Albalate del Arzobispo, Spain, 16 Jul. 1649; e. prov.
Aragon 30 Sep. 1662 ; arr. 1666; prof. 2 Feb. 1679; d. at sea near Puerto Rico
18 Sep. 1693.
Lopez, Gregorio: priest; b. Alcocer, Spain, Feb. 1561; t. 31 Mar. 1 579 ^ P ro J-
27 May 1596; arr. 19 May 1601 ; d. Manila 2 x Jul. 1614.
Lopez, Juan: priest; b. Muratalla, dioc. Murcia, Spain, 27 Dec. 1584; e. prov.
Toledo 9 Oct. 1600; arr. 16 Jul. 1606; prof. 18 Jan. 1618; d. Manila 3 Sep.
i 6 5 9 .
Lopez de la Parra, Pedro: priest; b. Salamanca, Spain, 1547; e. 1565; P ro J • 2 9
May 1591 ; arr. Aug. 1596; d. at sea near Catanduanes Mar. 1601.
Lugo, Bartolommeo: priest; no information available.
Maerckl, Franz: priest; b. Karlsbad 6 May 1698; e. prov. Bohemia 9 Oct. 17 * 7 ;
arr. 1729; d. Cebu? 5 Dec. 1754.
Malaga, Ignacio: priest; no information available.
Malinsky, Anton Xaver: priest; b. Prague, Bohemia, 1 May 1703; e. prov.
Bohemia 9 Oct. 1718; arr. 1729; d. 24 Mar. 1746.
Mancker, Andreas: priest; b. Herzogenburg, Austria, 25 Nov. 1640; e. prov.
Austria 31 Oct. 1664; arr. 1678; d. at sea on the way to China Jun. 1684.
614 Appendix C
Marie, Denis: brother; b. France 1572; e. 28 Oct, 1590; arr. 10 Jun, 1595;
d. before 1614,
Martes, Bartolome: priest; b . Luna, Aragon, Spain, 1571; e . 29 Sep. 1592;
arr . Aug. 1 596; dm. bef. 5 Jul. 1601 ,
Marti, Ignacio: priest; b. Orihuela, Spain, 7 Aug, 1606; e. 6 Nov. 1621.
Martin, Francisco: brother; b . Valencia de Alcantara (or Vigo), dioc. Soria,
Spain, 1558; e. prov. Andalusia 1584; arr. 20 Jun. 1590; temp, coadj. 28 Aug.
1595; d. Manila 28 Jun. 1620.
Martinez, Francisco: priest; b. Egea de los Caballeros, dioc. Huesca, Spain, 28
Feb. 1605; e. 13 May 1622; prof. 2 Feb. 1642; d . Zamboanga, Mindanao,
1 1 Sep. 1650.
Martinez, Manuel: priest; b , Pedraza, dioc. Segovia, Spain, 1560; e. prov.
Castile 5 Oct. 1577; spir. coadj. 13 Jun. 1 593; arr. 1596; d. Palapag, Samar,
12 Dec. 1626.
Medina, Luis de : priest ; b. Malaga, Spain, 25 Aug. 1636; e. 1656; arr. (Marianas)
23 Mar. 1668; killed by natives, Saipan, Marianas, 29 Jan. 1670.
Mendiola, Simonde: brother; e. Manila 1583; d. Manila 1592,
Mendonga, Francisco da: priest; b. Lisbon, Portugal, 24 Aug. 1602; e. prov.
Mexico 17 Jun. 1621; spir. coadj.; killed by Maranaus between Iligan and
Dansalan, Mindanao, 7 May 1642.
Messina, Francesco: priest; b. Messina, Sicily, 20 Dec. 1614; e. prov. Sicily
11 Jun. 1629; arr. 1643; prof. 6 Jan. 1650; d. Santa Cruz (Manila) 12 Dec,
1682.
Miedes, Francisco: priest; b. Alcala, Spain, 2 Mar. 1622; e. 1 Mar. 1643;
prof. 15 Aug. 1669.
Miralles, Cristobal de: priest; b . Seville, Spain, 20 Mar. 1632; e. 9 May 1646;
left for Philippines 1653 ; Manila 9 (or 13) Sep. 1708.
Misas, Juan de las: priest; b. Mexico 1593; e. Manila 16 May 1609; killed by
Camucones at sea near Marinduque 1624.
Monroy, Sebastian de: priest; b. Arajal, dioc. Seville, 1649; e. 23 Jun. 1672;
arr. (Marianas) 16 Jun. 1674; hilled by natives, Guam, Marianas, 6 Sep. 1676.
Monte, Ignacio de: see Sonnenberg.
Montes, Pedro de: priest; b. Malaga, Spain, 1560; e. 15 Nov. 1577; prof
25 Jul. 1594; arr. 22 Jun. 1605; d. Mexico ca. 1610.
Montiel, Juan de: priest; b. Rijoles, Kingdom of Naples, 1630; arr. 1654; killed
by Magindanaus, Bwayan, Mindanao, 13 Dec. 1655.
Montoya, Tomas de: priest; b. Zacatecas, Mexico, 1568; e. 13 Jul. 1596;
arr. 1 595 ; prof. 8 Sep. 1604; d. Manila 14 Jul. 1627.
Morales, Luis de: priest; b. Tordesillas, dioc. Valladolid, Spain, 29 Sep. 1641;
*- P rov - Castile 28 Aug. 1658; arr. (Marianas) 23 Mar. 1668; to Manila 1671 ;
prof. 2 Feb. 1676; d. Manila 14 Jun. 1716.
Moreno, Juan: priest; b. Torrecampo, dioc. Cordoba, Spain, 1 Jun. 1691;
e. 3 Jan. I7°9^ left for Philippines 1718; still living in 1759.
Mujica, Ignacio de: priest; l. Bilbao, dioc. Calahorra, Spain, 8 Mar. 1593;
e. prov. Toledo 15 Feb. 1608; arr. 1625 * P ro f 12 Oct. 1627; d. Manila 30 Nov.
1656.
Murillo Velarde, Pedro: priest; b. Laujar, dioc. Granada, Spain, 6 Aug. 1696;
Members Mentioned in the Text 615
c. 23 Oct. 1718; arr. 1723 ; ret . Spain 19 Dec. 1759; ^ Puerto de Santa Maria,
Spain, 30 Nov. 1753.
Nieto, Francisco: brother; b . Valencia de Alcantara, dioc. Soria, Spain, 1566;
e. Manila 25 Jul. 1588; temp . coadj. 3 Oct. 1610; d. Cebu 5 Jan. 1647.
Noceda, Juan de: priest; b. Seville, Spain, 24 Feb. 1681; e. 24 Apr. 1700;
l 1747.
Oliverio, Stefano: brother; b . Campo, Genoa, Italy, 1571; e . Manila 14 Jul.
1608; temp, coadj. 14 Nov. 1621 ; d . before 1614.
Ontineda, Juan de: priest; b. Fraga, Catalonia, Spain, 1571; e . Manila 25 Jan.
1593; dm. before Aug. 1604.
Ortega, Geronimo de: priest; b. Tudela del Duero, dioc. Valladolid, Spain, 12
Apr. 1627; e. 26 Apr. 1641; arr . 1654; prof. 22 Apr. 1663; d. at sea near
Acapulco 15 Nov. 1683.
Otazo, Diego de: priest; b. Canizar, dioc. Toledo, Spain, 11 Apr. 1676; e. 1 Sep.
1693; d. Manila 30 Apr. 1741.
Otazo, Francisco de: priest; b. Alcocer, dioc. Cuenca, Spain, 1570; e. prov.
Toledo 8 May 1588; arr. 1596; prof. 4 Oct. 1604; d. Huete, Spain, 16 Aug.
1622.
Oviedo, Juan Antonio de: priest; b . Santa Fe de Bogota, New Granada (now
Colombia), 25 Jun. 1670; e. prov. Mexico 7 Jan. 1690; visitor prov. Philippines
1722 ; d. Mexico 2 Apr. 1757.
Pacheco: see Garcia Pacheco, Juan.
Palacios, Alonso: priest; b. Montalbo, dioc. Cuenca, Spain, 15 Oct. 1574;
e. 11 Oct. 1594; arr . 22 Jun. 1605; d. Cebu 28 Feb. 1615.
Pallavicino, Gianandrea: priest; b. Genoa, Italy, 20 Apr. 1623; e . 2 Dec. 1640;
arr. 1654; prof. 2 Feb. 1663 ; d. Manila 24 Apr. 1683.
Palliola, Francesco: priest; b. Nola, Italy, 10 May 1612; e. prov. Naples 6 Feb.
1637; arr. 1643 ; lulled by Subanuns, Ponot, Mindanao, 29 Jan. 1648.
Pareja, Miguel de: priest; b. Jaen, Spain, 1625 ; e. prov. Andalusia 10 Dec. 1639;
arr. 1653; prof. 2 Dec. 1662; d. Manila 21 Oct. 1691.
Parra: see Lopez de la Parra, Pedro.
Parrado, Pedro: priest; b. Tenerife, Canary Islands, 29 Apr. 1599; e * ^ ec *
1621; prof.; d. Naujan, Mindoro, 16 Nov. 1636.
Patino, Diego: priest; b . Talancon, dioc. Cuenca, Spain, I Jun. 1593; e. 22 Mar.
1613; arr ' 1622; prof. 12 Oct. 1636; d. Tenerife, Canary Islands, 26 Jul. 1657.
Pazuengos, Bernardo: priest; b. Garnica, dioc. Calahorra, 22 May 1706; e. 9 Oct.
1720; left for Philippines 1732; living in 1768.
Pedraza, Luis de: priest; b. Vacea, dioc. Jaen, Spain, 1584; e. Sep. 1602; prof.
1 Nov. 1618; d. Zamboanga 22 Oct. 1639.
Pedrosa: see Steinhauser, Adolf.
Penalver, Domingo de: priest; b. San Lorenzo de la Parrilla, dioc. Cuenca, Spain,
X 579 ; Manila 2 Feb. 1605 ; prof.; d. Marinduque 17 Jan. 1629.
Pimentel, Luis: priest; b . Portillo, dioc. Valladolid, Spain, 30 May 1612;
616 Appendix C
e. prov. Castile 24 Mar* 1632; arr. 1643; prof, 1 May 1650; d. San Miguel
(Manila) 5 Jul. 1689,
Ponce, Miguel: priest; b. Penarroya, dioc. Saragossa, Spain, 2 Nov, 1604;
e . prov. Mexico 13 Oct. 1631 ; arr . 1632; spir. 12 May 1647; killed by
natives, Palapag, Samar, 11 Jun. 1649.
Prado: see Prat, Ramon.
Prat, Ramon: priest; b. San Cugat, Barcelona, Spain, 1557; e. 18 Nov. 1576;
arr. 26 May 1584; prof . 12 May 1593 ; d. Manila 12 Feb. 1605.
Prieto, Juan Silverio: priest; no information available.
Prospero, Juan: brother; e. prov. Mexico 22 Dec. 1576; temp . coadj. 19 Jan. 1592;
arr . 3 May 1592; d . Manila 25 Feb. 1593.
Receputo, Carlo: priest; b. Valenza, Kingdom of Naples, 13 Sep. 1613; e. prov.
Naples 30 Jul. 1632; prop . 1 Nov. 1650; d. Dapitan 29 Mar. 1662.
Ribera, Juan de: priest; b. Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico, 1 565 ; e. 17 Oct. 1581;
arr. 10 Jun. 1595; prof. 28 Aug. 1599; Manila 5 Jun. 1622.
Riccio, Giancamillo: brother; b. Turquiana, Italy, 1563; e. 1 Sep. 1592;
temp . coadj . 14 Dec, 1604; d . before 1614.
Riquelme, Javier de: priest; b. Murcia, Spain, 25 Aug. 1615; e . prov. Toledo
6 May 1634; arr . 1643 ; prof . 2 Jul. 1654; ^ Manila 24 May 1692.
Roa, Francisco de: priest; b. Mexico 1592; e. Manila 17 May 1609; prof.
12 Oct. 1625 ; d. at sea near Zamboanga Jan. 1660.
Rodriguez, Alonso: priest; b. Cordova, Spain, 1570; e . 3 Mar. 1589; arr . 14 Jul,
1596; d. Carigara 1610.
Rodriguez, Diego: brother; b. Ribadeo, Galicia, Spain, 1559; e. prov. Mexico
1584; arr. 17 Jun. 1599; temp . coadj . 1 May 1592; d. Silang, Luzon, 9 Oct,
1631.
Rodriguez, Manuel: brother; b. Alcazar de Usal, dioc. Arborea, Sardinia, 1624;
t. 20 Jun. 1647.
Salazar, Juan de: priest; b. Baza, dioc, Granada, Spain, 27 Dec. 1582; e. Oct.
1598; arr. 22 Jun. 1605; prof, zj Jun. 1615; d. San Miguel (Manila) 30 Nov.
1645.
Salgado, Francisco: priest; b. Grijoa de Galicia, dioc. Astorga, Spain, 4 Apr.
1629; e. prov. Castile 19 Apr. 1648; arr. 1662; prof. 2 Feb. 1666; d. Manila
14 Jul. 1689.
San Basilio, Antonio Maria di: priest; b. Catana, Sicily, 1643; e. 1 1 Jan. 1 659 i
killed by natives, Guam, 17 Jan. 1676.
San Roman, Fernando de: priest; b. Segura de la Sierra, dioc. Burgos, Spain,
Feb. 1581;*. prov. Castile 5 May 1603; arr . 22 Jun. 1605 ; d. 16 Jan. 1615.
Sanchez, Alonso: priest; b. Mondejar, Spain, e. prov. Toledo 20 Jun. 1565*
art. 1581; prof. 15 Aug. 1589; L Alcala de Henares, 27 May 1593.
Sanchez, Bartolome: priest; b. Villena, dioc. Toledo, Spain, 24 Aug. 1623;
prov. Toledo 6 May 1651 ; arr. 26 May 1652; spir. coadj. 2 Feb. 1664; killed
by Magindanaus, Pulangi River, Mindanao, 1 Jun. 1672.
Sanchez, Diego: priest; b. Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico, 1568; e. 1592;
arr. 10 Jun. 1595; d. Manila 30 Apr. 1605.
Members Mentioned in the Text 617
Sanchez, Gabriel: priest; b. Buenaventura, Spain, 1570; z. prov. Toledo 6 May
1589; art, 1 596 1 prof* 12 Dec. 1604; d. 1 Jan. 1617.
Sanchez, Mateo: priest; b. Aldea Nueva, dioc. Plasencia, Spain, 1562; e. prov.
Toledo 18 Oct. 1582; art. 10 Jun. 1595; prof . 28 Dec. 1603; d . Dagami,
Leyte, 9 Feb. 1618.
Sancho, Martin: brother; b. Pampanga, Luzon, 1 573 ^ e • p r °v. Toledo at Rome
1591 ; ret . Manila 19 May 1601 ; d . Manila 6 Jun. 1601.
Sanlucar, Juan de: priest; b . Seville, Spain, 1567; e . 8 Mar. 1586; arr. 5 Aug.
1596; prof . 19 Nov. 1606; d. Palapag, Samar, 27 Apr. 1612.
Sanlucar, Pedro de: priest; b . Manila 31 Jan. 1707; e. 13 Jan. 1 7 — 7 ^ still living,
Cavite, 1755.
Santiago, Diego de: priest; 6 . Jerez, dioc. Badajoz, Spain, 1570; e. prov. Andalusia
1586; arr. 1596 ; d. in sea battle with Dutch off Nasugbu, Luzon, 14 Dec.
1600.
Sanvitores, Diego Luis de: priest; b. Burgos, Spain, 12 Nov. 1627; e . 25 Jul.
1640; prof . 2 Dec. 1660; arr. 10 Jul. 1662; miss. Marianas 23 Mar. 1668;
killed by natives, Guam, 2 Apr. 1672.
Sarsali, Fabrizio: priest; b. Naples, Italy, Apr. 1568; z. 10 Dec. 1586; arr.
19 May 1601 ; prof. 19 Mar. 1607; d. Manila 1645.
Scelsi, Lionardo: priest; b. Syrinola, Kingdom of Naples, 15 67; e. 15 So;
arr. Aug. 1596; dm. 1598.
Schmitz, Bernhard: priest; b. Doesburg, Holland, 18 Nov. 1688; e. prov. Lower
Rhine 18 May 1708; arr. 1721 ; d. Zamboanga 1747.
Schrevel, Lewin: brother; in Marianas 1733; miss. Palaus 1733 *
Sedeno, Antonio: priest; b. San Clemente, dioc. Cuenca, Spain, 1 5 3 5 > 2 5 ^p r -
1559; arr. 1581; d. Cebu I Sep. 1595*
Segura, Pedro de: priest; b. San Martin de Zacatecas, Mexico, Jun. 1 57 — >
e. 29 Jun. 1589; arr . 19 May 1601 ; prof. 18 Aug. 1613 ;d. Manila 3 Apr. 1617.
Serrano, Andres: priest; b. Murcia, Spain, 15 Oct. 1655; e. 13 Jun. 1670;
prof. 2 Feb. 1689; d. at sea near Marinduque 18 Oct. 1711.
Simone, Francesco: brother; b. Aquila, Italy, 1560; e. 8 Sep. 1 5 S9 ; arr. 19 May
1601 ; temp, coadj . 4 Oct. 1604; d. before 1614.
Sola, Magino: priest; b. Manresa, Spain, 19 Dec. 1644; e. prov. Aragon 27 Dec.
1660; prof. 2 Feb. 1679; d. Manila 5 Jul. 1696.
Solana, Miguel: priest; b. Viguera, dioc. Calahorra, Spain, 1 Jun. 1 594 > e * P rov *
Andalusia 1 Jun. 1612; arr. 1622; prof. 2 Oct. 1629; d. 21 Dec. 1669.
Solorzano, Manuel: priest; b. Fregenal, Spain, 25 Dec. 1649; e. prov. Andalusia
21 Mar. 1666; arr. (Marianas) 1676; killed by natives, Guam, 23 Jul. 1684.
Sonnenberg, Walter Ignaz: priest; b. Lucerne, Switzerland, 20 Jul. 1612; e. prov.
Upper Germany 7 Sep. 1628; arr. 1643 >’ P ro J* b Jan. 1650; d. Fukien, China,
20 Jul. 1680.
Spilimberg, Fulcher: priest; b. Udine, 17 Dec. 1682; e. 8 Oct. 1708; arr.
10 Aug. 1718; d. Manila 22 May 1750.
Spinelli, Luigi: priest; b. Placia, Sicily, 13 Feb. 1613; t. 25 Nov. 1628; prof.
6 Jan. 1650; d. Manila 4 Apr. 1666.
Steinhauser, Adolf: priest; b. Laibach, Austria, 29 Nov. 1613; e. prov. Austria
17 Nov. 1630; arr. 1643; d. Dapitan 1648.
618 Appendix C
Strobach, Augustin: priest; b. Iglau, Moravia, 12 Mar. 1646; e. prov. Bohemia
15 Oct. 1667; arr, (Marianas) 1681; prof . 2 Feb. 1681; killed by natives,
Tinian, Marianas, Aug. 1684,
Suarez de Toledo, Gaspar: scholastic; b. Granada, Spain, 1554; e. 27 Sep. 1573 »
d. at sea on the way to the Philippines from Acapulco 8 Apr. 1581.
Suarez, Hernan: priest; prof. 2 Jul. 1578; arr . 26 May 1584; d. Lagyo (Manila)
2 Sep. 1586.
Tapia, Cristobal de: brother; b. Madrid, Spain, 1568; e. Manila 4 Apr. 1 5 9 ^ >
dm. 1 Feb. 1603.
Tejada, Francisco: priest; b . Soria, Spain, 31 Mar. 1674; e . 7 Jul. 1694; left for
Philippines 1707; d. 15 Jul. 1728.
Tello de Guzman, Pedro: priest; b. Guebar, near Seville, Spain, 1584; e. Manila
15 Jun. 1602; dm. 20 Feb. 1615; readmitted ca. 1628; d. 30 Apr. 1629.
Theoclitos, Daniel: brother; b. Castro, Island of Crete, 1562; e. Manila 18 Mar.
1590; temp, coadj . 8 Oct. 1 597 > d* 1612.
Tilpe, Johann: priest; b. Neisse, Silesia, 10 Oct. 1644; e . prov. Bohemia, 14 Oct.
1666; spir. coadj . 2 Feb. 1678; arr. 1681; miss. Marianas 1683; prof. 31 Jul.
I7 °°*
Torres, Juan de: priest; b. Montilla, Spain, 1564; e. 1583 ; arr. 159^ » s P* r ' coa “j*
18 Mar. 1604; d. Manila 14 Jan. 1625.
Tuccio, Antonino: priest; b. Messina, Sicily, 16 Apr. 1641; e. 18 May 1658;
arr . x 672 ; prof. 1 5 Aug. 1 677.
Valencia, Carlos de : see Receputo, Carlo.
Velasco, Jose de: priest; b. Manresa, Spain, 5 Apr. 1647; e. 29 Jul. 1663;
prof. 2 Feb. 1682.
Vera, Francisco de: priest; b . Tobarra, dioc. Cartagena, Spain; e. prov. Toledo
1582; arr . 14 Jul. 1596; prof; ret . Mexico 1598.
Vera, Melchor de: priest; b. Madrid, Spain, 13 Jan. 1585; e. 2 Apr. 1603;
arr. 1606; prof. 28 Aug. 1623; d. Cebu 13 Apr. 1646.
Vicente Puche, Francisco: priest; b. Tarragona, Spain, 1576; e. prov. Aragon
5 Apr. 1589; prof. 31 Jul, 1608; d. 15 Oct. 1650.
Villanueva, Tomas de: priest; b. Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico, 1572; e. 24 Jul.
1591 ; arr. 19 May 1601 ; spir. coadj . 9 Nov. 1606.
Walter, Victor: priest; b. dioc. Brixen, Germany, 14 Aug. 1689; e. prov. Upper
Germany 24 Sep. 1708; arr. (Marianas) 1724; miss. Palaus 1731, 17 33 >*
d. 12 Dec. 1745.
Wilhelmi, Josef: priest; b. Linz-am-Rhein, Germany, 20 Mar. 1710; e. prov.
Lower Rhine 19 Oct. 1729; d. Jolo, Sulu, 1748.
Xavier, Jakob: brother; b. Siguarde ? 13 Jun. 1665; e. Jan. 1688.
Zamora, Pedro Andres de: priest; b. Valencia, Spain, 1616; e. prov. Aragon; arr.
1626; dm. 1629; readmitted; killed by Magindanaus, Bwayan, 28 Dec. 1639.
Members Mentioned in the Text 619
Zanzini, Josef: priest; b . Trieste, Austria, 6 Mar. 1616; e. prov. Austria 25 Jan.
1632; arr. 1643; prof. 22 Oct. 1653; L Manila 19 Aug. 1692.
Zapata, Ignacio: priest; b . Lerida, Spain, 1 Feb. 1595 ; e . 27 Apr. 1613 ; arr . 1622;
prof. 25 Nov. 1633 ; d. Catbalogan, Samar, 3 Jan. 1666.
Zarzuela, Diego de: brother; b. Marchena, Spain, 1565; e. 27 Sep. 1581; arr .
19 May 1601; temp . coadj . before 1602; d. before 1614.
Zassi, Francisco: priest; no information available.
Zifuentes, Tiburcio de: priest; b. Toledo, Spain, 11 Aug. 1633 ; e . 6 Jan. 1652;
prof. 2 Feb. 1670.
Appendix D
MAJOR PUBLICATIONS OF THE PHILIPPINE
JESUIT PROVINCE
1604
Pedro Chirino (1558-1635). Relation it las islas Filipinas i ie lo que en ell as an
trabaiado los padres de la Compania de Jesus . 196 pp. Rome: Estevan Paulino, 1604.
This seems to be the earliest published work by a member of the Philippine
province. The circumstances of its publication have been described in the text.
During his mission tour at Tigbauan on the island of Panay, Chirino found the
time to write a commentary on the Canticle of Canticles: “Can tici canticorum
compendiaria explication which he completed in September 1594. The unpub-
lished manuscript is preserved, according to Sommervogel (II, 1148), in the
library of the College of San Gregorio of Mexico City. While still in Rome as
procurator of the vice-province, Chirino began his invaluable account of the first
twenty-five years of Jesuit activity in the Philippines, the full title of which is:
“Primera parte de la historia de la provincia de Philipinas de la Compania de
Jesus”. On 12 December 1605, Acquaviva wrote, encouraging him to continue
it and to submit the completed manuscript to the Philippine provincial for
censorship and possible publication (ARSI Phil. I, 21). Chirino ended his narra-
tive with the year 1606, the year after the establishment of the province. Unfor-
tunately, although the work was finished by 1610, Chirino never saw it in print.
The only surviving copy of the manuscript is in the archives of Tarragona.
Pastells in his edition of Colin’s Labor evangelica tells how it was acquired, and
publishes lengthy passages from it. I hope to edit the complete text. While teach-
ing in the College of Manila, Chirino composed another commentary on Sacred
Scripture, the manuscript of which used to be in the library of San Pedro Makati,
but has since disappeared: “Sacrum decachordum, hoc est, historiae sacrae
veteris novique Testamenti duplex selectus pentateuchus.”
1610
Cristobal Jimenez (i573'“ 1 628). Doctrina christiana Rob. Bellarmini in linguam
bisayam translata. Manila: Manuel Gomez, 1610.
I have not seen a copy of this work, but Sommervogel (VII, 1351) and many
other bibliographers mention it. Jimenez sent a copy of it to Saint Robert as soon
as it came off the press, and his letter of transmittal must have delighted the heart
of that saintly scholar (2 August 1610, ARSI Phil. 14, 47): “1 would be justly
deemed presumptuous in presenting myself before your most illustrious Lordship
[Bellarmme was already a cardinal], even if only by letter . . . were it not that my
purpose is humbly to beg your pardon for my presumption (if one may be said to
620
621
Major Publications oj the Provmce
presume where obedience commands) in translating the Catechism and Introduc-
tion to the Mysteries of our Holy Faith, which your most illustrious and reverend
Lordship wrote, into the Visayan language, which prevails in many of the islands
of which we members of the Society have charge here in the Philippines, for the
welfare and profit of this new mission. This is the first book which the Visayans
in the whole course of their history have seen written in their own language ; and
it is hoped that by reading the wholesome and holy doctrine contained therein,
both their own catechists, of whom there are already several in their towns, as well
as those who are being educated in the boarding schools, will imbibe as from a
pure spring the spirit of truth of our holy faith/'
Jimenez also published at about the same time an introductory Visayan grammar
and a confession manual in the same language. These two works were included in
later editions of the catechism; for example, the third: Doctrina christina y preguntas
en lengna bisaya y juntamente una introduction a esta lengna , y confesionario breve ,
Manila, 1732.
Although Jimenez’s catechism was the first one published by the Philippine
Jesuits, it was not the first composed, for Diego Garcia in his memorial of 1602
(ARSI Cong. prov. 49, 265) reports to Acquaviva that “a grammar, a confession
manual and the catechism in the Visayan language have been written, and a
vocabulary is being compiled. We judge it necessary to continue producing works
both in this language and in Tagalog; permission is requested from our Father
[General] to print them either here or in Japan." Acquaviva granted the request in
1604 (ibid. 50, 2i6v). The vocabulary referred to by Garcia may have been that
of Mateo Sanchez (1562-1618), of which a printed edition appeared in 1711;
whether there is any earlier edition I do not know.
Was Jimenez’s catechism printed in a Jesuit press ? Medina (La Imprenta en
Manila , p. xxxix) thinks so, basing his opinion on the fact that the printer whose
name appears on the title page, Manuel Gomez, was not as far as we know
employed in either of the two presses then certainly in existence, that of the
Dominicans or that of the Franciscans. And, although it is possible that Gomez
owned and operated the press himself, Medina considers this extremely unlikely.
We cannot however exclude the possibility, especially since the contemporary
Jesuit documents we have consulted make no mention of a press at the College of
Manila at this time. On the showing of Medina himself, the earliest imprint
which can certainly be attributed to this press is dated 1629. Its master printer
during the decade 1629-1639 was Tomas Pinpin, who seems to have left the
Dominican press to take charge of it. Pinpin’s successors, with the dates attributed
to them by Medina, are the following:
1634-? Raymundo Magisa
1643-1669 Simon Pinpin (son of Tomas?)
1674-1678 Santiago Dimatangso
1682-1683 Raymundo de Penafort
1697-? Luis Manumbas
1703 ?-l7i6 Gaspar Aquino de Belen
1729- ? Sebastian Lopez Sabino
1745-176 8 Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay
622
Appendix D
It will be noted that most if not all of these printers were Filipinos. After the
expulsion of the Society from the Philippines the government awarded the press
to the diocesan seminary.
1628
Francisco Colin (1592-1600). Sermon que mando impritnir el lUmo. y Rmo . 5. Z). Fray
Miguel Garda Serrano . . . predicado por el P. Francisco Colin . . . en la iglesia
catedral . . .29 de Noviembre de l6iy . . . Manila: Colegio de Santo Tomas, 1628.
Although this sermon on the Blessed Sacrament cannot be classified as a “major”
publication, I include it as an early example of a genre which the Manila presses
produced in great quantity during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The reader might also consider why, if a Jesuit press was already in existence at
this time, this sermon by a Jesuit should be printed in the Dominican press.
1637
Successos felices , que por mar , y tierra ha dado N. 5. a las armas espanolas ; en las islas
Filipinas contra el Mindanao; y en las de Terrenate contra los Holandeses , por fin del ano
de 1636, y principio del de 1637. 14 pp. Manila: Tomas Pinpin, 1637.
The author of this account of Corcuera's Magindanau Campaign, as well as of
the following item, which deals with his Jolo campaign, was very probably Juan
Lopez (1584-1659).
1638
Continuacion de los felices successos , que N. S. a dado a las armas espanolas en estas islas
Filipinas , por los fines del ano de 2637 y principios de el de 1638 . 18 pp.
No place and date of publication, but almost certainly Manila, 1638, with the
same author and printer as the above.
[Diego de Bobadilla (15 9° — 1 ^4^)1 * Felacion de las gloriosas victorias que en mar , y
tierra an tenido las armas de nuestro invictissimo rey } y monarca Felippe 7777 el Grande ,
en las islas Filipinas, contra los mores mahometanos de la gran isla de Mindanao , y su rey
Cachil Corral at, debaxo de la conduct a de Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera . 42 pp.
Mexico: Imprenta de Pedro de Quinones, 1638.
Bobadilla, elected procurator of the Philippine province, was at this time in
Mexico on his way to Rome. His narrative is based on the reports sent to him by
his brethren in the Philippines, especially Juan Lopez. Some of Bobadilla s
solutions to moral cases are preserved in the manuscript collection of which I have
given an account in the text. He is also, very probably, the author of the highly
interesting account of the customs and social organization of the Visayans which
Thevenot published in a French translation in his Relations de divers voyages
curieux (2 v., Paris: Thomas Moette, 1696), Vol. I: " Relation des lies Philippines,
faite par un religieux qui y a demeure 18 ansT I have not come across the Spanish
original.
623
Major Publications of the Province
1652
Francisco Colin (1592-1600). Vida, hechos y doctrina del venerable hermano Alonso
Rodrigue 4to, 223 fol. Madrid: Domingo Garda y Morras, 1652.
This life of the Jesuit saint is especially valuable because Colin knew him
personally.
1659
Rafael de Bonafe (1606-1668). Excelencias y ojicios de piedad del arcdngel San Rafael .
4to, 285 pp. Madrid, 1659.
1663
Domingo Ezquerra (1601-1670). Arte de la lengua bisaya de la provincia de Leyte .
89 fol. Manila: Imprenta de la Compania de Jesus por Simon Pinpin, 1663.
This work went into a second edition, 88 fob, Manila: Nicolas de la Cruz
Bagay, 1747. The author, a criollo born in Manila, is an older brother of Francisco
(1644-1674), who was killed by natives as a missionary in the Marianas.
Colin, Francisco (1592-1560). Labor evangelic a. 820 pp. Madrid: Jose Fernandez
Buendia, 1663.
Colin expanded Chirino's unpublished Historia with the aid of the documents
at his disposal and brought it down to 1616, adding a valuable statistical appendix
surveying the work and establishments of the Society in the Philippines in 1656,
when he completed the manuscript. This carefully researched and eminently read-
able work replaced that of Chirino as the ''first part” of the official history of the
Jesuit Philippine province, of which Murillo Velarde's Historia was to be the
second part.” A copiously annotated edition by Pablo Pas tells appeared in two
volumes at the beginning of the present century (Barcelona: Henrich, 1900-
1902).
1666
Francisco Colin (1592-1660). India sacra , hoc est , suppetiae sacrae ex utraqne India in
Europam , pro interpret atione facili ac genuina quorundam locorum ex veteri Testamento
qui adhuc Europaeos morantur interpretes; opus posthumum . 4to, 507 pp. Madrid:
Jose Fernandez de Buendia, 1666.
An interesting attempt to consider what new light is thrown on the Old Testa-
ment narrative by the knowledge acquired by Europeans in the New World and
the Far East.
1667
Francisco Combes (1620-1665). Historia de Mindanao , Jolo y sus adyacentes . 567 fol.
Madrid: Herederos de Pablo del Val, 1667.
624 Appendix D
Magnificently re-edited with introduction and notes by W. E. Retana, Madrid :
Viuda de M. Minuesa, 1 897. We are still searching for another work of Combes
of which we only have the bare notice: Disertacion en defens a de la libertad de los
indios , Manila, 1657. Can this be the same as the “Elogio” which he appended
to the controversial Discurso parenetico of Gomez de Espinosa (Manila, 1657) ?
1673
Francisco Ignacio de Alcina (1610-1674). Casos rates de la confesion e instruction para
bien tnorir; en HIT libros . . . puestos todos en lengua bisaya . 447 pp. Manila: En la
Compania de Jesus por Raymundo de Pena Fuerte, 1673.
Alcina is also the author of a Historia natural del sitio^fertilidady calidad de las islas
e indios de Visayas (1668), 370 foL, with numerous line drawings, which has
remained unpublished. There is a copy in the Biblioteca de Palacio, Madrid.
1697
Cristobal de Miralles (1632-1708). Libro y elogio anagramdtico del nembre misterioso
de 5 . Rosa de 5 . Maria . 324 pp. Manila: Imprenta de la Compania de Jesus por
D. Luis Manumbas.
1699
Andres Serrano (1655-1711). Los siete principes de los dngeles . .
devotion . Mexico, 1699.
. con prdetica de su
1703
Francisco Ignacio Alcina (1610-1674). Manual de devotion y exercicics christianos en
lengua bisaya para instruction de los hermanos bisayas congregantes de las congregations
de la Virgen Maria . 8vo. Manila, 1703.
According to Medina ( [Imprenta, p. 84) this is a reprint of an earlier edition, of
which no copy seems to have survived. It probably came out during the lifetime of
the author, hence before 1674.
Gaspar Aquino de Belen, tr. Manga panalanging pagtatagobilin sa caleloua nang
tauong naghihingalo . Manila, 1703.
This Tagalog translation by the master printer of the College of Manila press
of a work by a Spanish Jesuit, Tomas de Villacastin (Saragossa, 1613), does not
properly belong to this list at all, but I cannot refrain from mentioning it. The
title in English reads: Prayers of Commendation for the Soul of a Man at the Hour of
Death . The work must have been quite popular, for we have notice of a second
printing: Manila: Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay, 1760.
625
Major Publications of the Province
1704
Georg Josef Kamel (1661-1706)* “Herbarum aliarumque stirpium in insula
Luzone Philippinarum primaria nascentium” ; an appendix to VoL III of
John Ray s Historia plant arum, 3 v., London: M. Clarke, 1686-1704.
See the account of Brother Kamel’s work in the text. Further correspondence
by him with the British Academy is published by James Petiver in Philosophical
Transactions , Volumes 21, 23, 24, 25, 26 (London, 1690-1712). According to
Sommervogel (II, 579-580), 260 of the drawings which he sent to accompany the
Hcrbarum “icones ab auctore delineatae” — are in the Jesuit library at Louvain.
171 1
Mateo Sanchez (1562-1618)* Vocabitlano de la letigua hisaya. 551, 45 fol. Manila:
En el Colegio de la Sagrada Compania de Jesus por D. Gaspar Aquino de Belen,
1711*
A very rare work of which the only copy known to me is in the British Museum,
Was there an earlier printed edition? I do not know. It may have circulated in
manuscript for nearly a century before 17 1 1 .
1712
Antonio de Borja (1650-171 1). Aral na tunay na totoong pagaacay sa tano natig manga
calanalang gaua nang manga maloualhating santos na sina Barlaan at Josapkat, xi,
299 pp. Manila: Colegio de esta M. N. y L. C. de Manila por D. Gaspar
Aquino de Belen, 1712*
True Doctrine Regarding the Right Conduct oj Human Life , Derived from the Holy Deeds
of the Saints Barlaam and Josaphat , a translation into Tagalog of a work by Saint
John of Damascus.
Paul Klein (1 652-1717)* Remedios fdciles para diferetites enfermedades * (10), 218 pp.
Manila: Colegio y Universidad de Santo Tomas de Aquino por Juan Correa,
1712.
1713
Paul Klein (1652-1717). Ang infiernong nabulucsati sa tanong christiano , at nang
houag masoc doon. (8), 50 1 pp. Manila: Linimbag sa Convento nang Dilao nang
H. Francisco de los Santos, 1713*
1714
Paul Klein (1652-1717). Historia lauretana . 200 fol. Manila: Colegio de la
Compania de Jesus, por D. Gaspar Aquino de Belen, 1714.
A translation into Tagalog of a work by Orazio Tursellini, S.J.
6z6
Appendix D
Paul Klein (1652-1717). Pensamientos christianos , sa macatouid manga panimdimin
nang tauon christiano sa arao-arao . 128 fol. Manila: Linimbag sa Collegio nang la
Compania ni Jesus ni D. Gaspar Aquino de Belen, 1714.
Tagalog translation of a work by Dominic Bouhours S J. A second edition is
listed: Manila: Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay, 1748.
1716
Paul Klein (1652-1717). Benejicics y favores singulares hechos pot el glorioso archangel
San Rafael al santo patriarch a Tobias y sufamilia. 92 fol. Manila: Imprenta de la
Compania de Jesus por D. Gaspar Aquino de Belen, 1716.
This work also went into a second printing: Manila, 1754. ^ written in
Tagalog.
1734
Pedro de Estrada (1680-1748). Caton cristiano en lengna bisaya . Manila, 1734 *
I know of this work only from the additions to Medina compiled by the Augus-
tinian bibliographers Perez and Giiemes. It seems to be the first of a three- volume
work. The second volume is entitled: Segnnda parte de la explicacidn del catecismo
bisaya ilustrada con ejemplosy mor alidades. Manila, 1735; and the third: Tercera parte
de la explicacion del catkecismo bisaya , Manila, 1737.
1743
Pedro Murillo Velarde (1696-1753). Cursus iuris canonici hispani et indici. 2 v. fol.
Madrid: Ex typography Emmanuelis Fernandez, 1743.
This monumental treatise went into at least two subsequent editions : Madrid :
Angela de Aponte, 1763, and Madrid: Ramon Ruiz, 1791 ; both editions in two
volumes.
1745
Pedro Murillo Velarde (1696-1753). Prdctica de testamentos . 31 fol. Manila:
Imprenta de la Compania de Jesus por Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay.
The popularity of this handbook on the making of wills is attested by its
numerous editions: Mexico, 1765, 1790, 1852; Paris, 1869. These are not all,
for the Mexican edition of 1852 was the seventh.
1746
Pedro de Estrada (1680—1748)* Prdctica del cathecismo f donde se ensena un methodo
compendioso para componer las costumbres. Manila, 1746.
J 749
Pedro Murillo Velarde (1696-1753). Histcria de la provincia de Philipitias de la
Compania de Jesus) segunda parte , que ccmprehende los progresos de esta provincia desde el
Major Publications of the Province 627
aho de 1616 hast a el de ljl6 . 419 foL Manila: Imprenta de la Compama de
Jesus por D. Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay, 1749.
Some surviving copies of this work have a folding map — a reproduction of that
prepared by Murillo for the government in 1734 and engraved by Bagay.
Juan de Loyola (S .J.). El coragcn sagrado de Jesus descubierto a nuestra Espana , propagado
ya en varias provincias del orbe christiano. Manila, 1751*
This is a reprint of a work published in Spain probably as early as 1736- It
not by a member of the Philippine province, but I include it here as the earliest
Philippine publication that I know of devoted to the characteristically Jesuit
devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Francisco Tejada (1674-1728). Ycaduha nga bahin sa Pedagogo Christiano con sa
hinisaya Padre Phelipe Doutreman de la Compama de Jesus ugguihouad us ah sa hinisaya
nga polong sa P. Francisco Tejada. 8vo, 493 fob
The second volume of a Visayan translation of the French Jesuit Philippe
d’Outreman’s Le pedagogue chretien (Mons, 1625). Vol. I is said to have been
published in Manila in 1726, but I have seen no detailed reference to it or
indication of a surviving copy.
1752
Pedro Murillo Velarde (1696-1753). Catecismo of instruccion Christiana en que se
explican los mysterios de nuestra santa fe. 435 pp. Madrid: Herederos de Francisco
del Hierro, 1752.
Pedro Murillo Velarde (1696-1753). Ceographia historica . 10 v. Madrid: D. G.
Ramirez, 1752.
Volume 8 is devoted to the Philippines.
1753
Apparatus selectorum sive pro pueritia latinitate erudienda idonea ... ad usum studtosae
Manilensis juventutis novissime ccllecta, Manila, 1753 *
I have not seen this work, but it appears to be a collection of classical texts for
use in the grammar grades of the Jesuit curriculum, edited very probably by a
professor in the College of Manila. The following item also seems to be one of
the College textbooks:
Breve explicacion de tiempos segiin el methodo con que se ensena en las escuelas de la Compama .
Manila, 1753.
1754
Juan de Noceda (1681-1747) and Pedro de Sanlucar (1706-?). Vocahulario de la
lengua tagala. 619, 34, 190 pp. Manila: Imprenta de la Compama de Jesus por
Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay, 1754.
21 +j.i.p.
628 Appendix D
This highly regarded Tagalog dictionary was based by its authors on the
previous researches of Paul Klein and other Jesuit missionaries among the Tagalogs.
1750
Luis de Losada (S.J.j. Cursus phtlosophiei regahs Collegii Salmanticensis Soaetatis
prima . . - secunda . . . tertia pars. 3 v. Manila, 1759.
A Philippine edition, obviously for use in the College of Manila, of Losada'*s
textbook, which first came out in Salamanca, 1724-1735.
1762
Francisco de Salazar (S.J.). Meditaciones , cun manga mahal na pagninilay na sadya sa
sanctong pag-Eexercicios. 175 pp. Manila: Imprenta de la Compama de Jesus por
Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay, 1762.
A Tagalog translation by two Augustinians, Fray Pedro de Herrera and Fray
Juan Serrano, of a work by a Spanish Jesuit (not a member of the Philippine
province). The double "e” in “ pag-Eexercicios* 1 is not a misprint, but the Taga-
log reduplication.
SOURCES AND REFERENCES
Sources
The Philippine section of the central Jesuit archives in Rome consists of some
twenty bound volumes of manuscripts belonging to the period covered by this
history. The first volume, entitled Lpistolae generalium , contains file copies or
summaries of letters sent by Acquaviva and Vitelleschi to the Philippines during
the years 1602—1625. No others in this series seem to have been preserved.
Volumes 2, 2a, 3, and 4 consist of various catalogues sent to Rome between
1602 and 1755. These are of two kinds: personnel catalogues, and periodic lists
of the establishments of the province (catalogi return ). The personnel catalogues,
besides giving essential biographical data on the members of the province (date and
place of birth, entrance into the Society, admission to first and last vows), some-
times indicate the positions they have held or the works to which they have been
assigned. The catalogi rerum contain brief statements of the financial status of each
house or institution. Some of these catalogues were sent to Rome every three years,
and hence called catalogi triennales. Volumes 5-8 contain the so-called litter at
annuae for certain years: 5. Litt . arm. Z, 1595-1612; 6. Lift. arm. ZZ, 1612-1632;
7. Litt. arm. Ill , 1631-1672; 8. Litt. arm. IV., 1640-1749.
In the beginning these annual letters lived up to their name, being dispatched
on the yearly galleon which sailed in June for Acapulco. They summarized the
activities of each house of the province from June to June on the basis of reports
sent in to the central office at Manila. Sometimes they quoted extensively from
these reports. They are thus an invaluable source of first-hand information,
particularly with regard to the missions. In the second half of the seventeenth
century, however, they began to be sent less regularly. While continuing to be
called “ annual” letters, they would appear on the generals desk at intervals of
three and even six years. I gather from Astrain that this neglect of the annual
letters was pretty general at the time in the Spanish assistancy. Fortunately,
another type of report — the relation — less formal and in some ways more interest-
ing, took its place.
By far the most valuable portion of the Philippine documents in the Roman
archives of the Society is that contained in Volumes 9-14* These volumes are
labeled Historiae , by which is meant not so much a history as the materials for a
history of the mission, vice-province, and province. Here are original letters and
reports of the Philippine Jesuits, a large proportion of them holograph, written
with complete frankness to the general or his assistants regarding the activities
and problems, the successes and failures of the Society in the Philippines.
Although Volume 9 is catalogued as starting with the year 1585, the earliest letter
it contains is one from Sedeno dispatched soon after his arrival in Manila in 1582.
The last letter of Volume 14 is dated 1755. In fact, the entire Philippine section
contains no document much beyond this date. Father Repetti conjectures — and
I am inclined to agree with him — that later documents, being still in the current
629
630 Sources and References
files of the various offices in the general's headquarters, were impounded at the
time of the suppression of the Society and thus either dispersed or lost. Volumes
15-19 consist of manuscript copies of Colin's Labor evangeliea and a continuation
of it by Diego de Ona which remains unpublished. Volume 20 is a collection of
obituaries of various members of the province. Volume 21 is an index of 9-20,
but a more modern and satisfactory catalogue has been appended to each volume.
The care taken by the archivists of the Society in mending and preserving the
fragile rice paper on which many of these documents are written cannot be too
highly praised. Would that other archives had custodians as devoted !
Other sections of the Roman archives utilized by me are those pertaining to
the Spanish and Mexican provinces, the special collection devoted to provincial
congregations, and the Gesu collection. The acta and related documents sent to
Rome by the Philippine provincial congregations are specially valuable in throwing
light on the policies adopted by the missionaries, as I believe my note references
show. The Gesu collection, as its name suggests, consists of the archival material
which used to be kept in the Jesuit residence of the Gesu in Rome. It was con-
fiscated for a time by the Italian government but later returned, and has now been
incorporated in the central Jesuit archives.
When the Society was permitted to resume its labors in the Philippines in the
latter half of the nineteenth century, the mission was entrusted to the province
of Aragon. This province dropped out of existence in the recent reorganization of
the Spanish provinces and its archives passed to the new province of Tarragona.
The collection contains much important and interesting material not only on the
re-established Philippine mission but on the old province of the Philippines as
well. It has, for instance, Chirino's manuscript Historia , on which the first part of
our work leans so heavily. Extensive portions of this history have been published
by Pastells in his edition of Colin.
The Archives of the Indies at Seville is of course an inexhaustible treasure house
of source material for every aspect of Philippine history. The Philippine section
alone consists of over a thousand bulky legajos or bundles, and it is impossible to
say at present what may lie buried in the vast pile of documents light-heartedly
referred to as Indiferente general. Needless to say, I have been able to sift only a
small handful of this mountain — or more precisely, mountain range — for material
pertinent to our subject. However, the indefatigable Father Pastells — who has put
all historians of the Philippines forever in his debt — made my task easier by trans-
cribing many of the essential ones both in his edition of Colin referred to and in
the Historia general which he wrote to accompany Torres y Lanzas' Catalogc
de documents. This calendar, by the way, is a model of its kind; it is too bad that
it does not go beyond 1664, and is not provided with an index.
The library of the Academy of History at Madrid possesses an extensive collec-
tion of Jesuit papers, among which are the relaciones mentioned above. These were
really newsletters written by the Philippine Jesuits to their brethren in Spain, in
which they reported events not only of domestic but of general interest, and
involving other countries of the Far East as well as the Philippines. Some of them
are at present damaged beyond repair through much handling and sheer old age ;
but while they were still intact, an assiduous researcher named Ventura del Arco
copied a number of them out. These transcripts, along with much other material
Sources and References 631
pertinent to our subject, are now in the Ayer Collection of the Newberry Library
of Chicago, The reader will perceive the extent of my debt to this collection and
to its most courteous and co-operative custodian, Dr. Ruth Lapham Butler.
And what of the Philippine vice-province itself? What have its archives to
offer ? On the old province, pitifully little. Its papers were scattered or destroyed
after the expulsion, and our only hope of reconstructing a not inglorious past is to
obtain copies of the archival material in the repositories mentioned above with
the permission of the present owners. This is a task which the research required
in the preparation of the present volume has only barely begun.
References
The subjoined list is not a bibliography but merely the full titles, arranged
alphabetically by author, of the works cited in abbreviated form in the notes.
Altamira y Crevea, Rafael. Historia de Espana y de la civilisation espanola . 4 v.
Barcelona: Juan Gill, 1900-1930.
Astrain, Antonio. Historia de la Compama de Jesus en la asistencia de Espana . 7 v.
Madrid, 1912-1925.
Ballesteros y Beretta, Antonio. Historia de Espana. 9 v. Barcelona: Salvat, 1918-
1941. Some of the volumes have appeared in revised editions.
Barrantes, Vicente, ed. Guerras pirdticas de Filipinas. Madrid: Manuel G. Hernan-
dez, 1878.
Benitez, Fernando. Resena historica del real Colegio de San Jose. Manila, 1883.
Bernard, Henri. Aux porte s de la Chine. Tientsin: Hautes Etudes, 1933.
Les ties Philippines du grand archipel de la Chine . Tientsin: Hautes Etudes,
I . 936 *
Blair, E. H. and J. A. Robertson, eds. The Philippine Islands. 55 v. Cleveland:
Arthur H. Clark Co,, 1903-1909.
Boxer, C. R., ed. South China in the Sixteenth Century . London: Hakluyt Society,
1 95f
Brodrick, James. The Origin of the Jesuits. London: Longmans Green, 1940.
The Progress of the Jesuits . New York: Longmans Green, 1947.
Catdlogo de documentos . See Torres y Lanzas.
Cerri, Urbano. An Account of the State of the Roman Catholick Religion Throughout the
World. London, 1715.
Chirino, Pedro. Relation de las islas Ftlipinas i de lo que en ellas an trabaiado los padres
de la Compama de lesus . Rome : Estevan Paulino, 1 604.
Christie, E. B. The Subanuns of Sindangan Bay. Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1909.
Colin, Francisco. Labor evangelica. Pablo Pastells, ed. 3 v. Barcelona: Henrich,
1900-1902.
Combes, Francisco. Historia de Mindanao y Jolo. W. E. Retana, ed. Madrid: Viuda
de M. Minuesa, 1897.
Concepcion, Juan de la. Historia general de Philipinas. 14 v. Manila, 1788-1792.
Crawfurd, John. History of the Indian Archipelago. 3 v. Edinburgh, 1820.
Davila Padilla, Agustin. Historia de la fundacien y discurso de la provincia de Santiago
de Mexico de la orden de Predtcadores. Brussels: Juan Meerbeque, 1625.
632 Sources and References
Delgado, Juan Jose. Historia general s aero- prof an a, pclitica y natural de las islas del
poniente llamadas Filipinos, Manila: Eco de Filipinas, 1892.
Diaz, Casimiro. Conquistas de las islas Filipinas . . , parte segunda, Valladolid: Luis
de Gaviria, 1890. The first part of this work is that by San Augustin, q.v.
Doctrina Christiana : the First Book Printed in the Philippines , Manila, 1593. A facsimile
of the copy in the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress,
Washington. Edwin Wolf 2nd, introd. Washington: Library of Congress,
1947.
Ferrando, Juan. Historia de los PP . Dominicos en las islas Filipinas . . . Corregida por
J. Fonseca. 6 v. Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1870-1872.
Forrest, Thomas. A Voyage to New Guinea and the Moluccas from Balambangan .
London: G. Scott, 1779.
Gemelli Careri, Giovanni Francesco. Giro al mondo . 6 v. Naples, 1699-1700.
Gonzalez de Mendoza, Juan. Historia de las cosas mas notables , ritos y costumhres del
gran reyno de la China . Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1586.
Hall, D. G. E. A History of South-East Asia, New York: St. Martin's Press,
195 5 *
Haring, C. H. Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies . Cambridge, Mass. :
Harvard University Press, 1918.
Harney, Martin P. The Jesuits in History . New York: America Press, 1941.
Hernaez, Francisco Javier, ed. Coleccion de hulas , breves y otros documentos relatives a la
iglesia de America y Filipinas ♦ Brussels: Vromant, 1879.
Histoire de la persecution de deux saints eveques par les jesuites. Cologne( ?), 1691.
Huonder, Anton. Deutsche Jesuitenmissionare des 27 und 18 Jahrhunderts. Friburg:
Herder, 1899.
Institutum Societatis lesu . 3 v. Florence, 1892-1893.
Lazcano, Francisco Javier. Vida exemplar y virtudes heroicas del venerable padre Juan
Antonio de Oviedo . Mexico: Colegio de San Ildefonso, 1760.
Le Gentil de la Galaisiere, Guillaume Joseph. Voyage dans les mers de Vlnde . 2 v.
Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1779-1771.
Lopetegui, Leon. El padre Jose de Acosta y las misiones, Madrid: Consejo superior de
Investigaciones cientificas, 1942.
Marin y Morales, Valentin. Ensayo de tma sintesis de los trabajos re alidades por las
corporaciones religiosas espanolas de Filipinas . Manila: Imprenta de Santo Tomas,
1901.
Martinez de Zuniga, Joaquin. Estadismo de las islas Filipinas. W. E. Retana; ed.
2 v. Madrid: Viuda de M. Minuesa, 1893.
Mas, Sinibaldo de. Informe sobre el estado de las islas Filipinas en 1842 . 3 v. Madrid:
1843-
Montero y Vidal, Jose. Historia de la piraterta malayomahometana. 2 v. Madrid:
M. Tello, 1888.
Monumenta historica Societatis lesu. Madrid, Rome, and elsewhere, 1 894 ff. In pro-
gress.
Morga, Antonio de. Sucesos de las islas Filipinas. W. E. Retana, ed. Madrid:
Victoriano Suarez, 1909.
Murillo Velarde, Pedro. Geographia historica . 10 v- Madrid: G. Ramirez, 1752.
Historia de la provincia de Phtlipinas de la Compama de Jesus ; segunda parte.
Sources and References 633
Manila: Imprenta de la Compania de Jesus; 1749. dT e ® rst P art °f C ^ 1S ser l es
is Colin's work listed above.
Prdctica de testamentos . Mexico, 1765.
Ocio, Hilario. Resena biogrdfca de los religioscs de la prcvincia del Santisimc Rosario de
Filipinas. Manila, 1895.
Pachtler, G. M., ed. Ratio studiorum et institut tones scholasticae Soctetatis lesu per
Germaniam olitn vigentes . 4 v. Berlin: Hoffmann, 1887-1894. This work
constitutes Vols. 2, 5, 9, and 16 of Monumenta Germaniae paedagogica.
Pan, Jose Felipe del, ed. Documentos para la historia de la administracion de Filipinas.
Manila: Oceania Espanola, 1891.
Pardo de Tavera, T. H. Una memoria de Anda y Salagar . Manila: La Democracia,
l8 " -
Pastells, Pablo. “Historia general de Filipinas." In: Catdlogo de los documentos , ed.
Torres y Lanzas.
Pastor, Ludwig von. The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages. F. I.
Antrobus, R. F. Kerr, Ernest Graf, E. F. Peeler, tr. 40 v. St. Louis: Herder,
1923-1953.
Perez, Angel and Cecilio Giiemes, comp. Adiciones y continuacion de “La imprenta
de Manila" de D. J. T. Medina. Manila: Santos y Bernal, 1905.
Repetti, William C. The College of San Jose of Manila, ms. Manila, 1946.
Pictorial Records and Traces of the Society of Jesus in the Philippines and Guam
Prior to iy 68 . Manila, 1938.
The Society of Jesus in the Philippines . ms., 7 v. Washington (D.C.), 1945 “
195 °‘
Retana, W. E., ed. Archivo del biblioflo filipino. 5 v. Madrid, 1895-1905.
La primer a conjuracion separatist a. Madrid: Victoriano Suarez, 1908.
Ricci, Matteo. Opere storiche. Pietro Tacchi- Venturi, ed. 2 v. Macerata: Giorgetti,
191 1-1913.
Salazar, Vicente. Historia de la provincia del santisimo Rosario de Philipinas . . . tercera
parte. Manila: Collegio y Universidad de Santo Tomas, 1742.
Saleeby, Najeeb M. The History of Sulu. Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1908.
Studies in Moro History , Law and Religion . Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1905.
San Agustm, Gaspar de. Conquistas de las islas Philipinas; parte primera . Madrid:
Ruiz de Murga, 1698.
Schurz, William Lytle. The Manila Galleon . New York: Dutton, 1939.
Torres y Lanzas, Pedro, comp. Catdlogo de los documentos relatives a las islas Filipinas
en el archivo de Indias de Sevilla . 9 v. Barcelona, 1925-1936.
Vitoria, Francisco de. De indis et de iure belli relectiones. Ernest Nys, ed. Washing-
ton: Carnegie Institution, 19 17.
NOTES
Abbreviations
AGI Archivo general de Indias, Seville. Reference is made to section and bundle
according to the modern catalogue; thus, AGI FiL 9 refers to bundle 9 of the
section “ Filipinas/’ The documents in each bundle are not numbered.
Arag. Archivo de la antigua provincia de Aragon de la Compania de Jesus, Barcelona.
This archive is catalogued according to the system of estante-cajon-legajo-cuadcrno
(stack-shelf-bundle-sheaf), which we follow in our citations; for example,
Arag.E-I-a-18. The documents in each sheaf are sometimes, not always,
numbered.
Arco Ventura del Arco, comp. Documentos , datos y relacioncs para la historia de Filipinas .
ms., 5 v. Madrid, 1859-1865. Ayer Collection, n. 1300, The Newberry
Library, Chicago. See Appendix A. References are to volume and page.
ARSI Archivum romanum Societatis Iesu. References are to section, volume, and
folio page, with the letter “v” added to the folio number for reverse pages.
The sections referred to most often are PhiL — “ Philippinarum” — the Philip-
pine section, and Cong . prow - — “ Congregationes provinciales ” — the papers of the
provincial congregations.
BAH Biblioteca de la real Academia de la Historia, Madrid. References are almost
exclusively to the Jesuit papers: Jesuitas and Jcsuitas-Salazar. Bound manuscripts
are referred to by volume and number of document in the volume, for example,
BAH Jesuitas 112/28; loose manuscripts by stack-shelf-bundle.
Gesu Archivio gesuitico del Gesu, Rome. See Appendix A. References are to bundle
numbers.
Chapter One . The First Mission
1. Quoted by James Brodrick, The Origin of the Jesuits (London: Longmans, 1940), p. 73.
(Reproduced with the kind permission of Longmans, Green & Co., Inc.) The complete
text may be consulted in MHSI Constitutiones I (Rome, 1934), 16-20.
2. Brodrick, Origin , pp. 73-74.
3. Manila, 29 June and 30 July 1573, in Colin- Pastells I, 162, 166. Lavezans refers to
the Jesuits as “ theatines.” It was a fairly common error at the time to confuse the Society
with the order of clerks regular founded by St. Cajetan and Cardinal Carafa (afterward
Pope Paul IV), whose members were known by that name.
4. A provincial congregation was an assembly of the local superiors and professed fathers
which met with the superior of the province, or provincial, at stated intervals — usually
three years — -in order to consider the affairs of the province and make suitable recommen-
dations. These recommendations or postulata were brought to the General for approval by a
procurator elected by the congregation. Procurators of overseas provinces were also commis-
sioned to bring back missionaries recruited from the European provinces.
5. ARSI Congregationes Provinciales 42, 293-293V; 93, 256V. Mercurian to Martin
Enriquez, viceroy of Mexico, Rome, 31 January 1579, ARSI Mextci 1, 24V.
6. Colin- Pastells I, 164, 167.
7. Ibid. I, 262, 348. Antonio Sedeno to Claudio Acquaviva (general, 1581-1615),
Manila, 12 June 1582, ARSI Phil ippin arum 9, 7.
636 Notes to Chapter One
8. Historia de la Compama de Jesus en la asistencia dt Fspana (7 v., Madrid, 1912-1925},
III, 147.
9. Colin-Pastells I, 261, 516. Sanchez to Acquaviva, Manila, 18 June 1583, ARSI
Phil. 9, I)*
10. Jeronimo Nadal (1507-1580) was commissioned by St. Ignatius to promulgate the
constitutions of the order. The quotation is from a memorandum ol his to the provincial
of Portugal, MHSI Fpist. Nadal IV, 208-209.
11. Hernan Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila 25 June is8b. ARSI Phil. 9, SSv; Astrain,
Historia III, 147-148.
12. Brodrick, The Progress of the Jesuits (New York: Longmans, 1947)* pp- 219-222.
Colin- Pastells I, 261 ; II, 17-20.
13. Pedro Chirino, Primera parte de la historia de la provituta de Phihpinas de la Compaiita de
Jesus (ms., c. 16 10), bk. i, ch. 2.
14. Colin-Pastells I, 261-263. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 12 June 1582, ARSI
Phil. 9, 7 *
15. Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza, Historia de las cosas mas notables ntos y costumbres del gran
reyno de la China ( 2nd ed., Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1587), pr. 11, iSov. Colin-Pastells III,
741.
16. “Sumario de las respuestas del Padre Alonso Sanchez a una de un Obispo escrita
contra el derecho de su Magestad en las Indias” [1592] ARSI Phil. 9, 217-222.
17. Chirino, Historia, i, 2, 6. Colin-Pastells I, 262-263. Bishop Salazar to Philip II,
Manila, 12 June 1582, AGI FiL 74. Sedeho to Acquaviva, Manila, 12 June 1582, ARSI
Phil. 9, 7v-8. For the arguments in favor of Plaza Militar as the site of the first
Jesuit house in the Philippines, see W. C. Repetti, The Society oj Jesus in the Philippines
(ms., 7v., Washington, 1945-1950) I, 24-26. Ronquillo informed the king of the arrival
of the Jesuits in the following terms: “ Last year, 1581, there came three theatins from
New Spain. Two of them are priests, Father Antonio Sedeno and Father Alonso Sanchez,
great servants of God and men of learning. They are doing good work and I consider them
the kind of people we should have here. More of them should be sent” (16 June 1582, in
Colin- Pastells I, 167).
1 8. Chirino, Relation de las islas Filipinos 1 de lo qut en ellas an trabajado los padres de la
Companlade Jesus ( Rome: Estevan Paulino, 1604), p. 1 1 . Lit ter ae annuae 1 597, ARSI Phil. 5 » 3 V *
19. Santiago de Vera to Pedro Moya y Contreras (archbishop of Mexico), Manila, 20
June 1585, in Colin- Pastells I, 410.
20. City corporation of Manila to Philip II, December 1586, in Colin-Pastells II, 676.
21. Salazar to Philip II, Manila, 12 June 1582, AGI Ftl. 74.
22. Salazar to Philip II, Manila, 24 June 1590, AGI FiL 74. Sedeno to Acquaviva,
Manila, 12 June 1582, ARSI Phil. 9, 6-6v, 8V-9V. Sanchez to Acquaviva, Manila, 18
June 1583, ibid. 9, 17V.
23. See the description of the social organization of the Tagalogs composed for the
government by the Franciscan missionary, Fray Juan de Plasencia, Nagcarlang, 24 October
1598. This document has been published a number of times; I use W. E. Retana’s trans-
cription in his edition of Antonio de Morga, Sucesos de las islas Filipinos i Madrid: Victoriano
Suarez, 1909), pp. 471-473.
24. See the report of the city corporation of Manila previously cited (n. 20).
25. Cited above, n. 22.
26. Sanchez, “Relacion de la calidad y estado de estas islas en general” [1587], m
Colin-Pastells I, 368-369.
27. Gaspar de San Agustln, Conquistas de las islas Philipinas (Madrid: Ruiz de Murga,
1698), p. 490.
28. Report cited above, n. 22.
^>37
The Synod of Manila
Chapter Two. The Synod of Manila
1 * The allegations summarized in the preceding paragraphs are contained in the following
documents: Fray Diego de Herrera O.S.A. to Philip II, Mexico, 16 January 1570, in
Colin-Pastells II, 661-662; Herrera to Martin Enriquez (viceroy of Mexico), Panay,
July 1570, II, 662-665; Fray Martin de Rada O.S.A. to Enriquez, Panay, 31 July
1570, ibid. II, 665; “ Opinion of Fray Martin de Rada on Tribute from the Indians,”
Manila, 21 June 1574, in The Phihpptne Islands , E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson, eds.
55 v., Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1903-1909) III, 253-259; Bishop Salazar to
Philip II, Manila [1583], in Archive del bibliojilo flipino, W. E. Retana, ed. (5 v., Madrid,
1895-1905) III, no. 1; “Probanza hecha en Manila. . .sobre el valor de las cosas y
bastimentos,” Manila, 15 and 22 June 1584, summarized with related documents
in Retana's ed. of Morga, Sucesos , introd., pp. 13-16; Benito de Mendiola to
Philip II, Manila, 1583, AGI Til. 74. Mendiola was protector de indios t a kind of
public defender appointed by the Crown to look after the interests of the native popula-
tion. He was succeeded by Bishop Salazar, after whom the job became more or less attached
to the episcopal office. A somber summary of some of the complaints against the encomen-
deros of the Philippines is given in the declarative portion of a cedula of Philip II addressed
to Bishop Salazar (Lisbon, 27 March 1583, in San Agustfn, Conquistas t pp. 426-427):
“We have been informed that the native inhabitants of that province are being gradually
consumed by the ill treatment inflicted upon them by the encomenderos ; that their
numbers have declined to such an extent that in certain regions the population has been
reduced by more than one-third; that the full tribute is being demanded of them when
they are only obliged to pay one-third of it ; that they are treated worse than slaves, many
of them being sold by certain encomenderos to others ; that some have died under the lash,
and even women perish under the heavy burdens laid on them, while their children are
taken away from others for labor in the encomienda estates ; that these women sleep in the
open fields and there give birth, give suck, and die bitten by poisonous vermin; that many
hang themselves or starve themselves to death or take poison ; that there are even mothers
who kill their infants at birth saying it is to free them from the sufferings to which they
themselves are subject; and that the natives have conceived such great hatred of the
Christian name, looking upon the Spaniards as deceivers who do not practice what they
preach, that whatever they do, they do only by compulsion.”
2. “Unsigned Report on Offices Saleable in the Philippines” [1582?], in Blair &
Robertson V, 203-204. Colin-Pastells II, 186.
3. Salazar to Philip II, Manila, 20 June 1582, AGI Til. 74.
4. Gabriel de Ribera, “Complaints against [Ronquillo de] Penalosa,” [1583 ?], in Blair
& Robertson V, 208-209. The decision of the Council of the Indies is summarized by
Pablo Pastells in his “ Historia general de Filipinas” accompanying Catdlogo de los documentos
relatives d las islas Filipinas en el Archivo de las Indias de Sevilla, Pedro Torres y Lanzas, ed.
(9 v., Barcelona, 1925-1936), II, ccxlix. On the proposed audiencia, see the pertinent
documents in Colin-Pastells II, 669-671.
5. See “ Probanza” and Mendiola cited above, n. x .
6. Guido de Lavezaris and others, “ Reply to Rada’s Opinion ” [Manila, June 1 574 ?], in
Blair & Robertson III. 260-271 ; Diego de Aguilar and others to Philip II, Manila, 18 July
1581, in Colin-Pastells I, 263. The junta or colonial assembly of 1586 informed Philip II
that some of the encomiendas were quite small, consisting only of 100 or 200 tributes.
The revenue from such encomiendas was insufficient to support the encomendero, much
less enable him to provide his subjects with a resident missionary (Colin-Pastells I, 426).
Of this junta I shall have more to say presently.
7. General Memorial of the Junta of Manila, 26 June 1586, ibid . I, 428, 430; Gomez
638 Notes to Chapter Two
Perez Dasmarinas to Philip II, Manila, 21 June 1591, ibid. I, 178; Salazar to Philip II
[1583], in Retana, Archivo III, 35.
8. Sande to Philip II, Manila, 1576, in Morga-Retana, introd. p. 17.
9. The asiento with Ronquillo summarized ibid., pp. 395-396; cf. introd., pp. 17-19.
Sedeno to Philip II, Manila, 17 June 1583, in Blair & Robertson XXXI V, 362-363.
10. Manila, 21 December 1581, in Colin- Pastells II, 187.
11. Sedeno to Aquaviva, Manila, 12 June 1582, ARSI Phil . 9, 8. General memorial of
the Junta of Manila, 26 June 1586, in Colin- Pas tells I, 483.
12. Catholic Encyclopedia XIV, 338, s.v. Synod.
13. Chirino, Historia , i, 6; Hernan Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1586, ARSI
Phil 9, 88; Sanchez, “ Respuestas” [1589], ibid. 9, 217-217V. What Bishop Salazar said
to the synod about Sanchez he repeated in equivalent terms to Pope Sixtus V: “In the six
years that I have known him and been intimately associated with him, I have made him
cognizant of and sought his advice on all the affairs, cases, and problems that I have
encountered in the administration of this see ; and since this colony has only recently been
founded, they have been many and important and bristling with difficulties. I have always
found in him an integrity and zeal for the truth above all human respect, and a learning
equal to any problem that presented itself.” (Chirino, Historia , i, 16.)
14. The present account of the synod’s work is based on two extant versions of its
proceedings: a manuscript version in ARSI Phil. 12, 268-289V, entitled “Junta y congre-
gacion hecha en la ciudad de Manila para aviso de los confesores y remedio de algunos
casos y abusos de las islas Philipinas,” and a printed version consisting of lengthy passages
transcribed from a copy originally in the archives of the archdiocese of Manila and pub-
lished by Valentin Marin y Morales O.P. in his Ensayo de una si'ntesis de los trabajos reah^ados
per las corporaciones religiosas espanolos de Filipinos (2 v., Manila: Imprenta de Santo Tomas,
1901) I, 195-333. Both are incomplete but supplement each other. Where they overlap
the two versions render substantially the same sense, although with considerable differences
of wording. Marin’s version seems to contain additions of later date, e.g., the instructions
to alcaldes mayores on pp. 258-263. They will be cited hereafter as “Junta” and “ Marin.”
The discussion concerning the timeliness of the synod is in “Junta,” prologo , ch. 2, ARSI
Phil. 12, 269V-272V.
15* Apostolic Letter, 4 Nones June 1537, in which the Pope declares that the Indians
of America “and all other peoples who shall in future come to the knowledge of Christians
are not to be considered incapable of freedom or ownership, and are not to be deprived
thereof even though they do not profess the Christian faith; on the contrary they may
freely and lawfully exercise, possess and enjoy said liberty and property and ought not to
be reduced to slavery, and if anything to the contrary is done We, in virtue of our apostolic
authority . . . declare and decree it to be null and void.” (Davila Padilla, p. 91.)
16. San Agust/n, Conquistas, p. 413; “Council Regarding Slaves,” Tondo, 17 October
1581, in Blair and Robertson XXXIV, 327-330, Salazar to Philip II, 1583, in Retana,
Archivo III, 33-34.
17. “Junta,” bk. i, ch. 1. ARSI Phil. 12, 274-278V; Marin I, 196-200.
18. “Junta,” i, 2, ARSI Phil. 12, 279-281; Marini, 202-21 1.
19. Salazar to Philip II, Manila, 20 June 1582, transmitting the notarized deposition
of the datus of Tondo and other towns, AGI Fil 74. The datus declared that the alcaldes
mayores “ take at their own price the rice of the Indians and afterward sell it at a very high
rate, doing the same with all other articles of provisions and agricultural products. Further-
more, they oblige the Indians to act as oarsmen whenever they wish. If they return from an
expedition which has lasted a month, they are told straightway to prepare for another, being
paid nothing whatsoever; nevertheless in every village assessments are levied for the pay-
ment of those who go on such sendee. If at any time they are paid, it is very little, and that
Sanchez^ in China 639
very seldom. Because of the many acts of oppression which they have suffered many
Indians have now abandoned Tondo, Capaymisilo, and other villages near this city of
Manila. They have gone to live in other provinces, which has occasioned much damage
and loss to the chiefs. Out of the three hundred Indians who were there one hundred have
gone away, and the said chiefs are obliged to pay the tribute for those who flee and die,
and for their slaves and little boys. If they do not pay these they are placed in the stocks and
flogged. Others are tied to posts and kept there until they pay. Moreover they dig no gold,
for the officials oblige them to pay the fifth. If they do not make a statement of their gold
it is seized as forfeited, even when it is old gold ; and the gold is not returned to them until
after payment of a heavy fine. They do not wish to let the alcaldes-mayor buy rice because
they all hoard it. If the natives come to complain of their grievances to the alcaldes-mayor
alone they are imprisoned and thrown into the stocks and are charged with prison fees/'
(tr. Blair and Robertson V, 190-191). These accusations are corroborated by Benito de
Mendioia, protector de indios , in a report of 1583, AGI Fil. 74.
20. Marin I, 2IO-22I, 246-251, 258-259, 31 1.
21. Ibid. I, 274.
22. Manila, 4 June 1598, Philippine National Archives, Reales Cedillas ljjz~i 6 oo f
214V-215.
23. In Colin-Pastells I, 607.
24. See the reports of Bishop Salazar and Benito de Mendioia in 1 583, cited above, n. 1,
and the General Memorial of the Junta of Manila, 26 June 1586, in Colin-Pastells I,
426-427, 434.
25. Marin I, 272-275, 320-333. See the official schedule of basic commodity prices
drawn up by Governor Acuna in consultation with the ecclesiastical authorities, 18-27
September 1604, in Colin-Pastells II, 488-491.
26. Marin I, 224-226.
27. Ibid. I, 216-217.
28. “Junta/ 1 prologo, ch. 3-5, ARSI Phil. 12, 272V-273V.
29. Juan de la Concepcion, Historia general de Philippines (14 v., Manila, 1788-1792) II,
45-46. The Doctrina cristiana, a copy of which is in the Rosen wald Collection of the
Library of Congress in Washington, is the earliest extant book printed in the Philippines.
30. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila 12 June 1582, ARSI Phil. 9, 8.
31. Marin I, 307-310; Hernan Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 8 June 1585, ibid. 9, 39;
Salazar to Philip II, Manila, 24 June 1 590, AGI FiL 74.
Chapter Three. Sdnche ^ in China
1. Pastells, Catdlogo II, pp. cclxxxvi-cclxxxvii.
2. Rafael Altamira y Crevea, Historia de Espanay de la civilisation espahola (4 v., Barcelona :
Juan Gill, 1900-1930)111, 96-98; Antonio Ballesteros y Beretta, Historia de Espana IV- 1
(2nd ed., Barcelona: Sal vat, 1950), 366-389.
3. Chirino, Historia , i, 7; Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 12 June 1582, ARSI Phil. 9, 8.
4. Ronquillo to Philip II, Manila, 16 June 1582, in Colin-Pastells I, 306.
5. Henri Bernard, Les lies Philippines du grand archxpel de la Chine (Tientsin: Hautes fitudes,
i 9 3 6)) , pp. 25-39; “ Relacion breve de la jornada que el P. Alonso Sanchez .... hizo por
orden y parecer del Sr. Don Gonzalo Ronquillo de Penalosa governador de Philipinas,”
in Colin-Pastells I, 266, this last being the account of his first journey to Macao written by
Sanchez himself, hereafter to be cited as “ Relation” I.
6. The preceding paragraphs are based on Sanchez, ** Relacion ” I, ibid . I, 269-280.
7. Some of this information is contained in Sanchez’s account of his second journey to
Macao, “Relacion” II, ibid. I, 321-322. Alessandro Valignano was born at Chieti in
640 Notes to Chapter Three
Abruzzi in 1 5 3 9 ; took his doctorate in civil law at the University of Padua at the age of 1 9 ;
entered the Society of Jesus in 1 566. Pompilio Ruggiero was a Neapolitan, the son of
the estate manager of the Duke of Gravina. After graduating as doctor utriusque iuris at the
University of Naples he was employed in the government service until his admission to the
Society of Jesus in 1572, when he changed his classical name for the more Christian
Michael. He was sent as a missionary to the East in 1 577, ordained priest at Lisbon, and
reached Goa, in company with Rodolfo Acquaviva, Francesco Pasio, and Matteo Ricci, in
1578. Cf. Henri Bernard, Aux fortes de la Chine (Tientsin: Hautes Etudes, 193 3 )» PP* H 0 "
142, 144-145.
8. Sanchez, “Relacion" I, in Colin-Pastells I, 281-282.
9. Sanchez, "Relacion" I, ibid. I, 282-285; Bernard, Aux portes, pp. 164-165.
10. Bernard, Aux portes, pp. 88, 91; lies Philippines, pp. 35-36; C. R. Boxer, ed., South
China in the Sixteenth Century (London : Hakluyt Society, 1953)* pp- xxxiii-xxxv; Francisco
Sande to the Count of Coruna (Viceroy of Mexico), Mexico, 25 January 1582, in Pastells,
Catalogo II, Iviii.
1 1. Sanchez, “ Relacion" I, in Colin-Pastells I, 285-291.
12. The texts of these letters to Governor Ronquillo from Almeida (15 July 1582),
Valignano (14 December 1582) and Da Sa (10 February 1583) are in Colin-Pastells I,
294-298. See, further, the strong representations made by the Portuguese of India to
Philip II, ibid . I, 42 1 -424.
13. Sanchez, "Relacion" I, ibid . I, 298-300.
14. Sanchez, “Relacion” I, ibid. I, 285—286; cf. Salazar to Philip II, Manila, 18 June
1583, ibid. I, 306-307. The frigate with 18 on board was that of Fray Geronimo de Burgos
and his companions, that with 26 on board was Sanchez's; the prefect inverted the order
of their arrival. I am not sure what ** cat's eyes" meant; perhaps it referred to the color;
some of the Spaniards may have been blue- or green-eyed.
15. Sanchez, "Relacion" I, in Colin-Pastells I, 300-301. On the fire of 1582, see the
official reports, ibid. I, 170-171.
16. Manila, 18 June 1583, ARSI Phil. 9, 16.
17. Macao, 14 December 1582, in Colin-Pastells I, 297-298.
18. Manila, 18 June 1583, AGI Fil. 74.
19. Manila, 20 June 1583, in Colin-Pastells I, 311,
20. In the letter referred to above, n. 18.
21. Sanchez, "Relacion" II, in Colin-Pastells I, 323; cf. ibid. I, 169.
22. Sedeho to Acquaviva, Manila, 22 June 1584, ARSI PhiL 9, 36V.
23. Manila, 18 June 1583, ARSI Phil. 9, 15-15V.
24. Manila, 8 April 1584, AGI Fil. 74. Cf. Ronquillo to Philip II, Manila, 8 April 1 5 & 4 »
in Colin-Pastells 1 , 314.
25. Roman to Philip II, Macao, 25 June 1584, ibid. II, 520-521. Roman, who was
privy to the empresa de China , did some intelligence work at Macao and on the basis of his
observations confidently assured Philip that all that would be needed for the conquest of
China were five thousand Spanish troops (or even less), six or seven thousand Japanese
(whom the Jesuits could be asked to recruit from their converts), and three or four thousand
Visayans, who are good soldiers if backed up by our troops, or anyway much better than
the Chinese. A squadron of six galleons and six galleys would suffice to secure the landing.
(Macao, 28 September 1584, New York Public Library, Rich Mss. 96.) The detail about
Ruggiero’s clock is supplied by Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 22 June 1584, ARSI Phtl. 9,
36V.
26. Macao, 22 June 1584, Gesu 850a.
27. In a letter to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1586, ARSI Phil. 9, 86V-87.
28. Summarized, with portions transcribed, in Colin-Pastells II, 73-74, 689-690.
Surveying the Field 641
However, one of the Manila Jesuits, Ramon Prat, informs Acquaviva on 24 June 1587
that, according to reports received from Macao that year, the Jesuit interest in the trade
had increased to 40,000 crusadoes, and that the Macao merchants were complaining
bitterly that the Jesuits were cutting in on their profits (ARSI Phil. 9, 258). The Portu-
guese crusado and the ducat were roughly equivalent: about four 1940 U.S. dollars.
29. Sanchez, “Relation” II, in Colin-Pastells I, 325-328; Caspar de Ayala (Fiscal of
the Audiencia) to Philip II, Manila, 20 June 1585, ibid. I, 328
Chapter Four. Surveying the Field
1. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 12 June 1582, ARSI Phil. 9, 8-9; Sanchez to
Acquaviva, Manila, 18 June 1583, ibid. 9, 16.
2. Sedeno's letter cited above, ibid., 9, 6-9V; and cf. Colin-Pastells I, 165, 263; II,
274, 674-679; and Sanchez, “ Noticia de la mas remota y nueva christiandad de las Yndias
de el poniente” [1589], ARSI Phil. 9, 174V.
3. Letter cited above, ihtd. 9, 5~6v.
4. VI, iii, 5.
5. Pastell s, Catalogo IV, ccxxxviii.
6. The above summary of the recommendations of Sedeno and Sanchez are based on their
letters to Acquaviva of 18 June 1583 (Sanchez) and 17 June, 15 and 22 September 1583
Sedeno), ARSI Phil , 9, 11, i6v-l8, 2I-22V, 26-26V. Sedeno seems to have presumed
Acquaviva’s permission to receive Mendiola into the Society, at least as a postulant, some
time before Sanchez left on his second voyage to Macao, for, as we have seen, he was the
“brother” who accompanied Sanchez on that voyage, not, as Pastells conjectures (Coif n-
Pastells I, 329), Caspar Gomez. If this reconstruction is correct, Mendiola was the first
to be received into the Society in the Philippines.
7* AGI Fil. 74.
8. Diego Ronquillo to Philip II, Manila, 13 June 1583, in Colin-Pastells II, 247;
Sanchez to Acquaviva, Manila, 18 June 1583, ARSI Phil. 9, iy-iyv; Sedeno to
Acquaviva, Manila, 13 November 1583, ibid. 9, 30V-31.
9. Acquaviva’s instructions to Plaza, 30 March 1582, ARSI Mex. I, 36-36%%
10. Chirino, Historia , i, 15; Colin-Pastells I, 329.
11. Ibid. I, 348, 350; II, 324-325, 526-527; Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 8 June
1585, ARSI Phil . 9, 40; Almerici to Acquaviva, Manila, 15 June 1585, ibid. 9, 55. But
note that in the personnel files of the Society 7 (ARSI Phil. 2, Car. 1597-1603) Prat’s birth-
place is gi% T en as Vigas.
12. Letter of Almerici cited in the preceding note, ibid. 9, 55-56.
13. Pastells, Catdlooo II, eexlix; Morga-Retana, p. 25 ; Philip II’s instructions to the new
audiencia (Aranjuez, 5 May 1583) are summarized, with portions translated, in Blair and
Robertson V, VI.
14. De Vera to Philip II, 30 June 1584, in Colin-Pastells I, 330; Suarez to Acquaviva,
Manila 20 June 1584, ARSI Phil. 9, 34.
15. De Vera to Archbishop Moya y Contreras of Mexico, Manila, 20 June 1585,
Colin-Pastells I, 409-410.
16. In the letter of 1584 cited abo% 7 e, n. 14, and subsequent letters to Acquaviva, 8 and
17 June 1585, 25 June 1586, ARSI Phil. 9, 44%% 59, 88.
17. To Acquaviva, Manila 8, 12, and 13 June 1585, ARSI Phil. 9, 39, 43V-44, 46V-47;
cf. De Vera to Philip II, Manila 20 June 1585, in Colin-Pastells I, 171 -172.
18. Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 8 and 12 June 1585, ARSI Phil. 9, 39, 43V ; City' of
Manila to Philip II, December 31, 1586, in Colin-Pastells II, 676; Prat to Acquaviva,
Manila, 18 June 1584, 15 June 1585, ARSI Phil. 14, 1 -lv; 9, 48; Chirino, Relacion ,
p. 14; De Vera to Philip II, Manila, 26 June 1587, in Colin-Pastells I, 355.
642 Notes to Chapter Four
19. Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 8 and 12 June 1585, and 25 June 1586, ARSI Phil.
9, 39, 43, 88v; Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 4 October 1585, ibid . 14, 8v; Colin-Pastells I,
354. The course had to be discontinued when Prat took over the duties of Suarez after the
latter's death in September 1586.
20. Colin-Pastells II, 538-539.
21. Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 8 June 1585, ARSI Phil. 9, 39; Sanchez to Acquaviva,
Manila, 19 June 1585, ibid. 9, 67; De Vera to Moya y Contreras, Manila, 20 June 1585;
the same to Philip II, Manila, 20 June 1 586; Davalos to Philip II, Manila, 18 June 1585;
Colin-Pastells I, 410, 4 12-4 14.
22. Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1586, ARSI Phil. 9, 88V-90.
23. Acquaviva to Plaza, Rome, April 1581, in Astrain, Historia III, 148.
24. Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 17 June and 4 October 1585, 25 June 1586, ARSI
Phil. 9, 59, 88; 14, 8.
25* Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 8 June 1585, ibid. 9, 39-40; Prat to Acquaviva,
Manila, 15 June 1585, ibid. 9, 48.
26. Almerici to Acquaviva, Manila, 15 June 1585; Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 17
June 1585 and 25 June 1586; Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 4 October 1585 and 5 June
1586; ARSI Phil. 9, 50, 56V-57V; 9, 59, 88V-89; 14, 8-8v; 9, 77.
27. Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 12 June 1585, ibid. 9, 44V; Almerici to Acquaviva,
Manila, 15 June 1585, ibid. 9, 51-5IV.
28. Suirez to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1 586, ibid . 9, 89V-90.
29. Sedeno, 16 June 1585, ibid. 14, 6; Sanchez, 19 June 1585, ibid. 9, 68; Suarez, 8,
12, and 13 June 1585, 25 and 26 June 1586, ibid. 9, 39V-40V, 42-43V, 47, 91, 93V;
Prat, 16 June 1585 and 5 June 1586, ibid. 9, 48, 77.
30. Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1586, ibid. 9, 91.
31. Gesu 849; Colin-Pastells I, 351.
32. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 27 June 1 586, ARSI Phil. 9, 95V.
33. Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1586, ibid . 9, 89-89V, 91-9IV.
Chapter Five. The Colonial Agent
1. Colin-Pastells I, 332.
2. As previously pointed out in ch. 2, Retana in his edition of Morga's Sucesos, introd.
pp. 10-1 1, gives the following comparative prices of commodities in Manila for 1580 and
1584.
1 580
1584
Rice
1 toston (4 rials) per 6 fanegas
(300 gantas)
1 toston per fanega
Poultry
4 rials per dozen chickens
2 rials per chicken
E gg s
1 tomin (half rial) per 20 eggs
1 tomin per half dozen eggs
Lard
2 pesos per jar
8 pesos per jar
Pork
6 rials per pig (large)
4 pesos per pig (small)
Palm brandy
1 toston per 100 gantas
2 tostones per 100 gantas.
The reasons given in the documents cited by Retana (ibid. pp. 13-16) for these price
increases are : withdrawal of natives from agriculture by impressment of laborers and troops
for ga leys and expeditions ; abandonment of agriculture by natives themselves in order to
The Colonial Agent 643
participate in the more lucrative China trade; exploitation of the natives by alcaldes
mayores; increase of nonagri cultural population with high per capita consumption
(Spaniards, Chinese); increased mortality among the natives due to epidemics and expedi-
tions; bad harvests due to locusts.
Even in 1583 Sedeno was compelled drastically to revise his earlier report on how
cheaply a Jesuit could live in the Philippines. He had previously written that 500 pesos and
500 fanegas of rice a year would suffice to support ten or twelve Jesuits. He now thought
that 100 pesos and 100 fanegas would be needed for each man (Sedeno to Acquaviva,
Manila 22 September 1583, ARSI Phil. 9, 27).
In an effort to keep the cost of living down the government subjected prime commodities
to price control. But this only made matters worse, for alcaldes mayores and other officials
then forced the natives to sell their products to them at the pegged price rather than the
higher price of the open market, even if there was no particular scarcity. Bishop Salazar in
his particular memorial to the king (June 1586, Colm-Pastells I, 447) complained about
this and petitioned that price controls be not applied except in times of real scarcity, and
even at such times that the natives be not forced to sell their products except what is over
and above what they needed for one year.
3 . Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 27 June 1586, ARSI Phil . 9, 95; Audiencia of Manila
to Philip II, 13 July 1589, in Colm-Pastells I, 176.
4. General Memorial of the Assembly, Manila, 26 June 1586, ibid. I, 415; and I,
3 32-336 for what was said at the assembly, summarized in this and succeeding paragraphs.
The Jesuits present were Sedeno, Sanchez, Suarez, and Prat. No mention is made of
Almerici.
5. According to De Vera (in a letter to Archbishop Moya y Contreras, Manila, 20 June
1585, ibid. I, 410), the total income of the Philippine government in his time did not
reach 35,000 pesos a year; and elsewhere ( ibid . I, 354 ) he informs Philip II that the annual
deficit was upwards of 50,000 pesos. A summary of the financial status of the Philippines
in 1586, drawn up by Ledesma, one of Philip II's secretaries, gives the following figures
on income (ibid. I, 458): annual revenue from tribute, between 27,000 and 28,000 pesos;
customs duties, 10,000; royal quinto (the one-fifth share of all newly mined gold taken by
the government), 3,000. All this revenue was spent to defray the expenses of the colonial
government, the principal items being salaries, ship construction and naval stores. The
officers and crew of the galleons of the Manila- Acapulco line, all of which belonged to the
Crown, were paid in Mexico; their salaries amounted to 50,000 pesos per voyage. A
memorandum of the Council of the Indies attached to this summary stated that as of 1586
the royal treasury had spent more than three million pesos on the discovery, settlement,
and upkeep of the Philippines.
6. De Vera to Archbishop Moya y Contreras, Manila, 20 June 1585, ibid. I, 410. He
wrote in the same sense to Villamanrique, the viceroy of Mexico, as the latter informed
Philip II, Mexico, 24 January 1587, ibid. I, 363. De Vera as president of the audiencia
received 4,000 pesos a year; the oidores Davalos, Rojas, and Ribera Maldonado who came
somewhat later, and the attorney-general Ayala, 2,000 each. The salaries of the minor
officials amounted to 8,000 (ibid. I, 1 71).
7 * Ayala to Philip II, Manila, 20 June 1585, ibid. I, 41 1.
8. Davalos to Philip II, Manila, 20 June 1585, ibid. I, 409.
9. Manila, 25 June 1586, ARSI Phil. 9, 90-90V.
10. Colm-Pastells I, 339-340.
11 . Ibid. I, 337-33 8 > 347-34 8 *
12. Ibid. I, 415.
13. Sanchez, " Respuestas . . . a los puntos de una [carta] que el obispo de las Philipinas
escrivio a su Magestad” (Rome, 1592 ?), ARSI Phil. 9, 219V.
644 Notes to Chapter Five
14. Colm-Pastells I, 340-343 ; Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1586, ARSI Pktl
9, 90V-91 ; President De Vera to Acquaviva, Manila, 24 June 1586, ibid. 8i-8lv.
15. Colm-Pastells I, 343; Sanchez, “ Respuestas,” ARSI Phil. 9, 217V-218. In a letter
to Acquaviva, Manila, 23 June 1586, Bishop Salazar explained Sanchez’s mission and
took the opportunity to express his esteem for the Society and for “the fathers residing
in this city who have been my comfort and consolation in all the hardships and difficulties
I have encountered ” (ibid. 9, 79).
16. Colm-Pastells I, 349.
17. “ Razones . . . para que no convenia se dilatase su jornada” [Mexico, 1587],
ARSI Phil. 9, 125-127.
18. As Villamanrique explained to Philip II, Mexico, 6 May 1587, quoted by Leon
Lopetegui, El padre Jose de Acosta y las misiones (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones
cientfficas, 1942), pp. 464-465.
19. Sanchez, “Respuestas,” ARSI Phil. 9, 220; Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 20 June
1584, ibid . 9, 34; Mendoza to Acquaviva, Mexico, 17 January 1585, in Lopetegui,
Acosta, p. 463.
20. “ Parecer sobre la guerra de la China,” Mexico, 15 March 1587, published by
Pietro Tacchi-Venturi in the appendix to his edition of Matteo Ricci’s historical works,
Opere storicke (2 v., Macerata: Filippo Giorgetti. 1911-1913)11, 450-455.
21. Summarized with quotations in Lopetegui, Acosta, pp. 468-470.
22. “Parecer,” in Tacchi-Venturi, Opere storiche II, 452.
23. Ibid. II, 455.
24. “ Respuestas,” ARSI Phil. 9, 220.
25. Colm-Pastells I, 363-368.
26. Both letters dated 1 1 August 1587, quoted by Lopetegui, Acosta, p. 475. Acquaviva
disapproved so strongly of Sanchez’s two missions to Macao that he instructed the pro-
vincial of Mexico, 24 February and 16 June 1586, to recall Sanchez from the Philippines
to prevent any further expeditions (Lopetegui, ibid. p. 463). These letters must have reached
Mendoza when Sanchez was already in Mexico on his third mission, that with which we
are now concerned.
27. “Resolucion de los capitulos y puntos que la real audiencia y republica de las
Philipinas embiaron a pedir a su Magestad” [1589], Gesu 1432; Colm-Pastells I, 368—
370; Sanchez, * Respuestas,” ARSI Phil. 9, 219. The text of the various memorials may
be consulted in Colm-Pastells I, 415-455.
28. Text ibid. I, 368-374.
29. Ibid. I, 374 - 376 .
30. Contemporary copy in ARSI Phil. 9, 115-123; printed text in Cohn-Pastells I,
376-386.
31. Cf. St. Thomas, Summa theologica II— II, q. 12, a. 2, and Francisco de Vitoria.
Relectio de indis , sect. 2. The handiest edition of the latter for the English reader is that of
Ernest Nys, Washington : Carnegie Institution, 1917.
32. In all this Sanchez sticks pretty closely to Vitoria, Relectio de indis , sect. 3. Acosta,
however (Lopetegui, p. 4 7 ~)> points out that if both the government and the people of a
pagan nation refuse to admit Christian missionaries or listen to them, it is by no means
certain that they can be compelled by force to do so. Only if either the people or the
government are willing may pressure be applied to the unwilling party, under the usual
conditions : that all other means have failed, that no scandal ensues, and that only as much
pressure is applied as will assure freedom to preach and freedom to hear the word of God.
33. Cf. Ballesteros. Historia de Espana IV- 1, 394,
34. The text of the Philippine memorials and Philip s decisions are conveniently printed
Permanent Establishment 645
together in Colm-Pastells I, 415-459. See also Philip's instructions to Dasmarinas,
August 1589, ibid. Ill, 741-750.
3 5. We learn from a report of Ayala to Philip II (1 5 July 1589, ibid . I, 457) that govern-
ment clerkships were being sold at the following rates : four in Manila at 800 pesos each ;
one in Pampanga at 1,000 pesos; one in the Visayas at 1,700 pesos; one in Cebu at 600
pesos; one in Bonbon (Batangas) at 300 pesos; and one in Camarmes at 600 pesos. Alonso
Beltran, court secretary, sold his office when he went back to Mexico to Alonso Torres,
merchant. The price: 4,500 pesos.
36. Chirino, Historia, i. 27; Dasmarinas' appointment is in Colm-Pastells II, 174-175.
37. Ibid. I, 463-465.
38. Cf. Astrain, Historia III, 3 57-71 3 .
39. Acquaviva to Sanchez, Rome, 14 June 1588, in Lopetegui, Acosta , pp. 478—479’
Colm-Pastells I, 469-470.
40. ARSI Phil 14, 4-5. On Sanchez's negotiations in the Roman curia see Colm-Pastells
I, 472-501.
41. Text in F. J. Hernaez, ed., Colection de hulas , breves y otros documents relativos a la
iglesia de America y Filipinos (2 v., Brussels: Vromant, 1879) I, 108, and cf. Colm-Pastells I,
456, 476.
42. Text ibid . I, 482-489.
43. Manila, 24 June 1590, AGI Fit. 74; cf. Pastells, CatdlogolV, ix-x.
44. Ibid. Ill, xcv-xcix.
45. The following account is based on Colm-Pastells I, 388-407; cf. Sanchez, Res-
puestas,” ARSI Phil. 9, 2i8v.
46. This is the ** Respuestas" to which frequent reference has already been made, of
which there is a copy in ARSI Phil. 9, 2 17-222.
47. Colm-Pastells I, 514-516.
Chapter Six . Permanent Establishment
1. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 22 June 1587* ARSI Phil. 9, 2,5 3 V J Historia de la
vice-pro vincia de las islas Philipmas" [1600], ibid. 9, Iv; Chirino, Historia , i, 18.
2. Colm-Pastells I, 350.
3. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 9 September 1587* ARSI Phil. 9, 260— 260V.
4. Historia , i, 19; Relation, pp. 13-14.
5. As described by De Vera in a report to Philip II, Manila, 26 June 1587* in Cohn-
Pastells I, 174. He financed the construction by a prorated levy on all encomiendas (3,000
pesos) and a tax of one rial on all married and one-half rial on all unmarried natives
(6,000 pesos).
6. Annual Letter 1597, ARSI Phil. 5, 2.
7. Colm-Pastells 19-20.
8 . Audiencia of Manila to Philip II, 1585 h ibid. I, 181 ; cf. ibid. Ill, 127.
9. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 22 June and 9 September 1587* *9 J une I 594 »
ARSI Phil. 9, 253, 261, 293V; Chirino, Historia , iii, 1 ; Cohn-Pastells II, 22; cf. Ill,
750-753.
10. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 9 September 1587, ARSI Phil. 9, 260-260V.
Pacheco was an alderman of the city. It was his intention not only to build the Jesuit
residence but to endow it as a college; but after his wife's death in 1 59 1 c ^ an g ec ^ ^is
mind, having gone to Mexico and remarried. Dona Faustina was noted for her many
charities, one of which was to send food regularly to the hospital from her own kitchen.
646 Notes to Chapter Six
She was less than 40 when she died. Over her tomb m the Jesuit church the grateful
fathers placed the following inscription :
Fausta optbus Faustina suis, faustissima jama.
Carport fans t a nimis, faustior cst animo .
Cf. Chinno, Historia , i, 18; Colin-Pastelis I, 513. Don Luis de Sahajosa may be remem-
bered as the commander of the galleon which brought Sedeno and his companions to the
Philippines.
11. To Philip II, Manila, 26 June 1587, ibid. I, 354. An anonymous report of 1586
gives some of the current prices of China goods at Manila : damask, any color, 4 rials per
yard; cloth-of-gold, 10 rials per yard; cottons, i\ rials per yard; biscuit, 7 or 8 rials per
75-lb. jar; lard, 20 rials per 125-lb. jar; etc. (ibid. I, 3 5 5 — 3 5^)*
12. Quoted by C. H. Haring, Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies (Cambridge ;
Harvard University Press, 1918), pp. 145-146, from Hakluyt’s Voyages.
13. Colin-Pastelis I, 51 ; II, 676; Morga-Retana, p. 407; Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila,
22 June 1587, ARSI Phil. 9, 253V-254.
14. The following account is based on the contemporary reports in Colin-Pastelis I,
1 72-174, and W. E. Retana's monograph, La primer a conjuraciSn separatist a , Madrid:
Victoriano Suarez, 1908.
15. Thomas Cavendish of Suffolk attacked the Santa Ana on 4 November 1587 off the
California coast with two ships, the Desire , 120 tons, 18 guns, and the Content , 60 tons,
io guns. The 6oo-ton Santa Ana mounted no guns, and Alzola yielded her after a six-hour
battle. Cavendish was piloted to the Philippines by the navigator of the Santa Ana f Alonso
de Valladolid. He also took with him a Filipino member of the galleon’s crew, Francisco
Mansalay, who managed to escape and was the first to bring the news of the capture to
Manila. Cavendish sent his message to the Manila Spaniards by means of a captured
Portuguese seaman whom he set down before leaving the Islands. He entered Plymouth in
triumph on 9 September 1588, just after the destruction of the Armada. Queen Elizabeth
had the Desire brought round from Plymouth to be displayed to the court at Greenwich,
and is said to have remarked: “We care nothing for the Spaniards. Their ships, loaded
with gold and silver from the Indies, come hither after all." Cf. the documents in Colin-
Pasteils I, 5 C I 75 -I 7b; IIL 348-3 5b; William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New
York: Dutton, 1939), pp. 305-313.
16. Manila, 18 July 1583, in Colin-Pastelis I, 351,
17. ARSI Cong. Prov. 43, 373 -373V.
18. Ibid. 43, 41 iv. The second general congregation of the Society (1565) had recom-
mended to the general “ut potius applicaret animum ad roboranda et ad perfectionem
adducenda collegia iam admissa quam ad nova admittenda; et si quae admittenda existi-
maret ex iis quae offeruntur, eiusmodi essent et eis in locis et cum talibus circumstantiis ut
ad commune bonum Ecclesiae Dei magnum momentum habitura videantur” (decretum 8,
in G. M. Pachtler, Ratio studiorum et institutions scholasticae Societatis Iesu (4 v., Berlin, 1887
1894)1,74).
19. De la dispusicion de las Philipmas para quanto a estar de asiento en ellas la
Compania” [1589], Gesu 1465.
20. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 7 June 1 592-, ARSI Phil. 9, 276V; Valerio de Ledesma,
“ Historia provinciae Philippinarum Societatis Iesu,” Manila, 15 July 1620, ibid. 1 1, 1 1 5 ;
Colin-Pastelis I, 505-506.
21. Ibid. I, 177, 508-509, 579; Chirino, Historia , i, 29; Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila,
24 June 1590, ARSI Phil. 9, 270.
22. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 17 June 1588, Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 21 June
1 590, ARSI Phil. 9, 264V; Colin-Pastelis I, 5 1 3 . Sedeno saw to it that a bishop’s room was
Permanent Establishment
647
included in the plan of the residence, because Bishop Salazar liked to come and stay with
the fathers occasionally. He corresponded by donating a portion of his library; so Chirino,
Historia , i, 1 8. The construction of the church was also being financed by Pacheco and his
wife. The construction foreman was a Greek named Daniel Theoclitos, a former seaman.
He later entered the Society as a lay brother (Ann. Lett. 1612, in Colin-Pastells III,
279-281).
23. ARSI Cong , Prov. 45, 444, 467V; Angelo Armano to an unidentified correspondent,
Antipolo, 30 June 1602, ARSI Phil. 10, 94.
24. Reports of 21 June 1591 and 20 June 1592, in Colin-Pastells I, 178-179, 579.
25. Ibid. I, 177-179, 181, 579, 583; Dasmarifias to Philip II, Manila, 31 May 1592,
ibid. I, 581; Morga-Retana, p. 28.
26. 3 1 May 1592, in Colin-Pastells I, 579-580; cf. petition of 26 January 1 591, ibid. I,
585.
27. Ibid. I, 181-182.
28. 31 May 1591, in Retana, Archivo IV, 41-73.
29. To Dasmarinas, Mamla, 12 January 1591, in Colin-Pastells I, 603-604.
30. See the documents relative to this controversy ibid. I, 603-615.
31. Ibid. I, 598-599; cf. I, 612-613.
32. Chirino, Historia, iv. 7; Dasmarinas to Philip II, Manila, 18 October 1591, in
Colin-Pastells I, 1 80.
33. Ibid. I, 181 ; II, 193 ; San Agustin, Conquistas, pp. 458-459. Fray Luis de Maldonado
died before he could take possession of his diocese. Its first actual occupant was Fray
Francisco Ortega, O.S.A. Cf. Domingo Abella, “San Pedro Bautista— obispo de Nueva
Caceres Archivo ibero-americano 63 (July-September 1956), 355 - 375 ‘ ^7 friend Dr.
Abella informs me that the original title of the see in pontifical documents was not Nueva
Caceres but simply Caceres.
34. Text ibid. I, 587-588, dated 20 January 1592; papers submitted by the other
orders, ibid. I, 588-591.
35. Hall, South-East Asia, pp. 198-203; Marta to Acquaviva, Cebu, 5 December 1593,
ARSI Phil. 9, 288; Colin-Pastells I, 572.
36. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 7 June 1592, ARSI Phil. 9, 276V; Colin-Pastells I,
57 2 “ 573 * The instructions of Dasmarinas to Gomez are ibid. Ill, 29-30; a summary of
Gomez’s report in Pastells, Catalogo V, clxxvii-clxxx.
37. Colin-Pastells I, 573-576; Concepcion, Historia II, 198-204.
38. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 7 June 1592, ARSI Phil. 9, 276; Colin-Pastells I,
183 ; II, 56.
39. Ibid. I, 185, 600-603; H» 40-47; Marta to Acquaviva, Cebu, 2 December 1592,
ARSI Phil. 9, 2 8 8-2 8 8v; Chirino, Historia, ii, 23-24; Morga-Retana, pp. 29-30. Juan
Ezquerra was one of the first conquistadores of the Islands, and attained the military rank
of general. He died in 1615 survived bv 14 children and an unspecified number of grand-
children. He gave one son ('Domingo, who became provincial) and two grandsons (Francisco
and Juan, the former martyred in the Marianas) to the Society. We are given a charming
detail of his death : he had the habit of carrying a crucifix around with him everywhere,
and when his last hour was come he asked for it, saying, “ Give me my boon companion.
Cf. Colin-Pastells III, 568-569. According to Dasmarinas the Younger the Misericordia
kept up Father De Leon’s special charity of helping those who were ashamed to beg
\pebres vergon^antes') and added others to it, such as providing dowries for orphan girls or the
daughters of impoverished conquistadores, and providing poor families, especially settlers
from Mexico, a place to live until they could find employment. This last hostelry was
distinct from Santa Potenciana; it eventually developed into an orphanage for girls, the
648 Notes to Chapter Six
Coiegio de Santa Isabel, cf, Dasmarinas to Philip II, Manila, 15 June 1594 an< ^ 9 J une
1595, ibid. I, 634; II, 109-1 10.
40. Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 21 June 1590, ARSI Phil . 9, 268; De Vera to Philip II,
Manila, 1587, in Colin-Pastelis I, 353-354; Audiencia to Philip II, Manila, 25 June
1588, ibid. I, 354.
41. Almerici informs Acquaviva of the purchase of Figueroa’s ranch, San Juan del Monte
Taytay), 19 June 1593, ARSI Phil. 9, 282V. Notarial transcripts of the bills of sale of the
properties mentioned in the text, and of Mercado’s deed of donation, are in Gesu 1465.
The Mayhaligi property was further added to in 1598 by the purchase of adjoining lands
in Silangan, Bakor, and Butabuta from Dionisio Kapolo, Felipe Salonga, and Gabriel
Tuambakar, ibid. Other purchases recorded in the same dossier are: a city lot with a
wooden house belonging to the Licentiate Contreras, 18 September 1586; another wooden
house belonging to the estate of Diego Diaz, 6 June 1595* Cf. Sedeno to Acquaviva,
Manila, 19 June 1594 and 20 June 1595, ARSI Phil. 9, 293V-294; 14, iov.
42. Sedeno to Alarcon, Manila, 19 June I 594, ibid . 9, 292.
43. Colin-Pastelis II, 6-7.
44. Ibid. II, 10-11; Chirino, Relation, p. 11.
45. Text in Repetti, The College oj San Jose (ms,, Manila, 1946), Appendix A.
Chapter Seven. Mission Stations
1. Colm-Pastells I, 509-510; cf. Chirino, Relation, p. 35, and Prat to Acquaviva,
Manila, 21 June 1590, ARSI Phil. 9, 268.
2. Colm-Pastells II, 23-24.
3. Ibid. I, 510-51 1 ,* Chirino, Relation, p. 19.
4. Colm-Pastells I, 511-512; “Historia de la vice-provincia ” [1600], ARSI Phil. 9, 2.
5. Chirino, Relation, pp. 19-21. This work is, of course, our primary source for the
beginnings of the Taytay mission.
6. Ibid., pp. 21-22.
7. Ibid., pp. 20-21; Colin-Pastelis I, 512, 5 14.
8. Chirino, Relation, pp. 45, 52-56, 75-76. On the songs of the Tagalogs, see the learned
note of Epifanio de los Santos in Morga-Retana, pp. 456-464.
9. Acts xvii, 23-28.
10. Chirino, Relation, pp. 48-49.
1 1 . Reproduced in facsimile by the Library of Congress, Washington, in 1 947, with
an erudite introductory essay by Edwin Wolf 2nd.
12. Colin-Pastelis II, 1 1 0-1 1 1 .
13. Chirino, Relation , pp. 49-50; Historia, ui, 14.
14. Colin-Pastelis I, 513-514, 561-563; Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 7 June 1592,
ARSI Phil. 9, 276.
15. Colin-Pastelis II, 1 15; Chirmo, Relation , pp. 27-28.
16. See Chirino’s interesting account of his journey to Panay in Colin-Pastelis I,
564-565.
17. Ibid. II, 679; Chirino, Relation, pp, 7-8, 25.
18. Chirino, Relation, pp. 26-27; Historia, it. 20; Colin-Pastelis I, 565-566.
19. Chirino, Relation , pp. 16, 28; Almerici to Acquaviva, San Juan del Monte (Taytay),
19 June 1593, ARSI Phil. 9, 281.
20. Colin-Pastelis II, 5-6; Acquaviva to Esteban Paez, provincial of Mexico, Rome,
9 March I 594 > ARSI Cong. Prov. 45, 475; Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 20 June 1595 *
ARSI Phil. 14, 10; Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 18 June 1597, ibid. 14, 12— I2V.
21. According to the tribute roll compiled con puntitahdad in 1600; cf. Colin-Pastelis II.
Mission Stations
649
122. Sedeno had had his eye on Leyte for at least a year previous to this. His information
was that it had a total population of 70,000 (to Acquaviva, Manila, 19 June 1594,
ARSI Phil. 9, 29 3 -293V.)
22. Sedeno to Acquaviva, Manila, 20 June T595, ARSI Phti. 14, 10; Colin-Pastells I,
t 76 .
23. Chirino, Relacion , pp. 28-29; hiistona, ii, 25.
24. Chirino, Relation, pp. 62-63.
25. Ibid pp. 29-30; Colin-Pastells II, 12-14; Annual Letter 1597, ARSI Phil. 5, 5V,
1 5v ; “Historia de la vice-provincia" [1600], ibid . 9, 2v.
26. Colin-Pastells II, 12-22.
27. Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 5 August 1596, ARSI Phil . 9, 304V. Prat appointed
Juan de Ribera, the moral theology professor, acting rector of the College of Manila and
master of novices.
28. Prat, Ordinances of 1 597, ARSI Phil . 9, 30 iv.
29. “Escritura de fundacion del colegio de la Compania de Jesus de Manila,” 20 Oct-
ober 1595, Gesu 1465. Cf. Ribera to Acquaviva, Manila, 21 June 1 597, ARSI Phil. 9,
309-309V; Diego Garcia to Acquaviva, Manila, 6 August 1599, ibid. 9, 395. The income
of the college from all sources in 1600 was 2,800 pesos, according to “Historia de la
vice-pro vincia,” ibid. 9, Iv.
30. On these antecedents to Figueroa's expedition, see Colin-Pastells I, 140-142; II,
25-28, and documents therein.
31. Text ibid. Ill, 753-754; cf. I, 186-187; II> 28-29, 33 -
32. Ibid. II, 30-32, cf. Morga-Retana, p. 235; Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 18 June
1597, ARSI Phil. 14, iqv. The documents refer to the place where Sirongan decided to
make a stand as Buhayen (Bwayan), but this is hardly likely, as Bwayan was more than
30 miles up the Pulangi, and to reach it Figueroa would have had to deal with Magindanau
first. It is much more likely that Magindanau was meant, and that the Spaniards mistook
it for Bwayan because Sirongan w T as lord of Bwayan. Cf. Najeeb M. Saleeby, The History of
Sulu (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1908), p. 173.
33. Colin-Pastells II, 35-38, 162; Morga-Retana, p. 43.
34. Catalogi triennales , ARSI Phil . 2, 1-2; Colin-Pastells II, 9-10, 58-40; Chirino,
Historia, iii, 7.
35. Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 18 June 1597, ARSI Phil. 14, 13V-14V; Chirino,
Historia , iii, 19; Colin-Pastells II, 274.
36. The following account of the Taytay-Antipolo mission is based on Colin-Pastells II,
1 10-118; Chirino, Relation , pp. 56-58; Annual Letters 1597 and 1599, ARSI Phil. 5, 3,
46-47; Prat, Ordinances of 1597, ibid. 9, 300-300V.
37. To Fabio de Fabiis, Antipolo, 23 June 1597, ARSI Phil. 9, 313V.
38. Chirino, Relation , p. 79.
39. ARSI Phil. 5, 217V; cf. Chirino, Historia , iii, 16.
40. Cf. Colin-Pastells II, 128-130, wdiich includes Humanes' report to Prat, written
very probably in 1598. See also Annual Letter 1599, ARSI Phil. 5, 53, and Chirino,
Historia, iii, 19.
41. Jimenez to Prat, 1599, in Colin-Pastells II, 134-136; Chirino, Relation, pp. 129-
I 3 °*
42. Encinas to Prat, 1597, in Colin-Pastells II, 124-125; Chirino, Relation, pp. 124-
12 5 *
43. Rodriguez to Prat, 1598, in Colin-Pastells II, 138; Chirino, Relation, p. 127.
44. Colin-Pastells II, 1 35-137; Chirino, Relation, pp. 67, 124.
45. On the beginnings of the Jesuit mission in Samar, see Otazo to Prat, 1598, in
650
Notes to Chapter Seven
Coif n-Pas tells II, 141-145; Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 18 June 1597 . A RSI Phil. 14, i}v;
Annual Letter 1599, 5 » 54 *
46. The following account of the Bohol mission is based on Torres to Prat, I 597, in
Colin- Pastells II, 155-156; Torres to Chirino, 1598?, ibid. II, 153-155; Chirino,
Historia , iii, 24, 29*
47. “ Bai abai ko sa nagbanua j Bulung ko sa nagkubayon / Kai magakaliwaliwa ang
banua / Magakapuer-ra ang kubayon / Mabualag-ra kining longsor / Mabungkag-ra kining
kubayon.”
48. Colm-Pastells II, 158-162.
49. My account of Jesuit activities in Cebu is based on Prat, Instructions to De Vera,
1598, ARSI Phi . 9, 334V; Chirino to Acquaviva, Cebu, 5 June 1599, ibid. 9, 355 * P rac
to Acquaviva, Manila, 12 July 1599, ibid. 14, 2ov; Annual Letter 1599, 5 » 4 ^*
“Historia de la vice-provincia,” ibtd. 9, 2v; Colfn-Pastells II, 165-174, 195-197; III.
141. According to Prat, there were 20 students in the grammar school in 1599* Classes
were held for one hour in the morning and another hour in the afternoon, which was
apparently all the Latin the Cebuanos could take. It should be mentioned that throughout
the period we are dealing with a Jesuit “grammar school ” was a school in which boys who
had learned to read and write were taught Latin grammar and, through the reading and
analysis of selected classical texts, given the intellectual formation now imparted in
elementary school, high school and the first two years of college.
50. They are in ARSI Phil . 9, 297-299V (i 596) and 302-303V (1 598). The Ordinances
of 1596, referred to in preceding notes, were drawn up by Prat for the College of Manila
(ibid. 299V-302).
51. Ibid. 9, 302V.
52. Ibid. 9, 303V.
53. Ibid. 9, 299.
54. Cf. Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 8 June 1597, tbid. 14, i6v.
55. Ribera to Acquaviva, Manila, 27 and 30 June 1598, ibid. 9, 341, 347-34 yv;
Chirino to Acquaviva, Cebu, 5 June 1599, ibid. 9, 3 54-3 54V; Prat to Acquaviva, Manila,
5 August 1596, ibid, 9, 305.
Chapter Eight. Visitation
1* Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 18 June 1597 and 26 June 1598, ARSI Phil. 14, i 6 v -17
and Colm-Pastells II, 108 ; Ribera to Acquaviva, Manila, 27 June 1 598, ARSI Phil. 9, 341 ;
Garcia to Acquaviva, Manila, 6 August 1599, ibid. 9, 397, According to Morga, Das-
marinas charged the subsidy on the fund of the fourths; see his report to Philip II, 6 July
1596, in Morga-Retana, pp. 235-241.
2. Tello to Philip III, Manila, 17 June and 12 July 1 599, 6 July 1601, in Colfn-Pastells
II, 248; Acuna to Philip III, Manila, 15 July 1604, ibid. II, 251; Gregorio Lopez to
Acquaviva, Manila, 3 July 1608, ARSI Phil. 10, 257V.
3. Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 18 June 1597, 26 June 1598, 12 July 1599, ARSI Phi
14, 12V, 2iv, Colfn-Pastells II, 108; Tello to Philip II, Manila, 28 June 1597, ibid. II,
108; Annual Letter 1599, ARSI Phil. 5, 45; Prince Philip to Archbishop Santibanez,
San Lorenzo, 8 July 1598, ibtd. 9, 351.
4. Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 5 August 1596, ARSI Phi. 9, 304V; Annual Letter 1 596,
ibid. 5, lov-12; Annual Letter 1604, ibid. 5, 151V; Chirino, Historia , iii, 12.
5. Prat, Ordinances of 1596, ARSI Phil. 9, 297-299V; Prat to Acquaviva, Manila,
18 June 1597, ibid. 14, i2v; Annual Letters of 1596, 1599, 1602, 1603, ibid. 5, 8v-i2,
Visitation 651
44V-45V, 95 -95V, I28v; Chirino, Historia, iv. 2; Relation , pp. 47, 87; Colin-Pastells II,
107-109 and documents therein.
6. Prat, Ordinances of 1596 and 1597, ARSI Phil. 9, 298, 300; Garcia to Acquaviva,
Manila, 12 July 1599, 9 * 3^3 * Colm-Pastells III, 1 34.
7. Prat’s instructions to De Vera are in ARSI Phil. 9, 332-338.
8. Manila, 30 July 1 599. See the complete text of this letter in Morga-Retana,
pp. 269-271.
9. Audiencia to Philip II, Manila, 14 July 1598, in Colin-Pastells II, 186; Archbishop
Santibanez to Philip II, Manila, 26 June 1598, in Blair and Robertson X, 147, 156;
Pastells, Catdlogo IV, cxl-cxliii. By “almost naked” they apparently meant that Tello came
to sessions not in the sober garments of a judge, but “wearing a short cloak and a hat with
colored plumes,” and sometimes even without a cloak; see their report of 14 July 1958
in Blair and Robertson X, 183-185. Tello himself admits that he found it necessary to
punish several captains and aldermen, and on New Year’s Day, 1597, “ I had the entire
city corporation arrested for an act of disobedience to me” (to Philip II, Manila, 29 April
1597, ibid. X, 43-44).
10. Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 28 June 1598, ARSI Phil . 9, 342-343; Garcia to
Acquaviva, Manila, 4 July 1599, ibid. 9, 358V. Parra was a much older man than either
Prat or Ribera, and was one of the founders of the Jesuit mission of Mexico, In fact, he was
already professing theology at the College of Mexico while Ribera was a mere scholastic.
He imagined, in his crotchety way, that he had received less than justice from his local
superiors, and asked permission to return to Mexico. Permission was granted in 1600, but
the galleon in which he embarked was lost with all hands. Cf. Parra to Acquaviva, Manila,
15 July 1599, ibid. 9, 388; Garcia to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1601, ibid. 10, 65.
11. Annual Letter 1600, ARSI Phil . 5, 62; Colin-Pastells II, 207, 475-478.
12. Ibid . II, 477.
13. Ribera to Acquaviva, Manila, 1 July 1599, ARSI Phil . 9, 356; Garcia to Acquaviva,
Manila, 8 June 1600, ibid. 10, 5; Chirino, Historia , iv, 2; Relation , pp. 109-110. Further
damage was done by another earthquake which struck at midnight of the last day of 1 600
(Garcia to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1601, ARSI Phil. 10, 65V).
14. Garcia to Acquaviva, Manila, 4 July, 10 July and 6 August I 599 » 9 * 35& v *
372-373, 395; Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 12 July 1599 and 25 June 1600, ibid. 10,
20-20V; 14, 2iv; Chirino, Historia , iii, 2; Colm-Pastells II, 210.
15. Garcia to Acquaviva, Manila, 8 June 1600, ARSI Phil. 10, 6v-i5v; Chirino,
Historia , iii, 2.
16. From the report cited in the preceding note, ibid. 10, 9V. Brother Diego Alonso
trapped and killed a monster of a crocodile in Tinagon; he got a good-sized jar of oil from it
which he used to light the lamp before the Blessed Sacrament; cf. Colm-Pastells II, 398.
17. Ibid. II, 212-21 3.
18. ARSI Phil. 10, 9V.
19. Garcia’s report of 8 June 1600 cited above, ibid. 10, 7-8, 10-1 1 ; Prat to Acquaviva,
Manila, 9 July 1599, ibid. 9, 369V-370; “Historia vice-provinciae” [1600], ibid. 9, 3V-4;
Colin-Pastells II, 21 1, 302-303. Acquaviva’s directives, addressed to Prat, were dated 10
October 1 597 and 10 June 1 598. In them he stressed once again the fact that mission tours
w’ere to be preferred to resident missions as more conformable to the Society’s method of
operation, and that in any case care should be taken that the resident missions did not
become permanent; as soon as a locality was sufficiently Christianized, it should be turned
over to the diocesan prelate and new residences established in regions awaiting conversion.
The vice-province consultors, whom Garcia asked to comment on this before he left for his
tour of inspection, subscribed to the view expressed earlier by Sedeno and Alonso Sanchez
that mission tours were impracticable in the Philippines under prevailing conditions, and
652 Notes to Chapter Eight
advanced the same arguments that they did. They agreed in principle to the policy of not
making the resident missions a permanent charge, but represented that “ temporary 11 should
not be taken to mean a brief period of two or three years. It would take many years before
the people of Samar, Leyte, and Bohol could be considered sufficiently Christianized.
Furthermore, since the entire archipelago had already been partitioned by the king among
the various religious orders, where would they establish new missions ? It was difficult
enough as it was for the vice-provincial to inspect the Visayan missions, as he was bound
to do every year. Finally, it seemed to them to be asking too much that the missionaries,
after spending themselves on their present missions, ** should put aside the fruit just when
it is ripe enough to eat.” Cf. Carcxa to Acquaviva, Manila, 10 July 1599, ARSI Phil . 9,
375 ~ 375 v *
20. Prat to Acquaviva, Manila, 5 July 1600, ibid . 10, 24-24V, and Garcia's report cited
above. Prat had made this proposal earlier to Acquaviva, 18 June 1597, ibid . 9, 1 5V.
21. Mateo Sanchez to Acquaviva, Carigara, 12 April 1603, ibid . 10, io6v.
22* 30 June 1598, quoted by Pastells, Catalog) IV, clxxvi.
23. ARSI PhiL 5, 53V.
24. Colin-Pastells II, 213, and Garcia's report previously cited.
25. Ibid. Mandaue was a tiny village of 300 souls, almost all Christians. They went to
Sunday Mass in the Jesuit church in Cebu, half the village one Sunday and the other halt
the next. The fathers gave a mission there three times a year. Ledesma to Acquaviva,
Cebu, 27 April 1603, ibid . 10, 110.
26. Gabriel Sanchez to Garcia, 31 January 1600, in Colin-Pastells II, 291-292;
Chirino, Relation , pp. 159-162.
27. Garcia’s report cited above. He did not establish a separate residence in Bohol
because the people were still too widely dispersed. However, when they were sufficiently
settled, he estimated that four priests and four brothers would be needed for the island
and the mission of Tanay.
28. See especially that of 7 July 1600, ARSI PhiL 10, 24-24V.
29. Colin-Pastells II, 214-21 5, 323-324. The Antipoio mission at this time consisted
of Taytay with its villages of Dalig and Angono, a total of 400 households ; Antipolo with
its villages of Santa Cruz and Mahaihai, a total of 700 households; and the Aeta village of
Santiago with 400 households. Chirino, Relation , p. 1 8 1 .
30. Almerici to Fabiis, Antipolo, 19 June 1601, ARSI PhiL 10, 58V— 59 ; Garcia to
Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1601, ibid . 10, 67V— 68; Leonardo Scelsi to Prat, 1602, in
Colin-Pastells II, 270; Chirino, RelaciSn , p. 148.
31. ARSI PhiL 5, 98.
32. Scelsi’s report to Prat and Annual Letter of 1602, cited above. Garcfa informed
Acquaviva that the custom had developed among the people of Antipolo of presenting
food, wax, and money on the altar after the priest had said Mass for their intention. What
was to be done with these offerings ? Acquaviva replied (18 November 1602, ARSI PhiL 1 ,
lv, 4) that the funeral offerings should be given to the poor or to the choir that sang at the
funeral; as for the Mass offering, if the Mass was said in the Jesuit church it should be
refused, if in another church it should be accepted for that church.
33. Annual Letter 1603, ibid. 5, 14 iv.
34. Morga s account in Morga-Retana, pp. 103-119; Colin-Pastells II, 217-237, and
documents therein; Annual Letter 1601, ARSI PhiL 5, 76; Chirino, RelaciSn , pp. 145-
146.
35. Almerici to Fabiis, Antipolo, 19 June 1601, ARSI Phil, xo, 5 8v; Colin-Pastells II,
324-325.
36. Ibid. II, 313-322.
37. Garcia to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1601, ARSI Phil. 10, 65V.
Organisation 653
Chapter Nine . Organisation
3. Garcia to Acquaviva, Manila, 27 June 1601, ARSI Phil. 10, 67; cf. ibid. Cong. Prov.
49, 264V; Annual Letter 1602, ibid. Phil. 5, 95. Gomez writes to a friend that he was
summoned from the Bohol missions to take the professorship .'Manila, 19 June 1602, in
Colin- Pas tells II, 250).
2. To Philip III, Cebu, 7 July 1 60 1, in Co lln-Pas tells II, 248-249.
3. Garcia to Acquaviva, Manila, 8 June 1600, ARSI Phil. 10, y\\
4. 8 June 1598, Morga-Retana, pp. 254-258; English translation in Blair and Robert-
son x, 86-87.
5. Colln-Pastells II, 248-251.
6. Ibid. II, 482.
7. Annual Letter 1602, ARSI Phil. 5, 96V; Chirino, Relation, pp. 179-180; Colin-
Pasteils II, 250-252, 486.
8. We have not so far been able to find a copy of Garcia's original statutes. However, a
set of regulations dating back to 1620 is preserved in the archives of the Philippine vice-
province; it is rendered into English by Repetti, San Jose , pp. 279-280. Cf. Annual Letter
1605, ARSIPrii. 5, 173V.
9. Annual Letter 1604, ibid. 5, 152.
10. Ibid. 5, 96V-97.
11. Ann. Lett. 1603, ibid . 5, 127V; Chirino, Historia, v. 13; Colln-Pastells II, 361-
362; Morga-Retana, p. 14 1.
12. See my article, “Jesuit Education in the Philippines to 1768," in Philippine Studies
IV/2 (1956), 127-155*
13. Pascual de Acuna, Pedro de Aunon, Miguel Ignacio, and Cristoforo Certelio. The
last named has the distinction of having introduced the bassoon to the Philippines; Cohn-
Pastells II, 360.
14. Miguel Gomez to Andres Caro, Manila, 25 June 1603, in Colln-Pastells II, 250;
Annual Letters 1603, 1604, 1605, ARSI Phil. 5, 127, 148V-149, 172V-175; Chirino,
Historia, v, 17.
15. Cf. Colln-Pastells II, 248-250.
16. Manila, 6 July 1603, AGI Fil. 74.
17. ARSI Cong. Prov. 49, 264-265V; 50, 202-207. Chirino left Manila in early July
1602, as we learn from a letter of his to Acquaviva, written “at sea near Acapulco,
7 December 1602, ibid. Phil . 10, 99V. But even before Chirino reached Rome, Acquaviva,
better informed, had given his approval to the arts course and permission to seek royal
approval to grant degrees in arts and theology according to the Society's privileges, in view
of the fact that there was no intention of expanding the college into a full-fledged univer-
sity. At the same time, he prudendy directed the Philippine Jesuits to make it clear to the
colonial authorities that the professors of the college could not teach and be missionaries at
the same rime; hence, they should be exempted from mission work completely. Acquaviva
to Garcia, Rome, 18 November 1602, ibid. 1 , 4.
18. Garcia to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1601, ibid. 10, 66v.
19. Chirino, Historia , iv, 7; Benavides to Philip III, Manila, 7 July 1603, AGI Fil.j 4.
20. ARSI Phil. I, 5v; 10, 61, 63.
21. Garcia to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1601, ibid . 10, 67V; Chirino to Acquaviva,
Manila, 27 June 1601, ibid. 10, 71; Annual Letter 1603, ibid. 5, 127; Chirino, Relation,
p. 144; Historia , iv. 7.
22. ARSI Phil . 10, 213. In 1607 or thereabouts Father Francisco Moriz organized a
sodality for Spanish school boys; Chirino, Historia , v. 1 7.
23. Annual Letter 1603, ARSI Phil . 5, 128; Chirino, Relation , p. 145.
24. Scelsi to Spinelli, Antipolo, 22 May 1602, ARSI Phil. 10, 90V; Annual Letter
654 Notes to Chapter Nine
1602, ibid . 5, 98-98V; Chirino, Relation, pp. 183-188; Historia, iv, 8; Colin-Pastells II,
274-^75 *
25. This incident of the mandarins is reported in detail to Philip II by Governor Acuna,
Archbishop Benavides, and other officials in the dispatches of 1603 and 1604; cf. Colin-
Pastells II, 413-419, 424.
26. City of Manila to Philip III, 6 December 1603, ibid . II, 423 ; Acuna to Philip III,
23 December 1603, ibid. II, 433.
27. Salazar to Philip II, Manila, 24 June 1590, AGI FtL 74.
28. Santibanez to Philip II, Manila, 24 June 1598, ibid.
29. My account of the uprising of 1603 is based principally on the following sources:
(a) the official reports of Governor Acuna and the members of the audiencia to the home
government, 1603-1604, given in extenso in Colin-Pastells II, 421-428; (b) the detailed
account drawn up by Gregorio Lopez, rector of the College of Manila, for Diego Garcia,
vice-provincial, April 1604, ARSI Phil. 10, 128-140V, and the more summary narrative
in the Annual Letter of 1604, ibid. 5, 148-169; (c) Archbishop Benavides to Philip III,
Manila, 16 December 1603, AGI Fit. 74; (d) Morga-Retana, pp. 149-154.
30. Acuiia to Philip III, Manila, 15 July 1604, in Colin-Pastells II, 433-434; Bernar-
dino Maldonado to Philip III, 1605, ibid. 434.
31. See the text of this reply, translated into Spanish, in Morga-Retana, pp. 157-158.
32. Annual Letter 1604, ARSI Phil . 5, 150V.
33. Ibid. 5, 173V.
34. Annual Letter 1603, ibid. 5, 129V; cf. Annual Letter 1600, ibid . 5, 68V-70;
Garcia, Ordinances of 1602, ibid . 2 , 45V.
35. Colin-Pastells II, 466-477, 482, 554-555.
Chapter Ten. The Men
1. Colin-Pastells I, 207; III, 5-9.
2. In communications to Acquaviva, Manila, 21 June 1597, ARSI Phil. 9, 309V-310,
and 5 July 1601, ibid. 10, 8iv.
3. Ibid, i, 6.
4. Repetti, Society VI, 155-156.
5. Manila, 1 July 1606, ARSI Phil . 10, 22\\
6. Manila, 15 July 1599, ibid. 9, 387.
7. Chirino, Historia, v, 9; for the date of the arrival of Riccio and his group, see Repetti,
Society V, 4-6.
8. These details have been compiled from numerous references in the triennial catalogues,
annual letters, and other reports sent from the Philippines to Rome, and from the records
of the House of Trade at Seville. It would be wearisome to specify them here.
9. Colin-Pastells III, 741-743.
10. Astrain, Historia V, 47-49, 263-264, 278.
ii* See the data compiled by Repetti in his ms. “ History of the Society in the Philip-
pines” (IV, VI, VII), which is summarized here.
12. Mexico, 1 February 1643, ARSI Phil 11, 230V-231.
13. Mexico, 20 January 1606, in Colin-Pastells II, 470-473.
14. Quoted by Repetti, Society VI, 151,
15. To Diego de Martinez, Manila, 22 August 1626, BAH Jesuit as 108, 497-498.
16. Quoted by Schurz, Manila Galleon , p. 267.
17. To Vitelleschi, Manila, 6 August 1643, ARSI Phil. 11, 235-23 5V.
18. For a lucid account of the vicissitudes of the San Antonio see Repetti, Society IV,
207—219. He clarifies the obscure points in Lopez’s lengthy report to Acquaviva, Manila,
29 June 1601, ARSI Phil. 10, 73 -77V. 1
The Men 655
19. “ Relacion del viaje de los padres y hermanos que van a Filipinas” [1625] probably
written by Aguirre in Mexico, ibid . 12, 3 05-3 05V.
20. Bobadilla to Vitelleschi, Mexico, I February 1643, ibid. II, 228-228V.
21. “Relation,” ibid. 12, 306-307.
22. Manila, 6 August 1643, ibid, n, 237V-238V.
23. Cartagena to Martinez, Manila, 22 August 1626, BAH Jesuitas 108, 497-498.
24. On this whole question see my article, “The Development of the Native Clergy
in the Philippines,” Theological Studies VIII/2 (June 1947), 219-250.
25. Lopetegui, Acosta f p. 170.
26. Ibid., pp. 383-384.
27. Suarez to Acquaviva, Manila, 26 June 1586, ARSI Phil. 9, 93 V; Garcia to Acqua-
viva, Manila, 8 June 1600, ibid. 10, 6.
28. Acquaviva to Cabredo, Provincial of Peru, 10 March 1603, in Astrain, Histona IV,
53 6 *
29. Sanchez to Acquaviva, Manila, 18 June 1 5 8 3 > ARSI Phtl. 9, 17V-18; Garcia to
Acquaviva, Manila, 8 June 1600 and 7 June 1603, ibid. 10, 6, nov.
30. Acquaviva to Lopez, Rome 12 December 1605 and I April 1609, ARSI Phil. I, 21 v,
43 *
31. To Acquaviva, Manila, 16 July 1615, ibid. 11, 70.
32. Manila, 21 July 1615, ibid. II, 79.
33. Decree 52, Institutum Societatis lesu ^3 v., Florence, 1 892-1 S93) II, 278-279.
34. Murillo, Historia, n. ill.
35. Manila, 19 March 1592, ARSI Phtl. 11, 47.
36. Lopez told Acquaviva about them in a letter dated Manila, 3 July 1608, ibid .
14. 4 6 -
37. Ledesma in the Catalogue of 1614, ibid. 2, 99V.
38. Colin-Pastells III, 74I-743.
39. ARSI Phil. 10, 223.
40. The following biographical details are from Colin-Pastells III, 126-127, 7 & 3 * an d a
letter of Lopez to Acquaviva, Manila, 3 July 1608, ARSI Phil. 14, 35V.
41. Ibid. 10, 243 -2 54V.
42. See his report cited above, n. 40.
43. The following account of the San Pedro Makati house and endowment is based on
the triennial catalogues and annual letters of the period.
44. Colin-Pastells III, 126.
45. Historia V, 50.
46. Constitutions , x, 2.
47. ARSI Cong . prov. 30, 202-207.
48. Silang, 14 June 1606, Cesh 644.
49. “Consultatio circa modum gubernandi et socios conservandi,” undated, but from
internal evidence written circa 1606; ibid. 14* 39”4°*
50. Manila, 14 June 1612, ibid. 14, 49-49V.
51. Report “de statu spirituali,” Manila, 14 July 1615, ibid. II, 62 -63V.
52. Francisco Gutierrez to Acquaviva, Manila, 21 July 1615* ibid. 11, 79V.
53. Manila, 10 July 1615, ibid. 11, 58V.
54. Astrain, Historia V, 319-320.
55. Catalogue of 1614, ARSI Phil. 2, 99V.
56. Andres de la Camara to Ledesma, Palapag, 30 April 1615, tbtd. II, 5 I “ 54 V -
57. Diego de Encinas, procurator, to Vitelleschi, Rome, 1630, ARSI Cong. prov. 63,
1 87-1 87V.
58. Samar, 1 May 1601, ARSI Phil. 10, 45-45V.
656
Notes to Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven . Problems and Policies
1 . See Parts VIII and IX of the Constitutions and the pertinent decrees of the general
congregations in Institutum Societatis Iesu , voi. II.
2. They are to be found in the section Congregationum provincialium of the Roman Archives
of the Society of Jesus.
3. The postulata of Garcia and his consultors are in ARSI Cong. prov. 50, 202-207.
4. Ibid. 50, 205.
5. Ibid . 50, 20 5 -205V.
6. Ibid. 49, 264-265V.
7. The replies are to be found ibid . 50, 208-223 ; the statement in ARSI Phil. 1, 14-16;’.
8. The instructions he gave them in 1605 are ibid. 10, 221, 224.
9. My account is based on the papers of the congregation, ARSI Cong . Prov. 53, 1 1 5—
1 24V.
10. Ibid. 53, 125-126, 133V.
11. ARSI Phil. II, 19-22.
12. I do not have the proceedings of this congregation, but the text of this particular
proposal has been preserved in the treatise of Francisco Gutierrez cited below.
13. ARSI Cong. prov. 58, 2oov.
14. Proceedings of the Congregation of 1627, ibid. 61, 1 34V.
15. They sent along a letter written by Encinas in his Rotterdam prison, 29 January
1629, preserved in ARSI Phil. II, 142-143V.
16. Ibid. 11, 1 34-1 35V.
17. ARSI Cong. prov. 61, 134-148V.
18. Given in 1633, ibid. 63, 182.
19. Ibid. 6l, 143V., 145V-146; 63, 181V-182; 67, 200V, 202V.
20. Ibid. 63, 176.
21. Ibid. 63, 180.
22. Ibid . 50, 202 -2 02 v, 214; Garda to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1601, ARSI Phil.
10, 65V-66.
23. Santibanez to Philip II, Manila, 24 June 1598, AGI Ed. 74.
24. ARSI Cong, prov . 53, 116; Lopez to Acquaviva, Manila, 1 July 1606, ARSI Phil
10, 223 ; Lopez to Figueroa (Procurator for the Indies), Manila, 19 July 161 1, ibid. 1 1, 11.
25. Ledesma to Acquaviva, Manila, 26 July 1615, ibid. 11, 87.
26. The triennial catalogues referred to here and later are to be found in vol. 2 of the
section Philippinarum of the Roman Archives (ARSI Phil. 2).
27* Notarized copy in Gesu 1465) cf. also 849, and my article, “Jesuit Education in
the Philippines to 1768,“ Philippine Studies IV/2 (July 1956), 133-134.
28. Such were the findings of Juan de Ozaeta y Oro, Judge of Pardons and Crown Lands,
4 June 1699; cited by Repetti, San Jose , p. 179.
29. ARSI Cong, prov . 53, I17V; Acquaviva’s reply, 1612, ibid . 53, 125.
30. Catalogue of 1643, ARSI Phil. 2, 226.
31. Acquaviva to Lopez, Rome, 6 February 1606, ibid, i, 297-30; Lopez to Acquaviva,
Manila, 3 July 1608, ibid. 10, 257.
Chapter Twelve. The Great River
tt l - Francisco Tello to Philip III, Manila, 12 July 1599, Blair and Robertson X, 214,
Concerning the Pacification of the Island of Mindanao in the Year 1600,“ an anonymous
report, ibid. XI, 1 3 5 — 1 39 » Colin-Pastells I, 187-199 and documents therein; Morga-
Retana, pp. 44-46.
The Great River 657
2. In addition to the reference given above, Morga-Retana, pp. 64-65; Hall, South-East
Asia , p. 229.
3. Diego Garcia to Acquaviva, Manila, 25 June 1601, A RSI Phi. 10, 68; Chin no,
Relation, pp. 156-157; Montero, Pirateria I, 146-150.
4. Miguel Gomez to Acquaviva, Cebu, 29 April 1601, ARSI Phil . 14, 26v.
5. Gallinato to Acuna, Jolo, 22 April 1602, m Colin-Pastells II, 280, and ef. ibid. I,
202-203; Morga-Retana, pp. 12 1 -1 23.
6. The notes taken down at the interrogation of these prisoners are in Blair and Robert-
son XI, 292-301.
7. Acuna to Philip III, Manila, 26 October 1602, ibid. XII, 39; Gallinato to Antonio de
Ribera (oidor), Cebu 1602?, Colin-Pastells II, 281-282.
8. Acuna to Philip III, Manila, 3 July 1603, ihid . II, 372, and cf. ibid. I, 203-204;
Chirino, Historia , v, 17; Morga-Retana, pp. 134-136.
9. Benavides to Philip III, Manila, 24 July 1603, Colin-Pastells II, 370; Acuna to
Philip III, Manila, 26 October 1603, ibid . II, 371.
10. Ibid. II, 344-354; Morga-Retana, pp. 138-139; Hall, South-East Asia, pp. 229-233.
11. Chirino, Relation, pp. 149-150; Historia , iv, 12; v, 33.
12. Colin-Pastells III, 135. Royal approval of this grant was obtained on 18 January
1607; cf. Pastells, Catdlogo V, cccxxxi, n. 1.
13. Annual Letter 1602, ARSI Phil . 5, io8v; Annual Letter 1603, ibid. 5, 13IV.
14. Annual Letter 1601, ibid. 5, 89.
15. Otazo to Garcia, in Annual Letter 1603, ibid. 5, 132-1 32V.
16. Annual Letter 1602, ibid. 5, 107V-108V.
17. Garcia, Ordinances of 1602, ibid. 2, 45-45 v.
18. Colin-Pastells II, 326-328, 383-394; Chirino, Relation, pp. 175-177.
19. Carigara, 12 April 1603, ARSI Phil. 10, 104-104V.
20. Optimistic reports on Bohol towns by Ledesma in 1600 and 1601, Colin-Pastells II,
286-289, ARSI Phil. 14, 23; but see Chirino, Historia, v, 34.
21. Letter of Mateo Sanchez referred to above, ARSI Phil. 10, 105.
22. Our account of this raid and Hurtado’s captivity is based principally on the
following sources: Hurtado to Lopez, Cebu, 6 October 1604, ARSI Phil. 10, 159-176;
Otazo to Lopez, in Annual Letter 1604, ibid. 5, 148-169; Colin-Pastells II, 370-379,
387-388, 506-508, and documents therein; Chirino, Historia, v, 21.
23. Voyage, p. 23, note.
24. Ibid., pp. 13-14; cf. Acuna to Philip III, Manila, 3 July 1603, Colin-Pastells II, 374.
25. Hurtado, ARSI Phil . 10, 167.
26. Chirino, Historia, v. 52.
27. Codex of Datu Matsura in Saleeby, Studies , p. 23.
28. Ibid., pp. 23-24.
29. Ibid., pp. 37-38.
30. Ibid., diagram 1.
31. Ibid., p. 56: “Those who adopted the new religion remained in the rich lowlands
of the valley. . . . Those who wavered in accepting the new terms of submission and who
were later suffered to stay in the neighboring hills were called Tiruray. Those who refused
to submit, fled to more distant places . . . [and] were called Manobos.” Manobos (river
people) were so called because they took up their abode in the upper reaches of the Agusan
River.
32. Combes-Retana, cols. 53-61.
33. Christie, Subanuns, pp. 28-31.
34. Hurtado, ARSI Phil. 10, 172V.
35. Colin-Pastells II, 389-390, 507.
658
Notes to Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen . Challenge and Response
l* Cebu, 17 November 1603, in Colin-Pastelis II, 380-382.
2. Acuna to Philip III, Manila, 15 July 1604, ibid. II, 375-376; cf. tbid. II, 387-388.
3. Ibid . II, 507.
4. Ibid. II, 509-518; Hurtado, ARSI Phil. 10, 170-174V.
5. Acuna’s report cited above, n. 2.
6. Acuna to Philip III, Manila, 1 July 1605 an d Cavite, 8 July 1605, in Colin- Pastells
II, $12— 514* 37 h, cf. ibid. Ill, 29— 3 Acuna took the trouble to inform Acquaviva
(9 1605) of the use he had made of Brother Gomez. Acquaviva replied drily (25 July
1606) that he hoped Gomez s mission would redound to the greater stability and progress
of missionary work in the Philippines; ARSI Phil. 1, 22. See Brother Gomez’s memorial
to Philip III, 30 August 1606, giving an account of his services to the government, in
Colin-Pastelis I, 208-209.
7* The principal account of Hurtado s mission is that which Hurtado himself sent to
Acquaviva, Bwayan, 18 April 1606, ARSI Phil. 10, 205-212. See also Chirmo, Historia ,
v, 53 -
8. Text in Hurtado’s report to Acquaviva cited above.
9. Colin-Pastelis III, 156-157.
10. Acuna to Gregorio Lopez, Rio de Mindanao, 6 March 1606, ARSI Phil 14, 30-31.
11. Colin-Pastelis III, 4 3 “88, text and documents.
12. 22 July 1606, 1 bid. Ill, 78.
13* Our sources for the raid of 1608 fall into two groups, (a} Reports to Acquaviva of
the Jesuit missionaries Cristobal Jimenez (Dagami, 8 March 1608, ARSI Phil. 14, 41),
Fabrizio Sarsali (Leyte, 20 March 1608, ibid . 14, 42), and Giovanni Domenico Bilanci
(A anga ang, 24 April 1608, ibid. 10, 235-235V). (b) The 1608 reports of the oidores and
Acting Governor Vivero in Colin-Pastelis III, 167-170; cf. ibid . Ill, 180-181.
14. Ibid. I, 213; III, 173-175 (text and Annual Letter of i6oq\
15. Ibid. IH, 336-339.
16. Cf. two letters of Diego Laurencio to Acquaviva, Bohol, 4 April 1606 (ARSI Phil
14, 28-29), anci Loboc, 7 April 1608 (tbid. 10, 229V).
17. Ibid. 1, 39-39V.
18. Gregorio Lopez, "Vita Michaelis Ayatumi,” in Colin-Pastelis III, 21 1-21 3.
19. BAH Jesuitas 87/69.
20. Colin-Pastelis III, 253-254.
21. Murillo, Historia, nn. 33-35.
asf - 7 ’ for ‘ nstance > the section on Dulag in the Annual Letter of 1605 (ARSI Phil. 5,
1 0ur chur ches and houses have been rebuilt; refugees have been brought back,
some y persuasion, others by the threat of punishment ; the towns have been reconstituted,
not only by their original residents, but by new ones recruited from those who had formerly
re use to sett e . . . The hospital, the sodality of Our Lady, and the boarding school have
been re-established with the help of alms from the Spanish colonists as well as the king .who
gave a generous donation. They are making steady progress.”
23. Annual Letter of 1610, BAH Jesuitas 87/69; Annual Letter of 1611, Colin-Pastelis
III, 256-257.
24. Annual Letter of 1605, ARSI Phi. 5, i 93 v-i 94 .
broier^ 11111 ^’ H ' St ° r ' a ’ 39 6 ~ 4 ° 2 . Ballesteros was received into the Society as a lay
26.
27 .
28.
Colin-Pastelis H, 173; III, 26-27, 162; Chirino, Historia,
Blair and Robertson XIV, 251-255.
Colin-Pastelis III, 158-159; Otazo to Acquaviva, Cebu,
ii, 27.
22 April 1608, ARSI
The Sun of Holland 659
Phil. 10, 23 3-23 3v; Lopez to Acquaviva, Manila, 3 July 1608, ibid. 14, 43; Ledesma,
"Historia provinciae" (1620), ibid . 11, 116; Annual Letter of 1626, ibid. 6, 416.
29. Annual Letter of 1610, BAH Jesuit as 87/69.
30. Colin-Pastells III, 130-1 31, 133-134; Gonzalez to Acquaviva, Cebu, 29 April
1608, ARSI Phil . 10, 237-238; Lopez to Acquaviva, Manila, 3 July 1608, ibid . 14, 45V;
Ledesma, “Historia provinciae" (1620), ibid. 11, 116V-I17. The provincial congregation
of 1609 also requested that the foundation be approved, ARSI Cong. prov. 53, 124V;
Acquaviva's reply, ibid. 53, 125V.
31. Murillo, Historia , n. 107. On 20 September 1635 the audiencia ordered the recon-
struction of the Jesuit church and house at Arevalo at government expense; Colin-Pastells
III, 131.
32. Vicente to Acquaviva, Butuan, 27 May 1612, ARSI Phil. II, 25 ; Annual Letters of
1611, 1612, and 1614, quoted by Colin-Pastells III, 329-333.
33. Murillo, Historia , nn. 136-137.
34. History of Sulu, pp. 155-158.
35. Ibid., pp. 158-164.
36. Forrest, Voyage , p. 326.
37. Annual Letter of 1617, in Colin-Pastells III, 631-639; Diego de Bobadilla, “Rela-
cion" (1638), p. 11.
38. Voyage , pp. 374-375-
39. “Relation** (1617-1618) BAH Jesuitas 84/7.
40. “Reladon" (1626), ibid . 84/11; Murillo, Historia , nn. 65-67.
41. Saleeby, Sulu , p. 158.
42. Annual Letter of 1624, ARSI Phil. 6, 369; “Verissima relation" (1626), in
Re tana, Archivo , I/i.
43. My account of the raid and of Lugo*s punitive expedition is based principally on
the Jesuit “Relacion** (1627-1628), BAH Jesuitas 84/12.
44. Colin-Pastells I, 239; Murillo, Historia , nn. 104-106.
45. For the details see “Relacion" (1629-1630), BAH Jesuitas 118/116; Colin-
Pastells I, 239-240; Murillo, Historia , n. 120.
46. Quoted in Annual Letter of 1632, ARSI Phil. 7, 82/9-82/9V.
47. Colin>Pastells III, 802.
48. Ibid. Ill, 792; Murillo, Historia , n. 180.
49. BAH Jesuitas 84/20.
50. On the foundation of Zamboanga, see Combes-Retana, cols. 226-229; Murillo,
Historia , nn. 1 94-1 95.
Chapter Fourteen . The Sun of Holland
1. Cf. Hall, South-East Asia , pp. 233-235.
2. Manila, 4 July 1608, ARSI Phil . 10, 270-270V.
3. Forrest, Voyage , p. 308, quoting Valentine.
4. Our account of this battle and the events leading up to it is based on the documents
in Colin-Pastells I, 214-215, III, 217-226, 232-242. Cf. Schurz, Manila Galleon,
p. 346.
5. Angelo Armano to Fabio de Fabiis, Manila, 29 July 1610, ARSI Phil. 11,3.
6. Annual Letter 1610, BAH Jesuitas 87/69 ; Colin-Pastells I, 216-217; III, 262-265.
7. Manila, 9 July 161 1, ARSI Phil. 1 1, 8.
8. Ibid. 11, 48.
9. Colin-Pastells III, 328-329; Andrea Caro to the Jesuits of the Roman province,
Manila, 16 July 1615, ARSI Phil. 11, 67.
10. Colin-Pastells III, 313-328, 576-580; Murillo, Historia , n. 1.
22— j.i.p.
66o
Notes to Chapter Fourteen
11. Colin-Pastells III, 581-589, 608, 633-648, 791.
12. Quoted by Schurz, Manila Galleon , p. 345.
13. My narrative is based principally on the documents in Colin-Pastells I, 219-220;
III, 622-639. Cf. Murillo, Historian nn. 3-4; Schurz, Manila Galleon , p. 347-348.
14. Annual Letter 1618-1619, BAH Jesuitas 84/8; Colin-Pastells I, 221-222.
1 5. There is a copy of this memorial in Gesii 848.
16. Quoted by Pasteils, Catalog) VII/ 1, Ixxxiii.
17. Schurz, Manila Galleon, p. 351.
18. Colin-Pastells I, 223; Murillo, Historia , n. 27.
19. Colin-Pastells I, 223-224.
20. Ibid . I, 230-232; Murillo, Historia , nn. 61-62.
21. Colin-Pastells I, 233; Murillo, Historia , n. 64.
22. ARSI Phil. II, 32V.
23. Colin-Pastells III, 586.
24. To Philip III, 24 June 1614, ibid .
25. Report of Sebastian de Pineda, 1619, in Pasteils, Catalog) VI, ccclxiv.
26. Quoted by Rizal in his edition of Morgans Sucesos, p. 295*
27. Pineda's report cited above, n. 25; Garcia Serrano to Philip IV, Manila, 31 July
1 622, AGI Fil . 74.
28. Juan Nino de Tabora to Philip IV, Manila, i August 1629, in Pasteils, Catalog
VII/ 1, cl vi-clvii.
29. Manila, 21 August 1617, ibid . VI, cdxv-cdxvi.
30. Madrid, 6 March 1608, ibid. VII /i, xxv-xxvi.
31. Lisbon, 10 August 1619, ibid. VII/ 1 xxvi.
32. “Relation,” 1628-1629, BAH Jesuitas 8 4/ 1 3-
33. Manila, 5 June 1622, in Pasteils, Catalog. o, VII/l, ixxxvii-lxxxviii.
34. Colin-Pastells III, 125-126.
35. See Schurz's treatment of this question in his excellent monograph, The Manila
Galleon.
36. ARSI Phil . 6, 439-441.
37. Archbishop Garcia Serrano to Philip IV, Manila, 31 July 1622, AGI Fil. 74*
38. Archbishop Garcia Serrano to Philip IV, Manila, 25 July 1621, in Colin-Pastells II,
2 5 I -
39. See the various contemporary accounts of this cause celebre in BAH Jesuitas 84/103,
87/48; Pasteils, Catalog) VII/i, 1 -lii; Arco I, 501-514.
40. Cf. Morga-Retana, pp. 207-208.
41. AGI Fil , 74.
Chapter Fifteen. Fair , with Occasional Showers
1. Colin-Pastells III, 24; Chirino, Historia , v. 17; Acquaviva to Gomez, Rome 6 Feb-
ruary 1607, ARSI Phil. I, 27V; Acquaviva to Lopez, Rome, 16 September 1608, ibid . 37V.
2. Annual Letter 1610, BAH Jesuitas 87/69.
3. Annual Letter 1611, in Colin-Pastells II, 253; cf. ibid . II, 260, the summary of
documents pertaining to the College of Santo Tomas.
4. Manila, 24 June 1612, AGI Fil. 74.
5. Manila, 25 June 1616, in Colin-Pastells III, 564.
6. Ibid. II, 255, 261; Murillo, Historia , nn. 54-55; Delgado, Historia , p. 226.
7. Colin-Pastells II, 255; III, 151; Murillo, Historia , n. 199.
8. Annual Letter 1626, ARSI Phil. 6, 398.
9. Casos morales resueltos per los PP. Juan de Ribera y Diego de Bobadilla } de la Compania de
66i
Fair, with Occasional Showers
Jesus, pcrtenecientes a la provincia de Filipinos , desde 1602 a 1636. ms. in folio; two parts;
fols. 1-72 of the first part are missing, the rest are foliated 73-239, with an index; the
second part has 245 numbered folios without index. Although only Ribera and Bobadilla
are mentioned in the title (which is modern), some of the cases are resolved by other
professors, and some by the entire theological faculty.
10. My account of this controversy is based in part on Casos morales , ii, 190 ff., and in
part on the following documents: “ Relacion,” 1620-1621. BAH Jesuitas 84/ioa and
84/11; “Junta que el Illmo. Sr. D. Fr. Miguel Garcia Serrano Arzobispo destas islas
Philippinas hizo en su palacio arzobispal . . . sobre la absolucion que se debia practicar de
uno que pidiese confession en el artfculo de la muerte abiendo perdido el sentido antes que
llegase el confessor/' Manila, 13-18 January 1621 (notarized transcript of the proceedings),
ARSI PhiL 11, 119-129V.
11. “ Catalogus rerum/* 1618, ARSI PhiL 2, 131V-132; Vitelleschi to Ledesma, Rome,
5 March 1616, ihid. 1, 8ov-8i.
12. See the triennial catalogues for the period referred to in ARSI PhiL 2. Vitelleschi's
decision was in response to a petition of the provincial congregation of 1621; cf. ARSI
Cong, prov . 56, 233.
1 3. These are summarized from the annual letters of 16 1 1 (Colfn-Pasteils II, 254), 1620,
1624, 1627, 1630 (ARSI PhiL 6, 259 ff.).
14. Colfn-Pasteils II, 494. Fajardo's decision is reproduced in “ Relacion de las sen-
tencias " (1654), Gesu 849.
15. Annual Letter 1609, ARSI PhiL 5, 256; Annual Letter 1610, BAH Jesuitas 87/69.
16. Annual Letter 1630, ARSI PhiL 6, 579V-580; Annual Letter 1634-1635, ihid. 7,
1 37 v.
17. To Fabio de Fabiis, Manila, 6 July 161 1 , ARSI PhiL 7, 11.
18. Annual Letter 1610, BAH Jesuitas 87/69; Colfn-Pasteils III, 242-244.
19. Ihid. I, 210-21 1 ; III, 24-25; Annual Letter 1607 in Repetti, Society VII, 31.
20. Annual Letter 1614, Colfn-Pasteils III, 397-399; Ledesma to Acquaviva, Manila,
25 July 1615, ARSI PhiL II, 8i-8iv.
21. Annual Letter 1610, BAH Jesuitas 87/69; Annual Letter 1626, ARSI PhiL 6, 398;
Memorial of Juan Lopez, procurator, Rome 1634, ARSI Cong. prov. 63, 171, 173.
22. Colfn-Pasteils III, 755-756; Memorial of Humanes, procurator, Rome, 20 March
1612, ARSI Cong. prov. 53, 137; Memorial of Encinas, procurator, Rome 1630, ihid. 61,
150, 201.
23. Annual Letter 1611, in Colfn-Pasteils III, 268-272. Armano, writing to Acquaviva
(Manila, 20 August 1611, ARSI Phil. II, 14), says that eighty different nationalities took
part in the festivities, “different from one another in language, color, region and usages,
but all Christians"; this would give the general some idea of what a metropolis Manila is.
24. Murillo, Historia , nn. 23, 31, 46-51.
25. AGI Fil. 74; Colfn-Pasteils II, 487-488.
26. Quiapo, 25 July 1609, Blair and Robertson XIV, 327-329.
27. ARSI PhiL 1, 63.
28. Encinas, procurator, Rome 1630, ARSI Cong. prov. 63, 191, 202 v; Colfn-Pasteils
Iff 4 * 7 .
29. Murillo, Historia , nn. 484-489.
30. Diego de Cartagena to Diego Martinez, Manila, 22 August 1626, BAH Jesuitas 108,
489; Annual Letter 1627, ARSI PhiL 6, 44IV-442; Annual Letter 1630, ibid . 6, 582-
582V; Colfn-Pasteils III, 754; Murillo, Historia , n. 92. On 3 August 1637 Francisco
Colfn, rector, reported to Philip IV that the college building had been completed save for
the infirmary (Colfn-Pasteils III, 757-758).
662 Notes to Chapter Fifteen
31. Annual Letters of 1610 (BAH Jesuitas 87/69), 1616, 1626, 1627, 1632, 1633
(ARSI Phil . 6 and 7, passim).
32* Annual Letter 1614, ibid . 6, 38V-39.
33. Annual Letter 1611, in Colm-Pastells III, 276-277; Annual Letter 1620, ARSI
Phil. 6, 260; Memorial of Gutierrez, procurator, Rome 1624, ARSI Cong, prov . 58, 200,
202; Statement of royal treasury officials, Manila, 10 February 1699, Arag. E-I-a-16, n. 2.
34. Colm-Pastells II, 258-260.
35. Gesu 849.
36. Ledesma to Acquaviva, Manila, 26 July 1615, ARSI Phil. 11, 87; Proceedings of
the provincial congregation of 1627, ARSI Cong. prov. 61, x 3 5 v ; Annual Letter 1632,
ARSI Phil. 7, 8i/io-8i/iov; Colm-Pastells III, 339-340; Murillo, Historia , nn. 63, 162,
353. Lucas de Castro was an alumnus of the College of Manila.
37. Gesu 849. The draft of Vitelleschi’s letter of acceptance, Rome, 2 April 1639, * s
archived with this document.
38. Colfn-Pastells III, 781-782.
39. Arag. E-II-a-13, n. 17.
40. Colm-Pastells III, 782-783; Murillo, Htstona , n. 70. On 16 April 1630, Bishop
Arce of Cebu, administrator once again of Manila after Archbishop Garcia Serrano’s death,
granted a petition of Pedro de Prado, procurator of the College of Manila, for a similar
arrangement regarding the cow hands, farmers, and other personnel of the college’s cattle
ranch near Taytay, which has now been given the name of Jesus de la Pena. That is, that
the Jesuits be allowed to attend to their spiritual needs, in order to save them the incon-
venience of having to travel to the nearest parish for Sunday Mass and the sacraments.
Bishop Arce imparted the faculties requested to whomsoever the rector of the college
might appoint, and on 22 April of the same year Governor Tabora gave his consent as
vice-patron to the arrangement. This information is contained in a printed pamphlet
entitled Traslado de una consulta fecha a los illustrtssimcs senores auxiliares. ... pro D. Fray
Phelippe Pardo (Manila, 1687), pp. 75-76. The purport of this publication we shall see in
due course.
41. Annual Letter 1627, ARSI Phil. 6, 452; Diego de Cartagena to Rafael de Pereira,
Manila, 2 August 1631, BAH Jesuitas 1 11/25.
42. Annual Letter 1620, in Colm-Pastells III, 149-150; cf. Ledesma to Acquaviva,
Manila, 1 June 1620, in Pastells, Catdlogo v, cccxxxiii; Murillo, Historia , n. 71.
43. Annual Letter 1622, ARSI Phil. 6, 335; Murillo, Historia , nn. 44, 57, 71.
44. Ibid. nn. 135, 163; Annual Letter 1631, ARSI Phil. 7, 61-61 v.
45. Ibid . 7, 81/15-81/16.
46. Annual Letter 1633, ibid. 7, 104-105; Catalogue 1636, ibid. 2, 2oiv.
Chapter Sixteen. The Last Conquistador
1 . Era este cabaliero al paso que muy entendido, muy rigido y austero, muy tenaz en
las determinaciones y casado con sus dictamenes, ocasion en los prfncipes de los mayores
yerros; pues por no ceder en lo que el amor propio prohijo por aciertos, se dejan llevar a
cualquier precipicio.” — Conquistas, p. 326.
2. In Pastells, Catdlogo VIII, xviii-xx.
3. Vicente Salazar, Historia de la provincia de el santissimo Rosario de Philipinas . . . tercera
parte (Manila, 1742), p. 403; Pastells, Catalogo VIII, xvii-xviii; Diaz, Conquistas ,
pp. 326-327.
4. My account of this and the other controversies which led to Archbishop Guerrero’s
banishment is based on the documents reproduced by Pastells (Catdlogo VIII, xxxi ff.)»
supplemented by Corcuera’s “ Representacion al Rey” (1638; in Arco II, 292 flf.), the
The Last Conquistador 663
Jesuit newsletter for 1635-1636 (BAH Jesuit as 119/16, 132 ft), Diaz’s detailed narrative
( Conquistas , pp. 325 ff), in which he utilizes material left him by Fray Caspar de San
Agustin.
5. Pastells, Catalogo VIII, xxxv-xxxvi.
6. These details of the actual banishment are derived from the sources cited above, n. 4.
7. Diaz, Conquistas , pp. 338-339.
8. Pastells, Catalog) IX, xxi.
9. Quoted by Murillo, Historia , n. 340.
10. Combes- Retana, cols. 232-234.
11. Juan Lopez to Diego de Bobadilla, Cavite, 23 July 1637, BAH Jesuitas 84/25.
12. This is the account given by Diego de Bobadilla in his Relation de las gloriosas
victorias ... en las islas Filipinos contra los moros (Mexico: Pedro de Quinones, 1638),
pp. 1-9V.
13. The principal sources for the battle of Punta Flechas and Corcuera’s Magindanau
campaign are Marcello MastrillFs report to Juan de Salazar, provincial, composed at
Taytay, 2 June 1637, and printed m Bobadilla's Relation cited above; and Succesos j dices qui
por mar y tierra ha dado Nuestro Senor a las armas espanolas en las islas Filipinos contra el mindanao
(Manila: Tomas Pinpin, 1637), printed anonymously but very probably by Juan Lopez.
Cf. also Combes-Retana, cols. 234-262, and Murillo, Historia, nn. 204-214.
14. Cf. Bobadilla, Relation , pp. 37V-38V.
15. On Corcuera’s Jolo campaign, see Continuation de los j dices, successes (n.p., n.d., but
obviously Manila, 1638, and very 7 probably also by Juan Lopez). This should be supple-
mented by Juan Lopez to Diego de Bobadilla, Cavite, 15 September 1637, in Barrantes,
Cuerr as piratic as, pp. 300-301 ; Juan de Barrios to the rector and community of the College
of Manila, Jolo, 31 March 1638, BAH Jesuitas 84/27; Combes-Retana, cols. 349-369;
Murillo, Historia , nn. 232-237.
16. Pastells, Catalog 0 VIII, clvii-clxiv.
17. BAH Jesuitas 84/28.
18. I summarize the information contained in the following sources : Jesuit newsletter of
1640, BAH Jesuitas 101/ 12 (portions of this document are published in Colin-Pastells III,
128-129 and Pastells, Catalog) VIII, ccxliii-ccxlvi) ; Diaz, Conquistas pp. 403-428;
“Relacion del alzamiento de los chinos / ’ in Arco II, 186-187; Colin, “ Commentarius ”
(1639-1643), ARSI Phil. 7, 404V-405; Murillo, Historia , nn. 254, 268-270.
19. The following paragraphs summarize Combes-Retana, cols. 269-318, 329-348;
Murillo, Historia , nn. 242-247; 282-290, Colin, “ Commentarius,” ARSI Phil. 7, 463 V-
465; Colin-Pastells III, 801.
20. These occurrences in the Sulu islands are chronicled by Combes-Retana, nn. 369-
395, 402-424, and Murillo, Historia , nn. 237-241, 300-304.
21. For the attempted conquest of Lanao see Combes-Retana, cols. 150-182; Colin-
Pastells III, 800; Murillo, Historia , nn. 276-281.
22. Colin, “ Commentarius,” ARSI Phil . 7, 400; Murillo, Historia, nn. 313-314.
23. Juan Lopez to Fabian Lopez, Cebu, 5 May 1643, BAH Jesuitas 120/1 3, n. 24.
Corcuera put all the able-bodied citizens of Manila, the entire garrison, the Chinese
community, and about 800 Filipino draft laborers to work repairing the fortifications of
the city. He razed the smart Spanish suburb of Bagumbayan to the ground because it had
spread too close to the walls and blocked the line of fire of the artillery mounted on them.
All this lost him the popularity he had gained by his victories, and counted heavily against
him in his residencia. However, the religious orders contributed generously to the defense
fund. Each provincial underwrote the cost of one or two war vessels. Colin, the Jesuit pro-
vincial at the time, sent a circular to each residence and mission station directing that all
church bells except one be sent to the Manila foundry to be cast into cannon.
664 Notes to Chapter Sixteen
24. Murillo, Historia , nn. 330-342.
25. Narrative and supporting documents in Pastells, Catdlogo VIII, clxxxiii— ccxxxiii;
Colfn-Pastells II, 261-268; 491-494; HI, 763-767; Annual Letter 1643-1645, ARSI
Phil 7, 506-514; Murillo, Historia , nn. 310-312.
26. Cedula dated Madrid, 16 June 1643, incorporated in “Traslado del pleito que ha
seguido el Rdo. P. Fray Martin Real de la Cruz rector de la universidad y academia de Sto.
Thomas de Aquino . . . contra el Rdo. P. Francisco Colin rector de la Compania de
Jesus ...” (1649), Gesu 849.
27. Pastells, Catdlogo VIII, ccxxx-ccxxxiii.
28. Ibid . VIII, xxiv. Note, however, that Corcuera was mistaken in saying that the
Society did not admit applicants in the Philippines ; they did.
29. Havana, 20 September 1650, ibid. IX, cv-cx.
30. Colfn-Pastells III, 783; Murillo, Historia , nn. 223-224; Pastells, Catdlogo VIII,
cxix. The text of Philip IV’s cedula of 8 April 1639 is in Arag. E-I-c-2, n. 68.
31. Diaz, Conquistas, p. 342.
Chapter Seventeen. A Succession of Shocks
1. Conquistas , pp. 362-364.
2. “Verdadera relacion de la grande destruicion que ... a avido en la ciudad de
Manila” (Madrid, 1649), in Retana, Archivo I, no. 2. Anonymous, but probably by a Jesuit
eyewitness.
3. In addition to Diaz and the “ Verdadera relacion,” see Annual Letter 1646-1649,
ARSI Phil. 7, 630; Colfn-Pastells II, 268; Murillo, Historia , nn. 346-347.
4. On the naval actions of 1646-1647 see Murillo, Historia , nn. 3 14-3 17, and Schurz,
Manila Galleon , pp. 355-356.
5. “Traslado del testimonio de lo determinado en el pleito entre los dos colegios desta
ciudad de Manila de Santo Thomas y San Joseph sobre la precedencia en los actos publicos,
14 August 1647, Gesu 849; Annual Letter 1646-1649, ARSI Phil . 7, 630V-63IV;
Colfn-Pastells II, 494.
6. Transcribed in “Traslado del pleito que a seguido el Rdo. P. Fray Martin Real de la
Cruz rector de la universidad y academia de Sto. Thomas de Aquino desta ciudad de
Manila contra el Rdo. P. Francisco Colfn rector de la Companfa de Jesus de la dfcha
ciudad” (1649), Gesu 849. My account of this litigation is based principally on this and
the following related documents in the same section of the Gesu Archives : Francisco Bello,
procurator of the Philippine province, to Francisco de Montemayor, Spanish assistant,
Madrid?, 15 July 1650; Miguel Solana, procurator of the Philippine province, to Philip
IV, 1650 ?; “ Auto difinitivo del Consejo real de las Indias,” 12 August and 25 November
1652; “Relacion de las sentencias que en la real audiencia y chancillerfa de estas islas
Filipinas ha dado y executoriado el real y supremo Consejo de las Indias a favor del colegio
de San Joseph y estudios del de S. Ignacio contra el colegio y estudios de S. Thomas de
Manila” (printed; 14 pp.; Manila, 1654).
7. I have condensed the detailed accounts of this rebellion in Annual Letter 1646-1649,
ARSI Phil . 7, 668-678, and Murillo, Historia , nn. 42 1 -429.
8. Ibid., n. 561. Luckily, Messina seems to have stayed behind.
9. “Informe al Rey nuestro Senor, Felipe Quarto, en su real y supremo Consejo de las
Indias, del estado eclesiastico y seglar de las islas Filipinas” (printed; 27 numbered leaves;
index; Madrid?, 1650), Gesu 848.
10. Manila Galleon , p. 49.
11. In Colfn-Pastells HI, 674-676.
12. Ibid. IH, 684-685.
Recoil and Advance 665
13. Letters of 24 July 1611, 8 July 1612, and 2 August 1615, excerpted and summarized
by Pastells, Catdlogo VI, ccxcii-ccxcv, ccclvii.
14. In Colm-Pastells III, 693.
15. Manila, 1 August 1622, ibid . Ill, 697.
16. See, among others, the memorial of Fray Francisco de San Jose, provincial of the
Philippine Recollects, to the audiencia of Mamla (1654), ibid. Ill, 711-712.
17- Ibid. Ill, 680.
18. Ibid. Ill, 685-686.
19. Ibid. Ill, 680-681.
20. Ibid. Ill, 686-687.
21. ibid, in, 698.
22. On the chronology of events, see Bolivar to Philip IV, Manila, 1 July 1656, ibid .
111,729-731.
23. Ibid . Ill, 701-703.
24. Ibid. Ill, 71 1.
25. Ibid. Ill, 705-706; complete text in Gesu 1432.
26. Cf. Diaz, Conqaistas , pp. 527-533.
27. mi P p. 533-534.
28. Colm-Pastells III, 716-717.
29. Ibid. Ill, 724; cf. 718.
30. Ibid. Ill, 724.
31. Ibid. Ill, 724-725.
32. Ibid. Ill, 725-726.
33. Manila, 18 June 1656, ibid . Ill, 728-729.
34. Ibid . Ill, 731-740.
Chapter Eighteen. Recoil and Advance
1. Miguel Solana, provincial, to Governor Manrique de Lara, Manila, 30 June 1655,
ARSI Phil, ii, 29 1 -292V.
2. Ibid. 2, 314-317V, 412-41 5v; 14, 106-109.
3. Murillo, Historia, appendix.
4. These details are put together from numerous indications in the section Congregationum
provincialium and the section Philippinarum of ARSI; more specific citation would be
tedious and seems unnecessary.
5. ARSI Cong. prov. 73, I96av, 2o8v, 21 1; 74, 13 1; and see the royal cedula of 10
December 1664 referred to below.
6. Arag. E-I-c-2, n. 52. This transcript of the cedula bears the date “ 1674,” but 1664
was clearly intended.
7. Oliva to the Provincials of Austria, Flanders, French-speaking Belgium, Bohemia,
and Upper Germany, Rome, 29 November 1664, in Huonder, Deutsche Jesuitenmissiondre,
p. 21 1.
8. Madrid, 12 March 1675, Arag . E-I-c-2, n. 52. This transcript bears a certification
of receipt by the audiencia of Manila, 22 November 1675, with the usual notation, “se
guarde y cumpla.”
9* “Epitome rei nummariae quam catholici Hispaniarum reges dicatam habent in viros
religiosos e Societate Iesu transportandos in Indiam ibique alendos," ARSI Phil. 12,
1 00- 1 05 (printed).
10. Francisco Solano to an unknown correspondent, Manila, 12 July 1664, ibid. 12,
15-17.
11. Boranga to David Loys, Acapulco, 27 March 1681, Arag. E-I-a-18.
666 Notes to Chapter Eighteen
12. Kaller to Johann Ulke, Mexico, 8 March 1688, ibid .
13. ARSI Cong. prov. 76, 130-131.
14. Manila, 19 June 1686, ARSI Phil. 12, 88,
15. ARSI Cong. prov. 76, 132V.
16. Quoted by Murillo, Historia , n. 580.
17. Text in Combes- Re tana, cols. 430-433.
18. Ibid . cols. 433-436; Murillo, Historia , n. 368.
19. Ibid. nn. 369-370; text of treaty in Combes- Re tana, cols. 443-447.
30. Murillo, Historia , nn. 370-374; cf. Combes-Retana, cols. 453-460.
21. Murillo, Historia , n. 374.
22. Ibid. nn. 375, 454.
23. Ibid. n. 384.
24. Ibid. nn. 436-438.
25. Ibid. nn. 373, 376.
26. ARSI Cong. prov. 73, 196a; 74, 123. The petition was submitted to the Holy See
(ibid. 74, 1 31), but we do not know whether the faculty was granted. In any case, subse-
quent events made it unnecessary.
27. Murillo, Historia , nn. 564-567; Combes-Retana, cols. 537-542, 57 1- 5 ^ 3 *
Murillo publishes (n. 586) what purports to be a letter from Kudrat to the sultan of Jolo,
written immediately after the murder of Lopez and Montiel, in which he says: I send
you word that we have put to death the fathers. They wished to make Christians of us, and
so we killed them. It will be good hereafter for us to act in concert for the defence of our
faith/* I have not been able to verify the authenticity of this letter.
28. Ibid. nn. 56 8, 570-574, 603.
29. Ibid. n. 642.
30. Ibid. nn. 648-650.
31. Ibid. n. 191; Combes-Retana, cols. 33-39.
32. Murillo, j Historia, nn. 491-492; Annual Letter 1630, ARSI Phil , 6, 613V,* Colin,
“ Commentarius/’ 1639-1643, ibid. 7, 447V.
33. Christie, The Subamms, pp. 63-64.
34. Ibid., p. 62.
35. Annual Letter 1631, ARSI Phil. 7, 63V-67; Annual Letter 1632, ibid . 7, 82/5V.
36. Subanuns , p. 74.
37. Ibid., p. 77.
38. Murillo, Historia , nn. 386-388.
39. Zanzini to Bernhard Geyer, 16 March 1670, Arag. E-I-a-18.
40. My account is based on Murillo, Historia , nn. 562, 696, 700, and on Pareja's report
to Governor De Leon, Manila, 25 January 1671, ARSI Phil. 12 , 56-59.
41. Murillo, Historia , nn. 724-731.
42. The following account summarizes Murillo, Historia , nn. 676-684, 723, 75 ^»
761-766, 811-823, 850.
43. “ Motivos para no dilatar mas la reduccion y doctrina de las islas de los Ladrones”
[1665], with corrections in Sanvitores’ handwriting, ARSI Phil. 14, 60-6 3V.
Chapter Nineteen. The Long Haul
1. Pintados, 24 June 1660, ARSI Phil. 12, 1-12.
2. Manila, 8 June 1670, ibid. 12, 50-5 5V.
3. “Historia natural del sitio, fertilidad y calidad de las islas e indios de Visayas
(1668), New York Public Library, Rich Mss. 96, 17-iyy.
4. Gesu 848.
Thunder and Lightning 667
5. Colfn-Pastells III, 792-793; Murillo, Historia , nn. 613-614; Annual Letter 1659-
1665, ARSI Phil 7, 822-823.
6. Manila, 20 June 1664, ibid. 2, 329.
7. My account is based on the following documents : decree of Bishop Juan Lopez, Cebu,
29 April 1670, ARSI Phil 12, 48-49; Vicente Chova, rector of Iloilo, to Gian Paolo Oliva,
Manila, 18 May 1671, ibid. 12, 60-66; Jeronimo de Ortega, “Defensa por la provincia
de la Companfa de Jesus de las islas Filipinas contra una sentencia que el Rmo. e Illmo.
S. M. D. Fr. Juan Lopez, obispo de Cebu, fulmino contra el P. Retor del Coleg io de Yloilo ”
(printed, 1671), Gesu 1432; Manuel Villabona, procurator of the Jesuit provinces of the
Indies, to the Queen Regent, undated, Arag. E-I-c-2, n. 6; Jose de Velasco to Mauricio
Perera, Iloilo, 1 February 1697, Arag. E-I-a-18, n. 2.
8. Letter to Constantin Schiel, Manila 1682, Arag. E-I-a-18.
9. Taytay, 22 July 1663, ARSI Phil 14, 56-59.
10. Murillo, Historia , nn. 651-652.
11. “ Breve relacion de la mission que los padres de la Companfa de Jestis hicieron en
estas islas Filipinas” (1664), ARSI Phil . 11, 243-248.
12. “ Missiones del colegio de la Companfa de Jesus de Manila desde Julio de 1665 hasta
la quaresma de 1666,” ibid . 12, 24-3 9V.
13. Annual Letter 1665-1672, ibid. 7, 833V-834, 838-838V.
14. “Relacion de las missiones hechas en la provincia de Philipinas de la Companfa de
Jesus asf entre espanoles como indios tagalos y bisayas este ano de 1677/' ibid. 12, 70-79.
15. See “Breve relacion del estado de las islas Filipinas y reynos adiacentes” (c. 1665),
ARSI Phil. 12, 295-295V; Annual Letter 1687-1696, ibid. 8, 43 -43V. 46; Annual Letter
1696-1701, ibid . 8, 69; Murillo, Historia , nn. 652, 677-668, 928.
16. Corcuera’s observations are published in great part by Pas tells, Catdlogo IX, lii-lviii.
17. Colfn-Pastells III, 116-123.
18. Manila, 20 May 1683, Gesu 848, Sandfn’s paper which occasioned this letter is
dated 24 March 1681; Gesu 848.
19. Ms. copy in ARSI Phil. 1 1, 293-3 52V.
20. “Encomio al Discurso parenetico ,” printed, Manila, 27 August 1657, ibid. 1 1,
353 “ 357 '
21. Nueva Segovia, 13 February 1658, in Marin, Ensayo II, 823-827.
22. Constitutions VI, ii. 7.
23. “Respuesta a una relacion sumaria” (Madrid, 1685), fol. 6v.
Chapter Twenty. Thunder and Lightnino
1. Blair and Robertson XXXVI, 202-205.
2. On this rebellion see Manrique de Lara to Philip IV, 20 July 1661, in Pastells,
Catdlogo IX, cxxxii-cxli; “Relacion breve de lo sucedido en las yslas Filipinas y otras
adiacentes” (October 1660 to June 1662), ARSI Phil. 12, 13-14V; “Relacion de varios
sucesos en estas yslas Filippinas” (1661-1664), ibid. 12, 14/1— 14/15V; Annual Letter
1665, ibid. 7, 763V; Diaz, Conquistas, pp. 571-616; Murillo, Historia , nn. 605-610.
3. In addition to the “Relacion” of 1664 and the Annual Letter of 1665 cited above,
see “Sucesos de las islas Philippinas” (1663), BAH Jesuitas 201/23; “Breve relacion del
estado de las islas Filipinas y reynos adiacentes” (ca. 1665), ARSI Phil 12, 294-295 v;
Murillo, Historia , nn. 640-647.
4. My account of the Salcedo affair is based principally on the “ Relacion de los sucesos
del aho de 1668 en las islas Philipinas,” dated Manila, 14 January 1669, ARSI Phil. 12,
42 -47V; a breve compendia of the same, ibid . 12, 40-40V; and Murillo, Historia , nn. 693-694.
668
Notes to Chapter Twenty
5. Diaz, Conquistas, pp. 705, 712-713; Salazar, Santisimo Rosario , pp. 62-63, 66-67;
Murillo, Historia , nn. 670, 695-697.
6. Ocio, Resena biogrdjica , pp. 172-173 ; Salazar, Santisimo Rosario , pp. 490-49 1 ; Ferrando,
Historia III, 74-75 , 236-237. 396-399.
7. Murillo, Historia , n. 771 . The bishop of Cebu, Fray Diego de Aguilar, also a Domini-
can, came as a consecrated bishop to the Philippines in 1680; cf. Concepcion, Historia
Vm, 29. The idea of appointing auxiliary bishops seems to have been suggested by the
Dominican procurator at Madrid, Pedro Diaz del Cossio; see his memorial (1674) in
Ar co III, 1-5. Among his other suggestions was the highly pertinent one that the governor
and the audiencia of Manila be deprived of the power of banishing bishops. It was not
followed.
My account of the events leading to Archbishop Pardo’s banishment is based on the
following sources: Juan Sanchez, " Relacion sumaria de los sucessos de la ciudad de
Manila” (1683), in Retana, Archivo I/4; Alonso Sandm, Respuesta a una relacion sumaria ,
Madrid, 1685; Copia de una carta escrita al Padre Fray Alonso Sandin , n.p., n.d. ; Cristobal de
Pedroche, Breve y compendiosa relacion de la estrane^y destierro de el senor argobispo Don Fray
Pbelipe Pardo , Manila, 1683. Sanchez, a Spanish mestizo, was the secretary of the audiencia
of Manila. Sandm, who had been stationed in the Philippines in 1671-1676, was the
Dominican procurator at Madrid when the Pardo controversy broke out. He transcribes
Sanchez’s Relacion paragraph by paragraph, following each with his own version of the facts,
supported wherever possible by documents textually reproduced. He also edits the letter
written to him by a correspondent in the Philippines whose identity he withholds, but who
was almost certainly a fellow Dominican. Fray Cristobal de Pedroche was the prior of the
Dominican residence in the Parian and eyewitness of many of the events he describes.
Among the works of later date which I have utilized are the histories of Salazar, Concepcion,
Ferrando, and Murillo. I have placed considerable reliance on the Dominican historian
Salazar, who belonged to the generation immediately succeeding Archbishop Pardo’s and
had access to documents and oral testimony no longer available. The pages of his Conquistas
which the Augustinian historian Diaz devotes to the affair is probably our most objective
account of it. This is because it was based on the notes left by his predecessor and fellow
Augustinian, Fray Gaspar de San Agustin, who comes closest among all our sources to
being an uncommitted eyewitness.
To be used with caution is the anonymous Histoire de la persecution de deux saints eviquts par
lesjesuites (1691), a Jansenist version of two causes ceTebres in which the Jesuits were involved :
that of Bishop Cardenas of Paraguay and that of Archbishop Pardo. The author mani-
pulates the Spanish sources available to us to suit his purpose ; but he does give the dossier
of Pardo’s process against the Jesuits, which I have not found anywhere else.
For the events pertinent and subsequent to Archbishop Pardo's recall, I have relied
chiefly on the following : Relacion con insertion de autos sobre todo lo que hapassado para restituir a su
silla al Illmo. Sr. D. Fr. Phelipe Pardo, Manila, 1685 ; Relacion de los progresos y paraderos que ban
tenido los negocios que en anos pas ados se refirieron en otra relacion impresa , Manila, 1688; “ Rela-
cion curiosa” (1685), in Arco III, 523-557; Cedulas reales despacbadas a Manila . 1681-1736,
Newberry Library, Ayer Collection, mss., n. 1440. The two relaciones mentioned first were
compiled by Domingo Diaz, Archbishop Pardo’s secretary. The third is of unknown
authorship, but obviously by an eyewitness. An important contemporary source for the
later stages of the affair in so far as they affected the Jesuits is Antonio Jaramiilo’s Memorial
al Ray Nuestro Senor por la provincia de la Compania de Jesus de las islas Filipinos } Madrid, 1689.
8. In Sandin, Respuesta , p. zj\.
9. Ibid., p. 68v.
10. Copia de una carta, p. 1 1.
1 1 . Compendiosa relacion, p. 4V.
Crossroads
669
12. Constitutions VI, iii. 7.
13. Prdctica de test amentos (Mexico, 1765), p. 34.
14. In Jaramillo, Memorial , p. 59.
15. Diaz, Conquistas , p. 760.
16. Cf. Pedroche, Compendiosa relation, p. 3.
17. Relation con insertion de autos , pp, 22V-23V.
18. The principal documents relative to both these cases are reproduced in Traslado de
una consult a fecha a los illustrissimos senores auxiliares pot . . . D. Fray Phelippe Pardo , Manila,
1687. The Jesuit side of the controversy is presented in Jaramillo, Memorial , and in a num-
ber of contemporary Jesuit writings transcribed by Arco(III, 625-628, 715, 730-73 l). The
decisions of the Manila tribunals were confirmed by the king in 1688 and 1689; cf.
Cedulas reales despachadas a Manila , pp. 198V-199V, 213-214V. Both Cainta and Jesus de la
Pena were restored to the Society as parochial charges in 1696; cf. Murillo, Historia, n.
779 *
19. Text in Traslado , pp. 45-45V.
20. Cedulas , pp. 188-190.
21. Ibid,, pp. 217V-2l8v.
22. Annual Letter 1649, ARSI Phil. 7, 630; Colin-Pastells III, 788.
23. ARSI Phil 8, 64-65.
24. Annual Letters 1665, 1672, 1701, ibid. 7, 793-794V, 837-839; 8, 63-64; Repetti
San Jose, p. 194.
25. ARSI Phil. 8, 40-40V.
26. ARSI Cong. prov. 79, 169.
27. ARSI Phil. 8, 64.
28. Ibid. 7, 794.
29. Ibid. 7, 837-837V.
30. Ibid. 8, 52.
31. Ibid. 12, 191.
32. Ibid, iz, 191-19^.
33. Repetti, San Jose , pp. 330-334.
34. Murillo, Historia, nn. 809-810.
35. “Noticia de la religiosa devocion con que los fieles de Manila y sus contornos se
dispusieron a ganar los jubileos plenissimos de las missiones” (1655), ARSI Phil. 11 ,
2 8 9-2 90 v.
36. Annual Letter 1672, ibid. 7, 832.
37. Annual Letter 1701, ibid. 8, 54-54V.
38. ARSI Cong. prov. 76, 130, 131’
39. ARSI Phil . 12, 226-227.
40. Taytay, 22 July 1663, ibid. 14, 56-56V.
41. ARSI Cong. prov. 76, 136, 138.
42. Ibid. 76, 1 39V.
43. To Schiel, Manila 1682, Arag. E-I-a-18.
44. ARSI Phil. 12, X36.
45. ARSI Cong, prov . 76, 130-131.
46. Ibid. 75, 212.
47- ARSI Phil. 12, 191V-! 92V.
Chapter Twenty-One. Crossroads
I. Marie Anne, regent, to the audiencia of Manila, Madrid, 17 June 1671, and 29
September 1675, Arag. E-I-c-2, nn. 37, 68; Manuel de Villabona, procurator of the
670 Notes to Chapter Twenty-one
Jesuit provinces of the Indies, to the queen regent, undated, but after 1670, ibid., n. 5;
decision of the Council of the Indies, 9 May 1678, ARSI Phil. 12, 197V-201 ; Murillo,
Historia , nn. 225-228.
2. Jaramiilo, Memorial, pp. 66-80, and the two communications of the queen regent
cited above.
3. Gesu 650.
4. Ibid.
5. ARSI Phil. 12, ii8-ii8v.
6. “Parecer del P. Alexo Lopez sobre si conviene o no el que la provincia de Philipinas
dexe las doctrinas que tiene a su cargo en aquel reino” (1690), ibid. 12 , 138-150V.
7. “Sobre el ser curas de indios en varias partes de Philipinas los de la Compania de
Jesus/' ibid. 12, 167-1 82V.
8. Jose de Velasco, rector of Cebu; Eugenio Bautista Sornosa, vice-provincial of the
Visayas; Mauricio Perera, rector of Arevalo; Cristobal de Miralles, former rector of
various Visayan residences; ibid. 12, 183-187V.
9. Memorial, pp. 1 34-1 5 °*
10. Gesu 1465. The signatories were, for the Dominicans, Juan de Santo Domingo,
provincial; for the Franciscans, Alonso de Zaffa, provincial; for the Augustinians,
Francisco de Zamora, vicar provincial; for the Jesuits, Silvestre Navarro, vice-provincial ;
for the Recollects, Jose de Santa Maria, provincial; for the Brothers of Saint John of
God, Manuel de San Roman, provincial.
11. Murillo, Historia , n. 779.
12. The materials on Archbishop Camacho's proceedings are only less bulky than those
on the Pardo affair. The documentary sources include Camacho's printed manifesto to the
heads of the religious orders (Manila, 1697); his two letters to the general of the Jesuits,
dated 15 June 1698 and 10 June 1699 (Gesu 850); the record of his transactions in the
parish records of San Pedro Tunasan and Balayan (ARSI Phil. 12, 233V-242;) the dossier
of documents transmitted to the Holy See by Bishop Gonzalez of Cebu (Gesu 859); the
lengthy memorial presented to the Crown by the procurators Mimbela, San Agustin, and
Jaramiilo (BAH Jesuit as- Salazar 14-5 -13). Among the narrative sources are those trans-
cribed by Arco (vol. IV) and those in Gesu 650 and 850. Both Dfaz (Conquistas') and Salazar
( Santlsimo Rosario ) have rather full accounts.
13. Preserved in Gesu 850.
14. Ibid .
Chapter Twenty-Two. Doors Opening
1. Historia , nn. 780-781.
2. Cf. Discurso parenetico, ARSI Phil. II, 297-299, 310.
3. Tstadismo I, 73-76.
4. In Del Pan, Documentos , pp. 140-141.
5. On the community chests see Marin, Ensayo I, 263.
6. Historia, n. 389.
7. See the whole passage, II, 447-449.
8. Tstadismo I, 173 -1 74.
9. By Jose Astudillo, Antipolo, 26 August 1729, ARSI Phil. 12, 260-263.
10. Ibid. 8, 8o-8ov.
11. Ibid. 8, 83V.
12. Ibid. 8, 84V-85V.
13. Cf. Annual Letters of 1706, 1714, 1737, ibid. 8, mv, 142-142V, 170; Repetti,
Pictorial Records, passim .
14. ARSI Phil. 8, 145.
15. Extracts from four letters of Anton Rauscher, 1743, 1750, Arag. E-I-a-18.
671
Doors Opening
1 6. Annual Letter 1714, ARSI Phil 8, 143-143V.
17. Annual Letter 1719, ibid . 8, 151V.
18. Our account is based on the letters of the Jesuits stationed in Negros — Bernhard
Schmitz, Anton Malinsky, and Lorenz John — written to friends and relatives in Europe
between 1733 and 1738. French translations of these letters are in Arag. E-I-a-18.
19* Malinsky to a noble lady, Inayauan, 15 March 1735, ibid.
20. Sanvitores to Oliva, Taytay, 22 July 1663, ARSI Phil. 14, 58-59*
21. “ Breve relacion del estado de las islas Filipinas y reynos adiacentes” ( ca . 1665), tbid .
12, 295; Marie Anne, queen regent, to Governor Diego Salcedo, Madrid, 30 December
1666, Arag. E-I-c- 2, n. 15c.
22. Murillo, Historic, n. 650.
23. Ibid., n. 700.
24. ARSI Phil 12, 153-189V.
25. Annual Letter 1725, ibid. 8, 157V-158; Murillo, Historic , n. 650; Saleeby, Sulu ,
p. 179. Two Jesuits, whose names, unfortunately, have not been preserved, accompanied
the expedition. In February 1719 a force of 5,000 Moros tried to retake the fort, but after
a three months’ siege were compelled to retire.
26. Annual Letter 1706, ARSI Phil. 8, 1x2-1 12v; Murillo, Historia , n. 869.
27. Forrest, Voyage , pp. 308-309.
28. Ibid., pp. 277-279.
29. Bernhard Schmitz to Josef Geisberg, La Caldera, 10 February 1730, Gesu 720;
“Senor. Joseph Calvo de la Compama de Jesus, procurador general de su provincia de
Philipinas, dice . . (printed), Gesu 1432.
30. In addition to Calvo’s memorial cited above, see Governor Obando* s manifesto of
21 December 1751, nn. 3-8, and Saleeby, Sulu, pp. 179-180.
31. Saleeby, ibid. ; Calvo, Memorial
32. Saleeby, ibid. ; Obando, Manifesto, n. 5.
33. Saleeby, ibid.
34. Pedro de Estrada, provincial of the Philippines, to Pedro de San Cristobal, pro-
curator, Manila, 8 July 1748, in Barrantes, Guerras pirdtieas, pp. 321-326. The text of
Philip V’s letter to Alimuddin is in Concepcion, Historia XII, 79-83.
35. Spanish translations of these replies in Barrantes, Guerras pirdtieas, pp. 329-335;
French translations in Arag. E~I-a-l8,
36. Obando, Manifesto , nn. 8-10.
37. On Alimuddin’s relations with the Zamboanga Jesuits, and the joint campaign
against the Camucones, see three letters of Wilhelm to his brother Johann, 30 August
1746, 18 May, and an unsigned report on the Zamboanga mission dated 1748, 28
September 1747, Arag. E-I-a-18.
38. Reproduced by Barrantes, Guerras pirdtieas, pp. 343-347.
39. In addition to the report of 1748 cited above, note 37, see Concepcion, Historia XU,
127-140.
40. One principal difficulty lies in the lack of available Sulu sources and the partisan
nature of most of our Spanish sources. Our account is sifted from the following : Estrada
to San Cristobal, Manila, 8 July 1748, in Barrantes, Guerras pirdtieas, pp. 335-340;
Obando’s manifesto of 1751, nn. 20 ff. ; Concepcion, Historia XII, 115-171; Saleeby,
Sulu, pp. 181-184.
41. Obando to Ferdinand VI, Manila, 18 June 1752, in Saleeby, Sulu, pp. 307-411;
ibid., pp. 185-187; “ Compendio de los sucesos que con grande gloria de Dios . . . se
consiguieron contra los mahometanos enemigos por el armamento destacado al presidio de
Iligan, M Manila, 1755; he Gentil, Voyage II, 77.
42. My account is based principally on Murillo, Historia, nn. 693, 855-866, and on
672 Notes to Chapter Twenty-Two
transcripts of notes and reports bp Juan Antonio Cantova, Josef KropfF, and Josef Bonani in
Arag. E-I-a-18. Etienne Baudin’s letter to Andres Serrano, Lianga, 18 January 1711, is
in ARSI Phil. 14, 100-102V.
43. Clement XI to Philip V, Rome* 30 April 1706, ibid. 1 2, 248-248V.
Chapter Twenty-Three . A Door Is Closed
X. Annual Letter 1706, ARSI Phil . 8, 74; Murillo, Historia , n. 877; Philip V, Buen
Retiro, 23 October 1715.
2. Five of his letters to Tamburini, written in 1718 and 1719, have been preserved:
Gesu 720, 1432.
3. 30 October 1705, ARSI Phil 12, 245-247V.
4. To Josef Geisberg, La Caldera, 10 February 1730, Gesu 720.
5. Lazcano, Oviedo , p. 435.
6. Ibid., pp. 179-202. Oviedo returned to Mexico in June 1724.
7. Cf. Murillo, Historia , n. 489.
8. See Father Leo Cullum’s article on Brother Kamel in Philippine Studies IV/2 (July
1956), pp. 319-339* on which my account is based.
9. Murillo, Historia , nn. 892-893.
10. Manila Galleon , p. 253. Quoted by permission of Dutton and Co., New York.
11. Voyage II, 177.
12. Costumbres del collegio de nnestro P . Sn . Ignacio de Manila (1752), ms. in the archives of
the old province of Aragon, now Tarragona.
13. Annual Letter 1737, ARSI Phil. 8, 168; Murillo, Historia , nn. 417-418; Colin-
Pastells II, 261.
14. Murillo, Historia , n. 55.
15. N. 420.
16. Le Gentil, Voyage II, 164, 177-178; Perez y Giiemes, Adiciones , 1758, 1759, *7^2;
Felipe Solis to Manuel Jose Fuertes, Manila, 7 July 1757, Arag. E-I-a-18, n. 1.
17. Voyage II, 96-97.
18. Colin-Pastells II, 492; Repetti, San Jose , ch. 15.
19. Benitez, San Jose , p. 13; Repetti, San Jose, ch. 14.
20. An Account ojthe State ojthe Roman Catholic Religion throughout the World (London, 171 5),
PP- 1 1 3 -i 14*
21. XLV, 182-183.
22. Pardo de Tavera, Una memoria de Anday Salazar (Manila, 1899), pp. 48-49.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., pp. 49-50; Blair and Robertson XXVIII, 121 ; XLV, 192 ff.
25. The acta of the congregation (22-30 May 1724) are in ARSI Cong, prov . 89, 90-96.
Otazo s postulatum in a short and an extended version, and his letter of transmittal to the
general, Manila, 11 June 1724, ibid ., 88, 290-292; 89, 97-102V.
26. Historia , p. 293.
27. vni, 37.
28. In Mas, Informe III, 33.
29. Ibid. HI, 33-34.
30. Historia , pp. 293-295.
31. ARSI Phil. 8, 164, 168.
32. Historia , n. 392.
33 - Ibid., nn. 417, 844; Colm-Pastells II, 496-497.
34. Historia V, 102-103.
35* Relacion de los sucesos de Manila del ano 1719” (anonymous, not by a Jesuit),
The King s Good Servants 673
ARSI Phil. 12, 256-259V; Gilles Wibault (Jesuit), to Chamboge, Manila, 20 December
1721, Lettres edifiantes XXIII, 416-424.
36. Gesu 720.
37. “Cataiogi Chris tianorum” for these dates in ARSI Phil. 14, 110-121.
Chapter Twenty-Four. The Kings Good Servants
1. MS. Copy in Philippine National Archives, Jesuit Papers.
2. Arag. E-I-d-14.
3. “Destierro de los jesuitas de la provincia de Filipinas el ano de 1768,” a contem-
porary account by an anonymous Jesuit; ms. copy in Arag. E-I-d-5.
4. ‘‘1768. Autos referentes a la expulsion de los padres de la Compama de Jesus;
Colegio de San Ildefonso,” ms. copy, Arag. E-I-d-6.
5. Ibid., p. 7.
6. “Destierro,” pp. 5-8.
7. Ibid, and “Expediente de las diligencias de intimacion del Real decreto de extra-
namiento de los religiosos jesuitas y ocupacion de sus bienes al rector y comuni dad del Real
colegio de San Joseph de Manila,” ms. copy from original in the archives of the Conta-
duria, Manila, Arag. E-I-d-8.
8. Ibid., pp. 23-24.
9. “ Autos . . . San Ildefonso,” Arag. E-I-d-6, passim .
10. “ Destierro,” pp. 10-11.
11. Ibid., p. 12.
12. Ibid., pp. 13-14.
13. Ibid., pp. 18-20.
14. Ibid., pp. 25-26.
15. Arag. E-I-d-6, pp. 232-233; E-I-d-7, pp. 295-304.
16. These are, principally, the transcripts of the expulsion proceedings preserved in
Arag. E-I-d-6, E-I-d-9 and E-I-d-10.
17. Arag. E-I-d-9, p- 33 *
18. Cf., in addition to the above, the reports of the special commissioner, Juan Fran-
cisco de Anda, in Arag. E-I-d-5 an d E-I-d-7. The account in subsequent paragraphs of
the disposition of Jesuit property is based on the same records.
19. Historia general de Filipinas II, 21 6-2 17.
20. E. J. Burrus, “A Diary of Exiled Philippine Jesuits,” Archivum historicum Societatis
Iesu XX (Rome, 1951)* 275. The diary edited by Father Burrus is that of the successful
second voyage of the San Carlos in 1769. It is also anonymous and probably the same hand
that wrote the diary of the first voyage referred to above.
Index
Abad, Ramon, 548, 549
Abarca, Antonio, 398, 435, 436
Abarca, Juan de, 425
Abucay, 407
Abuyog, 159, 290
Acapulco: customs dues at, 415; fair, in,
144; mentioned, 8, 17, 84, 12 1, 134,
179, 227, 229, 230, 238, 377, 493
Ache, Datu, 322-323, 386-387
Achinese, 333-334, 340
Acosta, Jose de, 85-87, 88, 100, 105, 120,
234 '
Acquaviva, Claudio: and Jesuit Philippine
mission, 60, 116-117, 120; and Philip-
pine vice-province, 145, 187; and Philip-
pine province, 221-222, 242, 249,
260-262, 277, 367; and admission of
criollos, 235-236; and College of
Manila, 117, 177-178, 181, 192, 194,
198, 200, 202, 35 ! ; and missions, 183,
2o 3 > 255, 262, 277, 312, 318, 470; on
episcopal jurisdiction, 258-259, 528;
on patronato, 257-259; and Philip II,
100; and Alonso Sanchez, 71-72, 8i-88,
loo, 105; generalate of, 236; dies, 264;
mentioned, 50, 53, 54-55, 59, 60, 62,
72, 76, 81, 84, 85, 133, 182, 199, 223,
259, 240, 244, 246, 248-249, 250, 251,
272, 291, 304, 327, 372, 469
Acto de contrition , 471
Acuna, Pascual de, 248, 310-311, 319
Acuna, Pedro Bravo de: and Chinese revolt
of 1603, 204-205, 208-216; and
Jesuits, 366, 370 ; and Magindanaus,
285, 302-304, 307, 541 ; sends troops to
Leyte, 302; and Moluccas, 286, 304-
308, 327, 342, 362; dies, 308; men-
tioned, 218, 221, 316, 319, 328
Adelantado, 96
Adrian VT, Pope, loi, 419-420
Aduarte, Diego de, 227-229, 378
Aduna, Martin de, 389-390
23+J.1.P.
Aetas, 12, 155, 538; settlements, 155, 159,
19 1 , 369, 473, 475; and Chinese revolt
of 1603, 215
Agiguan, 456
Agrigan, 456
Aguilar, Mateo de, 224
Aguilar, Pedro de, 276, 3 17-318
Aguilar, Pedro de (bp,), 495
Aguirre, Juan de, 224, 229, 231
Agurto, Pedro de: bishop of Cebu, 127,
287, 3 j 7 > an d College of Manila, 174,
192, 194, 199; and Jesuits, 166-167,
186, 218; on episcopal jurisdiction, 287;
mentioned, 277
Agusan River, 319, 413
Akta, Francisco, 113
Alabes, Diego de, 383
Alamagan, 456
Alangalang, 154, 162, 183, 187, 292, 302
Alanis, Esteban Lorenzo de la Fuente, 489,
499
Alarcon, Garcia de, 133
Alba, Andres de, 91
Alba, Duke of, 37
Albay, 383
Alberto, Raymundo, 390
Alcabala, 415
Alcala de Henares, 54, 106, 261; Jesuit
college of, 6, 73; university of, 179
Alcaldes mayores, 17, 59; duties, 18, 30;
salary, 17, 292; abuses, 17-18, 30; and
towns, 34, 185; in Visayan missions,
460-46 1
Alcaldes ordinarios, 1 1
Alcaraz, Andres de, 336
Alcarazo, Juan de, 315
Alcega, Juan de, 190, 21 1
Alcina, Ignacio: on Visayan missions,
458-469; on retirement of missionaries,
462 ; dies, 467; mentioned, 468, 474, 535
Aleman, Vicente, 592
Aleni, Giulio, 412
675
Index
676
Alfaro, Pedro de, 39
Alferez general, 239
Alfonso, Domingo, 154
Alguactl mayor, 1 1
Alimuddin, Sultan, 543, 549; baptism of,
548 ; and Jesuits, 544-545 ; and Spanish
government, 543-545, 547-549; and
British, 549
Alipin, 12-13
Almeida, Joam d', 46, 47, 48
Almeida, Luis d\ 55
Almerici, Francesco, 65, 225; voyage to
Philippines, 64-65; in Manila, 67,
69-71, 73, 76; and Chinese, 68-69; an< ^
tribute, 126; in Taytay and Antipolo,
143, 145, 155-157, 181-182; and
Aetas, 155, 188; dies, 1 90-191; men-
tioned, 154, 238
Almojarifazgo, 95
Almonte, Pedro de, 387-388, 393, 394,
396, 398
Alonso, Gregorio, 585
Alonso of Bengal, 39, 41
Aloysius Gonzaga, Saint, 365
Alvares, Domingo, 46
Alvarez, Diego de, 79
Alzola, Tomas de, ill
Amaghikon, 1 1 3 , 116
Ama ni Kalavv, Luis, 1 14
Amarlanhagi, Felipe, 114
Amboina, 286, 317, 327, 331, 335
Ambrosio, Jose, 593
America, 5, 51; Jesuit establishments in,
5, 226, 252
Amiruddin, Sultan, 546
Amok, 153
Amoy, 38, 450
Anatayan, 456
Anda, Juan Francisco de, 594
Andalusia, 164; Jesuit province of, 224-
226
Andrade, Tomas, de, 435, 471
Ang infiernong nabubucsan sa tauong christiano f
507
Angel, Francisco, 386
Angelis, Theophilus de, 440, 457
Angles, Juan, 546
Anito, 138
Annam, 56-57
Antilles, 78, 231
Antipolo: town, 137, 155, 215, 345, 391,
469; boarding school, 188-189, 288;
church, 189, 369; hospital, 189; mission,
137-143, 155-159* 181-182, 187-189,
195, 200-201; Our Lady of, 369, 391,
531; residence, 243, 369, 433-434, 471,
475; sodality, 189, 202
Antonio, Dom, 37-38
Aparri, 440
Apay, Mateo, 158-159
Aragon, Jesuit province of, 224-226
Aranda, Count of, 582, 583
Araya, Fernando de, 594
Arcada, Sebastian Ignacio de, 544, 546
Arce, Pedro de, 365, 374
Arceo, Julio de, 390
Arechederra, Juan de, 546, 581
Aressu, Giovanni Domenico, 465
Aressu, Giuseppe, 592
Arevalo: town, 59, 143-145, 152-15 3,
274, 282, 284-285; province, 59;
college, 242, 277, 433-434, 575 J mis-
sion, 318-319; residence, 247. See also
Iloilo
Arias de Mora, Luis, 389-390
Arima, Daimyo of, 56
Arizala, Pedro Martinez de. See Martinez
de Arizala, Pedro
Armada, Invincible, 91, 94, 116
Armano, Angelo, 191, 213, 237, 244-246,
33 °~ 33 2
Armas, Plaza de, 370
Arqueros de Robles, Sebastian, 49 0)
492 ,
Arreguia, Martin de, 230
Arroceros Street, 391
Arroyo, Alonso de, 364, 391
Arroyo, Vicente, 585
Asin, Datu, 548-549
Asm, Joaquin, 509
Asoncon, 456
Assam, 300
Astrain, Antonio, 6, 226, 243, 249
Astrea, 593
Atienza, Francisco de, 393, 398, 442, 444*
445
Audiencia. See Manila, Audiencia of
Augustinian Recollects. See Recollects
Augustinians : establishments of, 5» 9 »
59-60, 97, 1 17; in Cebu, 287; in
Manila, 23, 25, 121, 175, 524; in
Panay, 143 ; attempts to enter China, 38;
and Jesuits, 180, 467, 500, 525, 592;
on administration of sacraments, 476;
Index
677
and omnimoda faculties, 258; on Spanish
conquest of Philippines, 15-18, 22; on
tribute, 126; mentioned, 358, 424, 425,
467,475,515
Austria, Jesuit province of, 225, 440
Avellaneda, Diego de, 145
Avila, Diego Camacho y. See Camacho y
Avila, Diego
Avina y Echavarria, Lorenzo de, 510
A wit, 157
Ayala, Fernando de, 328, 340-341
Ayala, Gaspar de, 66, 81, 83
Ayala Bridge, 370
Ayatumo, Miguel de, 3 12-3 1 3
Azcueta, Cristobal de, 215
Azevedo, Juan de, 337
Azufre Point, 131
Baabullah, 129
Babailan, 314
Babuyan Islands, 497
Baclayon, 164, 282, 287, 315, 323, 435,
474
Baco, 473
Badajoz, 316
Badasaolan, 322
Bagatao, 323, 343
Bagay, Nicolas de la Cruz, 556, 567
Baginda, 320
Bagumbayan (Manila), 213, 386, 482,
490-49 1
Bagumbayan (Zamboanga), 445
Bai, Lake of, 10, 12, 35, 114, 232, 344,
348, 392, 472, 475
Balambangan Island, 549
Balangingi Island, 444
Balatamai, 393, 447, 449, 450
Balayan: coast, 295; province, 59, 124;
town, 136-137, 284
Balintawak, 116
Ballesteros, Juan de, 316-317
Baluka, Tuan, 322, 388
Banal, Juan, 1 1 5
Banal, Miguel, 366
Bandala, 344-345
Bangjar, 297
Bangkaia, 298
Bankau, Datu, 315
Bantam, 281, 286, 327
Bantilan, Datu, 547
Bantu, 448
Barangay, 1 2 ; cabezas de, 13, 345, 349
Baras, 392
Barbary Coast, 99, 355
Barcelona, 65
Barcena, Ventura, 466
Bar co, Alonso del, 154, 161
Baroncini, Gregorio, 191
Barrientos, Gines, 477, 489, 497-500
Barrio, Patricio del, 546
Barrios, Juan de, 383, 387
Barruelo, Luis de, 80
Barugo, 161
Basco Street, 121
Basi, Geronimo, 1 13, 116
Basilan Island, 151, 281, 384, 386-387,
543; evangelization of, 395, 445;
Liguanan datu of, 283; Samals of, 322
Bataan, 1 14, 407
Batachina Island, 307
Batangas: bay, 337; coast, 1 31; province,
114. 3 6 9
Batara Shah Tangah, 321-322
Batavia, 342, 473
Batchan, 307
Bat-hala, 140
Batiokan, Kechil, 444
Batulak Point. See San Agustin, Cabo de
Baudin, Etienne, 550
Bautista, Pedro. See Pedro Bautista, Saint
Bautista, Simon, 43 5
Bay bay, 324
Baylana. See Babailan
Bayug, 398
Beatas de la Compahia de Jesus* See
Religious of the Virgin Mary
Belgium, Jesuit province of, 225
Belin, Gregorio, 384, 386, 387
Beltran, Lazaro Antonio, 585
Benavides, Miguel de, 127, 201, 218; and
Chinese revolt of 1603, 208-209, 215;
and Jesuits, 174, 197, 199-200, 370,
571; on Magindanaus, 285
Benedict XIV, Pope, 252
Berart, Ramon, 490, 49 1 , 498, 501
Berber , 335
Beriberi, 286
Bermudez, Clemente, 586
Bertarello, Roderigo, 238
Betel: chewing of, 356; government
monopoly of, 370-371
Biandi, 136
Bichara, 452, 454
Biesman, Lambert, 189-190
Index
678
Biland, Giovanni Domenico, 323-324
Biliran Island. See Panamao
Binan, 276, 367
Binangonan, 47 5 , 525
Binocot, 313
Binondo: church, 499; district, 1 1, 209-
210, 348, 484; parish, 392, 426, 490-
49 l > 5 I 3 - 5 H
Bishops. See Episcopal jurisdiction ; Philip-
pine Islands
Boac, 375, 433> 434
Boarding schools. See Schools for natives,
Jesuit
Bobadilla, Diego de: as procurator, 224-
225, 254, 437; voyage to Philippines,
230—233; term as provincial, 254; as
moralist, 354, 357; on government sup-
port of missions, 227
Bobadilla, Fernando de, 451
Bobadilla, Jose de, 550
Bobon, 412
Bocaue, 392
Bohol Island, 59, 163, 165; population,
163, 435; Spanish annexation of, 19,
163-164; Moro raids on, 282, 323-324,
450; commerce, 163-164; famine, 313;
revolt, 315
— missions: founded, 1 54-1 55; progress
of, 163-165, 173, 287, 290, 312-315;
government of, 186, 260; property, 276;
statistics, 187; and formation of towns,
292, 350; expulsion of Jesuits from, 591
— residence, 242-244, 247
Bojeador, Cape, 39, 399
Bolanos, Catalina de, 163
Bolinao, Cape, 329, 406
Bolingit, Pedro, 114
Bolivar, Juan de, 425, 427
Bolivar, Pedro Sebastian de, 489, 501
Bonafe, Rafael de, 435, 441, 466, 509
Bondoc Peninsula, 374-375
Bongol, 467
Bonifaz, Juan Manuel de la Pena, 486-488
Boranga, Karl von, 440, 457
Borgia, Saint Francis. See Francis Borgia,
Saint
Borja, Antonio de, 475, 541
Borneo, 15 1, 261, 284, 286, 320, 470
Borongan, 340, 518
Bosque, Juan, 134
Braceros de Cardenas, Tomas, 201
Braganza, Duchess of, 37
Bravo, Tomas, 2 1 1
Bravo de Acuna, Pedro. See Acuna, Pedro
Bravo de
Brazil, 4; Jesuit province of, 117, 260
British occupation of Manila, 549, 581
Brito, Pedro de, 239-241
Britto, Antonio de, 286
Brunei: Camucones of, 321; Moslem
migration to, 297; and Magindanau, 296,
310; and Philippines, 13, 115, 136, 540:
mentioned, 110, 112, 151, 320
Bruno, Bernardo, 591
Buayabuaya, 445
Buddhism, 68-69
Budtul, 298
Buen Socorro t 549
Bueras, Juan de, 224, 254, 321, 371, 373:
on Moro raids, 324-325; on episcopal
visitation, 424
Buhayen. See B way an
Bukidnon, 152
Buklug, 453
Bulacan: province of, 21 1, 215, 392; town
of, 1 14, 116* 533
Bulunai. See Brunei
Bungsu, Raja: accession, 322; and Spani-
ards, 323, 386-388, 395-396, 442; and
Alejandro Lopez, 444-445
Buranun, 320
Burgos, 473^
Burgos, Geronimo de, 48, 103
Burrus, Ernest J., 595
Bustamante, Fernando de, 581
Bustillos, Lorenzo, 456
Butig, 398
Butuan, 19, 59; Jesuit mission of, 154*
165-166, 171, 186,247-248, 301, 319;
Recollect mission of, 398
Buwis. See Tribute
Bwayan, 152, 296-298, 303, 305, 3 ° 7 *
385; Spaniards at, 279, 393—395* 44 2;
treaty, 306
Bwisan, Datu: and Melchor Hurtado, 305 »
305; and Spaniards, 279, 306, 308;
raids of, 283-285, 287, 292-296,
308-310; mentioned, 299, 301, 302
Cabalian, 290, 324, 465
Cabezas de barangay. See Barangay, cabezas
de
Cabildo, 11
Cabinti, 392, 402
Index
679
Cabral, Jose, 502, 503
Cadiz, 224, 227, 230
Cagayan: province, 59, 124, 415, 497;
setdement, 59; missions, 75, 498;
revolt, 77, 342
Cagayan de Oro, 412-413
Cainta, 155, 475, 500, 515, 524-525
Caja de las cuartas, 167, 185
Calamba, 215; Chinese revolt, 276, 389,
391-392; Jesuit estate in, 584, 586, 594
Calamianes Islands, 59, 115, 382, 403;
raids on, 284, 301, 304
Calatagan, 594
Calavite, 473
Calbiga, 31
Caldera, La, 279, 281, 283-284
Calderon, Antonio, 498
Calderon, Diego de, 489, 492, 501
Calderon, Francisco, 254, 363
Calilaya: town, 284; province, see Tayabas
Calunbaba, Augustin, 238
Calvanese, Carlos Javier. See Strobach,
Augustin
Cal vo, Bartolome, 190
Calvo, Jose, 542, 544, 581
Camacho y Avila, Diego, 525, 527; and
Bishop Gonzalez, 526; and Jesuits,
526-527; and episcopal jurisdiction,
436, 525-526, 552
Camara, Andres de la, 362
Camarines, 9, 59, 1 10, 124, 413
Cambodia, 346, 413, 415
Camellia, 558
Camiguin Island, 412
Campioni, Gianantonio, 368, 509
Campo, Juan del (1563-1596), 134,
146-148, 1 52-1 54, 159-160
Campo, Juan del (1620-1650), 446-447,
454 * 542
Camucones, 321, 375, 545-546; raids of,
284, 301, 321-322, 383, 540; expedi-
tions against, 444 , 545 ; conversion of,
446
Candaba, 1 14
Cani, Nicolas, 472
Canicia, Rafael, 593
Canton: Alonso Sanchez in, 41-44; and
Portuguese, 37, 42; and Spaniards,
38-39, 216, 488; mentioned, 44, 45,
48, 49, 53, 6 9 , 411
Cantova, Juan Antonio, 550-551
Capdevila, Ignacio, 509
Capul Island, 592
Caraballo, Juan de, 372
Caracoa, 294
Caraga, 296, 31 1; raiders from, 301, 311,
3 98; Spaniards in, 31, 311,393, 447-448
Caravaca, 6
Cardenas, Rodrigo de, 477-478
Cardenoso, Tomas, 456
Cardona, Pedro de, 91
Carigara mission: founded, 146-147; pro-
gress of, 161-162, 182-183, 187, 316-
317; raided by Magindanaus, 308-309;
mentioned, 149, 154, 1 60, 29 1
— residence, 242-244, 247, 433-434, 576
— town, 146, 316, 323-324
Carneiro, Melchor, 46
Caro, Andrea, 236, 361
Caroline and Marshall Islands, 549-550,
580
Carpio, Juan del, 324
Carreno Valdes, Francisco, 342
Cartagena, 81, 99, 100
Cartagena, Diego de, 229-231, 233
Cartagena, Pedro de, 353
Carvajal, Alonso de, 502
Casanova, Pedro de, 456
Castile, 6, 11; Jesuit province of, 224, 226
Castro, Alonso de, 79, 80
Castro, Francisco de, 165
Castro, Josepha de, 587
Castro, Lucas de, 373
Castro, Santiago de, 196
Castro de Viena, Alonso de. See Mancker,
Andreas
Catalina, Dona, 349
Catalonia, 225-226
Catanduanes Island, 231
Catangalan, 114
Catarman, 412
Catbalogan: mission of, 474, 493 ; resi-
dence of, 242-243, 433-434, 462, 557,
576
Catechisms, 35, 144, 374
Catechetical instruction, 156-157, 170; in
Butuan, 165-166; in Leyte missions,
146, 159-162, 217, 288-289;
Manila, 176, 402; in Samar, 316; at
Silang, 203 ; at Tanay, 186 ; at Tigbauan,
144-145; in Visayan missions, 168,
262-264, 267-268 ; and Synod of Cebu,
287; and theatricals, 290, 313; and
formation of towns, 259
68o
Index
Catechumenate, 35, 141-142, 159-162
Catubig, 31, 163; mission, 171, 183, 290,
412-413
Cauchela, Andres, 10
Cavendish, Thomas, 114, 116
Cavite, College of, 277, 389, 535 ~ 53 6 >
575; church, 372, 536-537; elementary
school, 433; statistics, 242; Jesuits
expelled from, 584
Cavite mission, 372-373
— port, 59, 83, ill, 121, 131, 189;
Chinese mandarins visit, 205 ; Dutch at-
tack, 407; fortified by Silva, 329; galley
slaves in, 128; and expelled Jesuits,
588-589; popular missions, 473-474;
Sul us raid, 336
— province, 369-370
— shipyard, 115, 123, 321; Jesuit chap-
lains of, 330; laborers in, 343— 345 » 4 XI »
413. 535-536
— town, 1 14, 375, 377 * 39 2 > 475
Cebreros, Jeronimo, 454-455
Cebu, College of, 242, 244, 247, 3 17. 575 >
endowment, 167-168, 276, 317-318;
finances, 276-277, 317-318; ministries,
318-319; studies, 2 77, 433
Cebu city, 59, 131, 284, 315, 337, 412,
517; and Amboina exiles, 317; Chinese
of, 166-167, 186; popular missions, 474
— diocese, 127, 287, 365, 433-434
— island, 19, 59, 282
— missions, 312, 317-320
— province, 59, 124
— residence: founded, 145-146, 148-149;
finances, 167, 186-187, 276, 594 *
growth, 155, 166-168, 178, 186-187,
537
— squadron, 301, 309, 3 11, 325
Celebes Sea, 37
Cepeda, Augustin de, 396, 397, 406-407
Cerri, Urbano, 572
Cevicos, Juan de, 353
Chamchian, 204
Chana, 49
Chaoking, 43, 44, 53
Charles II, King, 500-502, 514, 525
Charles III, King, 351, 582-583, 592, 594
Chavez, Juan de, 325-326
Chavez, Pedro de, 70, 209, 366
Ch'en Chuei, 4 3 "44
Chile, 8i
China: coastguard fleet, 39-40, 52; culture
of, 50; and Dutch, 286, 414-415;
exclusion policy, 38-39, 41, 43* 4 &>
85-86; exports to Philippines, 38, 50,
97, ill; and Japan, 45 ; and Jesuits, 38,
50, 64, 74, 117; and Spaniards, 47 “ 49 >
53, 56, 103, 216; Spanish plan to
invade, 5°"53’ 83, 85-88, 96, 100-101,
104-105, 126, 234; trade with Philip-
pines, 13, 80-81, 194, 339~34 2 > 4 ^»
mentioned, 4, 89, 90, 112, 13 377 *
478
China Sea, 37, 89
Chinese, 41, 47, 5 1 3-5 14; converts, 68-69,
167, 514; hospital, 348, immigration,
205-206, 215; and Jesuits, 75, 120, 133,
272-273, 373 - 374 .' language- 68; of
Manila, n— 12, 68, 131* 4 ^ 3 * 5 * 4 »
occupations of, 68 , no, 159* 39 2 ’ 4 1 ^»
parishes, 392, 490; revolt of 1603, 198,
207-216, 273, 301-302, 362, 370;
revolt of 1639, 276, 389-392, 402;
revolt of 1662, 450, 4 ^ 4 > 5 ° 5 » an ^
Synod of Manila, 35; taxation of, 95,
205-206, 400
Chinese Rites, 573
Chirino, Pedro: sent to Philippines, 120-
121; in Balayan, 136-137** at Taytay
and Antipolo, 1 37-143; in Tigbauan,
143—145, 375; founds Leyte missions,
146-148; in Cebu, 148-149, 155 *
1 66- 1 68; in College of Manila, 17b*
181, 201-202, 352-353; procurator to
Rome, 200, 222-224, 244, 255, 259;
writes Relation , 1 37, 222 ; at Silang,
203; and Almerici, 19 1; and College
of Cebu, 317; and College of San Jose,
195; and Diego Garcia, 217-218; and
Prat, 1 71; and Sedeno, 107, 109; on
Antipolo mission, 155; on 1 agalogs,
136, 158; character, 181; mentioned,
159, 161, 183, 186, 228, 272, 375
Cho, 394
Chocolate, 248-249, 356, 51 1-5 12
Chova, Vicente, 454
Christian doctrine. See Catechetical instruc-
tion
Christie, E. B., 452-453
Ch'ungming Island, 450
Cibabao. See Samar
Cid, Pedro, 178
Cimarrones, 473
Index
681
Clavius, Christopher, 568
Clement VIII, Pope, 101, 102
Clement XI, Pope, 527
Clement XII, Pope, 566
Clement XIV, Pope, 593
Clergy, 88; education, 64, 1 19; forbidden
to engage in trade, 247, 462; native,
233-234, 441, 572-573. 576-579;
recruitment, 64
Clergy, regular : conduct, 42 3 ; privileges,
101-102, 258, 419-420, 524; and
episcopal jurisdiction, 10 1 -1 02, 258,
419-429, 436, 524-528, 552; and
missions, 255, 437; and parishes, 426-
428, 525, 528; and royal patronato, 257-
258, 271 ; and secular clergy, 491
Clergy, secular, 490-491, 514, 522, 525;
and Jesuits, 255, 260, 5 1 3, 5 1 5 ;
parishes of, 59-60, 473 ; and regular
clergy, 422, 426-427, 429, 462, 574
Cobos, Juan, 130
Cochay, 204-205
Cochin China, 57
Coelho, Caspar, 55
Coemans, Pierre, 457
Cogseng. See Koxinga
Colin, Francisco, 23 I, 254, 399, 409, 513;
cited, 225, 238-239, 434
Collado, Diego, 377
Colleges, Jesuit, 260, 575. See also under
individual names of colleges
Collegium inchoatum, 187, 277
Coloma, Francisco, 486-487
Combes, Francisco, 451, 477-478
Community chests, 533
Concepcion , 414
Concepcion, Juan de la, 580-581
Concordia , 189-190
Condestabile, Giovanni, 593
Conferencias, 359, 563
Confession. See Penance, sacrament of
Confirmation, sacrament of, 447
Confraternities, 201-202
Conquest of the Philippines. See Philippine
Islands, conquest and colonization
Constitutions, Jesuit. See Society of Jesus
Corcuera, Sebastian Hurtado de, 377, 399,
407, 442, 513; and Chinese, 345; and
Archbishop Guerrero, 377-382, 424;
and Jesuits, 393, 398, 400-403; and
Lanao, 398; and Magindanaus, 382-387,
395, 448; and Stilus, 386-389, 395,
397; and Zamboanga, 392-393; on
parish priests, 475, 477; on royal
patronato, 417; residencia, 381, 399
Cordero, Nicolas, 495-496
Corocoro. See Caracoa
Corralat, Cachil. See Kudrat
Corregidores, 292
Corregidor Island, 132, 377, 417
Corridos, 532
Cortes, Adriano de las, 262-263, 360
Cortil, Joseph, 550
Corvee labor. See Forced labor
Corvera, Francisco, 486, 488
Cotabato, 151, 153, 443. See also Magin-
danau
Cotta, Simone, 225
Council, Sacred Congregation of the, 423,
527 .
Council of the Indies. See Indies, Council of
Coutinho, Affonso Vaz, 333
Crawfurd, John, 534
Crespo, Ignacio, 550
Criollos, 235, 245, 572
Cruz, Julian, 441
Cruzat y Gongora, Fausto, 502, 509, 525-
526,535,572
Cruzat y Gongora, Fausto jr., 503
Cuenca, 149
Curuzelaegui y Arriola, Gabriel, 498-502
Custom Book. See Manila, College of
Cuyo Island, 115, 284, 382-383
Dagami, 242, 243, 293, 433 ~ 434 » 474
Damiani, Vicenzo, 412-413
Danolays , 335
Dansalan, 398-399
Dapitan town: settlement, 310, 451; and
Magindanaus, 284, 324; mentioned, 304,
3 °?> 355
— mission, 319, 451; administration,
385-386, 451; difficulties, 446, 453;
and Subanuns, 446; residence, 433-434,
45 1
Dapitwan Kudrat. See Kudrat
Das marinas, Gomez Perez, 99, 120, 221,
257, 354, 417; as governor, 99, 122-
124, 132; and Bishop Salazar, 105, 124-
127; and conquest of Mindanao, 152;
and Jesuits, 1 29-1 30, 134, 304; and
Moluccas, 129-13 1, 143, 145; and
Zambales revolt, 127-129; assassinated,
1 3 1
68z
Index
Dasmarinas, Luis Perez, 99, 131-132, 152,
195-196; and Chinese revolt of 1603,
209-21 1 ; and Jesuits, 166-167, 172-
173
Datang, Orangkaia, 442, 444
Datus, 12, 20
Davalos, Melchor, 66, 70-71, 79, 81, no
Debt slavery. See Slavery
De procuranda Indorum salute, 234
Delgado, Juan Jose, 535, 576-579
Denis Marie, 134, 154, 160
Diaz, Casimiro, 377, 389-390, 404-405*
493, 496-497
Diaz, Pedro, 154, 162, 457
Diaz Barrera, Bartolome, 383
Diaz, Guiral, Rodrigo, 346
Diego, Don, datu of Duiag, 160
Dilao, 12, 213-215, 362-363, 420-421
Dimasangkai, 298
Discurso parenctico , 477-478, 480
Diwata, 138, 313
Doetrina cristiana , 3 5
Dominguez Franco, Pedro, 276
Dominicans: in Philippines, 87, 117, 227-
229, 476; in Binondo, 209, 392; in
Manila, 133, 198, 21 1, 405 ; in Northern
Luzon, 440; catechisms of, 14 1, 374;
hospital of, 348; and administration of
sacraments, 357, 476; and China, 38,
102-103; an d Diego Collado, 377-378;
and College of San Felipe, 400-401;
and episcopal jurisdiction, 258, 424,
426; and Jesuits, 9, 180, 440, 473, 493,
592; and Archbishop Pardo, 489, 493,
497-498, 501; and training of native
clergy, 579; on tribute, 126; mentioned,
217, 407, 513, 514, 515. See also ,
Santo Tomas, College of
Donado, 316, 503
Donart, 335
Drake, Sir Francis, 77
Duberon, Jacques, 550
Dubois, Balthazar, 457
Ducos, Jose, 549
Duiag mission, 147, 149, 154, 159-161,
163, 287, 301; boarding school, 159,
287-289, 293, 302, 312; girls’ school,
217; hospital, 289-290; Moro raids,
293-295, 311; sodality, 290; statistics,
187
— residence, 183, 243-244, 248
— town, 146, 316, 469
Dulawan, 152
Duran, Juan, 489, 495
Duran de Monforte, Pedro, 445
Dutch: and Acapulco galleons, 399-341,
405; and China trade, 347, 405, 414-
415; East India Company, 327-329,
332, 341-342; effect on Philippines of
attacks, 342-348, 369; in Formosa, 342,
399; in Iiocos, 405-406; sack Iloilo,
332; threaten Macao, 342; and Malacca,
333-334, 399; and Magindanaus, 306,
332, 448, 541; in Moluccas, 307, 317,
3 3 1 —3 32,, 454; and Moros, 328; conquer
Siao, 455 ; and Silva’s armada, 321, 334;
in Southeast Asia, 281, 285-286, 334,
534; and Spaniards, 189, 328, 339 - 34 2 »
362, 405-407; and spice trade, 285-
286, 327; and Sulus, 321, 443; West
India Company, 265
Dyaks, 320
Ejemplo, 231
Elcano, Sebastian de, 129
Eleanor of Portugal, Queen, 132
Elian, Datu, 165
Empresa de China. See China, Spanish plan
to invade
Encarnacion, 406-407
Encinas, Francisco de, 154, 160-16 1, 224,
271, 364; captured by Dutch, 254, 265,
268
Encomiendas, 13, 20, 31-32, 96; kinds,
13-14, 125; list of (1591), 124;
churches in, 33; crown, 29, 81; private,
90, no; granted to veterans, X 5 » 80-81,
95, 261 ; as source of revenue, 63, 96
Encomenderos : qualifications, 96; rights
and duties, 13, 31-33, 96-97, benefits,
1 9 ; abuses, 20 ; heirs of, 3 5 ; refute
Augustinian charges, 18-22; appeal to
Dasmarinas, 125-126; and formation of
towns, 161, 184-185, 259, 290-291;
and Jesuits, 261; and Magindanau raids,
282, 284-285; and missionary stipends,
19, 62, 182, 256, 259, 277; and reli-
gious instruction, 90-91, 96, 12 5-126;
and tribute, 95, 98; in Visayas, 77*
159-160, 246, 287
Eng Kang, 204, 208-210, 212, 215
England, 7 , 9 1 * 94 * 371
English East India Company, 281, 341
Enriquez, Martin, 1 42-1 45
Index
Episcopal jurisdiction, 258, 419-420,
422-429, 469, 489, 515, 524-528, 574.
See also Visitation, episcopal
Ermita, La, 10, 132, 368, 380
Esandi, Juan, 592
Esbrf, Onofre, 392, 402
Escalona, Gregorio de, 502
Escorial, 91, 94, 99
Espinar, Pedro de, 436, 516
Espinosa. See Gomez de Espinosa, Salvador
Esptritu SattfOi 3 30-3 31. 333
Espiritu Santo, Cape, 162, 231
Espiritu Santo, Ignacia del. See Ignacia del
Espiritu Santo
Esquivel, Diego de, 454, 475
Esquivel, Martin de, 307
Estero, 12
Extreme unction, 475-476
Ezquerra, Domingo, 435
Ezquerra, Francisco, 457
Ezquerra, Juan, 132
Fajardo, Diego, 399, 401, 406, 514; anc ^
Moros, 442, 444, 447 ; and Sumoroy’s
revolt, 411, 413, 445
Fajardo de Tenza, Alonso, 339-340, 345,
349, 360, 370-37L 377
Falalep Island, 550
Fanega, 12
Faranda Kiemon, 130
Faranda Mangoshiro, 130
Farreira, Diego, 186
Fatimah, 549
Feria, Duke of, 7, 79
Fernandez, Dionisio, 113, 116
Fernandez, Juan, 593
Fernandez, Pascual, 568
Fernandez de Leon, Juan, 132
Fernando I of Jolo, King. See Alimuddin
Figueroa, Esteban Rodriguez de, 70, no,
1 3 1, 146, 153, 159, 172, 240, 466; and
College of Manila, 149-150, 175, 273,
503; and College of San Jose, 274-275;
and Jesuits, 110, 133, 143; Jolo expedi-
tion, 151, 320; Magindanau expedition,
150-153, 279; wealth of, 144, 177; last
will of, 152, 274-275
Figueroa, Juana de, 275
Figueroa, Margarita de, 274
Figueroa, Rodrigo de, 215
Filipino: character, 19-20, 30, 61, 89,
119, 579; culture, 91-92, 94, 347;
★
683
economic and social organization, 1 9-20,
25, 89, 168, 259, 355, 514. See also
Philippine Islands
Fink, Leonhard, 552-555
Fiscal: of audiencia, 66; of parish, 158-
159 * 4 ZI
Flores, Cosme de, I 34, 146-148, 154, 162
Florida, 5, 7-8, 149
Foochow, 41
Forced labor: abuse of, 30, 485 ; criticisms
of, 29, 33-34, 80, 127; and Dutch wars,
340, 343-346; exemption from, 112,
349; for galleys, 17, 62, 124; as perma-
nent institution, 127; and Jesuits, 185;
in Luzon, 343, 413; for shipbuilding,
17, 41 1 ; and town organization, 292; in
Visayas, 413; wages, 17, 343—345 » 4 * 3 »
mentioned, 479
Formosa Island, 47, 342, 346, 377, 450
Forrest, Thomas, 294, 321, 542
Fortun Island, naval battle off, 189-190
Forty Hours Devotion, 363-364
Fraile island, 329
Francis Borgia, Saint, 4-5, 7-8, 62
Francis Xavier, Saint, 4, 38, 45, 14 2 * 286,
365, 470, 579; and Marcello Mastrilli,
383; mission methods of, 140, 217; in
Moluccas, 60, 129; Alonso Sanchez on,
55
Franciscans: and China, 3 8—39, 43, 48-49,
56, 102-103; and episcopal jurisdiction,
258, 420-421, 428; hospitals of, 348,
493; and Japan, 130; and Jesuits, 10,
35, 7 2 -73* 136-137, 180, 203, 473*
592; missions in Philippines, 9-10,
59-60, 117, 124, 203; in synod of
Manila, 23; and tribute, 126; men-
tioned, 358, 424, 427
Francisco, Jose, 585
Fresne , 335
Freyle, Antonio, 31, 148
Fukien, 39, 41, 53, 68, 216, 374
Galban, Manuel, 583—591
Gallardo, Nicolas, 5, 58, 65, 71-73* 84
Galleon trade: cargoes, ill, 144, 198, 346,
415, 589; and Dutch, 337, 340-341,
346,399; duties, 95, 122, 415; investors,
82, 97, 206, 238-239; pancada system,
97; and Philippine economy, 132, 194,
404, 414; restrictions, 91, 414-416;
route, 8-9, 59, 162, 230; sailings, 124;
Index
684
ships, 34, 41 1, 413-415; state of, 67,
no, 273, 415-416. See also Philippine
Islands
Gallinato, Juan Juarez, 214, 282-283,
286-287, 3 ° 9 » 311; and Magindanaus,
283-285, 304, 307, 309-310
Gamboa, Pedro de, 163
Gandia, 65
Garay, Caspar, 146-149, 155, 166
Garces, Garcia, 333
Garcetas, Miguel, 318, 353
Garcia, Diego: early career, 179-180;
visitor, 179, 187; vice-provincial, 192,
200, 244, 255; dies, 218; and boarding
schools, 287-289, 575; and College of
Manila, 180-181, 194-195, 199, 202,
216; and College of San Jose, 1 95-1 97,
275 ; and devotion to saints, 202-203 ;
and Jesuit novitiate, 200-201, 239; and
missions, 181-189, 203, 262, 287-290,
293, 302; financial problems, 272;
personnel problems, 217, 223, 235;
policy problems, 185-186, 255-259;
mentioned, 21 1, 221, 247, 358
Garcia, Nicolas, 451
Garcia Pacheco, Juan, 73, 84
Garcia Romero, Alonso, 392
Garcia Serrano, Miguel : and episcopal
jurisdiction, 349-350, 420-423; and
Jesuits, 353, 365, 373 - 375 ; on adminis-
tration of sacrament of penance, 357; on
wages for forced labor, 344
Garcia Sierra, Juan, 282
Gasang, 375
Gastelu, Santiago, 392
Gavanti, Bartolomeo, 535
Gayo, Juan, 112-114
Gayo de Aragon, Jesus, 374
Gemelli Careri, Giovanni Francesco, 229-
231
German College, 7, 149
Germany, Jesuit provinces of, 225
Geronimo of Siao, King, 130-131, 145,
21 1
Giginto, 1 15
Gimba, 444
Ginapau, 391
Giron, Andres Arias, 380-381
Goa, 4, 39,42,43,46, 129, 287, 332-333,
454
Gobemadordllo, 13, 533
Gomes, Pero, 332-334
Gomez, Cristobal, 297, 302-303
Gomez, Caspar, 64-65, 71-73, 179, 221,
248-250; and Figueroa expedition, 152-
154; and Moluccas, 130, 304
Gomez, Luis, 166, 175-176, 195
Gomez, Miguel, 154, 160-16 1, 163, 192,
199, 282, 351
Gomez de Arellano, Francisco, 196, 209
Gomez de Espinosa, Salvador, 428, 477-
478, 480
Gonsalves, Ayres, 44
Gonzalez, Andres (bp. of Nueva Caceres),
526, 528
Gonzalez, Andres (S.J.), 580
Gonzalez, Francisco (secular priest), 498
Gonzalez, Francisco (S.J.), 179, 182, 318
Gonzalez, Nicolas, 383-386
Gonzalez, Tirso, 515-516, 523, 552
Gonzalez Davila, Gil, 100, 1 05
Gonzalo, Don, 163, 316
Gorgojos, 229, 231-232
Government, Spanish colonial. See Philip-
pine Islands
Governor, petty. See Gobernadorcillo
Governor-general: duties and powers, 21,
28-30, 34-35, 485; qualities required
in, 90 ; term of office, 1 8 ; and audiencia,
65-66 ; relations with central government,
99; relations with clergy, 100
Granada, College of, 223
Great River of Mindanao. See Magindanau
Gregory the Great, Saint, 32, 313, 422
Gregory the Wonder-Worker, Saint, 137
Gregory XIII, Pope, 56
Gregory XIV, Pope, 101-102, 354
Gregory XV, Pope, 3 52
Grimaldos, Cristobal de, 489, 501
Guadalupe , 333, 337
Guadeloupe Island, 231
Guadin, Prince, 447
Guam Island, 9, 456, 550
Guerrero, Hernando, 361, 377-382, 388,
402, 417
Guevara, Diego de, 374
Gugu Sarikula, 298
Guguan Island, 456
Guillestigui, Rodrigo de, 337
Guimaras Island, 143
Guiuan, 474
G uinar as, Datu, 31 1
Gutierrez, Francisco, 224, 236, 254, 265-
268, 273
685
Index
Gutierrez, Pedro : and Mindanao missions,
319, 325, 398, 451-452; and Moro
wars, 325, 385-388, 393, 399
Gutierrez de Cespedes, Hernan, 82
Gutierrez del Real, Juan, 3 1
Guzman, Luis de, 396
Hainan Island, 56
Hairun, Sultan, 129
Halmahera Island, 129
Haraya, 144
Harmensz, Wolphert, 286
Havana, 8, 149
Hawkins, John, 77
Henao, Alonso de, 148-149, 276
Henrique, Dom, 37
Heredia, Pedro de, 337
Hernandez, Sebastian, 104
Herrao Island, 307
Herrera, Ana de, 239
Herrera, Francisco de, 424
Herrera, Jeronimo de, 489, 491, 502
Herrera, Juan de, 154
Heyn, Piet, 265
Hideyoshi, 56, 1 30
H inunday an, 323
Hirado, daimyo of, 1 1 3
Hispaniola, 66
Histoire de la persecution de deux saints eveques
par les Jesuit es, 517
Holland. See Dutch
Holy Office, Congregation of, 101, 105
Holy See. See Papacy
Hospitals, 348, 405, 445
Huana, 446
Humanes, Alonso de, 134, 248-249, 254;
procurator, 224, 248, 254, 260-261;
and boarding schools, 173* 575 i an ^
Visayan missions, 148-149, 1 54* 1 59 ~
160, 183, 260
Hurtado, Melchor, 179, 182, 310-311,
327-328; and Magindanaus, 293-297,
301-308
Iba, Datu, 384
Ibabao. See Samar
Ibalon. See Sorsogon
Ibanez, Juan, 498, 580
Ibarra, Juan de, 91, 178
Ibero, Francisco Javier, 593
Idiaquez, Juan de, 91, 98-99
Ieyasu, 363
Ignacia del Espfritu Santo, 507-508
Ignacio, Miguel, 334
Ignatius bean, 557
Ignatius of Loyola, Saint: canonization,
365, 568; ait, 231, 365; spirit, 243,
246; spiritual exercises, 201, 295; on
care of religious women, 62; on colleges,
277; on cure of souls, 61-62; and popu-
lar missions, 470; on powers of general
congregation, 252; on stipends and stole
fees, 256, 479; mentioned, 7, 42, 171,
197, 236, 505, 580, 595
Ilagorri, Gaspar, 592
Iligan, 398-399,433, 45 L 549
Illanos. See Iranun
Ilocos, 59, 131, 392; Dutch in, 339, 405-
406; missions, 59, 74> 124-125;
revolts, 18, 483
Hog. 319. 434 . 53 8
Iloilo, 131, 275, 306, 384, 397, 433, 538;
Dutch attacks on, 327-328, 332, 335 ”
336; naval squadron of, 301, 319, 3 2 5*
See also Arevalo
Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of, 157,
365
Inabangan, 324, 435, 474
Inadang, 345, 369
India, 4, 5, 38, 89, 1 17, 286, 332, 579
Indies, Council of, 103, 205, 381, 399,
475; and Jesuits, 118, 200, 400-401,
410-41 1, 514; and Philippine Church,
417-418, 425, 428-429, 501
Indies, Jesuit province of, 273
Indies convoy, 227
Indochina, 346
Indonesia, 12, 15 1
Inigo de Loyola. See Ignatius of Loyola, Saint
Innocent IX, Pope, 10 1
Innocent X, Pope, 253, 408-409, 465
Inongan, Diego, 301
Inquisition, 102, 104, 380, 478, 4 ^ 5 * 4 ^»
488; and Jesuits, 100, 105
Insak Sindangan, 300
Iranun, 300, 395
Ingoven, Juan de (Jesuit of Philippine
province), 436, 441
Irigoyen, Juan de (Jesuit resident at Rome),
527
Isabella of Bourbon, Queen, 408
Isla, Gaspar, 70
Islam, 13, 297
Islas Filipinas. See Philippine Islands
686
Index
Isleta, 374. 499 - 5^3
Israel, Prince, 544, 547
Italy, Jesuit provinces of, 224, 225
Itas. See Aetas
Japan: Jesuits of, 55-56, 64, 74, 117, 180,
363, 478, 587-588; missions, 64, 104;
trade with Philippines, 60, 80, 97, 1 1 1 ;
mentioned, 4, 89, 371, 377
Japanese, 44, 208-209, 214, 283, 334,
339, 362-363; Christian exiles, 363,
370; college, 370-372; and Philippine
Jesuits, HI, 233, 362-363; and Tagalog
conspiracy, 1 12-1 15
Jara, Juan de la, 1 5 3-1 54, 279
Jaramillo, Antonio, 436, 506-507, 512,
516, 523, 524; as procurator, 436, 521-
523
Java, 80, 281, 342, 384
Javier, Francisco, 505
Jayme, Esteban, 466
Jesuits. See Society of Jesus
Jesus, Pablo de, 39
Jesus de la Pena, Jesuit estate of, 273, 500,
515
Jimenez, Cristobal, 154, 1 60-1 61, 290
John, Lorenz, 538
John of Holywood, 568
John the Greek, 215
Johore, 297, 320, 327; sultan of, 57
Jolo, 283, 309, 320, 335, 546-547;
Spanish expeditions against, 15 1, 279,
281-283, 548; conquest and pacification
of, 386-388, 395-397; abandonment by
Spaniards, 442-445. See also Sulus
Jorge, Sebastiao, 49-50
Kaapitan, 395-396
Kabungsuwan, 297, 300
Kachil, 299
Kaffirs, 363
Kagangkagang, 445
Kalaw, 1 14
Kaller, Adam, 440-441
Kalualhatian, 1 39-140
Kamel, Georg Josef, 441, 556-557, 580,
594 ,
Kampilan, 153
Kamza, Pakir Maulana, 544, 546
Kanakan, 542
Kanganga, Juan, 161
Kapitan Lawut. See Bwisan
Kapolo, Dionisio, 1 14
Katitwan, 298
Katolonan, 139, 156
Katunau, 163, 165
Kawit (Cavite), 372-373
Kawit (Sulu), 151
Keit. See Cavite
Ki Kuan, 543
Klein, Paul, 507-508, 535-536, 550, 553,
580
Komintang. See Batangas
Koran, 320, 543
Koxinga, 438, 450, 483, 488, 503
Kudrat, 299, 312, 389, 398-399, 443;
raids of, 324, 382, 447, 449; and
Governor Corcuera, 384-386; and paci-
fication of Magindanau, 393—395* 44 2 ~
444; and Lopez treaty, 448-449
Kumintang, 139
Kuran, 297
Kwangtung, viceroy of, 40-41, 45* 47 *
53-54
Labor, native, 480. See also Forced labor
Lado, Francisco, 445
Ladrones. See Marianas
Laguna, 59, 124, 344, 389, 392, 533
Lagyo, 10, 12, 14, 109, 370; Jesuit house
in, 24, 58, 63, 66-69, 71-74, 83, 107,
122, 433
Laksamana, Francisco, 484
Lal-lo, 501
Lamitan, 384-385
Lampon, 232
Lampurdanes, Placido, 593
Lanao, 397-399* 44 $* 454
Landa, Juan de, 435-436
Landeiro, Bartolomeu Vaz, 48-49, 5 2
Lantaka, 294
Laon, 147
Lara. See Manrique de Lara, Sabiniano
Larauan, 138
Las Casas, Bartolome de, 5 1
Laurencio, Diego, 191
Laut, 542
Lavezaris, Guido de, 5, 10
Lawton, Plaza, 109
Ledesma, Andres de, 435, 442
Ledesma, Valerio de, 238, 250, 273, 301,
332, 345; in Butuan, 155, 165-166,
319; rector, 186, 248; provincial, 248,
2 54 * 358, 363, 372, 375
Index
Legazpi, Agustm de, 112-116
Legazpi, Miguel Lopez de, 5, 11, 13, 20,
37, no, 163, 165, 315
Le Gentil de la Galaisiere, Guillaume
Joseph, 559, 567-568
Lemos, Pedro de, 285
Leon, Manuel de, 454, 488-489
Leon, Rodrigo de, 70
Leres, Francisco, 592
Letona, Bartoiome de, 482
Letrado, 66
Leunis, Jean, 201
Leyte Island, 59, 145-147, 159, 343, 350,
462, 465; Moro raids on, 287, 292—
296, 301-302, 308, 311, 323-324,450;
revolts, 77, 145, 292, 3x5
— missions: founded, 145-148, 539;
administration, 183-187, 260; develop-
ment, 159-162, 173, 182,202,287,290,
3 1 5-3 17, 538; Jesuits expelled from,
592
— town, 1 61
Liampo. See Ningpo
Lian, 136, 503, 527, 594
Liang, Pehon Yameng, 203
Liguanan, 283
Lima, 85, 233-234, 408
Limahong, 21, 109
Limasawa Island, 315
Limpieza de sangre, 236—237
Limtolam, 203
Linao, 413
Lingayon, 295
Lipir, 444
Lisbon, 7, 37, 42, 91, 132
Lizardo, Domingo, 551
Llorens, Juan, 591
Loaisa, Garda Jose de, 129, 281
Loboc, 164-165, 292, 312-313, 315,
433 ” 435,469
Lompotes, 143-144
Lopez, Alejandro; and development of
Zamboanga mission, 445, 447; and paci-
fication of Jolo, 387-389, 395, 397, 444;
negotiates treaty with Magindanaus,
442-445, 448, 544; killed by Magin-
danaus, 447-450; mentioned, 541, 543
Lopez, Alejo, 512, 517, 519-521, 537,
540-54L 571
Lopez, Gregorio, 84, 191, 203, 230-231;
vice-provincial, 221; provincial, 254,
260, 358; and Chinese revolt of 1603,
687
211— 215; and College of Cebu, 317—
318; and College of Manila, 273, 351;
and Jesuit novitiate, 239-240; and
Visayan missions, 260, 3 1 8 ; on Moluccas,
342-343 ; on recruitment of missionaries,
223; on religious observance, 247-248;
mentioned, 192, 224, 225, 235
Lopez, Jeronimo, 471
Lopez, Juan (bp. of Cebu), 367, 466-467,
489, 491, 514
Lopez, Juan (S.J.), 224, 254, 268, 271,
3 I9 > 3 % ^
Lopez de Azaldigui, Andres, 413
Lopez de la Parra, Pedro, 155, 179
Lopez de Lucero, Juan, 394
Losada, Juan Enriguez, 488
Los Banos, hospital of, 348
Loyola. See Ignatius of Loyola, Saint
Loyola de Azpeitia, Juan de. See Angelis,
Theophilus de
Lugo, Bartolommeo, 553-554, 556, 573,
579
Lugo, Cristobal de, 323
Lujan. See Rodriguez de Lujan, Jeronimo
Lumaiag, 300
Lumban, 392
Lumian, 283
Lutaus, 322, 384, 388, 395, 413, 445, 448,
45 1
Luzon Island, 9, 49, 58-59, 216, 284,
450; Jesuit missions and parishes, 462,
478, 588
Macao, 37, 39, 44-45, 84, 89, 97, 103,
342, 372; Jesuits of, 75, 122; men-
tioned, 40, 42-44, 46, 48-50, 53-56,
60, 71, 87
Macassar, 320, 324, 387-388
Madrid, 65, 88, 501, 515-517
Madrid, Sebastian de, 337
Maerckl, Franz, 542, 552-553
Magailanes de Souza, Jose, 568
Magat, 136
Magat Saiamat, 113-116
Magatsina, 136
Magellan, Ferdinand, 5, 19, 65, 455
Magellan Straits, 285
Magindanau territory, 152, 299, 443;
mission in, 443 » 54^1 pacification of,
393 - 395 * 44 2 * mentioned, 151, 279,
282, 285, 295-296, 310
— town, 153, 298, 303, 305, 385, 541
688
Index
Magindanaus: and Dutch, 306, 327, 332,
334-335, 340; government, 152-153,
298-299, 3 11-3 12, 541-542; raids,
281-285, 292-296, 304, 308-312, 324,
382-383, 447; effects of raids, 302, 316;
religion, 261, 296-298, 301, 384; and
Spaniards, 305-306, 308, 328, 448;
Spanish expeditions against, I IO, 15 1,
279, 281, 303, 307, 383-387; and
Sulus, 309, 319-320, 541; and Temate,
306, 309; mentioned, 287, 301, 321
Maglinti, Gonzalo, 451
Magolabon, 443
Magsanga, Diego, 203
Maharlika, 12, 14, 116, 299
Maka-alang, 298
Makati. See San Pedro Makati
Makombon, Fernando, 451
Malabang, 297
Malabohoc, 435
Malacca, 37, 39, 55, 57, 89, 320, 334;
and Dutch, 327, 333, 454
Malaga, Ignacio, 546-547
Malangit, Datu, 296
Malate, 10, 12, 14, 109, 368
Malay Peninsula, 12
Malays, 12, 151, 320
Maldonado, Luis de, 127
Maldum, 320
Malinding, 375
Malinsky, Anton, 538-539
Malinug, 546-547
Malirong, 161
Malolos, 115
Mamalu, 297-298
Mamu, 298
Manakior, 393-395, 443
Manchu Dynasty, 450
Mancker, Andreas, 440, 467-468, 51 1-
512
Mandaue, 186-187, 434
Mangaio prau, 294
Mangians, 375“376, 47 3 “474
Manila, archdiocese of, 74, 365, 375, 433-
434, 475-476, 489, 497; cathedral
chapter, 64, 346, 491, 497-499, 500,
514
Manila, Audiencia of : proposed, 1 8 ; estab-
lished, 65-67; abolished, 96, 98; recon-
sidered, 80—81, 90—91; restored, 127;
duties of oidores, 65-66; and College of
Manila, 133, 408-410, 425, 566-567;
and the Church, 81 ; and episcopal juris-
diction, 421, 426-428; and Bishop
Lopez, 467 ; and Archbishop Pardo, 486-
487, 489-493, 496-499, 501; and
Governor Telio, 178-179
Manila, city of, 1 1, 13, 19, 59; buildings,
97, 124, 347, 404-405, 530; Chinese
residents, 68, 109, 198, 205-207, 272-
273, 347, 392, 483, 514; climate, 66;
commerce, 13, 347, 361; defense, 205 »
483 ; description, 11, 482-483 ; disasters,
49, 67, 198, 402-405, 473, 482; and
Dutch, 335, 339-342; environs, 12,
346-347, 370; festivals, 174-175, 363-
365, 386-387, 389, 404; government,
1 1 ; hospitals, 79, 97, 132, 175, 198,
202, 348; hostelry for women, 79, 97-
98; Jesuit establishments, 61, 102, 107,
121, 132-133, 180; popular missions,
472-473; population, 11, 59, 74, 118-
119, 178, 234, 361-362; prosperity,
1 94-195, 273, 346-348; provisioning,
12, 30, 66, 175, 233; public works, 124;
revenues, 95; servants and slaves, 209,
347; site, 1 0-1 1, 109; social conditions,
132, 1 94-1 95; streets, 12 1, 123; trades,
206-207; walls and fortifications, 67,
79, 95, 109, 121-123, I 3°> mentioned,
10, 370, 426, 470-471, 498
Manila, College of; planned, 62, 75-76,
1 1 8, 133; opened, 1 34-1 3 5 ; administra-
tion, 116-117, 1 19, 145* 200, 271, 332,
506, 575; arts course (philosophy), 192,
198, 216, 433, 563-565; and boarding
school for natives, 1 72-1 73 ; buildings,
401, 405, 537, 556, 558-559; church,
174-175, 180, 2l6, 274, 367-368, 5OI,*
classes, 173 -174, 237, 562; and College
of San Jose, 195-197, 274, 358; and
College of Santo Tomas, 356-358, 409-
411, 580; courses, 134, 150, 177-178,
2 5 ^» 35 C 3 5 3 » 433 * 5 o 6 “ 5 o 7 > 5 62 “
564; degrees, 352-354, 409-410, 563-
565; disputations, 199, 352, 511, 564-
565; domestics, 571 ; elementary school,
360-361, 402, 433, 506, 568-570;
endowment, 63, 149-150, 152, 177 ;
examinations, 351, 51 1, 564; expulsion
of Jesuits from 581, 584-585, 588, 591,
593; faculty, 199, 352, 354 - 357 ;
grammar school, 181, 1 92, 194, 198-
1 99 < 433; holidays, 351-352, 505;
Index
689
Jesuit community, 177, 180-181, 238,
244, 247, 273, 361, 363, 504, 510, 554-
555; and Jesuit novices, 236, 239-241;
law courses, 542, 563, 566; library, 351,
555* 55 8; mathematics course, 567-568;
memorable events, 17 3 -179, 212, 216,
387, 487; ministries, 255, 361-364,
370, 472-474, 508-509, 579; pharmacy,
556, 594—595 ; printing press, 203, 556,
594-595; retreats in, 508, 559, 579;
revenues, 149-150, 216, 272-274, 276,
366-368, 503; scholarships, 134, 403,
503, 505, 570; sodality, 201-202;
statistics, 242; students, 173-174, 351 —
352, 502-503, 505; theology courses,
199, 224, 433, 563, 565-566; time
order, 177, 503-504, 559-562; univer-
sity status, 1 81, 192, 194, 199; and
Visayan missions, 171; mentioned, 179,
1 9 1 , *9 8 t 232-233, 260* 265, 277,
322, 365, 473, 486, 502-503, 513—5 14,
520, 568
Manila, Junta of, 77-83, 103, 124
Manila, province of, 124
Manila, Synod of, 22-25, 7 1 » on adminis-
tration of justice, 28-30; on colonial
officials, 28-31, 34; decrees, 101-102,
292; effects, 36; on encomenderos,
30-33; and episcopal jurisdiction, 258;
on forced labor, 30, 33-34; instructions
for confessors, 35; on native government,
2 7-28; proceedings, 23-24, 35, 88; on
rebellion, 28; on religious instruction,
26-27, 31-33, 35, 141; on requisition-
mg, 29 ; on local self-government, 34-35,
349; on restitutions, 29-30, 35-36, 199;
on slavery, 25-26; on Spanish sove-
reignty, 26-28, 93; on tribute, 29-30,
3 2 ~ 33 » 12 5 ; on war, 29-30; mentioned,
98, 104
Manila Bay, 9-xo, 59, 377, 475
Maniswa, 136
Manobos, 319, 4 12-4 13
Manook, Pedro Manuel, 451
Manrique de Lara, Sabiniano, 448-450,
454 * 4 8 3 - 4 8 5
Manteista, 197
Mantiris, 320
Manugit, Agustrn, 113, 1 1 5
Mapono River, 31
Maragondong, 369, 475
Maralaya, 472
Maranaus, 397-398
Maranon, Diego de Espinosa, 490
Marianas Islands, 455-457, 470; Jesuit
missions in, 436, 438-439, 455-457,
470, 495, 554, 581, 592-593. See also
Guam
Maribohoc, 324
Marie Anne of Austria, 439, 456
Marikina, 125,273, 524
Marin. Juan, 458, 462
Marinduque Island, 59, 12 1, 321, 336,
375, 406; missions, 375, 588; shipyard,
3 2 9 * 339
Marmolejo, Agustrn de, 394-395
Marquez, Cristobal, 393
Marquez, Luis, 587
Marquina, Esteban de, 209-210
Marron, Bartolome, 498
Marta, Antonio, 129-131, 145
Martes, Bartolome, 154, 162-163
Marti, Ignacio, 232
Martin, Bernardo, 583
Martin, Francisco, 120-121, 143, 145,
1 5 5 * 374-375
Martin, Pedro, 80-8 1
Martinez, Francisco, 387-389, 395
Martinez, Francisco (Fray), 592
Martinez, Manuel, 155, 165
Martinez de Arizala, Pedro, 548
Martinez de Zuniga, Joaquin, 532, 5 34—
535
Masbate Island, 59, 124, 412, 450
Masha* ika, Tuan, 320
Masinglo, 338
Massonio, Lorenzo, 317
Mastrilli, Marcello, 383-385
Mata, Pedro de la, 395-397
Matampai, 298
Matanda, Raja, 13, 113
Matanzas Bay, 265
Mauban, 30, 337
Maug, 456
Mauritius , 189-190
Mayhaligi, 133, 149, 272, 373 - 374 - 5 1 3 »
594
Maynila. See Manila
Medina, Luis de, 456
Meisilo, 113, 116, 520, 594
Malayu, 387
Meloni, Girolamo, 527
Menangkabau, 320
Mendicant orders. See Clergy, regular
Index
690
Mendiola, Simon de, 53, 56-57, 63, 71, 73
Mendon^a, Andres Furtado da, 286-287,
327
Mendoza, Antonie de, 84-85,
Mendoza, Francisco de, 399
Mendoza, Ines de, 70
Menendez de Aviles, Pedro, 7-8
Mercado, Antonio de, 52
Mercurian, Everard, 5 * 4 2 » 2 3 5
Merdekas, 475
Merienda, 171
Mesa, Gregorio Catena de, 373~374
Mesa, Juan de, 349
Messina, Francesco, 413, 488, 5 14-5 15
Mestizos, 234, 514
Mexico, church of, 233, 422
Mexico, College of, 7 * 180, 232
Mexico, Jesuit province of, 5-6, 1 1 6, 1 19-
120, 122, 134, 179* 2 35 * 2 49 * 44 °* 495 *’
members dismissed, 245 ; and Philippines,
1 18, 200, 221-222, 224-225, 272, 552;
provincial, 71, 75, 177, 188, 192, 254,
442; visitation, 1 79
Mexico, University of, 408, 426
Mexico, viceroyalty of, 5, 18, 64, 87, 95,
97, 1 16, 133, 149, 228, 415, 498, 516,
526; courts, 66, 8l, 99; emigration to
Philippines, 90, 195, 416; subsidy to
Philippines, 79, 41 5 ; treasury, 96, 229
Mexico City, 8, 85, ill, 227
Miedes, Francisco, 454-455
Milan, Jesuit province of, 225
Militar, Plaza, 10, 370
Millan de Poblete, Miguel, 426, 465, 47 U
473,489, 514, 525
Mimbela, Jaime de, 527
Mindanao Island, 59 * 283, 343 * 4^6, 477 *
484; evangelization, 154* 165* 59 2 »
geography, 152, 281, 397; population,
58, 150-151, 320
Mindoro Island, 59, 284, 295, 383; mis-
sions, 375 - 376 , 473 * 5 1 5
Miranda, Francisco de, 332, 334
Miranda, Toribio de, 31, 279, 281
Misas, Juan de las, 321-322, 324, 375
Misericordia, Confraternity of, 348-349,
4 ° 5
Missionaries, 64, 440, 512, 546, 554 *’
in encomiendas, 31-33; forbidden to
leave Philippines, 97, 102-103; recruit-
ment, 64, 437; stipend of; 10, 62, 76,
96-97, 182, 256, 259, 277, 425-426,
445 ; transportation to Philippines, 65,
226-233, 439
Mission districts, 145
Mission methods, Jesuit, 8, 1 40-142,
1 56-! 57, 169, 183, 262-268, 290-292,
3*3
Mission policy, Jesuit, 61-62, 93 ~ 94 * 2 47 >
251, 265-271, 401-402, 537; on ad-
ministration of sacraments, 168-171,
263-264, 422-423, 466; and colonial
government, 257* 259* 537* on personal
conduct of missionaries, 170-171; on
study of languages, 245, 261-262, 436,
51 1 ; on treatment of natives, 169-170,
246-247, 402
Mission residences, Jesuit, 262— 264* 270,
277-278, 433-434 ^
Mission stations, Jesuit, 4-6, 42, 55 *
63, 67-68, 120, 132-133, 136, 145,
261, 535, 5 37-5 3 8 >' policy regarding,
62, 64, 74, 1 17. 1 19. 2 55> 259-260,
262. See also Tagalog missions; Visayan
missions
Mission statistics, Jesuit, 466, 542. See also
Philippine province, Jesuit
Mission tours, 183, 255-256, 260, 262,
471-473,480
Missions, civil protectorate of, 27-28, 79 *
92-94, 102, 104-105, 456
Missions, popular, 8, 62, 75, 117-118*
176-177, 470-471, 473 ~ 474 * 5 o8 ' 5°9
Missions, superintendent of, 260, 263-264
Miyako, beatas of, 363
Mogmog Island, 550
Molave, 58
Molina, Juan Bautista de, 337
Molinillo, 17 1
Moluccas Islands, 4, 55, 89-90, 112, 145*
165, 287, 299, 475; and Dutch, 281,
285-286, 317, 327-328, 334; missions,
60, 74, 166, 286, 317, 433, 438, 454;
Moslem Malays of, 261 ; and Portuguese,
37, 77; Spanish claim to, 305; Spanish
expeditions to, 67, 77, 129-131, 3 ° 4 ~
308, 331, 342-343; Spanish garrison in,
275, 345, 484; and Spanish government,
61, 342-343, 454
Mongkai, 385-386, 393-394
Monroy, Pedro de, 377-380
Monroy, Sebastian de, 457
Monte, Ignacio de. See Sonnenberg, Walter
Montemayor, Francisco de, 486-487
Index
691
Montero y Vidal, Jose, 594-595
Montes, Pedro de, 223-224, 229-230, 351,
362-363
Mon del, Juan, 448
Montoro, Diego de, 70
Montoya, Tomas de, 134, 174-175, 192,
214
Moodo, Rajah, 542
Moors, 86, 96, 236-237
Mora, Cristobal de, 91
Morale pratique des jesuites, 517
Morales, Gaspar de, 396-397
Morales, Luis de, 435-436, 456, 515-516
Moreno, Juan, 546-547
Morga, Antonio de, 178, 189-190, 205,
215
Morga, Antonio de (the younger), 196
Moro Gulf, 152, 281
Moron, Juan de, 78
Moros. See Magindanaus; Moslem Malays;
Sul us
Morotai Island, 307, 341
Moslem Malays, 89, 104, 129, 151, 447,
466, 475, 478; and Dutch wars, 343;
raids of, 261, 327, 342-343, 543; and
slavery, 151, 354-355; and Spaniards,
58, 1 5 1, 540, 549
Motilief, 328
Moya y Contreras, Pedro de, 70, 91
Mu’izzudin. See Bantilan, Datu
Mujica, Ignacio, 232
Mundos, 466-467
Mura, Raja, 279, 281, 283-284, 298, 305,
308-3 10
Mur alia Street, 121
Murcia: Jesuit College of, 84
Murillo Velarde, Pedro, 372-373, 411,
455, 484, 495, 555, 576 - 577 ; on
College of Manila, 556-559, 567; on
parish life, 530, 533, 535; teaches canon
law, 552-553, 566; on teaching in the
Philippines, 579-580; works, 567, 580
Mutusingwood, 542
Nabeda, Jose de, 205-206
Nadal, Jeronimo, 7
Naga. See Nueva Caceres
Nagasaki, 56, 370-371
Nagtahan, 594
Nanking, 450
Naples : college of, 383 ; Jesuit province of,
225
Nasugbu, 594
Natubakan, 297
Naujan, 375, 473
Nava, Francisco de, 377
Naval, La. See Our Lady of the Rosary
Navotas, 113, n6
Nawan, 300
Negritos. See Aetas
Negroes, 363
Negros Island, 59, 282, 319, 517;
missions of, 435, 512, 538-539, 592
New Moon, 335
New Philippines. See Caroline and Marshall
Islands
New Spain. See Mexico
New World. See America
Neyra, Domingo, 566
Nickel, Goswin, 437
Nieto, Francisco, 330, 366
Ningpo, 41, 488
Nithard, Everard, 456
Norona, Francisco Javier, 594
North Borneo, 549
Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe , 592
Nuestra Senora de Gufa, bastion of, 123,
508
Nuestra Senora del Pilar, fort of. See
Zamboanga
Nuestra Senora de Paz y Buen Viaje. See
Antipolo, Our Lady of
Nueva Caceres: city of, 59, 82; diocese of,
127, 365, 502
Nueva Segovia, diocese of, 127, 199, 365,
489-491
Nunez Crespo, Juan, 144
Obando, Francisco Josa de, 548, 567, 581
Obra pia, 275
Ogtong. See Arevalo; Iloilo
Oidores. See Manila, Audiencia of
Olaso, Lorenzo de, 323
Olavide y Michelena, Enrique, 592-593
Old Moon, 335
Old 335
Oliva, Gian Paolo, 437, 441, 466, 509-5 12
Oliver, Juan de, 136
Oliverio, Stefano, 238, 390
Omaiagar, 3 14
Omnimoda faculties. See Clergy, regular
Onarano, 283
Ontal. See Suntay, Juan
Ontineda, Juan, 163
Index
692
Orangkaia, 299
Orang Tedong. See Camucones
Order of Friars Minor. See Franciscans
Order of Preachers. See Dominicans
Orellana. See Pizarro de Orellana, Francisco
Ormoc: mission, 154, 161-162, 183-184,
186-187, 2x7, 592; town, 316, 323-
324
Ortega, Jeronimo de, 436, 487, 495-496,
500
Ortiz de Covarrubias, Miguel, 498, 501
Ortiz Zugasti, Francisco, 568
Osegtiera, Ana de, 274
Otazo, Diego de, 573-576, 580-581
Otazo, Francisco de, 293, 340; as mis-
sionary, 154, 162-163, 183, 289; as
procurator, 224, 254, 264; as superior,
246-248, 260
Oton. See Arevalo; Iloilo
Oviedo, Juan Antonio de, 555-556, 579
Ozaeta, Juan de, 526
Pacheco Maldonado, Juan, 109-110, 121,
137 , 15 °
Pacho, Juan, 297
Paco. See Dilao
Padre Capitan, el. See San Pedro, Agustin de
Paez, Esteban, 134
Paez, Juan, 205-206
Pagadian Bay, 397
Pagali, 315
Pagbuaya, Datu, 451
Pagdalanun, Datu, 3 10-311
Pagon, 456
Pakian Baktial, 396, 445, 451
Palacios, Alonso, 248
Palacios y Villagomez, Faustina, no
Palapag, 242-243, 250, 316, 341, 433-
434, 589; revolt, 411-413, 445, 447
Palaus. See Caroline and Marshall Islands
Palawan Island, 59, 284, 321, 540
Palembang, 297, 320
Pallavicino, Gian Andrea, 435, 474, 515
Palliola, Francesco, 446, 454
Pallu, Francois, 488
Palo: mission, 154, 160-161, 183, 187,
287, 301, 31 1 ; town, 159, 295, 316
Palomino, Pedro, 385-386
Pambuhan, 412
Pampanga, 59, 70, 124, 343, 407, 508,
533; ravaged by Zambales, 127-128;
revolt, 483, 505
Pampangos, 114-115, 2X1, 215, 392, 400,
505; troops, 1 31, 484* 505
Panahon Island, 290, 296
Panamao, 290, 343, 377
Panaon. See Punta Flechas
Panay Island, 59, lio, 124, 131, 143, 146,
274-275* 2 & 2 » 2 95 > 35 8 * 4 66 > 59 2
Pancada, 97
Pandakan, 114
Panditas, 300-301, 445
Panela, Matias, 44
Panga, Martin, 113-115
Pangasinan, 39, 59, 124-125, 392, 483,
497 , 5 ° I
Pangiran, Raja, 151, 320
Panglao Island, 290, 435
Panguil Bay, 309, 397
Panguil village, 232
Pangutaran Island, 397, 444
Pantao, shipyard of, 321, 336, 343—
344
Papacy, 3, 422, 426, 489, 499, 524, 527;
and episcopal visitation, 526, 528, 552;
and Spanish sovereignty, 26, 92
Paraguay, 459, 516
Paranaque, 390
Paranas, boarding school of, 163, 316
Parang, 397
Pardo, Felipe, 477, 489, 502, 524, 57 2 »
banishment and recall, 497-499, 5°^»
and civil authorities, 489-493, 496-497*
501-502; and Jesuits, 493-496, 500,
515; and secular clergy, 490-491; men-
tioned, 476, 492, 501, 514, 516, 528
Pareja, Miguel de, 454-455
Parian: and Chinese revolts, 208-216, 391 ;
description, 206-207; founded, 11;
guilds, 391 ; rebuilt, 392; site, 109; men-
tioned, 374, 482-484, 513-5x4
Paris University, 3, 359
Parishes, 420-421, 467-468, 479, 49 °*
512. See also Clergy; Episcopal jurisdic-
tion; Patronato; Stole fees
Parishes, Jesuit, 402, 433-434, 535 J argu-
ments for giving up, 518-520, 525-529;
arguments for retaining, 5 17-518; policy
on, 61-62, 74, 255-256, 259-260;
renunciation of, 425, 516; in Tagaiog
provinces, 462, 465, 474-475, 479, 517*
5 2I » 535 * 537
Parish missions. 5 ^r Missions, popular
Parish Priests, 475-479, 533
Index ^93
Parrado, Pedro, 231, 374
Pasalamat, 479
Pasig: river, 10, 12, 58-59, 109, 232, 240,
513; town, 215
Pasio, Francesco, 42-43, 53
Patani, ill
Patemina, Jose de, 486, 488
Patino, Diego, 254, 325, 398, 435-436
Patronato, 127, 377 , 379 * 3 82 ^ and
parishes and missions, 271, 4 i8 > 4 2 3~
424; and Philippine church, 257, 259,
416-419, 424-425, 477, 4 88 > 574
Paul, Saint, 14°, 2 3 4
Paul (Chinese convert), 69
Paul III, Pope, 3, 25
Paula, Francisco de, 408
Pay gw an, 298
Paz, Juan de, 474
Pazos, Antonio de, 99
Pazuengos, Bernardo, 583, 591
Pedroza, Luis de, 378
Pedro Bautista, Saint, 124, 1 30
Pedroche, Cristobal de, 476, 494-495, 498
Pedrosa, Juan de. See Steinhauser, Adolf
Peking, 42, 45, 203
Pena Bonlfaz, Juan Manuel de la. See
Bonifaz, Juan Manuel de la Pena
Penal ver, Domingo de, 237, 356 - 357 * 375
Penance, sacrament of, 35, 3 57 * 476 - 477 *
508
Penitentes, 142
Pensamietitos christianos , 507
Pereira, Andrea, 286, 317
Pereira, Antonio, 1 30-1 32, 145-146,
148-149, 166
Pereira, Gonsalvo, 37
Perez de Calatayud, Juan Bautista. See
Boranga, Karl von
Permiso. See Galleon trade
Peru: Jesuit province of, 85, 179, 234-
235, 245; viceroyalty of, 5, 7, 52, 87,
414-41 5, 423
Peso, 12
Peter Claver, Saint, 364
Petiver, James, 557
Philip II, King: and China, 51, 102-103;
and encomiendas, 31-32; and Jesuits,
75-76, 84, 88, 100, 102, 105; and
patronato, 257, 417-418; and Philip-
pines, 5, 91, 94 " 99 * I2 7 * 1 5 L 354 ;
and Portugal, 37-38, 46, 61 ; mentioned,
58, 91, 109, 116, 206, 424
Philip III, King, 174* * 99 > 345 - 346 >
418-419
Philip IV, King; and Jesuits, 35 2 » 4 ° 2 *
41 1, 437; and patronato, 382, 422-424;
mentioned, 401-402, 408
Philip V, King, 541, 544, 566, 572-573,
580
Philippine Islands: agriculture, 21, 97,
137, 291, 539; army, 11, 17* 20-21,
78-79, 88-90, 95, 122, 128, 131, 340,
416; church administration, 96-97, 127,
277-278, 349-350, 489, see also Clergy;
church and state, 257, 416-419, 475*
485, 489, 496, 526, see also Patronato;
Christian life, 481, 530-532, see also
Parishes; climate, geography, natural re-
sources, 54, 58-59* 89-90, 122; con-
quest and colonization, 5, 13-15* 17-1-9*
22-23, 29, 89, 96, 340; culture and
society, 34, 92-93, 416, 440, 53 °~ 53 2 *
534-535, 567; economy, 17-18, 62,
77-78, 81-82, 97, 112, 179, 207, 346-
348; education, 1 81, 5 o8 » see a ^ 50 under
names of schools; finances, 79-80, 90,
95, 122-124, 340, 413-416; insular
government, 13 — 14* 26—35* 66, 81-82,
91-94, 96, 124, 239, 349* 47 °* 5 2 6 *
5 3 2—5 35; provincial and local govern-
ment, 27-28, 34-35* 292, 530, 533“
534, see also Towns, formation of; immi-
gration, 205, 416; industry, 17, 89,
109-110, 143-144; administration of
justice, 18, 30, 34, 98, 115-116, 349;
navy, 79, 95* 123* 343 » 543 » see a ^ s0
Dutch, Magindanaus, Sul us; officials,
88, 90, 96, 179; population, 12, 58-59,
89-90, 98, 1 5 1, 434; taxation, 17, 30-
32, 97-98, 125, see also Forced labor,
Tribute; domestic trade, 30-31, 146,
284, 392; foreign trade, 34, 79-81, 91,
95, iio-m, 124, 136, 414-416, 543,
see also China, Galleon trade
Philippine province, Jesuit, 200, 222;
churches, 537; colleges, 277, 515, 576;
see also under names of individual colleges ;
congregations, 254, 260-261, 264-265,
269-271, 276-277, 435 - 436 , 447 * 4 6 9 >
512, 528, 573; expulsion and suppres-
sion, 582-595; finances, 241, 246-247,
272-278, 401, 494-495, 503, 594-595;
government, 249-252, 258-260; see also
Mission policy, Jesuit; and native clergy,
Index
694
572-573, 579; novitiate, 200-201,
238-240, 433, 510; see also San Pedro
Makati; personnel, 223-226, 241-242,
249-250, 436, 438, 440, 516, 552;
procurators, 224-225, 254-255, 437,
440; recruitment, 226-227, 237, 261-
262, 401, 437, 441, 552; religious
observance, 243-251, 268, 512; statis-
tics, 238-239, 241-242, 433-434, 441,
552, 581; superiors, 245-246, 248, 254,
271, 435; tertianship, 261, 433
Philippine vice-province, Jesuit, J49-1 50,
187, 222
Piarists, 593
Piccolomini, Francesco, 252
Piedad, Jesuit estate of, 594
Pimentel, Juan, 9
Pimentel, Luis, 435-436
Pineda, Sebastian de, 344
Pintados. See Visayans
Pious Schools, Fathers of. See Piarists
Pitong Gatang, 1 1 3
Pius X, Pope, 510
Pizarro de Orellana, Francisco, 489, 491
Plasencia, Juan de, 35, 79
Playa Honda: first battle of, 329-331;
second battle, 336-340; third battle,
341, 406-407; mentioned, 335, 339,
346, 350, 362
Playing cards, monopoly of, 123-124
Plaza, Juan de la, 7-8, 14, 64, 179
Poblete. See Millan de Poblete, Miguel
Pobre, Juan, 39
Pollok Harbor. See Sabanilla
Polo, 1 14
Polosin, Magdalena, 159
Ponce, Miguel, 412
Ponolud, 453
Poor Clares, 526
Porto Rico, 230
Portuguese, 37, 41-42; and Dutch, 341,
399; at Macao, 39, 42-44; in Moluccas,
129, 286-287, 305, 317; and Silva's
armada, 321, 332-334; slave trade, 195,
363; and Spaniards, 37, 45, 47, 61 , 103,
415; trade in Asia, 4, 45, 104, 488
Postulata, 253
Prado, Raymundo de. See Prat, Ramon
Prat, Ramon, 64-65, 67, 180, 218; and
boarding school for natives, 172-273 ;
and catechetical instruction, 176; and
Chinese, 68, 76, 209, 213; on Chirino,
181 ; and church music, 175; and College
of Manila, 145, 149-150; and formation
of towns, 184-185; on Pedro Lopez de
la Parra, 179; master of novices, 192;
ministries in Manila, 69-71 ; and Miseri-
cordia, 132; mission policy, 168-171,
183-184, 257, 262; on Sedeno, 107,
109; teaches moral theology, 69; teaches
Tagalog, 136; and tribute, 126; vice-
provincial, 149, 171, 177-178, 187-
188; and Visayan missions, 152, 154 “
155, 166-167, 182-187; mentioned,
156, 203, 223, 238
Prieto, Juan Silverio, 583-585, 588-591,
595
Prima primaria. See Sodality of the Blessed
Virgin Mary
Principalia, 533
Privateers, 230
Propaganda, Sacred Congregation of, 466,
477 i 4 79
Prospero, Juan, 143 -144
Protector de indios, 35, 271
Protestantism, 455, 478
Puche. See Vicente, Francisco
Puebla, 180, 232, 426
Pulangi River, 151-153. See also Magin-
danau
Pulwa, 298
Punta Flechas, 384
Quecheu, 49
Quesada, Miguel, 593
Quiapo: district, 209-210, 212, 374*
Jesuit property in, 133, 149, 272, 366-
367; parish, 373, 402, 5 13-5 14
Quinalasag Island, 231
Quinones, Diego de, 336
Quinones, Juan de, 80
Quinto, 98
Quiroga, Pedro de, 414
Rada, Martin de, 32
Ramirez de Arellano, Francisco, 594
Raon, Jose, 583-585, 588
Ratio studiorum, 162, 198, 351, 361, 565
Ray, John, 557
Real Street, 121, 368
Real de la Cruz, Martin, 409
Receputo, Carlo, 225-226
Recollects, 358, 383-384, 398, 401, 405,
424-425, 473, 59 x ~ 59 2
Index 695
Recurso de fuerza, 490, 524
Red Lion , 335
Regidor, 1 1
Relacion curiosa } 499
Religious of the Virgin Mary, 507-508,
579 , ,
Religious orders. See Clergy, regular
Religious women, 61-62
Remedies fdciles para diferentes enfermedades, 507
Renteria, Juan de, 365
Repartimiento, 17, 23, 62. See also
Requisitioning
Repetti, William C., 57 0 ~ 57 *
Requisitioning, 21, 29, 127, 340, 344-
346, 41 3-414
Residencia, 18
Restitution, 35-36, 93, 98, 102, 127
Retreats, 176-177, 183, 241, 318, 359,
508, 558 - 559 > 579
Rial. See Peso.
Ribeiro, Manoel, 334
Ribera, Juan de, X 34, 17L * 73 * * 79 * x 82-
187, 203, 221; embassy to Goa, 332-
333; as moralist, 199, 354
Ribera, Gabriel de, 18, 65, 82, 132, 15 1_
1 52; and Jesuits, 76, 107, 110-in, 121
Ribera Maldonado, Antonio de, 231
Ribera Maldonado, Diego, 400
Ricci, Matteo, 43, 50, 53, 103-104, 140
Ricci, Vittorio, 450, 483
Riccio, Gian Camillo, 224-225
Rio, Pedro del, 3 93 » 398
Rio Grande de Mindanao. See Pulangi River
Rios Coronel, Hernando de los, 209, 344 "
345 .
Riquelme, Javier, 435, 474, 486
Rizal, province of. See Tondo
Roa, Francisco de, 254, 405, 435
Robert Bellarmine, Saint, 332
Rodriguez, Alonso, 1 54 * 161—162, 3 ° 8 —
3°9
Rodriguez, Andres, 593
Rodriguez, Diego, 179, 186, 304, 306
Rodriguez, Jose, 586
Rodriguez, Manuel, 509, 537, 558
Rodriguez de Avila, Francisco, 302
Rodriguez de Figueroa. See Figueroa,
Esteban Rodriguez de
Rodriguez de Ledesma, Francisco, 16 1
Rodriguez de Lujan, Jeronimo, 5 1 3
Roi, Meindert de, 541
Rojas, Pedro de, 66, 70, 79, 83, 130
Roman, Juan Bautista, 52-53, 56 - 57 * 80,
83-84
Roman College, 201
Romblon, 493
Rome, 54, 37 L 377 * 5 * 6 ; Jesuit province
of, 225
Romero, Juan Francisco, 587, 591
Ronquillo, Diego, 50-51, 64
Ronquillo, Juan, 279, 337“ 339
Ronquillo de Penalosa, Gonzalo, II, 18,
21, 25-26, 38-39, 49, 65, 99, 129, I43;
and Jesuits, 10, 38, 40, 76; mentioned,
41, 47, 81, 110
Ros de Aviles, Gines, 388, 393, 3 95 ” 3 9 ^
Rosa, Francisco de la, 592
Rosario, Jose del, 594
Rosario, 406-407
Rosary, Our Lady of the, 407
Rota Island, 456
Rotterdam, 265, 334
Rubin, Mateo, 593
Rueda, Juan de, 514
Ruggiero, Michele, 42-44* 5 °» 5 3 — 54 * 56*
85, 103-104
Ruiz de Maroto, Juan, 397
Sa, Lionardo da, 46-47
Sabanilla, 393, 395 * 398 * 44 2
Sabdullah, Datu, 545
Saguinsin, Bartolome, 576
Sahajosa, Luis de, 8, 110
Said, Sultan, 328, 331
Said Abu Bakr, 320
Said Dini, Sultan, 3 ° 7 “~ 3°8
Saipan Island, 456
Saito, Juan, 363
Salalila, Felipe, 113* **6
Salamanca, Juan Cerezo de, 3 2 5 * 3 ^ 1 » 5*3
Salazar, Domingo de, 5* 9 ~ *** 5 * » *°*"
102, 105, ill, 127; and Chinese, 69,
206-207; on civil protectorate of mis-
sions, 104; and colonial government, 21,
1 24-1 27; convokes synod of Manila, 23 ,‘
on duty of restitution, 36, 127; and
episcopal jurisdiction, 258; and Jesuits,
63-64, 68-70, 72, 1 16, 137. 35*5 and
Junta of Manila, 78, 80, 82-83; and
native rights, 25—26, 3°* 112, 126—127;
and parish appointments, 418; on
patronato, 127, 424; on privileges of
regular clergy, 10 1 ; and project to invade
China, 50-53; and Alonso Sanchez, 9,
Index
696
23-24, 50, 83, 100, 102-105; on
Spanish conquest, 22, 101; and stone
construction, 107, 1 09-1 10; mentioned,
38, 167 ,
Salazar, Jeronimo, 204
Salazar, Jose de, 502
Salazar, Juan de, 233, 254, 373, 387, 405
Salcedo, Diego de, 485-486, 488
Saleeby, Najeeb, 297-298, 300, 320, 543,
545 * 549
Salgado, Francisco (Captain), 309
Salgado, Francisco (S.J.), 435-436, 476,
495 * 5 i 5
Sali, 282, 287
Salibansa, 397
Salinas, Luis de, 136
Salingaia Bungsu, 300
Salonga, Felipe, 114
Salumbide, Jose, 587
Salvadora 3 La, 333, 337-338
Salvatierra, Cristobal de, 9, 24, 132
Samals. See Lutaus
Samar Island, 9, 19, 31, 59, 162, 316, 341,
343, 462, 589; raids on, 308, 311, 323,
383, 450; revolt, 411-413, 447
— missions, 145, 154, 260, 287, 350, 399,
592; progress, 162-163, 315-316;
reorganization, 183-187
— residence, see Tinagon
Samboangan. See Zamboanga
Samper, Domingo, 474
Sampuatan, 161
San Agustin, Cabo de, 296
San Agustin, Gaspar de, 14, 577-578
San Agustin, Juan Antonio de, 527
San Andres , 333
San Angel, 456
San Antonio (galleon), 230-231, 275
San Antonio (w arship), 215
San Antonio, Martin de, 586
San Basilio, Antonio Maria de, 457
San Bernardino Strait, 9, 162, 231, 340-
341, 405-406, 590
San Carlos , 588-591, 593
Sanchez, Alonso: character and early life,
5 - 7 * 35 * 8 2 * 101; and synod of Manila,
23-24; first voyage to Macao, 38, 44—
50, 76; at Canton, 41-44; in Formosa,
47-48; second voyage to Macao, 52-53,
56-57; at Junta of Manila, 79, 80, 82,
83; colonial agent, 76, 82-83; i n
Mexico, 84-88; at Madrid, 88-89; ac
Rome, 99, 100-105, 1 74 ~ 1 75 J dies,
106; on colonial officials, 71, 90, 98-
100, 292; and Chinese officials, 40-41,
48-49, 56; and Dominicans, 87, 102-
105; and Franciscans, 39; and Jesuit
Philippine mission, 9, 60-61, 63, 71—74,
1 17-120, 221, 235; and Jesuits in
China, 42, 54 — 5 5 ; and mission policy,
75, 93-94, 104; and native rights, 343,
354; as peacemaker, 70; on Philippines,
12, 14, 88-91; and plan to invade
China, 50-52; on Portuguese, 41-42; and
Bishop Salazar, 14, 23-24, 102-105;
and Spanish Jesuits, 105-106; on Spanish
sovereignty, 91-94; spiritual doctrine,
6-7, 71; mentioned, 58, 117, 122, 132,
191,234,414
Sanchez, Bartolome, 394-395
Sanchez, Diego, 134, 175-176
Sanchez, Gabriel, 1 55, 164-165, 186, 312
Sanchez, Jose, 435-436
Sanchez, Mateo, 134, 148-149, 155, 183 —
184, 291-292
Sanchez, Pedro, 5-6
Sancho, Martin, 84, 191
Sancho, Tomas, 585, 587-588
Sancho de Santa Justa y Rufina, Basilio,
582, 584, 587, 593-594
Sanctuary, right of, 378, 487
Sandakan, 297
Sande, Francisco de, 18, 21, 29, 113, 239,
320; expedition to Brunei, 29, 136, 151
San Diego, 406-407
San Diego de Cebu , 189-190
Sandin, Alonso, 477, 479-480
San Felipe, 333-334, 337
San Felipe, College of, 400-401, 445
San Fernando , 548
San Francisco de As is, 592
San Francisco Javier village, 473
San Gabriel: convent, 490, 497, 499 *
hospital, 348; parish, 525
Sangil, 283, 447
Sangleys. See Chinese
San Gregorio, Antonio de, 502
San Ignacio settlement, 369, 473
San Ignacio University. See Manila, College
of
San Ildefonso, College of (Cebu)* See Cebu,
College of
San Ildefonso, College of (Manila), 5S3 —
584, 587-588, 595
Index
697
San Jacinto, 589, 591
San Jose, College of: academic gown 196,
360, 403; academies, 197, 216-217,
352; administration, 200, 244, 358,
433, 553, 575; alumni, 321, 400, 502-
503 ; buddings, 197-198, 276, 405, 559;
and Chinese revolt of 1603, 212-217;
and clerical vocations, 217, 3 59» 57^ J
and College of Manila, 352-353* 35 ^>
504; and College of San Felipe, 400; and
College of Santo Tomas, 407-408, 410-
411, 493; doctorates, 353-354, 503;
domestics, 512; endowment, 274-275,
587; and expulsion of Jesuits, 584-587,
593 ; finances, 272-274, 358; foundation,
1 34-135, 195-197, 258; an obra pia,
275, 526; royal patronage of, 408, 580;
scholarships, 349, 400, 403 ; statistics,
242; statues, 197, 359* 57 1 > student
life, 217, 358-359, 511, 555; students,
199, 358, 570, 585-586; studies, 216—
217, 360, 504, 568; mentioned, 232—
233, 277, 365, 367-368, 466, 474, 494,
502, 505, 507
San Jose, Francisco de, 425
San Jose, Hospicio de, 374
San Jose Street, 121
San Juan, 456
San Juan Bautista , 329-331* 333 “ 334 > 337
San Juan Bautista estate, 503
San Juan de Letran, College of, 586
San Juan del Monte; convent, 497 ; mis-
sion, see Taytay
San Juan de Ulua, 121, I 34
San Juanico Strait, 162
San Lorenzo, 456
San Lorenzo , 333, 337
Sanlucar, Juan de, 154* 2,51, 290
Sanlucar de Barrameda, 120, 227-228, 230
San Marcos , 333, 3 37 — 33 s
San Martin , 8-9, 52-53, 84
San Mateo, 367, 391-392, 484
San Miguel: parish, 212-21 3, 345 * 3 ^ 5 *
370-372; residence, 363, 372, 4 ° 5 » 43 3 ~
434 * 537
San Miguel) 333, 337
San Pedro, Agustin de, 398
San Pedro Makati, 110, 240-242, 273,
278, 390, 433, 508, 584, 586, 594
San Pedro Tunasan, 276, 358, 367, 390,
503, 527, 586
San Roman, Hernando de* 248, 330
Santa Ana, 456
Santa Ana t HI, 114, Il6
Santa Catalina, Bernardo de, 209
Santa Cruz (Manila): district of, 273* 373 *
513; parish of, 374, 392, 402, 413,
490-491, 513-514; residence of, 433-
434, 438, 575* See also San Ildefonso,
College of
Santa Cruz (Marinduque), 374“375 * 575 “
57 6
Santa Cruz (near Antipolo), 159
Santa Cruz, Baltazar de, 491
Santa Cruz, Eugenio de, 576
Santa Ines, 471-473* 475
Santa Maria, 473
Santa Maria Maggiore, 312
Santa Misericordia, 1 3 1-1 32
Santa Potenciana, 286
Santa Potenciana, College of, 132, 176,
349 * 405
Santa Rosa (frigate), 593
Santa Rosa (galleon), 493, 495, 498
Santiago , 333
Santiago (settlement), 191, 345 * 3^8-369
Santiago, Diego, 143, 154* * 57 * 189-190
Santiago, Fort, 123, 176* 205, 21 1, 391*
403, 489, 499, 502, 519, 549
Santiago de Bagumbayan, 490
Santibanez, Ignacio de, 127* 178, 199* 2 ° 7 *
272
Santisimo Nombre de Jesus. See Cebu
Santo Domingo, 421, 498-499
Santo Tomas, College of, 181, 352, 405.
408-410, 503, 526, 566; and College of
Manila, 356-358* 3 ^ 5 * 409-411, 580;
and College of San Felipe, 400; and
College of San Jose, 360, 407-408, 410-
41 1, 493, 586; scholarships, 349, 400;
mentioned, 489* 494 * 5 I 4
Santo Tomas University, 374, 507
Santos, Jose de los, 427
Sanvitores, Diego Luis de, 455-456* 4 ^ 9 “
470, 474-475, 508, 510-511, 540; and
Marianas mission, 455-456, 470; and
popular missions, 470-471
Sao Paulo, College, 46, 54 — 5 5
Sardinia, Jesuit province of, 224-225, 252
Sarigan 456
Sankula, Prince, 443, 445 * 45 °
Sarmiento, Pedro, 115
Sarsali, Fabrizio, 191, 290, 323
Savoy, Duke of, 37
Index
698
Sayor, 142
Scelsi, Leonardo, 154, 161-162, 203
Schmitz, Bernhard, 538, 542, 555-556
Schools, Jesuit: elementary, 43 3, 530, 538;
for natives, 75 . *19. 163, 172-173,
188-189, * 95 * 2 6°< 316, 359, 575. See
also under names of individual colleges
and missions
Schrevel, Lewin, 550
Schurz, William Lytle, 416, 558
Sebastiao I, King, 37, 55
Secanell, Luis, 592
Sedeno, Antonio: character and early life,
7-8, 72, 149, 180; and Jesuit Philippine
mission, 5, 7, 60-61, 221; as mission
superior, 65, 71-74, 433; starts Jesuit
ministry with Chinese, 67-68 ; learns
Tagalog, 14, 58, 76; and Jesuit residence
in Manila, 1 07, 121, 51 3; rector, 120;
vice-provincial, 145; and College of
Manila, 63, 1 33-1 35; and Visayan
missions, 135, 145, 148-149, 166; dies,
149; as builder, 107, 109-110, 122;
civic work, 70, 109-110, 132; and
colonial government, 21-22, 79, 82, 126,
128-1 30; on Philippines, 12, 14, 58-59;
and Juan de Plasencia, 35; and Alonso
Sanchez, 35, 38, 52-53, 55, 83; men-
tioned, 66, 1 17, 159, 174, 201, 367-
368, 595
Segovia Wood, 31
Segura, Juan Bautista de, 7-8
Segura, Pedro de, 19 1, 203, 248
Seminario de indios. See Schools, Jesuit
Serrano, Andres, 550, 553
Seville, 7, 88-89, I20 » 22 3 > 226-228
Shang-ch’uan Island, 45
Shipbuilding, 17, 33-34, 343-346, 402,
41 1
Siam, 57, 1 12, 286
Siao Island, 130, 438, 454-455, 506, 541
Siassi Island, 444
Sibuguey, 395
Sicily, Jesuit province of, 225
Sidotti, Gianbattista, 573
Sierra Madre, 9-10, 232, 391, 413, 537,
580
Sierra y Osorio, Juan de, 526
Silang: mission of, 203, 474, 527; resi-
dence of, 242-244, 248, 369-370, 43 3 —
434, 475; town of, 203, 345, 469
Silva, Fernando de, 330, 374
Silva, Jeronimo de, 341
Silva, Juan de, 308, 334-336, 344, 352,
372, 419; armada against Dutch, 320-
321, 3 3 3—3 34; and battle of Playa
Honda, 329-331; Moluccas expedition,
33 I_ 33 2 » 34 2
Simone, Francesco, 191, 223-225
Simuai, 298, 442
Siquijor Island, 290
Sirongan, Raja, 152-153, 295, 298; and
Melchor Hurtado, 297, 303, 305, 307;
raids of, 282-284, 309-310; and
Spaniards, 279, 297, 303, 305-306
Sistran Bay, 231
Sixtus V, Pope, 101, 1 04-105
Siangan, 298
Slavery: church policy on, 102, 421; and
Jesuits, 107, 157-158; among Moslem
Malays, 151, 299-300, 354, 433; among
Spaniards, 15, 17, 25; Spanish policy on,
25, 98, 102, 1 12, 1 1 5, 354-355* 3 88 >
435;amongTagalogs, 12-13,25, 139, 376
Slaves, 118-119, 128, 200, 435; East
Indian, 369; negro, 1 95, 209, 363
Slave trade, 124, 299-300, 324
Society of Jesus, 3-4, 7, 61-62, 100, 277,
365, 433, 437, 462, 510; admission
policy, 63, 226, 233-237, 441, 555 *
general congregations, 105, 226, 236,
252-253; provincial congregations, 253;
constitutions, 3-4, 61, 105, 49 5 “49^*
522; and episcopal jurisdiction, 258, 271,
419; expulsion from Spain and domi-
nions, 351, 582; external discipline, 249,
512; government, 100, 168, 252-255;
membership, 4; and patronato, 270-271 ;
schools, 192, 201, 277, 409-410;
suppression, 593
Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 201,
364; in Manila, 201-202, 217, 3 ^°> * n
Visayan missions, 202, 217
Sodomy, 207
Sogod, 290, 324
Sola, Magino, 414-416, 435
Solana, Miguel, 224-225, 252, 254, 410-
41 1, 425, 435 - 437 , 4 86
Soliman, Raja, 13, 366
Solorzano, Manuel, 457
Sonnenberg, Walter, 225
Sonsorol, 550
Sorda, Jose, 592
Sorsogon, 9, 154, 412
699
Sotelo, Pedro, Z83
So tomayor, Bartolome de, 79
Sousa, Felix de, 594
Southeast Asia, 89-90, 151, 285-286
Spain, 226, 371, 471, 523, 528; and
China, 44, 47, 53, 56, 86; colonial
government, 31, 422, 534 * J e suit pro-
vinces of, 133-134, 224—226, 236, 252,
262, 437, 524; and missions, 63-64,
226-229; and Moluccas, 129, 454;
sovereignty in Philippines, 34, 91-94, 96,
See also Philippine Islands
Spice Islands. See Moluccas
Spilimberg, Fulcher, 548
Spinelli, Luigi, 485
Spiritual exercises. See Retreats
Statute labor. See Forced labor
Steinhauser, Adolf, 225, 443
Stengel, Franz Xaver, 593
Stole fees, 277, 420, 475-480
Strobach, Augustin, 440, 457
Studium generale, 409
Suaraga, 466-467, 525
Suarez, Francisco, 6, 295
Suarez, Hernan, 64-67, 71 - 73 * I0 7 * H 7 I
ministries in Manila, 67-70, 76, 85; on
mission policy, 75-76* 234
Suarez de Toledo, Gaspar, 5-6, 9
Subanuns, 300, 445-447, 451-454,
Sulu archipelago, 59, Hi, 261, 281, 320,
466; Spanish expedition to, Ilo, 281,
387-388
Sulug. See Sulus
Sulus, 296, 299, 309, 320-323, 445, 543;
and Dutch, 327, 334, 336, 443; and
Islam, 151, 297, 300, 320, 543; and
Magindanaus, 283, 309, 541; raiding
expeditions, 151, 316, 3 19-323, 344,
45°, 539; and Spaniards, 282, 388, 442-
445 * 549
Sumatra, 286, 320, 340
Sumoroy , 4 1 1 -4 1 3
Sun of Holland, 335, 338
Sunda Strait, 89, 281
Sungjaku, 300
Suntay, Juan, 208, 210-212
Surigao Strait, 296
Susabau, 115
Tabako, 445
Tabora, Juan Nino de, 319, 3 22 '* 345 ^ 34 ^*
369, 374* 4^3
Index
Tabunawai, 297-298, 300
Tagabundok, 188
Tagal, 382—384
Tagalog missions, Jesuit, 256, 265-271*
278, 369, 462, 469, 474
Tagalogs, 12, 30, 112 - 115 * 15 *» I 57 * 208-
209, 212, 343, 508, 523; and Aetas,
155; character, 14-15; culture, 14, 140-
141, 156-157, 532; customs, 13, 113,
1 1 5, 137'139* 158-I59» l an g ua g e > 14*
144; and Mangians, 375 ~ 37 b; religious
beliefs, 138-140, 155-1 57 > 3 6 9 ^ social
and political organization, 12-13, 112,
116, 125, 139, 533
Tagaytay, 1 25
Tagima. See Basilan
Tagolanda, 283
Tagoloan, 298
Taipei, 342
Takayama, Justo, 363
Talibong, 165
Tamarau, 375
T ambobong, 113-114
Tamburini, Michelangelo, 555, 673
Tamontaka, 152-153
Tampakan, 153-154* 2 79
Tampasuk, 297
Tampilos, 446
Tanay, 186-187
Tancon, 41
Tandu, 397
Tanores, 170
Tanshui, 342, 399
Tantayan, 1 5 3
Tapia, Cristobal de, 155
Tapul Island, 444
Tarapilla Salcedo, Pedro de, 371
Tarragona, Jesuit province of, 354
Tasi, Esteban, 114, 116
Tawi-tawi Island, 1 5 1, 396, 466
Tayabas, 124, 3 21
Taytay: mission, 1 37 - 143 * * 45 * 1 54 “ 1 59 »
189, 233, 365, 368-369; ranch, 133,
149, 181, 239, 273, 276; town, 137,
345 * 369* 391 * 4 6 9 » 47 i
Tello, Juan, 281
Tello, Pedro, 196, 237, 250-25 1
Tello de Guzman, Francisco, 31, 154, 178-
179, 205, 279, 281; and Jesuits, 173-
174, 178-179, 182, 199, 287-288,
408
Tepotzotian, College of, 179
Index
700
Termte Island, 129-130, 319, 331; and
Dutch, 286, 327; mission, 332, 454,
475; and Portuguese, 286-287; and
Spaniards, 303, 307, 342, 416. See also
Moluccas
— people: and Magindanaus, 279, 283,
304, 306, 309; raid Bohol, 163; and
Sulus, 309
— town, 475
Theatricals, Jesuit, 188-189, 313, 364-
3 6 s .
Theoclitos, Daniel, 237-238
Thomar, Cortes of, 38
Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 34
Thomas More, Saint, 595
Ticao Island, 589
Tidore Island, 129, 307, 327, 473
Tigbauan, 143-146, 159, 375
Tilpe, Johannes, 440
Timaua, 12, 299
Timuai, 451-452
Tinagon: mission, 154, 162-163, 182,
187, 287, 316; residence, 183, 243, 316
Tinian, 456
Tiongeng, 203 -20 5, 216
Tirurai, 298
Tithes, 98, 100
Tobacco: monopoly, 370-371; smoking,
356
Tokugawa, 371
Toledo, 6, 11, 89; Jesuit province of, 84,
106, 224, 226, 516
Toledo, Francisco de, 102, 105
Toledo, Gaspar Suarez de. See Suarez de
Toledo, Gaspar
Tondo: district, 12-13, 210-21 1, 272,
533; parish, 23, 79, 491; province, 70,
112-116, 392; mentioned, 30, 133
Tordesillas, Agustfn de, 39
Tordesillas, Treaty of, 37
Torre, Gaspar de la, 546
Torres, Juan de, 155, 164-165, 290, 374-
375
Toumon, Charles Mailiard de, 573
Towns, formation of, 33, 181-182, 259-
261, 350; in Bohol, 314-3 15; in Leyte,
160-162, 315-316; and Moro raids,
261-262, 343; in Visayas, 184-186,
260-263, 290-292
Trent, Council of, 258-259, 419
Tribute, 15, 17, 59, 91, 95, 1 1 3, 124,
126, 246; amount, 19, 32, 95 ; collection,
15, 17, 20, 30, 32-33, 96, 160, 162,
164, 284, 293, 349; controversy regard-
ing, 105, 124-127; exemptions from,
13, 1 12; form of, 33, 98; morality of,
19, 23, 29-32; pre-Spanish, 1 12. Sec
also Taxation
Trujillo, Cristobal de, 146
Tuambakar, Gabriel, 113, 133
Tuan, 299
Tuao, 501
Tubud, 314
Tubuk, 297
Tubunawai, 300
Tuccio, Antonino, 435, 553 ~ 554 > 5^0
Tuigan, Salvador, 167
Tulayan Island, 549
Tuley, 1 31
Tunasan. See Pedro Tunasan
Turks, 3,4, 86
Ugalde, Lorenzo de, 406-407
Ugalde Orella, Esteban de, 443
Ugbo, Orangkaia, 447
Ulut River, 162
Umbun, 298
Ungac, Lorenzo, 167
Uray, Marfa, 451
Urban VII, Pope, 101
Urdaneta, Andres de, 19
Usury, 421
Valdemoros, Alonso de, 421
Valdez, Francisco, 380
Valdez y Tamon, Fernando, 544, 567, 581
Valdivia, Francisco Campos, 501
Valencia, Carlos de. See Receputo, Carlo
Valenzuela, Juan Morales de, 540
Valignano, Alessandro, 42-43, 45 ~ 47 > 5 °»
54-56, 180
Van Neck, Jakob, 286, 327
Van Noort, Oliver, 189-190, 285-286,
329
Van Speilbergen, Joris, 334-339
Vargas, Alonso de, 91
Vargas, Francisco de, 498
Vargas, Juan de, 489, 492-493, 499-5° L
5H-5I5
Vazquez Mercado, Diego, 9, 23, 343-344-
360, 419-421; and Jesuits, 63, 1 3 3, 35 2 >
366, 370
Vecino, 11
Index
701
Vega, Hernando de, 91
Vega, Juan de la, 337-339
Vega, Juan Manuel de la, 309
Vela, Baltazar, 591
Velasco, Jose de, 554, 558, 579
Velez, Juan de, 502
Velez, Luis, 80
Venegas, Manuel Estacio, 401, 482
Venus , 593
Vera, Francisco de, 154, 177-179, 221
Vera, Isabel de, 66
Vera, Juan Bautista de. See Eng Kang
Vera, Melchorde, 323-326, 330, 334, 385,
3871 3 93
Vera, Santiago de, 66, 69-71, 78, 80-81,
1 1 X —1 1 3 , 404; and fortifications of
Manila, 109, 121-123; and Jesuits, 64,
68, 133
Vera Cruz, 227, 230
Verde, Cape, 78
Verdote, Pablo, 591-592
Vereeinigde Oostindische Compagnie
(V.O.C.). See Dutch East India Company
Viaticum, 476-477
Vicente, Francisco, 166-167, 290, 319,
39 °
Victoria Street, 121
Viga, Juan Antonio de, 489, 501
Vigan, 39, 59, 490
Villa, Mateo de, 400
Villa Fernandina. See Vigan
Villagra, Cristobal, 279, 281
Villalba, Francisco, 492-493
Villalobos, Diego Jorge, 203
Villalobos, Ruy Lopez de, 5, 281
Villamanrique, Marquis of, 84
Villanueva, Antonio de, 9
Villanueva, Tomas de, 191
Visayan islands, 59, 124-125, 304, 411,
478 ; Moro raids on, 151,261,282-285,
299-301,324-325
Visayan missions, Jesuit, 170—171, 256,
287, 467-468, 518, 523, 528; abandon-
ment or retention of, 462-463, 517,
520-521 ; churches, 185, 224, 246, 268,
317; conduct of missionaries, 244, 461;
finances, 278, 461-462; growth, 319,
467, 538; organization, 244, 262-271,
460-465; problems, 182-183, 458-
460, 462; schools, 248, 290, see also
under Schools, Jesuit, and names of
individual missions; superintendent of,
260, 271; and Tagalog missions, 351,
462
Visayans, 58, 143-144, 151, 262, 411;
culture, 1 60-161; customs, 147, 160;
economy, 20, 459-460; languages, 144;
religious beliefs, 147, 313-314; revolts,
412-413; social organization, 146-147,
184-185, 290-292. See also Towns,
formation of
Visitas, 266, 433
Visitation, episcopal, 102, 490, 5 1 5, 525.
See also Episcopal jurisdiction
Vitandus, 493
Vitelleschi, Muzio, 227, 264, 269, 358,
383, 512; and College of Cavite, 373;
and College of Manila, 358, 370; and
drinking of chocolate, 249 ; and episcopal
jurisdiction, 271; and royal patronato,
270-271 ; and reorganization of Philip-
pine missions, 264-265, 270-271; on
women sodalists, 364
Vivero, Rodrigo de, 308-309
Vizcaino, Sebastian, ill
Volante, Juan, 102-105
Wako, 45, 59
Walter, Victor, 550
Wan Li, 203
Warai Tupueng, Datu, 163
Westphalia, Peace of, 407, 41 1
Wilhelm, Johann, 545
Wilhelm, Josef, 545-546
Windward Fleet, 415
Witchcraft, 356, 421
Wittert, Francois de, 328-331, 335
Xavier. See Francis Xavier, Saint
Xavier, Jakob, 536-537, 550
Yakans, 445
Ysui, 466
Zabalburu, Domingo de, 541, 550
Zacarias, Pedro, 548
Zambales, 127-128
Zamboanga: College of, 277, 433-434,
542, 575, 592; fort, 325-326, 382-383,
416,433,438,444-445, 540-541, 543;
mission, 445-447, 451, 540-542, 546,
549; naval squadron, 384, 41 1, 413,
547; peninsula, 279, 281, 297, 300, 309,
702
Index
320, 451-452; town, 1 51, 283, 304,
395
Zamora, Pedro Andres de, 3 94
Zamudio, Francisco, 381
Zanzini, Josef, 454
Zapata, Ignacio, 254, 435
Zapata, Marcos, 380-381
Zarzuela, Diego de, 191
Zarzuela, Juan de, 41 1
Zassi, Francisco, 544
Zelandia, Fort, 450
Zifuentes, Tiburcio de, 487
Zugasti. See Ortiz Zugasti, Francisco
Zuniga. See Martinez de Zuniga, Joaquin
Imprimatur: * Rufinus J. Santos, D. D. Manilensis,
Die 21 Decembris 1957.
I
Central Archaeological Library,
NEW DELHI.
Call No. 271*5099l</*al - 38114
1 Author- delaCo,rta » H -
Title— Jaeuita In the Philippines
(1581-1768)
Borrower No,
Date of Issuo t Date of Return
-L
**A book ihai is shut is but a block”
^aeoloc,^
GOVT. OF INDIA
Department of Archaeology ^
<
A?
&
NEW DELHI.
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