The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume 32, 1640
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Preface
In the present volume is concluded the excellent Historia of the Dominican writer Diego Aduarte, begun in Vol. XXX, and continued in XXXI; the period of mission history here covered being 1608–37. Aduarte died in 1636; but the events subsequent to 1634, with a sketch of Aduarte’s life, are added by the hand of his editor, Fray Domingo Gonçalez.
Continuing the life of Fray Luis Gandullo, who was prominent among the founders of the Dominican province, Aduarte narrates the marvelous conversions and even miracles wrought by him, and many of his visions and other wonderful experiences. In 1612, the chapter again elects Fray Miguel de San Jacinto as provincial. The persecutions in Japan become more widespread and severe; various incidents therein are related. Our writer sketches the life of Fray Diego de Soria, the second bishop of Nueva Segovia; and of another early missionary in that province, Francisco Minayo.
Book ii of Aduarte’s history recounts events from 1614 on, beginning with Japan, where a new and more cruel persecution of the Christians begins with that year; and orders are given by the shogun that all priests and religious must be banished from Japan. When this order is carried out, many of the missionaries remain in the country, in hiding and disguised – traveling through the country to instruct and console the Christians, suffering great hardships and dangers, and finally, in most cases, dying as martyrs for their faith. In the long biography of Fray Francisco de San Joseph Blancas, the most interesting point is his linguistic achievements in the Tagal language, and the introduction of printing in the Philippine Islands, which Aduarte here ascribes entirely to Fray Francisco. This father also learned the Chinese language, and assumed the charge of instructing the negroes and slaves in Manila.
In 1615, the Cagayán mission is much disturbed and injured by the flight to the mountains of many Indians who had been gathered into the mission reductions; this is caused by the machinations of the aniteras, or priestesses of the old idols, who try to draw these half-tamed Indians back to their old superstitions. In this year come a large company of religious; and in 1616 the provincial elected is Fray Bernardo de Sancta Catalina – who dies soon afterward, and of whom Aduarte writes a long biographical account. He is succeeded as provincial (April 15, 1617) by Fray Melchior de Mançano. The persecutions in Japan steadily increase in severity, in 1615–16, in which latter year Iyeyasu dies. In 1617 two missionaries – one a Dominican, the other an Augustinian – deliberately go to Omura to rebuke the daimiô for his cruelty to the Christians, and to preach the gospel in public; they, with other captive religious, are put to death. Their example in so bravely enduring martyrdom encourages and strengthens the Japanese Christians, many of whom give their lives for the faith, and compels the respect of the heathen. Other missionaries are arrested, and suffer great privations while in prison.
Aduarte recounts the progress of the work undertaken by the Dominicans for the Chinese in Manila. For many years the missionaries live at Binondoc, the village to which the Christian Chinese go to live when they receive the new faith; but they conclude that it would be better for all concerned to build a convent and church within the Parián. In 1617 they begin to erect these buildings, and priests of the order take up their residence therein, in the midst of that great market and its crowd of traders and artisans. Their labors are crowned with notable and prompt success – not only in securing the baptism of the sick and dying, but in the instruction of those who are in health, who carry the gospel into their own country, wherein the missionaries hope to effect a great conversion some day. The church first erected is a poor and unsubstantial affair; but afterward a large and very handsome church is built – in the Chinese fashion, of wood shaped and fitted without any nails. When the Parián is burned in 1628, the church is saved by placing an image of the Virgin in front of the approaching flames. Later, the timbers begin to decay, and another building is erected, with stone pillars; its walls are covered with paintings, which serve greatly for the instruction of the heathen. During fifteen years, the number of baptisms in this church amounts to 4,752. The Dominicans win the great respect and affection of the Chinese, who seldom die without having received baptism.
This order extends its labors to some other countries. China is, of course, the chief goal of its desires; but the Dominicans are unable to effect an entrance therein. One of the friars, attempting to go there (1618), is obliged by storms to land on Formosa; and to his subsequent report of the advantages of this island is ascribed its later acquisition by the Spaniards. Another mission sets out for Korea, but is unable to go farther than Nangasaki, and is thus frustrated. Twenty-four new missionaries arrive this year from Spain. A new residence is established at Cavite, the priests in which accomplish much good, among both Spaniards and natives. A new mission is begun in the Babuyan Islands, north of Cagayán; it is very arduous and full of privations, but the religious gladly labor therein, and find the people excellent Christians, although they are most poor and needy. The fathers often ask alms from the convents and the Christians in Nueva Segovia, to help these poor disciples of the Lord. Some of the religious who have remained in Japan are martyred in this year of 1618; yet amid the fierce persecutions new converts are made, and the native Christians show much loyalty and generosity to their spiritual fathers.
In 1619 the intermediate chapter session meets at Nueva Segovia, on which occasion the college of Santo Thomas at Manila is formally added to the province; an historical sketch of this institution is presented. In November of that year occurs an unusually severe earthquake in Luzón, of which various features and incidents are recorded. Among the buildings overthrown is the Dominican convent in Manila, all its inmates, however, escaping in safety. In 1621 Fray Miguel Ruiz is elected provincial. On November 6 of that year occurs a revolt among the Gadanes in northern Luzón, of which a full account is given. One of the Dominican missionaries, Fray Pedro de Santo Thomas, courageously goes alone and unarmed, to the mountain stronghold of the insurgents, to win them back; and some months later he returns with three hundred families of these rebels, who settle peaceably on the lower lands. Aduarte fills chapters xviii–xxvi with accounts of martyrdoms of Dominicans in Japan, during 1621–23, and sketches of their lives – matter which is presented to our readers in brief synopsis, as but indirectly concerning the Philippines.
The election of provincial in 1625 elevates to that dignity Fray Bartholomé Martinez, who has long labored among the Chinese of Manila. In this year occurs another revolt among some of the Cagayán Indians; two religious are treacherously slain by them, and then they flee to the mountains. In 1626, Fernando de Silva sends an expedition to conquer Formosa, which is accompanied by Dominican missionaries, who hope to find in Formosa a stepping-stone to an entrance for them into China. A fortified post is established in the island by the Spaniards; the Dominicans act as spiritual guides for the soldiers, and, after learning the native language, are able to win the confidence of the inhabitants and begin instructing them. Many of the missionaries in the province die, but a reënforcement comes to them in this same year. In 1627 is held the intermediate chapter-session. By that time the revolted Mandayas have been pacified, and by the efforts of their Dominican pastors induced to return to their villages and to the care of the missionaries. In this year occur many martyrdoms in Japan, of which accounts are given. In 1628, the four orders of friars in the Philippines unite to send a reënforcement of missionaries to Japan, but this attempt is frustrated by the wreck of their ship. Aduarte at this time arrives at Manila with a large company of religious. A Spanish expedition is sent to Camboja, and the Dominicans send missionaries thither; but both enterprises result in failure. In Formosa they are making some progress.
The provincial elected in 1629 is Fray Francisco de Herrera. Soon afterward dies Fray Bartolomé Martinez, of whom Aduarte writes a long biography; he ends his life in the Formosa mission, which he had established. The persecutions in Japan continue (1629–30), hundreds being martyred for the faith, and rigorous search being made everywhere for all Christians. It is with difficulty that any news of events there can be sent from that country. At the end of 1630, some Spaniards, accompanied by two Dominican friars, go on an embassy to the Chinese city of Ucheo; on the way, the Chinese crew mutiny, and kill most of the Spaniards. Four of these, including one of the friars, escape to the Chinese coast; the father remains there, and labors among the heathen. In December, 1633, the preaching of the gospel is introduced into Itui, in Luzón; two Dominican friars go thither, of whose mission, and of that region and its people, some account is given, followed by a long biography of Fray Tomás Gutierrez, head of the mission. The new provincial this year is Fray Domingo Gonçalez, Aduarte’s editor; at this session of the chapter an important change is made, the abolition of the intermediate chapter. The missions are extended farther than ever before, but new workers are greatly needed. Many religious meet a martyr’s death in Japan this year, and the persecution steadily increases in severity; biographical sketches of several martyrs are given, one of whom had achieved much in Formosa. In that island arises a rebellion among the natives, who murder (1633) one of the missionaries.
Aduarte describes the mission to the Mandayas of northern Luzón, begun in 1631; it has been very successful, and many of those fierce and warlike people are now quite tamed and Christianized. The martyrdoms (in 1634) of several missionaries and Christian women in Japan, with sketches of their lives, are related. Two chapters are devoted to an account of the Dominican missions in China, which contain many devout Christians; at times, the missionaries are in danger of being slain by mobs. The Dominican mission in Formosa has not accomplished many conversions, and it has lost many devoted missionaries.
At this point ends Aduarte’s own work in this history; the remaining chapters are added by his editor, Fray Domingo Gonçalez. He relates in full the late effort made by Fray Diego Collado to divide the province of Filipinas, and to appropriate its best posts and revenues for his congregation of “Barbones.” This attempt greatly disturbs Aduarte, whose last days are saddened, and perhaps even shortened, thereby. But not long after his death this cloud passes away, and the province is restored to its former condition – a result mainly ascribed to the intervention of the Virgin Mary; and Collado’s new congregation melts away. Gonçalez then presents a long and elaborate biography of the illustrious Aduarte, which we abridge considerably, retaining especially such information about that prelate, and such account of the missions, as has not already appeared in his Historia. His virtues are recounted at length, and the many benefits which he secured for his order, for the poor and needy everywhere, and for the Indians.
Fray Gonçalez completes Aduarte’s history up to the year 1637, thus comprising the first fifty years of the history of the Philippine Dominican province. In that year, Fray Carlós Gant is elected provincial; and in Japan the last Dominican friars remaining there are martyred, of whose lives and deaths sketches are given. At the end of the book is printed a letter from Felipe IV to the Dominican provincial at Manila, ordering that the recent partition of the province be annulled, and Collado sent back to Spain.
The Editors
August, 1905.
Historia de la Provincia del
Sancto Rosario de la Orden
De Predicadores
(Concluded)By Diego Aduarte, O.P.; Manila, 1640Source: Translated from a copy of the above work in the possession of Edward E. Ayer, Chicago.
Translation: This is made by Henry B. Lathrop, of the University of Wisconsin. This volume includes chaps. lxxi–lxxviii of book i, and all of book ii – partly in synopsis.
History of the Dominican Province of the Holy Rosary
By Fray Diego Aduarte, O.P.
(Concluded)
Chapter LXXI
The arrival at Manila of father Fray Luis, his assignment to Pangasinan and the events there
[Father Fray Luis was assigned to the province of Pangasinan and went there in the company of the two other fathers who were sent to the same place. Suffering from disease as a result of exposure, he was miraculously cured. The Lord wrought miraculous conversions by means of father Fray Luis, and supported him in his sufferings and illness with visions. Being taken back to Manila for care, and fearing that he might be sent to some other province, he prayed God to renew his strength that he might return to Pangasinan. The Lord heard his prayer and he was able to return to the duties which he loved. The Lord blessed the mere word of father Fray Luis, sometimes even more than the great labors of other religious; and he took as his special charge those Indians who had been given up by others. At one time when news came that smallpox was raging in one of the villages named Bimmalay, and that many children were dying in it, father Fray Luis instantly went there to baptize as many of the children as he could. The fathers were not usually permitted to baptize the children, except in cases where it was certain that they were not going to live, and then they were permitted to do so only as a result of prayers and importunities. At one time a soldier came to Binalatongan with news that Don Luis Perez das Mariñas was dying in the province of Ylocos. He sent word to father Fray Luis, but without asking him to come, as the sisters of Lazarus wrote to the Lord. Father Fray Luis went to his choir to intercede for his friend, and there remained constantly in prayer and sacrifice until he received news that he was better. From the very day when the soldier reached father Fray Luis, the governor began to recover his health. On many occasions sick children were healed by the prayers of father Fray Luis. He was ready to risk his life for his duties. In many cases it seemed as if God had kept children alive only until they received baptism that they might be saved.]
A case which illustrates this point happened to father Fray Luis in Calasiao. He would never tell of this unless compelled by his obedience. He was called upon to see a child who had been baptized, and who was dying; and he went there with a boy named Andresillo, and with others. When they came near the house where the child was, they heard a great lamentation with which they were weeping over him; and in another house very near they heard a great noise of people who were drinking, as was then very common among the heathen. Among others was their chief named Catongal, a man fierce by nature, and furious when he had taken wine. On this occasion he came up with the others, full of wine, and said to the father, “You kill many” – intimating that he killed them with baptism, because few of those who received it escaped. The father replied that the reason of this was, that the Indians did not permit the children to be baptized until there was no hope for their lives; and he said that the good that the religious did to them would cause them to rejoice greatly if they knew it. Catongal was not mollified by this; and the father tried to leave him to go on, but it seemed best to have the child shrouded first that he might take it and bury it – to prevent superstitious acts, such as were customary. He saw it lying dead in the arms of an Indian woman; and, looking upon it as such, he directed them to shroud it. But a voice within him seemed to say that he should repeat a gospel. He went to look at it again, found upon it all the marks of death, and said, “Why should I say a gospel for it?” They shrouded it; but he was still more urged on by that inner impulse to repeat the gospel, until at last he did so. It was the gospel of St. John, In principio erat verbum.1 After he had repeated this he made the sign of the cross upon the brow of the infant, saying, “O Lord, I ask no miracles of thee; but if it is to thy glory, the credit of thy faith, and the conversion of these heathen, I pray thee to work them.” He added, Evangelica lectio sit tibi salus et protectio, placing his hand upon the head of the child; and, before he took away his hand, the Lord looked upon the child and gave it life. All were astonished, and the father in confusion said, in order to humiliate himself, that it could not have been dead; and the chief was convinced that the fathers did not kill children. The child sucked immediately, like a well and healthy child. It would have been a miracle, even though it were not dead, for it so suddenly to have recovered its health. Father Fray Luis passed the rest of that day in great embarrassment, being anxious lest some part of what had happened should be attributed to him, as the instrument of it. On the following day he went to ask how the child was, and found it well and strong. He asked the Indians who were there what they thought of the event, and, before they replied, the Lord gave him an answer from within: “This is excessive curiosity.” He blamed himself severely, and was so ashamed that he went away immediately, and never more looked upon the child or spoke of the matter; and on the occasions which offered themselves for any father to make any reference to it (because it had been public), he changed the subject of conversation, without appearing to understand. [In the villages of Gabon and Magaldan, father Fray Luis succeeded in overcoming the hardness of heart of the heathen.]
Chapter LXXII
Some special favors received by father Fray Luis from the Lord, and some temptations which he suffered from the enemy
[However glorious the success of father Fray Luis in this country, he was desirous of going to Great China, the conversion of which the religious of this region had most at heart. He was taught in a vision that the conversion of China was soon to be attempted and saw also a vision of a man such as the missionaries to China ought to be. He was constant in prayer and had frequent visions which guided him in his religious life. The Lord granted him the blessing of great purity. At one time, having been careless in prayer, he was visited by the Lord with a punishment of strange trembling which went from the feet to the top of his head, and seemed as if it would shatter his bones. When the fathers of this province decided to send two to make an exploration of the great kingdom of China, father Fray Miguel de Benavides asked for the prayers of father Fray Luis – and, in particular, that the idols might fall to the earth before the presence of God. Father Fray Luis offered his prayers, and received from God the reply that he asked much. But he answered, “Thou canst do it, O Lord.”
It is not only favors which the Lord grants His servants; hence father Fray Luis suffered many temptations of the devil, which were permitted by the Lord that the virtues of the father might take firmer roots. At one time the devil appeared to him in the form of Christ; but father Fray Luis, not being moved by the affection which he commonly felt for holy visions, said to him, “Thou art not that which thou seemest.” When father Fray Luis made the sign of the cross, the devil took the form of a great cat, fierce, black, and terrible, which by sending fire from its eyes and mouth exhibited its rage and torment. “That is your real form, I think,” said the father, and without paying any further attention to him, he went on with his holy exercises. The devil strove to interfere with him in his prayer, but he was able to drive him away. He was at times tempted to be guilty of improprieties in saying mass, such as looking into the chalice, but the angels protected him. The devils at times strove to make him flee from the church where he was performing his discipline.
Father Fray Luis suffered as much from the temptations of others as from his own. He comforted Brother Juan de Soria of Manila, who, under the direction of God, laid aside the habit of the order. On another occasion, he assisted a novice who was moved by affection for a woman. He had a vision of Christ crucified, with drops of blood falling from his head upon his breast, but not upon the ground; this signified that the novice should leave the order, but not to his destruction.. He did so, and was married; but in a few days he was left alone, his wife going to the aid of her poor and widowed mother. This the Lord seemed to have ordained. On another occasion, father Fray Luis succeeded in converting a Spanish sinner of the most obstinate sort, who had been exiled from Nueva España to the Philippinas for his scandalous life. The wretch confessed, and received communion, girt himself with a haircloth garment, and, during the rest of his life (during which he was confined in prison), he fasted often on bread and water.]
Chapter LXXIII
The fervor of spirit of father Fray Luis, and his expedition to China
[Although grace perfects nature, it may work so vehemently that it weakens it and takes from it health and even life. This happened in the case of father Fray Luis, who, although he was of robust constitution, sometimes lost his health and was in great danger of death as the result of the vehemence of his spirit in receiving the favors of God. He prayed to the Lord to moderate this vehemence of spirit, and begged that he would take it from him. Father Fray Juan de Soria prayed the Lord to take from father Fray Luis this intensity, and to give it to Don Luis Perez das Mariñas. From that day forward the father lived with the greatest calmness, while the knight became so fervent of spirit that he seemed like a living fire; and finally he said to father Fray Luis that he should die of the love of God. Father Fray Luis, after having received this peace and calm, became eager to go to the conversion of China. Father Fray Juan had a vision of Christ our Lord, seated upon a very spirited horse, which was biting the bit and leaping about. The saddle, the girths, the reins, and all the other accoutrements all seemed so weak that saddle and horseman were sure to fall to the ground; but he held his seat firmly, and made charges in one direction and another, brandishing a lance with great dexterity. The horseman said to the father, “Who, think you, can control this horse?” He answered, “Thou only knowest, Lord.” “It is I alone,” said the Lord, giving him an inward understanding that this horse represented China, and the weak accoutrements signified the scarcity of ministers for its conversion. He added aloud, “Go straightway and tell Fray Luis what thou hast seen, which is a corroboration of what has at other times been said to him.” Visions were manifested to others, which ratified the visions which had already shown Fray Luis that he was to go to China. Before the departure of the governor Gomez Perez, Cathalina Diaz – a Spanish woman of holy life, to whom God vouchsafed to see the future in visions, at times – had a vision of the governor with his head cut open and bathed in his blood, the death of the governor by treachery being prophesied in this way. Although the difficulties of going to China seemed as a result of this act of treachery to be greatly increased, in reality the Lord made it the means by which father Fray Luis was sent there; for he received a commission as ambassador, in company with father Fray Juan de Castro. The ambassadors, reaching the province of Canton instead of that of Chincheo, for which they were bound, were arrested as pirates. Father Fray Luis thus had the opportunity to convert an apostate Christian among the Chinese. He also found many slaves from Macan who had apostatized in that country; and to them he preached with much spirit, but little fruit. The voyage was one on which they suffered greatly, particularly father Fray Luis, who traveled with nothing but the habit in which he was clothed; and they were exposed to the rain and to the cold, which was excessive. The viceroy of Canton was very wrathful with them because they did not show him the courtesy customary in that country, threatened them, and commanded them to leave the province within fifteen days, taking with them not more than twenty-five picos of rice. On his way back to the port he found a number of apostates, but was unable to bring them back to the faith.