Chapter 4

[In 1618 two unusually brilliant comets were visible in the Philippines; their effects on the minds of the people are thus described (fol. 5):]1There was great variety and inaccuracy of opinion about the comets; but through that general although confused notion which the majority of people form, that comets presage disastrous events, and that the anger of God threatens men by them, they assisted greatly in awakening contrition in the people, and inciting them to do penance. To this the preachers endeavored to influence them with forcible utterances, for the Society had not been behind [the other orders] in preparing the city for the entire success of the jubilee;2for there was one occasion when eleven Jesuits were counted, who, distributed at various stations, cried out like Jonah, threateningdestruction to impenitent and rebellious souls. God giving power to their words, this preaching was like the seed in the gospel story, scattered on good ground, which not only brought forth its fruit correspondingly, but so promptly that those who heard broke down in tears at hearing the eternal truths; and, like thirsty deer, when the sermon was ended they followed the preacher that he might hear their confessions, already dreading lest some emergency might find them in danger of damnation. This harvest was not confined within the walls of Manila, but extended to its many suburbs, and to the adjacent villages, in which missions had been conducted. Not only was there preaching to the Spaniards, but to the Tagálogs, the Indian natives of the country—who, in token of their fervor, gave from their own scanty supply food in abundance to the jails and prisons, Ours aiding them to carry the food, to the edification of the city. To the Japanese who were living in our village of San Miguel—exiles from their native land, in order to preserve their religion, who had taken refuge in Manila, driven out from that kingdom by the tyrant Taycosama—our fathers preached, in their own language. And it can be said that there was preaching to all the nations, that which occurred to the apostles in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost being represented in Manila; for I believe that there is no city in the world in which so many nationalities come together as here. For besides the Spaniards (who are the citizens and owners of the country) and the Tagálogs (who are the Indian natives of the land), there are many other Indians from the islands, who speak different tongues—such as the Pampangos, the Camarines[i.e., the Bicols], the Bisayans, the Ilocans, the Pangasinans, and the Cagayans. There are Creoles [Criollos], or Morenos, who are swarthy blacks, natives of the country;3there are many Cafres, and other negroes from Angola, Congo, and Africa. There are blacks from Asia, Malabars, Coromandels, and Canarins. There are a great many Sangleys, or Chinese—part of them Christians, but the majority heathens. There are Ternatans, and Mardicas (who took refuge here from Ternate); there are some Japanese; there are people from Borney and Timor, and from Bengal; there are Mindanaos, Joloans, and Malays; there are Javanese, Siaos, and Tidorans; there are people from Cambay and Mogol, and from other islands and kingdoms of Asia. There are a considerable number of Armenians, and some Persians; and Tartars, Macedonians, Turks, and Greeks. There are people from all the nations of Europa—French, Germans, and Dutch; Genoese and Venetians; Irish and Englishmen; Poles and Swedes. There are people from all the kingdoms of España, and from all America; so that he who spends an afternoon on thetuley4or bridge of Manila will see all these nationalities pass by him, behold their costumes, and hear their languages—something which cannot be done in any other city in the entire Spanish monarchy, and hardly in any other region in all the world.From this arises the fact that the confessional of Manila is, in my opinion, the most difficult in all theworld; for, as it is impossible to confess all these people in their own tongues, it is necessary to confess them in Spanish; and each nationality has made its own vocabulary of the Spanish language, with which those people have intercourse [with us], conduct their affairs, and make themselves understood; and without it Ours can understand them only with great difficulty, and almost by divination. A Sangley, an Armenian, and a Malabar will be heard talking together in Spanish, and our people do not understand them, as they so distort the word and the accent. The Indians have another Spanish language of their own; and the Cafres have one still more peculiar, to which must be added that they eat half of the words. No one save he who has had this experience can state the labors which it costs to confess them; and even when the fault is understood in general, to seek for a specific account of the circumstances is to enter a labyrinth without a clue. For they do not understand our orderly mode of speech, and therefore when they are questioned they say “yes” or “no” as it occurs to them, without rightly understanding what is asked from them—so that in a short time they will utter twenty contradictions. It is therefore necessary to accommodate oneself to their language, and learn their vocabulary. Another of the very serious difficulties is the little capacity of these people to distinguish and explain numbers, incidents, and circumstances; add to this the unbridled licentiousness of some, in accordance with the freedom and opportunities [for vice] in this land, the continual backsliding, and the few indications of fixed purpose. In others, who are capable and explain their meaning well, is found a complicationof perplexities—with a thousand reflections, and bargains, and frauds, and oaths all joined together; and faults that are extraordinary and of new kinds, which keep even the most learned man continually studying them. The heat of the country, and the stench or foul odor of the Indians and the negroes, unite in great part to make a hardship of the ministry, which in these islands is the most difficult; and on this account I regard it as being very meritorious. The annual confessions last from the beginning of Lent until Corpus Christi. In our college of Manila the church is open from daylight until eleven o’clock, and from two o’clock until nightfall; and always some fathers are present to hear confessions—for this is done not only by the active ministers, but by the instructors, when their scholastic duties give them opportunity; and I have known some fathers who remain to hear confessions during seven, eight, or more hours a day.It makes them bear all these annoyances patiently, and even sweetens these, to see how many souls are kept pure by the grace of God, in the midst of so many temptations, like the bramble in the midst of the fire without being burned. There are many who are striving for perfection, who frequent the sacraments, who maintain prayer and spiritual reading, and who give much in alms and perform other works of charity. And it is cause for the greatest consolation to see, at the solemn festivals of the Virgin and other important feasts, the confessional surrounded by Indians, Cafres, and negroes, men and women, great and small, who are awaiting their turns with incredible patience, kept there through the grace of God, against every impulse of their natural dispositionsand their slothfulness. And at the season of Lent it is heart-breaking to see the confessor, when he rises from his seat, surrounded by more than a hundred persons of all colors, who go away disconsolate because they have not obtained an opportunity to make their confessions; and in this manner they go and come for eight or ten days, or a fortnight, or even more, with unspeakable patience, but with such eagerness that when the confessor rises they go following him throughout the house, calling to him to hear their confessions. This is done even by boys of seven to twelve years, and hardly with violence can they be made to leave the father, and they continue to call after him; and some remain in the passages, on their knees, asking for confession, so great is the number of the penitents—to which that of the confessors does not correspond by far, nor does their assiduity, even if there were enough of them. The Society is not content with aiding those who come to seek relief in our church, and attending the year round all the sick, of various languages, who summon them to hear confession; but its laborers go forth—as it were, gospel hunters—to search for penitents. They assist almost all who are executed in the city; every week they go to the jails and hospitals; in Lent they hear confessions in all the prisons, and at the foundry, those of the galley-slaves. And in the course of the year they hear confessions in the college of Santa Ysabel—in which there are more than a hundred students, who are receiving the most admirable education—and in the seminary of Santa Potenciana, the students frequenting the sacraments often; and, in fine, they go on a perpetual round in pursuit of the impious.The confessional is, as it were, the harvesting of the crop; and the pulpit is the sowing, in which the seed of the gospel is scattered in the hearts of men, where with the watering of grace it bears fruit in due time, according to the coöperation [of the Holy Ghost?]. With great constancy and solicitude the Society contributes to the cultivation of these fields of Christianity, with preaching. In Manila the Society has, besides the sermons from the holy men of the order, other endowed feasts, and the set sermons5in the cathedral and the royal chapel. When necessity requires it, a mission is held, and the attendance is very large, although hardly a fifth of those who hear understand the Spanish language; this to a certain extent discourages the missionaries, as does even much more the fact that they do not encounter those external demonstrations of excitement and tears that they arouse in other places. This originatesfrom the characteristic of a large part of the audience, that these attend with due seriousness only to certain undertakings; and the distractions of their disputes and business affairs, and their indolence and the air of the country, dissipate their attention beyond measure. Their imaginations, overborne with foolish trifles, and accustomed to our voices, become so relaxed that even the most forcible and persuasive discourses make little, if any, impression. Nevertheless, there are many in whom the holy fear of God reigns, and the seed of the gospel takes root—which they embrace with seriousness and simplicity, as the importance of the subject demands. The marvel is, that many Indians and a great many Indian women, only by the sound of [the preaching in] the mission, and without understanding what they hear, are stricken with contrition, confess themselves, and receive communion, in order to gain the indulgences—to their own great advantage, and to the unspeakable consolation of their confessors at seeing the wonderfully loving providence of God for these souls.This fruit and this consolation are most evident in theSpiritual Exercisesof St. Ignatius,6which are explained through most of the year in our college.The principal citizens make their retreat there, and in the solitude of that retirement God speaks to them within their hearts; and marvelous results have been seen in various persons, in whom has been established a tenor of life so Christian that they may be called the religious of the laymen—in their minds those eternal truths, on which they meditate with seriousness, remaining firm, for the orderly conduct of their lives. The students in the college of San Joseph have their own society, which meets every Sunday, in which they perform their exercises of devotion and have their exhortations, during the course of the year. Every Sunday the Christian doctrine is explained to the boys in the school, and some example [for their imitation] is related to them; and they walk in procession through the streets, chanting the doctrine. The Indian servants of the college have their own assembly, conducted in a very decorous manner, with continual instruction in the doctrine. Every Saturday an address in Tagálog is given to the beatas who attend our church; they have their own society, and exercise themselves in frequent devotions, furnishing an excellent and useful example to the community. Every year they perform the spiritual exercises; and the topics therein are given to them in Tagálog, in our church, by one of Ours. Many devout Indian and mestizo women resort hither on this occasion, to perform these exercises, in various weeks, for which purpose they make retreat in the beaterio during the week required for that; and even Spanish women, including ladies of the most distinguished position, perform their spiritual exercises, and the topics for meditation are assigned to them in our church. This practice isvery beneficial for their souls, of great usefulness to the community, and remarkably edifying to all.The Society also busies itself in the conversion and reconciliation of certain heretics, who are wont to come from the East (as has been observed in recent years), and in catechising and baptizing the Moros or the heathens who sometimes reach the islands—either driven from their route, or called by God in other ways; and He draws them to himself, so that they obtain holy baptism, as has been seen in late years in some persons from the Palaos and Carolina islands, and from Siao. Another of the means of which the Society avails itself for the good of souls is, to print and distribute free many spiritual books in various languages, which are most efficacious although mute preachers. These, removing from men their erroneous ideas by clear exposition [of the truth], and leaving them without the cloak of their own fantastic notions, persuade them, without being wearisome, to abandon vice or error; and then they embrace virtue and the Christian mode of life. In Lent, as being an acceptable time and especially opportune for the harvest, the dikes are opened, in order that the waters of the word of God may flow more abundantly. On Tuesdays there is preaching to the Spaniards, and these sermons usually have the efficacy of a mission, although not given under that name. On Thursdays there is explanation of the doctrine, and preaching, in Tagálog, to the Indians; the attendance is very great, since many come, not only from the numerous suburbs of Manila, but even from the more distant villages. On Saturdays some good example of the Virgin is related, with a moral exhortation; the Spaniards who are members offraternities attend these, and afterward visit the altars. On Sundays there is preaching to the Cafres, blacks, creoles, and Malabars—who through a sense of propriety are called Morenos, although they are dark-skinned. The sermon is in Spanish, and the greatest difficulty of the preacher is to adapt his language to the understanding of the audience. Various poor Spaniards also attend these sermons, as well as other people, of various shades of color, of both sexes.Every Sunday certain fathers are sent to preach at the fort or castle, to the soldiers and the other men who live there. The Christian doctrine is chanted through the streets, and in the procession walk the boys of the school; it ends at the royal chapel, where some part of the catechism is explained, and a moral sermon is preached to the soldiers who live in their quarters in order to mount guard. The doctrine is explained at the Puerta Real and at the Puerta del Parián, and there is preaching in the guard-room—where there is a large attendance, not only of soldiers, but of the many people who, on entering or going out from the gates, stop to hear the word of God. Another father goes to the royal foundry, in which the galley-slaves live, where there is such a variety of people—mestizos, Indians of various dialects, Cafres, negroes of different kinds, and Sangleys or Chinese—that exceptional ability and patience are necessary in order to make them understand. Other fathers go to the college of Santa Isabel and the seminary of Santa Potenciana, where they give addresses and exhortations to the students of the former, and the women secluded in the latter. Others go to the prisons of both the ecclesiastical andsecular jurisdictions, in order that the prisoners may obtain the spiritual food of the doctrine. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays there is in our church aMiserere, with the discipline [i.e., scourging]; a spiritual book is read to those who are present, and at least once a week an exhortation is addressed to them.Such is, in general, the distribution of work for our college at Manila in Lent, and therein are engaged nearly all the men in the college, whether priests or students; and in times when there is a scarcity of workers I have seen some helping at two or three posts, and not only ministers and instructors thus occupied, but even the superiors, and men of seventy years old, to the great edification of the community. At Lent is seen in Manila that which occurred at the destruction of Jericho, where, when the priests sounded around the city the trumpets of the jubilee, the walls immediately gave way and fell to the ground. Thus in Manila do the Jesuits surround the walls, calling to every class of people with the trumpets of the jubilee and offering pardon; and at the sound, through the grace and mercy of the Highest, the lofty walls of lawlessness, vice, and crime, fall in ruins. And even the presence of the ark is not lacking to this marvelous success, for it is not to be doubted that the Blessed Virgin, most merciful mother of sinners, aids us with her intercession. [Our author here relates various instances of miraculous aid from heaven, and other edifying cases.][Fol. 13:] Father Juan de Torres, with another priest and a brother, went from the college of Manila to conduct a mission at a place which is calledCabeza de Bondoc,7about sixty leguas from Manila, in the bishopric of Camarines—the bishop of Nueva Cazeres at that time being his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Diego de Guevara, of the Order of St. Augustine. As soon as that zealous prelate took possession of his see, he began to ask for fathers of the Society, in order that, commencing with the Indians who were already peaceable who reside in Nueva Cazeres, they might establish missions and continue their instructions in other villages which he intended to give them. But the Society, who always have showed due consideration to the other ministers in these islands, not attempting to dispossess them from their ministries—although not always have we found them respond in like spirit—thanked that illustrious prelate for his kindness, without accepting those ministries; and in order that he might see that [the cause of this action] was consideration for the ministers, and not the desire to escape from the labor, Ours consented to conduct a mission in Bondoc, the difficulty of which, and its results, are explained by that prelate in a letter which he wrote to Father Torres, in which he says: “I find that it is true, what was told to me in Manila, when I gave that mission-field to the Society, and I mention it with great consolation to myself; and that is, that it was the Holy Ghost who inspired me to give it—for I see the fruits which are steadily and evidently being gathered therein. For in so many ages it has been impossible to unite those villages, and the Indians in them were regarded as irreclaimable;and now in so short a time those villages have been united, and the Indians, [who were like] wild beasts, appear like gentle lambs. These are the works of God, who operates through the ministers of the Society—who with so much mildness, affection, and zeal are laboring for the welfare of those people.” Great hardships were suffered by those of the Society in these missions, and for several years that ministry was cared for by Ours, until it was entrusted to the secular priests.The mission of Bondoc gained such repute in the island of Marinduque, distant more than forty leguas from Manila, that its minister, who was a zealous cleric, wrote to the father rector at Manila asking him very humbly and urgently to send there a mission, from which he was expecting abundant fruit. So earnest were the entreaties of this fervent minister that a mission was sent to the said island; it had the results which were expected, and afterward the Society was commissioned with its administration. In nearly all the ministries of secular priests the Society was carrying on continual missions, at the petition of the ministers or at the instance of the bishops.... The Society was held in honor not only by the bishop of Camarines, but equally by his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano, a son of the great Augustine and most worthy archbishop of Manila. That most zealous father Lorenzo Masonio preached to the negroes who are in this city and outside its walls, according to the custom of this province, which distributes the bread of the gospel doctrine to all classes of people and all nations. And that holy prelate deigned to go to our church, and, taking a wand in his hand, asthe Jesuits are accustomed to do, he walked through the aisle of the church, asked questions, and explained the Christian doctrine to the slaves and negroes. The community experienced the greatest edification at seeing their pastor so worthily occupied in instructing his sheep, not heeding the outer color of their bodies, but looking only at their precious souls—for in the presence of God there is no distinction of persons.[Fol. 22:] The island of Malindig—named thus on account of a high mountain that is in it, and which the Spaniards call Marinduque—is more than forty leguas from Manila, extends north and south, and is in the course which is taken by the galleons on the Nueva España trade-route.8There Ours carried on a mission with much gain, at the instance of its zealous pastor, who was a cleric; and in the year 1622 this island was transferred to the Society by his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano, the archbishop of Manila, who was satisfied by the care with which the Society administers its charges, and desirous that his sheep should have the spiritual nourishment that is necessary for their souls—for it was exceedingly difficult for him always to find a secular priest to station there, on account of the distance from Manila, the difficulty of administering that charge, and the loneliness which one suffers there. The Society gladly overcame these difficulties for the sake of the spiritual fruit which could be gathered among those Indians; and our ministers,applying themselves to the cultivation [of that field], went about among those rugged mountains—from which they brought out some heathens, and others who were Christians, but who were living like heathen, without any spiritual direction. They baptized the heathens and instructed the Christians; and, in order that the results might be permanent, Ours gradually settled them in villages which they formed; there are three of these, Bovac, Santa Cruz, and Gasan, and formerly there was a visita in Mahanguin. The language spoken there is generally the Tagálog, although in various places there is a mixture of Visayan, and of some words peculiar to the island. God chose to prove those people by a sort of epidemic, of which many died; and the fathers not only gave them spiritual assistance, but provided the poor with food, and treated the sick. This trouble obliged them to resort for aid to the Empress of Heaven, to whom they offered a fiesta under the title of the Immaculate Conception, during the week before Christmas, with great devotion; and the Virgin responded to them by aiding them in their troubles and necessities.[Fol. 27:] In Marinduque Ours labored very fervently to reduce the Christians to a Christian and civilized mode of life; and among them was abolished an abuse which was deeply rooted in that island—which was, that creditors employed their debtors almost as if they were slaves, without the debtor’s service ever diminishing his debt. The wild Indians were reduced to settlement; among them were some persons who for thirty years had not received the sacraments of penance and communion. In the Pintados Islands there was now much longingfor and attendance upon these holy sacraments, when their necessity and advantage had been explained to the natives.[Fol. 29:] His illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano had so much affection for the Society, and so high an opinion of the zeal of its ministers, that he decided to entrust to it the parish of the port of Cavite. This, one may say, is a parish of all the nations, on account of the many peoples who resort to that port from the four quarters of the world; it was especially so then, when its commerce was more opulent, flourishing, and extensive [than now]. It did not seem expedient to the Society to accept this parish; but, in order to show their gratitude for the favor, and to coöperate by their labors with the zeal of that active prelate, they took upon themselves for several months the administration of that port, in which they gathered the fruit corresponding to the necessity—which, with so great a concourse of different peoples there, and the freedom from restraint which exists in this country, was very great. The metropolitan was well satisfied, and very grateful; and he insisted until the Society made itself responsible for the administration of one of the three visitas which the said parish has. This was a village on the shore of the river of Cavite, which on account of being older than the settlement at the port is called Cavite el Viejo [i.e., Old Cavite]; it afterward was located on the shore of the bay, about a legua from the said port—which, in order to distinguish it from this village, is called Cavite la Punta [i.e., Cavite on the Point], because it is on the point of the hook formed by the land; from this is derived the name Cavite, which means “a hook.” Theministry [at Old Cavite] was then small, but difficult to administer, on account of the people being scattered, and far more because of the corruption of morals; for, lacking the presence of the pastor, and the wolves of the nations who come here from all parts for trade, being so near, it might better be called a herd of goats than a flock of sheep—this village being, as it were, the public brothel [lupanar] of that port; and there was hardly a house where this sort of commerce was not established. This was a matter which at the beginning gave the ministers much to do, but with invincible firmness they continued to correct this lawless licentiousness; and by explaining the doctrine, preaching, and aiding the people with the sacraments, they made Christians in morals those who before only seemed to be such in outward appearance and name. Ours continued to reclaim these people to the Christian life, and today this village is one of the most Christian and best instructed communities in all the islands; it has a beautiful and very capacious church of stone, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, and a handsome house [for the minister]. There are in this village, besides the Tagálogs (who are the natives), some Sangleys and many mestizos, who live in Binacayan, which is a sort of ward of the village.[Fol. 31 b:] Ardently did the apostle of the Indias desire to go over to China for its conversion; but he died, like another Moses, in sight of the land which his desires promised to him. Since then, without looking for them, thousands of heathen Chinese have settled in these islands. As soon as the Society came to these shores, Ours applied themselves, in the best manner that they could, to the conversion andinstruction of those people—and even more in recent times, on account of the Society possessing near Manila some agricultural lands, which the Chinese (or Sangleys, as they are commonly called) began to cultivate. Ours were unwilling to lose the opportunity of converting them to our holy faith, so various persons were actually baptized; and, to render this result more permanent, a minister was stationed there, belonging to this field, who catechised them, preached in their own language, baptized them, and administered the sacraments—with permission from the vice-patron, Don Juan Niño de Tabora, and from the archbishop, Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano—and it is called the village of Santa Cruz. Their language is very difficult; the words are all monosyllables, and the same word, according to its various intonations, has many and various significations; on this account not only patience and close study, but a correct ear, are required for learning this language. Don Juan Niño de Tabora was the godfather of the first Sangley who was baptized; the most distinguished persons in the city attended the ceremony; and this very solemn pomp had much influence on the Chinese (who are very material), so that, having formed a high idea of the Catholic religion, many of them embraced it. Some were baptized a little while before they died, leaving behind many tokens of their eternal felicity, through the concurrence of circumstances which were apparently directed by a very special providence.In Marinduque Father Domingo de Peñalver had just induced some hamlets of wild Indians to settle down; he traveled through the bed of the river, getting his clothing wet, stumbling frequently over thestones, and often falling in the water. He went to take shelter in a hut, where there were so many and so fierce mosquitoes, that he remained awake all night, without being able to rid himself of the insects, notwithstanding all his efforts. He reached a hill so inaccessible that it was necessary that some Indians, going ahead and ascending by grasping the roots [of trees], should draw them all up the ascent with bejucos. There he set up a shed, where, preaching to them morning and afternoon, he prepared them for confession, and persuaded them to go down and settle in one place, as actually they did, to live as Christians. For lack of laborers, the Society resigned the district of Bondoc and several visitas, although Ours went there at various times on missionary trips. The people of Hingoso called upon Father Peñalver to assist them, because many in their village were sick, and the cura was at Manila; the father went there, gave the sacraments to the sick, and preached to the rest twice a day in the church. Three times a week they repaired to the church for the discipline, and he offered for them the act of contrition, and almost all the people in the village confessed. Afterward, at the urgent request of the archbishop of Manila, Father Peñalver went to Mindoro, to see if he could reconcile those Indians and their cura, which the archbishop had not been able to secure by various means; the said father went there, and preached various sermons, with so much earnestness and efficacy (on account of his proficiency in the Tagálog language) that in a short time they were reconciled together, the causes of the dispute bring entirely forgotten. This mission lasted two months; he preached twice every day, and heard some two thousand fivehundred confessions; at this the illustrious prelate (who was Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano) was greatly pleased, and thoroughly confirmed in the extraordinary esteem which he deigned to show the Society.... One of the greatest hardships and dangers experienced by the ministers of Bisayas (or Pintados), in which are the greater part of our ministries, is that they are journeying on the water all their lives; for, as the villages are many and the ministers few, one father regularly takes care of two villages, and sometimes of three or four; and as these are in different islands, he is continually moving from one to another, for their administration. I have known some fathers who formerly had six or seven visitas, and spent nearly all the year traveling from one to another. Nevertheless, so paternal and benignant is the providence of God that it is not known that any minister in Bisayas has been drowned—which, considering the many hurricanes, tempests, storms, currents, and other dangers in which every year many perish and are drowned, seems a continual miracle. To this it must be added that at various times vessels have capsized in the midst of the sea, and the fathers have fallen into the water; but God succored them by means of the Indians, who are excellent swimmers, or by other special methods of His paternal providence.[Fol. 38 b:] In this year [1628] Manila and the adjoining villages were grievously afflicted with a sort of epidemic pest, from which many people died—some suddenly, but even he who lingered longest died within twelve hours. Some attributed this pest to the many blacks who had been brought here from India to be sold, and who, sick from ill-usage, communicatedtheir disease to others; and some thought that it arose from an infection in the fish, which is the usual food of the poor. Various corpses were anatomized [se hizo anatomia], and the origin of the disease could not be discovered, although it was considered certain that it arose from a poisonous condition, since the only remedy that was found was theriac.9In a city where there are so few Spaniards, it is easy to understand the affliction which was felt at seeing the suddenness with which they were dying, since the colony was placed in so great danger of extinction, and the islands of being ruined at one stroke—besides the grief of individual persons at seeing themselves bereft, the wife without a husband, the husband without a wife, the father without children, the children deprived of their parents. All search was made for remedies. Our priests did not cease, day or night, to hear confessions, and to aid the sick and dying; and at the request of the cura they carried with them the consecrated oils, to administer these in case of need. They also carried theriac, after this was discovered to be a remedy, for the relief of the sick; so they exercised their charity at the same time on the souls and on the bodies of men, to the great edification of all.At San Miguel, one of those attacked by the pest told the father who was hearing his dying confession that he had seen near him two figures in the guise of ministers of justice, who seized people; and that when he had received absolution they went away from him, leaving behind a pestilential odor. Thefather published this information throughout the village, commanding the people to prepare themselves for confession on the following day, under the patronage of the Blessed Mary and St. Michael. A novenary was offered, and the litanies recited; and in the church the discipline was taken, with other prayers and penances, by which the Lord was moved to have especial mercy on this village—as God showed to a devout soul, in the figure of a ship which sailed through the air, the pilot of which was the common enemy; but he could not enter San Miguel, since there were powers greater than he, who prevented him. Also there were seen in the neighborhood of Manila malign spirits, in the appearance of horrible phantoms, who struck with death those who only looked at them. In the face of a danger so near, many amended their lives, and were converted to God in earnest, making a good confession. Then was seen the charity with which the poor Indians, despising the danger to their own lives, assisted the sick. Among others were two pious married persons, who devoted themselves entirely to aiding the sick, never leaving their bedsides until they either died or recovered; and God most mercifully chose to bring them out unscathed from so continual dangers. With the same kindness He chose to reward Brother Antonio de Miranda, who had charge of the infirmary in our college at Manila, who, on account of his well-known charity and solicitude in caring for the sick, had been commissioned by the father provincial, Juan de Bueras, to devote himself to the care of the sick Indians. But the poison of the pest infected him, so violent being the attack that hardly had he time to receive the sacraments;and he died at Manila on October 15, 1628.... He was a native of Ponferrada, and of a very well known family; he was an exemplary religious, and had been ten years in the Society.[Fol. 44 b:] In the years 1628 and 1629, at the request of the bishops and of some Indians the Society was placed in charge of various villages of converts. Don Juan Niño de Tabora gave us the chaplaincy of the garrison of Spanish soldiers which is at Iloylo in the island of Panay, and the instruction of the natives and the people from other nations who are gathered there. Also were given to us Ilog in the island of Negros, and Dapitan in Mindanao—of which afterward more special mention will be made.Map of Mindanao, showing settlements and districts occupied by Jesuits and RecollectsMap of Mindanao, showing settlements and districts occupied by Jesuits and Recollects[From MS. (dated 1683) inArchivo general de Indias, Sevilla][Fol. 50:] In this time [about 1630] the Christian faith made great advances in Maragondong, Silang, and Antipolo, bringing many Cimarrons (or wild Indians) from their lurking-places. A very fruitful mission was carried on in Mindoro, and on the northern coast of Mindanao; and Father Pedro Gutierrez went along those rivers, converting the Subanos. In Ilog, in the island of Negros, the fathers labored much in removing an inhuman practice of those barbarians, which was, to abandon entirely the old people, as being useless and only a burden on them; and these poor wretches were going about through the mountains, without knowing where to go, since even their own children drove them away. The fathers gave them shelter, fed them, and instructed them in order to baptize them; and there they converted many heathens.[Fol. 52:] In the year 1631 the cura of Mindoro, who was a secular priest, gave up that ministry to the Society, and Ours began to minister in that island,making one resilience of this and one of the island of Marinduque, and the superior lived at Nauhan in Mindoro; and they began to preach, and to convert the Manguianes, the heathen Indians of that island.In the year 1631 was begun the residence of Dapitan, in the great island of Mindanao. The first Jesuit who preached in that island was the apostle of the Indias, St. Francis Xavier, as appears from the bull for his canonization. Ruy Lopez de Villalobos came to these islands with his ships, sent by the viceroy of Nueva España, and gave them the name of Philipinas in honor of Phelipe II; and, driven by storms, he went to Amboyno, where the saint then was, in whose care Villalobos died. At the news of these islands thus obtained by the holy apostle, he came to them. The circumstance that this island was consecrated by the labors of that great apostle has always and very rightly commended it to the Society; and Ours have always and persistently endeavored to occupy themselves in converting the Mindanaos; and Father Valerio de Ledesma and others had begun to form missions on the river of Butuan. In the year 1596 the cabildo of Manila,in sede vacante—in whose charge was then the spiritual government of all the islands, as there was no division into bishoprics—gave possession of Mindanao to the Society in due form; and in 1597 this was confirmed by the vice-patron, Don Francisco Tello, the governor of these islands. Possession of it was taken by Father Juan del Campo, who, going as chaplain of the army, accompanied the adelantado, Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa, when he set out for the conquest of that kingdom.The first who began to minister to the Subanos inthe coasts of Dapitan was Father Juan Lopez; afterward Father Fabricio Sarsali, and then Father Francisco de Otazo, and various other fathers followed, who made their incursions sometimes from Zebu, sometimes from Bohol. In the year 1629 this ministry was entrusted to the Society by the bishop of Zebu, Don Fray Pedro de Arze. The venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez went through those coasts, carrying the gospel of Christ to the rivers of Quipit, Mucas, Telinga, and others; and in the year 1631 a permanent residence was formed, its rector being Father Pedro Gutierrez. The village of Dapitan is at the foot of a beautiful bay with a good harbor (in which the first conquistadors anchored), on the northern coast of Mindanao; it is south from the island of Zebu, and to the northeast of Samboangan, which is on the opposite coast [of Mindanao]. It lies at the foot of a hill, at the top of which there is a sort of fortress, so inaccessible that it does not need artillery for its defense. Above it has a parapet, and near the hill is an underground reservoir for collecting water, besides a spring of flowing water. Maize and vegetables can be planted there, in time of siege; and the minister and all the people retire to this place in time of invasions. I was there in the year 1737 [misprinted1637], and it seemed to me that it might be called the Aorno10of Philipinas.[Fol. 60:] In the year 1631 and in part of 1632 this province experienced so great a scarcity of laborers that the father provincial wrote to our father general that he would have been obliged to abandonsome of the ministries if the fervor of the few ministers had not supplied the lack of the many, their charity making great exertions. Our affliction was increased by the news that the Dutch had seized Father Francisco Encinas, the procurator of this province, who was going to Europa to bring a mission band here—for which purpose they had sent Father Juan Lopez, who was appointed in the second place11in the congregation of 1626. But soon God consoled this province, the mission arriving at Cavite on May 26, 1632. On June 18, 1631, they sailed from Cadiz, and on the last day of August arrived at Vera Cruz; they left Acapulco on February 23, 1632, and on May 15 sighted the first land of these islands. Every mission that goes to Indias begins to gather abundant fruit as soon as it sails from España; I will set down the allotment of work in which this band of missionaries was engaged, since from this may be gathered what the others do, since there is very little difference among them all. In the ship a mission was proclaimed which lasted eleven days, closing with general communion on the day of our father St. Ignatius; in this mission, through the sermons, instructions given in addresses, and individual exhortations, the fathers succeeded in obtaining many general confessions, besides the special ones which the men on the ship made, in order to secure the jubilee. Ours assisted the dying, consoled the sick and the afflicted, and established peace between those who were enemies. In Nueva España the priests were distributed in various colleges, in which they continued the exercises of preaching and hearing confessions.They went to Acapulco a month before embarking, by the special providence of God; for there were many diseases at that port, so that they were able to assist the dying. Thirty religious of St. Dominic were there, waiting to come over to these islands; all of them were sick, and five died; and, in order to prevent more deaths, they decided to remove from their house in which they were, on account of its bad condition. It was necessary, on account of their sick condition, to carry them in sedan-chairs; and although many laymen charitably offered their services for this act of piety, Ours did not permit them to do it, but took upon themselves the care of conveying the sick, their charity making this burden very light. In the ship “San Luys” they continued their ministries, preaching, and hearing the confessions of most of the people on the ship—in which the functions of Holy Week were performed, as well as was possible there. Twenty-one Jesuits left Cadiz, and all arrived at Manila except Father Matheo de Aguilar, who died near these islands on May 12, 1632; he was thirty-three years old, and had been in the Society sixteen years—most of which time he spent in Carmona, in the province of Andalusia, where he was an instructor in grammar, minister, and procurator in that college.... The rest who are known to have come in that year with Father Francisco de Encinas, procurator, and Brother Pedro Martinez are: The fathers Hernando Perez (the superior), Rafael de Bonafe, Luys de Aguayo, Magino Sola, and Francisco Perez; and the brothers Ignacio Alcina, Joseph Pimentél, Miguel Ponze, Andres de Ledesma, Antonio de Abarca, Onofre Esbri, Christoval de Lara, Amador Navarro, BartholomeSanchez; also Brother Juan Gazera, a coadjutor, and Diego Blanco and Pedro Garzia, candidates [for the priesthood].[Fol. 63 b:] In the islands of Pintados those first laborers made such haste that by this time [1633] there remained no heathens to convert, and they labored perseveringly in ministering to the Christians, with abundant results and consolation.... In the island of Negros and that of Mindanao, which but a short time before had been given up to the Society, the fathers were occupied in catechising and baptizing the heathens and especially in the island of Mindoro, where besides the Christian convents, were the heathen Manguianes, who lived in the mountains, and, according to estimate, numbered more than six thousand souls. These people wandered through the mountains and woods there like wild deer, and went about entirely naked, wearing only a breech-clout [bahaque] for the sake of decency; they had no house, hearth, or fixed habitation; and they slept where night overtook them, in a cave or in the trunk of some tree. They gathered their food on the trees or in the fields, since it was reduced to wild fruits and roots; and as their greatest treat they ate rice boiled in water. Their furnishings were some bows and arrows, or javelins for hunting, and a jar for cooking rice; and he who secured a knife, or any iron instrument, thought that he had a Potosi. They acknowledged no deity, and when they had any good fortune the entire barangay (or family connection) killed and ate a carabao, or buffalo; and what was left they sacrificed to the souls of their ancestors. In order to convert these heathens, a beginning was made by the reformation and instructionof the Christians; and by frequent preaching they gradually established the usage of confession with some frequency, and many received the Eucharist—a matter in which there was more difficulty then than now. Many came down from the mountains, and brought their children to be instructed; various persons were baptized, and even some, who, although they had the name of Christians, had never received the rite of baptism. After the fathers preached to the Christians regarding honesty in their confessions, the result was quickly seen in many general confessions, which were made with such eagerness that the crowds resorting to the church lasted more than two months.[Fol. 69:] In Maragondong various trips were made into the mountains [by Ours], and although many were reclaimed to a Christian mode of living, yet, as the mountains are so difficult of access and so close by, those people returned to their lurking-places very easily, and it was with difficulty that they were again brought into a village—so that the number of Indians was greatly diminished, not only in Maragondong, but in Looc, which was a visita of the former place, and contained very rugged mountains. In order to encourage the Indians thus settled to make raids on the Cimarrons and wild Indians and punish them, Don Juan Cerezo de Salamanca, the governorad interim, granted that those wild Indians should for a certain time remain the slaves of him who should bring them out of the hills; and by this means they succeeded in bringing out many from their caverns and hiding-places. Some of these were seventy or eighty years old, of whom many died as soon as they were instructed and baptized.Once the raiders came across an old woman about a hundred years old, near the cave in which those people performed their abominable sacrifices; she was alone, flung down on the ground, naked, and of so horrible aspect that she made it evident, even in external appearance, that she was a slave of the devil. Moved by Christian pity, those who were making the raid carried her to the village, where it was with difficulty that the father could catechise her, on account of her age and her stupidity. He finally catechised and baptized her, and she soon died; so that it seems as if it were a mercy of God that she thus waited for baptism, in order that her soul might not be lost—and the same with the other souls, their lives apparently being preserved in order that they might be saved through the agency of baptism. Blessed be His mercy forever! In Ilog, in the island of Negros, several heathens of those mountains were converted to the faith. An Indian woman was there, so obstinate in her blindness and so open in her hatred to holy baptism that, in order to free herself from the importunities of the minister, she feigned to be deaf and mute. Some of her relatives notified the father to come to baptize her. The father went to her, and began to catechise her, but she, keeping up the deceit, pretended that she did not hear him, and he could not draw a word from her. The father cried out to God for the conversion of that soul, and, at the same time, he continued his efforts to catechise her, suspecting that perhaps she was counterfeiting deafness. God heard his prayers, and, after several days, the first word which that woman uttered was a request for baptism—to the surprise of all who knew what horror of it she had felt. The father catechised and baptizedher, and this change was recognized as caused by the right hand of the Highest; for she who formerly was like a wild deer, living alone in the thickets, after this could not go away from the church, and continued to exercise many pious acts until she rested in the Lord.[Fol. 74 b:] In the year 1596 Father Juan del Campo and Brother Gaspar Gomez went with the adelantado Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa, who set out for the conquest of this island [Mindanao]. After the death of Father Juan del Campo, Father Juan de San Lucar went to assist that army, performing the functions of its chaplain, and also of vicar for the ecclesiastical judge. Fathers Valerio de Ledesma and Manuel Martinez preached to the Butuans, and afterward they were followed, although with some interruptions, by others, who announced the gospel to the Hadgaguanes—a people untamed and ferocious—to the Manobos, and to other neighboring peoples. Afterward this ministry was abandoned, on account of the lack of laborers for so great a harvest as God was sending us. Secular priests held it for some time, and finally it was given to the discalced Augustinian [i.e., Recollect] religious, who are ministering in that coast, and in Caraga as far as Linao—an inland region, where there is a small fort and a garrison. When Father Francisco Vicente was ministering in Butuan the cazique [meaningthe headman] of Linao went to invite him to go to his village; and even the blacks visited him, and gave him hopes for their submission. Thus all those peoples desired the Society, as set aside for the preaching in that island—which work was assigned to the Society by the ecclesiastical judge in the year 1596, and confirmedto them in 1597 by the governor Don Francisco Tello, as vice-patron. And when some controversy afterward occurred over [the region of] Lake Malanao, sentence was given in favor of the Society by Governors Don Juan Niño de Tabora and Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, as Father Combés states in book iii of hisHistory of Mindanao. These decisions were finally confirmed by Don Fernando Valdès Tamon, in the year 1737.In the year 1607 Father Pasqual de Acuña, going thither with an armada of the Spaniards, began to preach with great results to the heathens of the hill of Dapitan, where he baptized more than two hundred. He also administered the sacraments to some Christians who were there, who with Pagbuaya, a chief of Bohol, had taken refuge in that place. Afterward, Father Juan Lopez went to supply the Subanos of Dapitan with more regular ministrations. He was succeeded by Father Fabricio Sarsali, and he by Father Francisco Otazo and others, as a dependency of Zebu or of Bohol—until, in the year 1629, his illustrious Lordship the bishop of Zebu, Don Fray Pedro de Arze, governor of the archbishopric of Manila, again assigned this mission to the Society; and in 1631 the residence of Dapitan was founded, its first rector being the venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez; and in those times the Christian faith was already far advanced, and was extending through the region adjoining that place, and making great progress.[Fol. 92:] The island of Basilan, or Taguima, is three or four leguas south of Samboangan, east from Borney, and almost northeast from Joló. It is a fertile and abounding land, and on this account they callit the storehouse or garden of Samboangan. Its people are Moros and heathens, and almost always they follow the commands received from Joló. The Basilans, who inhabit the principal villages, are of the Lutaya people; those who dwell in the mountains are called Sameacas. Three chiefs had made themselves lords of the island, Ondol, Boto, and Quindinga; and they formed the greatest hindrance to the reduction of that people, who, as barbarians, have for an inviolable law the will of their headmen, [which they follow] heedlessly—that being most just, therefore, which has most following. Nevertheless, the brave constancy of Father Francisco Angel was not dismayed at such difficulties, or at the many perils of death which continually threatened him; and his zeal enabled him to secure the baptism of several persons, and to rescue from the captivity of Mahoma more than three hundred Christians, whom he quickly sent to Samboangan. Moreover, the fervor of the father being aided by the blessing of God, he saw, with unspeakable consolation to his soul, the three chiefs who were lords of the island baptized, with almost all the inhabitants of the villages in it; and in the course of time the Sameacas, or mountain-dwellers, were reduced—in this way mocking the strong opposition which was made by the panditas, who are their priests and doctors. [Here follows an account of the conquest of Joló in 1638, and of affairs there and in Mindanao, in which the Jesuits (especially Alexandro Lopez) took a prominent part; these matters have already been sufficiently recounted inVOLS. XXVIIIandXXIX].[Fol. 111:] [After the Spanish expeditions to Lake Lanao, in 1639–40, the fort built there was abandoned,and soon afterward burned by the natives. On May 7, 1642, the Moros of that region killed a Spanish officer, Captain Andres de Rueda, with three men and a Jesuit, Father Francisco de Mendoza, who accompanied him.] Much were the hopes of the gospel ministers cast down at seeing our military forces abandon that country, since they were expecting that with that protection the Christian church would increase. Notwithstanding, his faith thereby planted more firmly on God, Father Diego Patiño began to catechise the Iligan people—with so good effect that in a few months the larger (and the best) part of the residents in that village were brought under the yoke of Christ; this work was greatly aided by the kindness of the commandant of the garrison, Pedro Duran de Monforte. At this good news various persons of the Malanaos came down [from the mountains], and in the shelter of the fort they formed several small villages or hamlets, and heard the gospel with pleasure. The conversions increasing, it was necessary to station there another minister; this was Father Antonio de Abarca. They founded the village of Nagua, and others, which steadily and continually increased with the people who came down from the lake [i.e., Lanao], where the villages were being broken up.12This angered a brother of Molobolo,and he tried to avert his own ruin by the murder of the father; and for this purpose his treacherous mind [led him to] pretend that he would come down to the new villages, in order to become a Christian, intending to carry out then his treason at his leisure.But the father, warned by another Malanao, who was less impious, escaped death. The traitor did not desist from his purpose, and, when Father Abarca was in one of those villages toward Layavan, attacked the village; but he was discovered by the blacks ofthe hill-country, and they rained so many arrows upon the Moros that the latter abandoned their attempt. Another effort was a failure—the preparation of three joangas which the traitor had upon the sea, in order to capture and kill the father when he should return to Iligan; but in all was displayed the special protection with which God defends His ministers. However great the efforts made by the zeal of the gospel laborers, the result did not correspond to their desires, on account of the obstinacy of the Mahometans—although in the heathens they encountered greater docility for the acceptance of our religion. The life of the ministers was very toilsome, since to the task of preaching must be added the vigils and weariness, the heat and winds and rains, the dangers of [travel by] the sea, and the scarcity of food. In a country so poor, and at that time so uncultivated, it was considered a treat to find a few sardines or other fish, some beans, and a little rice; and many times they hardly could get boiled rice, and sometimes they must get along with sweet potatoes, gabes,13or [other] roots. But God made amends for these privations and toils with various inner pleasures; for they succeeded in obtaining some conversions that they had not expected, and even among the blacks, from whom they feared death, they found help and sustenance. [The author here relates a vision which appeared to an Indian chief, of the spirit of Father Marcelo Mastrilli as the directorand patron of Father Abarca; and the renunciation of a mission to Europe which was vowed by Father Patiño in order to regain his health—which accomplished, he returns to his missionary labors at Iligan.]He returned to the ministry, where he encountered much cause for suffering and tears; because the [military] officers [cabos] who then were governing that jurisdiction, actuated by arrogance and greed of gain, had committed such acts of violence that they had depopulated those little villages, many fleeing to the hills, where among the Moros they found treatment more endurable. The only ones who can oppose the injustice of such men are the gospel ministers. These fathers undertook to defend the Indians, and took it upon themselves to endure the anger of those men—who, raised from a low condition to places of authority, made their mean origin evident in their coarse natures and lawless passions; and the license of some of them went to such extremes that it was necessary for the soldiers to seize them as intolerable; and, to revenge themselves for the outrageous conduct of the officials, they accused the latter as traitors. Not even the Malanao chief Molobolo, who always had been firm on the side of the Spaniards, could endure their acts of violence, and, to avoid these, went back to the lake. This tempest lasted for some time, but afterward some peace was secured, when those officers were succeeded by others who were more compliant. The venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez went to Iligan, and with his amiable and gentle disposition induced a chief to leave the lake, who, with many people, became a resident of Dapitan; and another chief, still more powerful, wasadded to Iligan with his people. These results were mainly seemed by the virtue of the father, the high opinion which all had of his holy character, and the helpful and forcible effects of his oratory. The land was scorched by a drouth, which was general throughout the islands, from which ensued great losses. The father offered the Indians rain, if they would put a roof on the church; they accepted the proposal, and immediately God fulfilled what His servant had promised—sending them a copious rain on his saying the first mass of a novenary, which he offered to this end. With this the Indians were somewhat awakened from their natural sloth, and the church was finished, so that the fathers could exercise in it their ministries. The drouth was followed by a plague of locusts, which destroyed the grain-fields; the father exorcised them, and, to the wonder of all, the locusts thrust their heads into the ground, and the plague came to an end. This increased the esteem of the natives for our religion, and many heathens and Moros were brought into its bosom; and Father Combés says that when he ministered there he found more than fifty old persons of eighty to a hundred years, and baptized them all, with some three hundred boys this being now one of the largest Christian communities in the islands. The village is upon the shore, at the foot of the great Panguil,14between Butuan and Dapitan, to the south of Bohol, and north from Malanao, at the mouth of a river with a dangerous bar. The fort is of good stone, dedicated to St. Francis Xavier, in the shape of a star; the wallis two varas high, and half a vara thick, and it has a garrison, with artillery and weapons. The Moros have several times surrounded it, but they could not gain it by assault.[Fol. 116 b:] In Sibuguey Father Francisco Luzon was preaching, a truly apostolic man, who spent his life coming and going in the most arduous ministries of the islands. The Sibugueys are heathens, of a gentler disposition and more docile to the reception of the gospel than are the Mahometans; therefore this mission aroused great hopes. One Ash Wednesday Father Luzon went to the fort, and he was received by a Lutao of gigantic stature who gave him his hand. The father shook hands with him, supposing that that was all for which he stopped him; but the Lutao trickily let himself be carried on, and with his weight dragged the father into the water, with the assurance that he could not be in danger, on account of his dexterity in swimming. The father went under, because he could not swim, and the captain and the soldiers hastened from the fort to his aid—but so late that there was quite enough time for him to be drowned, on account of having sunk so deep in the water; they pulled him out, half dead, and the first thing that he did was to secure pardon for the Lutao. He gained a little strength and went to the fort; he gave ashes to the Spaniards, and preached with as much fervor as if that hardship had not befallen him. The principal of Sibuguey was Datan, and, to make sure of him, the Spaniards had carried away as a hostage his daughter Paloma; and love for her caused her parents to leave Sibuguey and go to Samboangan to live, to have the company of their daughter. Father Alexandro Lopez went to minister at Sibuguey, and he saw that without theauthority of Datan he could do almost nothing among the Sibugueys; this obliged him to go to Samboangan to get him, and he succeeded [in persuading them] to give him the girl. The father went up toward the source of the river, and found several hamlets of peaceable people, and a lake with five hundred people residing about it; and their chief, Sumogog, received him as a friend, and all listened readily to the things of God. He went so far that he could see the mountains of Dapitan, which are so near that place that a messenger went [to Dapitan] and returned in three days. These fair hopes were frustrated by the absence of Datan, who went with all his family to Mindanao; and on Ascension day in 1644 that new church disappeared, no one being left save a boy named Marcelo. Afterward the Moros put the fort in such danger, having killed some men, that it was necessary to dismantle it and withdraw the garrison.[Fol. 121 (sc.120):] The Joloans having been subjected by the bravery of Don Pedro de Almonte, they began to listen to the gospel, and they went to fix their abodes in the shelter of our fort. But, [divine] grace accommodating itself to their nature, as the sect of Mahoma have always been so obstinate, it was necessary that God should display His power, in order that their eyes might be opened to the light. The fervent father Alexandro Lopez was preaching in that island, to whose labors efficacy was given by the hand of God with many prodigies. The cures which the ministers made were frequent, now with benedictions, now with St. Paul’s earth,15in manycases of bites from poisonous serpents, or of persons to whom poison was administered. Among other cures, one was famous, that of a woman already given up as beyond hope; having given her some of St. Paul’s earth, she came back from the gates of death to entire health. With this they showed more readiness to accept the [Christian] doctrine, which was increased by a singular triumph which the holy cross obtained over hell in all these islands; for, having planted this royal standard of our redemption in an island greatly infested by demons, who were continually frightening the islanders with howls and cries, it imposed upon them perpetual silence, and freed all the other [neighboring] islands from an extraordinary tyranny. For the demons were crossing from island to island, in the sea, in the shape of serpents of enormous size, and did not allow vessels to pass without first compelling their crews to render adoration to the demon in iniquitous sacrifices; but this ceased, the demon taking flight at sight of the cross. [Several incidents of miraculous events are here related.] With these occurrences God opened their eyes, in order that they might see the light and embrace baptism, and in those islands a very notable Christian church was formed; and almost all was due to the miraculous resurrection of Maria Ligo [which our author relates at length]. Many believed, and thus began a flourishing Christian community; and as ministers afterward could not be kept in Joló on account of the wars, [these converts] exiled themselves from their native land, and went to live at Samboangan, in order that they might be able to live as Christians. [This prosperous beginning is spoiled by the lawless conduct ofthe commandant Gaspar de Morales, which brings on hostilities with the natives, and finally his own death in a fight with them.] Father Alexandro Lopez went to announce the gospel at Pangutaran, (an island distant six leguas east from Joló), and as the people were a simple folk they received the law of Christ with readiness ... The Moros of Tuptup captured a discalced religious of St. Augustine, who, to escape from the pains of captivity, took to flight with a negro. Father Juan Contreras (who was in Joló) went out with some Lutaos in boats to rescue him, calling to him in various places from the shore; but the poor religious was so overcome with fear that, although he heard the voices and was near the beach, he did not dare to go out to our vessels, despite the encouragement of the negro; and on the following day the Joloans, encountering him, carried him back to his captivity, with blows. He wrote a letter from that place, telling the misfortunes that he was suffering; all the soldiers, and even the Lutaos, called upon the governor [of Joló], to ransom that religious at the cost of their wages, but without effect. Then Father Contreras, moved by fervent charity, went to Patical, where the fair16washeld, and offered himself to remain as a captive among the Moros, in order that they might set free the poor religious, who was feeble and sick. Some Moros agreed to this; but the Orancaya Suil, who was the head chief of the Guimbanos, said that no one should have anything to do with that plan—at which the hopes of that afflicted religious for ransom were cut off. Seeing that he must again endure his hardships, from which death would soon result, he asked Father Contreras to confess him; the latter undertook to set out by water to furnish him that spiritual consolation, but the Lutaos would not allow him to leave the boat, even using some violence, in order not to endanger his person. All admired a charity so ardent, and, having renewed his efforts, he so urgently persuaded the governor, Juan Ruiz Maroto, to ransom him that the latter gave a thousand pesos in order to rescue the religious from captivity. Twice Father Contreras went to the fair, but the Moros did not carry the captive there with them. Afterward he was ransomed for three hundred pesos by Father Alexandro Lopez, the soldiers aiding with part of their pay a work of so great charity.

[In 1618 two unusually brilliant comets were visible in the Philippines; their effects on the minds of the people are thus described (fol. 5):]1There was great variety and inaccuracy of opinion about the comets; but through that general although confused notion which the majority of people form, that comets presage disastrous events, and that the anger of God threatens men by them, they assisted greatly in awakening contrition in the people, and inciting them to do penance. To this the preachers endeavored to influence them with forcible utterances, for the Society had not been behind [the other orders] in preparing the city for the entire success of the jubilee;2for there was one occasion when eleven Jesuits were counted, who, distributed at various stations, cried out like Jonah, threateningdestruction to impenitent and rebellious souls. God giving power to their words, this preaching was like the seed in the gospel story, scattered on good ground, which not only brought forth its fruit correspondingly, but so promptly that those who heard broke down in tears at hearing the eternal truths; and, like thirsty deer, when the sermon was ended they followed the preacher that he might hear their confessions, already dreading lest some emergency might find them in danger of damnation. This harvest was not confined within the walls of Manila, but extended to its many suburbs, and to the adjacent villages, in which missions had been conducted. Not only was there preaching to the Spaniards, but to the Tagálogs, the Indian natives of the country—who, in token of their fervor, gave from their own scanty supply food in abundance to the jails and prisons, Ours aiding them to carry the food, to the edification of the city. To the Japanese who were living in our village of San Miguel—exiles from their native land, in order to preserve their religion, who had taken refuge in Manila, driven out from that kingdom by the tyrant Taycosama—our fathers preached, in their own language. And it can be said that there was preaching to all the nations, that which occurred to the apostles in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost being represented in Manila; for I believe that there is no city in the world in which so many nationalities come together as here. For besides the Spaniards (who are the citizens and owners of the country) and the Tagálogs (who are the Indian natives of the land), there are many other Indians from the islands, who speak different tongues—such as the Pampangos, the Camarines[i.e., the Bicols], the Bisayans, the Ilocans, the Pangasinans, and the Cagayans. There are Creoles [Criollos], or Morenos, who are swarthy blacks, natives of the country;3there are many Cafres, and other negroes from Angola, Congo, and Africa. There are blacks from Asia, Malabars, Coromandels, and Canarins. There are a great many Sangleys, or Chinese—part of them Christians, but the majority heathens. There are Ternatans, and Mardicas (who took refuge here from Ternate); there are some Japanese; there are people from Borney and Timor, and from Bengal; there are Mindanaos, Joloans, and Malays; there are Javanese, Siaos, and Tidorans; there are people from Cambay and Mogol, and from other islands and kingdoms of Asia. There are a considerable number of Armenians, and some Persians; and Tartars, Macedonians, Turks, and Greeks. There are people from all the nations of Europa—French, Germans, and Dutch; Genoese and Venetians; Irish and Englishmen; Poles and Swedes. There are people from all the kingdoms of España, and from all America; so that he who spends an afternoon on thetuley4or bridge of Manila will see all these nationalities pass by him, behold their costumes, and hear their languages—something which cannot be done in any other city in the entire Spanish monarchy, and hardly in any other region in all the world.From this arises the fact that the confessional of Manila is, in my opinion, the most difficult in all theworld; for, as it is impossible to confess all these people in their own tongues, it is necessary to confess them in Spanish; and each nationality has made its own vocabulary of the Spanish language, with which those people have intercourse [with us], conduct their affairs, and make themselves understood; and without it Ours can understand them only with great difficulty, and almost by divination. A Sangley, an Armenian, and a Malabar will be heard talking together in Spanish, and our people do not understand them, as they so distort the word and the accent. The Indians have another Spanish language of their own; and the Cafres have one still more peculiar, to which must be added that they eat half of the words. No one save he who has had this experience can state the labors which it costs to confess them; and even when the fault is understood in general, to seek for a specific account of the circumstances is to enter a labyrinth without a clue. For they do not understand our orderly mode of speech, and therefore when they are questioned they say “yes” or “no” as it occurs to them, without rightly understanding what is asked from them—so that in a short time they will utter twenty contradictions. It is therefore necessary to accommodate oneself to their language, and learn their vocabulary. Another of the very serious difficulties is the little capacity of these people to distinguish and explain numbers, incidents, and circumstances; add to this the unbridled licentiousness of some, in accordance with the freedom and opportunities [for vice] in this land, the continual backsliding, and the few indications of fixed purpose. In others, who are capable and explain their meaning well, is found a complicationof perplexities—with a thousand reflections, and bargains, and frauds, and oaths all joined together; and faults that are extraordinary and of new kinds, which keep even the most learned man continually studying them. The heat of the country, and the stench or foul odor of the Indians and the negroes, unite in great part to make a hardship of the ministry, which in these islands is the most difficult; and on this account I regard it as being very meritorious. The annual confessions last from the beginning of Lent until Corpus Christi. In our college of Manila the church is open from daylight until eleven o’clock, and from two o’clock until nightfall; and always some fathers are present to hear confessions—for this is done not only by the active ministers, but by the instructors, when their scholastic duties give them opportunity; and I have known some fathers who remain to hear confessions during seven, eight, or more hours a day.It makes them bear all these annoyances patiently, and even sweetens these, to see how many souls are kept pure by the grace of God, in the midst of so many temptations, like the bramble in the midst of the fire without being burned. There are many who are striving for perfection, who frequent the sacraments, who maintain prayer and spiritual reading, and who give much in alms and perform other works of charity. And it is cause for the greatest consolation to see, at the solemn festivals of the Virgin and other important feasts, the confessional surrounded by Indians, Cafres, and negroes, men and women, great and small, who are awaiting their turns with incredible patience, kept there through the grace of God, against every impulse of their natural dispositionsand their slothfulness. And at the season of Lent it is heart-breaking to see the confessor, when he rises from his seat, surrounded by more than a hundred persons of all colors, who go away disconsolate because they have not obtained an opportunity to make their confessions; and in this manner they go and come for eight or ten days, or a fortnight, or even more, with unspeakable patience, but with such eagerness that when the confessor rises they go following him throughout the house, calling to him to hear their confessions. This is done even by boys of seven to twelve years, and hardly with violence can they be made to leave the father, and they continue to call after him; and some remain in the passages, on their knees, asking for confession, so great is the number of the penitents—to which that of the confessors does not correspond by far, nor does their assiduity, even if there were enough of them. The Society is not content with aiding those who come to seek relief in our church, and attending the year round all the sick, of various languages, who summon them to hear confession; but its laborers go forth—as it were, gospel hunters—to search for penitents. They assist almost all who are executed in the city; every week they go to the jails and hospitals; in Lent they hear confessions in all the prisons, and at the foundry, those of the galley-slaves. And in the course of the year they hear confessions in the college of Santa Ysabel—in which there are more than a hundred students, who are receiving the most admirable education—and in the seminary of Santa Potenciana, the students frequenting the sacraments often; and, in fine, they go on a perpetual round in pursuit of the impious.The confessional is, as it were, the harvesting of the crop; and the pulpit is the sowing, in which the seed of the gospel is scattered in the hearts of men, where with the watering of grace it bears fruit in due time, according to the coöperation [of the Holy Ghost?]. With great constancy and solicitude the Society contributes to the cultivation of these fields of Christianity, with preaching. In Manila the Society has, besides the sermons from the holy men of the order, other endowed feasts, and the set sermons5in the cathedral and the royal chapel. When necessity requires it, a mission is held, and the attendance is very large, although hardly a fifth of those who hear understand the Spanish language; this to a certain extent discourages the missionaries, as does even much more the fact that they do not encounter those external demonstrations of excitement and tears that they arouse in other places. This originatesfrom the characteristic of a large part of the audience, that these attend with due seriousness only to certain undertakings; and the distractions of their disputes and business affairs, and their indolence and the air of the country, dissipate their attention beyond measure. Their imaginations, overborne with foolish trifles, and accustomed to our voices, become so relaxed that even the most forcible and persuasive discourses make little, if any, impression. Nevertheless, there are many in whom the holy fear of God reigns, and the seed of the gospel takes root—which they embrace with seriousness and simplicity, as the importance of the subject demands. The marvel is, that many Indians and a great many Indian women, only by the sound of [the preaching in] the mission, and without understanding what they hear, are stricken with contrition, confess themselves, and receive communion, in order to gain the indulgences—to their own great advantage, and to the unspeakable consolation of their confessors at seeing the wonderfully loving providence of God for these souls.This fruit and this consolation are most evident in theSpiritual Exercisesof St. Ignatius,6which are explained through most of the year in our college.The principal citizens make their retreat there, and in the solitude of that retirement God speaks to them within their hearts; and marvelous results have been seen in various persons, in whom has been established a tenor of life so Christian that they may be called the religious of the laymen—in their minds those eternal truths, on which they meditate with seriousness, remaining firm, for the orderly conduct of their lives. The students in the college of San Joseph have their own society, which meets every Sunday, in which they perform their exercises of devotion and have their exhortations, during the course of the year. Every Sunday the Christian doctrine is explained to the boys in the school, and some example [for their imitation] is related to them; and they walk in procession through the streets, chanting the doctrine. The Indian servants of the college have their own assembly, conducted in a very decorous manner, with continual instruction in the doctrine. Every Saturday an address in Tagálog is given to the beatas who attend our church; they have their own society, and exercise themselves in frequent devotions, furnishing an excellent and useful example to the community. Every year they perform the spiritual exercises; and the topics therein are given to them in Tagálog, in our church, by one of Ours. Many devout Indian and mestizo women resort hither on this occasion, to perform these exercises, in various weeks, for which purpose they make retreat in the beaterio during the week required for that; and even Spanish women, including ladies of the most distinguished position, perform their spiritual exercises, and the topics for meditation are assigned to them in our church. This practice isvery beneficial for their souls, of great usefulness to the community, and remarkably edifying to all.The Society also busies itself in the conversion and reconciliation of certain heretics, who are wont to come from the East (as has been observed in recent years), and in catechising and baptizing the Moros or the heathens who sometimes reach the islands—either driven from their route, or called by God in other ways; and He draws them to himself, so that they obtain holy baptism, as has been seen in late years in some persons from the Palaos and Carolina islands, and from Siao. Another of the means of which the Society avails itself for the good of souls is, to print and distribute free many spiritual books in various languages, which are most efficacious although mute preachers. These, removing from men their erroneous ideas by clear exposition [of the truth], and leaving them without the cloak of their own fantastic notions, persuade them, without being wearisome, to abandon vice or error; and then they embrace virtue and the Christian mode of life. In Lent, as being an acceptable time and especially opportune for the harvest, the dikes are opened, in order that the waters of the word of God may flow more abundantly. On Tuesdays there is preaching to the Spaniards, and these sermons usually have the efficacy of a mission, although not given under that name. On Thursdays there is explanation of the doctrine, and preaching, in Tagálog, to the Indians; the attendance is very great, since many come, not only from the numerous suburbs of Manila, but even from the more distant villages. On Saturdays some good example of the Virgin is related, with a moral exhortation; the Spaniards who are members offraternities attend these, and afterward visit the altars. On Sundays there is preaching to the Cafres, blacks, creoles, and Malabars—who through a sense of propriety are called Morenos, although they are dark-skinned. The sermon is in Spanish, and the greatest difficulty of the preacher is to adapt his language to the understanding of the audience. Various poor Spaniards also attend these sermons, as well as other people, of various shades of color, of both sexes.Every Sunday certain fathers are sent to preach at the fort or castle, to the soldiers and the other men who live there. The Christian doctrine is chanted through the streets, and in the procession walk the boys of the school; it ends at the royal chapel, where some part of the catechism is explained, and a moral sermon is preached to the soldiers who live in their quarters in order to mount guard. The doctrine is explained at the Puerta Real and at the Puerta del Parián, and there is preaching in the guard-room—where there is a large attendance, not only of soldiers, but of the many people who, on entering or going out from the gates, stop to hear the word of God. Another father goes to the royal foundry, in which the galley-slaves live, where there is such a variety of people—mestizos, Indians of various dialects, Cafres, negroes of different kinds, and Sangleys or Chinese—that exceptional ability and patience are necessary in order to make them understand. Other fathers go to the college of Santa Isabel and the seminary of Santa Potenciana, where they give addresses and exhortations to the students of the former, and the women secluded in the latter. Others go to the prisons of both the ecclesiastical andsecular jurisdictions, in order that the prisoners may obtain the spiritual food of the doctrine. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays there is in our church aMiserere, with the discipline [i.e., scourging]; a spiritual book is read to those who are present, and at least once a week an exhortation is addressed to them.Such is, in general, the distribution of work for our college at Manila in Lent, and therein are engaged nearly all the men in the college, whether priests or students; and in times when there is a scarcity of workers I have seen some helping at two or three posts, and not only ministers and instructors thus occupied, but even the superiors, and men of seventy years old, to the great edification of the community. At Lent is seen in Manila that which occurred at the destruction of Jericho, where, when the priests sounded around the city the trumpets of the jubilee, the walls immediately gave way and fell to the ground. Thus in Manila do the Jesuits surround the walls, calling to every class of people with the trumpets of the jubilee and offering pardon; and at the sound, through the grace and mercy of the Highest, the lofty walls of lawlessness, vice, and crime, fall in ruins. And even the presence of the ark is not lacking to this marvelous success, for it is not to be doubted that the Blessed Virgin, most merciful mother of sinners, aids us with her intercession. [Our author here relates various instances of miraculous aid from heaven, and other edifying cases.][Fol. 13:] Father Juan de Torres, with another priest and a brother, went from the college of Manila to conduct a mission at a place which is calledCabeza de Bondoc,7about sixty leguas from Manila, in the bishopric of Camarines—the bishop of Nueva Cazeres at that time being his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Diego de Guevara, of the Order of St. Augustine. As soon as that zealous prelate took possession of his see, he began to ask for fathers of the Society, in order that, commencing with the Indians who were already peaceable who reside in Nueva Cazeres, they might establish missions and continue their instructions in other villages which he intended to give them. But the Society, who always have showed due consideration to the other ministers in these islands, not attempting to dispossess them from their ministries—although not always have we found them respond in like spirit—thanked that illustrious prelate for his kindness, without accepting those ministries; and in order that he might see that [the cause of this action] was consideration for the ministers, and not the desire to escape from the labor, Ours consented to conduct a mission in Bondoc, the difficulty of which, and its results, are explained by that prelate in a letter which he wrote to Father Torres, in which he says: “I find that it is true, what was told to me in Manila, when I gave that mission-field to the Society, and I mention it with great consolation to myself; and that is, that it was the Holy Ghost who inspired me to give it—for I see the fruits which are steadily and evidently being gathered therein. For in so many ages it has been impossible to unite those villages, and the Indians in them were regarded as irreclaimable;and now in so short a time those villages have been united, and the Indians, [who were like] wild beasts, appear like gentle lambs. These are the works of God, who operates through the ministers of the Society—who with so much mildness, affection, and zeal are laboring for the welfare of those people.” Great hardships were suffered by those of the Society in these missions, and for several years that ministry was cared for by Ours, until it was entrusted to the secular priests.The mission of Bondoc gained such repute in the island of Marinduque, distant more than forty leguas from Manila, that its minister, who was a zealous cleric, wrote to the father rector at Manila asking him very humbly and urgently to send there a mission, from which he was expecting abundant fruit. So earnest were the entreaties of this fervent minister that a mission was sent to the said island; it had the results which were expected, and afterward the Society was commissioned with its administration. In nearly all the ministries of secular priests the Society was carrying on continual missions, at the petition of the ministers or at the instance of the bishops.... The Society was held in honor not only by the bishop of Camarines, but equally by his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano, a son of the great Augustine and most worthy archbishop of Manila. That most zealous father Lorenzo Masonio preached to the negroes who are in this city and outside its walls, according to the custom of this province, which distributes the bread of the gospel doctrine to all classes of people and all nations. And that holy prelate deigned to go to our church, and, taking a wand in his hand, asthe Jesuits are accustomed to do, he walked through the aisle of the church, asked questions, and explained the Christian doctrine to the slaves and negroes. The community experienced the greatest edification at seeing their pastor so worthily occupied in instructing his sheep, not heeding the outer color of their bodies, but looking only at their precious souls—for in the presence of God there is no distinction of persons.[Fol. 22:] The island of Malindig—named thus on account of a high mountain that is in it, and which the Spaniards call Marinduque—is more than forty leguas from Manila, extends north and south, and is in the course which is taken by the galleons on the Nueva España trade-route.8There Ours carried on a mission with much gain, at the instance of its zealous pastor, who was a cleric; and in the year 1622 this island was transferred to the Society by his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano, the archbishop of Manila, who was satisfied by the care with which the Society administers its charges, and desirous that his sheep should have the spiritual nourishment that is necessary for their souls—for it was exceedingly difficult for him always to find a secular priest to station there, on account of the distance from Manila, the difficulty of administering that charge, and the loneliness which one suffers there. The Society gladly overcame these difficulties for the sake of the spiritual fruit which could be gathered among those Indians; and our ministers,applying themselves to the cultivation [of that field], went about among those rugged mountains—from which they brought out some heathens, and others who were Christians, but who were living like heathen, without any spiritual direction. They baptized the heathens and instructed the Christians; and, in order that the results might be permanent, Ours gradually settled them in villages which they formed; there are three of these, Bovac, Santa Cruz, and Gasan, and formerly there was a visita in Mahanguin. The language spoken there is generally the Tagálog, although in various places there is a mixture of Visayan, and of some words peculiar to the island. God chose to prove those people by a sort of epidemic, of which many died; and the fathers not only gave them spiritual assistance, but provided the poor with food, and treated the sick. This trouble obliged them to resort for aid to the Empress of Heaven, to whom they offered a fiesta under the title of the Immaculate Conception, during the week before Christmas, with great devotion; and the Virgin responded to them by aiding them in their troubles and necessities.[Fol. 27:] In Marinduque Ours labored very fervently to reduce the Christians to a Christian and civilized mode of life; and among them was abolished an abuse which was deeply rooted in that island—which was, that creditors employed their debtors almost as if they were slaves, without the debtor’s service ever diminishing his debt. The wild Indians were reduced to settlement; among them were some persons who for thirty years had not received the sacraments of penance and communion. In the Pintados Islands there was now much longingfor and attendance upon these holy sacraments, when their necessity and advantage had been explained to the natives.[Fol. 29:] His illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano had so much affection for the Society, and so high an opinion of the zeal of its ministers, that he decided to entrust to it the parish of the port of Cavite. This, one may say, is a parish of all the nations, on account of the many peoples who resort to that port from the four quarters of the world; it was especially so then, when its commerce was more opulent, flourishing, and extensive [than now]. It did not seem expedient to the Society to accept this parish; but, in order to show their gratitude for the favor, and to coöperate by their labors with the zeal of that active prelate, they took upon themselves for several months the administration of that port, in which they gathered the fruit corresponding to the necessity—which, with so great a concourse of different peoples there, and the freedom from restraint which exists in this country, was very great. The metropolitan was well satisfied, and very grateful; and he insisted until the Society made itself responsible for the administration of one of the three visitas which the said parish has. This was a village on the shore of the river of Cavite, which on account of being older than the settlement at the port is called Cavite el Viejo [i.e., Old Cavite]; it afterward was located on the shore of the bay, about a legua from the said port—which, in order to distinguish it from this village, is called Cavite la Punta [i.e., Cavite on the Point], because it is on the point of the hook formed by the land; from this is derived the name Cavite, which means “a hook.” Theministry [at Old Cavite] was then small, but difficult to administer, on account of the people being scattered, and far more because of the corruption of morals; for, lacking the presence of the pastor, and the wolves of the nations who come here from all parts for trade, being so near, it might better be called a herd of goats than a flock of sheep—this village being, as it were, the public brothel [lupanar] of that port; and there was hardly a house where this sort of commerce was not established. This was a matter which at the beginning gave the ministers much to do, but with invincible firmness they continued to correct this lawless licentiousness; and by explaining the doctrine, preaching, and aiding the people with the sacraments, they made Christians in morals those who before only seemed to be such in outward appearance and name. Ours continued to reclaim these people to the Christian life, and today this village is one of the most Christian and best instructed communities in all the islands; it has a beautiful and very capacious church of stone, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, and a handsome house [for the minister]. There are in this village, besides the Tagálogs (who are the natives), some Sangleys and many mestizos, who live in Binacayan, which is a sort of ward of the village.[Fol. 31 b:] Ardently did the apostle of the Indias desire to go over to China for its conversion; but he died, like another Moses, in sight of the land which his desires promised to him. Since then, without looking for them, thousands of heathen Chinese have settled in these islands. As soon as the Society came to these shores, Ours applied themselves, in the best manner that they could, to the conversion andinstruction of those people—and even more in recent times, on account of the Society possessing near Manila some agricultural lands, which the Chinese (or Sangleys, as they are commonly called) began to cultivate. Ours were unwilling to lose the opportunity of converting them to our holy faith, so various persons were actually baptized; and, to render this result more permanent, a minister was stationed there, belonging to this field, who catechised them, preached in their own language, baptized them, and administered the sacraments—with permission from the vice-patron, Don Juan Niño de Tabora, and from the archbishop, Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano—and it is called the village of Santa Cruz. Their language is very difficult; the words are all monosyllables, and the same word, according to its various intonations, has many and various significations; on this account not only patience and close study, but a correct ear, are required for learning this language. Don Juan Niño de Tabora was the godfather of the first Sangley who was baptized; the most distinguished persons in the city attended the ceremony; and this very solemn pomp had much influence on the Chinese (who are very material), so that, having formed a high idea of the Catholic religion, many of them embraced it. Some were baptized a little while before they died, leaving behind many tokens of their eternal felicity, through the concurrence of circumstances which were apparently directed by a very special providence.In Marinduque Father Domingo de Peñalver had just induced some hamlets of wild Indians to settle down; he traveled through the bed of the river, getting his clothing wet, stumbling frequently over thestones, and often falling in the water. He went to take shelter in a hut, where there were so many and so fierce mosquitoes, that he remained awake all night, without being able to rid himself of the insects, notwithstanding all his efforts. He reached a hill so inaccessible that it was necessary that some Indians, going ahead and ascending by grasping the roots [of trees], should draw them all up the ascent with bejucos. There he set up a shed, where, preaching to them morning and afternoon, he prepared them for confession, and persuaded them to go down and settle in one place, as actually they did, to live as Christians. For lack of laborers, the Society resigned the district of Bondoc and several visitas, although Ours went there at various times on missionary trips. The people of Hingoso called upon Father Peñalver to assist them, because many in their village were sick, and the cura was at Manila; the father went there, gave the sacraments to the sick, and preached to the rest twice a day in the church. Three times a week they repaired to the church for the discipline, and he offered for them the act of contrition, and almost all the people in the village confessed. Afterward, at the urgent request of the archbishop of Manila, Father Peñalver went to Mindoro, to see if he could reconcile those Indians and their cura, which the archbishop had not been able to secure by various means; the said father went there, and preached various sermons, with so much earnestness and efficacy (on account of his proficiency in the Tagálog language) that in a short time they were reconciled together, the causes of the dispute bring entirely forgotten. This mission lasted two months; he preached twice every day, and heard some two thousand fivehundred confessions; at this the illustrious prelate (who was Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano) was greatly pleased, and thoroughly confirmed in the extraordinary esteem which he deigned to show the Society.... One of the greatest hardships and dangers experienced by the ministers of Bisayas (or Pintados), in which are the greater part of our ministries, is that they are journeying on the water all their lives; for, as the villages are many and the ministers few, one father regularly takes care of two villages, and sometimes of three or four; and as these are in different islands, he is continually moving from one to another, for their administration. I have known some fathers who formerly had six or seven visitas, and spent nearly all the year traveling from one to another. Nevertheless, so paternal and benignant is the providence of God that it is not known that any minister in Bisayas has been drowned—which, considering the many hurricanes, tempests, storms, currents, and other dangers in which every year many perish and are drowned, seems a continual miracle. To this it must be added that at various times vessels have capsized in the midst of the sea, and the fathers have fallen into the water; but God succored them by means of the Indians, who are excellent swimmers, or by other special methods of His paternal providence.[Fol. 38 b:] In this year [1628] Manila and the adjoining villages were grievously afflicted with a sort of epidemic pest, from which many people died—some suddenly, but even he who lingered longest died within twelve hours. Some attributed this pest to the many blacks who had been brought here from India to be sold, and who, sick from ill-usage, communicatedtheir disease to others; and some thought that it arose from an infection in the fish, which is the usual food of the poor. Various corpses were anatomized [se hizo anatomia], and the origin of the disease could not be discovered, although it was considered certain that it arose from a poisonous condition, since the only remedy that was found was theriac.9In a city where there are so few Spaniards, it is easy to understand the affliction which was felt at seeing the suddenness with which they were dying, since the colony was placed in so great danger of extinction, and the islands of being ruined at one stroke—besides the grief of individual persons at seeing themselves bereft, the wife without a husband, the husband without a wife, the father without children, the children deprived of their parents. All search was made for remedies. Our priests did not cease, day or night, to hear confessions, and to aid the sick and dying; and at the request of the cura they carried with them the consecrated oils, to administer these in case of need. They also carried theriac, after this was discovered to be a remedy, for the relief of the sick; so they exercised their charity at the same time on the souls and on the bodies of men, to the great edification of all.At San Miguel, one of those attacked by the pest told the father who was hearing his dying confession that he had seen near him two figures in the guise of ministers of justice, who seized people; and that when he had received absolution they went away from him, leaving behind a pestilential odor. Thefather published this information throughout the village, commanding the people to prepare themselves for confession on the following day, under the patronage of the Blessed Mary and St. Michael. A novenary was offered, and the litanies recited; and in the church the discipline was taken, with other prayers and penances, by which the Lord was moved to have especial mercy on this village—as God showed to a devout soul, in the figure of a ship which sailed through the air, the pilot of which was the common enemy; but he could not enter San Miguel, since there were powers greater than he, who prevented him. Also there were seen in the neighborhood of Manila malign spirits, in the appearance of horrible phantoms, who struck with death those who only looked at them. In the face of a danger so near, many amended their lives, and were converted to God in earnest, making a good confession. Then was seen the charity with which the poor Indians, despising the danger to their own lives, assisted the sick. Among others were two pious married persons, who devoted themselves entirely to aiding the sick, never leaving their bedsides until they either died or recovered; and God most mercifully chose to bring them out unscathed from so continual dangers. With the same kindness He chose to reward Brother Antonio de Miranda, who had charge of the infirmary in our college at Manila, who, on account of his well-known charity and solicitude in caring for the sick, had been commissioned by the father provincial, Juan de Bueras, to devote himself to the care of the sick Indians. But the poison of the pest infected him, so violent being the attack that hardly had he time to receive the sacraments;and he died at Manila on October 15, 1628.... He was a native of Ponferrada, and of a very well known family; he was an exemplary religious, and had been ten years in the Society.[Fol. 44 b:] In the years 1628 and 1629, at the request of the bishops and of some Indians the Society was placed in charge of various villages of converts. Don Juan Niño de Tabora gave us the chaplaincy of the garrison of Spanish soldiers which is at Iloylo in the island of Panay, and the instruction of the natives and the people from other nations who are gathered there. Also were given to us Ilog in the island of Negros, and Dapitan in Mindanao—of which afterward more special mention will be made.Map of Mindanao, showing settlements and districts occupied by Jesuits and RecollectsMap of Mindanao, showing settlements and districts occupied by Jesuits and Recollects[From MS. (dated 1683) inArchivo general de Indias, Sevilla][Fol. 50:] In this time [about 1630] the Christian faith made great advances in Maragondong, Silang, and Antipolo, bringing many Cimarrons (or wild Indians) from their lurking-places. A very fruitful mission was carried on in Mindoro, and on the northern coast of Mindanao; and Father Pedro Gutierrez went along those rivers, converting the Subanos. In Ilog, in the island of Negros, the fathers labored much in removing an inhuman practice of those barbarians, which was, to abandon entirely the old people, as being useless and only a burden on them; and these poor wretches were going about through the mountains, without knowing where to go, since even their own children drove them away. The fathers gave them shelter, fed them, and instructed them in order to baptize them; and there they converted many heathens.[Fol. 52:] In the year 1631 the cura of Mindoro, who was a secular priest, gave up that ministry to the Society, and Ours began to minister in that island,making one resilience of this and one of the island of Marinduque, and the superior lived at Nauhan in Mindoro; and they began to preach, and to convert the Manguianes, the heathen Indians of that island.In the year 1631 was begun the residence of Dapitan, in the great island of Mindanao. The first Jesuit who preached in that island was the apostle of the Indias, St. Francis Xavier, as appears from the bull for his canonization. Ruy Lopez de Villalobos came to these islands with his ships, sent by the viceroy of Nueva España, and gave them the name of Philipinas in honor of Phelipe II; and, driven by storms, he went to Amboyno, where the saint then was, in whose care Villalobos died. At the news of these islands thus obtained by the holy apostle, he came to them. The circumstance that this island was consecrated by the labors of that great apostle has always and very rightly commended it to the Society; and Ours have always and persistently endeavored to occupy themselves in converting the Mindanaos; and Father Valerio de Ledesma and others had begun to form missions on the river of Butuan. In the year 1596 the cabildo of Manila,in sede vacante—in whose charge was then the spiritual government of all the islands, as there was no division into bishoprics—gave possession of Mindanao to the Society in due form; and in 1597 this was confirmed by the vice-patron, Don Francisco Tello, the governor of these islands. Possession of it was taken by Father Juan del Campo, who, going as chaplain of the army, accompanied the adelantado, Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa, when he set out for the conquest of that kingdom.The first who began to minister to the Subanos inthe coasts of Dapitan was Father Juan Lopez; afterward Father Fabricio Sarsali, and then Father Francisco de Otazo, and various other fathers followed, who made their incursions sometimes from Zebu, sometimes from Bohol. In the year 1629 this ministry was entrusted to the Society by the bishop of Zebu, Don Fray Pedro de Arze. The venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez went through those coasts, carrying the gospel of Christ to the rivers of Quipit, Mucas, Telinga, and others; and in the year 1631 a permanent residence was formed, its rector being Father Pedro Gutierrez. The village of Dapitan is at the foot of a beautiful bay with a good harbor (in which the first conquistadors anchored), on the northern coast of Mindanao; it is south from the island of Zebu, and to the northeast of Samboangan, which is on the opposite coast [of Mindanao]. It lies at the foot of a hill, at the top of which there is a sort of fortress, so inaccessible that it does not need artillery for its defense. Above it has a parapet, and near the hill is an underground reservoir for collecting water, besides a spring of flowing water. Maize and vegetables can be planted there, in time of siege; and the minister and all the people retire to this place in time of invasions. I was there in the year 1737 [misprinted1637], and it seemed to me that it might be called the Aorno10of Philipinas.[Fol. 60:] In the year 1631 and in part of 1632 this province experienced so great a scarcity of laborers that the father provincial wrote to our father general that he would have been obliged to abandonsome of the ministries if the fervor of the few ministers had not supplied the lack of the many, their charity making great exertions. Our affliction was increased by the news that the Dutch had seized Father Francisco Encinas, the procurator of this province, who was going to Europa to bring a mission band here—for which purpose they had sent Father Juan Lopez, who was appointed in the second place11in the congregation of 1626. But soon God consoled this province, the mission arriving at Cavite on May 26, 1632. On June 18, 1631, they sailed from Cadiz, and on the last day of August arrived at Vera Cruz; they left Acapulco on February 23, 1632, and on May 15 sighted the first land of these islands. Every mission that goes to Indias begins to gather abundant fruit as soon as it sails from España; I will set down the allotment of work in which this band of missionaries was engaged, since from this may be gathered what the others do, since there is very little difference among them all. In the ship a mission was proclaimed which lasted eleven days, closing with general communion on the day of our father St. Ignatius; in this mission, through the sermons, instructions given in addresses, and individual exhortations, the fathers succeeded in obtaining many general confessions, besides the special ones which the men on the ship made, in order to secure the jubilee. Ours assisted the dying, consoled the sick and the afflicted, and established peace between those who were enemies. In Nueva España the priests were distributed in various colleges, in which they continued the exercises of preaching and hearing confessions.They went to Acapulco a month before embarking, by the special providence of God; for there were many diseases at that port, so that they were able to assist the dying. Thirty religious of St. Dominic were there, waiting to come over to these islands; all of them were sick, and five died; and, in order to prevent more deaths, they decided to remove from their house in which they were, on account of its bad condition. It was necessary, on account of their sick condition, to carry them in sedan-chairs; and although many laymen charitably offered their services for this act of piety, Ours did not permit them to do it, but took upon themselves the care of conveying the sick, their charity making this burden very light. In the ship “San Luys” they continued their ministries, preaching, and hearing the confessions of most of the people on the ship—in which the functions of Holy Week were performed, as well as was possible there. Twenty-one Jesuits left Cadiz, and all arrived at Manila except Father Matheo de Aguilar, who died near these islands on May 12, 1632; he was thirty-three years old, and had been in the Society sixteen years—most of which time he spent in Carmona, in the province of Andalusia, where he was an instructor in grammar, minister, and procurator in that college.... The rest who are known to have come in that year with Father Francisco de Encinas, procurator, and Brother Pedro Martinez are: The fathers Hernando Perez (the superior), Rafael de Bonafe, Luys de Aguayo, Magino Sola, and Francisco Perez; and the brothers Ignacio Alcina, Joseph Pimentél, Miguel Ponze, Andres de Ledesma, Antonio de Abarca, Onofre Esbri, Christoval de Lara, Amador Navarro, BartholomeSanchez; also Brother Juan Gazera, a coadjutor, and Diego Blanco and Pedro Garzia, candidates [for the priesthood].[Fol. 63 b:] In the islands of Pintados those first laborers made such haste that by this time [1633] there remained no heathens to convert, and they labored perseveringly in ministering to the Christians, with abundant results and consolation.... In the island of Negros and that of Mindanao, which but a short time before had been given up to the Society, the fathers were occupied in catechising and baptizing the heathens and especially in the island of Mindoro, where besides the Christian convents, were the heathen Manguianes, who lived in the mountains, and, according to estimate, numbered more than six thousand souls. These people wandered through the mountains and woods there like wild deer, and went about entirely naked, wearing only a breech-clout [bahaque] for the sake of decency; they had no house, hearth, or fixed habitation; and they slept where night overtook them, in a cave or in the trunk of some tree. They gathered their food on the trees or in the fields, since it was reduced to wild fruits and roots; and as their greatest treat they ate rice boiled in water. Their furnishings were some bows and arrows, or javelins for hunting, and a jar for cooking rice; and he who secured a knife, or any iron instrument, thought that he had a Potosi. They acknowledged no deity, and when they had any good fortune the entire barangay (or family connection) killed and ate a carabao, or buffalo; and what was left they sacrificed to the souls of their ancestors. In order to convert these heathens, a beginning was made by the reformation and instructionof the Christians; and by frequent preaching they gradually established the usage of confession with some frequency, and many received the Eucharist—a matter in which there was more difficulty then than now. Many came down from the mountains, and brought their children to be instructed; various persons were baptized, and even some, who, although they had the name of Christians, had never received the rite of baptism. After the fathers preached to the Christians regarding honesty in their confessions, the result was quickly seen in many general confessions, which were made with such eagerness that the crowds resorting to the church lasted more than two months.[Fol. 69:] In Maragondong various trips were made into the mountains [by Ours], and although many were reclaimed to a Christian mode of living, yet, as the mountains are so difficult of access and so close by, those people returned to their lurking-places very easily, and it was with difficulty that they were again brought into a village—so that the number of Indians was greatly diminished, not only in Maragondong, but in Looc, which was a visita of the former place, and contained very rugged mountains. In order to encourage the Indians thus settled to make raids on the Cimarrons and wild Indians and punish them, Don Juan Cerezo de Salamanca, the governorad interim, granted that those wild Indians should for a certain time remain the slaves of him who should bring them out of the hills; and by this means they succeeded in bringing out many from their caverns and hiding-places. Some of these were seventy or eighty years old, of whom many died as soon as they were instructed and baptized.Once the raiders came across an old woman about a hundred years old, near the cave in which those people performed their abominable sacrifices; she was alone, flung down on the ground, naked, and of so horrible aspect that she made it evident, even in external appearance, that she was a slave of the devil. Moved by Christian pity, those who were making the raid carried her to the village, where it was with difficulty that the father could catechise her, on account of her age and her stupidity. He finally catechised and baptized her, and she soon died; so that it seems as if it were a mercy of God that she thus waited for baptism, in order that her soul might not be lost—and the same with the other souls, their lives apparently being preserved in order that they might be saved through the agency of baptism. Blessed be His mercy forever! In Ilog, in the island of Negros, several heathens of those mountains were converted to the faith. An Indian woman was there, so obstinate in her blindness and so open in her hatred to holy baptism that, in order to free herself from the importunities of the minister, she feigned to be deaf and mute. Some of her relatives notified the father to come to baptize her. The father went to her, and began to catechise her, but she, keeping up the deceit, pretended that she did not hear him, and he could not draw a word from her. The father cried out to God for the conversion of that soul, and, at the same time, he continued his efforts to catechise her, suspecting that perhaps she was counterfeiting deafness. God heard his prayers, and, after several days, the first word which that woman uttered was a request for baptism—to the surprise of all who knew what horror of it she had felt. The father catechised and baptizedher, and this change was recognized as caused by the right hand of the Highest; for she who formerly was like a wild deer, living alone in the thickets, after this could not go away from the church, and continued to exercise many pious acts until she rested in the Lord.[Fol. 74 b:] In the year 1596 Father Juan del Campo and Brother Gaspar Gomez went with the adelantado Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa, who set out for the conquest of this island [Mindanao]. After the death of Father Juan del Campo, Father Juan de San Lucar went to assist that army, performing the functions of its chaplain, and also of vicar for the ecclesiastical judge. Fathers Valerio de Ledesma and Manuel Martinez preached to the Butuans, and afterward they were followed, although with some interruptions, by others, who announced the gospel to the Hadgaguanes—a people untamed and ferocious—to the Manobos, and to other neighboring peoples. Afterward this ministry was abandoned, on account of the lack of laborers for so great a harvest as God was sending us. Secular priests held it for some time, and finally it was given to the discalced Augustinian [i.e., Recollect] religious, who are ministering in that coast, and in Caraga as far as Linao—an inland region, where there is a small fort and a garrison. When Father Francisco Vicente was ministering in Butuan the cazique [meaningthe headman] of Linao went to invite him to go to his village; and even the blacks visited him, and gave him hopes for their submission. Thus all those peoples desired the Society, as set aside for the preaching in that island—which work was assigned to the Society by the ecclesiastical judge in the year 1596, and confirmedto them in 1597 by the governor Don Francisco Tello, as vice-patron. And when some controversy afterward occurred over [the region of] Lake Malanao, sentence was given in favor of the Society by Governors Don Juan Niño de Tabora and Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, as Father Combés states in book iii of hisHistory of Mindanao. These decisions were finally confirmed by Don Fernando Valdès Tamon, in the year 1737.In the year 1607 Father Pasqual de Acuña, going thither with an armada of the Spaniards, began to preach with great results to the heathens of the hill of Dapitan, where he baptized more than two hundred. He also administered the sacraments to some Christians who were there, who with Pagbuaya, a chief of Bohol, had taken refuge in that place. Afterward, Father Juan Lopez went to supply the Subanos of Dapitan with more regular ministrations. He was succeeded by Father Fabricio Sarsali, and he by Father Francisco Otazo and others, as a dependency of Zebu or of Bohol—until, in the year 1629, his illustrious Lordship the bishop of Zebu, Don Fray Pedro de Arze, governor of the archbishopric of Manila, again assigned this mission to the Society; and in 1631 the residence of Dapitan was founded, its first rector being the venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez; and in those times the Christian faith was already far advanced, and was extending through the region adjoining that place, and making great progress.[Fol. 92:] The island of Basilan, or Taguima, is three or four leguas south of Samboangan, east from Borney, and almost northeast from Joló. It is a fertile and abounding land, and on this account they callit the storehouse or garden of Samboangan. Its people are Moros and heathens, and almost always they follow the commands received from Joló. The Basilans, who inhabit the principal villages, are of the Lutaya people; those who dwell in the mountains are called Sameacas. Three chiefs had made themselves lords of the island, Ondol, Boto, and Quindinga; and they formed the greatest hindrance to the reduction of that people, who, as barbarians, have for an inviolable law the will of their headmen, [which they follow] heedlessly—that being most just, therefore, which has most following. Nevertheless, the brave constancy of Father Francisco Angel was not dismayed at such difficulties, or at the many perils of death which continually threatened him; and his zeal enabled him to secure the baptism of several persons, and to rescue from the captivity of Mahoma more than three hundred Christians, whom he quickly sent to Samboangan. Moreover, the fervor of the father being aided by the blessing of God, he saw, with unspeakable consolation to his soul, the three chiefs who were lords of the island baptized, with almost all the inhabitants of the villages in it; and in the course of time the Sameacas, or mountain-dwellers, were reduced—in this way mocking the strong opposition which was made by the panditas, who are their priests and doctors. [Here follows an account of the conquest of Joló in 1638, and of affairs there and in Mindanao, in which the Jesuits (especially Alexandro Lopez) took a prominent part; these matters have already been sufficiently recounted inVOLS. XXVIIIandXXIX].[Fol. 111:] [After the Spanish expeditions to Lake Lanao, in 1639–40, the fort built there was abandoned,and soon afterward burned by the natives. On May 7, 1642, the Moros of that region killed a Spanish officer, Captain Andres de Rueda, with three men and a Jesuit, Father Francisco de Mendoza, who accompanied him.] Much were the hopes of the gospel ministers cast down at seeing our military forces abandon that country, since they were expecting that with that protection the Christian church would increase. Notwithstanding, his faith thereby planted more firmly on God, Father Diego Patiño began to catechise the Iligan people—with so good effect that in a few months the larger (and the best) part of the residents in that village were brought under the yoke of Christ; this work was greatly aided by the kindness of the commandant of the garrison, Pedro Duran de Monforte. At this good news various persons of the Malanaos came down [from the mountains], and in the shelter of the fort they formed several small villages or hamlets, and heard the gospel with pleasure. The conversions increasing, it was necessary to station there another minister; this was Father Antonio de Abarca. They founded the village of Nagua, and others, which steadily and continually increased with the people who came down from the lake [i.e., Lanao], where the villages were being broken up.12This angered a brother of Molobolo,and he tried to avert his own ruin by the murder of the father; and for this purpose his treacherous mind [led him to] pretend that he would come down to the new villages, in order to become a Christian, intending to carry out then his treason at his leisure.But the father, warned by another Malanao, who was less impious, escaped death. The traitor did not desist from his purpose, and, when Father Abarca was in one of those villages toward Layavan, attacked the village; but he was discovered by the blacks ofthe hill-country, and they rained so many arrows upon the Moros that the latter abandoned their attempt. Another effort was a failure—the preparation of three joangas which the traitor had upon the sea, in order to capture and kill the father when he should return to Iligan; but in all was displayed the special protection with which God defends His ministers. However great the efforts made by the zeal of the gospel laborers, the result did not correspond to their desires, on account of the obstinacy of the Mahometans—although in the heathens they encountered greater docility for the acceptance of our religion. The life of the ministers was very toilsome, since to the task of preaching must be added the vigils and weariness, the heat and winds and rains, the dangers of [travel by] the sea, and the scarcity of food. In a country so poor, and at that time so uncultivated, it was considered a treat to find a few sardines or other fish, some beans, and a little rice; and many times they hardly could get boiled rice, and sometimes they must get along with sweet potatoes, gabes,13or [other] roots. But God made amends for these privations and toils with various inner pleasures; for they succeeded in obtaining some conversions that they had not expected, and even among the blacks, from whom they feared death, they found help and sustenance. [The author here relates a vision which appeared to an Indian chief, of the spirit of Father Marcelo Mastrilli as the directorand patron of Father Abarca; and the renunciation of a mission to Europe which was vowed by Father Patiño in order to regain his health—which accomplished, he returns to his missionary labors at Iligan.]He returned to the ministry, where he encountered much cause for suffering and tears; because the [military] officers [cabos] who then were governing that jurisdiction, actuated by arrogance and greed of gain, had committed such acts of violence that they had depopulated those little villages, many fleeing to the hills, where among the Moros they found treatment more endurable. The only ones who can oppose the injustice of such men are the gospel ministers. These fathers undertook to defend the Indians, and took it upon themselves to endure the anger of those men—who, raised from a low condition to places of authority, made their mean origin evident in their coarse natures and lawless passions; and the license of some of them went to such extremes that it was necessary for the soldiers to seize them as intolerable; and, to revenge themselves for the outrageous conduct of the officials, they accused the latter as traitors. Not even the Malanao chief Molobolo, who always had been firm on the side of the Spaniards, could endure their acts of violence, and, to avoid these, went back to the lake. This tempest lasted for some time, but afterward some peace was secured, when those officers were succeeded by others who were more compliant. The venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez went to Iligan, and with his amiable and gentle disposition induced a chief to leave the lake, who, with many people, became a resident of Dapitan; and another chief, still more powerful, wasadded to Iligan with his people. These results were mainly seemed by the virtue of the father, the high opinion which all had of his holy character, and the helpful and forcible effects of his oratory. The land was scorched by a drouth, which was general throughout the islands, from which ensued great losses. The father offered the Indians rain, if they would put a roof on the church; they accepted the proposal, and immediately God fulfilled what His servant had promised—sending them a copious rain on his saying the first mass of a novenary, which he offered to this end. With this the Indians were somewhat awakened from their natural sloth, and the church was finished, so that the fathers could exercise in it their ministries. The drouth was followed by a plague of locusts, which destroyed the grain-fields; the father exorcised them, and, to the wonder of all, the locusts thrust their heads into the ground, and the plague came to an end. This increased the esteem of the natives for our religion, and many heathens and Moros were brought into its bosom; and Father Combés says that when he ministered there he found more than fifty old persons of eighty to a hundred years, and baptized them all, with some three hundred boys this being now one of the largest Christian communities in the islands. The village is upon the shore, at the foot of the great Panguil,14between Butuan and Dapitan, to the south of Bohol, and north from Malanao, at the mouth of a river with a dangerous bar. The fort is of good stone, dedicated to St. Francis Xavier, in the shape of a star; the wallis two varas high, and half a vara thick, and it has a garrison, with artillery and weapons. The Moros have several times surrounded it, but they could not gain it by assault.[Fol. 116 b:] In Sibuguey Father Francisco Luzon was preaching, a truly apostolic man, who spent his life coming and going in the most arduous ministries of the islands. The Sibugueys are heathens, of a gentler disposition and more docile to the reception of the gospel than are the Mahometans; therefore this mission aroused great hopes. One Ash Wednesday Father Luzon went to the fort, and he was received by a Lutao of gigantic stature who gave him his hand. The father shook hands with him, supposing that that was all for which he stopped him; but the Lutao trickily let himself be carried on, and with his weight dragged the father into the water, with the assurance that he could not be in danger, on account of his dexterity in swimming. The father went under, because he could not swim, and the captain and the soldiers hastened from the fort to his aid—but so late that there was quite enough time for him to be drowned, on account of having sunk so deep in the water; they pulled him out, half dead, and the first thing that he did was to secure pardon for the Lutao. He gained a little strength and went to the fort; he gave ashes to the Spaniards, and preached with as much fervor as if that hardship had not befallen him. The principal of Sibuguey was Datan, and, to make sure of him, the Spaniards had carried away as a hostage his daughter Paloma; and love for her caused her parents to leave Sibuguey and go to Samboangan to live, to have the company of their daughter. Father Alexandro Lopez went to minister at Sibuguey, and he saw that without theauthority of Datan he could do almost nothing among the Sibugueys; this obliged him to go to Samboangan to get him, and he succeeded [in persuading them] to give him the girl. The father went up toward the source of the river, and found several hamlets of peaceable people, and a lake with five hundred people residing about it; and their chief, Sumogog, received him as a friend, and all listened readily to the things of God. He went so far that he could see the mountains of Dapitan, which are so near that place that a messenger went [to Dapitan] and returned in three days. These fair hopes were frustrated by the absence of Datan, who went with all his family to Mindanao; and on Ascension day in 1644 that new church disappeared, no one being left save a boy named Marcelo. Afterward the Moros put the fort in such danger, having killed some men, that it was necessary to dismantle it and withdraw the garrison.[Fol. 121 (sc.120):] The Joloans having been subjected by the bravery of Don Pedro de Almonte, they began to listen to the gospel, and they went to fix their abodes in the shelter of our fort. But, [divine] grace accommodating itself to their nature, as the sect of Mahoma have always been so obstinate, it was necessary that God should display His power, in order that their eyes might be opened to the light. The fervent father Alexandro Lopez was preaching in that island, to whose labors efficacy was given by the hand of God with many prodigies. The cures which the ministers made were frequent, now with benedictions, now with St. Paul’s earth,15in manycases of bites from poisonous serpents, or of persons to whom poison was administered. Among other cures, one was famous, that of a woman already given up as beyond hope; having given her some of St. Paul’s earth, she came back from the gates of death to entire health. With this they showed more readiness to accept the [Christian] doctrine, which was increased by a singular triumph which the holy cross obtained over hell in all these islands; for, having planted this royal standard of our redemption in an island greatly infested by demons, who were continually frightening the islanders with howls and cries, it imposed upon them perpetual silence, and freed all the other [neighboring] islands from an extraordinary tyranny. For the demons were crossing from island to island, in the sea, in the shape of serpents of enormous size, and did not allow vessels to pass without first compelling their crews to render adoration to the demon in iniquitous sacrifices; but this ceased, the demon taking flight at sight of the cross. [Several incidents of miraculous events are here related.] With these occurrences God opened their eyes, in order that they might see the light and embrace baptism, and in those islands a very notable Christian church was formed; and almost all was due to the miraculous resurrection of Maria Ligo [which our author relates at length]. Many believed, and thus began a flourishing Christian community; and as ministers afterward could not be kept in Joló on account of the wars, [these converts] exiled themselves from their native land, and went to live at Samboangan, in order that they might be able to live as Christians. [This prosperous beginning is spoiled by the lawless conduct ofthe commandant Gaspar de Morales, which brings on hostilities with the natives, and finally his own death in a fight with them.] Father Alexandro Lopez went to announce the gospel at Pangutaran, (an island distant six leguas east from Joló), and as the people were a simple folk they received the law of Christ with readiness ... The Moros of Tuptup captured a discalced religious of St. Augustine, who, to escape from the pains of captivity, took to flight with a negro. Father Juan Contreras (who was in Joló) went out with some Lutaos in boats to rescue him, calling to him in various places from the shore; but the poor religious was so overcome with fear that, although he heard the voices and was near the beach, he did not dare to go out to our vessels, despite the encouragement of the negro; and on the following day the Joloans, encountering him, carried him back to his captivity, with blows. He wrote a letter from that place, telling the misfortunes that he was suffering; all the soldiers, and even the Lutaos, called upon the governor [of Joló], to ransom that religious at the cost of their wages, but without effect. Then Father Contreras, moved by fervent charity, went to Patical, where the fair16washeld, and offered himself to remain as a captive among the Moros, in order that they might set free the poor religious, who was feeble and sick. Some Moros agreed to this; but the Orancaya Suil, who was the head chief of the Guimbanos, said that no one should have anything to do with that plan—at which the hopes of that afflicted religious for ransom were cut off. Seeing that he must again endure his hardships, from which death would soon result, he asked Father Contreras to confess him; the latter undertook to set out by water to furnish him that spiritual consolation, but the Lutaos would not allow him to leave the boat, even using some violence, in order not to endanger his person. All admired a charity so ardent, and, having renewed his efforts, he so urgently persuaded the governor, Juan Ruiz Maroto, to ransom him that the latter gave a thousand pesos in order to rescue the religious from captivity. Twice Father Contreras went to the fair, but the Moros did not carry the captive there with them. Afterward he was ransomed for three hundred pesos by Father Alexandro Lopez, the soldiers aiding with part of their pay a work of so great charity.

[In 1618 two unusually brilliant comets were visible in the Philippines; their effects on the minds of the people are thus described (fol. 5):]1There was great variety and inaccuracy of opinion about the comets; but through that general although confused notion which the majority of people form, that comets presage disastrous events, and that the anger of God threatens men by them, they assisted greatly in awakening contrition in the people, and inciting them to do penance. To this the preachers endeavored to influence them with forcible utterances, for the Society had not been behind [the other orders] in preparing the city for the entire success of the jubilee;2for there was one occasion when eleven Jesuits were counted, who, distributed at various stations, cried out like Jonah, threateningdestruction to impenitent and rebellious souls. God giving power to their words, this preaching was like the seed in the gospel story, scattered on good ground, which not only brought forth its fruit correspondingly, but so promptly that those who heard broke down in tears at hearing the eternal truths; and, like thirsty deer, when the sermon was ended they followed the preacher that he might hear their confessions, already dreading lest some emergency might find them in danger of damnation. This harvest was not confined within the walls of Manila, but extended to its many suburbs, and to the adjacent villages, in which missions had been conducted. Not only was there preaching to the Spaniards, but to the Tagálogs, the Indian natives of the country—who, in token of their fervor, gave from their own scanty supply food in abundance to the jails and prisons, Ours aiding them to carry the food, to the edification of the city. To the Japanese who were living in our village of San Miguel—exiles from their native land, in order to preserve their religion, who had taken refuge in Manila, driven out from that kingdom by the tyrant Taycosama—our fathers preached, in their own language. And it can be said that there was preaching to all the nations, that which occurred to the apostles in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost being represented in Manila; for I believe that there is no city in the world in which so many nationalities come together as here. For besides the Spaniards (who are the citizens and owners of the country) and the Tagálogs (who are the Indian natives of the land), there are many other Indians from the islands, who speak different tongues—such as the Pampangos, the Camarines[i.e., the Bicols], the Bisayans, the Ilocans, the Pangasinans, and the Cagayans. There are Creoles [Criollos], or Morenos, who are swarthy blacks, natives of the country;3there are many Cafres, and other negroes from Angola, Congo, and Africa. There are blacks from Asia, Malabars, Coromandels, and Canarins. There are a great many Sangleys, or Chinese—part of them Christians, but the majority heathens. There are Ternatans, and Mardicas (who took refuge here from Ternate); there are some Japanese; there are people from Borney and Timor, and from Bengal; there are Mindanaos, Joloans, and Malays; there are Javanese, Siaos, and Tidorans; there are people from Cambay and Mogol, and from other islands and kingdoms of Asia. There are a considerable number of Armenians, and some Persians; and Tartars, Macedonians, Turks, and Greeks. There are people from all the nations of Europa—French, Germans, and Dutch; Genoese and Venetians; Irish and Englishmen; Poles and Swedes. There are people from all the kingdoms of España, and from all America; so that he who spends an afternoon on thetuley4or bridge of Manila will see all these nationalities pass by him, behold their costumes, and hear their languages—something which cannot be done in any other city in the entire Spanish monarchy, and hardly in any other region in all the world.From this arises the fact that the confessional of Manila is, in my opinion, the most difficult in all theworld; for, as it is impossible to confess all these people in their own tongues, it is necessary to confess them in Spanish; and each nationality has made its own vocabulary of the Spanish language, with which those people have intercourse [with us], conduct their affairs, and make themselves understood; and without it Ours can understand them only with great difficulty, and almost by divination. A Sangley, an Armenian, and a Malabar will be heard talking together in Spanish, and our people do not understand them, as they so distort the word and the accent. The Indians have another Spanish language of their own; and the Cafres have one still more peculiar, to which must be added that they eat half of the words. No one save he who has had this experience can state the labors which it costs to confess them; and even when the fault is understood in general, to seek for a specific account of the circumstances is to enter a labyrinth without a clue. For they do not understand our orderly mode of speech, and therefore when they are questioned they say “yes” or “no” as it occurs to them, without rightly understanding what is asked from them—so that in a short time they will utter twenty contradictions. It is therefore necessary to accommodate oneself to their language, and learn their vocabulary. Another of the very serious difficulties is the little capacity of these people to distinguish and explain numbers, incidents, and circumstances; add to this the unbridled licentiousness of some, in accordance with the freedom and opportunities [for vice] in this land, the continual backsliding, and the few indications of fixed purpose. In others, who are capable and explain their meaning well, is found a complicationof perplexities—with a thousand reflections, and bargains, and frauds, and oaths all joined together; and faults that are extraordinary and of new kinds, which keep even the most learned man continually studying them. The heat of the country, and the stench or foul odor of the Indians and the negroes, unite in great part to make a hardship of the ministry, which in these islands is the most difficult; and on this account I regard it as being very meritorious. The annual confessions last from the beginning of Lent until Corpus Christi. In our college of Manila the church is open from daylight until eleven o’clock, and from two o’clock until nightfall; and always some fathers are present to hear confessions—for this is done not only by the active ministers, but by the instructors, when their scholastic duties give them opportunity; and I have known some fathers who remain to hear confessions during seven, eight, or more hours a day.It makes them bear all these annoyances patiently, and even sweetens these, to see how many souls are kept pure by the grace of God, in the midst of so many temptations, like the bramble in the midst of the fire without being burned. There are many who are striving for perfection, who frequent the sacraments, who maintain prayer and spiritual reading, and who give much in alms and perform other works of charity. And it is cause for the greatest consolation to see, at the solemn festivals of the Virgin and other important feasts, the confessional surrounded by Indians, Cafres, and negroes, men and women, great and small, who are awaiting their turns with incredible patience, kept there through the grace of God, against every impulse of their natural dispositionsand their slothfulness. And at the season of Lent it is heart-breaking to see the confessor, when he rises from his seat, surrounded by more than a hundred persons of all colors, who go away disconsolate because they have not obtained an opportunity to make their confessions; and in this manner they go and come for eight or ten days, or a fortnight, or even more, with unspeakable patience, but with such eagerness that when the confessor rises they go following him throughout the house, calling to him to hear their confessions. This is done even by boys of seven to twelve years, and hardly with violence can they be made to leave the father, and they continue to call after him; and some remain in the passages, on their knees, asking for confession, so great is the number of the penitents—to which that of the confessors does not correspond by far, nor does their assiduity, even if there were enough of them. The Society is not content with aiding those who come to seek relief in our church, and attending the year round all the sick, of various languages, who summon them to hear confession; but its laborers go forth—as it were, gospel hunters—to search for penitents. They assist almost all who are executed in the city; every week they go to the jails and hospitals; in Lent they hear confessions in all the prisons, and at the foundry, those of the galley-slaves. And in the course of the year they hear confessions in the college of Santa Ysabel—in which there are more than a hundred students, who are receiving the most admirable education—and in the seminary of Santa Potenciana, the students frequenting the sacraments often; and, in fine, they go on a perpetual round in pursuit of the impious.The confessional is, as it were, the harvesting of the crop; and the pulpit is the sowing, in which the seed of the gospel is scattered in the hearts of men, where with the watering of grace it bears fruit in due time, according to the coöperation [of the Holy Ghost?]. With great constancy and solicitude the Society contributes to the cultivation of these fields of Christianity, with preaching. In Manila the Society has, besides the sermons from the holy men of the order, other endowed feasts, and the set sermons5in the cathedral and the royal chapel. When necessity requires it, a mission is held, and the attendance is very large, although hardly a fifth of those who hear understand the Spanish language; this to a certain extent discourages the missionaries, as does even much more the fact that they do not encounter those external demonstrations of excitement and tears that they arouse in other places. This originatesfrom the characteristic of a large part of the audience, that these attend with due seriousness only to certain undertakings; and the distractions of their disputes and business affairs, and their indolence and the air of the country, dissipate their attention beyond measure. Their imaginations, overborne with foolish trifles, and accustomed to our voices, become so relaxed that even the most forcible and persuasive discourses make little, if any, impression. Nevertheless, there are many in whom the holy fear of God reigns, and the seed of the gospel takes root—which they embrace with seriousness and simplicity, as the importance of the subject demands. The marvel is, that many Indians and a great many Indian women, only by the sound of [the preaching in] the mission, and without understanding what they hear, are stricken with contrition, confess themselves, and receive communion, in order to gain the indulgences—to their own great advantage, and to the unspeakable consolation of their confessors at seeing the wonderfully loving providence of God for these souls.This fruit and this consolation are most evident in theSpiritual Exercisesof St. Ignatius,6which are explained through most of the year in our college.The principal citizens make their retreat there, and in the solitude of that retirement God speaks to them within their hearts; and marvelous results have been seen in various persons, in whom has been established a tenor of life so Christian that they may be called the religious of the laymen—in their minds those eternal truths, on which they meditate with seriousness, remaining firm, for the orderly conduct of their lives. The students in the college of San Joseph have their own society, which meets every Sunday, in which they perform their exercises of devotion and have their exhortations, during the course of the year. Every Sunday the Christian doctrine is explained to the boys in the school, and some example [for their imitation] is related to them; and they walk in procession through the streets, chanting the doctrine. The Indian servants of the college have their own assembly, conducted in a very decorous manner, with continual instruction in the doctrine. Every Saturday an address in Tagálog is given to the beatas who attend our church; they have their own society, and exercise themselves in frequent devotions, furnishing an excellent and useful example to the community. Every year they perform the spiritual exercises; and the topics therein are given to them in Tagálog, in our church, by one of Ours. Many devout Indian and mestizo women resort hither on this occasion, to perform these exercises, in various weeks, for which purpose they make retreat in the beaterio during the week required for that; and even Spanish women, including ladies of the most distinguished position, perform their spiritual exercises, and the topics for meditation are assigned to them in our church. This practice isvery beneficial for their souls, of great usefulness to the community, and remarkably edifying to all.The Society also busies itself in the conversion and reconciliation of certain heretics, who are wont to come from the East (as has been observed in recent years), and in catechising and baptizing the Moros or the heathens who sometimes reach the islands—either driven from their route, or called by God in other ways; and He draws them to himself, so that they obtain holy baptism, as has been seen in late years in some persons from the Palaos and Carolina islands, and from Siao. Another of the means of which the Society avails itself for the good of souls is, to print and distribute free many spiritual books in various languages, which are most efficacious although mute preachers. These, removing from men their erroneous ideas by clear exposition [of the truth], and leaving them without the cloak of their own fantastic notions, persuade them, without being wearisome, to abandon vice or error; and then they embrace virtue and the Christian mode of life. In Lent, as being an acceptable time and especially opportune for the harvest, the dikes are opened, in order that the waters of the word of God may flow more abundantly. On Tuesdays there is preaching to the Spaniards, and these sermons usually have the efficacy of a mission, although not given under that name. On Thursdays there is explanation of the doctrine, and preaching, in Tagálog, to the Indians; the attendance is very great, since many come, not only from the numerous suburbs of Manila, but even from the more distant villages. On Saturdays some good example of the Virgin is related, with a moral exhortation; the Spaniards who are members offraternities attend these, and afterward visit the altars. On Sundays there is preaching to the Cafres, blacks, creoles, and Malabars—who through a sense of propriety are called Morenos, although they are dark-skinned. The sermon is in Spanish, and the greatest difficulty of the preacher is to adapt his language to the understanding of the audience. Various poor Spaniards also attend these sermons, as well as other people, of various shades of color, of both sexes.Every Sunday certain fathers are sent to preach at the fort or castle, to the soldiers and the other men who live there. The Christian doctrine is chanted through the streets, and in the procession walk the boys of the school; it ends at the royal chapel, where some part of the catechism is explained, and a moral sermon is preached to the soldiers who live in their quarters in order to mount guard. The doctrine is explained at the Puerta Real and at the Puerta del Parián, and there is preaching in the guard-room—where there is a large attendance, not only of soldiers, but of the many people who, on entering or going out from the gates, stop to hear the word of God. Another father goes to the royal foundry, in which the galley-slaves live, where there is such a variety of people—mestizos, Indians of various dialects, Cafres, negroes of different kinds, and Sangleys or Chinese—that exceptional ability and patience are necessary in order to make them understand. Other fathers go to the college of Santa Isabel and the seminary of Santa Potenciana, where they give addresses and exhortations to the students of the former, and the women secluded in the latter. Others go to the prisons of both the ecclesiastical andsecular jurisdictions, in order that the prisoners may obtain the spiritual food of the doctrine. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays there is in our church aMiserere, with the discipline [i.e., scourging]; a spiritual book is read to those who are present, and at least once a week an exhortation is addressed to them.Such is, in general, the distribution of work for our college at Manila in Lent, and therein are engaged nearly all the men in the college, whether priests or students; and in times when there is a scarcity of workers I have seen some helping at two or three posts, and not only ministers and instructors thus occupied, but even the superiors, and men of seventy years old, to the great edification of the community. At Lent is seen in Manila that which occurred at the destruction of Jericho, where, when the priests sounded around the city the trumpets of the jubilee, the walls immediately gave way and fell to the ground. Thus in Manila do the Jesuits surround the walls, calling to every class of people with the trumpets of the jubilee and offering pardon; and at the sound, through the grace and mercy of the Highest, the lofty walls of lawlessness, vice, and crime, fall in ruins. And even the presence of the ark is not lacking to this marvelous success, for it is not to be doubted that the Blessed Virgin, most merciful mother of sinners, aids us with her intercession. [Our author here relates various instances of miraculous aid from heaven, and other edifying cases.][Fol. 13:] Father Juan de Torres, with another priest and a brother, went from the college of Manila to conduct a mission at a place which is calledCabeza de Bondoc,7about sixty leguas from Manila, in the bishopric of Camarines—the bishop of Nueva Cazeres at that time being his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Diego de Guevara, of the Order of St. Augustine. As soon as that zealous prelate took possession of his see, he began to ask for fathers of the Society, in order that, commencing with the Indians who were already peaceable who reside in Nueva Cazeres, they might establish missions and continue their instructions in other villages which he intended to give them. But the Society, who always have showed due consideration to the other ministers in these islands, not attempting to dispossess them from their ministries—although not always have we found them respond in like spirit—thanked that illustrious prelate for his kindness, without accepting those ministries; and in order that he might see that [the cause of this action] was consideration for the ministers, and not the desire to escape from the labor, Ours consented to conduct a mission in Bondoc, the difficulty of which, and its results, are explained by that prelate in a letter which he wrote to Father Torres, in which he says: “I find that it is true, what was told to me in Manila, when I gave that mission-field to the Society, and I mention it with great consolation to myself; and that is, that it was the Holy Ghost who inspired me to give it—for I see the fruits which are steadily and evidently being gathered therein. For in so many ages it has been impossible to unite those villages, and the Indians in them were regarded as irreclaimable;and now in so short a time those villages have been united, and the Indians, [who were like] wild beasts, appear like gentle lambs. These are the works of God, who operates through the ministers of the Society—who with so much mildness, affection, and zeal are laboring for the welfare of those people.” Great hardships were suffered by those of the Society in these missions, and for several years that ministry was cared for by Ours, until it was entrusted to the secular priests.The mission of Bondoc gained such repute in the island of Marinduque, distant more than forty leguas from Manila, that its minister, who was a zealous cleric, wrote to the father rector at Manila asking him very humbly and urgently to send there a mission, from which he was expecting abundant fruit. So earnest were the entreaties of this fervent minister that a mission was sent to the said island; it had the results which were expected, and afterward the Society was commissioned with its administration. In nearly all the ministries of secular priests the Society was carrying on continual missions, at the petition of the ministers or at the instance of the bishops.... The Society was held in honor not only by the bishop of Camarines, but equally by his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano, a son of the great Augustine and most worthy archbishop of Manila. That most zealous father Lorenzo Masonio preached to the negroes who are in this city and outside its walls, according to the custom of this province, which distributes the bread of the gospel doctrine to all classes of people and all nations. And that holy prelate deigned to go to our church, and, taking a wand in his hand, asthe Jesuits are accustomed to do, he walked through the aisle of the church, asked questions, and explained the Christian doctrine to the slaves and negroes. The community experienced the greatest edification at seeing their pastor so worthily occupied in instructing his sheep, not heeding the outer color of their bodies, but looking only at their precious souls—for in the presence of God there is no distinction of persons.[Fol. 22:] The island of Malindig—named thus on account of a high mountain that is in it, and which the Spaniards call Marinduque—is more than forty leguas from Manila, extends north and south, and is in the course which is taken by the galleons on the Nueva España trade-route.8There Ours carried on a mission with much gain, at the instance of its zealous pastor, who was a cleric; and in the year 1622 this island was transferred to the Society by his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano, the archbishop of Manila, who was satisfied by the care with which the Society administers its charges, and desirous that his sheep should have the spiritual nourishment that is necessary for their souls—for it was exceedingly difficult for him always to find a secular priest to station there, on account of the distance from Manila, the difficulty of administering that charge, and the loneliness which one suffers there. The Society gladly overcame these difficulties for the sake of the spiritual fruit which could be gathered among those Indians; and our ministers,applying themselves to the cultivation [of that field], went about among those rugged mountains—from which they brought out some heathens, and others who were Christians, but who were living like heathen, without any spiritual direction. They baptized the heathens and instructed the Christians; and, in order that the results might be permanent, Ours gradually settled them in villages which they formed; there are three of these, Bovac, Santa Cruz, and Gasan, and formerly there was a visita in Mahanguin. The language spoken there is generally the Tagálog, although in various places there is a mixture of Visayan, and of some words peculiar to the island. God chose to prove those people by a sort of epidemic, of which many died; and the fathers not only gave them spiritual assistance, but provided the poor with food, and treated the sick. This trouble obliged them to resort for aid to the Empress of Heaven, to whom they offered a fiesta under the title of the Immaculate Conception, during the week before Christmas, with great devotion; and the Virgin responded to them by aiding them in their troubles and necessities.[Fol. 27:] In Marinduque Ours labored very fervently to reduce the Christians to a Christian and civilized mode of life; and among them was abolished an abuse which was deeply rooted in that island—which was, that creditors employed their debtors almost as if they were slaves, without the debtor’s service ever diminishing his debt. The wild Indians were reduced to settlement; among them were some persons who for thirty years had not received the sacraments of penance and communion. In the Pintados Islands there was now much longingfor and attendance upon these holy sacraments, when their necessity and advantage had been explained to the natives.[Fol. 29:] His illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano had so much affection for the Society, and so high an opinion of the zeal of its ministers, that he decided to entrust to it the parish of the port of Cavite. This, one may say, is a parish of all the nations, on account of the many peoples who resort to that port from the four quarters of the world; it was especially so then, when its commerce was more opulent, flourishing, and extensive [than now]. It did not seem expedient to the Society to accept this parish; but, in order to show their gratitude for the favor, and to coöperate by their labors with the zeal of that active prelate, they took upon themselves for several months the administration of that port, in which they gathered the fruit corresponding to the necessity—which, with so great a concourse of different peoples there, and the freedom from restraint which exists in this country, was very great. The metropolitan was well satisfied, and very grateful; and he insisted until the Society made itself responsible for the administration of one of the three visitas which the said parish has. This was a village on the shore of the river of Cavite, which on account of being older than the settlement at the port is called Cavite el Viejo [i.e., Old Cavite]; it afterward was located on the shore of the bay, about a legua from the said port—which, in order to distinguish it from this village, is called Cavite la Punta [i.e., Cavite on the Point], because it is on the point of the hook formed by the land; from this is derived the name Cavite, which means “a hook.” Theministry [at Old Cavite] was then small, but difficult to administer, on account of the people being scattered, and far more because of the corruption of morals; for, lacking the presence of the pastor, and the wolves of the nations who come here from all parts for trade, being so near, it might better be called a herd of goats than a flock of sheep—this village being, as it were, the public brothel [lupanar] of that port; and there was hardly a house where this sort of commerce was not established. This was a matter which at the beginning gave the ministers much to do, but with invincible firmness they continued to correct this lawless licentiousness; and by explaining the doctrine, preaching, and aiding the people with the sacraments, they made Christians in morals those who before only seemed to be such in outward appearance and name. Ours continued to reclaim these people to the Christian life, and today this village is one of the most Christian and best instructed communities in all the islands; it has a beautiful and very capacious church of stone, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, and a handsome house [for the minister]. There are in this village, besides the Tagálogs (who are the natives), some Sangleys and many mestizos, who live in Binacayan, which is a sort of ward of the village.[Fol. 31 b:] Ardently did the apostle of the Indias desire to go over to China for its conversion; but he died, like another Moses, in sight of the land which his desires promised to him. Since then, without looking for them, thousands of heathen Chinese have settled in these islands. As soon as the Society came to these shores, Ours applied themselves, in the best manner that they could, to the conversion andinstruction of those people—and even more in recent times, on account of the Society possessing near Manila some agricultural lands, which the Chinese (or Sangleys, as they are commonly called) began to cultivate. Ours were unwilling to lose the opportunity of converting them to our holy faith, so various persons were actually baptized; and, to render this result more permanent, a minister was stationed there, belonging to this field, who catechised them, preached in their own language, baptized them, and administered the sacraments—with permission from the vice-patron, Don Juan Niño de Tabora, and from the archbishop, Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano—and it is called the village of Santa Cruz. Their language is very difficult; the words are all monosyllables, and the same word, according to its various intonations, has many and various significations; on this account not only patience and close study, but a correct ear, are required for learning this language. Don Juan Niño de Tabora was the godfather of the first Sangley who was baptized; the most distinguished persons in the city attended the ceremony; and this very solemn pomp had much influence on the Chinese (who are very material), so that, having formed a high idea of the Catholic religion, many of them embraced it. Some were baptized a little while before they died, leaving behind many tokens of their eternal felicity, through the concurrence of circumstances which were apparently directed by a very special providence.In Marinduque Father Domingo de Peñalver had just induced some hamlets of wild Indians to settle down; he traveled through the bed of the river, getting his clothing wet, stumbling frequently over thestones, and often falling in the water. He went to take shelter in a hut, where there were so many and so fierce mosquitoes, that he remained awake all night, without being able to rid himself of the insects, notwithstanding all his efforts. He reached a hill so inaccessible that it was necessary that some Indians, going ahead and ascending by grasping the roots [of trees], should draw them all up the ascent with bejucos. There he set up a shed, where, preaching to them morning and afternoon, he prepared them for confession, and persuaded them to go down and settle in one place, as actually they did, to live as Christians. For lack of laborers, the Society resigned the district of Bondoc and several visitas, although Ours went there at various times on missionary trips. The people of Hingoso called upon Father Peñalver to assist them, because many in their village were sick, and the cura was at Manila; the father went there, gave the sacraments to the sick, and preached to the rest twice a day in the church. Three times a week they repaired to the church for the discipline, and he offered for them the act of contrition, and almost all the people in the village confessed. Afterward, at the urgent request of the archbishop of Manila, Father Peñalver went to Mindoro, to see if he could reconcile those Indians and their cura, which the archbishop had not been able to secure by various means; the said father went there, and preached various sermons, with so much earnestness and efficacy (on account of his proficiency in the Tagálog language) that in a short time they were reconciled together, the causes of the dispute bring entirely forgotten. This mission lasted two months; he preached twice every day, and heard some two thousand fivehundred confessions; at this the illustrious prelate (who was Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano) was greatly pleased, and thoroughly confirmed in the extraordinary esteem which he deigned to show the Society.... One of the greatest hardships and dangers experienced by the ministers of Bisayas (or Pintados), in which are the greater part of our ministries, is that they are journeying on the water all their lives; for, as the villages are many and the ministers few, one father regularly takes care of two villages, and sometimes of three or four; and as these are in different islands, he is continually moving from one to another, for their administration. I have known some fathers who formerly had six or seven visitas, and spent nearly all the year traveling from one to another. Nevertheless, so paternal and benignant is the providence of God that it is not known that any minister in Bisayas has been drowned—which, considering the many hurricanes, tempests, storms, currents, and other dangers in which every year many perish and are drowned, seems a continual miracle. To this it must be added that at various times vessels have capsized in the midst of the sea, and the fathers have fallen into the water; but God succored them by means of the Indians, who are excellent swimmers, or by other special methods of His paternal providence.[Fol. 38 b:] In this year [1628] Manila and the adjoining villages were grievously afflicted with a sort of epidemic pest, from which many people died—some suddenly, but even he who lingered longest died within twelve hours. Some attributed this pest to the many blacks who had been brought here from India to be sold, and who, sick from ill-usage, communicatedtheir disease to others; and some thought that it arose from an infection in the fish, which is the usual food of the poor. Various corpses were anatomized [se hizo anatomia], and the origin of the disease could not be discovered, although it was considered certain that it arose from a poisonous condition, since the only remedy that was found was theriac.9In a city where there are so few Spaniards, it is easy to understand the affliction which was felt at seeing the suddenness with which they were dying, since the colony was placed in so great danger of extinction, and the islands of being ruined at one stroke—besides the grief of individual persons at seeing themselves bereft, the wife without a husband, the husband without a wife, the father without children, the children deprived of their parents. All search was made for remedies. Our priests did not cease, day or night, to hear confessions, and to aid the sick and dying; and at the request of the cura they carried with them the consecrated oils, to administer these in case of need. They also carried theriac, after this was discovered to be a remedy, for the relief of the sick; so they exercised their charity at the same time on the souls and on the bodies of men, to the great edification of all.At San Miguel, one of those attacked by the pest told the father who was hearing his dying confession that he had seen near him two figures in the guise of ministers of justice, who seized people; and that when he had received absolution they went away from him, leaving behind a pestilential odor. Thefather published this information throughout the village, commanding the people to prepare themselves for confession on the following day, under the patronage of the Blessed Mary and St. Michael. A novenary was offered, and the litanies recited; and in the church the discipline was taken, with other prayers and penances, by which the Lord was moved to have especial mercy on this village—as God showed to a devout soul, in the figure of a ship which sailed through the air, the pilot of which was the common enemy; but he could not enter San Miguel, since there were powers greater than he, who prevented him. Also there were seen in the neighborhood of Manila malign spirits, in the appearance of horrible phantoms, who struck with death those who only looked at them. In the face of a danger so near, many amended their lives, and were converted to God in earnest, making a good confession. Then was seen the charity with which the poor Indians, despising the danger to their own lives, assisted the sick. Among others were two pious married persons, who devoted themselves entirely to aiding the sick, never leaving their bedsides until they either died or recovered; and God most mercifully chose to bring them out unscathed from so continual dangers. With the same kindness He chose to reward Brother Antonio de Miranda, who had charge of the infirmary in our college at Manila, who, on account of his well-known charity and solicitude in caring for the sick, had been commissioned by the father provincial, Juan de Bueras, to devote himself to the care of the sick Indians. But the poison of the pest infected him, so violent being the attack that hardly had he time to receive the sacraments;and he died at Manila on October 15, 1628.... He was a native of Ponferrada, and of a very well known family; he was an exemplary religious, and had been ten years in the Society.[Fol. 44 b:] In the years 1628 and 1629, at the request of the bishops and of some Indians the Society was placed in charge of various villages of converts. Don Juan Niño de Tabora gave us the chaplaincy of the garrison of Spanish soldiers which is at Iloylo in the island of Panay, and the instruction of the natives and the people from other nations who are gathered there. Also were given to us Ilog in the island of Negros, and Dapitan in Mindanao—of which afterward more special mention will be made.Map of Mindanao, showing settlements and districts occupied by Jesuits and RecollectsMap of Mindanao, showing settlements and districts occupied by Jesuits and Recollects[From MS. (dated 1683) inArchivo general de Indias, Sevilla][Fol. 50:] In this time [about 1630] the Christian faith made great advances in Maragondong, Silang, and Antipolo, bringing many Cimarrons (or wild Indians) from their lurking-places. A very fruitful mission was carried on in Mindoro, and on the northern coast of Mindanao; and Father Pedro Gutierrez went along those rivers, converting the Subanos. In Ilog, in the island of Negros, the fathers labored much in removing an inhuman practice of those barbarians, which was, to abandon entirely the old people, as being useless and only a burden on them; and these poor wretches were going about through the mountains, without knowing where to go, since even their own children drove them away. The fathers gave them shelter, fed them, and instructed them in order to baptize them; and there they converted many heathens.[Fol. 52:] In the year 1631 the cura of Mindoro, who was a secular priest, gave up that ministry to the Society, and Ours began to minister in that island,making one resilience of this and one of the island of Marinduque, and the superior lived at Nauhan in Mindoro; and they began to preach, and to convert the Manguianes, the heathen Indians of that island.In the year 1631 was begun the residence of Dapitan, in the great island of Mindanao. The first Jesuit who preached in that island was the apostle of the Indias, St. Francis Xavier, as appears from the bull for his canonization. Ruy Lopez de Villalobos came to these islands with his ships, sent by the viceroy of Nueva España, and gave them the name of Philipinas in honor of Phelipe II; and, driven by storms, he went to Amboyno, where the saint then was, in whose care Villalobos died. At the news of these islands thus obtained by the holy apostle, he came to them. The circumstance that this island was consecrated by the labors of that great apostle has always and very rightly commended it to the Society; and Ours have always and persistently endeavored to occupy themselves in converting the Mindanaos; and Father Valerio de Ledesma and others had begun to form missions on the river of Butuan. In the year 1596 the cabildo of Manila,in sede vacante—in whose charge was then the spiritual government of all the islands, as there was no division into bishoprics—gave possession of Mindanao to the Society in due form; and in 1597 this was confirmed by the vice-patron, Don Francisco Tello, the governor of these islands. Possession of it was taken by Father Juan del Campo, who, going as chaplain of the army, accompanied the adelantado, Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa, when he set out for the conquest of that kingdom.The first who began to minister to the Subanos inthe coasts of Dapitan was Father Juan Lopez; afterward Father Fabricio Sarsali, and then Father Francisco de Otazo, and various other fathers followed, who made their incursions sometimes from Zebu, sometimes from Bohol. In the year 1629 this ministry was entrusted to the Society by the bishop of Zebu, Don Fray Pedro de Arze. The venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez went through those coasts, carrying the gospel of Christ to the rivers of Quipit, Mucas, Telinga, and others; and in the year 1631 a permanent residence was formed, its rector being Father Pedro Gutierrez. The village of Dapitan is at the foot of a beautiful bay with a good harbor (in which the first conquistadors anchored), on the northern coast of Mindanao; it is south from the island of Zebu, and to the northeast of Samboangan, which is on the opposite coast [of Mindanao]. It lies at the foot of a hill, at the top of which there is a sort of fortress, so inaccessible that it does not need artillery for its defense. Above it has a parapet, and near the hill is an underground reservoir for collecting water, besides a spring of flowing water. Maize and vegetables can be planted there, in time of siege; and the minister and all the people retire to this place in time of invasions. I was there in the year 1737 [misprinted1637], and it seemed to me that it might be called the Aorno10of Philipinas.[Fol. 60:] In the year 1631 and in part of 1632 this province experienced so great a scarcity of laborers that the father provincial wrote to our father general that he would have been obliged to abandonsome of the ministries if the fervor of the few ministers had not supplied the lack of the many, their charity making great exertions. Our affliction was increased by the news that the Dutch had seized Father Francisco Encinas, the procurator of this province, who was going to Europa to bring a mission band here—for which purpose they had sent Father Juan Lopez, who was appointed in the second place11in the congregation of 1626. But soon God consoled this province, the mission arriving at Cavite on May 26, 1632. On June 18, 1631, they sailed from Cadiz, and on the last day of August arrived at Vera Cruz; they left Acapulco on February 23, 1632, and on May 15 sighted the first land of these islands. Every mission that goes to Indias begins to gather abundant fruit as soon as it sails from España; I will set down the allotment of work in which this band of missionaries was engaged, since from this may be gathered what the others do, since there is very little difference among them all. In the ship a mission was proclaimed which lasted eleven days, closing with general communion on the day of our father St. Ignatius; in this mission, through the sermons, instructions given in addresses, and individual exhortations, the fathers succeeded in obtaining many general confessions, besides the special ones which the men on the ship made, in order to secure the jubilee. Ours assisted the dying, consoled the sick and the afflicted, and established peace between those who were enemies. In Nueva España the priests were distributed in various colleges, in which they continued the exercises of preaching and hearing confessions.They went to Acapulco a month before embarking, by the special providence of God; for there were many diseases at that port, so that they were able to assist the dying. Thirty religious of St. Dominic were there, waiting to come over to these islands; all of them were sick, and five died; and, in order to prevent more deaths, they decided to remove from their house in which they were, on account of its bad condition. It was necessary, on account of their sick condition, to carry them in sedan-chairs; and although many laymen charitably offered their services for this act of piety, Ours did not permit them to do it, but took upon themselves the care of conveying the sick, their charity making this burden very light. In the ship “San Luys” they continued their ministries, preaching, and hearing the confessions of most of the people on the ship—in which the functions of Holy Week were performed, as well as was possible there. Twenty-one Jesuits left Cadiz, and all arrived at Manila except Father Matheo de Aguilar, who died near these islands on May 12, 1632; he was thirty-three years old, and had been in the Society sixteen years—most of which time he spent in Carmona, in the province of Andalusia, where he was an instructor in grammar, minister, and procurator in that college.... The rest who are known to have come in that year with Father Francisco de Encinas, procurator, and Brother Pedro Martinez are: The fathers Hernando Perez (the superior), Rafael de Bonafe, Luys de Aguayo, Magino Sola, and Francisco Perez; and the brothers Ignacio Alcina, Joseph Pimentél, Miguel Ponze, Andres de Ledesma, Antonio de Abarca, Onofre Esbri, Christoval de Lara, Amador Navarro, BartholomeSanchez; also Brother Juan Gazera, a coadjutor, and Diego Blanco and Pedro Garzia, candidates [for the priesthood].[Fol. 63 b:] In the islands of Pintados those first laborers made such haste that by this time [1633] there remained no heathens to convert, and they labored perseveringly in ministering to the Christians, with abundant results and consolation.... In the island of Negros and that of Mindanao, which but a short time before had been given up to the Society, the fathers were occupied in catechising and baptizing the heathens and especially in the island of Mindoro, where besides the Christian convents, were the heathen Manguianes, who lived in the mountains, and, according to estimate, numbered more than six thousand souls. These people wandered through the mountains and woods there like wild deer, and went about entirely naked, wearing only a breech-clout [bahaque] for the sake of decency; they had no house, hearth, or fixed habitation; and they slept where night overtook them, in a cave or in the trunk of some tree. They gathered their food on the trees or in the fields, since it was reduced to wild fruits and roots; and as their greatest treat they ate rice boiled in water. Their furnishings were some bows and arrows, or javelins for hunting, and a jar for cooking rice; and he who secured a knife, or any iron instrument, thought that he had a Potosi. They acknowledged no deity, and when they had any good fortune the entire barangay (or family connection) killed and ate a carabao, or buffalo; and what was left they sacrificed to the souls of their ancestors. In order to convert these heathens, a beginning was made by the reformation and instructionof the Christians; and by frequent preaching they gradually established the usage of confession with some frequency, and many received the Eucharist—a matter in which there was more difficulty then than now. Many came down from the mountains, and brought their children to be instructed; various persons were baptized, and even some, who, although they had the name of Christians, had never received the rite of baptism. After the fathers preached to the Christians regarding honesty in their confessions, the result was quickly seen in many general confessions, which were made with such eagerness that the crowds resorting to the church lasted more than two months.[Fol. 69:] In Maragondong various trips were made into the mountains [by Ours], and although many were reclaimed to a Christian mode of living, yet, as the mountains are so difficult of access and so close by, those people returned to their lurking-places very easily, and it was with difficulty that they were again brought into a village—so that the number of Indians was greatly diminished, not only in Maragondong, but in Looc, which was a visita of the former place, and contained very rugged mountains. In order to encourage the Indians thus settled to make raids on the Cimarrons and wild Indians and punish them, Don Juan Cerezo de Salamanca, the governorad interim, granted that those wild Indians should for a certain time remain the slaves of him who should bring them out of the hills; and by this means they succeeded in bringing out many from their caverns and hiding-places. Some of these were seventy or eighty years old, of whom many died as soon as they were instructed and baptized.Once the raiders came across an old woman about a hundred years old, near the cave in which those people performed their abominable sacrifices; she was alone, flung down on the ground, naked, and of so horrible aspect that she made it evident, even in external appearance, that she was a slave of the devil. Moved by Christian pity, those who were making the raid carried her to the village, where it was with difficulty that the father could catechise her, on account of her age and her stupidity. He finally catechised and baptized her, and she soon died; so that it seems as if it were a mercy of God that she thus waited for baptism, in order that her soul might not be lost—and the same with the other souls, their lives apparently being preserved in order that they might be saved through the agency of baptism. Blessed be His mercy forever! In Ilog, in the island of Negros, several heathens of those mountains were converted to the faith. An Indian woman was there, so obstinate in her blindness and so open in her hatred to holy baptism that, in order to free herself from the importunities of the minister, she feigned to be deaf and mute. Some of her relatives notified the father to come to baptize her. The father went to her, and began to catechise her, but she, keeping up the deceit, pretended that she did not hear him, and he could not draw a word from her. The father cried out to God for the conversion of that soul, and, at the same time, he continued his efforts to catechise her, suspecting that perhaps she was counterfeiting deafness. God heard his prayers, and, after several days, the first word which that woman uttered was a request for baptism—to the surprise of all who knew what horror of it she had felt. The father catechised and baptizedher, and this change was recognized as caused by the right hand of the Highest; for she who formerly was like a wild deer, living alone in the thickets, after this could not go away from the church, and continued to exercise many pious acts until she rested in the Lord.[Fol. 74 b:] In the year 1596 Father Juan del Campo and Brother Gaspar Gomez went with the adelantado Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa, who set out for the conquest of this island [Mindanao]. After the death of Father Juan del Campo, Father Juan de San Lucar went to assist that army, performing the functions of its chaplain, and also of vicar for the ecclesiastical judge. Fathers Valerio de Ledesma and Manuel Martinez preached to the Butuans, and afterward they were followed, although with some interruptions, by others, who announced the gospel to the Hadgaguanes—a people untamed and ferocious—to the Manobos, and to other neighboring peoples. Afterward this ministry was abandoned, on account of the lack of laborers for so great a harvest as God was sending us. Secular priests held it for some time, and finally it was given to the discalced Augustinian [i.e., Recollect] religious, who are ministering in that coast, and in Caraga as far as Linao—an inland region, where there is a small fort and a garrison. When Father Francisco Vicente was ministering in Butuan the cazique [meaningthe headman] of Linao went to invite him to go to his village; and even the blacks visited him, and gave him hopes for their submission. Thus all those peoples desired the Society, as set aside for the preaching in that island—which work was assigned to the Society by the ecclesiastical judge in the year 1596, and confirmedto them in 1597 by the governor Don Francisco Tello, as vice-patron. And when some controversy afterward occurred over [the region of] Lake Malanao, sentence was given in favor of the Society by Governors Don Juan Niño de Tabora and Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, as Father Combés states in book iii of hisHistory of Mindanao. These decisions were finally confirmed by Don Fernando Valdès Tamon, in the year 1737.In the year 1607 Father Pasqual de Acuña, going thither with an armada of the Spaniards, began to preach with great results to the heathens of the hill of Dapitan, where he baptized more than two hundred. He also administered the sacraments to some Christians who were there, who with Pagbuaya, a chief of Bohol, had taken refuge in that place. Afterward, Father Juan Lopez went to supply the Subanos of Dapitan with more regular ministrations. He was succeeded by Father Fabricio Sarsali, and he by Father Francisco Otazo and others, as a dependency of Zebu or of Bohol—until, in the year 1629, his illustrious Lordship the bishop of Zebu, Don Fray Pedro de Arze, governor of the archbishopric of Manila, again assigned this mission to the Society; and in 1631 the residence of Dapitan was founded, its first rector being the venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez; and in those times the Christian faith was already far advanced, and was extending through the region adjoining that place, and making great progress.[Fol. 92:] The island of Basilan, or Taguima, is three or four leguas south of Samboangan, east from Borney, and almost northeast from Joló. It is a fertile and abounding land, and on this account they callit the storehouse or garden of Samboangan. Its people are Moros and heathens, and almost always they follow the commands received from Joló. The Basilans, who inhabit the principal villages, are of the Lutaya people; those who dwell in the mountains are called Sameacas. Three chiefs had made themselves lords of the island, Ondol, Boto, and Quindinga; and they formed the greatest hindrance to the reduction of that people, who, as barbarians, have for an inviolable law the will of their headmen, [which they follow] heedlessly—that being most just, therefore, which has most following. Nevertheless, the brave constancy of Father Francisco Angel was not dismayed at such difficulties, or at the many perils of death which continually threatened him; and his zeal enabled him to secure the baptism of several persons, and to rescue from the captivity of Mahoma more than three hundred Christians, whom he quickly sent to Samboangan. Moreover, the fervor of the father being aided by the blessing of God, he saw, with unspeakable consolation to his soul, the three chiefs who were lords of the island baptized, with almost all the inhabitants of the villages in it; and in the course of time the Sameacas, or mountain-dwellers, were reduced—in this way mocking the strong opposition which was made by the panditas, who are their priests and doctors. [Here follows an account of the conquest of Joló in 1638, and of affairs there and in Mindanao, in which the Jesuits (especially Alexandro Lopez) took a prominent part; these matters have already been sufficiently recounted inVOLS. XXVIIIandXXIX].[Fol. 111:] [After the Spanish expeditions to Lake Lanao, in 1639–40, the fort built there was abandoned,and soon afterward burned by the natives. On May 7, 1642, the Moros of that region killed a Spanish officer, Captain Andres de Rueda, with three men and a Jesuit, Father Francisco de Mendoza, who accompanied him.] Much were the hopes of the gospel ministers cast down at seeing our military forces abandon that country, since they were expecting that with that protection the Christian church would increase. Notwithstanding, his faith thereby planted more firmly on God, Father Diego Patiño began to catechise the Iligan people—with so good effect that in a few months the larger (and the best) part of the residents in that village were brought under the yoke of Christ; this work was greatly aided by the kindness of the commandant of the garrison, Pedro Duran de Monforte. At this good news various persons of the Malanaos came down [from the mountains], and in the shelter of the fort they formed several small villages or hamlets, and heard the gospel with pleasure. The conversions increasing, it was necessary to station there another minister; this was Father Antonio de Abarca. They founded the village of Nagua, and others, which steadily and continually increased with the people who came down from the lake [i.e., Lanao], where the villages were being broken up.12This angered a brother of Molobolo,and he tried to avert his own ruin by the murder of the father; and for this purpose his treacherous mind [led him to] pretend that he would come down to the new villages, in order to become a Christian, intending to carry out then his treason at his leisure.But the father, warned by another Malanao, who was less impious, escaped death. The traitor did not desist from his purpose, and, when Father Abarca was in one of those villages toward Layavan, attacked the village; but he was discovered by the blacks ofthe hill-country, and they rained so many arrows upon the Moros that the latter abandoned their attempt. Another effort was a failure—the preparation of three joangas which the traitor had upon the sea, in order to capture and kill the father when he should return to Iligan; but in all was displayed the special protection with which God defends His ministers. However great the efforts made by the zeal of the gospel laborers, the result did not correspond to their desires, on account of the obstinacy of the Mahometans—although in the heathens they encountered greater docility for the acceptance of our religion. The life of the ministers was very toilsome, since to the task of preaching must be added the vigils and weariness, the heat and winds and rains, the dangers of [travel by] the sea, and the scarcity of food. In a country so poor, and at that time so uncultivated, it was considered a treat to find a few sardines or other fish, some beans, and a little rice; and many times they hardly could get boiled rice, and sometimes they must get along with sweet potatoes, gabes,13or [other] roots. But God made amends for these privations and toils with various inner pleasures; for they succeeded in obtaining some conversions that they had not expected, and even among the blacks, from whom they feared death, they found help and sustenance. [The author here relates a vision which appeared to an Indian chief, of the spirit of Father Marcelo Mastrilli as the directorand patron of Father Abarca; and the renunciation of a mission to Europe which was vowed by Father Patiño in order to regain his health—which accomplished, he returns to his missionary labors at Iligan.]He returned to the ministry, where he encountered much cause for suffering and tears; because the [military] officers [cabos] who then were governing that jurisdiction, actuated by arrogance and greed of gain, had committed such acts of violence that they had depopulated those little villages, many fleeing to the hills, where among the Moros they found treatment more endurable. The only ones who can oppose the injustice of such men are the gospel ministers. These fathers undertook to defend the Indians, and took it upon themselves to endure the anger of those men—who, raised from a low condition to places of authority, made their mean origin evident in their coarse natures and lawless passions; and the license of some of them went to such extremes that it was necessary for the soldiers to seize them as intolerable; and, to revenge themselves for the outrageous conduct of the officials, they accused the latter as traitors. Not even the Malanao chief Molobolo, who always had been firm on the side of the Spaniards, could endure their acts of violence, and, to avoid these, went back to the lake. This tempest lasted for some time, but afterward some peace was secured, when those officers were succeeded by others who were more compliant. The venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez went to Iligan, and with his amiable and gentle disposition induced a chief to leave the lake, who, with many people, became a resident of Dapitan; and another chief, still more powerful, wasadded to Iligan with his people. These results were mainly seemed by the virtue of the father, the high opinion which all had of his holy character, and the helpful and forcible effects of his oratory. The land was scorched by a drouth, which was general throughout the islands, from which ensued great losses. The father offered the Indians rain, if they would put a roof on the church; they accepted the proposal, and immediately God fulfilled what His servant had promised—sending them a copious rain on his saying the first mass of a novenary, which he offered to this end. With this the Indians were somewhat awakened from their natural sloth, and the church was finished, so that the fathers could exercise in it their ministries. The drouth was followed by a plague of locusts, which destroyed the grain-fields; the father exorcised them, and, to the wonder of all, the locusts thrust their heads into the ground, and the plague came to an end. This increased the esteem of the natives for our religion, and many heathens and Moros were brought into its bosom; and Father Combés says that when he ministered there he found more than fifty old persons of eighty to a hundred years, and baptized them all, with some three hundred boys this being now one of the largest Christian communities in the islands. The village is upon the shore, at the foot of the great Panguil,14between Butuan and Dapitan, to the south of Bohol, and north from Malanao, at the mouth of a river with a dangerous bar. The fort is of good stone, dedicated to St. Francis Xavier, in the shape of a star; the wallis two varas high, and half a vara thick, and it has a garrison, with artillery and weapons. The Moros have several times surrounded it, but they could not gain it by assault.[Fol. 116 b:] In Sibuguey Father Francisco Luzon was preaching, a truly apostolic man, who spent his life coming and going in the most arduous ministries of the islands. The Sibugueys are heathens, of a gentler disposition and more docile to the reception of the gospel than are the Mahometans; therefore this mission aroused great hopes. One Ash Wednesday Father Luzon went to the fort, and he was received by a Lutao of gigantic stature who gave him his hand. The father shook hands with him, supposing that that was all for which he stopped him; but the Lutao trickily let himself be carried on, and with his weight dragged the father into the water, with the assurance that he could not be in danger, on account of his dexterity in swimming. The father went under, because he could not swim, and the captain and the soldiers hastened from the fort to his aid—but so late that there was quite enough time for him to be drowned, on account of having sunk so deep in the water; they pulled him out, half dead, and the first thing that he did was to secure pardon for the Lutao. He gained a little strength and went to the fort; he gave ashes to the Spaniards, and preached with as much fervor as if that hardship had not befallen him. The principal of Sibuguey was Datan, and, to make sure of him, the Spaniards had carried away as a hostage his daughter Paloma; and love for her caused her parents to leave Sibuguey and go to Samboangan to live, to have the company of their daughter. Father Alexandro Lopez went to minister at Sibuguey, and he saw that without theauthority of Datan he could do almost nothing among the Sibugueys; this obliged him to go to Samboangan to get him, and he succeeded [in persuading them] to give him the girl. The father went up toward the source of the river, and found several hamlets of peaceable people, and a lake with five hundred people residing about it; and their chief, Sumogog, received him as a friend, and all listened readily to the things of God. He went so far that he could see the mountains of Dapitan, which are so near that place that a messenger went [to Dapitan] and returned in three days. These fair hopes were frustrated by the absence of Datan, who went with all his family to Mindanao; and on Ascension day in 1644 that new church disappeared, no one being left save a boy named Marcelo. Afterward the Moros put the fort in such danger, having killed some men, that it was necessary to dismantle it and withdraw the garrison.[Fol. 121 (sc.120):] The Joloans having been subjected by the bravery of Don Pedro de Almonte, they began to listen to the gospel, and they went to fix their abodes in the shelter of our fort. But, [divine] grace accommodating itself to their nature, as the sect of Mahoma have always been so obstinate, it was necessary that God should display His power, in order that their eyes might be opened to the light. The fervent father Alexandro Lopez was preaching in that island, to whose labors efficacy was given by the hand of God with many prodigies. The cures which the ministers made were frequent, now with benedictions, now with St. Paul’s earth,15in manycases of bites from poisonous serpents, or of persons to whom poison was administered. Among other cures, one was famous, that of a woman already given up as beyond hope; having given her some of St. Paul’s earth, she came back from the gates of death to entire health. With this they showed more readiness to accept the [Christian] doctrine, which was increased by a singular triumph which the holy cross obtained over hell in all these islands; for, having planted this royal standard of our redemption in an island greatly infested by demons, who were continually frightening the islanders with howls and cries, it imposed upon them perpetual silence, and freed all the other [neighboring] islands from an extraordinary tyranny. For the demons were crossing from island to island, in the sea, in the shape of serpents of enormous size, and did not allow vessels to pass without first compelling their crews to render adoration to the demon in iniquitous sacrifices; but this ceased, the demon taking flight at sight of the cross. [Several incidents of miraculous events are here related.] With these occurrences God opened their eyes, in order that they might see the light and embrace baptism, and in those islands a very notable Christian church was formed; and almost all was due to the miraculous resurrection of Maria Ligo [which our author relates at length]. Many believed, and thus began a flourishing Christian community; and as ministers afterward could not be kept in Joló on account of the wars, [these converts] exiled themselves from their native land, and went to live at Samboangan, in order that they might be able to live as Christians. [This prosperous beginning is spoiled by the lawless conduct ofthe commandant Gaspar de Morales, which brings on hostilities with the natives, and finally his own death in a fight with them.] Father Alexandro Lopez went to announce the gospel at Pangutaran, (an island distant six leguas east from Joló), and as the people were a simple folk they received the law of Christ with readiness ... The Moros of Tuptup captured a discalced religious of St. Augustine, who, to escape from the pains of captivity, took to flight with a negro. Father Juan Contreras (who was in Joló) went out with some Lutaos in boats to rescue him, calling to him in various places from the shore; but the poor religious was so overcome with fear that, although he heard the voices and was near the beach, he did not dare to go out to our vessels, despite the encouragement of the negro; and on the following day the Joloans, encountering him, carried him back to his captivity, with blows. He wrote a letter from that place, telling the misfortunes that he was suffering; all the soldiers, and even the Lutaos, called upon the governor [of Joló], to ransom that religious at the cost of their wages, but without effect. Then Father Contreras, moved by fervent charity, went to Patical, where the fair16washeld, and offered himself to remain as a captive among the Moros, in order that they might set free the poor religious, who was feeble and sick. Some Moros agreed to this; but the Orancaya Suil, who was the head chief of the Guimbanos, said that no one should have anything to do with that plan—at which the hopes of that afflicted religious for ransom were cut off. Seeing that he must again endure his hardships, from which death would soon result, he asked Father Contreras to confess him; the latter undertook to set out by water to furnish him that spiritual consolation, but the Lutaos would not allow him to leave the boat, even using some violence, in order not to endanger his person. All admired a charity so ardent, and, having renewed his efforts, he so urgently persuaded the governor, Juan Ruiz Maroto, to ransom him that the latter gave a thousand pesos in order to rescue the religious from captivity. Twice Father Contreras went to the fair, but the Moros did not carry the captive there with them. Afterward he was ransomed for three hundred pesos by Father Alexandro Lopez, the soldiers aiding with part of their pay a work of so great charity.

[In 1618 two unusually brilliant comets were visible in the Philippines; their effects on the minds of the people are thus described (fol. 5):]1There was great variety and inaccuracy of opinion about the comets; but through that general although confused notion which the majority of people form, that comets presage disastrous events, and that the anger of God threatens men by them, they assisted greatly in awakening contrition in the people, and inciting them to do penance. To this the preachers endeavored to influence them with forcible utterances, for the Society had not been behind [the other orders] in preparing the city for the entire success of the jubilee;2for there was one occasion when eleven Jesuits were counted, who, distributed at various stations, cried out like Jonah, threateningdestruction to impenitent and rebellious souls. God giving power to their words, this preaching was like the seed in the gospel story, scattered on good ground, which not only brought forth its fruit correspondingly, but so promptly that those who heard broke down in tears at hearing the eternal truths; and, like thirsty deer, when the sermon was ended they followed the preacher that he might hear their confessions, already dreading lest some emergency might find them in danger of damnation. This harvest was not confined within the walls of Manila, but extended to its many suburbs, and to the adjacent villages, in which missions had been conducted. Not only was there preaching to the Spaniards, but to the Tagálogs, the Indian natives of the country—who, in token of their fervor, gave from their own scanty supply food in abundance to the jails and prisons, Ours aiding them to carry the food, to the edification of the city. To the Japanese who were living in our village of San Miguel—exiles from their native land, in order to preserve their religion, who had taken refuge in Manila, driven out from that kingdom by the tyrant Taycosama—our fathers preached, in their own language. And it can be said that there was preaching to all the nations, that which occurred to the apostles in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost being represented in Manila; for I believe that there is no city in the world in which so many nationalities come together as here. For besides the Spaniards (who are the citizens and owners of the country) and the Tagálogs (who are the Indian natives of the land), there are many other Indians from the islands, who speak different tongues—such as the Pampangos, the Camarines[i.e., the Bicols], the Bisayans, the Ilocans, the Pangasinans, and the Cagayans. There are Creoles [Criollos], or Morenos, who are swarthy blacks, natives of the country;3there are many Cafres, and other negroes from Angola, Congo, and Africa. There are blacks from Asia, Malabars, Coromandels, and Canarins. There are a great many Sangleys, or Chinese—part of them Christians, but the majority heathens. There are Ternatans, and Mardicas (who took refuge here from Ternate); there are some Japanese; there are people from Borney and Timor, and from Bengal; there are Mindanaos, Joloans, and Malays; there are Javanese, Siaos, and Tidorans; there are people from Cambay and Mogol, and from other islands and kingdoms of Asia. There are a considerable number of Armenians, and some Persians; and Tartars, Macedonians, Turks, and Greeks. There are people from all the nations of Europa—French, Germans, and Dutch; Genoese and Venetians; Irish and Englishmen; Poles and Swedes. There are people from all the kingdoms of España, and from all America; so that he who spends an afternoon on thetuley4or bridge of Manila will see all these nationalities pass by him, behold their costumes, and hear their languages—something which cannot be done in any other city in the entire Spanish monarchy, and hardly in any other region in all the world.From this arises the fact that the confessional of Manila is, in my opinion, the most difficult in all theworld; for, as it is impossible to confess all these people in their own tongues, it is necessary to confess them in Spanish; and each nationality has made its own vocabulary of the Spanish language, with which those people have intercourse [with us], conduct their affairs, and make themselves understood; and without it Ours can understand them only with great difficulty, and almost by divination. A Sangley, an Armenian, and a Malabar will be heard talking together in Spanish, and our people do not understand them, as they so distort the word and the accent. The Indians have another Spanish language of their own; and the Cafres have one still more peculiar, to which must be added that they eat half of the words. No one save he who has had this experience can state the labors which it costs to confess them; and even when the fault is understood in general, to seek for a specific account of the circumstances is to enter a labyrinth without a clue. For they do not understand our orderly mode of speech, and therefore when they are questioned they say “yes” or “no” as it occurs to them, without rightly understanding what is asked from them—so that in a short time they will utter twenty contradictions. It is therefore necessary to accommodate oneself to their language, and learn their vocabulary. Another of the very serious difficulties is the little capacity of these people to distinguish and explain numbers, incidents, and circumstances; add to this the unbridled licentiousness of some, in accordance with the freedom and opportunities [for vice] in this land, the continual backsliding, and the few indications of fixed purpose. In others, who are capable and explain their meaning well, is found a complicationof perplexities—with a thousand reflections, and bargains, and frauds, and oaths all joined together; and faults that are extraordinary and of new kinds, which keep even the most learned man continually studying them. The heat of the country, and the stench or foul odor of the Indians and the negroes, unite in great part to make a hardship of the ministry, which in these islands is the most difficult; and on this account I regard it as being very meritorious. The annual confessions last from the beginning of Lent until Corpus Christi. In our college of Manila the church is open from daylight until eleven o’clock, and from two o’clock until nightfall; and always some fathers are present to hear confessions—for this is done not only by the active ministers, but by the instructors, when their scholastic duties give them opportunity; and I have known some fathers who remain to hear confessions during seven, eight, or more hours a day.It makes them bear all these annoyances patiently, and even sweetens these, to see how many souls are kept pure by the grace of God, in the midst of so many temptations, like the bramble in the midst of the fire without being burned. There are many who are striving for perfection, who frequent the sacraments, who maintain prayer and spiritual reading, and who give much in alms and perform other works of charity. And it is cause for the greatest consolation to see, at the solemn festivals of the Virgin and other important feasts, the confessional surrounded by Indians, Cafres, and negroes, men and women, great and small, who are awaiting their turns with incredible patience, kept there through the grace of God, against every impulse of their natural dispositionsand their slothfulness. And at the season of Lent it is heart-breaking to see the confessor, when he rises from his seat, surrounded by more than a hundred persons of all colors, who go away disconsolate because they have not obtained an opportunity to make their confessions; and in this manner they go and come for eight or ten days, or a fortnight, or even more, with unspeakable patience, but with such eagerness that when the confessor rises they go following him throughout the house, calling to him to hear their confessions. This is done even by boys of seven to twelve years, and hardly with violence can they be made to leave the father, and they continue to call after him; and some remain in the passages, on their knees, asking for confession, so great is the number of the penitents—to which that of the confessors does not correspond by far, nor does their assiduity, even if there were enough of them. The Society is not content with aiding those who come to seek relief in our church, and attending the year round all the sick, of various languages, who summon them to hear confession; but its laborers go forth—as it were, gospel hunters—to search for penitents. They assist almost all who are executed in the city; every week they go to the jails and hospitals; in Lent they hear confessions in all the prisons, and at the foundry, those of the galley-slaves. And in the course of the year they hear confessions in the college of Santa Ysabel—in which there are more than a hundred students, who are receiving the most admirable education—and in the seminary of Santa Potenciana, the students frequenting the sacraments often; and, in fine, they go on a perpetual round in pursuit of the impious.The confessional is, as it were, the harvesting of the crop; and the pulpit is the sowing, in which the seed of the gospel is scattered in the hearts of men, where with the watering of grace it bears fruit in due time, according to the coöperation [of the Holy Ghost?]. With great constancy and solicitude the Society contributes to the cultivation of these fields of Christianity, with preaching. In Manila the Society has, besides the sermons from the holy men of the order, other endowed feasts, and the set sermons5in the cathedral and the royal chapel. When necessity requires it, a mission is held, and the attendance is very large, although hardly a fifth of those who hear understand the Spanish language; this to a certain extent discourages the missionaries, as does even much more the fact that they do not encounter those external demonstrations of excitement and tears that they arouse in other places. This originatesfrom the characteristic of a large part of the audience, that these attend with due seriousness only to certain undertakings; and the distractions of their disputes and business affairs, and their indolence and the air of the country, dissipate their attention beyond measure. Their imaginations, overborne with foolish trifles, and accustomed to our voices, become so relaxed that even the most forcible and persuasive discourses make little, if any, impression. Nevertheless, there are many in whom the holy fear of God reigns, and the seed of the gospel takes root—which they embrace with seriousness and simplicity, as the importance of the subject demands. The marvel is, that many Indians and a great many Indian women, only by the sound of [the preaching in] the mission, and without understanding what they hear, are stricken with contrition, confess themselves, and receive communion, in order to gain the indulgences—to their own great advantage, and to the unspeakable consolation of their confessors at seeing the wonderfully loving providence of God for these souls.This fruit and this consolation are most evident in theSpiritual Exercisesof St. Ignatius,6which are explained through most of the year in our college.The principal citizens make their retreat there, and in the solitude of that retirement God speaks to them within their hearts; and marvelous results have been seen in various persons, in whom has been established a tenor of life so Christian that they may be called the religious of the laymen—in their minds those eternal truths, on which they meditate with seriousness, remaining firm, for the orderly conduct of their lives. The students in the college of San Joseph have their own society, which meets every Sunday, in which they perform their exercises of devotion and have their exhortations, during the course of the year. Every Sunday the Christian doctrine is explained to the boys in the school, and some example [for their imitation] is related to them; and they walk in procession through the streets, chanting the doctrine. The Indian servants of the college have their own assembly, conducted in a very decorous manner, with continual instruction in the doctrine. Every Saturday an address in Tagálog is given to the beatas who attend our church; they have their own society, and exercise themselves in frequent devotions, furnishing an excellent and useful example to the community. Every year they perform the spiritual exercises; and the topics therein are given to them in Tagálog, in our church, by one of Ours. Many devout Indian and mestizo women resort hither on this occasion, to perform these exercises, in various weeks, for which purpose they make retreat in the beaterio during the week required for that; and even Spanish women, including ladies of the most distinguished position, perform their spiritual exercises, and the topics for meditation are assigned to them in our church. This practice isvery beneficial for their souls, of great usefulness to the community, and remarkably edifying to all.The Society also busies itself in the conversion and reconciliation of certain heretics, who are wont to come from the East (as has been observed in recent years), and in catechising and baptizing the Moros or the heathens who sometimes reach the islands—either driven from their route, or called by God in other ways; and He draws them to himself, so that they obtain holy baptism, as has been seen in late years in some persons from the Palaos and Carolina islands, and from Siao. Another of the means of which the Society avails itself for the good of souls is, to print and distribute free many spiritual books in various languages, which are most efficacious although mute preachers. These, removing from men their erroneous ideas by clear exposition [of the truth], and leaving them without the cloak of their own fantastic notions, persuade them, without being wearisome, to abandon vice or error; and then they embrace virtue and the Christian mode of life. In Lent, as being an acceptable time and especially opportune for the harvest, the dikes are opened, in order that the waters of the word of God may flow more abundantly. On Tuesdays there is preaching to the Spaniards, and these sermons usually have the efficacy of a mission, although not given under that name. On Thursdays there is explanation of the doctrine, and preaching, in Tagálog, to the Indians; the attendance is very great, since many come, not only from the numerous suburbs of Manila, but even from the more distant villages. On Saturdays some good example of the Virgin is related, with a moral exhortation; the Spaniards who are members offraternities attend these, and afterward visit the altars. On Sundays there is preaching to the Cafres, blacks, creoles, and Malabars—who through a sense of propriety are called Morenos, although they are dark-skinned. The sermon is in Spanish, and the greatest difficulty of the preacher is to adapt his language to the understanding of the audience. Various poor Spaniards also attend these sermons, as well as other people, of various shades of color, of both sexes.Every Sunday certain fathers are sent to preach at the fort or castle, to the soldiers and the other men who live there. The Christian doctrine is chanted through the streets, and in the procession walk the boys of the school; it ends at the royal chapel, where some part of the catechism is explained, and a moral sermon is preached to the soldiers who live in their quarters in order to mount guard. The doctrine is explained at the Puerta Real and at the Puerta del Parián, and there is preaching in the guard-room—where there is a large attendance, not only of soldiers, but of the many people who, on entering or going out from the gates, stop to hear the word of God. Another father goes to the royal foundry, in which the galley-slaves live, where there is such a variety of people—mestizos, Indians of various dialects, Cafres, negroes of different kinds, and Sangleys or Chinese—that exceptional ability and patience are necessary in order to make them understand. Other fathers go to the college of Santa Isabel and the seminary of Santa Potenciana, where they give addresses and exhortations to the students of the former, and the women secluded in the latter. Others go to the prisons of both the ecclesiastical andsecular jurisdictions, in order that the prisoners may obtain the spiritual food of the doctrine. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays there is in our church aMiserere, with the discipline [i.e., scourging]; a spiritual book is read to those who are present, and at least once a week an exhortation is addressed to them.Such is, in general, the distribution of work for our college at Manila in Lent, and therein are engaged nearly all the men in the college, whether priests or students; and in times when there is a scarcity of workers I have seen some helping at two or three posts, and not only ministers and instructors thus occupied, but even the superiors, and men of seventy years old, to the great edification of the community. At Lent is seen in Manila that which occurred at the destruction of Jericho, where, when the priests sounded around the city the trumpets of the jubilee, the walls immediately gave way and fell to the ground. Thus in Manila do the Jesuits surround the walls, calling to every class of people with the trumpets of the jubilee and offering pardon; and at the sound, through the grace and mercy of the Highest, the lofty walls of lawlessness, vice, and crime, fall in ruins. And even the presence of the ark is not lacking to this marvelous success, for it is not to be doubted that the Blessed Virgin, most merciful mother of sinners, aids us with her intercession. [Our author here relates various instances of miraculous aid from heaven, and other edifying cases.][Fol. 13:] Father Juan de Torres, with another priest and a brother, went from the college of Manila to conduct a mission at a place which is calledCabeza de Bondoc,7about sixty leguas from Manila, in the bishopric of Camarines—the bishop of Nueva Cazeres at that time being his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Diego de Guevara, of the Order of St. Augustine. As soon as that zealous prelate took possession of his see, he began to ask for fathers of the Society, in order that, commencing with the Indians who were already peaceable who reside in Nueva Cazeres, they might establish missions and continue their instructions in other villages which he intended to give them. But the Society, who always have showed due consideration to the other ministers in these islands, not attempting to dispossess them from their ministries—although not always have we found them respond in like spirit—thanked that illustrious prelate for his kindness, without accepting those ministries; and in order that he might see that [the cause of this action] was consideration for the ministers, and not the desire to escape from the labor, Ours consented to conduct a mission in Bondoc, the difficulty of which, and its results, are explained by that prelate in a letter which he wrote to Father Torres, in which he says: “I find that it is true, what was told to me in Manila, when I gave that mission-field to the Society, and I mention it with great consolation to myself; and that is, that it was the Holy Ghost who inspired me to give it—for I see the fruits which are steadily and evidently being gathered therein. For in so many ages it has been impossible to unite those villages, and the Indians in them were regarded as irreclaimable;and now in so short a time those villages have been united, and the Indians, [who were like] wild beasts, appear like gentle lambs. These are the works of God, who operates through the ministers of the Society—who with so much mildness, affection, and zeal are laboring for the welfare of those people.” Great hardships were suffered by those of the Society in these missions, and for several years that ministry was cared for by Ours, until it was entrusted to the secular priests.The mission of Bondoc gained such repute in the island of Marinduque, distant more than forty leguas from Manila, that its minister, who was a zealous cleric, wrote to the father rector at Manila asking him very humbly and urgently to send there a mission, from which he was expecting abundant fruit. So earnest were the entreaties of this fervent minister that a mission was sent to the said island; it had the results which were expected, and afterward the Society was commissioned with its administration. In nearly all the ministries of secular priests the Society was carrying on continual missions, at the petition of the ministers or at the instance of the bishops.... The Society was held in honor not only by the bishop of Camarines, but equally by his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano, a son of the great Augustine and most worthy archbishop of Manila. That most zealous father Lorenzo Masonio preached to the negroes who are in this city and outside its walls, according to the custom of this province, which distributes the bread of the gospel doctrine to all classes of people and all nations. And that holy prelate deigned to go to our church, and, taking a wand in his hand, asthe Jesuits are accustomed to do, he walked through the aisle of the church, asked questions, and explained the Christian doctrine to the slaves and negroes. The community experienced the greatest edification at seeing their pastor so worthily occupied in instructing his sheep, not heeding the outer color of their bodies, but looking only at their precious souls—for in the presence of God there is no distinction of persons.[Fol. 22:] The island of Malindig—named thus on account of a high mountain that is in it, and which the Spaniards call Marinduque—is more than forty leguas from Manila, extends north and south, and is in the course which is taken by the galleons on the Nueva España trade-route.8There Ours carried on a mission with much gain, at the instance of its zealous pastor, who was a cleric; and in the year 1622 this island was transferred to the Society by his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano, the archbishop of Manila, who was satisfied by the care with which the Society administers its charges, and desirous that his sheep should have the spiritual nourishment that is necessary for their souls—for it was exceedingly difficult for him always to find a secular priest to station there, on account of the distance from Manila, the difficulty of administering that charge, and the loneliness which one suffers there. The Society gladly overcame these difficulties for the sake of the spiritual fruit which could be gathered among those Indians; and our ministers,applying themselves to the cultivation [of that field], went about among those rugged mountains—from which they brought out some heathens, and others who were Christians, but who were living like heathen, without any spiritual direction. They baptized the heathens and instructed the Christians; and, in order that the results might be permanent, Ours gradually settled them in villages which they formed; there are three of these, Bovac, Santa Cruz, and Gasan, and formerly there was a visita in Mahanguin. The language spoken there is generally the Tagálog, although in various places there is a mixture of Visayan, and of some words peculiar to the island. God chose to prove those people by a sort of epidemic, of which many died; and the fathers not only gave them spiritual assistance, but provided the poor with food, and treated the sick. This trouble obliged them to resort for aid to the Empress of Heaven, to whom they offered a fiesta under the title of the Immaculate Conception, during the week before Christmas, with great devotion; and the Virgin responded to them by aiding them in their troubles and necessities.[Fol. 27:] In Marinduque Ours labored very fervently to reduce the Christians to a Christian and civilized mode of life; and among them was abolished an abuse which was deeply rooted in that island—which was, that creditors employed their debtors almost as if they were slaves, without the debtor’s service ever diminishing his debt. The wild Indians were reduced to settlement; among them were some persons who for thirty years had not received the sacraments of penance and communion. In the Pintados Islands there was now much longingfor and attendance upon these holy sacraments, when their necessity and advantage had been explained to the natives.[Fol. 29:] His illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano had so much affection for the Society, and so high an opinion of the zeal of its ministers, that he decided to entrust to it the parish of the port of Cavite. This, one may say, is a parish of all the nations, on account of the many peoples who resort to that port from the four quarters of the world; it was especially so then, when its commerce was more opulent, flourishing, and extensive [than now]. It did not seem expedient to the Society to accept this parish; but, in order to show their gratitude for the favor, and to coöperate by their labors with the zeal of that active prelate, they took upon themselves for several months the administration of that port, in which they gathered the fruit corresponding to the necessity—which, with so great a concourse of different peoples there, and the freedom from restraint which exists in this country, was very great. The metropolitan was well satisfied, and very grateful; and he insisted until the Society made itself responsible for the administration of one of the three visitas which the said parish has. This was a village on the shore of the river of Cavite, which on account of being older than the settlement at the port is called Cavite el Viejo [i.e., Old Cavite]; it afterward was located on the shore of the bay, about a legua from the said port—which, in order to distinguish it from this village, is called Cavite la Punta [i.e., Cavite on the Point], because it is on the point of the hook formed by the land; from this is derived the name Cavite, which means “a hook.” Theministry [at Old Cavite] was then small, but difficult to administer, on account of the people being scattered, and far more because of the corruption of morals; for, lacking the presence of the pastor, and the wolves of the nations who come here from all parts for trade, being so near, it might better be called a herd of goats than a flock of sheep—this village being, as it were, the public brothel [lupanar] of that port; and there was hardly a house where this sort of commerce was not established. This was a matter which at the beginning gave the ministers much to do, but with invincible firmness they continued to correct this lawless licentiousness; and by explaining the doctrine, preaching, and aiding the people with the sacraments, they made Christians in morals those who before only seemed to be such in outward appearance and name. Ours continued to reclaim these people to the Christian life, and today this village is one of the most Christian and best instructed communities in all the islands; it has a beautiful and very capacious church of stone, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, and a handsome house [for the minister]. There are in this village, besides the Tagálogs (who are the natives), some Sangleys and many mestizos, who live in Binacayan, which is a sort of ward of the village.[Fol. 31 b:] Ardently did the apostle of the Indias desire to go over to China for its conversion; but he died, like another Moses, in sight of the land which his desires promised to him. Since then, without looking for them, thousands of heathen Chinese have settled in these islands. As soon as the Society came to these shores, Ours applied themselves, in the best manner that they could, to the conversion andinstruction of those people—and even more in recent times, on account of the Society possessing near Manila some agricultural lands, which the Chinese (or Sangleys, as they are commonly called) began to cultivate. Ours were unwilling to lose the opportunity of converting them to our holy faith, so various persons were actually baptized; and, to render this result more permanent, a minister was stationed there, belonging to this field, who catechised them, preached in their own language, baptized them, and administered the sacraments—with permission from the vice-patron, Don Juan Niño de Tabora, and from the archbishop, Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano—and it is called the village of Santa Cruz. Their language is very difficult; the words are all monosyllables, and the same word, according to its various intonations, has many and various significations; on this account not only patience and close study, but a correct ear, are required for learning this language. Don Juan Niño de Tabora was the godfather of the first Sangley who was baptized; the most distinguished persons in the city attended the ceremony; and this very solemn pomp had much influence on the Chinese (who are very material), so that, having formed a high idea of the Catholic religion, many of them embraced it. Some were baptized a little while before they died, leaving behind many tokens of their eternal felicity, through the concurrence of circumstances which were apparently directed by a very special providence.In Marinduque Father Domingo de Peñalver had just induced some hamlets of wild Indians to settle down; he traveled through the bed of the river, getting his clothing wet, stumbling frequently over thestones, and often falling in the water. He went to take shelter in a hut, where there were so many and so fierce mosquitoes, that he remained awake all night, without being able to rid himself of the insects, notwithstanding all his efforts. He reached a hill so inaccessible that it was necessary that some Indians, going ahead and ascending by grasping the roots [of trees], should draw them all up the ascent with bejucos. There he set up a shed, where, preaching to them morning and afternoon, he prepared them for confession, and persuaded them to go down and settle in one place, as actually they did, to live as Christians. For lack of laborers, the Society resigned the district of Bondoc and several visitas, although Ours went there at various times on missionary trips. The people of Hingoso called upon Father Peñalver to assist them, because many in their village were sick, and the cura was at Manila; the father went there, gave the sacraments to the sick, and preached to the rest twice a day in the church. Three times a week they repaired to the church for the discipline, and he offered for them the act of contrition, and almost all the people in the village confessed. Afterward, at the urgent request of the archbishop of Manila, Father Peñalver went to Mindoro, to see if he could reconcile those Indians and their cura, which the archbishop had not been able to secure by various means; the said father went there, and preached various sermons, with so much earnestness and efficacy (on account of his proficiency in the Tagálog language) that in a short time they were reconciled together, the causes of the dispute bring entirely forgotten. This mission lasted two months; he preached twice every day, and heard some two thousand fivehundred confessions; at this the illustrious prelate (who was Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano) was greatly pleased, and thoroughly confirmed in the extraordinary esteem which he deigned to show the Society.... One of the greatest hardships and dangers experienced by the ministers of Bisayas (or Pintados), in which are the greater part of our ministries, is that they are journeying on the water all their lives; for, as the villages are many and the ministers few, one father regularly takes care of two villages, and sometimes of three or four; and as these are in different islands, he is continually moving from one to another, for their administration. I have known some fathers who formerly had six or seven visitas, and spent nearly all the year traveling from one to another. Nevertheless, so paternal and benignant is the providence of God that it is not known that any minister in Bisayas has been drowned—which, considering the many hurricanes, tempests, storms, currents, and other dangers in which every year many perish and are drowned, seems a continual miracle. To this it must be added that at various times vessels have capsized in the midst of the sea, and the fathers have fallen into the water; but God succored them by means of the Indians, who are excellent swimmers, or by other special methods of His paternal providence.[Fol. 38 b:] In this year [1628] Manila and the adjoining villages were grievously afflicted with a sort of epidemic pest, from which many people died—some suddenly, but even he who lingered longest died within twelve hours. Some attributed this pest to the many blacks who had been brought here from India to be sold, and who, sick from ill-usage, communicatedtheir disease to others; and some thought that it arose from an infection in the fish, which is the usual food of the poor. Various corpses were anatomized [se hizo anatomia], and the origin of the disease could not be discovered, although it was considered certain that it arose from a poisonous condition, since the only remedy that was found was theriac.9In a city where there are so few Spaniards, it is easy to understand the affliction which was felt at seeing the suddenness with which they were dying, since the colony was placed in so great danger of extinction, and the islands of being ruined at one stroke—besides the grief of individual persons at seeing themselves bereft, the wife without a husband, the husband without a wife, the father without children, the children deprived of their parents. All search was made for remedies. Our priests did not cease, day or night, to hear confessions, and to aid the sick and dying; and at the request of the cura they carried with them the consecrated oils, to administer these in case of need. They also carried theriac, after this was discovered to be a remedy, for the relief of the sick; so they exercised their charity at the same time on the souls and on the bodies of men, to the great edification of all.At San Miguel, one of those attacked by the pest told the father who was hearing his dying confession that he had seen near him two figures in the guise of ministers of justice, who seized people; and that when he had received absolution they went away from him, leaving behind a pestilential odor. Thefather published this information throughout the village, commanding the people to prepare themselves for confession on the following day, under the patronage of the Blessed Mary and St. Michael. A novenary was offered, and the litanies recited; and in the church the discipline was taken, with other prayers and penances, by which the Lord was moved to have especial mercy on this village—as God showed to a devout soul, in the figure of a ship which sailed through the air, the pilot of which was the common enemy; but he could not enter San Miguel, since there were powers greater than he, who prevented him. Also there were seen in the neighborhood of Manila malign spirits, in the appearance of horrible phantoms, who struck with death those who only looked at them. In the face of a danger so near, many amended their lives, and were converted to God in earnest, making a good confession. Then was seen the charity with which the poor Indians, despising the danger to their own lives, assisted the sick. Among others were two pious married persons, who devoted themselves entirely to aiding the sick, never leaving their bedsides until they either died or recovered; and God most mercifully chose to bring them out unscathed from so continual dangers. With the same kindness He chose to reward Brother Antonio de Miranda, who had charge of the infirmary in our college at Manila, who, on account of his well-known charity and solicitude in caring for the sick, had been commissioned by the father provincial, Juan de Bueras, to devote himself to the care of the sick Indians. But the poison of the pest infected him, so violent being the attack that hardly had he time to receive the sacraments;and he died at Manila on October 15, 1628.... He was a native of Ponferrada, and of a very well known family; he was an exemplary religious, and had been ten years in the Society.[Fol. 44 b:] In the years 1628 and 1629, at the request of the bishops and of some Indians the Society was placed in charge of various villages of converts. Don Juan Niño de Tabora gave us the chaplaincy of the garrison of Spanish soldiers which is at Iloylo in the island of Panay, and the instruction of the natives and the people from other nations who are gathered there. Also were given to us Ilog in the island of Negros, and Dapitan in Mindanao—of which afterward more special mention will be made.Map of Mindanao, showing settlements and districts occupied by Jesuits and RecollectsMap of Mindanao, showing settlements and districts occupied by Jesuits and Recollects[From MS. (dated 1683) inArchivo general de Indias, Sevilla][Fol. 50:] In this time [about 1630] the Christian faith made great advances in Maragondong, Silang, and Antipolo, bringing many Cimarrons (or wild Indians) from their lurking-places. A very fruitful mission was carried on in Mindoro, and on the northern coast of Mindanao; and Father Pedro Gutierrez went along those rivers, converting the Subanos. In Ilog, in the island of Negros, the fathers labored much in removing an inhuman practice of those barbarians, which was, to abandon entirely the old people, as being useless and only a burden on them; and these poor wretches were going about through the mountains, without knowing where to go, since even their own children drove them away. The fathers gave them shelter, fed them, and instructed them in order to baptize them; and there they converted many heathens.[Fol. 52:] In the year 1631 the cura of Mindoro, who was a secular priest, gave up that ministry to the Society, and Ours began to minister in that island,making one resilience of this and one of the island of Marinduque, and the superior lived at Nauhan in Mindoro; and they began to preach, and to convert the Manguianes, the heathen Indians of that island.In the year 1631 was begun the residence of Dapitan, in the great island of Mindanao. The first Jesuit who preached in that island was the apostle of the Indias, St. Francis Xavier, as appears from the bull for his canonization. Ruy Lopez de Villalobos came to these islands with his ships, sent by the viceroy of Nueva España, and gave them the name of Philipinas in honor of Phelipe II; and, driven by storms, he went to Amboyno, where the saint then was, in whose care Villalobos died. At the news of these islands thus obtained by the holy apostle, he came to them. The circumstance that this island was consecrated by the labors of that great apostle has always and very rightly commended it to the Society; and Ours have always and persistently endeavored to occupy themselves in converting the Mindanaos; and Father Valerio de Ledesma and others had begun to form missions on the river of Butuan. In the year 1596 the cabildo of Manila,in sede vacante—in whose charge was then the spiritual government of all the islands, as there was no division into bishoprics—gave possession of Mindanao to the Society in due form; and in 1597 this was confirmed by the vice-patron, Don Francisco Tello, the governor of these islands. Possession of it was taken by Father Juan del Campo, who, going as chaplain of the army, accompanied the adelantado, Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa, when he set out for the conquest of that kingdom.The first who began to minister to the Subanos inthe coasts of Dapitan was Father Juan Lopez; afterward Father Fabricio Sarsali, and then Father Francisco de Otazo, and various other fathers followed, who made their incursions sometimes from Zebu, sometimes from Bohol. In the year 1629 this ministry was entrusted to the Society by the bishop of Zebu, Don Fray Pedro de Arze. The venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez went through those coasts, carrying the gospel of Christ to the rivers of Quipit, Mucas, Telinga, and others; and in the year 1631 a permanent residence was formed, its rector being Father Pedro Gutierrez. The village of Dapitan is at the foot of a beautiful bay with a good harbor (in which the first conquistadors anchored), on the northern coast of Mindanao; it is south from the island of Zebu, and to the northeast of Samboangan, which is on the opposite coast [of Mindanao]. It lies at the foot of a hill, at the top of which there is a sort of fortress, so inaccessible that it does not need artillery for its defense. Above it has a parapet, and near the hill is an underground reservoir for collecting water, besides a spring of flowing water. Maize and vegetables can be planted there, in time of siege; and the minister and all the people retire to this place in time of invasions. I was there in the year 1737 [misprinted1637], and it seemed to me that it might be called the Aorno10of Philipinas.[Fol. 60:] In the year 1631 and in part of 1632 this province experienced so great a scarcity of laborers that the father provincial wrote to our father general that he would have been obliged to abandonsome of the ministries if the fervor of the few ministers had not supplied the lack of the many, their charity making great exertions. Our affliction was increased by the news that the Dutch had seized Father Francisco Encinas, the procurator of this province, who was going to Europa to bring a mission band here—for which purpose they had sent Father Juan Lopez, who was appointed in the second place11in the congregation of 1626. But soon God consoled this province, the mission arriving at Cavite on May 26, 1632. On June 18, 1631, they sailed from Cadiz, and on the last day of August arrived at Vera Cruz; they left Acapulco on February 23, 1632, and on May 15 sighted the first land of these islands. Every mission that goes to Indias begins to gather abundant fruit as soon as it sails from España; I will set down the allotment of work in which this band of missionaries was engaged, since from this may be gathered what the others do, since there is very little difference among them all. In the ship a mission was proclaimed which lasted eleven days, closing with general communion on the day of our father St. Ignatius; in this mission, through the sermons, instructions given in addresses, and individual exhortations, the fathers succeeded in obtaining many general confessions, besides the special ones which the men on the ship made, in order to secure the jubilee. Ours assisted the dying, consoled the sick and the afflicted, and established peace between those who were enemies. In Nueva España the priests were distributed in various colleges, in which they continued the exercises of preaching and hearing confessions.They went to Acapulco a month before embarking, by the special providence of God; for there were many diseases at that port, so that they were able to assist the dying. Thirty religious of St. Dominic were there, waiting to come over to these islands; all of them were sick, and five died; and, in order to prevent more deaths, they decided to remove from their house in which they were, on account of its bad condition. It was necessary, on account of their sick condition, to carry them in sedan-chairs; and although many laymen charitably offered their services for this act of piety, Ours did not permit them to do it, but took upon themselves the care of conveying the sick, their charity making this burden very light. In the ship “San Luys” they continued their ministries, preaching, and hearing the confessions of most of the people on the ship—in which the functions of Holy Week were performed, as well as was possible there. Twenty-one Jesuits left Cadiz, and all arrived at Manila except Father Matheo de Aguilar, who died near these islands on May 12, 1632; he was thirty-three years old, and had been in the Society sixteen years—most of which time he spent in Carmona, in the province of Andalusia, where he was an instructor in grammar, minister, and procurator in that college.... The rest who are known to have come in that year with Father Francisco de Encinas, procurator, and Brother Pedro Martinez are: The fathers Hernando Perez (the superior), Rafael de Bonafe, Luys de Aguayo, Magino Sola, and Francisco Perez; and the brothers Ignacio Alcina, Joseph Pimentél, Miguel Ponze, Andres de Ledesma, Antonio de Abarca, Onofre Esbri, Christoval de Lara, Amador Navarro, BartholomeSanchez; also Brother Juan Gazera, a coadjutor, and Diego Blanco and Pedro Garzia, candidates [for the priesthood].[Fol. 63 b:] In the islands of Pintados those first laborers made such haste that by this time [1633] there remained no heathens to convert, and they labored perseveringly in ministering to the Christians, with abundant results and consolation.... In the island of Negros and that of Mindanao, which but a short time before had been given up to the Society, the fathers were occupied in catechising and baptizing the heathens and especially in the island of Mindoro, where besides the Christian convents, were the heathen Manguianes, who lived in the mountains, and, according to estimate, numbered more than six thousand souls. These people wandered through the mountains and woods there like wild deer, and went about entirely naked, wearing only a breech-clout [bahaque] for the sake of decency; they had no house, hearth, or fixed habitation; and they slept where night overtook them, in a cave or in the trunk of some tree. They gathered their food on the trees or in the fields, since it was reduced to wild fruits and roots; and as their greatest treat they ate rice boiled in water. Their furnishings were some bows and arrows, or javelins for hunting, and a jar for cooking rice; and he who secured a knife, or any iron instrument, thought that he had a Potosi. They acknowledged no deity, and when they had any good fortune the entire barangay (or family connection) killed and ate a carabao, or buffalo; and what was left they sacrificed to the souls of their ancestors. In order to convert these heathens, a beginning was made by the reformation and instructionof the Christians; and by frequent preaching they gradually established the usage of confession with some frequency, and many received the Eucharist—a matter in which there was more difficulty then than now. Many came down from the mountains, and brought their children to be instructed; various persons were baptized, and even some, who, although they had the name of Christians, had never received the rite of baptism. After the fathers preached to the Christians regarding honesty in their confessions, the result was quickly seen in many general confessions, which were made with such eagerness that the crowds resorting to the church lasted more than two months.[Fol. 69:] In Maragondong various trips were made into the mountains [by Ours], and although many were reclaimed to a Christian mode of living, yet, as the mountains are so difficult of access and so close by, those people returned to their lurking-places very easily, and it was with difficulty that they were again brought into a village—so that the number of Indians was greatly diminished, not only in Maragondong, but in Looc, which was a visita of the former place, and contained very rugged mountains. In order to encourage the Indians thus settled to make raids on the Cimarrons and wild Indians and punish them, Don Juan Cerezo de Salamanca, the governorad interim, granted that those wild Indians should for a certain time remain the slaves of him who should bring them out of the hills; and by this means they succeeded in bringing out many from their caverns and hiding-places. Some of these were seventy or eighty years old, of whom many died as soon as they were instructed and baptized.Once the raiders came across an old woman about a hundred years old, near the cave in which those people performed their abominable sacrifices; she was alone, flung down on the ground, naked, and of so horrible aspect that she made it evident, even in external appearance, that she was a slave of the devil. Moved by Christian pity, those who were making the raid carried her to the village, where it was with difficulty that the father could catechise her, on account of her age and her stupidity. He finally catechised and baptized her, and she soon died; so that it seems as if it were a mercy of God that she thus waited for baptism, in order that her soul might not be lost—and the same with the other souls, their lives apparently being preserved in order that they might be saved through the agency of baptism. Blessed be His mercy forever! In Ilog, in the island of Negros, several heathens of those mountains were converted to the faith. An Indian woman was there, so obstinate in her blindness and so open in her hatred to holy baptism that, in order to free herself from the importunities of the minister, she feigned to be deaf and mute. Some of her relatives notified the father to come to baptize her. The father went to her, and began to catechise her, but she, keeping up the deceit, pretended that she did not hear him, and he could not draw a word from her. The father cried out to God for the conversion of that soul, and, at the same time, he continued his efforts to catechise her, suspecting that perhaps she was counterfeiting deafness. God heard his prayers, and, after several days, the first word which that woman uttered was a request for baptism—to the surprise of all who knew what horror of it she had felt. The father catechised and baptizedher, and this change was recognized as caused by the right hand of the Highest; for she who formerly was like a wild deer, living alone in the thickets, after this could not go away from the church, and continued to exercise many pious acts until she rested in the Lord.[Fol. 74 b:] In the year 1596 Father Juan del Campo and Brother Gaspar Gomez went with the adelantado Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa, who set out for the conquest of this island [Mindanao]. After the death of Father Juan del Campo, Father Juan de San Lucar went to assist that army, performing the functions of its chaplain, and also of vicar for the ecclesiastical judge. Fathers Valerio de Ledesma and Manuel Martinez preached to the Butuans, and afterward they were followed, although with some interruptions, by others, who announced the gospel to the Hadgaguanes—a people untamed and ferocious—to the Manobos, and to other neighboring peoples. Afterward this ministry was abandoned, on account of the lack of laborers for so great a harvest as God was sending us. Secular priests held it for some time, and finally it was given to the discalced Augustinian [i.e., Recollect] religious, who are ministering in that coast, and in Caraga as far as Linao—an inland region, where there is a small fort and a garrison. When Father Francisco Vicente was ministering in Butuan the cazique [meaningthe headman] of Linao went to invite him to go to his village; and even the blacks visited him, and gave him hopes for their submission. Thus all those peoples desired the Society, as set aside for the preaching in that island—which work was assigned to the Society by the ecclesiastical judge in the year 1596, and confirmedto them in 1597 by the governor Don Francisco Tello, as vice-patron. And when some controversy afterward occurred over [the region of] Lake Malanao, sentence was given in favor of the Society by Governors Don Juan Niño de Tabora and Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, as Father Combés states in book iii of hisHistory of Mindanao. These decisions were finally confirmed by Don Fernando Valdès Tamon, in the year 1737.In the year 1607 Father Pasqual de Acuña, going thither with an armada of the Spaniards, began to preach with great results to the heathens of the hill of Dapitan, where he baptized more than two hundred. He also administered the sacraments to some Christians who were there, who with Pagbuaya, a chief of Bohol, had taken refuge in that place. Afterward, Father Juan Lopez went to supply the Subanos of Dapitan with more regular ministrations. He was succeeded by Father Fabricio Sarsali, and he by Father Francisco Otazo and others, as a dependency of Zebu or of Bohol—until, in the year 1629, his illustrious Lordship the bishop of Zebu, Don Fray Pedro de Arze, governor of the archbishopric of Manila, again assigned this mission to the Society; and in 1631 the residence of Dapitan was founded, its first rector being the venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez; and in those times the Christian faith was already far advanced, and was extending through the region adjoining that place, and making great progress.[Fol. 92:] The island of Basilan, or Taguima, is three or four leguas south of Samboangan, east from Borney, and almost northeast from Joló. It is a fertile and abounding land, and on this account they callit the storehouse or garden of Samboangan. Its people are Moros and heathens, and almost always they follow the commands received from Joló. The Basilans, who inhabit the principal villages, are of the Lutaya people; those who dwell in the mountains are called Sameacas. Three chiefs had made themselves lords of the island, Ondol, Boto, and Quindinga; and they formed the greatest hindrance to the reduction of that people, who, as barbarians, have for an inviolable law the will of their headmen, [which they follow] heedlessly—that being most just, therefore, which has most following. Nevertheless, the brave constancy of Father Francisco Angel was not dismayed at such difficulties, or at the many perils of death which continually threatened him; and his zeal enabled him to secure the baptism of several persons, and to rescue from the captivity of Mahoma more than three hundred Christians, whom he quickly sent to Samboangan. Moreover, the fervor of the father being aided by the blessing of God, he saw, with unspeakable consolation to his soul, the three chiefs who were lords of the island baptized, with almost all the inhabitants of the villages in it; and in the course of time the Sameacas, or mountain-dwellers, were reduced—in this way mocking the strong opposition which was made by the panditas, who are their priests and doctors. [Here follows an account of the conquest of Joló in 1638, and of affairs there and in Mindanao, in which the Jesuits (especially Alexandro Lopez) took a prominent part; these matters have already been sufficiently recounted inVOLS. XXVIIIandXXIX].[Fol. 111:] [After the Spanish expeditions to Lake Lanao, in 1639–40, the fort built there was abandoned,and soon afterward burned by the natives. On May 7, 1642, the Moros of that region killed a Spanish officer, Captain Andres de Rueda, with three men and a Jesuit, Father Francisco de Mendoza, who accompanied him.] Much were the hopes of the gospel ministers cast down at seeing our military forces abandon that country, since they were expecting that with that protection the Christian church would increase. Notwithstanding, his faith thereby planted more firmly on God, Father Diego Patiño began to catechise the Iligan people—with so good effect that in a few months the larger (and the best) part of the residents in that village were brought under the yoke of Christ; this work was greatly aided by the kindness of the commandant of the garrison, Pedro Duran de Monforte. At this good news various persons of the Malanaos came down [from the mountains], and in the shelter of the fort they formed several small villages or hamlets, and heard the gospel with pleasure. The conversions increasing, it was necessary to station there another minister; this was Father Antonio de Abarca. They founded the village of Nagua, and others, which steadily and continually increased with the people who came down from the lake [i.e., Lanao], where the villages were being broken up.12This angered a brother of Molobolo,and he tried to avert his own ruin by the murder of the father; and for this purpose his treacherous mind [led him to] pretend that he would come down to the new villages, in order to become a Christian, intending to carry out then his treason at his leisure.But the father, warned by another Malanao, who was less impious, escaped death. The traitor did not desist from his purpose, and, when Father Abarca was in one of those villages toward Layavan, attacked the village; but he was discovered by the blacks ofthe hill-country, and they rained so many arrows upon the Moros that the latter abandoned their attempt. Another effort was a failure—the preparation of three joangas which the traitor had upon the sea, in order to capture and kill the father when he should return to Iligan; but in all was displayed the special protection with which God defends His ministers. However great the efforts made by the zeal of the gospel laborers, the result did not correspond to their desires, on account of the obstinacy of the Mahometans—although in the heathens they encountered greater docility for the acceptance of our religion. The life of the ministers was very toilsome, since to the task of preaching must be added the vigils and weariness, the heat and winds and rains, the dangers of [travel by] the sea, and the scarcity of food. In a country so poor, and at that time so uncultivated, it was considered a treat to find a few sardines or other fish, some beans, and a little rice; and many times they hardly could get boiled rice, and sometimes they must get along with sweet potatoes, gabes,13or [other] roots. But God made amends for these privations and toils with various inner pleasures; for they succeeded in obtaining some conversions that they had not expected, and even among the blacks, from whom they feared death, they found help and sustenance. [The author here relates a vision which appeared to an Indian chief, of the spirit of Father Marcelo Mastrilli as the directorand patron of Father Abarca; and the renunciation of a mission to Europe which was vowed by Father Patiño in order to regain his health—which accomplished, he returns to his missionary labors at Iligan.]He returned to the ministry, where he encountered much cause for suffering and tears; because the [military] officers [cabos] who then were governing that jurisdiction, actuated by arrogance and greed of gain, had committed such acts of violence that they had depopulated those little villages, many fleeing to the hills, where among the Moros they found treatment more endurable. The only ones who can oppose the injustice of such men are the gospel ministers. These fathers undertook to defend the Indians, and took it upon themselves to endure the anger of those men—who, raised from a low condition to places of authority, made their mean origin evident in their coarse natures and lawless passions; and the license of some of them went to such extremes that it was necessary for the soldiers to seize them as intolerable; and, to revenge themselves for the outrageous conduct of the officials, they accused the latter as traitors. Not even the Malanao chief Molobolo, who always had been firm on the side of the Spaniards, could endure their acts of violence, and, to avoid these, went back to the lake. This tempest lasted for some time, but afterward some peace was secured, when those officers were succeeded by others who were more compliant. The venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez went to Iligan, and with his amiable and gentle disposition induced a chief to leave the lake, who, with many people, became a resident of Dapitan; and another chief, still more powerful, wasadded to Iligan with his people. These results were mainly seemed by the virtue of the father, the high opinion which all had of his holy character, and the helpful and forcible effects of his oratory. The land was scorched by a drouth, which was general throughout the islands, from which ensued great losses. The father offered the Indians rain, if they would put a roof on the church; they accepted the proposal, and immediately God fulfilled what His servant had promised—sending them a copious rain on his saying the first mass of a novenary, which he offered to this end. With this the Indians were somewhat awakened from their natural sloth, and the church was finished, so that the fathers could exercise in it their ministries. The drouth was followed by a plague of locusts, which destroyed the grain-fields; the father exorcised them, and, to the wonder of all, the locusts thrust their heads into the ground, and the plague came to an end. This increased the esteem of the natives for our religion, and many heathens and Moros were brought into its bosom; and Father Combés says that when he ministered there he found more than fifty old persons of eighty to a hundred years, and baptized them all, with some three hundred boys this being now one of the largest Christian communities in the islands. The village is upon the shore, at the foot of the great Panguil,14between Butuan and Dapitan, to the south of Bohol, and north from Malanao, at the mouth of a river with a dangerous bar. The fort is of good stone, dedicated to St. Francis Xavier, in the shape of a star; the wallis two varas high, and half a vara thick, and it has a garrison, with artillery and weapons. The Moros have several times surrounded it, but they could not gain it by assault.[Fol. 116 b:] In Sibuguey Father Francisco Luzon was preaching, a truly apostolic man, who spent his life coming and going in the most arduous ministries of the islands. The Sibugueys are heathens, of a gentler disposition and more docile to the reception of the gospel than are the Mahometans; therefore this mission aroused great hopes. One Ash Wednesday Father Luzon went to the fort, and he was received by a Lutao of gigantic stature who gave him his hand. The father shook hands with him, supposing that that was all for which he stopped him; but the Lutao trickily let himself be carried on, and with his weight dragged the father into the water, with the assurance that he could not be in danger, on account of his dexterity in swimming. The father went under, because he could not swim, and the captain and the soldiers hastened from the fort to his aid—but so late that there was quite enough time for him to be drowned, on account of having sunk so deep in the water; they pulled him out, half dead, and the first thing that he did was to secure pardon for the Lutao. He gained a little strength and went to the fort; he gave ashes to the Spaniards, and preached with as much fervor as if that hardship had not befallen him. The principal of Sibuguey was Datan, and, to make sure of him, the Spaniards had carried away as a hostage his daughter Paloma; and love for her caused her parents to leave Sibuguey and go to Samboangan to live, to have the company of their daughter. Father Alexandro Lopez went to minister at Sibuguey, and he saw that without theauthority of Datan he could do almost nothing among the Sibugueys; this obliged him to go to Samboangan to get him, and he succeeded [in persuading them] to give him the girl. The father went up toward the source of the river, and found several hamlets of peaceable people, and a lake with five hundred people residing about it; and their chief, Sumogog, received him as a friend, and all listened readily to the things of God. He went so far that he could see the mountains of Dapitan, which are so near that place that a messenger went [to Dapitan] and returned in three days. These fair hopes were frustrated by the absence of Datan, who went with all his family to Mindanao; and on Ascension day in 1644 that new church disappeared, no one being left save a boy named Marcelo. Afterward the Moros put the fort in such danger, having killed some men, that it was necessary to dismantle it and withdraw the garrison.[Fol. 121 (sc.120):] The Joloans having been subjected by the bravery of Don Pedro de Almonte, they began to listen to the gospel, and they went to fix their abodes in the shelter of our fort. But, [divine] grace accommodating itself to their nature, as the sect of Mahoma have always been so obstinate, it was necessary that God should display His power, in order that their eyes might be opened to the light. The fervent father Alexandro Lopez was preaching in that island, to whose labors efficacy was given by the hand of God with many prodigies. The cures which the ministers made were frequent, now with benedictions, now with St. Paul’s earth,15in manycases of bites from poisonous serpents, or of persons to whom poison was administered. Among other cures, one was famous, that of a woman already given up as beyond hope; having given her some of St. Paul’s earth, she came back from the gates of death to entire health. With this they showed more readiness to accept the [Christian] doctrine, which was increased by a singular triumph which the holy cross obtained over hell in all these islands; for, having planted this royal standard of our redemption in an island greatly infested by demons, who were continually frightening the islanders with howls and cries, it imposed upon them perpetual silence, and freed all the other [neighboring] islands from an extraordinary tyranny. For the demons were crossing from island to island, in the sea, in the shape of serpents of enormous size, and did not allow vessels to pass without first compelling their crews to render adoration to the demon in iniquitous sacrifices; but this ceased, the demon taking flight at sight of the cross. [Several incidents of miraculous events are here related.] With these occurrences God opened their eyes, in order that they might see the light and embrace baptism, and in those islands a very notable Christian church was formed; and almost all was due to the miraculous resurrection of Maria Ligo [which our author relates at length]. Many believed, and thus began a flourishing Christian community; and as ministers afterward could not be kept in Joló on account of the wars, [these converts] exiled themselves from their native land, and went to live at Samboangan, in order that they might be able to live as Christians. [This prosperous beginning is spoiled by the lawless conduct ofthe commandant Gaspar de Morales, which brings on hostilities with the natives, and finally his own death in a fight with them.] Father Alexandro Lopez went to announce the gospel at Pangutaran, (an island distant six leguas east from Joló), and as the people were a simple folk they received the law of Christ with readiness ... The Moros of Tuptup captured a discalced religious of St. Augustine, who, to escape from the pains of captivity, took to flight with a negro. Father Juan Contreras (who was in Joló) went out with some Lutaos in boats to rescue him, calling to him in various places from the shore; but the poor religious was so overcome with fear that, although he heard the voices and was near the beach, he did not dare to go out to our vessels, despite the encouragement of the negro; and on the following day the Joloans, encountering him, carried him back to his captivity, with blows. He wrote a letter from that place, telling the misfortunes that he was suffering; all the soldiers, and even the Lutaos, called upon the governor [of Joló], to ransom that religious at the cost of their wages, but without effect. Then Father Contreras, moved by fervent charity, went to Patical, where the fair16washeld, and offered himself to remain as a captive among the Moros, in order that they might set free the poor religious, who was feeble and sick. Some Moros agreed to this; but the Orancaya Suil, who was the head chief of the Guimbanos, said that no one should have anything to do with that plan—at which the hopes of that afflicted religious for ransom were cut off. Seeing that he must again endure his hardships, from which death would soon result, he asked Father Contreras to confess him; the latter undertook to set out by water to furnish him that spiritual consolation, but the Lutaos would not allow him to leave the boat, even using some violence, in order not to endanger his person. All admired a charity so ardent, and, having renewed his efforts, he so urgently persuaded the governor, Juan Ruiz Maroto, to ransom him that the latter gave a thousand pesos in order to rescue the religious from captivity. Twice Father Contreras went to the fair, but the Moros did not carry the captive there with them. Afterward he was ransomed for three hundred pesos by Father Alexandro Lopez, the soldiers aiding with part of their pay a work of so great charity.

[In 1618 two unusually brilliant comets were visible in the Philippines; their effects on the minds of the people are thus described (fol. 5):]1There was great variety and inaccuracy of opinion about the comets; but through that general although confused notion which the majority of people form, that comets presage disastrous events, and that the anger of God threatens men by them, they assisted greatly in awakening contrition in the people, and inciting them to do penance. To this the preachers endeavored to influence them with forcible utterances, for the Society had not been behind [the other orders] in preparing the city for the entire success of the jubilee;2for there was one occasion when eleven Jesuits were counted, who, distributed at various stations, cried out like Jonah, threateningdestruction to impenitent and rebellious souls. God giving power to their words, this preaching was like the seed in the gospel story, scattered on good ground, which not only brought forth its fruit correspondingly, but so promptly that those who heard broke down in tears at hearing the eternal truths; and, like thirsty deer, when the sermon was ended they followed the preacher that he might hear their confessions, already dreading lest some emergency might find them in danger of damnation. This harvest was not confined within the walls of Manila, but extended to its many suburbs, and to the adjacent villages, in which missions had been conducted. Not only was there preaching to the Spaniards, but to the Tagálogs, the Indian natives of the country—who, in token of their fervor, gave from their own scanty supply food in abundance to the jails and prisons, Ours aiding them to carry the food, to the edification of the city. To the Japanese who were living in our village of San Miguel—exiles from their native land, in order to preserve their religion, who had taken refuge in Manila, driven out from that kingdom by the tyrant Taycosama—our fathers preached, in their own language. And it can be said that there was preaching to all the nations, that which occurred to the apostles in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost being represented in Manila; for I believe that there is no city in the world in which so many nationalities come together as here. For besides the Spaniards (who are the citizens and owners of the country) and the Tagálogs (who are the Indian natives of the land), there are many other Indians from the islands, who speak different tongues—such as the Pampangos, the Camarines[i.e., the Bicols], the Bisayans, the Ilocans, the Pangasinans, and the Cagayans. There are Creoles [Criollos], or Morenos, who are swarthy blacks, natives of the country;3there are many Cafres, and other negroes from Angola, Congo, and Africa. There are blacks from Asia, Malabars, Coromandels, and Canarins. There are a great many Sangleys, or Chinese—part of them Christians, but the majority heathens. There are Ternatans, and Mardicas (who took refuge here from Ternate); there are some Japanese; there are people from Borney and Timor, and from Bengal; there are Mindanaos, Joloans, and Malays; there are Javanese, Siaos, and Tidorans; there are people from Cambay and Mogol, and from other islands and kingdoms of Asia. There are a considerable number of Armenians, and some Persians; and Tartars, Macedonians, Turks, and Greeks. There are people from all the nations of Europa—French, Germans, and Dutch; Genoese and Venetians; Irish and Englishmen; Poles and Swedes. There are people from all the kingdoms of España, and from all America; so that he who spends an afternoon on thetuley4or bridge of Manila will see all these nationalities pass by him, behold their costumes, and hear their languages—something which cannot be done in any other city in the entire Spanish monarchy, and hardly in any other region in all the world.

From this arises the fact that the confessional of Manila is, in my opinion, the most difficult in all theworld; for, as it is impossible to confess all these people in their own tongues, it is necessary to confess them in Spanish; and each nationality has made its own vocabulary of the Spanish language, with which those people have intercourse [with us], conduct their affairs, and make themselves understood; and without it Ours can understand them only with great difficulty, and almost by divination. A Sangley, an Armenian, and a Malabar will be heard talking together in Spanish, and our people do not understand them, as they so distort the word and the accent. The Indians have another Spanish language of their own; and the Cafres have one still more peculiar, to which must be added that they eat half of the words. No one save he who has had this experience can state the labors which it costs to confess them; and even when the fault is understood in general, to seek for a specific account of the circumstances is to enter a labyrinth without a clue. For they do not understand our orderly mode of speech, and therefore when they are questioned they say “yes” or “no” as it occurs to them, without rightly understanding what is asked from them—so that in a short time they will utter twenty contradictions. It is therefore necessary to accommodate oneself to their language, and learn their vocabulary. Another of the very serious difficulties is the little capacity of these people to distinguish and explain numbers, incidents, and circumstances; add to this the unbridled licentiousness of some, in accordance with the freedom and opportunities [for vice] in this land, the continual backsliding, and the few indications of fixed purpose. In others, who are capable and explain their meaning well, is found a complicationof perplexities—with a thousand reflections, and bargains, and frauds, and oaths all joined together; and faults that are extraordinary and of new kinds, which keep even the most learned man continually studying them. The heat of the country, and the stench or foul odor of the Indians and the negroes, unite in great part to make a hardship of the ministry, which in these islands is the most difficult; and on this account I regard it as being very meritorious. The annual confessions last from the beginning of Lent until Corpus Christi. In our college of Manila the church is open from daylight until eleven o’clock, and from two o’clock until nightfall; and always some fathers are present to hear confessions—for this is done not only by the active ministers, but by the instructors, when their scholastic duties give them opportunity; and I have known some fathers who remain to hear confessions during seven, eight, or more hours a day.

It makes them bear all these annoyances patiently, and even sweetens these, to see how many souls are kept pure by the grace of God, in the midst of so many temptations, like the bramble in the midst of the fire without being burned. There are many who are striving for perfection, who frequent the sacraments, who maintain prayer and spiritual reading, and who give much in alms and perform other works of charity. And it is cause for the greatest consolation to see, at the solemn festivals of the Virgin and other important feasts, the confessional surrounded by Indians, Cafres, and negroes, men and women, great and small, who are awaiting their turns with incredible patience, kept there through the grace of God, against every impulse of their natural dispositionsand their slothfulness. And at the season of Lent it is heart-breaking to see the confessor, when he rises from his seat, surrounded by more than a hundred persons of all colors, who go away disconsolate because they have not obtained an opportunity to make their confessions; and in this manner they go and come for eight or ten days, or a fortnight, or even more, with unspeakable patience, but with such eagerness that when the confessor rises they go following him throughout the house, calling to him to hear their confessions. This is done even by boys of seven to twelve years, and hardly with violence can they be made to leave the father, and they continue to call after him; and some remain in the passages, on their knees, asking for confession, so great is the number of the penitents—to which that of the confessors does not correspond by far, nor does their assiduity, even if there were enough of them. The Society is not content with aiding those who come to seek relief in our church, and attending the year round all the sick, of various languages, who summon them to hear confession; but its laborers go forth—as it were, gospel hunters—to search for penitents. They assist almost all who are executed in the city; every week they go to the jails and hospitals; in Lent they hear confessions in all the prisons, and at the foundry, those of the galley-slaves. And in the course of the year they hear confessions in the college of Santa Ysabel—in which there are more than a hundred students, who are receiving the most admirable education—and in the seminary of Santa Potenciana, the students frequenting the sacraments often; and, in fine, they go on a perpetual round in pursuit of the impious.

The confessional is, as it were, the harvesting of the crop; and the pulpit is the sowing, in which the seed of the gospel is scattered in the hearts of men, where with the watering of grace it bears fruit in due time, according to the coöperation [of the Holy Ghost?]. With great constancy and solicitude the Society contributes to the cultivation of these fields of Christianity, with preaching. In Manila the Society has, besides the sermons from the holy men of the order, other endowed feasts, and the set sermons5in the cathedral and the royal chapel. When necessity requires it, a mission is held, and the attendance is very large, although hardly a fifth of those who hear understand the Spanish language; this to a certain extent discourages the missionaries, as does even much more the fact that they do not encounter those external demonstrations of excitement and tears that they arouse in other places. This originatesfrom the characteristic of a large part of the audience, that these attend with due seriousness only to certain undertakings; and the distractions of their disputes and business affairs, and their indolence and the air of the country, dissipate their attention beyond measure. Their imaginations, overborne with foolish trifles, and accustomed to our voices, become so relaxed that even the most forcible and persuasive discourses make little, if any, impression. Nevertheless, there are many in whom the holy fear of God reigns, and the seed of the gospel takes root—which they embrace with seriousness and simplicity, as the importance of the subject demands. The marvel is, that many Indians and a great many Indian women, only by the sound of [the preaching in] the mission, and without understanding what they hear, are stricken with contrition, confess themselves, and receive communion, in order to gain the indulgences—to their own great advantage, and to the unspeakable consolation of their confessors at seeing the wonderfully loving providence of God for these souls.

This fruit and this consolation are most evident in theSpiritual Exercisesof St. Ignatius,6which are explained through most of the year in our college.The principal citizens make their retreat there, and in the solitude of that retirement God speaks to them within their hearts; and marvelous results have been seen in various persons, in whom has been established a tenor of life so Christian that they may be called the religious of the laymen—in their minds those eternal truths, on which they meditate with seriousness, remaining firm, for the orderly conduct of their lives. The students in the college of San Joseph have their own society, which meets every Sunday, in which they perform their exercises of devotion and have their exhortations, during the course of the year. Every Sunday the Christian doctrine is explained to the boys in the school, and some example [for their imitation] is related to them; and they walk in procession through the streets, chanting the doctrine. The Indian servants of the college have their own assembly, conducted in a very decorous manner, with continual instruction in the doctrine. Every Saturday an address in Tagálog is given to the beatas who attend our church; they have their own society, and exercise themselves in frequent devotions, furnishing an excellent and useful example to the community. Every year they perform the spiritual exercises; and the topics therein are given to them in Tagálog, in our church, by one of Ours. Many devout Indian and mestizo women resort hither on this occasion, to perform these exercises, in various weeks, for which purpose they make retreat in the beaterio during the week required for that; and even Spanish women, including ladies of the most distinguished position, perform their spiritual exercises, and the topics for meditation are assigned to them in our church. This practice isvery beneficial for their souls, of great usefulness to the community, and remarkably edifying to all.

The Society also busies itself in the conversion and reconciliation of certain heretics, who are wont to come from the East (as has been observed in recent years), and in catechising and baptizing the Moros or the heathens who sometimes reach the islands—either driven from their route, or called by God in other ways; and He draws them to himself, so that they obtain holy baptism, as has been seen in late years in some persons from the Palaos and Carolina islands, and from Siao. Another of the means of which the Society avails itself for the good of souls is, to print and distribute free many spiritual books in various languages, which are most efficacious although mute preachers. These, removing from men their erroneous ideas by clear exposition [of the truth], and leaving them without the cloak of their own fantastic notions, persuade them, without being wearisome, to abandon vice or error; and then they embrace virtue and the Christian mode of life. In Lent, as being an acceptable time and especially opportune for the harvest, the dikes are opened, in order that the waters of the word of God may flow more abundantly. On Tuesdays there is preaching to the Spaniards, and these sermons usually have the efficacy of a mission, although not given under that name. On Thursdays there is explanation of the doctrine, and preaching, in Tagálog, to the Indians; the attendance is very great, since many come, not only from the numerous suburbs of Manila, but even from the more distant villages. On Saturdays some good example of the Virgin is related, with a moral exhortation; the Spaniards who are members offraternities attend these, and afterward visit the altars. On Sundays there is preaching to the Cafres, blacks, creoles, and Malabars—who through a sense of propriety are called Morenos, although they are dark-skinned. The sermon is in Spanish, and the greatest difficulty of the preacher is to adapt his language to the understanding of the audience. Various poor Spaniards also attend these sermons, as well as other people, of various shades of color, of both sexes.

Every Sunday certain fathers are sent to preach at the fort or castle, to the soldiers and the other men who live there. The Christian doctrine is chanted through the streets, and in the procession walk the boys of the school; it ends at the royal chapel, where some part of the catechism is explained, and a moral sermon is preached to the soldiers who live in their quarters in order to mount guard. The doctrine is explained at the Puerta Real and at the Puerta del Parián, and there is preaching in the guard-room—where there is a large attendance, not only of soldiers, but of the many people who, on entering or going out from the gates, stop to hear the word of God. Another father goes to the royal foundry, in which the galley-slaves live, where there is such a variety of people—mestizos, Indians of various dialects, Cafres, negroes of different kinds, and Sangleys or Chinese—that exceptional ability and patience are necessary in order to make them understand. Other fathers go to the college of Santa Isabel and the seminary of Santa Potenciana, where they give addresses and exhortations to the students of the former, and the women secluded in the latter. Others go to the prisons of both the ecclesiastical andsecular jurisdictions, in order that the prisoners may obtain the spiritual food of the doctrine. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays there is in our church aMiserere, with the discipline [i.e., scourging]; a spiritual book is read to those who are present, and at least once a week an exhortation is addressed to them.

Such is, in general, the distribution of work for our college at Manila in Lent, and therein are engaged nearly all the men in the college, whether priests or students; and in times when there is a scarcity of workers I have seen some helping at two or three posts, and not only ministers and instructors thus occupied, but even the superiors, and men of seventy years old, to the great edification of the community. At Lent is seen in Manila that which occurred at the destruction of Jericho, where, when the priests sounded around the city the trumpets of the jubilee, the walls immediately gave way and fell to the ground. Thus in Manila do the Jesuits surround the walls, calling to every class of people with the trumpets of the jubilee and offering pardon; and at the sound, through the grace and mercy of the Highest, the lofty walls of lawlessness, vice, and crime, fall in ruins. And even the presence of the ark is not lacking to this marvelous success, for it is not to be doubted that the Blessed Virgin, most merciful mother of sinners, aids us with her intercession. [Our author here relates various instances of miraculous aid from heaven, and other edifying cases.]

[Fol. 13:] Father Juan de Torres, with another priest and a brother, went from the college of Manila to conduct a mission at a place which is calledCabeza de Bondoc,7about sixty leguas from Manila, in the bishopric of Camarines—the bishop of Nueva Cazeres at that time being his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Diego de Guevara, of the Order of St. Augustine. As soon as that zealous prelate took possession of his see, he began to ask for fathers of the Society, in order that, commencing with the Indians who were already peaceable who reside in Nueva Cazeres, they might establish missions and continue their instructions in other villages which he intended to give them. But the Society, who always have showed due consideration to the other ministers in these islands, not attempting to dispossess them from their ministries—although not always have we found them respond in like spirit—thanked that illustrious prelate for his kindness, without accepting those ministries; and in order that he might see that [the cause of this action] was consideration for the ministers, and not the desire to escape from the labor, Ours consented to conduct a mission in Bondoc, the difficulty of which, and its results, are explained by that prelate in a letter which he wrote to Father Torres, in which he says: “I find that it is true, what was told to me in Manila, when I gave that mission-field to the Society, and I mention it with great consolation to myself; and that is, that it was the Holy Ghost who inspired me to give it—for I see the fruits which are steadily and evidently being gathered therein. For in so many ages it has been impossible to unite those villages, and the Indians in them were regarded as irreclaimable;and now in so short a time those villages have been united, and the Indians, [who were like] wild beasts, appear like gentle lambs. These are the works of God, who operates through the ministers of the Society—who with so much mildness, affection, and zeal are laboring for the welfare of those people.” Great hardships were suffered by those of the Society in these missions, and for several years that ministry was cared for by Ours, until it was entrusted to the secular priests.

The mission of Bondoc gained such repute in the island of Marinduque, distant more than forty leguas from Manila, that its minister, who was a zealous cleric, wrote to the father rector at Manila asking him very humbly and urgently to send there a mission, from which he was expecting abundant fruit. So earnest were the entreaties of this fervent minister that a mission was sent to the said island; it had the results which were expected, and afterward the Society was commissioned with its administration. In nearly all the ministries of secular priests the Society was carrying on continual missions, at the petition of the ministers or at the instance of the bishops.... The Society was held in honor not only by the bishop of Camarines, but equally by his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano, a son of the great Augustine and most worthy archbishop of Manila. That most zealous father Lorenzo Masonio preached to the negroes who are in this city and outside its walls, according to the custom of this province, which distributes the bread of the gospel doctrine to all classes of people and all nations. And that holy prelate deigned to go to our church, and, taking a wand in his hand, asthe Jesuits are accustomed to do, he walked through the aisle of the church, asked questions, and explained the Christian doctrine to the slaves and negroes. The community experienced the greatest edification at seeing their pastor so worthily occupied in instructing his sheep, not heeding the outer color of their bodies, but looking only at their precious souls—for in the presence of God there is no distinction of persons.

[Fol. 22:] The island of Malindig—named thus on account of a high mountain that is in it, and which the Spaniards call Marinduque—is more than forty leguas from Manila, extends north and south, and is in the course which is taken by the galleons on the Nueva España trade-route.8There Ours carried on a mission with much gain, at the instance of its zealous pastor, who was a cleric; and in the year 1622 this island was transferred to the Society by his illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano, the archbishop of Manila, who was satisfied by the care with which the Society administers its charges, and desirous that his sheep should have the spiritual nourishment that is necessary for their souls—for it was exceedingly difficult for him always to find a secular priest to station there, on account of the distance from Manila, the difficulty of administering that charge, and the loneliness which one suffers there. The Society gladly overcame these difficulties for the sake of the spiritual fruit which could be gathered among those Indians; and our ministers,applying themselves to the cultivation [of that field], went about among those rugged mountains—from which they brought out some heathens, and others who were Christians, but who were living like heathen, without any spiritual direction. They baptized the heathens and instructed the Christians; and, in order that the results might be permanent, Ours gradually settled them in villages which they formed; there are three of these, Bovac, Santa Cruz, and Gasan, and formerly there was a visita in Mahanguin. The language spoken there is generally the Tagálog, although in various places there is a mixture of Visayan, and of some words peculiar to the island. God chose to prove those people by a sort of epidemic, of which many died; and the fathers not only gave them spiritual assistance, but provided the poor with food, and treated the sick. This trouble obliged them to resort for aid to the Empress of Heaven, to whom they offered a fiesta under the title of the Immaculate Conception, during the week before Christmas, with great devotion; and the Virgin responded to them by aiding them in their troubles and necessities.

[Fol. 27:] In Marinduque Ours labored very fervently to reduce the Christians to a Christian and civilized mode of life; and among them was abolished an abuse which was deeply rooted in that island—which was, that creditors employed their debtors almost as if they were slaves, without the debtor’s service ever diminishing his debt. The wild Indians were reduced to settlement; among them were some persons who for thirty years had not received the sacraments of penance and communion. In the Pintados Islands there was now much longingfor and attendance upon these holy sacraments, when their necessity and advantage had been explained to the natives.

[Fol. 29:] His illustrious Lordship Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano had so much affection for the Society, and so high an opinion of the zeal of its ministers, that he decided to entrust to it the parish of the port of Cavite. This, one may say, is a parish of all the nations, on account of the many peoples who resort to that port from the four quarters of the world; it was especially so then, when its commerce was more opulent, flourishing, and extensive [than now]. It did not seem expedient to the Society to accept this parish; but, in order to show their gratitude for the favor, and to coöperate by their labors with the zeal of that active prelate, they took upon themselves for several months the administration of that port, in which they gathered the fruit corresponding to the necessity—which, with so great a concourse of different peoples there, and the freedom from restraint which exists in this country, was very great. The metropolitan was well satisfied, and very grateful; and he insisted until the Society made itself responsible for the administration of one of the three visitas which the said parish has. This was a village on the shore of the river of Cavite, which on account of being older than the settlement at the port is called Cavite el Viejo [i.e., Old Cavite]; it afterward was located on the shore of the bay, about a legua from the said port—which, in order to distinguish it from this village, is called Cavite la Punta [i.e., Cavite on the Point], because it is on the point of the hook formed by the land; from this is derived the name Cavite, which means “a hook.” Theministry [at Old Cavite] was then small, but difficult to administer, on account of the people being scattered, and far more because of the corruption of morals; for, lacking the presence of the pastor, and the wolves of the nations who come here from all parts for trade, being so near, it might better be called a herd of goats than a flock of sheep—this village being, as it were, the public brothel [lupanar] of that port; and there was hardly a house where this sort of commerce was not established. This was a matter which at the beginning gave the ministers much to do, but with invincible firmness they continued to correct this lawless licentiousness; and by explaining the doctrine, preaching, and aiding the people with the sacraments, they made Christians in morals those who before only seemed to be such in outward appearance and name. Ours continued to reclaim these people to the Christian life, and today this village is one of the most Christian and best instructed communities in all the islands; it has a beautiful and very capacious church of stone, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, and a handsome house [for the minister]. There are in this village, besides the Tagálogs (who are the natives), some Sangleys and many mestizos, who live in Binacayan, which is a sort of ward of the village.

[Fol. 31 b:] Ardently did the apostle of the Indias desire to go over to China for its conversion; but he died, like another Moses, in sight of the land which his desires promised to him. Since then, without looking for them, thousands of heathen Chinese have settled in these islands. As soon as the Society came to these shores, Ours applied themselves, in the best manner that they could, to the conversion andinstruction of those people—and even more in recent times, on account of the Society possessing near Manila some agricultural lands, which the Chinese (or Sangleys, as they are commonly called) began to cultivate. Ours were unwilling to lose the opportunity of converting them to our holy faith, so various persons were actually baptized; and, to render this result more permanent, a minister was stationed there, belonging to this field, who catechised them, preached in their own language, baptized them, and administered the sacraments—with permission from the vice-patron, Don Juan Niño de Tabora, and from the archbishop, Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano—and it is called the village of Santa Cruz. Their language is very difficult; the words are all monosyllables, and the same word, according to its various intonations, has many and various significations; on this account not only patience and close study, but a correct ear, are required for learning this language. Don Juan Niño de Tabora was the godfather of the first Sangley who was baptized; the most distinguished persons in the city attended the ceremony; and this very solemn pomp had much influence on the Chinese (who are very material), so that, having formed a high idea of the Catholic religion, many of them embraced it. Some were baptized a little while before they died, leaving behind many tokens of their eternal felicity, through the concurrence of circumstances which were apparently directed by a very special providence.

In Marinduque Father Domingo de Peñalver had just induced some hamlets of wild Indians to settle down; he traveled through the bed of the river, getting his clothing wet, stumbling frequently over thestones, and often falling in the water. He went to take shelter in a hut, where there were so many and so fierce mosquitoes, that he remained awake all night, without being able to rid himself of the insects, notwithstanding all his efforts. He reached a hill so inaccessible that it was necessary that some Indians, going ahead and ascending by grasping the roots [of trees], should draw them all up the ascent with bejucos. There he set up a shed, where, preaching to them morning and afternoon, he prepared them for confession, and persuaded them to go down and settle in one place, as actually they did, to live as Christians. For lack of laborers, the Society resigned the district of Bondoc and several visitas, although Ours went there at various times on missionary trips. The people of Hingoso called upon Father Peñalver to assist them, because many in their village were sick, and the cura was at Manila; the father went there, gave the sacraments to the sick, and preached to the rest twice a day in the church. Three times a week they repaired to the church for the discipline, and he offered for them the act of contrition, and almost all the people in the village confessed. Afterward, at the urgent request of the archbishop of Manila, Father Peñalver went to Mindoro, to see if he could reconcile those Indians and their cura, which the archbishop had not been able to secure by various means; the said father went there, and preached various sermons, with so much earnestness and efficacy (on account of his proficiency in the Tagálog language) that in a short time they were reconciled together, the causes of the dispute bring entirely forgotten. This mission lasted two months; he preached twice every day, and heard some two thousand fivehundred confessions; at this the illustrious prelate (who was Don Fray Miguel Garzia Serrano) was greatly pleased, and thoroughly confirmed in the extraordinary esteem which he deigned to show the Society.... One of the greatest hardships and dangers experienced by the ministers of Bisayas (or Pintados), in which are the greater part of our ministries, is that they are journeying on the water all their lives; for, as the villages are many and the ministers few, one father regularly takes care of two villages, and sometimes of three or four; and as these are in different islands, he is continually moving from one to another, for their administration. I have known some fathers who formerly had six or seven visitas, and spent nearly all the year traveling from one to another. Nevertheless, so paternal and benignant is the providence of God that it is not known that any minister in Bisayas has been drowned—which, considering the many hurricanes, tempests, storms, currents, and other dangers in which every year many perish and are drowned, seems a continual miracle. To this it must be added that at various times vessels have capsized in the midst of the sea, and the fathers have fallen into the water; but God succored them by means of the Indians, who are excellent swimmers, or by other special methods of His paternal providence.

[Fol. 38 b:] In this year [1628] Manila and the adjoining villages were grievously afflicted with a sort of epidemic pest, from which many people died—some suddenly, but even he who lingered longest died within twelve hours. Some attributed this pest to the many blacks who had been brought here from India to be sold, and who, sick from ill-usage, communicatedtheir disease to others; and some thought that it arose from an infection in the fish, which is the usual food of the poor. Various corpses were anatomized [se hizo anatomia], and the origin of the disease could not be discovered, although it was considered certain that it arose from a poisonous condition, since the only remedy that was found was theriac.9In a city where there are so few Spaniards, it is easy to understand the affliction which was felt at seeing the suddenness with which they were dying, since the colony was placed in so great danger of extinction, and the islands of being ruined at one stroke—besides the grief of individual persons at seeing themselves bereft, the wife without a husband, the husband without a wife, the father without children, the children deprived of their parents. All search was made for remedies. Our priests did not cease, day or night, to hear confessions, and to aid the sick and dying; and at the request of the cura they carried with them the consecrated oils, to administer these in case of need. They also carried theriac, after this was discovered to be a remedy, for the relief of the sick; so they exercised their charity at the same time on the souls and on the bodies of men, to the great edification of all.

At San Miguel, one of those attacked by the pest told the father who was hearing his dying confession that he had seen near him two figures in the guise of ministers of justice, who seized people; and that when he had received absolution they went away from him, leaving behind a pestilential odor. Thefather published this information throughout the village, commanding the people to prepare themselves for confession on the following day, under the patronage of the Blessed Mary and St. Michael. A novenary was offered, and the litanies recited; and in the church the discipline was taken, with other prayers and penances, by which the Lord was moved to have especial mercy on this village—as God showed to a devout soul, in the figure of a ship which sailed through the air, the pilot of which was the common enemy; but he could not enter San Miguel, since there were powers greater than he, who prevented him. Also there were seen in the neighborhood of Manila malign spirits, in the appearance of horrible phantoms, who struck with death those who only looked at them. In the face of a danger so near, many amended their lives, and were converted to God in earnest, making a good confession. Then was seen the charity with which the poor Indians, despising the danger to their own lives, assisted the sick. Among others were two pious married persons, who devoted themselves entirely to aiding the sick, never leaving their bedsides until they either died or recovered; and God most mercifully chose to bring them out unscathed from so continual dangers. With the same kindness He chose to reward Brother Antonio de Miranda, who had charge of the infirmary in our college at Manila, who, on account of his well-known charity and solicitude in caring for the sick, had been commissioned by the father provincial, Juan de Bueras, to devote himself to the care of the sick Indians. But the poison of the pest infected him, so violent being the attack that hardly had he time to receive the sacraments;and he died at Manila on October 15, 1628.... He was a native of Ponferrada, and of a very well known family; he was an exemplary religious, and had been ten years in the Society.

[Fol. 44 b:] In the years 1628 and 1629, at the request of the bishops and of some Indians the Society was placed in charge of various villages of converts. Don Juan Niño de Tabora gave us the chaplaincy of the garrison of Spanish soldiers which is at Iloylo in the island of Panay, and the instruction of the natives and the people from other nations who are gathered there. Also were given to us Ilog in the island of Negros, and Dapitan in Mindanao—of which afterward more special mention will be made.

Map of Mindanao, showing settlements and districts occupied by Jesuits and RecollectsMap of Mindanao, showing settlements and districts occupied by Jesuits and Recollects[From MS. (dated 1683) inArchivo general de Indias, Sevilla]

Map of Mindanao, showing settlements and districts occupied by Jesuits and Recollects

[From MS. (dated 1683) inArchivo general de Indias, Sevilla]

[Fol. 50:] In this time [about 1630] the Christian faith made great advances in Maragondong, Silang, and Antipolo, bringing many Cimarrons (or wild Indians) from their lurking-places. A very fruitful mission was carried on in Mindoro, and on the northern coast of Mindanao; and Father Pedro Gutierrez went along those rivers, converting the Subanos. In Ilog, in the island of Negros, the fathers labored much in removing an inhuman practice of those barbarians, which was, to abandon entirely the old people, as being useless and only a burden on them; and these poor wretches were going about through the mountains, without knowing where to go, since even their own children drove them away. The fathers gave them shelter, fed them, and instructed them in order to baptize them; and there they converted many heathens.

[Fol. 52:] In the year 1631 the cura of Mindoro, who was a secular priest, gave up that ministry to the Society, and Ours began to minister in that island,making one resilience of this and one of the island of Marinduque, and the superior lived at Nauhan in Mindoro; and they began to preach, and to convert the Manguianes, the heathen Indians of that island.

In the year 1631 was begun the residence of Dapitan, in the great island of Mindanao. The first Jesuit who preached in that island was the apostle of the Indias, St. Francis Xavier, as appears from the bull for his canonization. Ruy Lopez de Villalobos came to these islands with his ships, sent by the viceroy of Nueva España, and gave them the name of Philipinas in honor of Phelipe II; and, driven by storms, he went to Amboyno, where the saint then was, in whose care Villalobos died. At the news of these islands thus obtained by the holy apostle, he came to them. The circumstance that this island was consecrated by the labors of that great apostle has always and very rightly commended it to the Society; and Ours have always and persistently endeavored to occupy themselves in converting the Mindanaos; and Father Valerio de Ledesma and others had begun to form missions on the river of Butuan. In the year 1596 the cabildo of Manila,in sede vacante—in whose charge was then the spiritual government of all the islands, as there was no division into bishoprics—gave possession of Mindanao to the Society in due form; and in 1597 this was confirmed by the vice-patron, Don Francisco Tello, the governor of these islands. Possession of it was taken by Father Juan del Campo, who, going as chaplain of the army, accompanied the adelantado, Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa, when he set out for the conquest of that kingdom.

The first who began to minister to the Subanos inthe coasts of Dapitan was Father Juan Lopez; afterward Father Fabricio Sarsali, and then Father Francisco de Otazo, and various other fathers followed, who made their incursions sometimes from Zebu, sometimes from Bohol. In the year 1629 this ministry was entrusted to the Society by the bishop of Zebu, Don Fray Pedro de Arze. The venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez went through those coasts, carrying the gospel of Christ to the rivers of Quipit, Mucas, Telinga, and others; and in the year 1631 a permanent residence was formed, its rector being Father Pedro Gutierrez. The village of Dapitan is at the foot of a beautiful bay with a good harbor (in which the first conquistadors anchored), on the northern coast of Mindanao; it is south from the island of Zebu, and to the northeast of Samboangan, which is on the opposite coast [of Mindanao]. It lies at the foot of a hill, at the top of which there is a sort of fortress, so inaccessible that it does not need artillery for its defense. Above it has a parapet, and near the hill is an underground reservoir for collecting water, besides a spring of flowing water. Maize and vegetables can be planted there, in time of siege; and the minister and all the people retire to this place in time of invasions. I was there in the year 1737 [misprinted1637], and it seemed to me that it might be called the Aorno10of Philipinas.

[Fol. 60:] In the year 1631 and in part of 1632 this province experienced so great a scarcity of laborers that the father provincial wrote to our father general that he would have been obliged to abandonsome of the ministries if the fervor of the few ministers had not supplied the lack of the many, their charity making great exertions. Our affliction was increased by the news that the Dutch had seized Father Francisco Encinas, the procurator of this province, who was going to Europa to bring a mission band here—for which purpose they had sent Father Juan Lopez, who was appointed in the second place11in the congregation of 1626. But soon God consoled this province, the mission arriving at Cavite on May 26, 1632. On June 18, 1631, they sailed from Cadiz, and on the last day of August arrived at Vera Cruz; they left Acapulco on February 23, 1632, and on May 15 sighted the first land of these islands. Every mission that goes to Indias begins to gather abundant fruit as soon as it sails from España; I will set down the allotment of work in which this band of missionaries was engaged, since from this may be gathered what the others do, since there is very little difference among them all. In the ship a mission was proclaimed which lasted eleven days, closing with general communion on the day of our father St. Ignatius; in this mission, through the sermons, instructions given in addresses, and individual exhortations, the fathers succeeded in obtaining many general confessions, besides the special ones which the men on the ship made, in order to secure the jubilee. Ours assisted the dying, consoled the sick and the afflicted, and established peace between those who were enemies. In Nueva España the priests were distributed in various colleges, in which they continued the exercises of preaching and hearing confessions.They went to Acapulco a month before embarking, by the special providence of God; for there were many diseases at that port, so that they were able to assist the dying. Thirty religious of St. Dominic were there, waiting to come over to these islands; all of them were sick, and five died; and, in order to prevent more deaths, they decided to remove from their house in which they were, on account of its bad condition. It was necessary, on account of their sick condition, to carry them in sedan-chairs; and although many laymen charitably offered their services for this act of piety, Ours did not permit them to do it, but took upon themselves the care of conveying the sick, their charity making this burden very light. In the ship “San Luys” they continued their ministries, preaching, and hearing the confessions of most of the people on the ship—in which the functions of Holy Week were performed, as well as was possible there. Twenty-one Jesuits left Cadiz, and all arrived at Manila except Father Matheo de Aguilar, who died near these islands on May 12, 1632; he was thirty-three years old, and had been in the Society sixteen years—most of which time he spent in Carmona, in the province of Andalusia, where he was an instructor in grammar, minister, and procurator in that college.... The rest who are known to have come in that year with Father Francisco de Encinas, procurator, and Brother Pedro Martinez are: The fathers Hernando Perez (the superior), Rafael de Bonafe, Luys de Aguayo, Magino Sola, and Francisco Perez; and the brothers Ignacio Alcina, Joseph Pimentél, Miguel Ponze, Andres de Ledesma, Antonio de Abarca, Onofre Esbri, Christoval de Lara, Amador Navarro, BartholomeSanchez; also Brother Juan Gazera, a coadjutor, and Diego Blanco and Pedro Garzia, candidates [for the priesthood].

[Fol. 63 b:] In the islands of Pintados those first laborers made such haste that by this time [1633] there remained no heathens to convert, and they labored perseveringly in ministering to the Christians, with abundant results and consolation.... In the island of Negros and that of Mindanao, which but a short time before had been given up to the Society, the fathers were occupied in catechising and baptizing the heathens and especially in the island of Mindoro, where besides the Christian convents, were the heathen Manguianes, who lived in the mountains, and, according to estimate, numbered more than six thousand souls. These people wandered through the mountains and woods there like wild deer, and went about entirely naked, wearing only a breech-clout [bahaque] for the sake of decency; they had no house, hearth, or fixed habitation; and they slept where night overtook them, in a cave or in the trunk of some tree. They gathered their food on the trees or in the fields, since it was reduced to wild fruits and roots; and as their greatest treat they ate rice boiled in water. Their furnishings were some bows and arrows, or javelins for hunting, and a jar for cooking rice; and he who secured a knife, or any iron instrument, thought that he had a Potosi. They acknowledged no deity, and when they had any good fortune the entire barangay (or family connection) killed and ate a carabao, or buffalo; and what was left they sacrificed to the souls of their ancestors. In order to convert these heathens, a beginning was made by the reformation and instructionof the Christians; and by frequent preaching they gradually established the usage of confession with some frequency, and many received the Eucharist—a matter in which there was more difficulty then than now. Many came down from the mountains, and brought their children to be instructed; various persons were baptized, and even some, who, although they had the name of Christians, had never received the rite of baptism. After the fathers preached to the Christians regarding honesty in their confessions, the result was quickly seen in many general confessions, which were made with such eagerness that the crowds resorting to the church lasted more than two months.

[Fol. 69:] In Maragondong various trips were made into the mountains [by Ours], and although many were reclaimed to a Christian mode of living, yet, as the mountains are so difficult of access and so close by, those people returned to their lurking-places very easily, and it was with difficulty that they were again brought into a village—so that the number of Indians was greatly diminished, not only in Maragondong, but in Looc, which was a visita of the former place, and contained very rugged mountains. In order to encourage the Indians thus settled to make raids on the Cimarrons and wild Indians and punish them, Don Juan Cerezo de Salamanca, the governorad interim, granted that those wild Indians should for a certain time remain the slaves of him who should bring them out of the hills; and by this means they succeeded in bringing out many from their caverns and hiding-places. Some of these were seventy or eighty years old, of whom many died as soon as they were instructed and baptized.Once the raiders came across an old woman about a hundred years old, near the cave in which those people performed their abominable sacrifices; she was alone, flung down on the ground, naked, and of so horrible aspect that she made it evident, even in external appearance, that she was a slave of the devil. Moved by Christian pity, those who were making the raid carried her to the village, where it was with difficulty that the father could catechise her, on account of her age and her stupidity. He finally catechised and baptized her, and she soon died; so that it seems as if it were a mercy of God that she thus waited for baptism, in order that her soul might not be lost—and the same with the other souls, their lives apparently being preserved in order that they might be saved through the agency of baptism. Blessed be His mercy forever! In Ilog, in the island of Negros, several heathens of those mountains were converted to the faith. An Indian woman was there, so obstinate in her blindness and so open in her hatred to holy baptism that, in order to free herself from the importunities of the minister, she feigned to be deaf and mute. Some of her relatives notified the father to come to baptize her. The father went to her, and began to catechise her, but she, keeping up the deceit, pretended that she did not hear him, and he could not draw a word from her. The father cried out to God for the conversion of that soul, and, at the same time, he continued his efforts to catechise her, suspecting that perhaps she was counterfeiting deafness. God heard his prayers, and, after several days, the first word which that woman uttered was a request for baptism—to the surprise of all who knew what horror of it she had felt. The father catechised and baptizedher, and this change was recognized as caused by the right hand of the Highest; for she who formerly was like a wild deer, living alone in the thickets, after this could not go away from the church, and continued to exercise many pious acts until she rested in the Lord.

[Fol. 74 b:] In the year 1596 Father Juan del Campo and Brother Gaspar Gomez went with the adelantado Estevan Rodriguez de Figueroa, who set out for the conquest of this island [Mindanao]. After the death of Father Juan del Campo, Father Juan de San Lucar went to assist that army, performing the functions of its chaplain, and also of vicar for the ecclesiastical judge. Fathers Valerio de Ledesma and Manuel Martinez preached to the Butuans, and afterward they were followed, although with some interruptions, by others, who announced the gospel to the Hadgaguanes—a people untamed and ferocious—to the Manobos, and to other neighboring peoples. Afterward this ministry was abandoned, on account of the lack of laborers for so great a harvest as God was sending us. Secular priests held it for some time, and finally it was given to the discalced Augustinian [i.e., Recollect] religious, who are ministering in that coast, and in Caraga as far as Linao—an inland region, where there is a small fort and a garrison. When Father Francisco Vicente was ministering in Butuan the cazique [meaningthe headman] of Linao went to invite him to go to his village; and even the blacks visited him, and gave him hopes for their submission. Thus all those peoples desired the Society, as set aside for the preaching in that island—which work was assigned to the Society by the ecclesiastical judge in the year 1596, and confirmedto them in 1597 by the governor Don Francisco Tello, as vice-patron. And when some controversy afterward occurred over [the region of] Lake Malanao, sentence was given in favor of the Society by Governors Don Juan Niño de Tabora and Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, as Father Combés states in book iii of hisHistory of Mindanao. These decisions were finally confirmed by Don Fernando Valdès Tamon, in the year 1737.

In the year 1607 Father Pasqual de Acuña, going thither with an armada of the Spaniards, began to preach with great results to the heathens of the hill of Dapitan, where he baptized more than two hundred. He also administered the sacraments to some Christians who were there, who with Pagbuaya, a chief of Bohol, had taken refuge in that place. Afterward, Father Juan Lopez went to supply the Subanos of Dapitan with more regular ministrations. He was succeeded by Father Fabricio Sarsali, and he by Father Francisco Otazo and others, as a dependency of Zebu or of Bohol—until, in the year 1629, his illustrious Lordship the bishop of Zebu, Don Fray Pedro de Arze, governor of the archbishopric of Manila, again assigned this mission to the Society; and in 1631 the residence of Dapitan was founded, its first rector being the venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez; and in those times the Christian faith was already far advanced, and was extending through the region adjoining that place, and making great progress.

[Fol. 92:] The island of Basilan, or Taguima, is three or four leguas south of Samboangan, east from Borney, and almost northeast from Joló. It is a fertile and abounding land, and on this account they callit the storehouse or garden of Samboangan. Its people are Moros and heathens, and almost always they follow the commands received from Joló. The Basilans, who inhabit the principal villages, are of the Lutaya people; those who dwell in the mountains are called Sameacas. Three chiefs had made themselves lords of the island, Ondol, Boto, and Quindinga; and they formed the greatest hindrance to the reduction of that people, who, as barbarians, have for an inviolable law the will of their headmen, [which they follow] heedlessly—that being most just, therefore, which has most following. Nevertheless, the brave constancy of Father Francisco Angel was not dismayed at such difficulties, or at the many perils of death which continually threatened him; and his zeal enabled him to secure the baptism of several persons, and to rescue from the captivity of Mahoma more than three hundred Christians, whom he quickly sent to Samboangan. Moreover, the fervor of the father being aided by the blessing of God, he saw, with unspeakable consolation to his soul, the three chiefs who were lords of the island baptized, with almost all the inhabitants of the villages in it; and in the course of time the Sameacas, or mountain-dwellers, were reduced—in this way mocking the strong opposition which was made by the panditas, who are their priests and doctors. [Here follows an account of the conquest of Joló in 1638, and of affairs there and in Mindanao, in which the Jesuits (especially Alexandro Lopez) took a prominent part; these matters have already been sufficiently recounted inVOLS. XXVIIIandXXIX].

[Fol. 111:] [After the Spanish expeditions to Lake Lanao, in 1639–40, the fort built there was abandoned,and soon afterward burned by the natives. On May 7, 1642, the Moros of that region killed a Spanish officer, Captain Andres de Rueda, with three men and a Jesuit, Father Francisco de Mendoza, who accompanied him.] Much were the hopes of the gospel ministers cast down at seeing our military forces abandon that country, since they were expecting that with that protection the Christian church would increase. Notwithstanding, his faith thereby planted more firmly on God, Father Diego Patiño began to catechise the Iligan people—with so good effect that in a few months the larger (and the best) part of the residents in that village were brought under the yoke of Christ; this work was greatly aided by the kindness of the commandant of the garrison, Pedro Duran de Monforte. At this good news various persons of the Malanaos came down [from the mountains], and in the shelter of the fort they formed several small villages or hamlets, and heard the gospel with pleasure. The conversions increasing, it was necessary to station there another minister; this was Father Antonio de Abarca. They founded the village of Nagua, and others, which steadily and continually increased with the people who came down from the lake [i.e., Lanao], where the villages were being broken up.12This angered a brother of Molobolo,and he tried to avert his own ruin by the murder of the father; and for this purpose his treacherous mind [led him to] pretend that he would come down to the new villages, in order to become a Christian, intending to carry out then his treason at his leisure.But the father, warned by another Malanao, who was less impious, escaped death. The traitor did not desist from his purpose, and, when Father Abarca was in one of those villages toward Layavan, attacked the village; but he was discovered by the blacks ofthe hill-country, and they rained so many arrows upon the Moros that the latter abandoned their attempt. Another effort was a failure—the preparation of three joangas which the traitor had upon the sea, in order to capture and kill the father when he should return to Iligan; but in all was displayed the special protection with which God defends His ministers. However great the efforts made by the zeal of the gospel laborers, the result did not correspond to their desires, on account of the obstinacy of the Mahometans—although in the heathens they encountered greater docility for the acceptance of our religion. The life of the ministers was very toilsome, since to the task of preaching must be added the vigils and weariness, the heat and winds and rains, the dangers of [travel by] the sea, and the scarcity of food. In a country so poor, and at that time so uncultivated, it was considered a treat to find a few sardines or other fish, some beans, and a little rice; and many times they hardly could get boiled rice, and sometimes they must get along with sweet potatoes, gabes,13or [other] roots. But God made amends for these privations and toils with various inner pleasures; for they succeeded in obtaining some conversions that they had not expected, and even among the blacks, from whom they feared death, they found help and sustenance. [The author here relates a vision which appeared to an Indian chief, of the spirit of Father Marcelo Mastrilli as the directorand patron of Father Abarca; and the renunciation of a mission to Europe which was vowed by Father Patiño in order to regain his health—which accomplished, he returns to his missionary labors at Iligan.]

He returned to the ministry, where he encountered much cause for suffering and tears; because the [military] officers [cabos] who then were governing that jurisdiction, actuated by arrogance and greed of gain, had committed such acts of violence that they had depopulated those little villages, many fleeing to the hills, where among the Moros they found treatment more endurable. The only ones who can oppose the injustice of such men are the gospel ministers. These fathers undertook to defend the Indians, and took it upon themselves to endure the anger of those men—who, raised from a low condition to places of authority, made their mean origin evident in their coarse natures and lawless passions; and the license of some of them went to such extremes that it was necessary for the soldiers to seize them as intolerable; and, to revenge themselves for the outrageous conduct of the officials, they accused the latter as traitors. Not even the Malanao chief Molobolo, who always had been firm on the side of the Spaniards, could endure their acts of violence, and, to avoid these, went back to the lake. This tempest lasted for some time, but afterward some peace was secured, when those officers were succeeded by others who were more compliant. The venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez went to Iligan, and with his amiable and gentle disposition induced a chief to leave the lake, who, with many people, became a resident of Dapitan; and another chief, still more powerful, wasadded to Iligan with his people. These results were mainly seemed by the virtue of the father, the high opinion which all had of his holy character, and the helpful and forcible effects of his oratory. The land was scorched by a drouth, which was general throughout the islands, from which ensued great losses. The father offered the Indians rain, if they would put a roof on the church; they accepted the proposal, and immediately God fulfilled what His servant had promised—sending them a copious rain on his saying the first mass of a novenary, which he offered to this end. With this the Indians were somewhat awakened from their natural sloth, and the church was finished, so that the fathers could exercise in it their ministries. The drouth was followed by a plague of locusts, which destroyed the grain-fields; the father exorcised them, and, to the wonder of all, the locusts thrust their heads into the ground, and the plague came to an end. This increased the esteem of the natives for our religion, and many heathens and Moros were brought into its bosom; and Father Combés says that when he ministered there he found more than fifty old persons of eighty to a hundred years, and baptized them all, with some three hundred boys this being now one of the largest Christian communities in the islands. The village is upon the shore, at the foot of the great Panguil,14between Butuan and Dapitan, to the south of Bohol, and north from Malanao, at the mouth of a river with a dangerous bar. The fort is of good stone, dedicated to St. Francis Xavier, in the shape of a star; the wallis two varas high, and half a vara thick, and it has a garrison, with artillery and weapons. The Moros have several times surrounded it, but they could not gain it by assault.

[Fol. 116 b:] In Sibuguey Father Francisco Luzon was preaching, a truly apostolic man, who spent his life coming and going in the most arduous ministries of the islands. The Sibugueys are heathens, of a gentler disposition and more docile to the reception of the gospel than are the Mahometans; therefore this mission aroused great hopes. One Ash Wednesday Father Luzon went to the fort, and he was received by a Lutao of gigantic stature who gave him his hand. The father shook hands with him, supposing that that was all for which he stopped him; but the Lutao trickily let himself be carried on, and with his weight dragged the father into the water, with the assurance that he could not be in danger, on account of his dexterity in swimming. The father went under, because he could not swim, and the captain and the soldiers hastened from the fort to his aid—but so late that there was quite enough time for him to be drowned, on account of having sunk so deep in the water; they pulled him out, half dead, and the first thing that he did was to secure pardon for the Lutao. He gained a little strength and went to the fort; he gave ashes to the Spaniards, and preached with as much fervor as if that hardship had not befallen him. The principal of Sibuguey was Datan, and, to make sure of him, the Spaniards had carried away as a hostage his daughter Paloma; and love for her caused her parents to leave Sibuguey and go to Samboangan to live, to have the company of their daughter. Father Alexandro Lopez went to minister at Sibuguey, and he saw that without theauthority of Datan he could do almost nothing among the Sibugueys; this obliged him to go to Samboangan to get him, and he succeeded [in persuading them] to give him the girl. The father went up toward the source of the river, and found several hamlets of peaceable people, and a lake with five hundred people residing about it; and their chief, Sumogog, received him as a friend, and all listened readily to the things of God. He went so far that he could see the mountains of Dapitan, which are so near that place that a messenger went [to Dapitan] and returned in three days. These fair hopes were frustrated by the absence of Datan, who went with all his family to Mindanao; and on Ascension day in 1644 that new church disappeared, no one being left save a boy named Marcelo. Afterward the Moros put the fort in such danger, having killed some men, that it was necessary to dismantle it and withdraw the garrison.

[Fol. 121 (sc.120):] The Joloans having been subjected by the bravery of Don Pedro de Almonte, they began to listen to the gospel, and they went to fix their abodes in the shelter of our fort. But, [divine] grace accommodating itself to their nature, as the sect of Mahoma have always been so obstinate, it was necessary that God should display His power, in order that their eyes might be opened to the light. The fervent father Alexandro Lopez was preaching in that island, to whose labors efficacy was given by the hand of God with many prodigies. The cures which the ministers made were frequent, now with benedictions, now with St. Paul’s earth,15in manycases of bites from poisonous serpents, or of persons to whom poison was administered. Among other cures, one was famous, that of a woman already given up as beyond hope; having given her some of St. Paul’s earth, she came back from the gates of death to entire health. With this they showed more readiness to accept the [Christian] doctrine, which was increased by a singular triumph which the holy cross obtained over hell in all these islands; for, having planted this royal standard of our redemption in an island greatly infested by demons, who were continually frightening the islanders with howls and cries, it imposed upon them perpetual silence, and freed all the other [neighboring] islands from an extraordinary tyranny. For the demons were crossing from island to island, in the sea, in the shape of serpents of enormous size, and did not allow vessels to pass without first compelling their crews to render adoration to the demon in iniquitous sacrifices; but this ceased, the demon taking flight at sight of the cross. [Several incidents of miraculous events are here related.] With these occurrences God opened their eyes, in order that they might see the light and embrace baptism, and in those islands a very notable Christian church was formed; and almost all was due to the miraculous resurrection of Maria Ligo [which our author relates at length]. Many believed, and thus began a flourishing Christian community; and as ministers afterward could not be kept in Joló on account of the wars, [these converts] exiled themselves from their native land, and went to live at Samboangan, in order that they might be able to live as Christians. [This prosperous beginning is spoiled by the lawless conduct ofthe commandant Gaspar de Morales, which brings on hostilities with the natives, and finally his own death in a fight with them.] Father Alexandro Lopez went to announce the gospel at Pangutaran, (an island distant six leguas east from Joló), and as the people were a simple folk they received the law of Christ with readiness ... The Moros of Tuptup captured a discalced religious of St. Augustine, who, to escape from the pains of captivity, took to flight with a negro. Father Juan Contreras (who was in Joló) went out with some Lutaos in boats to rescue him, calling to him in various places from the shore; but the poor religious was so overcome with fear that, although he heard the voices and was near the beach, he did not dare to go out to our vessels, despite the encouragement of the negro; and on the following day the Joloans, encountering him, carried him back to his captivity, with blows. He wrote a letter from that place, telling the misfortunes that he was suffering; all the soldiers, and even the Lutaos, called upon the governor [of Joló], to ransom that religious at the cost of their wages, but without effect. Then Father Contreras, moved by fervent charity, went to Patical, where the fair16washeld, and offered himself to remain as a captive among the Moros, in order that they might set free the poor religious, who was feeble and sick. Some Moros agreed to this; but the Orancaya Suil, who was the head chief of the Guimbanos, said that no one should have anything to do with that plan—at which the hopes of that afflicted religious for ransom were cut off. Seeing that he must again endure his hardships, from which death would soon result, he asked Father Contreras to confess him; the latter undertook to set out by water to furnish him that spiritual consolation, but the Lutaos would not allow him to leave the boat, even using some violence, in order not to endanger his person. All admired a charity so ardent, and, having renewed his efforts, he so urgently persuaded the governor, Juan Ruiz Maroto, to ransom him that the latter gave a thousand pesos in order to rescue the religious from captivity. Twice Father Contreras went to the fair, but the Moros did not carry the captive there with them. Afterward he was ransomed for three hundred pesos by Father Alexandro Lopez, the soldiers aiding with part of their pay a work of so great charity.

Back to IndexNext