CHAPTER VIII

Treating of the hardships endured by our religious in Philipinas, because of various persecutions that occurred in our fields of Christendom.

The year 1668

§ I

Abridged relation of the persecutions of our holy faith in Philipinas, from the year 1640 to the year under consideration, 1668, and which are not mentioned in the preceding volumes.

307. He who would like to know what manner of province is ours in Philipinas and its height of love to God and its neighbor, which that Lord has given to it, who is so well able to inculcate charity, must not be governed only by the immense zeal of its individuals in alluring souls into the sheepfold of the Church but as well by the continual persecutions which they have suffered in order that they might maintain that field of Christendom in the purity of the faith, despising their lives at each step in order to preserve it. The lack of fear of death, by which those valiant soldiers of the God of armies have sustained the field of battle against all the power of the gates of hell, is doubtless one of the greatest of miracles which divine Providence has hung in its temple in this world, to the no small glory of these provinces of España, that have become such marvels of charity through so good milk, that they consider and have considered it an honor to suffer and even to die, in order to defend that harassed church. Many events in confirmation of this truth are drawn With most accurate brush in the preceding volumes of this history. By them one may see that our brothers have left us examples worthy of imitation by incessantly placing in practice the highest perfection of exposing their lives to death for the assistance and consolation of certain poor Indians, that they might encourage them in the continual invasions of the Moros. But notwithstanding the great skill that accompanied the painters of so idealistic canvasses, I find in a lower degree not a few pictures worthy of immortality, for without doubt the colors of the notices were lacking, which are so indispensable to form the pictures in the painting of history. I having obtained trustworthy relations of the many misfortunes that assaulted our fields of Christendom and their directors from the year 1640 until the present of 1668, which is under consideration, it would not be laudable to leave such trophies buried in forgetfulness, although the copy, which would have been most accurate if done by the brushes of the other writers, be disfigured.

308. To continue; Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuèra, governor of Philipinas, thought that by building and garrisoning some strongholds in Tolò [i.e., Joló], an island which is given over to the perfidy of Mahomet and is the nesting place of the robbers of the whole archipelago, he could restrain its inhabitants by preventing them from going to our villages with their fleets as they had done until that time, with the sequel of innumerable depredations. He put that idea into practice in the year 1638, after the conclusion of the war with the koran, in the beginning of which when the sword was drawn the scabbard was thrown away. But neither his valor nor that diligence were sufficient for the attainment of his end. For in the year 1640, now by the Joloans themselves, and now by means of the Borneans their allies, and now by making use of their vassals who inhabited the adjacent islands, they tried to find in sea surprises some betterment of their fortune or some havoc by which to temper it. With that object they attacked missions belonging to our reformed order both boldly and treacherously in the districts of Calamiànes, Butuàn, and Cagayang; and it is a fact that we always had the worst of it in those wars. They committed depredations very much to their liking, with the boldness that their greed gave them and with the severity which their hatred to the evangelical law inspired in them. The captives who were taken in our villages on that occasion numbered three hundred and more. The churches were ruined, the holy images profaned, the evangelical ministers became fugitives in the mountains, the sheep were scattered as their shepherds could not attend to them with their watchful eye, the villages were reduced to ashes, and all of those fields of Christendom became the necessary object of the most bitter lamentation.

309. They did almost the same thing in the three following years, and there was no means of taking worthy satisfaction from enemies so inhuman who, like wild and hellish beasts, destroyed a great portion of the rich patrimony of Christ which had flourished in that country under the care of our discalced order. The devastation was so general that it appears to have been presaged by heaven with very extraordinary portents. For on the fourth day of January, 1640, a volcano suddenly burst forth in the island of Sanguiz, not far from the cape of San Agustin in the island of Mindanao, which showed very rare and unusual results. For the ashes, rocks, and burning material which it cast up traveled for many leguas as far as Zebù. Noises like artillery were heard, which caused the Spanish garrisons to get under arms, and the day grew dark from ten in the morning, so that it seemed pitch black night. The same thing happened in another volcano in an islet opposite the bar of the river of Jolò. There was a furious hurricane in the island of Luzòn up toward the province of Ilòcos in the part where the Igolòtes live. That hurricane was followed by the most frightful earthquake, and the earth swallowed up three inaccessible mountains with as many settlements which were located at the foot of the mountains, and in the space left a large lake was formed. Such was the noise at the dislocation of the huge mass of those mountains, that it was heard not only in all the Philipinas Islands and in Malùco but also in the kingdoms of Cochinchina, China, and Cambòja, throughout a circumference of more than nine hundred leguas. So great was the persecution that it was believed to have been announced by the so great heaping together of surprises and misfortunes. [17]

310. But the time when the Moros gave full rein to their barbaric fury, was from the beginning of the year 1645, for then they were freed from the terror that had been caused them by Corcuèra who had just been succeeded in the government of the islands by the master-of-camp Don Diego Fajardo. The arrival also of two ships well manned with Dutchmen at Jolò and which had been asked for by Prince Salicàla, the heir to the scepter, for the purpose of destroying the strongholds which the Spaniards held in the said island, gave them at that time a motive for employing greater power in their piracies. Although the commandant of those strongholds, Don Estevan de Orella Hugalde, caused the enemy to return to their factories badly the losers, and without having obtained the end of their attempt, the Joloans were able, through their protection, to launch three squadrons which filled our villages with fear and confusion. It is no new thing in that continent for the heretics to lend arms to the pagans and to the Mahometans in order to put down the Christian name. A savage end it is to pit themselves for the private ends of trade and in a religious war, on the side of the koran and of idolatry, which they themselves condemn, against the gospel, which they persecute with fury. The three fleets went out then, for their campaign, and not having anyone to oppose them, the enemy filled their boats with what they called spoils, took about two hundred captives, persecuted our religious as ever, with mortal hate, and destroyed fifteen villages, almost all of them of our spiritual administration, and they filled Calamiànes especially with bitterness and grief.

311. The Dutch were not content with protecting the Moros, in order that they might persecute the name of Christ, but they themselves tried to drive that name from all that archipelago. Among all the disunited members of the Spanish monarchy, which the Dutch have endeavored to cut off from it, (in order that their power might wax more formidable at the expense of another) they have ever cast their eyes on the honorable and wealthy dominion of the Philipinas Islands. That country is such for their designs and trade, that better could not be desired: both because from there they were assured of all the trade of China, Japòn, Cochinchina, Cambòja, and the Malùcas; and because they were guaranteed the best woods for the building of their ships that can be found on the whole round earth. For that reason, the Dutch have left no stone unturned in all times if it pertained to the maxim of their desire, as can be deduced from several passages which are to be found in the previous decades and are necessary for the intelligence of the history that is treated in them. [18] The year, then, of 1646, they were seen with fifteen warships. With five of them they besieged the district of Playahònda, while seven of them were stationed in the Embocadero or strait of San Bernardino, and the remaining three filled the islands of the Pintados with fear. Our villages of Masìnloc, Iba, Marivèlez, Romblòn, Bantòn, and Surigào, suffered more harm and vexation than usual, of which the greater part touched the religious ministers.

312. Two galleons left Cavìte and fought first with five ships and twice afterwards with seven, and obtained three victories which were clearly miraculous. For they destroyed the enemy, without receiving any special damage, and the enemy were compelled to abandon their attempts for the nonce. Although father Fray Balthassar de Santa Cruz attributes all of the prodigy to Our Lady of the Rosary with sufficient foundation, [19] we, while confessing the might of so holy a warrior, must suggest that St. Nicholas of Tolentino had no small part in it, whom the soldiers, persuaded by two Recollects, as is mentioned in volume 3 of this history, who served as chaplains in our small fleet, also invoked as the sworn patron of those seas. [20] But under shelter of the Dutch enemy, who continued their attempts with no more success the two following years, the Moros, always emboldened, transgressed all bounds, attacking ceaselessly the villages of the Spanish dominion. For, although Corralàt, king of Mindanào, kept quiet during so dangerous a season for reasons of his own convenience, and had even acted as mediator so that Butria Bòngso, king of Jolò should make peace with our arms, which was done April 14, 1646, none of all that was sufficient to give quiet to that field of Christendom. Mahometan perfidy took the pretext that the Joloan Prince Salicàla and Paguyàn Cachile, prince of the Guinbanos, [21] and seignior of Tuptup in Bornèy, should refuse to sign the peace. With that excuse those princes, aided in secret by those kings, peopled the sea with boats and caused unspeakable damage to Calamiànes, Camiguìn, and Romblòn.

313. That was not the only fatal consequence that followed from those inhuman premises which were set by the Dutch. For if we had thitherto seen the aliens fighting against the faith, from the year 1649 the very sons of the Church worked for its destruction. The Dutch incited the Indians, already Christian and subject, to withdraw themselves from the mild yoke of Spain, the country which had drawn them from the darkness of paganism, and kept them on the road to salvation. Nor were they deaf to the voices filled with the fraud most difficult to recognize, for since they carried the agreeable sound of liberty, they secretly induced them to undergo the most tyrannical subjection; and God permitting by His secret judgments excessive flights to audacity and shamelessness for the credit of the virtuous and the crown of the just; the most cowardly of nations were seen with surprise and the nakedness of the Indians was armed against the invincible sword of the Spaniards. The insurrection began in the village of Palapàg in the province of Hibabào in the island of Sàmar, whence the good outcome of the first action traveling on the wings of unsteady report, found minds so ready throughout the islands of Pintàdos, that (just as if the counsel were common, and they were only awaiting the signal in order to do it), the temples were burned in many places, and sacred things profaned. The evangelical ministers fled, and the rebels retiring to the loftiest mountains, imagined that they could defend their former barbarity there.

314. Our reformed order had enough things to bewail in those revolutions; for in addition to the tragedies of Linao, which are related in volume 3, [22] the villages of Cagayàng, Camiguin, Hingòog, Romblòn, Bantòn, and Cibuyàn added wood to the fire of the sedition. If the promised help of the Dutch had come over and above the boldness of the Indians, it is inferred that what had taken so many years to conquer would have been lost in a few days. But God who always punishes as a father those who try to serve Him, measured the times so accurately, that amid the echoes of the insurrection, the proclamations of the peace which had been arranged between España and Olanda resounded in Manila. With that the Catholic arms were freed from their chastisement, and all things returned to their pristine quiet. That was not the case with the Moros, who were then and for many years after, the perennial enemies of that afflicted field of Christianity. Barbarously blinded in their treacherous gains as if it were a thing done, they made a practice of going every year to take captives in the islands of our administration, often outraging the temples sacrilegiously and not a single one that was near the beach escaped profanation and they utterly abused everything intended for religious worship, with great scorn to the name of Christian. They cut the sacred vestments, into robes and other garments [capisayos], and they destined the ciboriums and sacred chalices to the dirty use of their wine, tobacco, and buyo.

315. But it did not so happen, I return to say. For notwithstanding that they were a terror every year from that of 1649 to 1655 because of their piracies, now in some and now in other parts, they remained without the due punishment although so sacrilegious insults demanded it so justifiably. Without fear of our arms, they overran those seas at will, trusting their security to their swiftness; for their boats were built on purpose for piracy, and ours compared to theirs of lead. It happened not once only that they were taken because of carelessness between the bars of the rivers with forces sufficient to make one consider their destruction sure; but they got out laughing on one side or the other, amid the discharge of their artillery. And the forces of Manila, Zebù, Zamboàngan, and Carhàga, which were not despicable squadrons, served no other purpose than to scare off the evil, so that the persecution might be enormously expanded. They carried their insolence so far that two small vessels with but small crews, dashed into the bay of Manila one of the above years, and almost in sight of that capital, seized a caracoa from Iloilo with the rich cargo aboard it. Then they went out haughtily, and no one could take their prize from them, or punish their arrogance. In view of this one may infer how harassed were the distant villages, and how filled with tribulations were our religious ministers, who ever occupied the most advanced and dangerous posts.

316. It even transcended the tragic representation of so doleful misfortunes, when in the year 1655 Corralàt, king of Mindanào, proclaimed war against the Christian name. He began his treachery by the inhuman murders of two fathers of the Society whom their rank as ambassadors, which is so greatly respected by the law of nations, did not aid. That prince was in Philipinas what Gustavus Adolphus, king of Suecia, was in Alemania, namely, the thunderbolt of Lucifer, the scourge of Catholicism, and the Attila of the evangelical ministers, who never practiced courtesy toward them except when force or some reason of state compelled him so to do. For his private convenience he had pretended that he was peaceful in public during the preceding years. But now with no other reason than his fury, he gave license to his vassals to infest the Christian villages; and they did it like a river which overflows its bed, after having rid itself of the embarrassment of its dikes. He was not content with that, but in order to give greater flights to his impiety, he excused it among the neighboring Moros under the name of a religious war; and under that title he invited to it the Borneans, Tidorans, and Joloans, so that confederated with him into one body they might unfurl the banners of the perfidious Mahomet, without stopping until they utterly destroyed the law of grace.

317. He incited so great an uprising against that straitened field of Christendom that, although the previous persecutions that the Moros had practiced against it were so inhuman, (as may be seen in the places of this history cited in the margin) [23] they were all assuredly less intolerable than those which were now incited; for now fury and barbarity were carried to the extreme. That was so fierce that disinterested pens did not hesitate to compare it with the last of antichrist; so persevering, that until the year 1668, of which this history is treating, and the year when the relations which we follow end, there was not a single instant of rest; so shameless that ruin was seen almost at the very gates of Manila; and so universal that but few villages of our administration escaped being the theater of war and the lamentable object of its misfortunes. This is a brief compendium of the tragic events which happened in the Philippine church, which was surrounded on all sides by the waters of contradiction, as is the territory of those islands by the salt waves of the sea. This is a sketch of the cold winds, which, notwithstanding the heat of its climate, parched in great part the wavy exuberance of that leafy garden, so abounding in the flowers of Christianity and the mature fruits of virtue. Let us now consider with the most possible brevity, a concise sketch of the glory which was obtained by our discalced order in return for the hardships which overwhelmed its evangelical workers at so calamitous a time. We warn the reader that we shall follow no other chronological order than chance offers.

§ II

Of the hardships of our religious during these persecutions. The venerable father, Fray Antonio de San Agustin, dies at the hands of the Moros, in glorious martyrdom.

318. In the above-mentioned pillaging, [24] which God permitted for so many years, the Moros were triumphant, the Catholic arms rebuffed, the Christian villages without other defense than that of heaven, and the Indians drowned in the sea of tribulations. Moreover, as the sword of the persecutor, also that of greed and vengeance, was moved by the hatred of our holy faith, the direction of its greatest force was toward the sowers of the gospel. Daily did religious who had been driven from their ministries and missions bring to Manila news of entire villages ruined, the outcries of priests who had been captured, and letters which announced the death of others. All was confusion, all lamentation, all chaos, where the enemies of God were trying to elevate their throne in the darkness upon so bloody and confused injustice. It has already been seen that our Recollects had to suffer greatly, since they occupy the vanguard of the army of God in Carhàga and Calamianes; but that was irremediable in so disastrous a storm. The ship was seen to be buffeted hither and yon by the waves; and it was impossible that the sailors should not suffer from the buffeting. The winds were both violent and hostile; the ship could not but be dashed from one side to another. The hurricane was both furious and fierce; necessarily the pilots had to suffer greatly.

319. Our provincials called out for relief, exciting pity by the relation of their churches which had been burned and profaned; of their sheep that had been scattered, and many of them lost; and by their subjects who had been killed or captured, or at the least obliged to hide in the mountains, where deprived of all necessity, they suffered indescribable misery, traveling in the inconveniences and darkness of the night in order to fulfil their obligation as missionaries. But Manila is, as a rule, the place where least attention is paid to the wretchedness of the poor Indians and to the misfortunes of the gospel workers; for, since the citizens are busied in their Asiatic and American trade, the only thing that troubles them is any opposition to their profits. Very few are the Spaniards who risk themselves in small boats to seek profit from island to island; and consequently, they hear of misfortunes, which ought to cause the greatest horror, quietly and without any special disturbance. The passages from some islands to others being occupied and even embarrassed by Moro craft, the latter cause those who sail thither innumerable ruin; but many of the inhabitants of Manila have very little or, perhaps, no feeling. If news arrives that a religious has been killed or captured, some insolent tongue is not wanting to break out with the ballad as infamous as ancient, that the king brings us for this, namely, to suffer and die in defense of the law of God; as if it were compatible with the royal piety to abandon the defenseless ministers of Christ, however much they may expose themselves with heroic mind to endure a thousand martyrdoms. Nothing in short, matters to those people, if it do not touch their persons or interests: neither the misfortunes nor the violent deaths of their neighbors, nor the outrages of his Majesty's vassals, nor the losses of his royal treasury in the tributes which are lessened by such confusions, because the Indians are lost by the thousand.

320. Although the captain-general tries, as a good minister, to attend to such wrongs, it is quite common that he is unable to do all that he tries; now because of the depletion of the royal treasury, whose funds do not suffice to meet the calls upon it; and now since he must proceed with the advice of the council of war in which those have many votes who understand only what pertains to the exercise of merchants, although they sign their names with military titles. If the vessels in which they are interested are in danger, all difficulties are conquered, for there is no one who does not hasten with vote and money to fit out fleets to oppose the enemy. But if not then each proposition is a labyrinth, whence he who makes it cannot unravel himself, although Ariadne gives him a thread to guide him. Hence it follows, either that squadrons are not prepared of size sufficient to warn the aggressors, or if they are prepared, they set sail when it would be better for them not to, for they only occasion the vassals new trouble. Let no one imagine that the matter of these two numbers includes imagination or lack of truth. This is proved by authentic documents in what touches the past; while so far as the present century is concerned (during which the same persecutions have been repeatedly shown), experience has given me knowledge of such injuries, when I, as procurator-general and secretary of the province of Philipinas, found that I had to solicit relief for the persecuted Indians and for the afflicted religious. It is also certain that the same thing happened in almost all the wars of which we are speaking, so that our oppressed missionaries had no other consolation than that of God, in the pains that it was indispensable for them to suffer, and which we shall now begin to relate.

321. We have already mentioned in various parts of this history, that when our Recollects arrived at the Philipinas Islands, in order to illumine them with the splendors of the faith, and to fight like well-ordained astral bodies against the sissara of the abyss, they chose with apostolic strength the most difficult districts, the islands of the most barbaric people, and the places where, if the light of the gospel had shone, it had allowed itself to be seen only in fitful gleams. Hence it is that our ministers are the most exposed to peril and danger among all those of the archipelago; for they are very distant, not only from Manila, but also among themselves from one another, and surrounded by enemies to the Christian name. Each district consists of many villages and even of distinct islands. Since all of them have a right to the bread of the doctrine, which is the only food for souls, the religious, in order to attend to that obligation, has to be in continual movement. He must travel by sea threatened by so many dangers to his life, among frights and chance; and he who considers it of value to endure them and despise them, can only form a just opinion of them. They do this without other profit than the spiritual, enduring to the uttermost penury, and the lack of necessities, in order to teach and instruct certain poor peoples whom they are alluring from the most wild barbarism in order to get them to live like men in a civilized Christian society.

321. Let one add to all the above bodily hardships the lack of one to employ himself in so great charity, to whatever serves in this life as a consolation to the spirit. For there our religious is properly a hermit, although he may live among many people. Now, it is because he is deprived of the company of his brothers, for he is almost always alone in villages that are too large, and the nearest minister is fifteen or twenty leguas away and separated by rough seas, or inaccessible mountains, which render it impossible most of the year for them to have the comfort of seeing one another, or even to have communication with one another by means of letters, in order that they might console one another in their mutual troubles. Now, it is because the Indians make them no company for the blessings that human association brings with it, but serve only for an insupportable martyrdom; for, in addition to the fatigues incumbent on them as missionaries, they must attend to all their quarrels, grudges, necessities, and troubles. For these reasons and others that cannot be expressed at present, the governor of Philipinas, Don Fausto Cruzàt y Gòngora, when addressing the king in a report, did not hesitate to affirm that the discalced Augustinians, even in times of peace, and after the subjection of the villages of their administration, suffer the same hardships as do missionaries in the lands of the infidels. His Excellency, the bishop of Zebù, Don Manuel Antonio de Ocio y Ocampo, was wont to say, as I have heard from his own mouth, and not only once, that if he had authority for it he would not hesitate to canonize any Recollect, who happens to lose his life among the fatigues of his calling, while completely fulfilling his obligation in the missions of those islands, as is the case with many.

323. And if this is endured in only the hardships annexed to the spiritual administration, what must it not be when the destructive tempests of the persecutions of the Moros, the greatest part of which assail our laborers, happen to come? Then there is no other relief than to flee to the mountains in order to live in passes and caves, seeking their preservation, not so much for their self-love, but because of that for others. There, through lack of food, too much heat, continual rains, and many other discomforts, they are generally so disfigured and so weak that rivaling Job, they only live because of a skin loosely stretched over their bones. How many contract incurable diseases there, who dragging along all their life with them prove themselves to be stages of the greatest pity! How many by trampling under foot evident dangers, in hastening to the consolation of their sheep, to confess the sick, to aid the dying, either gave themselves into the hands of the enemy to be the victims of their cruelty, or offered themselves a willing sacrifice to the precipices of the mountains and to the shipwrecks of the seas! How many, since the world is unworthy of their noble and Christian intercourse, and, it seems, tried to cast from itself, wander for months at a time, naked, an hungered, persecuted, followed on all sides by the shadow of death, without other consolation than that of God, in whose hands they desire to finish their lives, delivering to Him their wearied souls! And how many, finally, obtained the precious crown of martyrdom, after having coursed the sands of so many hardships, which were ended either by the edge of the sword, or by a spear-thrust, or at the spindle of hardships, or at grief at seeing holy things so outraged, or by the inundations of penalties in atrocious captivities! Mention has been made of many in the preceding volumes, but some who will serve to ornament this volume were omitted.

[In the remainder of this section are contained accounts of several who suffered the martyrdoms above mentioned in their war of the faith, and all of whom are mentioned by Combés in his Historia de Mindanao, who is cited at length by our author. [25] The first martyr (see Combés, book vi,