The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 35, 1640-1649 / Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century

by Unknown

EARLY FRANCISCAN MISSIONS

Entrance of the seraphic order of our father St. Francis into the Philipinas Islands

His sacred Majesty our king and sovereign Philipo Second was pleased, through his most Christian and Catholic zeal, to establish this kingdom of Philipinas and plant herein the evangelical doctrine by means of the religious of our seraphic father St. Francis. For this purpose his Majesty sent father Fray Pedro de Alfaro with seventeen religious, sons of the province of San Joseph, of the discalced religious. Thirteen of them were priests, two were choristers and two lay-brothers. Six religious died on the voyage, but they were joined by six more in México, and they entered Manila August 2, 1577. They were lodged in a bamboo house, where the marshal Gabriel de Ribera built a church of planks. Father Fray Pedro de Alfaro began his ministry immediately by assigning his associates to all the provinces of this kingdom; and they, inducing the Indians to come from the rugged mountains and reducing them to settlements, baptized them and instructed them in the mysteries of our holy faith, and erected churches and laid out villages. At present the province has charge of fifty-two villages in these islands, as follows.