The Friars in the Philippines

by Ambrose Coleman

4. Neither was the education of the female sex neglected. Among other establishments of a like nature, there was an orphan asylum for girls at Mandaloya on the Tasig, conducted by Augustinian nuns, twenty-two in number. Last year it contained 122 pupils, who were receiving instruction in music, the piano, painting, drawing, embroidery, artificial flower-making, dressmaking, hair-dressing, lacemaking, laundry work, and sewing.

5. The Franciscans had colleges as well, and besides doing their share in the work of education, devoted their time and services to the hospitals of the Archipelago, the principal of which are, the Royal Hospital of St. Lazarus at Manila, the Infirmary of St. Ann in the province of Laguna, and that of Vasa in the province of Camarines.

Scattered through the various islands are the posts or residences, where the fathers of the various Orders devote themselves to the “nuevos Christianos,” as they are called, or latter-day converts from Paganism. This zealous work of conversion has never ceased from the time of the conquest, and the Christian population has been steadily on the increase till our own times. The recent traveller,[1] whom we quoted at the beginning, came in contact a good deal with the Dominicans during his stay in the Philippines, visiting several of their outlying stations, and receiving everywhere the greatest kindness and hospitality from them. He says: “Everywhere you enter the monastery as though it was your own, eat and drink unstintedly, and sleep, and depart with thanks and a cordial God-speed from the fathers, and naught to pay for the entertainment.” Alas! the good fathers did not know the viper they were nursing. Pity they could not recognize in the smiling Englishman who so readily accepted their hospitality, and “paid naught for the entertainment,” the man who would speak of them as dirty monks, who would consider it worthy of sneering record that they did not shave when on board ship, and who, though not able to discover any evil himself, would repeat gross calumnies about them, got from hearsay. What he saw with his own eyes belies his wicked innuendos. He says: “It was plain that they cared naught for the fretting of the world. In many a dismal place, even in the remotest spots, I found the clusters of monastic exiles perfectly happy—the outer world dead, or too far away—craving for no other fate. They are enchanted to welcome and give you of their best; will even, if struggling overland, lend a vehicle or a ridinghorse to convey you to the next convent on the way. Cheery, kindly, simple people, practical sermons on ‘Content.’ The monks of Ramblon, a dozen or so all told, were delighted to show us all that was to be seen. A homely little church was duly exhibited, built of a local wood, which cuts into planks of extreme width, adorned with a grain which is brought out with wax and oil. The columns were of solid ebony, the floor of four marbles, white, gray, black, and brown. All these were the products of this little island.” A fair-minded man would have duly attributed their joy of mind and kindness to strangers to religious feeling,—to the love of God, for whose sake these Spanish missionaries had given up father and mother, friends and worldly prospects, to spend their lives, year in and year out, without hope of earthly reward, in these spots, dismal enough to the ordinary tourist, but to them bright and cheery, as they were the posts alloted to them by Divine Providence for the extension of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

“The provincial stations,” he says in another place, “are in reality governed by the priests.” How could it be otherwise? With a government notoriously weak and inefficient, with lay officials notoriously corrupt, unwilling to exile themselves in these parts remote from civilization, unwilling to condescend to learn the many various dialects in use in the Archipelago, no wonder that the missionary living in the midst of the people to whom he had devoted his life, and who looked up to him as a father, exercised a sort of parental authority over them. This was done both in the interest of the civil government and of the natives themselves. The governors utilized the authority of the missionaries as long as it suited their purpose; when, on the other hand, the missionaries had to oppose extortion and unjust treatment, the officials started the cry that the missionaries were ruling the Archipelago. About those gentlemen Thomas Comin wrote in 1810:

“In order to be a chief of a province in these islands no training, or knowledge, or special service is necessary. It is quite a common thing to see a barber, a Governor’s lackey, a sailor, or a deserter suddenly transformed into an Alcalde, Administrator, and Captain of the Forces of a populous province, with no counsellor but his rude understanding, and no guide but his passions.”

Here are some edifying facts concerning Spanish officials in the Philippines. In five years Governor-General Manuel de Arandia amassed a quarter of a million dollars; a successor of Arandia, within the last few years, is reported to have made $700,000 in a single year; while another is commonly said to have placed millions to his credit during a short term of office. Men talk openly in Manila of bribing judges to put cases off and off. Little wonder, then, that, with such a state of rottenness, bribery, and corruption obtaining, the missionaries on the remote stations have, in the interests of the people, looked after their worldly affairs.

Interior of natives’ hut, Mindanao.

The missionary zeal of the Jesuits carried them even to Mindanao, an island so inaccessible by reason of its mountains and volcanoes, its impenetrable jungle, its unnavigable rivers infested with alligators and pirates, its fierce and savage inhabitants always at war with one another, that the Spanish Government exercised only nominal sovereignty over it, and was not ever able even to get its interior surveyed. When the Jesuits came there some years ago they found a Christian population only on the east and north coasts, and in a few isolated spots of the other coast regions. Of the interior tribes many were known only by name. Owing to the zeal of these fathers, not only in missionary enterprise, but also in geographical and ethnographical exploration, the network of rivers in the great island is now very well known, the fathers having recorded the results of their explorations in numerous sketches and maps. They have also fully described the manners and customs of the heathen tribes. As an instance of the savagery of the Mindanayas, for the most part fanatical Moros or Mohammedans, it may be mentioned that head-hunting seemed till lately to be the great object of their existence. The man who had chopped off sixty heads was entitled to wear a scarlet turban for the rest of his mortal life, and scarlet turbans are still far from uncommon among them. As there was an inordinate desire among the doughty and dusky warriors to wear these turbans, it follows that the population was being gradually but surely thinned out. Yet even here, on the sea-coast of Mindanao, the Jesuits established their stations, living in the midst of their small flocks, with their lives in their hands, in close proximity to pirates, savage alligators, and still more savage scarlet turbans.