Chapter XXII
Of the persecution of the religious by the Indians, at the beginning; and of their later heartfelt conversion.
The principal reason that these Indians had for persecuting these first fathers who came to their villages was that, as soon as they came thither, they built a convent in a few days, and a very tiny church, in front of which they set up a large wooden cross; and that thereupon their greatest idol, who was called Ana Gaoley, ceased to give the responses and oracles which it had been wont to give them, in the shrines or temples which they had made, which were called anitoan. The priestesses had been accustomed to invoke these oracles, for the ministry of idols among them was given over to women. These women, called managanito, were dressed in certain vestments dedicated to this sole use, and employed certain vessels esteemed among them, containing oils, unguents, odors, and perfumes. With all this they placed themselves in a retreat where they used to conjure the devil; and there the devil spoke to them, giving them answers with regard to their wars, their sicknesses, and their undertakings. Whatever thing the devil asked by the mouths of these women, however costly it might be, the Indians brought immediately; and if through them he commanded the Indians to kill any one, they instantly put the command into execution without a word. But from the moment of the building of the church the oracle was silent. The Indians felt this very much, and made many sacrifices to placate him, supposing he had grown silent from anger; but they could not succeed in drawing a single word from him. He revealed himself on a mountain at some distance from the village, where there were some Indians cutting wood for their houses, and said to them that they should not wear themselves out by asking anything more from him, because two things had banished him from his village. One of them was that straight stick set up in the village, with another across it, like a body with two arms. The other was those men with hair on their heads who were among them in his village; for so long as they were there he could not go back to it. [This ought to have been enough to convert them, like the priest of the idol whom St. Gregory Thaumaturgus put to silence by his presence; but these people had not intelligence enough for that, and grew very indignant against the religious, especially after the father of lies told them that the friars meant to kill their children. Their wrath against the innocent religious grew so great that, if they had not feared the Spaniards, they would have killed them. The enemy of God found means still more to inflame the wrath of the Indians against the friars.] One of the Indian women of the highest rank being found pregnant when she was about to be married, her parents intended to execute upon her their ancient law, which was to bury her alive, together with the malefactor. They seized her, and tortured her to make her reveal who he was. She, at the instigation of the devil, declared that it was father Fray Bernardo de Sancta Catalina, the superior of all those religious, and the one against whom the devil and the Indians felt most bitter, because he was the principal minister of the gospel. Thereupon, without further investigation, she was immediately believed: and they came upon him like bloodthirsty wolves, with the purpose of carrying out that penalty. He was not disturbed or alarmed, but made them go with him to the Indian woman, and asked her some questions; and when the time was ascertained at which she had conceived, it was plain that the father had not been at that time, or for many days before or after, in that village. Thus they believed him firmly, while they and he who had stirred them up were ashamed and confused. Still the woman’s artifice was of use to her; for the father repaid her for the false witness she had given, by delivering her from the death which they were going to inflict upon her—searching for devices to bring this about, just as the devil had searched for them to do evil; for kindness is no less subtle than malice. Later will be seen what was the life and death of this holy religious, whom the devil strove to discredit by other means, but without success. [The devil was finally banished from these villages, in which he had kept all the Indians in wretched slavery; for if he gave them some liberty to vice he demanded from them a much greater return.] In addition to the sacrifices that he required of them—which as has been said were costly, and which sometimes extended even to the death of men, he required them to do most painful things in their times of bereavement. For the first three days they did not have a mouthful to eat; for three more days they had only a little fruit; after this, for a long time, they had only boiled herbs or roots, without wine to drink, and with nothing savory to eat. During all this time they wore around the neck a little gold chain, which was a mark of mourning; and this they were not allowed to put off during all this period, unless they killed some one. As soon as they committed a homicide, there was an end of the mourning and the fast; and they made up by eating and drinking without limit or measure. Every little thing that happened to them caused them a thousand superstitions, painful, and sometimes expensive.
The worst of all was the wars that they were constantly waging among themselves, and the great oppressions inflicted upon the people of the lower class by those who are above them in rank. These took away their possessions from them and made them slaves at their mere whims, under the law that “might makes right.” One of these bravo chiefs (a very tyrannical one, and therefore the more esteemed, feared, and respected by the rest), by name Cabanday, would never hear of being converted to Christianity—the more so because he would have been required to restore everything which he had taken by injustice, usury, extortion, and wrong; for thus he had gained all he had, and he was very rich. [God one day heard the prayers of the friars for him; and at night he told the Indian who was his closest friend that he felt so strong an impulse to turn to God that he could not resist it. He ordered his slaves to take the chest in which he kept all his gold and riches, to carry it to the church, and to open it immediately. They broke it open. The fathers went down from the choir where they were, being mistrustful of some ill. They found him with his chest; he opened it; placed at the feet of father Fray Bernardo all that was in it, and afterwards threw himself at these too—praying, with much feeling and with many tears, to be baptized, and telling them that there was the whole of his fortune and the fortune of his children; let them do with it what they would, though they should send him away poorer than the lowest of his vassals, if only they would do what he asked. The religious gave a thousand thanks to God, comforted him, promised him baptism, and began to prepare him for it. Being very old, he could not learn the prayers by heart; but he was very intelligent, and very well understood the mysteries of the faith they taught him. They accordingly baptized him, to his own great joy and to the comfort of the fathers. They called him in baptism Don Pablo. Though he could not learn the prayers by memory, he was not deprived of them; for when he recited the rosary, in place of the pater-noster he said in his own language: “Oh, Lord my God, have pity upon me, a sinner,” and in place of the Ave Maria he said the same to our Lady. And, when he came to confess, in place of the general confession he said: “Father, I come to your feet to reveal my sins, and to obtain pardon therefor from God our Lord.” He made his confession with much clearness and contriteness, educated his children in the fear of God, strove to have all the people of his country baptized, and lived an exemplary life. He lived eighteen years a Christian. His death took place under the following circumstances. While father Fray Bernardo was confessing the Indians, one Lent, in the church of Binalatongan, Don Pablo came on foot and said: “Father, confess me, for I am going to die today.” He asked the father to come and say mass, and to give him the viaticum. On the same day he died.
No less remarkable was the conversion of another great chief of the village of Magaldan, called Casipit, who had been on the point of killing a Franciscan, so opposed was he to the faith. This Indian had already thrown him on the ground to kill him with a cruel dagger which they use, when the others hindered him. When now our order came to his country, he took it so ill that he went to Manila to arrange to have the friars withdrawn from his village; and to carry out the negotiation he offered his encomendero half his property, which was considerable. His wife, named Lalo, was first converted by the preaching of father Fray Pedro de Soto. She was baptized Doña Gracia. By her efforts the husband was converted and baptized, with the whole of his family and his large retinue. He used to gather the people of his village near the church, and to address them, urging them to works of mercy with plain and sensible words; but with such fervor and devotion that he made them all weep, even the religious who had concealed himself to overhear. He led a very religious life, directing his household in habits of devotion. So also did his wife; and the good people directed their slaves to pay as much attention to their religious duties as to the work they did for them. On one occasion, when one of his slaves died, and it was impossible to bury him in the churchyard, because of the floods, the old man determined to carry the slave to another village, which on account of its higher situation had not been flooded, and to bury him in the church there. The river was full of trees and logs which might overturn his boat, the current was very strong, and there were many whirlpools in it. There was also danger from the caymans, which at that period of the year are most dangerous, and most frequently attack small boats. Don Pedro was not ignorant of the risks for an old man like him, for he was more than a hundred years old, though he had lost none of his strength. In spite of the petitions of all of his family he made the effort, carrying the slave to the village of San Jacintho. The old man, when he got there, was all wet, and was chilled with the cold of the rain that had fallen and of the winds that had blown on him. He buried the slave and went home, happy in having fulfilled his duty so nobly. When one of his slaves died by accident, without having been able to confess, the good Don Pedro took it to heart as if it had been his own sin. From this instance may be seen how devoted Christians those Indians became whose conversion had been so difficult.]
Chapter XXIII
Some miracles wrought by God in Pangasinan at the beginning of the preaching in this province
[Though the Lord did not work so many miracles in this province as in the primitive church, since that was the foundation of all the churches since, He still gave authority to the preaching of His gospel in these regions by many marvelous works. Father Fray Alonso Montero,[20] a son of the province of Mexico, and a native of Castilla la Vieja, tells us that, in two years during which he was in this province, no day passed without a miracle. After a year, during which no conversions had been made among the Indians, because of their hardness of heart, it seemed to father Fray Bernardo that it was time to break the silence which they had kept up to that time. By the favor of an Indian chief who had been converted in Manila, Don Juan de Vera by name, and of his brother, who was headman of that village, they visited all the houses, asking the people to let them have the children to baptize them. In one house they had a child and hid it. When father Fray Bernardo asked for it, they told him they had no child. In affliction he turned to his companion, father Fray Luis Gandullo, and said: “There was a child here, and they will not let me have him. Ask for him, your Reverence, perhaps they will give him to you.” After they had refused him, too, the child put up its head, and when father Fray Luis opened his arms and said to him in the Castilian language, “Come to me, child of my heart, that knowest not the good that thou losest in being hidden from holy baptism; come to us. I promise thee to take care of thee, and to do thee good,” the child, as if it had understood Castilian (of which it did not know a word), and as if it had had the sense to know what was for its advantage, left its mother and its kinsfolk to go to the religious, keeping its eyes fixed upon him as if thanking him for the good counsel they had been giving it. It went with the religious and was baptized, and turned out to be a very perfect Christian, as having been made one by miracle. An old man annoyed them by speaking against them in his own language, and following them about everywhere. When father Fray Luis took him by the arm and kindly remonstrated with him, the Indian, who did not understand the language, began to scream and said, “Let go, Father; I do not wish to become a Christian.” They kept this up for some time till the father let him go. Some days afterward, the two fathers saw him again; and father Fray Luis, who had prayed much for him in the interval, pointed him out to father Fray Bernardo, and said: “Let us ask him now if he wishes to be a Christian.” He accepted, and was baptized. A girl was born blind, and her parents were so afflicted that, as cruel barbarians, they planned to kill her. The religious knew of this, and prayed to God that He would be pleased to provide relief. Father Fray Marcos de Sant Antonio undertook the business of gaining this soul. He spoke to the parents of the child; but they were unwilling to give the child, and offered to sell her. They came to an agreement for eight reals; and the religious took the child and baptized her. At her baptism, the Lord was pleased to give her not only the light of His grace, but also that of corporal sight; and her eyes became miraculously clear and beautiful. With this the eyes of the parents were also opened, and they began to give their children for baptism, especially as this was not the only miracle wrought among the baptized children. That they might not suppose that the virtue of this most necessary sacrament had an effect upon children only, an Indian who was wounded in the abdomen, so that his entrails protruded in great quantity and he seemed to be near death, was implored by the religious to be baptized. He, however, refused, and was not even influenced when they once said that this holy sacrament had sometimes cured bodies as well as souls. The religious came and did what they could to keep away the ants which came to feed upon his entrails. He already had the smell of death upon him; and, when he felt that death was near, he begged for baptism. When he was baptized, his entrails drew in again, the wound was closed, and he was as sound as if such a thing had never happened. A number of similar miracles of healing were wrought. The Indians were surprised to see the religious come among them unarmed and alone, while the other Spaniards always came in numbers and with firearms—even then not regarding themselves as safe, but proceeding with much caution. The religious, however, went about carelessly. When the Indians consulted the devil, according to their custom before doing away with any one, he responded to them that the religious did not go unprotected; that they were accompanied by an armed angel, with a cross on his brow, and another on his shield. The Indians had never seen such a thing, and could not have made up a fiction because they had never seen a painting or heard mention of any such matter. Thus they learned that the devil was not so strong as they had supposed, since he was obliged to admit that there was one stronger than he. Another heathen Indian, who had permitted his child to be baptized, was rewarded by a vision, by which he was converted. He put away all his wives but the first, though he loved another and better one. He built in his village, called Gabon, a monastery and a church for the religious, more capacious than those they had. Devils were driven away by the holy sacrament of baptism, and children were restored to life. When the heathen jeered at some Christians for going to church on Sunday and neglecting their fields, God was pleased to send a plague of locusts, which spared the fields of the Christians. Many more miracles might be put down here, of which we have reports from religious of great virtue; and there is a still greater number which they have passed over and failed to mention.]