When they reached Nueva Segovia, a minister was provided for the village of Nasiping, which had been accepted ten years before, but for which it had been impossible previously to provide a minister because the supply of them was so scanty. Even now there was so much requiring the attention of the religious, and they were so few, that half a miracle was necessary for the missionary to be given. Father Fray Francisco de la Cruz, or Jurado,[40] was taken dangerously ill. He was a religious of much virtue, of whom they had great hopes. The father provincial, fearing to lose him, promised to give a minister to Nasiping if the sick man recovered. Father Fray Francisco recovered, and the provincial fulfilled his vow and named the church after St. Michael. This village is on the banks of the great river [i.e., of Cagayán], five or six leguas higher up than the city of the Spaniards. In the year 1625, twenty-one years after it received ministers, there had been baptized in it more than three thousand four hundred persons, as is certified by the baptismal records; and, in addition to this, many were baptized in sickness who, because of their immediate death, were not entered on the records. To this village there came an Indian from Tuguegarao, which is distant two days’ journey by water. He very earnestly desired the religious to confess him, and to give him the other holy sacraments. The religious confessed him and gave him the communion, more that he might assist his devotion than because he supposed he was in danger. He had come on foot and seemed strong, so that it seemed that he was very far from being in such a state of necessity; but after he had received the sacrament he died. This was something at which the religious wondered, and which aroused in him great devotion and joy when with his eyes he saw so plainly the power of divine predestination, carried out in ways so hidden and mysterious. Father Fray Pedro Muriel,[41] who is still living, has testified as an eye-witness that when he was minister in that village, in the year 1631, the locusts were more in number than the natives had ever seen before. In the fields of that village they were in such numbers that they spread over a space three leguas in length and a quarter of a legua in breadth, covering the earth and the trees so that the ground could not be seen, so thickly did they cover it; and they ravaged the fields as if they had been burnt. [The Indians did what they could to frighten away the locusts, but in vain; and the Lord heard the prayers of one of the Indians that He would drive away the locusts during the night. At dawn, when he expected to find all of his fields desolated, he found that just half of them had been eaten, and that all the rest had been left. The Lord showed a similar grace to a poor woman who prayed for His aid in protecting her field of maize.]
In this same year, 1604, the provincial sent three religious to the estuary of Lobo and the country of Ytabes,[42] in the province of Nueva Segovia. All those Indians are heathen; and though by nature they are very tractable and easy to deal with, simple and free from malice, and concerned with nothing but their agriculture, still the outrages of those who took tribute from them were so great that they enraged the natives and obliged them to take up arms, to the great loss of the Spaniards. As they were few and the multitude of the Indians many, the few, although they were very courageous, came to their death by the hands of the many; or, rather, the unjust came to death by the hands of divine justice, which in this way was pleased to chastise and end their injustices. And as we very seldom reckon rightly, the chastisement which God wrought by the hands of these Indians was attributed by the Spaniards to the courage and valor of this tribe; and thus they were very fearful of them until the holy gospel declared by the Dominican religious changed them from bloodthirsty wolves to gentle sheep—the Lord aiding by manifest miracles to give credit to His faith and to His ministers, to the end that they might be able to do that which without this or similar assistance from the Lord it would have been impossible to achieve. One of the three religious who entered these heathen villages to undertake their conversion said, in giving an account of what happened: “Since the hand of the Lord has been so plainly succoring these Indians by the hands of those religious who dwelt among them, their reformation has been great and marvelous. They have gone from one extreme to the other, almost without any intermediate stage, since the religious took them under their care. Before that they were so free, so completely without God or law, without king or any person to respect, that they gave themselves up freely to their desires and their passions. Evidence of this is found in those wars which they were continually waging among themselves, without plan or order; and in the drunkenness and the outrages of which they were guilty, without regard to God or man. He who was most esteemed among them was the greatest drunkard, because, as he was the richest, he could obtain the most liquor. He who slew the greatest number of men was regarded as superior to all the rest. They married and unmarried daily, with one or many wives. In a word, they were a barbarous race, given up to all sorts of shameless conduct. In spite of all this, when the missionary came among them they were as docile as if they had during all their lives been learning to obey, which is something very difficult even in religious orders. This was true, although the religious instantly laid a general interdict upon all their ancient vices; obliged them to consort solely with their lawful wives; even forced many to abandon their land and their old villages, that they might come where teaching was given them; and, in a word, compelled them to enter all at once, and in a body, into ordered ways of living, in matters both divine and human. They had not a thought of opposing a single command; and this has been achieved without stripes or penalties, but simply by kindness and gentleness. The result has been that those who did not understand anything except killing, and drinking till they could not stand, and running without any restraint after every sort of vice, now never think of doing these things—as I have seen in these first three villages in this district of Ytabes. The day we went among them we found all the men lying about the streets, dead drunk; since that day there has not been one drunk enough to lose his senses. The same reformation has been achieved in all other matters, for they were not compelled to do all this by fear of the Spaniards. Quite otherwise; the Spaniards regarded these Indians as so indomitable and intrepid that, for fear of them, they did not dare go up the river as far as their villages; but after the religious went among them, they were gathered into large villages that they might be more easily instructed in the faith, having been previously scattered among many small ones, like so many farmsteads [in Spain]. There were three villages thus formed: one of about five hundred tributes, named Taban, the church of which was called San Raymundo; and the other two of more than a thousand tributes each—one called Pia, its church Santa Ynes de Monte Policiano, afterwards known as San Domingo; and the last one, named Tuao, the church of which was dedicated to the holy guardian angels because of the incident referred to above. Thus all those people were brought together and united, to reduce them to settlements, and to a civilized mode of life and government; and to the church; but this result was obtained at no small cost to the religious. Of three of them, two immediately fell very sick, and the third still more so, for he died as a result of the illness. This was father Fray Luis de Yllescas, a son of the convent of Sancto Domingo at Mexico, a very humble religious, very obedient and beloved by all. He received the holy sacraments for his departure with great devotion; and went away to enjoy, as may be presumed, the reward of his labors, which had been many in a short time. Yet neither this death nor the failure of health in the rest caused them to withdraw their hands from the work upon which they had begun. On the contrary, the great good which they beheld, wrought by the Lord among these Indians, served as medicines and remedies for the ills from which they suffered; and for their convalescence, though they had no worldly luxuries, that fruit was much better which, more and more every day, was borne by this new plant of the church. From it they recovered health, strength, and new courage to carry on the work which they had begun. To give them still greater spirit, the Lord came to them working miracles. The first mass which was celebrated in the village of Pia took place on St. Bartholomew’s day, the twenty-fourth of August. [Before the end of the month, a sick person who wished to be baptised beheld some fierce and abominable forms which dissuaded him from baptism, and reminded him of the rights and customs of his ancestors, charging him not to change the faith in which his fathers and grandfathers had lived. These dreadful forms were driven away by three persons, clad in black cloaks with white garments beneath. The sick man was often asked if he knew these three persons who had delivered him, and he said “no.” When he was asked if they were religious of our order he also said “no,” because he had never seen any of the religious wearing their cloaks. He always declared that he had been awake and not asleep; and the narrative was accepted as certain. At one time, a religious who was himself in poor health was left in charge of thirteen newly-converted Christians, who were all confined to their beds by sickness. Being unable to give them the care which he desired, he placed upon the abdomen of each of them a little roasted rice-bran, very hot, begging the Lord to make up by His pity for the lack of medicine. When he came back the next day to visit them, all but two were well, and had gone to work in the field; and the others soon recovered. The same treatment given by another Indian or by the sick man to himself had no effect; and thus it is plain that the healing was due to the desire of the Lord to honor and to give authority to the hand which applied the remedy. The Indians themselves observed that, after they had religious, far fewer died than before they had them. In their ancient days of superstition, when a man fell sick he generally died, because he was treated only by the witchcraft of the aniteras, whose sole purpose was to get gold from the sick persons by false promises. The sorcerers did them no good and indeed rather harmed them, since cures came from our worst enemy, the devil; while now the Lord was giving them, by means of the religious, health that was health indeed. One of the religious in this region, father Fray Juan Naya,[43] fell ill, and grew worse so rapidly that he was given up as a consumptive. By the advice of another religious, he made a vow to our Lady to serve in that province among the heathen, if she should be pleased to grant him sufficient health for him to carry on this work. He made the vow for seven consecutive years from the day of the Visitation, July 2, 1605. During all this time he had his health; but at the end of the seven years he was attacked by a very severe and dangerous illness, which left him when he renewed his vow for four years more. Similar experiences have been frequent among the religious. It has even happened to some who were not very devoted to this work, and who desired to go to other provinces where the Lord might be served with less severity and with somewhat greater comfort, that they have been afflicted with diseases, which gave place to miraculous health as soon as they made vows to remain and minister to the Indians whom they wished to leave. In this region the Lord manifested His goodness and gave authority to his ministers, curing a sick woman who was at the point of death, by means of the sacrament of holy baptism. In this same village it happened to father Fray Juan Naya that a poisonous snake entered his shoe without any evil effect. An Indian in this same village called upon God in his illness, and, when it did not seem good to the divine Providence to heal him, he called upon the devil whom he had previously served. The Lord punished him with dreadful visions, from which he was delivered upon praying to the Lord for His protection; and he was finally cured, after making his confession. A child was miraculously healed in the town of Pia at the time when father Fray Juan Sancta Ana was vicar there. A woman who did not seem to be dangerously ill prayed so earnestly to be baptized that the father granted her wish. She died almost immediately after, the Lord having shown her a marvelous kindness in causing the religious to baptize her immediately.]
Chapter LX
What our Lord wrought, by the intercession of our Lady of the Rosary, who stands in a shrine between the two villages of Pia and Tuao.
[In the church of the village of Pia there was an image of our Lady on one of the side altars. It had been made in Macan, and had been first set up in the church of our order in the city of Nueva Segovia, whence it was taken to the church of Pia. Here the image was greatly beloved; and when father Fray Juan de Sancta Ana gave it away to another village, after having received a second image of much greater beauty, the people begged so earnestly to have it returned that the vicar was obliged to have another painted on canvas and sent to the village of Tuguegarao (to which he had given the one for which the Indians begged), and to have the first image brought back. While the father was considering where it would best be put, the idea occurred to him that it would be well to establish a shrine on the road between Pia and Tuao, at a distance of about a league and a half from each of the towns. This shrine was set up on St. Stephen’s day in 1623. On the day on which the shrine was consecrated more than ten thousand persons were gathered together from the neighboring villages. One of the women of the highest rank in the village of Pia undertook the care of the shrine, placing a lamp to burn constantly before the holy image. This Indian was named Doña Ynes Maguilabun. The Virgin was not slow to reward her for this devotion, for once when Doña Ynes took with her to the shrine her little nephew, a child of five years, who was suffering from a large swelling under his left arm—a disease among the Indians which runs into an abscess, and, being so near the heart, is very dangerous indeed, because of the lack of medicines and of medical science among these Indians—the little one was left in the shrine, and fell asleep on the steps of the altar. While there he had a vision of the Virgin, and, when he awoke, the swelling was entirely healed. Other miracles were wrought by the same image. One particularly worthy of mention happened in the year 1624. There being a severe drouth, the father who was at that time in the village of Tuao, Fray Andres de Haro,[44] and father Fray Juan de Sancta Ana, decided to make some processions and offer prayers to the Lord for His mercy. They accordingly arranged to make processions on a certain day from each of the villages to the shrine. The Indians of Pia confessed their sins, that the burden of them might be removed from the land; and on that same Sunday it rained so copiously in the region of this village of Pia that it seemed as if the village would be drowned and as if the floodgates of heaven were open. On the day appointed for the processions, the father of the village of Pia told the Indians that it was not necessary to make the procession, but that he would say a solemn mass of thanks to our Lady, which could be done in the church. They, however, insisted; and when they reached the shrine they found there all the people of the village of Tuao, where not a drop of rain had fallen, because the inhabitants of Tuao had not thought of confessing. They immediately began to prepare themselves for confession, and all that day the inhabitants of Tuao and Pia confessed their sins, revealing some which, from lack of faith, or pusillanimity, or shame, they had concealed. When they reached home in the evening it began to rain in both villages and in all the fields around them; and it rained so hard that it was impossible to bring back the ornaments which had been taken to the shrine for the saying of mass. On several other occasions our Lady showed mercy by granting rain in answer to the prayers of those who besought it before this holy image.]
Chapter LXI
The venerable father Fray Miguel de Venavides, one of the first founders of this province and archbishop of Manila.
Among the great kindnesses and benefits which our province, and indeed all these islands, have received from the Lord, one of the greatest was His having given them father Fray Miguel de Venavides as one of the first who came to establish this province of the Holy Rosary, and as second archbishop of this city. At a time when its inhabitants suffered great tribulations, and found themselves suddenly besieged by a number of enemies much larger than their own—enemies from within their houses and their homes—they found in him a true father for their consolation, and a prelate acceptable to God, who could placate His ire by interceding for his people. He was born in Carrion de Los Condes, of noble parents, well known in that region because of their descent and their virtue. When he was not more than fifteen years old he assumed the habit of this religious order, and learned by experience how true is the saying of the Holy Spirit that it is well for a man to carry the easy yoke of the service of God from his youth. He received the habit and professed in the distinguished convent of San Pablo at Valladolid. He immediately began to display the subtilty of his mind, which was very great; at the very beginning of his studies he seemed like an eagle soaring above his fellow-pupils, distinguishing himself by special marks or acuteness, so that most of the students and the learned were astonished. He was, accordingly, soon made a member of the college of San Gregorio in that city, a crucible in which is refined the metal of the finest intellects which the order has in the provinces of España and Andalucia. Here he had as master him who of right was the master of the theology of España—the most learned father Fray Domingo Bañez. The two were so completely suited to each other in virtue and ability that father Fray Miguel could not fail to be the beloved disciple of such a master. So much did the great teacher love him that, when he saw him advance so far in both virtue and ability, he was accustomed to say Hic est discipulus ille [i.e., “This is that disciple”], giving him by antonomasia the name of his disciple, out of the many, whom he regarded with so great praise. He taught the arts in his convent, and theology in many houses of the province; and finally returned to be lecturer in theology in his convent of San Pablo. It was while he was engaged in this duty and exercise that he was taken captive by the voice of father Fray Juan Chrisostomo, who was seeking for religious for the foundation of the province of the Holy Rosary in the Philippinas. The province was to be founded for the conversion of the many heathen who were in those islands, and for the purpose of entering upon the preaching of the gospel in the most populous kingdom of China, if the Lord should open the door to it, as well as in that of Japon and the other kingdoms neighboring to the said islands. Being seized by a fervent desire and a holy zeal for the redemption of the souls of the many heathen in these islands, he gave up his position as lecturer, and the honors and degrees which were waiting for him; and esteeming it a higher task to labor for Christ and for his fellow men he made up his mind to go with those who were preparing for this holy journey. The Lord thus ordained because of the serious problems which were to be met, in which his character, ability, knowledge, and talents would be very necessary to overcome the many obstacles which confronted this holy foundation as soon as its founders reached Nueva España, and also in the royal court and in the Roman court; for in all these places there were many impediments. Against all of them father Fray Miguel was the defender of truth; and by his speeches and writings he came off always victor. Afterward, when the difficulty which was met with in Mexico was overcome, he came, with the rest of the fathers who founded the province, to the city of Manila on the day of the apostle St. James; and on the day of our father St. Dominic, which came immediately afterward, he presided in the great church over some theological discussions. This he did to the admiration of his listeners, who were not accustomed to have anything so remarkable in these regions. The good bishop of these islands, Don Fray Domingo de Salacar, was bathed with tears of joy when he heard, to the great refreshing of his spirit, such superior preachers of the gospel in his bishopric—men who were not only fit to be teachers of these heathen races, but to teach others who might be the same, and this more excellently than he had ever expected to see in those regions. Among the many various heathen nations who come to this country that which excels in intelligence, civilization, and courtesy is that of the Chinese; and, much as they excel in these qualities, they likewise excel in their multitude and number. For there are very many who come every year to attend to their large and rich business, and to serve the city in all the trades which can be expected in the best regulated of cities; for they learn everything with the greatest ability, and succeed in everything that they undertake.