On the fourth of February of this year father Fray Alonso del Castillo, a native of Andalucia and a son of Sancto Domingo de Sant Lucar, set sail from his convent in the islands of the Babuyanes to go to Nueva Segovia. The distance is a little more than six leguas, but the crossing is dangerous at some times. His vessel was swamped, and the father and those who were with him were all drowned. He was an abstemious and devoted religious. Father Fray Alonso lived in the islands of the Babuyanes. He was at one time tempted by a thought which was unworthy of his state as a religious, and the purity which he maintained—the devil urging him to it, and putting before him the means of carrying out the design, and the method of keeping it in secrecy during the absence of the superior. Father Fray Alonso, recognizing from whose bow this arrow had been shot, went to his superior and told him the temptation of the devil with all the details. He and the superior laid the matter before God with prayers and scourgings. The devil was unable to oppose such humility, and in a few days father Fray Alonso was able to assure the vicar that there was nothing to fear. In the following April died father Fray Ambrosio de la Madre de Dios, a native of Guatimala, a son of the convent of Sancto Domingo at Mexico. He came to the Philippinas in the year 1595, and was assigned to the province of Nueva Segovia. Without any controversy, it is he who up to the present day has most accurately learned the language there, and who was the teacher of those who understood it best. No one surpassed him in his pronunciation and his choice of words. He wrote a methodical grammar, arranged a vocabulary, translated the gospels, various examples of holy life, an explanation of the articles, the passion of our Lord, and other works highly esteemed for the elegance of the writing and the propriety of the words. He was a religious of great virtue, and our Lord wrought many miracles by his prayers. It was in response to his prayers that when the lime-kiln in Abulug fell, those upon whom it fell did not lose their lives. In Pata occurred two cases, as it seemed, of resurrection; and in Tocolana he saved the church from burning.
At the last of May, father Fray Diego Carlos, a native of Guatimala and a son of the convent at Puebla de Los Angeles, died in the same province. He suffered much at the time of the insurrection of the Mandayas Indians, whose minister he had been, and whom he had brought down from their mountains. In the provincial chapter of 1621 he twice received half the votes in the election for provincial. In the month of June, father Fray Juan de San Jacintho, a native of Los Guertos in Segovia, and a son of San Estevan at Salamanca, fell ill in the province of Ytuy. He lived a devout and a devoted life in the province of Pangasinan. He was greatly beloved by all. Some Indians of the province of Ytuy having asked for baptism, he went thither twice, suffering greatly from the hardships of the journey. The second time, he fell ill; and it was rumored that the Indians had given him poison, as they often do. He died at Manila. In the year of our Lord 1627, toward the end of March, died in the province of Nueva Segovia brother Fray Juan Garcia,[34] a lay religious, a native of Yebenes in La Mancha, and a son of the convent of Sancto Domingo at Manila.]
To aid in supplying the want of these noble ministers, and to fill up the gap caused by the death of many more, our Lord gave us in July, 1626, a reënforcement of religious, who had been assembled in España by father Fray Jacintho Calvo, and whom he had entrusted in Mexico to father Fray Alonso Sanchez de la Visitacion—a son of the convent at Ocaña, who had come to the Philippinas in the year 1613.[35] He was at the time vicar of San Jacintho, where he had been sent by the chapter of the year 1623; and he now undertook the charge of conducting the religious, returning to the ministry of Nueva Segovia, where he had previously been. He had been appointed by the Inquisition of Mexico as its commissary for the cases which might arise in the said province pertaining to that holy tribunal.
Chapter XXX
The state of the province, and the persecution in Japon
For the holding of the intermediate chapter [in 1627], an ancient custom in the Order of St. Dominic, devout fathers had assembled. Although the day was at hand, the provincial was absent, being occupied in the new conversion in the island of Hermosa. He had not returned from there since the previous year, when he had made the journey. As the accidents of the sea are so various, the religious were anxious; but the Lord relieved them from their anxiety on the day before the holding of the chapter, the morning of Thursday. The coming of father Fray Bartolome caused joy in all the community; and in recognition of the good news which he brought and of the labors which he had undergone, the governor Don Juan Niño de Tavora, invited him and the fathers who constituted the chapter to dine with him on the following day, which was Friday. That evening they discussed that which they were to do on Saturday the twenty-fourth of April; and on that day they elected as definitors fathers Fray Balthasar Fort and Fray Miguel Ruiz, who had been provincials; Fray Antonio Cañiçares, vicar of Babuyanes, and Fray Marcos Saavedra, a son of Villaescusa, vicar of San Raymundo de Malagueg. By this time the Indians who not long before had revolted and apostatized from the faith in Mandayas (and especially those of Fotol and Capinatan) had been reduced to subjection, and, as a result of the efforts of the religious, had gone down to their old villages. Recognizing the error which they had committed, and desirous of atoning for it by amending their lives, they built churches, reëstablished the villages, and returned to the quiet which they had enjoyed in their earlier age of gold, giving up their age of hard iron[36] which they had been deluded into entering.
[The religious in Japon were at this time greatly afflicted. One of the persecutors, Feyzo, strove to force his own mother by hunger to give up the faith from which he was himself a renegade. This man captured Father Baltazar de Torres, a religious of the Society of Jesus, who had been his own father in the faith, and imprisoned him. On the twentieth of July four religious of the Society of Jesus, with five of their servants, were burned at the stake. The persecution was most bitter at Omura, where the holy father Fray Luis Beltran (of Exarch) then was. He was a native of Barcelona, and received the habit in the convent of Sancta Catarina Martir in that city. He was sent to the college of Origuela, where even during the time of his studies he devoted himself to prayer and spiritual exercises. He volunteered for the Philippinas, reaching Manila in 1618. After learning the language of the Indians of that region, who are called Tagalos, he also learned that of the Chinese, ministering in both languages up to the year 1622, when he was sent to Japon to assist in consoling the afflicted Japanese. He came in disguise, and very soon learned the language of that country; and he labored for three years with great effect in the kingdom of Omura. He foresaw that he was to suffer death by martyrdom. He was serving in a hut of lepers when he was betrayed to the judge. While in prison his very jailers showed him respect.]