The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 09 of 55 / 1593-1597 / 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

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[1] Francisco Ortega (thus Pérez; but de Ortega in the MSS. which we follow) made profession in the Augustinian order, at Toledo—in 1564, according to Pérez, but various allusions in this document render 1554 a more satisfactory date. Two years later he went to Mexico, and thence (about 1570) to the Philippines. In 1575, when he was a missionary in Mindoro, he barely escaped death at the hands of the natives, and was then appointed prior of the convent of Manila. In 1580 he went to Spain as commissary for the Philippine province of the order; and ten years afterward returned to the Philippines with a considerable body of missionaries. In 1597 Ortega was transferred to Mexico, where he died in 1601.

[2] In MS. dos (two); evidently an error for doce (twelve).

[3] In the original, las galeras que estan la Havana. It must be remembered that these Ortega papers are in abstract only—apparently summarized for the use of the royal council by some clerk, who may have been more familiar with affairs in Nueva España than in the Philippines. La Havana is probably his error or conjecture for á Cavite.

Decree for Despatch of Missionaries

The King: To Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, knight of the order of Santiago, my governor and captain-general of the Filipinas Islands. After reading what you wrote me recently in regard to the need of those islands for religious to carry out our obligation to the conversion and instruction of the natives, I have ordered the needful despatch put thereto, so that at the present one hundred religious are going there—to wit, forty Augustinians, twenty-four Dominicans, eighteen descalced Franciscans, and eighteen of the Society. Furthermore, additional missionaries shall be sent until the need is met. Now because I have learned that better results will be obtained by assigning each order to a district by itself, and more emulation will ensue among them without their embarrassing one another, or their work overlapping, as might happen if they were assigned to districts regardless of order, I command you, together with the bishop of those islands, to divide the provinces, for the said instruction and conversion, among the religious of the orders, in such a manner that where Augustinians go there shall be no Franciscans, nor religious of the Society where there are Dominicans. Thus you will proceed, assigning each Page 113order to its province; taking note that the province allotted to the Society must have the same manner of instruction as the others; for this same obligation rests upon them there as upon the others, and it does not at all differ from them. Given at Aranjuez, April 27, one thousand five hundred and ninety-four.

I The King

Countersigned by Don Luis de Salazar and approved by the Council. Page 114