The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 20 of 55 / 1621-1624 / 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

[11] At this point the following citation occurs in the margin: ultra plures cum Cobb lib. 3, variar, c. 13, nº 6. Bartol alias ex conducto et item cumquidam ff locat e inl c et divus ff de uauj e ex trah i egruti p. totum maxime n° 15 luias De penia in l i c de principal lib. 12. Much of this is unintelligible and there have evidently been many errors in transcription due to the illegibility of the original MS. The following conjectures and information, however, clear up certain portions of the passage.

Mr. FitzGerald conjectures ultra plures to be “several [authors] besides.” Cobb. is read Codieibus by Father José Algué, S.J.

Ex conducto et item cumquidam ff locat. The reference is to Justinian’s Digest, book 19, tit. 2 (locati conducti), fr. 15, which begins “ex conducto” and especially to the passage in the middle of fr. 15 (§ 3 of modern editions) which begins “cum quidam.” It reads: “When a certain person alleged a conflagration on the (leased) land and desired a remission (of the rent), the following rescript is sent to him: ‘If you have tilled the soil, relief may not undeservedly be given you on account of the accident of a sudden conflagration.’” The transcription of the following reference to the Digest: Divus ff: is too hopelessly muddled to identify. Before these is a reference to Bartolus, and at the end a reference possibly to Cujas (Cujacius). Bartolus was the leading civilian of the fourteenth century; Cujacius of the sixteenth.—Munroe Smith.

In l is for in loco, and l i c for loco ibi citato.—Jose Algue, S.J.

[12] Chocolate was at that time supplied to the Philippines from Nueva España; but the cultivation of the cacao-tree (Theobroma cacao), of which chocolate is a product, was introduced into the islands about 1665 by the governor Diego Salcedo, at the instance of the Jesuit Juan de Avila, according to Delgado (Hist. de Filipinas, p. 535). Blanco says (Flora, p. 420), citing Gaspar de San Agustin, that this honor belongs to a pilot named Pedro Brabo de Lagunas, who brought cacao plants to Manila in 1670.

[13] There is evidently a slip of some sort here, due either to mistranscription or to a slip between Messa’s hand and brain. The sense seems to require some such phrase as “depositions were given with great fear.”

[14] There is a probable play on words here, the original reading asolar, literally, “destroy;” but the writer may have used it in the sense of “to deprive the earth of the sun,” in view of the succeeding remark, sol being the word for “sun.”

Letters from the Archbishop of Manila to the King

Sire: