The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 28 of 55 / 1637-38 / 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

In 1763 or 1764 an alcalde of Manila, zealous for the public welfare, had a royal road lengthened two or three leagues from the city, and had both sides of it planted with trees. It produced a very beautiful effect, and facilitated the carriage of food to Manila. The fathers of the Society began a suit against the alcalde, because, they said, he had encroached upon the lands of the poor Indians. The alcalde, and rightfully, paid but little attention to the suit. The fathers of the Society, upon seeing that the matter was not turning out at all to their advantage, caused the trees to be cut down by the Indians, and reduced the road to its former condition—that is to say, they administered justice themselves. Will it be believed that the affair is left in this condition? However, nothing is more certain; it was still quite recent at my arrival at Manila, and was related to me by several persons worthy of credit.

According to an ordinance of the king, renewed, perhaps, a hundred times, the religious are ordered to teach Castilian to the young Indians. But his Majesty, the Spaniards of Manila have assured me universally, has not yet been obeyed to this day, and has not been able to succeed in having the ordinance executed. Public schools are to be seen at a half-league’s distance from Manila, where the youth are taught, but good care is taken not to teach them Castilian. They are taught the language of the country. They have, it is true, little prayer-books written in Castilian, and the youth are taught now and then a few words of that language; but the chief language that the teachers try to have them speak and read well is the language of their own country. So, go one league from Manila, and you can scarcely be understood if you do not know the language of the country—a fact which I can attest, for I have experienced it. It is still worse in the provinces. Thus are the friars the masters of the Indians. A great abuse that follows from that is, that the Spaniards themselves cannot get any knowledge of the condition of things in those provinces. They would have no safety in traveling, if they were not known to the religious, and if they did not have with them recommendations presented by the religious of Manila. Those recommendations are infinitely more to be preferred than the orders which the governor could give to the alcaldes or to those religious. The latter would probably not deign to receive them; while the alcaldes, who themselves need to keep on good terms with the friars, would give but faint response to the governor’s orders.

Notwithstanding all the recommendations possible, it yet happens that the friar in charge of the people among whom you travel, allows you but rarely to speak alone with the Indians. When you speak in his presence to any Indian who understands a little Castilian, if that religious is displeased to have you converse too long with that native he makes him understand, in the language of the country, not to answer you in Castilian but in his own language. The Indian obeys him; and, if you are not aware of that practice, you cannot guess his reason, inasmuch as you have not understood what the religious said. I have been assured of this by several Spaniards, among them the engineer Don Féliciano Marquès. He has several times complained to me that, in spite of his great desire to travel in the provinces, he did not dare resolve to do it, in view of the great difficulties that he saw to be inseparable from such an undertaking.

We went together, he and I, several times, on the river in a pangue—the boat of the country. Once we went up stream for three leguas. No one could understand us at that short distance from Manila, for no one knew any Castilian; neither did they even pay any attention to us. One would not believe that the Spaniards were the masters of the country. That, I was told by the Spaniards, was the result and the effect of the policy of the friars.

If the religious in the Philippines have resisted the temporal power in these matters, they have not been more docile, in another matter, to the ecclesiastical power; for they have been able, even to this day, to elude the visitation of the archbishops, and those prelates have never been able to succeed in that.

The great obstacle in this matter is, that there are very few [secular] priests in the Philippines, and the majority of those who are there are Indians. The people, say the Spaniards, have almost no respect or veneration for the latter. Most frequently they are dressed like their compatriots, the other Indians, in the fashion of the country. The friars, on the contrary, are necessarily more respected, and even though it were only by reason of their mode of dress, they would inspire more awe in the people than do the Indian priests. Those religious hold the people in a sort of dependence in which the priests of their own race, and clad as they, could not hold them. But so the religious, because they know that they are necessary in the present condition of affairs, have always raised an opposition when the archbishops have tried to visit them, so that the latter have never been able to surmount the difficulty. The religious are, so to speak, entrenched or fortified in castles (encastillados, to use the peculiar expression of the Spaniards), so that all the zeal of the archbishops has been unable to reduce them to the footing of the other curas. As a rule, there are no difficulties at all in the other bishoprics; for, as the livings there are almost always filled by religious, the curas easily allow themselves to be visited by a person of their own class. It is true that, since the governors have not as yet taken sides with them, the archbishops have always been the weaker party.

Monsieur Arandia, of whom I have already spoken, a man fit to govern a state, would have doubtless put an end to it had he lived. Don Manuel Antonio Roxo was appointed archbishop of Manila under his government. Don Andrès Roxo, nephew of that archbishop, told me several times that Monsieur Arandia was only awaiting his uncle’s arrival to conclude that important matter. But Arandia died before his arrival, and it is claimed that he was helped to die. However that may be, Archbishop Roxo, having lost his support, could not, although he became governor and captain-general of the islands, make the friars submissive. He wrote to the king that the briefs of the pope and the decrees of his Majesty would always be without force and validity; and that the one and only way of succeeding in regulating that matter was to issue imperative commands to the general of each order in Europe to direct their friars at Manila to receive the visit of the archbishop. In the meantime, the war comes—Manila is captured; Roxo dies, and all is as before.

Roxo was replaced only in 1767. That year the court of España sent an archbishop.[14] I saw him, and even went to make him several visits when he had made his [public] entrance. He wrote to all the communities that he was preparing to visit his diocese. He had, so it was said, left Europe with the fullest authority for that purpose. He had bulls, briefs from the pope, and orders from the court. He thought that he would succeed with all these arms, but he did not know that there would be an answer for everything at Manila. The friars answered then that they could not allow him to visit them; and such is their answer [to their superior]. They went, say they, first to the Philippines; they have received the care of souls, under certain conditions and certain charges that cannot be set aside; [and they said] that the archbishop might, if he wished, take away all the livings in their charge and provide the same with secular priests. I have said that the archbishopric of Manila contains more than two hundred livings, of which only thirteen are in charge of secular priests. Consequently, there are about two hundred still occupied by the friars. Now the case was very embarrassing for the archbishop, who did not then have two hundred priests at his disposal. As to the briefs, bulls, etc., consider the pleasant response that they made, and which their partisans scattered abroad in public; they said, then, that his Excellency had not brought any new rulings with him from the courts of Rome and Madrid. It was very true that there existed a bull of the pope in regard to that matter, but it would have to be looked for in the books. In order that it might, on the other hand, become a law, it was necessary for the archbishop to give notification of it, legalized by notary in the ordinary manner. Such, they said, were the laws of the kingdom, in consideration of the fact that there might be some difference in the books, either by the transposition of a comma, or by some other error that might have slipped into the printing.

Such are the intrenchments that the friars opposed in 1767 to the new archbishop of Manila. In the beginning, the Dominicans and Augustinians were disturbed; the Dominicans in fact submitted, and the archbishop’s party already thought that he had the victory. But, toward the end of the year, some repented, and changed their minds; and, as a consequence, there was a schism in the convent. The Augustinians also were divided, and they came even to blows among themselves. One of the chief actors was imprisoned in his room. However, the matter was arranged, and it was agreed that all of them should assemble and be reconciled, without saying a word of what had occurred. It produced a singular effect. At my arrival the dissension had again commenced, but I am not aware how the affair terminated.

The other religious and the fathers of the Society held firm. These last especially, in appearance, were very assiduous in visiting the governor[15]—and that at an hour when no one is received in the houses of Manila, unless it be for matters which cannot suffer delay; that is to say, the fathers went just after dinner, at the time when all people retire to take their siesta. Having gone one day during that time, just after his dinner, to see the governor about a pressing matter which concerned me, scarcely had I begun what I had to say when a father of the Society appeared, who had ascended by a little private stair-way. I was unable to terminate my business. The reverend father took possession of the governor, who made an appointment with me for another time. I cannot be positive that that father had gone on the matter of the visitation; I only report that fact because it agrees with what was said then at Manila in regard to the frequent visits which the fathers of the Society made to the governor, at times when no one dared present himself at the government [house].