[Chapters iii, iv, and a portion of v, treat of Recollect affairs in Spain and America. Chapter v contains the following in regard to the Philippines:]
II
Our religious enter the islands of Romblòn to preach the holy gospel. Some of our rules are reformed by apostolic authority.
This year [1635] our religious entered the islands of Romblòn—or, as they are called, “Las Isletas” [i.e., “the Islets”]. That district belonged to the seculars who were subject to the bishopric of Zibù, and their beneficed incumbent was at that time Francisco Rodriguez the relator.[10] He, becoming weary of going about daily with his possessions on his back; and fleeing from the enemy, entered into negotiations with the father provincial of Filipinas, Fray Joseph de la Anunciacion, saying that he would give him that district in exchange for a suitable chaplaincy. Those islands were a station and gateway, so to speak, for the visitas of the Bisayas which were in our charge, and also in the path of the navigation from Manila to Zibù. The documents having been made ready, the father provincial sent father Fray Pedro de San Joseph, alias de Roxas. The island of Romblòn is the chief place of that district, and as visitas it has the islands of Zubuyàn, Tablas, Simara, Bantòn and Bantoncillo. The people are honest, pacific, docile, and very intelligent. They trade in the products of the land—oil, goats, swine, wine, and bonete [i.e., bonote]. They have a great abundance of domestic animals. They construct ships, build houses, and make other things of wood with great skill, all of which they take to Manila, as well as to other places, to sell. Consequently, as a rule, those who apply themselves to work are prosperous. All these things have a serious counterweight, namely, the enemy; for there is scarcely a year in which the enemy are not seen in that district, where they commit many depredations, burn villages and churches, and capture a great number of Indians.
That was experienced by the said father prior, Fray Pedro de San Joseph, as soon as he took possession; for hearing that the enemy were coming, he had barely time to escape to the mountains, saving his person, but without time to save anything else. The enemy entered Romblòn, sacked the village, burned the church and convent, captured a few persons, and then returned. Those disasters are experienced nearly every year. Amid such hardships do our religious administer the sacraments to the faithful, and subdue the infidels to the faith, exposing their lives valiantly for that purpose. [The remainder of this section concerns the change of rules allowed by Pope Urban VIII (December 15, 1635).]
[Chapters vi and vii are occupied with the captivity and deaths of the Recollect missionaries captured in 1636 by the Moros, who attack the islands of Cuyo and Calamianes—which has been already related in previous volumes. A few extracts from Luis de Jesús’s account are added here, as containing further information.]
[Pages 285–286:] The enemy, delighted at the capture of the fathers (which was their principal aim), tried to capture the religious of Dinay under the pretense of peace, even commencing to treat for it. But their design having been discovered, the fathers retired to the mountain, and consequently, the enemy could capture no more than the things that could not be taken to the mountain with the fathers—a quantity of wax, a tribute paid by the natives to the encomenderos. They captured seven women and one man, and killed another from whom they learned that the fathers had retired. They went to look for them but did not find them. Thence they went to other islands where they did what damage they could.
At the end of six months, during which they were employed in pillaging considerable property, and in capturing more than six hundred and fifty persons, besides the old whom they killed because they were useless, the fleet returned quite at its leisure, committing all the depredations possible. The barbarians took the religious along naked and fed them on a trifle of dirty rice. Their bed was a wretched mat without any other shelter, and they were exposed to the inclemencies of the weather, and ill-treated by word and deed. Sometimes they were offered wealth and beautiful women to abandon the faith. Those were attacks by which the valor of the blessed fathers was proved, for their life was a continual martyrdom. But the soldiers of Christ were happy, for they employed their lives in suffering for love of Him. They preached the evangelical law to the barbarians and censured their vices and blindness. All that was the same as throwing wood on the fire of their fury, to make them devise means to conquer the strength of the invincible religious.
[In chapter eighth are recounted the holy deaths of the three Recollect fathers, Fray Juan de San Antonio, Fray Francisco de Santa Monica, and brother Fray Francisco de la Madre de Dios, which occur in the year 1638. The first, a native of Mexico who had professed in the Manila convent, had been seized by one Dato Achen, of Jolo, an adherent of Corralat. After four years of cruel captivity, during which temptations of the flesh are offered him in order to make him deny the faith and he is subjected to all sorts of abuse, the father dies triumphant. The second father is killed by the Moros in his convent of Divail of which he was prior. The third Recollect meets death from the Sangleys whom he has severely censured in the island of Cuyo.]
[The ninth chapter is devoted to the conversion and Christian life of Clara Calimàn, a native woman of the village of Butuàn, who is given the rank of beata (beatas being women who live in religious retirement, although not known as nuns), by the Recollects.]