DECREE REGARDING MISSIONARIES
The King. To Don Diego Fajardo, knight of the Order of Santiago, member of my Council of War, and my governor and captain-general of the Filipinas Islands: In a clause of the letter which you wrote to me on the fifteenth of August in the past year of six hundred and forty-five, you say that the bishop-elect of Caceres is bringing suit against the religious of St. Francis in regard to some mission stations which those religious have held for the past thirty years and more; that he has asked you to aid him in taking possession of them; and that you have delayed doing so until you could report to me that in those islands the Indian natives are much better instructed by the religious than by the secular priests—considering that the latter are born in the islands, and are but few in number; and that many of them are by their habit of life not fitted to set an example for others, or [to carry out] what is decreed for the other parts of the Yndias. In regard to the missions, there are in those islands especial reasons why I should order this matter to be again considered, on account of not having secular priests of more approved life for the new conversions and doctrines; for since the natives of those islands have been instructed from the beginning by religious, they are more obedient to these. This matter having been examined in my royal Council of the Yndias, together with the opinion thereon of my fiscal of the Council, I have deemed it best to tell you that, in regard to the point of furnishing aid [to the bishop], it is your duty to consider what course you ought to pursue conformably to [the requirements of] justice, and whether it would be just to grant him aid according to law. You shall act accordingly in this, and in other matters that may arise in which it may be expedient to grant aid. In what concerns those missions which the religious may hold, you shall observe what has been ordained by the decrees and orders that have been issued on account of this, in all cases giving careful attention to [the requirements] of my royal patronage, without making any change in what has been commanded and decided in the matter. Dated at Madrid, on the seventeenth of September in the year one thousand six hundred and forty-seven.
I the King
By command of the king our sovereign: Juan Bauptista Saenz Navarrete Signed by the members of the Council.
EARLY FRANCISCAN MISSIONS
Entrance of the seraphic order of our father St. Francis into the Philipinas Islands
His sacred Majesty our king and sovereign Philipo Second was pleased, through his most Christian and Catholic zeal, to establish this kingdom of Philipinas and plant herein the evangelical doctrine by means of the religious of our seraphic father St. Francis. For this purpose his Majesty sent father Fray Pedro de Alfaro with seventeen religious, sons of the province of San Joseph, of the discalced religious. Thirteen of them were priests, two were choristers and two lay-brothers. Six religious died on the voyage, but they were joined by six more in México, and they entered Manila August 2, 1577. They were lodged in a bamboo house, where the marshal Gabriel de Ribera built a church of planks. Father Fray Pedro de Alfaro began his ministry immediately by assigning his associates to all the provinces of this kingdom; and they, inducing the Indians to come from the rugged mountains and reducing them to settlements, baptized them and instructed them in the mysteries of our holy faith, and erected churches and laid out villages. At present the province has charge of fifty-two villages in these islands, as follows.