Treating of the hardships endured by our religious in Philipinas, because of various persecutions that occurred in our fields of Christendom.
The year 1668
§ I
Abridged relation of the persecutions of our holy faith in Philipinas, from the year 1640 to the year under consideration, 1668, and which are not mentioned in the preceding volumes.
307. He who would like to know what manner of province is ours in Philipinas and its height of love to God and its neighbor, which that Lord has given to it, who is so well able to inculcate charity, must not be governed only by the immense zeal of its individuals in alluring souls into the sheepfold of the Church but as well by the continual persecutions which they have suffered in order that they might maintain that field of Christendom in the purity of the faith, despising their lives at each step in order to preserve it. The lack of fear of death, by which those valiant soldiers of the God of armies have sustained the field of battle against all the power of the gates of hell, is doubtless one of the greatest of miracles which divine Providence has hung in its temple in this world, to the no small glory of these provinces of España, that have become such marvels of charity through so good milk, that they consider and have considered it an honor to suffer and even to die, in order to defend that harassed church. Many events in confirmation of this truth are drawn With most accurate brush in the preceding volumes of this history. By them one may see that our brothers have left us examples worthy of imitation by incessantly placing in practice the highest perfection of exposing their lives to death for the assistance and consolation of certain poor Indians, that they might encourage them in the continual invasions of the Moros. But notwithstanding the great skill that accompanied the painters of so idealistic canvasses, I find in a lower degree not a few pictures worthy of immortality, for without doubt the colors of the notices were lacking, which are so indispensable to form the pictures in the painting of history. I having obtained trustworthy relations of the many misfortunes that assaulted our fields of Christendom and their directors from the year 1640 until the present of 1668, which is under consideration, it would not be laudable to leave such trophies buried in forgetfulness, although the copy, which would have been most accurate if done by the brushes of the other writers, be disfigured.
308. To continue; Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuèra, governor of Philipinas, thought that by building and garrisoning some strongholds in Tolò [i.e., Joló], an island which is given over to the perfidy of Mahomet and is the nesting place of the robbers of the whole archipelago, he could restrain its inhabitants by preventing them from going to our villages with their fleets as they had done until that time, with the sequel of innumerable depredations. He put that idea into practice in the year 1638, after the conclusion of the war with the koran, in the beginning of which when the sword was drawn the scabbard was thrown away. But neither his valor nor that diligence were sufficient for the attainment of his end. For in the year 1640, now by the Joloans themselves, and now by means of the Borneans their allies, and now by making use of their vassals who inhabited the adjacent islands, they tried to find in sea surprises some betterment of their fortune or some havoc by which to temper it. With that object they attacked missions belonging to our reformed order both boldly and treacherously in the districts of Calamiànes, Butuàn, and Cagayang; and it is a fact that we always had the worst of it in those wars. They committed depredations very much to their liking, with the boldness that their greed gave them and with the severity which their hatred to the evangelical law inspired in them. The captives who were taken in our villages on that occasion numbered three hundred and more. The churches were ruined, the holy images profaned, the evangelical ministers became fugitives in the mountains, the sheep were scattered as their shepherds could not attend to them with their watchful eye, the villages were reduced to ashes, and all of those fields of Christendom became the necessary object of the most bitter lamentation.
309. They did almost the same thing in the three following years, and there was no means of taking worthy satisfaction from enemies so inhuman who, like wild and hellish beasts, destroyed a great portion of the rich patrimony of Christ which had flourished in that country under the care of our discalced order. The devastation was so general that it appears to have been presaged by heaven with very extraordinary portents. For on the fourth day of January, 1640, a volcano suddenly burst forth in the island of Sanguiz, not far from the cape of San Agustin in the island of Mindanao, which showed very rare and unusual results. For the ashes, rocks, and burning material which it cast up traveled for many leguas as far as Zebù. Noises like artillery were heard, which caused the Spanish garrisons to get under arms, and the day grew dark from ten in the morning, so that it seemed pitch black night. The same thing happened in another volcano in an islet opposite the bar of the river of Jolò. There was a furious hurricane in the island of Luzòn up toward the province of Ilòcos in the part where the Igolòtes live. That hurricane was followed by the most frightful earthquake, and the earth swallowed up three inaccessible mountains with as many settlements which were located at the foot of the mountains, and in the space left a large lake was formed. Such was the noise at the dislocation of the huge mass of those mountains, that it was heard not only in all the Philipinas Islands and in Malùco but also in the kingdoms of Cochinchina, China, and Cambòja, throughout a circumference of more than nine hundred leguas. So great was the persecution that it was believed to have been announced by the so great heaping together of surprises and misfortunes.[9]
310. But the time when the Moros gave full rein to their barbaric fury, was from the beginning of the year 1645, for then they were freed from the terror that had been caused them by Corcuèra who had just been succeeded in the government of the islands by the master-of-camp Don Diego Fajardo. The arrival also of two ships well manned with Dutchmen at Jolò and which had been asked for by Prince Salicàla, the heir to the scepter, for the purpose of destroying the strongholds which the Spaniards held in the said island, gave them at that time a motive for employing greater power in their piracies. Although the commandant of those strongholds, Don Estevan de Orella Hugalde, caused the enemy to return to their factories badly the losers, and without having obtained the end of their attempt, the Joloans were able, through their protection, to launch three squadrons which filled our villages with fear and confusion. It is no new thing in that continent for the heretics to lend arms to the pagans and to the Mahometans in order to put down the Christian name. A savage end it is to pit themselves for the private ends of trade and in a religious war, on the side of the koran and of idolatry, which they themselves condemn, against the gospel, which they persecute with fury. The three fleets went out then, for their campaign, and not having anyone to oppose them, the enemy filled their boats with what they called spoils, took about two hundred captives, persecuted our religious as ever, with mortal hate, and destroyed fifteen villages, almost all of them of our spiritual administration, and they filled Calamiànes especially with bitterness and grief.
311. The Dutch were not content with protecting the Moros, in order that they might persecute the name of Christ, but they themselves tried to drive that name from all that archipelago. Among all the disunited members of the Spanish monarchy, which the Dutch have endeavored to cut off from it, (in order that their power might wax more formidable at the expense of another) they have ever cast their eyes on the honorable and wealthy dominion of the Philipinas Islands. That country is such for their designs and trade, that better could not be desired: both because from there they were assured of all the trade of China, Japòn, Cochinchina, Cambòja, and the Malùcas; and because they were guaranteed the best woods for the building of their ships that can be found on the whole round earth. For that reason, the Dutch have left no stone unturned in all times if it pertained to the maxim of their desire, as can be deduced from several passages which are to be found in the previous decades and are necessary for the intelligence of the history that is treated in them.[10] The year, then, of 1646, they were seen with fifteen warships. With five of them they besieged the district of Playahònda, while seven of them were stationed in the Embocadero or strait of San Bernardino, and the remaining three filled the islands of the Pintados with fear. Our villages of Masìnloc, Iba, Marivèlez, Romblòn, Bantòn, and Surigào, suffered more harm and vexation than usual, of which the greater part touched the religious ministers.
312. Two galleons left Cavìte and fought first with five ships and twice afterwards with seven, and obtained three victories which were clearly miraculous. For they destroyed the enemy, without receiving any special damage, and the enemy were compelled to abandon their attempts for the nonce. Although father Fray Balthassar de Santa Cruz attributes all of the prodigy to Our Lady of the Rosary with sufficient foundation,[11] we, while confessing the might of so holy a warrior, must suggest that St. Nicholas of Tolentino had no small part in it, whom the soldiers, persuaded by two Recollects, as is mentioned in volume 3 of this history, who served as chaplains in our small fleet, also invoked as the sworn patron of those seas.[12] But under shelter of the Dutch enemy, who continued their attempts with no more success the two following years, the Moros, always emboldened, transgressed all bounds, attacking ceaselessly the villages of the Spanish dominion. For, although Corralàt, king of Mindanào, kept quiet during so dangerous a season for reasons of his own convenience, and had even acted as mediator so that Butria Bòngso, king of Jolò should make peace with our arms, which was done April 14, 1646, none of all that was sufficient to give quiet to that field of Christendom. Mahometan perfidy took the pretext that the Joloan Prince Salicàla and Paguyàn Cachile, prince of the Guinbanos,[13] and seignior of Tuptup in Bornèy, should refuse to sign the peace. With that excuse those princes, aided in secret by those kings, peopled the sea with boats and caused unspeakable damage to Calamiànes, Camiguìn, and Romblòn.