313. That was not the only fatal consequence that followed from those inhuman premises which were set by the Dutch. For if we had thitherto seen the aliens fighting against the faith, from the year 1649 the very sons of the Church worked for its destruction. The Dutch incited the Indians, already Christian and subject, to withdraw themselves from the mild yoke of Spain, the country which had drawn them from the darkness of paganism, and kept them on the road to salvation. Nor were they deaf to the voices filled with the fraud most difficult to recognize, for since they carried the agreeable sound of liberty, they secretly induced them to undergo the most tyrannical subjection; and God permitting by His secret judgments excessive flights to audacity and shamelessness for the credit of the virtuous and the crown of the just; the most cowardly of nations were seen with surprise and the nakedness of the Indians was armed against the invincible sword of the Spaniards. The insurrection began in the village of Palapàg in the province of Hibabào in the island of Sàmar, whence the good outcome of the first action traveling on the wings of unsteady report, found minds so ready throughout the islands of Pintàdos, that (just as if the counsel were common, and they were only awaiting the signal in order to do it), the temples were burned in many places, and sacred things profaned. The evangelical ministers fled, and the rebels retiring to the loftiest mountains, imagined that they could defend their former barbarity there.
314. Our reformed order had enough things to bewail in those revolutions; for in addition to the tragedies of Linao, which are related in volume 3,[14] the villages of Cagayàng, Camiguin, Hingòog, Romblòn, Bantòn, and Cibuyàn added wood to the fire of the sedition. If the promised help of the Dutch had come over and above the boldness of the Indians, it is inferred that what had taken so many years to conquer would have been lost in a few days. But God who always punishes as a father those who try to serve Him, measured the times so accurately, that amid the echoes of the insurrection, the proclamations of the peace which had been arranged between España and Olanda resounded in Manila. With that the Catholic arms were freed from their chastisement, and all things returned to their pristine quiet. That was not the case with the Moros, who were then and for many years after, the perennial enemies of that afflicted field of Christianity. Barbarously blinded in their treacherous gains as if it were a thing done, they made a practice of going every year to take captives in the islands of our administration, often outraging the temples sacrilegiously and not a single one that was near the beach escaped profanation and they utterly abused everything intended for religious worship, with great scorn to the name of Christian. They cut the sacred vestments, into robes and other garments [capisayos], and they destined the ciboriums and sacred chalices to the dirty use of their wine, tobacco, and buyo.
315. But it did not so happen, I return to say. For notwithstanding that they were a terror every year from that of 1649 to 1655 because of their piracies, now in some and now in other parts, they remained without the due punishment although so sacrilegious insults demanded it so justifiably. Without fear of our arms, they overran those seas at will, trusting their security to their swiftness; for their boats were built on purpose for piracy, and ours compared to theirs of lead. It happened not once only that they were taken because of carelessness between the bars of the rivers with forces sufficient to make one consider their destruction sure; but they got out laughing on one side or the other, amid the discharge of their artillery. And the forces of Manila, Zebù, Zamboàngan, and Carhàga, which were not despicable squadrons, served no other purpose than to scare off the evil, so that the persecution might be enormously expanded. They carried their insolence so far that two small vessels with but small crews, dashed into the bay of Manila one of the above years, and almost in sight of that capital, seized a caracoa from Iloilo with the rich cargo aboard it. Then they went out haughtily, and no one could take their prize from them, or punish their arrogance. In view of this one may infer how harassed were the distant villages, and how filled with tribulations were our religious ministers, who ever occupied the most advanced and dangerous posts.
316. It even transcended the tragic representation of so doleful misfortunes, when in the year 1655 Corralàt, king of Mindanào, proclaimed war against the Christian name. He began his treachery by the inhuman murders of two fathers of the Society whom their rank as ambassadors, which is so greatly respected by the law of nations, did not aid. That prince was in Philipinas what Gustavus Adolphus, king of Suecia, was in Alemania, namely, the thunderbolt of Lucifer, the scourge of Catholicism, and the Attila of the evangelical ministers, who never practiced courtesy toward them except when force or some reason of state compelled him so to do. For his private convenience he had pretended that he was peaceful in public during the preceding years. But now with no other reason than his fury, he gave license to his vassals to infest the Christian villages; and they did it like a river which overflows its bed, after having rid itself of the embarrassment of its dikes. He was not content with that, but in order to give greater flights to his impiety, he excused it among the neighboring Moros under the name of a religious war; and under that title he invited to it the Borneans, Tidorans, and Joloans, so that confederated with him into one body they might unfurl the banners of the perfidious Mahomet, without stopping until they utterly destroyed the law of grace.
317. He incited so great an uprising against that straitened field of Christendom that, although the previous persecutions that the Moros had practiced against it were so inhuman, (as may be seen in the places of this history cited in the margin)[15] they were all assuredly less intolerable than those which were now incited; for now fury and barbarity were carried to the extreme. That was so fierce that disinterested pens did not hesitate to compare it with the last of antichrist; so persevering, that until the year 1668, of which this history is treating, and the year when the relations which we follow end, there was not a single instant of rest; so shameless that ruin was seen almost at the very gates of Manila; and so universal that but few villages of our administration escaped being the theater of war and the lamentable object of its misfortunes. This is a brief compendium of the tragic events which happened in the Philippine church, which was surrounded on all sides by the waters of contradiction, as is the territory of those islands by the salt waves of the sea. This is a sketch of the cold winds, which, notwithstanding the heat of its climate, parched in great part the wavy exuberance of that leafy garden, so abounding in the flowers of Christianity and the mature fruits of virtue. Let us now consider with the most possible brevity, a concise sketch of the glory which was obtained by our discalced order in return for the hardships which overwhelmed its evangelical workers at so calamitous a time. We warn the reader that we shall follow no other chronological order than chance offers.
§ II
Of the hardships of our religious during these persecutions. The venerable father, Fray Antonio de San Agustin, dies at the hands of the Moros, in glorious martyrdom.
318. In the above-mentioned pillaging,[16] which God permitted for so many years, the Moros were triumphant, the Catholic arms rebuffed, the Christian villages without other defense than that of heaven, and the Indians drowned in the sea of tribulations. Moreover, as the sword of the persecutor, also that of greed and vengeance, was moved by the hatred of our holy faith, the direction of its greatest force was toward the sowers of the gospel. Daily did religious who had been driven from their ministries and missions bring to Manila news of entire villages ruined, the outcries of priests who had been captured, and letters which announced the death of others. All was confusion, all lamentation, all chaos, where the enemies of God were trying to elevate their throne in the darkness upon so bloody and confused injustice. It has already been seen that our Recollects had to suffer greatly, since they occupy the vanguard of the army of God in Carhàga and Calamianes; but that was irremediable in so disastrous a storm. The ship was seen to be buffeted hither and yon by the waves; and it was impossible that the sailors should not suffer from the buffeting. The winds were both violent and hostile; the ship could not but be dashed from one side to another. The hurricane was both furious and fierce; necessarily the pilots had to suffer greatly.
319. Our provincials called out for relief, exciting pity by the relation of their churches which had been burned and profaned; of their sheep that had been scattered, and many of them lost; and by their subjects who had been killed or captured, or at the least obliged to hide in the mountains, where deprived of all necessity, they suffered indescribable misery, traveling in the inconveniences and darkness of the night in order to fulfil their obligation as missionaries. But Manila is, as a rule, the place where least attention is paid to the wretchedness of the poor Indians and to the misfortunes of the gospel workers; for, since the citizens are busied in their Asiatic and American trade, the only thing that troubles them is any opposition to their profits. Very few are the Spaniards who risk themselves in small boats to seek profit from island to island; and consequently, they hear of misfortunes, which ought to cause the greatest horror, quietly and without any special disturbance. The passages from some islands to others being occupied and even embarrassed by Moro craft, the latter cause those who sail thither innumerable ruin; but many of the inhabitants of Manila have very little or, perhaps, no feeling. If news arrives that a religious has been killed or captured, some insolent tongue is not wanting to break out with the ballad as infamous as ancient, that the king brings us for this, namely, to suffer and die in defense of the law of God; as if it were compatible with the royal piety to abandon the defenseless ministers of Christ, however much they may expose themselves with heroic mind to endure a thousand martyrdoms. Nothing in short, matters to those people, if it do not touch their persons or interests: neither the misfortunes nor the violent deaths of their neighbors, nor the outrages of his Majesty’s vassals, nor the losses of his royal treasury in the tributes which are lessened by such confusions, because the Indians are lost by the thousand.
320. Although the captain-general tries, as a good minister, to attend to such wrongs, it is quite common that he is unable to do all that he tries; now because of the depletion of the royal treasury, whose funds do not suffice to meet the calls upon it; and now since he must proceed with the advice of the council of war in which those have many votes who understand only what pertains to the exercise of merchants, although they sign their names with military titles. If the vessels in which they are interested are in danger, all difficulties are conquered, for there is no one who does not hasten with vote and money to fit out fleets to oppose the enemy. But if not then each proposition is a labyrinth, whence he who makes it cannot unravel himself, although Ariadne gives him a thread to guide him. Hence it follows, either that squadrons are not prepared of size sufficient to warn the aggressors, or if they are prepared, they set sail when it would be better for them not to, for they only occasion the vassals new trouble. Let no one imagine that the matter of these two numbers includes imagination or lack of truth. This is proved by authentic documents in what touches the past; while so far as the present century is concerned (during which the same persecutions have been repeatedly shown), experience has given me knowledge of such injuries, when I, as procurator-general and secretary of the province of Philipinas, found that I had to solicit relief for the persecuted Indians and for the afflicted religious. It is also certain that the same thing happened in almost all the wars of which we are speaking, so that our oppressed missionaries had no other consolation than that of God, in the pains that it was indispensable for them to suffer, and which we shall now begin to relate.