15. The parties being notified, and a report of the proceedings having been proclaimed, sentence was then given as follows: “In the city of Manila, October twenty-two, one thousand seven hundred and twelve: The president and auditors of the royal Audiencia and Chancilleria of these islands assembled in the royal courts thereof, having examined in relation the proceedings prosecuted on the part of the Recollect province and religious of San Nicolas de Tolentino of these islands, against the province of Santo Rosario and the religious of St. Dominic in regard to the restitution of the spiritual administration of the natives of the province of Zambales, hereupon declared that they ought to restore—and they hereby have restored—to the said Recollect province, and religious of San Nicolas of these islands the spiritual administration of the natives of Zambales, in the same manner as they held it at the time when the very reverend and devout father provincial of the said order, Fray Joseph de San Nicolas de Tolentino, resigned, handed over, and separated them from his administration in the former year one thousand six hundred and seventy-nine. In consequence whereof they moreover ordered—and they have so ordered—that there be made out in due form for the party of the said Order of San Nicolas a warrant to that effect. Thus was it decreed, ordered, and subscribed to in the presence of his Majesty’s fiscal.
Doctor Torralva
Licentiate Villa
The Fiscal”
In the presence of Antonio de Yepes y Arce, notary-public. Their decision was heard and obeyed promptly by the party to the suit, and proper warrants having been received, the spiritual administration of the Zambals was peacefully restored to the province of San Nicolas of the Augustinian Recollects. Perhaps the very reverend father chronicler, Fray Domingo Collantes,[78] did not have at hand these original documents when he penned the fourth part of the chronicles of his province of Santissimo Rosario which has been recently published; and this must be the reason for the so great diversity in the [story of the] restoration of Zambales, and for the minuteness with which it is discussed here.
[1] Following is a translation of the title-page of this work: “General history of the discalced religious of the Order of the hermits of the great father and doctor of the Church, San Agustin, of the congregation of España and of the Indias. Volume Four. By Father Fray Pedro de San Francisco de Assis, pensioned lecturer, calificador of the Holy Office, apostolic missionary, father of the province of Aragon, ex-definitor-general, and chronicler of the said congregation. Dedicated to St. Nicholas of Tolentino. Containing three decades, extending from the year 1661 to that of 1690. Zaragoza; printed by Francisco Moreno, in the year 1756.”
[2] A sidenote at this point in the original is as follows: ”Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario, volume ii, book ii, chapter xv.” The reference is of course to Baltasar de Santa Cruz’s book.
[3] A sidenote in the original refers to volume iii of the Recollect History by Santa Theresa, Decade vii, book i, chapter iv, section vii, folio 241, nos. 507–515. The Philippine portion of this book appears in our Vol. XXXVI, pp. 113–188.
[4] Juan Polanco (not Palanco), was a native of the Burgos mountain region, and professed in the Dominican convent of Valladolid, July 13, 1639. As he showed evident signs of a brilliant mind he was sent to the college of San Gregorio of Valladolid, after graduating from which he returned to the convent as lecturer in philosophy. Thence he went to the convent of Trianos as master of students, but later joining the Philippine mission arrived at those islands in 1658. Destined for the instruction of the Chinese he was sent to the Chinese missions as soon as he had mastered the language. His two years in China were years of continual suffering, imprisonment, and torment. Recalled, although against his will, to become procurator for his province in Madrid and Rome, and to act as definitor in the general chapter, he gave up his mission work. Always of a humble and obedient disposition, when he was ordered to return immediately to Spain on one occasion after he had just conducted a mission to Mexico, he obeyed without hesitation, but he had scarcely reached the convent at Sevilla, when he died, December 2, 1671. At the chapter held at Rome 1668, he petitioned the beatification of the Japanese martyrs. See Reseña biográfica, ii, pp. 1–3.
[5] A sidenote in the original at this point refers to the Chronicas of San Antonio, i, book i, chapter xvii.
[6] A sidenote of the original reads: “All this appears from Father Fray Juan Francisco de San Antonio, ut supra, book ii, chapter xviii, folio 364, and chapter xix, folio 372.”