The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 43, 1670-1700 / Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century

by Unknown

[10] Beléno: Birth, in the sense of representing that of our Lord Jesus Christ (Echegaray’s Diccionario etimológico). Hence it was the representation of a manger.

[11] Literally the “mass of the cock;” the mass that is said at midnight on Christmas Eve, and hence equivalent to midnight mass.

[12] This mass is also called media. It is a mass sung, but without deacon and sub-deacon and the ceremonies proper to High Mass. In some American dioceses the use of incense is permitted at such masses. See Addis and Arnold’s Catholic Dictionary, p. 565.

[13] Or Missa solemnis, the high mass. See Addis and Arnold’s Catholic Dictionary, p. 565.

[14] Possibly a “house with festal decorations.”

[15] i.e., And beyond.

Letters from Father Mateo Gisbert to the Reverend Fathers and Brothers of Veruela

Dávao, January 4, 1886.

Pax Christi.