[Fol. 111:] [After the Spanish expeditions to Lake Lanao, in 1639–40, the fort built there was abandoned, and soon afterward burned by the natives. On May 7, 1642, the Moros of that region killed a Spanish officer, Captain Andres de Rueda, with three men and a Jesuit, Father Francisco de Mendoza, who accompanied him.] Much were the hopes of the gospel ministers cast down at seeing our military forces abandon that country, since they were expecting that with that protection the Christian church would increase. Notwithstanding, his faith thereby planted more firmly on God, Father Diego Patiño began to catechise the Iligan people—with so good effect that in a few months the larger (and the best) part of the residents in that village were brought under the yoke of Christ; this work was greatly aided by the kindness of the commandant of the garrison, Pedro Duran de Monforte. At this good news various persons of the Malanaos came down [from the mountains], and in the shelter of the fort they formed several small villages or hamlets, and heard the gospel with pleasure. The conversions increasing, it was necessary to station there another minister; this was Father Antonio de Abarca. They founded the village of Nagua, and others, which steadily and continually increased with the people who came down from the lake [i.e., Lanao], where the villages were being broken up.[12] This angered a brother of Molobolo, and he tried to avert his own ruin by the murder of the father; and for this purpose his treacherous mind [led him to] pretend that he would come down to the new villages, in order to become a Christian, intending to carry out then his treason at his leisure. But the father, warned by another Malanao, who was less impious, escaped death. The traitor did not desist from his purpose, and, when Father Abarca was in one of those villages toward Layavan, attacked the village; but he was discovered by the blacks of the hill-country, and they rained so many arrows upon the Moros that the latter abandoned their attempt. Another effort was a failure—the preparation of three joangas which the traitor had upon the sea, in order to capture and kill the father when he should return to Iligan; but in all was displayed the special protection with which God defends His ministers. However great the efforts made by the zeal of the gospel laborers, the result did not correspond to their desires, on account of the obstinacy of the Mahometans—although in the heathens they encountered greater docility for the acceptance of our religion. The life of the ministers was very toilsome, since to the task of preaching must be added the vigils and weariness, the heat and winds and rains, the dangers of [travel by] the sea, and the scarcity of food. In a country so poor, and at that time so uncultivated, it was considered a treat to find a few sardines or other fish, some beans, and a little rice; and many times they hardly could get boiled rice, and sometimes they must get along with sweet potatoes, gabes,[13] or [other] roots. But God made amends for these privations and toils with various inner pleasures; for they succeeded in obtaining some conversions that they had not expected, and even among the blacks, from whom they feared death, they found help and sustenance. [The author here relates a vision which appeared to an Indian chief, of the spirit of Father Marcelo Mastrilli as the director and patron of Father Abarca; and the renunciation of a mission to Europe which was vowed by Father Patiño in order to regain his health—which accomplished, he returns to his missionary labors at Iligan.]
He returned to the ministry, where he encountered much cause for suffering and tears; because the [military] officers [cabos] who then were governing that jurisdiction, actuated by arrogance and greed of gain, had committed such acts of violence that they had depopulated those little villages, many fleeing to the hills, where among the Moros they found treatment more endurable. The only ones who can oppose the injustice of such men are the gospel ministers. These fathers undertook to defend the Indians, and took it upon themselves to endure the anger of those men—who, raised from a low condition to places of authority, made their mean origin evident in their coarse natures and lawless passions; and the license of some of them went to such extremes that it was necessary for the soldiers to seize them as intolerable; and, to revenge themselves for the outrageous conduct of the officials, they accused the latter as traitors. Not even the Malanao chief Molobolo, who always had been firm on the side of the Spaniards, could endure their acts of violence, and, to avoid these, went back to the lake. This tempest lasted for some time, but afterward some peace was secured, when those officers were succeeded by others who were more compliant. The venerable Father Pedro Gutierrez went to Iligan, and with his amiable and gentle disposition induced a chief to leave the lake, who, with many people, became a resident of Dapitan; and another chief, still more powerful, was added to Iligan with his people. These results were mainly seemed by the virtue of the father, the high opinion which all had of his holy character, and the helpful and forcible effects of his oratory. The land was scorched by a drouth, which was general throughout the islands, from which ensued great losses. The father offered the Indians rain, if they would put a roof on the church; they accepted the proposal, and immediately God fulfilled what His servant had promised—sending them a copious rain on his saying the first mass of a novenary, which he offered to this end. With this the Indians were somewhat awakened from their natural sloth, and the church was finished, so that the fathers could exercise in it their ministries. The drouth was followed by a plague of locusts, which destroyed the grain-fields; the father exorcised them, and, to the wonder of all, the locusts thrust their heads into the ground, and the plague came to an end. This increased the esteem of the natives for our religion, and many heathens and Moros were brought into its bosom; and Father Combés says that when he ministered there he found more than fifty old persons of eighty to a hundred years, and baptized them all, with some three hundred boys this being now one of the largest Christian communities in the islands. The village is upon the shore, at the foot of the great Panguil,[14] between Butuan and Dapitan, to the south of Bohol, and north from Malanao, at the mouth of a river with a dangerous bar. The fort is of good stone, dedicated to St. Francis Xavier, in the shape of a star; the wall is two varas high, and half a vara thick, and it has a garrison, with artillery and weapons. The Moros have several times surrounded it, but they could not gain it by assault.
[Fol. 116 b:] In Sibuguey Father Francisco Luzon was preaching, a truly apostolic man, who spent his life coming and going in the most arduous ministries of the islands. The Sibugueys are heathens, of a gentler disposition and more docile to the reception of the gospel than are the Mahometans; therefore this mission aroused great hopes. One Ash Wednesday Father Luzon went to the fort, and he was received by a Lutao of gigantic stature who gave him his hand. The father shook hands with him, supposing that that was all for which he stopped him; but the Lutao trickily let himself be carried on, and with his weight dragged the father into the water, with the assurance that he could not be in danger, on account of his dexterity in swimming. The father went under, because he could not swim, and the captain and the soldiers hastened from the fort to his aid—but so late that there was quite enough time for him to be drowned, on account of having sunk so deep in the water; they pulled him out, half dead, and the first thing that he did was to secure pardon for the Lutao. He gained a little strength and went to the fort; he gave ashes to the Spaniards, and preached with as much fervor as if that hardship had not befallen him. The principal of Sibuguey was Datan, and, to make sure of him, the Spaniards had carried away as a hostage his daughter Paloma; and love for her caused her parents to leave Sibuguey and go to Samboangan to live, to have the company of their daughter. Father Alexandro Lopez went to minister at Sibuguey, and he saw that without the authority of Datan he could do almost nothing among the Sibugueys; this obliged him to go to Samboangan to get him, and he succeeded [in persuading them] to give him the girl. The father went up toward the source of the river, and found several hamlets of peaceable people, and a lake with five hundred people residing about it; and their chief, Sumogog, received him as a friend, and all listened readily to the things of God. He went so far that he could see the mountains of Dapitan, which are so near that place that a messenger went [to Dapitan] and returned in three days. These fair hopes were frustrated by the absence of Datan, who went with all his family to Mindanao; and on Ascension day in 1644 that new church disappeared, no one being left save a boy named Marcelo. Afterward the Moros put the fort in such danger, having killed some men, that it was necessary to dismantle it and withdraw the garrison.
[Fol. 121 (sc. 120):] The Joloans having been subjected by the bravery of Don Pedro de Almonte, they began to listen to the gospel, and they went to fix their abodes in the shelter of our fort. But, [divine] grace accommodating itself to their nature, as the sect of Mahoma have always been so obstinate, it was necessary that God should display His power, in order that their eyes might be opened to the light. The fervent father Alexandro Lopez was preaching in that island, to whose labors efficacy was given by the hand of God with many prodigies. The cures which the ministers made were frequent, now with benedictions, now with St. Paul’s earth,[15] in many cases of bites from poisonous serpents, or of persons to whom poison was administered. Among other cures, one was famous, that of a woman already given up as beyond hope; having given her some of St. Paul’s earth, she came back from the gates of death to entire health. With this they showed more readiness to accept the [Christian] doctrine, which was increased by a singular triumph which the holy cross obtained over hell in all these islands; for, having planted this royal standard of our redemption in an island greatly infested by demons, who were continually frightening the islanders with howls and cries, it imposed upon them perpetual silence, and freed all the other [neighboring] islands from an extraordinary tyranny. For the demons were crossing from island to island, in the sea, in the shape of serpents of enormous size, and did not allow vessels to pass without first compelling their crews to render adoration to the demon in iniquitous sacrifices; but this ceased, the demon taking flight at sight of the cross. [Several incidents of miraculous events are here related.] With these occurrences God opened their eyes, in order that they might see the light and embrace baptism, and in those islands a very notable Christian church was formed; and almost all was due to the miraculous resurrection of Maria Ligo [which our author relates at length]. Many believed, and thus began a flourishing Christian community; and as ministers afterward could not be kept in Joló on account of the wars, [these converts] exiled themselves from their native land, and went to live at Samboangan, in order that they might be able to live as Christians. [This prosperous beginning is spoiled by the lawless conduct of the commandant Gaspar de Morales, which brings on hostilities with the natives, and finally his own death in a fight with them.] Father Alexandro Lopez went to announce the gospel at Pangutaran, (an island distant six leguas east from Joló), and as the people were a simple folk they received the law of Christ with readiness ... The Moros of Tuptup captured a discalced religious of St. Augustine, who, to escape from the pains of captivity, took to flight with a negro. Father Juan Contreras (who was in Joló) went out with some Lutaos in boats to rescue him, calling to him in various places from the shore; but the poor religious was so overcome with fear that, although he heard the voices and was near the beach, he did not dare to go out to our vessels, despite the encouragement of the negro; and on the following day the Joloans, encountering him, carried him back to his captivity, with blows. He wrote a letter from that place, telling the misfortunes that he was suffering; all the soldiers, and even the Lutaos, called upon the governor [of Joló], to ransom that religious at the cost of their wages, but without effect. Then Father Contreras, moved by fervent charity, went to Patical, where the fair[16] was held, and offered himself to remain as a captive among the Moros, in order that they might set free the poor religious, who was feeble and sick. Some Moros agreed to this; but the Orancaya Suil, who was the head chief of the Guimbanos, said that no one should have anything to do with that plan—at which the hopes of that afflicted religious for ransom were cut off. Seeing that he must again endure his hardships, from which death would soon result, he asked Father Contreras to confess him; the latter undertook to set out by water to furnish him that spiritual consolation, but the Lutaos would not allow him to leave the boat, even using some violence, in order not to endanger his person. All admired a charity so ardent, and, having renewed his efforts, he so urgently persuaded the governor, Juan Ruiz Maroto, to ransom him that the latter gave a thousand pesos in order to rescue the religious from captivity. Twice Father Contreras went to the fair, but the Moros did not carry the captive there with them. Afterward he was ransomed for three hundred pesos by Father Alexandro Lopez, the soldiers aiding with part of their pay a work of so great charity.
[Fol. 123:] [The Society of Jesus throughout the world celebrates the centennial anniversary of its foundation; the official order for this does not reach Manila in time, so the Jesuits there observe the proper anniversary (September 27, 1640) with solemn religious functions, besides spending a week in practicing the “spiritual exercises” and various works of charity. “On one day of the octave all the members of the Society went to the prisons, and carried to the prisoners an abundant and delicious repast. The same was done in the hospitals, to which they carried many sweetmeats to regale the sick; they made the beds, swept the halls, and carried the chamber-vessels to the river to clean them; and afterward they sprinkled the halls with scented water. Throughout the octave abundance of food was furnished at the porter’s lodge to the beggars; and a free table was set for the poor Spaniards, who were served with food in abundance and neatness. It was a duty, and a very proper manner of celebrating the [virtues of the] men who have rendered the Society illustrious, to imitate them in humility, devotion, and charity.”]
[Fol. 123 b:] In the Pintados Islands and other ministries Ours labored fervently in ministering to the Christians and converting the infidels. Nor was the zeal of the Society content with laboring in its own harvest-field; it had the courage to go to the ministers of the secular priests to conduct missions. Two fathers went on a mission to Mindoro and Luban, and when they were near the village their caracoa was attacked by three joangas of Borneans and Camucones. The caracoa, in order to escape from the enemies, ran ashore; and the fathers, leaving there all that they possessed—books, missal, and the clothing that they were carrying to distribute as alms to the poor Indians—took to the woods, through which they made their way to Naujan. On the road it frequently rained, and they had no change of clothing, nor any food save some buds of the wild palm-tree; they suffered weariness, hunger, and thirst, and to slake this last they drank the water which they found in the pools there. After twenty days of this so toilsome journeying they reached the chief town [of the island], their feet covered with wounds, themselves faint and worn out with hunger, and half dead from fatigue; but they were joyful and contented, because God was giving them this opportunity to suffer for love of Him. One of the fathers went back to Marinduque, where he found other troubles, no less grievous than those which had gone before; for the Camucones had robbed the church, ravaged the grain-fields, captured some Indians, and caused the rest to flee to the hills. The father felt deep compassion for them, and at the cost of much toil he again assembled the Indians and brought them back to their villages.
[Fol. 134:] In the fifth provincial congregation, which was held in the year 1635, Father Diego de Bobadilla was chosen procurator to Roma and Madrid. He embarked in the year 1637, and while he was in España the disturbances in Portugal and Cataluña occurred. The news of these events was very afflicting to this province, considering the difficulty in its securing aid. Besides the usual fields of Tagalos and Bisayas, the province occupied the new missions of Buhayen, Iligan, Basilan, and Jolo; and there were several years when it found itself with only forty priests, who with the utmost difficulty provided as best they could for needs so great. Phelipe IV—whom we may call “the Great,” on account of his unconquerable, signal, and unusual patience, which God chose to prove by great and repeated misfortunes—was so zealous for the Catholic religion, its maintenance, and its progress that even in times so hard he did not grudge the grant of forty-seven missionaries for this province. He also gave orders that they should be supplied at Sevilla with a thousand and forty ducados, and at Mexico with thirteen thousand pesos—a contribution of the greatest value in those circumstances, and which could only be dictated by a heart so Catholic as that of this prince, who every day renewed the vow that he had taken that he would not make friends with the infidels, to the detriment of religion, even though it should cost him his crown and his life. On Holy Tuesday, March 31, in 1643, forty-seven Jesuits embarked at Acapulco; and on the second of April mass was sung, and communion was celebrated—not only by the missionaries, but by almost all the laymen who came in the almiranta, where was established a distribution [of their labors] as well planned as in an Observant college. For at daybreak[17] a bell was rung tor rising; there was a season of prayer; mass was said, once on working-days and twice on feast-days; the priests who did not say mass received communion every day, and the lay-brothers, students, and coadjutors two or three times a week; there was reading at meal-times; and at the approach of night the litanies were recited and the Salve sung. Every night a father went to the forecastle to explain the Christian doctrine, and ended with some brief address. When night began, the father procurator rang a little bell, in order that they might pray to God for the souls in purgatory and for those who are in mortal sin, imitating the example of St. Francis Xavier. Before the hour for retiring, the bell was rung for the examination of conscience. Every Sunday, feast-day, and Saturday, addresses were made to all the [people of the] ship.
Soon after they had embarked, a sort of wind blew which made nearly all those who were coming in the ship fall ill; and from this sickness died five Jesuits, and thirty-three laymen; and in the flagship six religious of St. Dominic and seventy [other] persons. These sick persons gave sufficient occasion for the charity of Ours, who assisted them by administering the sacraments and caring for their souls; and they even busied themselves in relieving the sick, so far as was possible, with delicacies and personal attentions. This occupation was an excellent preparation in order that the sermons and exhortations that the ministers uttered might produce the desired result—that a great reform in morals and much attendance on the sacraments might be secured. [After perils and hardships by sea, and in the overland passage from Lampon to Manila, they reach that city. “It was a very numerous mission band, who accomplished much work; and there were some of them who spent fifty and even more than sixty years in Philipinas, which is a very extraordinary thing.” Five of them had died on the voyage: fathers Francisco Casela, a native of Naples, aged thirty years; Francois Boursin, a native of Arras, aged thirty-four; Georg Kocart, from Neuburg, aged twenty-eight; Gonzalo Cisneros, an Aragonese (?), aged twenty-eight; and Dominic Vaybel (probably for Waibl), a native of Constance, of the same age.] In the college of Zebu the Society labored with apostolic zeal; for, although regularly there was no one in it besides the father rector and another priest, they maintained preaching and confession, and attended to the spiritual welfare of the Spaniards, Indians, mestizos, and other people who gathered there; and God gave His blessing to our pious desires and labors. Many Indians attended the sermons that were preached in that church, even when the sermons were in Spanish.
[Fol. 152 b:] Our military forces, being set free from the nearer enemies, were employed against those more distant. Accordingly, the commander of our armada, Pedro Duran de Monforte, directed his course to the great island of Borney, where he burned many villages on that coast, and carried away forty captives; and he succeeded in making this voyage known [to navigators], and in observing the shoals, monsoons, and other difficulties. With this experience he again set out, on January 11, 1649, with fourteen vessels, his people being partly Indian adventurers from Pintados, partly Lutaos; and Father Francisco Lado accompanied him. He touched at Lacaylacay; went on to Onsan, the limit of the former expedition; and went to the island of Bangui. Everywhere he found abundance of rice, swine, and goats. He plundered and destroyed several villages; burned more than three hundred vessels, among them the armed fleet which they held ready that year to infest these islands—which on account of this exploit remained for the time free from their fury and barbarity. He brought back more than two hundred captives, and ransomed some Christians. All this was done in a short time and with ease, because these affairs were undertaken with proper seriousness. As a result of this, when the governor of Samboangan, Rafael Omen, died, Pedro Duran de Monforte was appointed in his place; and the latter imitated his predecessor in his zeal for religion, in his Christian mode of life, in disinterestedness, and in an affable and mild bearing, for which he was beloved by all, while his government was peaceful and prosperous. With the opportunity afforded by these armadas, the Jesuits (who went as chaplains) began to announce the gospel in the great island of Borney, than which there is no larger island in the world. So prosperous were those beginnings that they succeeded in having seven hundred islanders baptized. Two chiefs of the neighboring islands offered vassalage to the king of Spain, and asked for gospel ministers, as Father Colin testifies; and this mission finally gave hopes that a numerous and extensive Christian church would be founded which would compensate for the losses in Japon and the Orient; but, lacking the protection of the Spanish military forces, this so beautiful hope faded away almost at its flowering. Deplorable and repeated experiences persuade us that in these latter times the Christian missions are maintained and increased only when in the shelter of Catholic arms; sad witnesses to this are Japon, India, and now China. If in these islands and America our kings did not protect religion, I believe that those regions would now be as heathen as in their former times. Experience teaches this, and the rest I regard as speculation—although the powerful arm of the Highest easily overcomes the greatest impossibilities.
[Fol. 155 b:] The testimony of the venerable Father Mastrili, and the voluntary choice of so many distinguished Jesuits and martyrs who embraced these missions with the greatest eagerness, are sufficient recommendation for them. With just reason they can be esteemed, as being among the most laborious and difficult which the Society maintains anywhere in the world. This title is deserved by the missions of Philipinas, and among them those to Mindanao and the Subanos are some of the most difficult. No one accuses this statement of being exaggerated, and still less of being arrogant, before he has examined it minutely; and then he cannot find more moderate terms [than the above] in order not to fall short of the truth. Whatever dangers, inconveniences, and privations are experienced on land are also experienced on the sea, with an [additional] sort of circumstances which renders them more grievous, and besides this there are the hardships natural and peculiar to that element; and even that which on land is chosen for convenience and relief costs on the sea inconvenience and trouble—as, for instance, sleeping, eating, and taking exercise. Every boat is a prison without chains, but more closely shut than the narrowest jail; it is a broad coffin, in which the living suffer the discomforts of death. Whoever sets foot in a boat resolutely confronts all the elements, which conspire in arms to terrify and destroy him. The water upon which he journeys, the air by which he sails, the fire by which he lives, the land which he so anxiously seeks—all are declared enemies of the traveler. The sea is, by antonomasia, the theater for [all] perils; and no one who has not been tossed upon its foaming waves can speak with justice of its dangers, just as the blind man cannot dispute about colors. A heart of steel or of diamond, say the ancients, he must have had who first boldly launched himself upon the [waters of the] gulfs, so many perils did they conceive of an element which has as many treacheries as waves. Therefore, as nearly all the missions of this province are established along the seas, on which our missionaries go about, continually on the move, these are the (or among the) most difficult, arduous and perilous that exist on the whole round globe. To this sacrifice charity gladly constrained us. Let to all this be added the nature of the country, in which earthquakes, baguios, hurricanes, storms of thunder and lightning, and tempests often occur. The winds are violent and hurtful, the season hot; the rainy season gloomy, dark and persistent; the wet soil producing many disgusting insects that are troublesome and vexatious. The care for the temporal welfare of the people—seeing that they pay their tributes to the king, and that they plant their fields in time—is an employment that is troublesome, tedious, and necessary. Nor is it a less task to take care for the provisioning of the [missionary’s] own house, without having in this respect the aid which the apostles had; because the minister must rather care for his own house and for that of others, a charge which charity lays upon us. Charitas omnia sustinet [i.e., “Charity endures all things”].