[2] From the date of the foundation of the College of Santo Tomás, there was strife between it and the Jesuit college of San José. In 1648, the Dominicans triumphed for the time being, and the Jesuits were forbidden by the royal Audiencia to grant degrees in their university. That decision was reversed in Spain by a royal decree of March 12, 1653. San José was closed when the Jesuits were expelled. (Pardo de Tavera, pp. 43, 44, note 1.) [↑]
[3] In note 2 (pp. 44–47), Pardo de Tavera gives a sketch of the history of the “secular university” of Manila. The royal decree founding it (dated May 16, 1714) states as its purpose, “that persons born there may have the comfort of being enabled to fit themselves for obtaining the prebends;” accordingly, three chairs were established at Manila, for instruction in canon and civil law and Roman law. The first incumbents (appointed in 1715) were Julian de Velasco, Francisco Fernandez Thoribio, and Manuel de Osio y Ocampo. The institution was opened on June 9, 1718, and included also the chairs of medicine and mathematics, professors for these being appointed by the governor—who, finding that this enterprise was opposed by the religious orders, especially by the Dominicans and Jesuits, ordered that a building for its use should be erected near his palace; but lack of funds stopped this work in 1721. When the chairs became vacant in 1726, a competitive examination was held to fill them, at which only five men with the degree of bachelor of law were present. The lectures were but thinly attended, five or six students only being the usual audience; the royal decree suggested that these be reënforced by students from San José and Santo Tomás, but these colleges discouraged such attendance, and it availed naught. In 1726, the Jesuit Murillo Velarde was appointed to the chair of canon law, and then the Jesuits offered San José college to the new professors (at first, the lectures in the royal foundation had been given in a private house, because the archbishop declined to let them be given in the archiepiscopal seminary); this aroused the jealousy of the Dominicans. Finally a compromise was made between them, by agreeing that in each of the two universities there should be a chair of canon law in charge of a religious, and one of civil law in charge of a layman. The king, learning of this controversy and the ineffectiveness of his foundation, decreed (July 26, 1730) that it should be closed, thus saving to the treasury the annual cost of 2,000 pesos. Pardo de Tavera remarks that the name of “university,” given to it in Manila, does not appear in the royal decree of 1714, which simply established the three chairs mentioned. See also the account of “the college seminary of San Phelipe,” in VOL. XLV of this series, pp. 187–207, and some allusions to it in VOL. XLIV, pp. 145, 178; Velasco and Toribio were imprisoned by Bustamante at one time (VOL. XLIV, pp. 152, 155, 159.)
In reality, we must go back to the royal foundation in 1702, which was encroached on by Cardinal Tournon and the abbot Sidoti (1704–07); see San Antonio’s full account of this in VOL. XXVIII, pp. 117–122. Pardo de Tavera gives an outline of this account in his note 3 (pp. 48–50), and adds: “The power of the friars caused the organization of the seminary to be delayed until, toward the end of the past century, thanks to Señor Sancho de Santa Justa y Rufina, the seminary of San Carlos was created; it was installed in the former house of the expelled members of the Society of Jesus.” [↑]
[4] “The religious orders in Filipinas have always been accused of opposing culture and the diffusion of human learning among the Filipinos, having assumed, according to their traditional policy, the role of monopolisers of public instruction, in order thus to present themselves as its defenders and partisans, proclaiming themselves the civilizers of the people, and the source and origin of their intellectual progress. In reality, having in their hands the public instruction they so conducted themselves that, as Don Simon says, they organized an instruction of mere ceremony, intended to maintain the Filipinos in a calculated ignorance, and keep them imbued with principles which tended to subject their conscience and reason to the absorptive power of the monastic supremacy.” (Pardo de Tavera, p. 50, note 4.) [↑]
[5] It is to be remembered that Anda wrote this memorial at Madrid, where he was occupying a seat in the Council of Castilla. [↑]
[6] “The idea of secularizing the university of Manila, suggested by Anda y Salazar, was contemplated a century later by Señor Moret, minister for the colonies [de Ultramar], and decreed by the regent of the kingdom on November 6, 1870. The college of San Juan de Letran was also secularized by the same decree; but in Filipinas orders of that sort were not executed. For the friars upset the whole matter, threatening the ruin of the colony if the decree were carried out, raising protests and petitions—in short, causing the bishops and the authorities to range themselves on their side, in order to present to the government at Madrid the question from the point of view which suited the interests of the Dominican order. The execution of the regent’s decree was suspended, writings were sent to Madrid in favor of the friars, and, as always, they gained their point, and continued to be owners and masters of the university and of the college of San Juan de Letran.” (Pardo de Tavera, note 6, pp. 50, 51.) [↑]
[7] “The friars have always been considered as poor and needy by the government of España, and in that notion—without stopping to consider that their ownership of land was continually extending further in Filipinas, and that through various schemes they had created for themselves a secure income in the country—the Spanish monarchs by various provisions (most of them despatched at the instigation of the friars) have ordained that their needs be supplied with wine, oil, various contributions, and cash donations, under the most flimsy pretexts.” (Pardo de Tavera, note 7, p. 51.) [↑]
[8] “At the pleasure of the king, on account of the lack of clerics at the beginning.” [↑]
[9] “In effect, it can be said the friars trained clerics in order afterward to employ the latter in their own service; for under the name of coadjutors each cura kept in his convent one or two clerics, according to the necessities of the parish, who served him as if they were slaves, and who suffered every sort of humiliation and annoyance. It was not only in those times [of Anda] that the situation of the Filipino cleric was so melancholy and abject; but, in the midst of the increasing prosperity of the friars and their curates, with equal pace increased also the wretchedness of their coadjutors and the intolerable misery of their existence. In order to justify their conduct toward the Filipino clerics, the friars resorted to the pretext of their unfitness; but not only is this argument calumnious, but, even if it were accepted as sound, it does not justify the bad treatment which they give the cleric, and would demonstrate, besides, that the education which he receives from the friars is incomplete and defective.” (He cites Archbishop Santa Justa as rebuking the regulars for thus calumniating the clerics, saying, among other things, “Is it not notorious to every one of us here that the spiritual administration all devolves upon the coadjutor cleric, the father minister reserving to himself only the charge of collecting in his own house, without leaving it, the parochial dues. How can they deny this, when it is so public? If the clerics are incapable, how can the ministers in conscience allow and entrust to them the spiritual administration of their villages? If that be not so, how dare they discredit the clerics with the strange, not to say unjust, censure of their being unfit and incompetent?”) “In these later times, the friars, since they could no longer rail against the clerics in that fashion—for they do not, at least so much now, insist on their old accusation of unfitness, because the Filipino clerics have proved that they include men of as great learning and virtue as the friars, and even more—resorted to a political reason, making the Spanish government believe that the Filipino clerics were every one filibusters. This weapon was of good results for the cause of the friars, but fatal for the Filipino clergy, who found themselves horribly trampled upon in 1870, on occasion of the famous rebellion of the Cavite Arsenal; for three of their most distinguished and revered members, Fathers Burgos, Zamora, and Gomez, were executed under the calumnious accusation of being leaders of the rebellion, and a great number of other distinguished Filipino priests were sent to the military posts or into exile. Public opinion flung back upon the friars the terrible responsibility of sentences so iniquitous; but since then the new and safe weapon of ‘filibusterism’ has been used more and more against the Filipino clerics.” (Pardo de Tavera, note 8, pp. 52, 53.) [↑]
[10] “The contribution of wine and oil had been granted (as is stated in ley 7, tit. iii, book i of the Recopilación de Indias) to certain poor monasteries, so that they could illuminate the blessed sacrament and celebrate the holy sacrifice of the mass. It was likewise ordained that such contribution should be furnished in the articles themselves, both oil and wine, and not in money or bullion. This contribution was to be given to the conventual religious and not to the ministers of doctrinas, that is, to the curas (ley 9). The escort of soldiers which was furnished to the missionaries was granted to them by a royal decree of July 23, 1744, the text of which I have not been able to find. According to Diaz Arenas (Memorias históricas), the royal decree of May 13, 1579, granted to each cura in a doctrina the sum of 50,000 maravedís, and half as much to the sacristans. Afterward, by a royal decree of October 31, 1596, the said stipend of missionary religious was fixed at $100 and 100 fanegas of palay. On March 4, 1696, August 14, 1700, January 19, 1704, and July 14, 1713, the king had ordered the viceroys of his colonial possessions to send him a report in regard to the religious who were really in need of the contribution of wine, wax, and oil, in order that he might cease giving aid to those who had no need of it, ‘or that the half or the third part might be deducted from their allowance, in proportion to the poverty of each one.’ This is seen in the royal decree of September 22, 1720, in which the king insists that this information should be sent to him; but he could not obtain it, in spite of repeated orders.” [Other attempts were made to secure such information, through the century, but without success.] (Pardo de Tavera, note 9, pp. 54–56.) [↑]