[2] On March 27, 1765, Viana declared (Respuestas, fol. 113) that the natives of Pangasinan ought to be compelled to pay all arrears of tribute due since the last collection made before the English invasion; that the village notables should not be exempted; and that each tribute ought to pay two reals extra to reimburse the government for the costs of putting down the rebellion in that province. Later (fol. 134), he estimates that the tributes in that province are the same as before the war; “for, although it is certain that a great many of the insurgents died, it is also evident that the reduction [of the province] prevents the concealment of the tributes which was formerly practiced by the heads of barangay.” [↑]
[3] Puch specified the alcaldes-mayor (VOL. XLIX, p. 337, note 208)—cf. what Viana says of those officials in his “Memorial” (VOL. XLVIII), chapter v, sections 34–38—but his remarks were considered as reflections on higher officials. [↑]
[4] Ferrando (v, pp. 9–16) says that Puch was engaged, by order of his provincial, Father Bernardo Pazaengos (more correctly written Pazuengos), and at the urgent requests of other pious persons, in conducting a sort of mission in the city, “with the object of correcting the many vices which had been introduced into Manila during the invasion by the English;” and in one of those sermons he made the utterances which brought him into trouble. The Audiencia resolved to notify the provincials of all the orders and the dean of the cathedral that they must order their subordinates to conform to the laws in regard to their preaching; and the Jesuit provincial in particular, that he also take care that Puch should give satisfaction to the Audiencia and the public for his reflections on government officials. Pazuengos laid the case before the heads of Santo Tomás university, and, as their decision was in his support, he answered the Audiencia that he had ordered the priest hereafter to obey the law cited by the Audiencia; but that he declared Puch to be “immune and exempt from blame” in regard to the remarks made in the sermon before mentioned, and protested that he did not intend to censure in the least the acts of the Audiencia. He added that, if this were not enough, he would send Puch to the Mindanao missions. This aroused Viana’s anger, first “against the Jesuits, and afterward against all the other orders; and he finally issued an official opinion filled with calumnies and invectives, which might rather be called a defamatory libel.” At this all the orders took up the matter, especially resenting Viana’s attitude because they had supported the government so loyally during the English invasion: the superiors held a special conference in the convent at Tondo, and agreed to draw up a remonstrance to the king against the fiscal’s unjust attack on them, demanding that he investigate the whole affair and decide it according to justice. Ferrando condemns Puch’s imprudent remarks, but regrets that the matter had not been settled by his superior, instead of dragging the other orders into the quarrel and thus eventually causing trouble at court for all of them, especially for the Jesuits. Ferrando adds (p. 24): “We have also another key to explain the hostility which certain persons at that time manifested toward the religious orders in these provinces over seas, in the sinister Pleiad of ministers who then surrounded the Catholic king. Aranda, Roda, Campománes, Azpuru, and Floridablanca all had connections, more or less evident and close, with the French encyclopedists and philosophers of that time, and all emulated Tanucci in regard to regalist doctrines”—that is, maintaining the rights and prerogatives of the state as against the church (Gray’s Velázquez Dictionary).
In regard to this last statement, cf. Manuel Danvila y Collado, in his Reinado de Carlos III, ii, pp. 561–564: “Religious intolerance, still great in the reign of Felipe V, tended to extinction in succeeding reigns. In the almost half a century during which he occupied the throne, there were in España twelve inquisitors-general; and such was the hold which the Holy Office possessed in public opinion that, in order to entertain the new king, a solemn auto de fe was held in 1701, which he declined to attend. Nevertheless, he protected the Inquisition, because Louis XIV had advised him to support it as a means of maintaining tranquillity in the country; he availed himself of it to inspire respect for the oath of fidelity which was given to the new monarch; he repressed the Jewish worship which, again and secretly, had been propagated in España after the annexation of Portugal; but it was the general opinion that rigor against the heretics diminished after the advent of the house of Bourbon. The sect of Molinos was persecuted and punished with severity; even Macanaz, the enthusiastic defender of the royal prerogatives, was banished from España, for political rather than religious motives; and the third volume of the Historia civil de España, by Fray Nicolás de Jesús Belando, who dared to defend the regalist idea, was prohibited. These rigorous proceedings diminished during the reign of Fernando VI, who permitted Macanaz to return to España, and who established as a principle that the coming of the Bourbons to the throne of the Españas was to produce a complete modification of the system of the Holy Office … Even the Concordats of 1737 and 1753, by recognizing the royal prerogatives of the crown of España, authorizing the taxes on the estates of the clergy, and reforming various points of discipline, allowed the admission of some ideas which ignorance or superstition had until then deemed irreligious or favorable to impiety. The Diario de los literatos also enlightened many people in regard to knowledge of the books which were being published, and the judgment which ought to be formed of them; and the weekly sheets gave acquaintance with foreign works which no one knew of, and which were a preparation for the interesting literary transformation of the epoch of Fernando VI; while at the same time the rigors of the Inquisition were relaxed, in harmony with the change which had been produced in public opinion. Indeed, from that time the Holy Office occupied itself only with persecuting the Jesuits and the Free Masons (who had been excommunicated by the bull of Clement XII of April 28, 1738, renewed on May 18, 1751)…. There certainly is no room for doubt that, partly through the progress of public opinion and partly through the knowledge which was obtained here of the works of Diderot and D’Alambert—and especially of the Encyclopedia, begun in 1751, and concluded in 1772—it became the fashion and people were proud to have acquaintance with the tendency of the philosophy proclaimed by the French freethinkers—but they did not comprehend that this philosophy necessarily led to revolution, and with it to the loss of all property rights (which was the foundation of its influence in society), and the annihilation of all political influence within the state …. The Spanish nobility were seduced by the philosophic or Encyclopedistic propaganda of France.”
The official opinion by Viana regarding the Puch episode may be found in a MS. volume entitled, Respuestas dadas por el fiscal de S. M., fol. 22v–26; it is apparently Viana’s own original record of his official opinions delivered to the Audiencia during the year 1765, and is in the possession of Edward E. Ayer, Chicago. This book furnishes valuable information regarding conditions in the islands after the departure of the British forces. [↑]
[5] Le Gentil (who sojourned in Manila from 1766 to 1768) relates in his Voyage (t. ii, pp. 199, etc.) various incidents to show this; and Raón even displayed to Le Gentil the magnificent presents which he had received from the officers of a French ship which came to Manila in evasion of the prohibition of foreign trade there. Raón was also condemned, in his residencia, for having revealed to the Jesuits, beforehand, for a large sum of money, the news that their expulsion had been decreed, and for other acts of disobedience to the royal commands regarding that expulsion. [↑]
[6] This date is incorrect, for the fiscal gave his assent to the manufacture of barrillas on February 16, 1765. This is shown by the entry for that date in Viana’s Respuestas (MS.), fol. 89; he makes the express stipulation that these barrillas be used only for petty payments, and not for important transactions. From fol. 108v it appears that these coins were immediately made, but in too great haste, and were called in by the authorities, late in March. [↑]
[7] See Jagor’s description of the great volcano of Mayon and his ascent of it (September, 1859), with a list of its known eruptions, in his Reisen, pp. 75–84. Cf. Le Gentil’s description of it and of this eruption (Voyage, ii, pp. 13–19); he cites at length a letter from the then alcalde of Albay. Its summit was considered inaccessible until two young Scotchmen made the ascent in April, 1858. [↑]
[8] Santa Justa belonged to the Order of Escuelas Pías (see VOL. XLVIII, pp. 52–54, note 10). See list of writings by this prelate, in Montero y Vidal’s Hist. de Filipinas, ii, pp. 228, 229, 318; also in Vindel’s Catálogo biblioteca filipina, pp. 380–389; they are mainly pastoral letters, and memorials to the Spanish government. [↑]
[9] When Raón insisted on enforcing the royal rights of patronage, the orders all resisted him, repeating the arguments which they had alleged to Arandía in the like case. The Dominicans declared that they could not obey the governor’s commands until they could receive orders from their superiors in Europe; Raón refused to wait, and the provincial declared that his curas would rather surrender their ministries, but would continue to serve therein until the governor, as vice-patron, should command that these be surrendered to other curas. “This was sufficient to make the archbishop hasten to deliver to the secular clergy, first the ministries of the Parián and Binondo, and afterwards those of the province of Bataan, notwithstanding that he could have no cause for complaint against our religious, who without resistance or opposition had accepted his diocesan visit, as he himself confessed in letters to the king and the supreme pontiff. He found a pretext for proceeding to the secularization of the curacies in Bataan, in the banishment of the Jesuits, whose expulsion from the islands occurred at the same time as the events which we are relating.” “As the ministries in the island of Negros were left vacant in consequence of the expulsion of the Jesuits, the governor addressed himself to our provincial, asking for ministers to occupy those vacant posts. The latter excused himself from this, on account of the lack of religious; and the archbishop made this a pretext for informing and counseling the governor that, since the Dominicans had offered their resignation of the doctrinas in the province of Bataan, on account of the controversy over the right of patronage, the religious who were ministering in that district could be sent to the island of Negros. He offered to provide secular priests in their place, and availed himself of this opportunity to despoil our religious of the curacies or ministries of Bataan. In effect, this was done; and our religious were compelled to abandon to the seculars this province of the archbishopric, in order to go to learn a new dialect and minister to strange peoples in the inland of Negros.” “The bishop of Cebú had no secular priests capable of replacing the Jesuits (as deserving as persecuted), who were administering the island of Negros and the province of Iloilo,… consequently, our religious began to minister in the villages of Iloilo, Himaras, Mandurriao and Molog, in the island of Panay; and those of Ilog, Cabancalan, Jimamaylan, and Guilgonan, in that of Negros. With great repugnance the province took charge of an administration of which the Jesuit fathers had been despoiled in so unworthy a manner; and not only on this account but on that of the great difficulties which arose from this separation of provinces and villages, in the regular visiting of them and in intercourse and the supply of provisions, our fathers abandoned those ministries at the end of some years; and in the meantime the bishop of Cebú undertook to transfer their administration to the secular priests. Thus it was that by the year 1776 our religious had departed from all those villages.” (Ferrando, Hist. PP. dominicos, v, pp. 39, 42, 43.) [↑]