The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 07 of 55: 1588-1591; 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
History
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 07 of 55: 1588-1591; 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
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
In the next to the last clause of this letter your Majesty says that
to remedy the present lack of instruction is my own special obligation,
which I confess; and I have so appreciated this that, seeing the great
present need of instruction and the little help which I can offer,
I am so disturbed and so filled with anxiety that, if I were able to
leave the bishopric, I would try to flee from it. But if, inasmuch as
your Majesty declares to me my obligation, and puts in my charge what
is lacking, you should give me, together with it, authority to right
affairs, your Majesty would be relieved of responsibility, and I of
anxiety, other than to make progress in learning my obligations. If
I do not have authority and power to remedy this, I must live all my
life in anxiety and perturbation of spirit, because every year I see
them collect tribute from a race that is never given to understand
why it is collected; nor is there any hope that they may be able to
have instruction, because of the great difficulty there is in giving
it to them. Knowing that this is the legitimate title which we have
in seeking tribute, your Majesty may see what peace of conscience
he can have who has all these souls in his charge, both those who
collect and those of whom collection is taken. To relieve me from the
anguish in which I live, the only means of removing all difficulties
is for your Majesty to send us a great number of religious of the
four orders already established here--without giving ear to those who
speak of a matter about which, in my opinion, they have no means of
judging here. They say that some have tried to persuade your Majesty,
with no other spirit than that of the devil (who wishes to hinder
so much good), that we have all the religious that are necessary. In
addition to the thirty-seven Augustinians now here, more than three
hundred others are needed; and even these will not be enough. Yet,
with this number great results would be accomplished.
The first is that your Majesty would be fulfilling the obligation
which you have toward these nations, in giving them instruction. They
need this, because of the ten divisions of this bishopric eight have
no instruction; and some provinces have been paying tribute to your
Majesty for more than twenty years, but without receiving on account
of that any greater advantage than to be tormented by the tribute
and afterward to go to hell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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