The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 — Volume 21 of 55: 1624; 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 21 of 55: 1624; 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
[Lives of Fathers Alonso de la Anunciacion and Francisco de los Santos,
and Brother Bernardo de San Augustin, follow in the succeeding three
sections of this chapter, which concludes with a section on the]
_Foundation of the convent of Masinglo_
With just reason can this house be [regarded as] the most precious and
esteemed jewel that the Augustinian Reform venerates, as it was the
fort that was raised against the devil in the lands of the infidels,
which the devil had usurped from the cross and the gospel, when our
religious, after so many labors and sufferings, tamed the untamable
Zambàles. That village, before called Masinloc, was suitable for
the foundation, as it was in a location from which they could attend
quickly to the service of God our Lord and of souls. Accordingly, they
chose it, although its inhabitants were more ferocious than the rest
of their neighbors because they had no one to drive away their errors
and illumine their darkness. Father Fray Andres del Espiritu Santo,
then, accompanied by two other religious, planted that holy bulwark
to oppose all hell. With great care and helpfulness they tried first
to adorn it with the example of their virtues, so that the neophytes
should become fonder of the law which we profess. At that time the
recently baptized amounted to eight hundred, with whom great efforts
were exerted in separating them from their former evil habits, more
especially that of idolatry, to which was joined that of intoxication;
they were given to these in excess, by the habit that they had acquired
in both things from childhood. With the lapse of time the converted
have surpassed two thousand, because of the reduction of certain more
terrible Indians who lived in the mountains, without houses and away
from the coast. The latter were continually at war with others who
are called Negrillos [_i.e._, "little blacks"], for they seem to be
such, and they are very black. One may now consider the vigilance it
must have cost to attract those brutes, in order to make them live a
social life in accordance with reason, in peace and quiet--things that
were never seen among them until our religious undertook to tame them
and to bring them into rational intercourse. The jurisdiction of that
convent has extended fourteen leguas, and it has ten visitas which are
villages. The missionaries generally go to those villages to care for
their souls, and do not allow them to continue their former wickedness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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