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The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume 31, 1640: 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 centuryAduarte, Diego

History

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume 31, 1640: 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

Name: The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume 31, 1640: 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
Author: Aduarte, Diego

Aduarte, Diego

Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources

rosary among the treasures of the church, giving the Indian another
in its place. There it remained, in token of the esteem and respect
which our Lady willed that the fire should pay to her holy rosary.

[In the month of June, 1607, father Fray Juan Baptista Gacet ended his
labors happily in the convent of Sancto Domingo at Manila. He was a
son of the convent of Preachers at Valencia, and a beloved disciple of
St. Luis Beltran, whom he succeeded in the office of master of novices
at Valencia. When St. Luis returned from the Indias, the Lord moved
father Fray Juan to go to them, as he desired to reap a harvest of
souls, and feared that they might strive to make him superior in his
own province. He received the approval of St. Luis, and went to the
Indias at the time when master Fray Alonso Bayllo went out from his
convent of Murcia, by command of our lord the king and of the general
of the order, to divide the province of Vaxac from that of Sanctiago de
Mexico. Being threatened with a superiorship in the province of Vaxac,
father Fray Juan did what he could to avoid it. When a company of
religious under the leadership of father Fray Pedro de Ledesma passed
through Nueva España on their way to the Philippinas, father Fray Juan
decided to accompany them, though he was already of venerable age;
and he reached Manila in 1596. Here he was greatly honored, and, being
too old to learn the Indian languages, was retained in the convent of
Manila to act as confessor and spiritual guide to a number of devout
persons in the city. He was made definitor in the first provincial
chapter, and was later obliged to accept the office of prior--having
no other country to flee to, as he had fled from España to the Indias,
and thence to the Philippinas, to avoid this elevation. He was given
to devout exercises and to prayer, reading often from some devout book,
usually from St. John Climachus, and afterward discussing the passage,
and making it the basis of devout meditation. After leaving the office
of prior, he returned to his life of devotion and abstraction.

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