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The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 35, 1640-1649: 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 — John Shaqi

History

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 35, 1640-1649: 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

[Chapters iv and v deal with the life of Juan de Santo Tomas (alias
de Ormaza), one of the founders of the province of Santo Rosario,
and its fourth provincial. He was a native of Medina del Campo, and
his father was a noted jurist. The latter desiring his son to follow
in his footsteps, he was sent to the university of Salamanca; but the
youthful student, developing a taste for the religious life, prevailed
upon his parents to allow him to devote himself to religion. He entered
the Dominican convent at Valladolid, where he professed. The first
mission to the Philippines, which arrived there in 1587, found him
among its ranks. Arrived at the islands he was assigned to the missions
at Bataan, where he labored assiduously until the year 1600, when he
became provincial by unanimous vote. Shortly after the completion
of his term of office he was sent to Japan as vicar-general of the
Dominican missions there, and after several years there he returned
to Manila and resumed his old vicariate of Bataan. As old age came
on he retired to the convent of Manila, where he died at the age of
nearly ninety, on December 7, 1638. In the general chapter held in
Rome in 1644, he received mention for his good life and works.]




CHAPTER VI

Of the intermediary meeting of the year 1639, and events of that time


In the year 1639 was held the intermediary meeting in the convent
of St. Dominic in Manila, where besides the ordinary arrangements
some rules were enacted, although only a few. One of those rules was
much to the credit of holy Poverty: namely that no one could ask
permission to spend any money, even to the extent of a small sum,
unless he first declare the purpose of it to the superior. It was a
very happily conceived rule; for supposing that to each religious
is given whatever is religiously necessary for him in health and
in sickness, it is right and proper, if the alms of any mass come
into his hands--even though it be to give alms, or to aid religious
friends who are in other villages with some trifles, which they do
not possess--to tell it to the superior, and not to give any occasion
for Poverty to complain, even in slight matters.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

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