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
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
There were many wild and barbarous people in the mountains of Bacoag
and Bolor, who lived by theft and murder. Many efforts had been
made to reach those Indians in order to reduce and punish them, but
all failed. They were ruled by an Indian named Salimbong, a man of
considerable wisdom, prudence, and understanding, who kept them very
well in hand. The insurrection occurred, and while the ministers of
the gospel were wandering about abandoned and afflicted, God consoled
them with the conversion of that Indian. It happened as follows:
the father teacher, father Fray Lorenço de San Facundo--freed now,
as above related, from his prison--left Bacoag in order to bury
the dead, and get together the possessions that had remained in the
convent. On the following day when the father reached the convent,
the Indian Salimbong appeared to him with one hundred companions,
and said that he was disabused of his errors and wished to become a
Christian. The religious, who knew his good understanding and wisdom,
was surprised. He asked him many different questions in order to prove
his spirit. He found Salimbong ready, and baptized him and all his
men. That conversion was cried far and wide and was of great use in
the pacification of many villages, which with the protection of that
Indian will furnish much room for further work.
[On June 22, 1632, a report is made before the archbishop ad interim,
Pedro de Arce, of the murders of the Recollect missionaries, and
their other trials. Two authorized copies are made of the report
"one of which was presented to the royal Council of the Indias in
the year 1635, and the other is preserved in the archives of the
congregation of our convent at Madrid."]
[The following section (vii) is an account of the life and death of the
first vicar-general of the order, Geronimo de la Resurreccion. Chapter
second is concerned with the order in Japan and the martyrdoms of
some of the workers there. In section ii occurs the following:]
The blessed father Fray Francisco [de Jesus] was not satisfied with
giving spiritual life to those whom he was converting and baptizing [in
Japon], but he also gave them the girdle of our father St. Augustine,
making them confriars and religious of the fourth order (as the
confriars of the said girdle are), [18] so that enlisted under the
banner of so great a captain and doctor they might be armed to fight
and to suffer even to the point of giving their lives to the Lord who
gave them rebirth in baptism. And from this circumstance it happened
that the blessed father could write from the prison of Bomurà in a
letter to the father provincial of Filipinas under date of October
six, 1630, that more than three hundred confriars of the girdle had
suffered, besides many others whom the Observantine fathers have.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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