The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700: 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 41 of 55, 1691-1700: 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
70. Sailing along the same coast toward Cape Engaño one comes to the
bay of Casigùran, which has a circumference of twelve leguas. On its
shore is located the village of the same name. The third convent was
erected there and was given the title of our father St. Augustine. It
belongs also to the Tagálog language, the province of Tayàbas, and
the bishopric of Camarìnes. Two religious resided there generally,
and sometimes three, for they extended their administration to many
leguas of coast, and their zeal for the spread of the faith to the
extensive mountains near by, which being filled with Aètas, blacks,
and Calìngas heathen gave worthy although most toilsome occupation
to the messengers of the law of grace. From one extremity of the bay
of Casigùran, the point called San Ildephonso protrudes three leguas
seaward. At its head end the province of Tayàbas and the bishopric
of Camarìnes. Having doubled that point, and after one has navigated
ten or twelve leguas northward one comes to the village and district
of Palànan, which belongs to the bishopric and province of Cagayàn
or Nueva Segovia. The fourth convent is founded there, and bears
the title of Santa Maria Magdalena. And although all the religious
who could be assigned to that mission illumined it, considering
the lack of them from which this holy province usually suffers,
yet notwithstanding this, it could always be said that the harvest
was great and the laborers few. For besides the Christians already
reduced, the fathers had to contend with an innumerable number of
heathen who overran the neighboring mountains for a distance of more
than thirty leguas from the point of San Ildephonso to Cape Engaño.
71. I assert that I have several times heard from fathers Fray Valero
de San Salvador and Fray Silvestre de la Purificacion (who passed a
considerable portion of their well-employed lives in those missions,
and whom I knew in Manila, and who attained a venerable and exemplary
age) that from the admission of that territory by our province to
the year 1704, the multitude of infidels who were turned by the
preaching of our brothers from the unhappy liberty of paganism to
the mild yoke of the Catholic faith, was vast. For, notwithstanding
that there were three or four epidemics in all those villages in
the above-named period, which occasioned the death of an excessive
portion of the old Christians, the settlements were replaced by
those newly converted. Consequently, the lack was not observed, for
the same number of tributes were collected for the king during the
latter years as during the first. This same thing is attested by the
documents and depositions that I have before me, which designate the
Recollect religious who lived on the Contracosta with the character
of laborers in the living missions because of the many souls that
their apostolic zeal drew to the sheepfold of the Church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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