The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898; Volume 46, 1721-1739: 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 46, 1721-1739: 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
But one can immediately understand that teachers who taught without
any charge, who might be sacristans, and Indians who wished to study
voluntarily, were not fitting factors to attain the most praiseworthy
end which the legislator proposed to himself; and in fact it could not
have given the desired result since eighty-four years afterwards, law
v, título xiii, book i, was issued by Felipe IV, without indicating the
means, in Madrid, March 2, 1634, and repeated two years afterward, on
November 4, which reads as follows: "We ask and request the archbishops
and the bishops to provide and order the curas and missionaries of
the Indians in their dioceses, by the use of the mildest means,
to arrange and direct that all the Indians be taught the Spanish
language, and in that language the Christian doctrine, so that they
may become more capable of understanding the mysteries of our holy
Catholic faith and so that other advantages may be gained for their
salvation, and follow in their government and method of life." The
fulfilment of both laws [was] recorded by the royal decree of March 20,
1686, [82] and those laws were at the same time extended to Filipinas,
since the desire of the legislator was the same in both parts, namely,
"to consult upon what is the most efficacious means for destroying the
idolatries incurred at present by the majority of the Indians as was
true at the beginning of their conversion, etc.," as is said in the
above-mentioned royal decree. From that decree one infers a wholesome
instruction for Filipinas; but it is no wonder that the Filipinos
have not learned Castilian, and that they abandon their primitive
superstitions with difficulty, when the Americans of greater capacity
than they, with greater means, with a powerful and constant stream of
Christian civilization, carried by numerous missionaries, and a greater
European emigration, after two centuries did not know the Castilian
speech, and the majority were sunk in their idolatries, a thing which
does not occur with the masses of the Filipinos, although they are
not a little superstitious, a quality exhibited in more or less degree
by numerous peoples of Europa after so many centuries of illumination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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