Opening the text

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 52, 1841-1898: 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 52, 1841-1898: 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

Character and objects of this exposition. May the nation, government,
and your Excellency, pardon this slight extension of our sentiments of
dignity, offended as religious and as Spaniards. This is not a memorial
of merits and services, since we have never solicited applause or
recompense, which never constitute the lever of our labors. Neither is
it a panegyric, which we are not called upon to make, and which we do
not believe is wanting, since the history of the religious corporations
of Filipinas detaches itself so patiently and cleanly in all kinds
of just and upright progress. It contains some apologetic matter and
much of most sensible complaint because of the unjustifiable injuries
that almost daily are received by us. It is the weak expression of the
profound bitterness that seizes upon us at contemplating and viewing
from anear the condition of vast disturbance in which this beautiful
portion of the fatherland finds itself. With the utmost respect and
submission, laying aside absolutely whatever proceeds from political
parties and much more from private persons, it tells the government
with Christian simplicity and synthetically that it should adopt and
maintain a perfectly logical criterion with regard to the religious
corporations of Filipinas; and that, therefore, if it thinks, as is
just and decorous, that we, the religious corporations, exercise a
most lofty and necessary mission in the archipelago, honorable and
worthy of the greatest consideration, of its own accord and without
utilitarian considerations and false reasons of state, it so manifest
clearly and with nobility, making a beginning by giving a practical
example of that in its laws and decrees, and in its instructions to the
authorities of these islands, and that it do not allow us to be annoyed
or insulted; and so much the more since being weak and helpless,
and bound as we are by religious weakness and patience, we have no
other means of defense than our right and the protection of the good,
and we can never appeal to the means of repression and influence to
which we allude in the beginning of this expository statement.

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

Opening the text

History

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 52, 1841-1898: 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

Character and objects of this exposition. May the nation, government,
and your Excellency, pardon this slight extension of our sentiments of
dignity, offended as religious and as Spaniards. This is not a memorial
of merits and services, since we have never solicited applause or
recompense, which never constitute the lever of our labors. Neither is
it a panegyric, which we are not called upon to make, and which we do
not believe is wanting, since the history of the religious corporations
of Filipinas detaches itself so patiently and cleanly in all kinds
of just and upright progress. It contains some apologetic matter and
much of most sensible complaint because of the unjustifiable injuries
that almost daily are received by us. It is the weak expression of the
profound bitterness that seizes upon us at contemplating and viewing
from anear the condition of vast disturbance in which this beautiful
portion of the fatherland finds itself. With the utmost respect and
submission, laying aside absolutely whatever proceeds from political
parties and much more from private persons, it tells the government
with Christian simplicity and synthetically that it should adopt and
maintain a perfectly logical criterion with regard to the religious
corporations of Filipinas; and that, therefore, if it thinks, as is
just and decorous, that we, the religious corporations, exercise a
most lofty and necessary mission in the archipelago, honorable and
worthy of the greatest consideration, of its own accord and without
utilitarian considerations and false reasons of state, it so manifest
clearly and with nobility, making a beginning by giving a practical
example of that in its laws and decrees, and in its instructions to the
authorities of these islands, and that it do not allow us to be annoyed
or insulted; and so much the more since being weak and helpless,
and bound as we are by religious weakness and patience, we have no
other means of defense than our right and the protection of the good,
and we can never appeal to the means of repression and influence to
which we allude in the beginning of this expository statement.

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

No reviews yet