Contents:
Account of a Tour in Normandy, Volume 1 By: The Book of Ballads, edited by Bon Gaultier [pseud. Twenty Years of Hus'ling By: The Cavern of the Shining Ones By: Philosophy of Osteopathy By: A Modern Chronicle By: The Blue Pavilions By: The Rat Racket By: The White Feather Hex By: Fifty Years of Golf By: The Bars of Iron By: Il peccato di Loreta By: The Eve of the Revolution; a chronicle of the breach with England By: When I Grow Up By: Lost Man's Lane By: The following case study indicates that some played the Spaniards and the imperial structures very well indeed.
We do not have a complete record but the important points for our purposes are clear. The priest was removed, either by the Franciscans or by the government, in or in early In , the Spanish governor of Samar was informed by the Governor General of the colony that the priest was to be reinstated.
By July the priest was back. By August the gobernadorcillo, an assistant, and the pueblo clerk had fled. They took with them a cannon, its carriage, some balls and powder, and the lists of tribute payers. About a week and a half later they did. There were two major reasons the officials gave for their flight.
Since they were the major protagonists who had tried to oust the priest, they felt ashamed when he returned and they wanted to make the authorities reconsider. They feared that the priest might precipitate trouble for them. Secondly, fearing arrest for having opposed the priest, the subordinate pueblo officials refused to go to the provincial capital in another case. The gobernadorcillo feared that he would be arrested because the two refused to go to Catbalogan.
They explained that they had taken the weapons and the tribute lists because the gobernadorcillo was responsible for them and did not want to be blamed if they were lost or damaged during their absence. The three pueblo officials were reinstated by the provincial governor. Lowlanders wanted highland goods and enterprising traders from the lowlands would go to the highlands to get them, just as enterprising highlanders would travel to the lowlands to exchange goods.
Documentary records for the missions under Franciscan administration strongly suggests widespread, significant trade contacts between highlanders and lowlanders. These used to trade with Pungcan regularly, though enmity with that mission around had an adverse effect of the interchange for a while. The mestizos there usually advance payments in cloth against expected jerky ….
Other examples exist as well. They live where there are trees that give them fruit, their usual and constant food. Their house is a half shack [choza], in which they take refuge from storms. Their commerce are of [forest and other products] that they take to the pueblos and fields of the Christians, where they are exchanged for the goods they value, namely rice and tobacco.
Afterwards they return to the mountains rich and happy. When they have exhausted the fruit in one area they move to another …. This same manuscript f. They became irritated if one tried to speak of conversion or suggested that they visit with the missionary priest.
Some from Debimbinan who had been to the Yrraya territory said that it is a difficult trek and for those carrying loads it took nine days six without loads to get to the first of their settlements. It is striking in fact how distance and difficult terrain or tumultuous seas did little to prevent the movement of goods to and from Manila. Here is a description of Palanan from about , which mentions how isolated it was from effective Spanish administrative oversight due to distance and adverse sailing conditions. Yet Palanan and its nearby areas produced significant amounts of wax, some rice corn was more commonly consumed , and marine products.
The manuscript records shows that trade connections between highlander and lowlander was an important theme, probably in all areas of the Islands and throughout Philippine history. Also an important theme was the prevalence of conflict in the highlands. Some incidents seemed to have occurred between groups without involving residents in the missions. The conflict was marked by such hatred and brutal enmity, we are told, that no quarter was given to the Aeta, with each day murders and beheadings. A mission with 23 houses was reduced to three.
A writer in said that during the two years he was in the highlands Casignan and Pungcan he knew of deaths of Igorots at the hands of Ilongots; and in one year, he knew of 69 Ilongots killed by Igorots. Since they are naturally fearful, many of those already congregated have deserted the Missions and returned to the mountains. This same source discussed p. Threats and attacks against priests also occurred. Juan Silva o de la Concepcion, assassinated, Tigaon, 8 September Juan Beltran, assassinated, Tabueyon, 1 October Through an interpreter the Franciscan priest learned that residents in Baler had stolen rice and other items from one of their leaders.
They planned to take revenge by killing the thief. The Franciscan writer, P. Bernardo de Santa Rosa, observed that among the Ilongots, especially in a place called Dinariauan on the way north towards Baler, their leaders were not infrequently priests. If the leader demanded a head for magical services, the individual would have to get one. If someone fell ill, a head would be necessary, and so forth.
For these reasons the trip from Casiguran to Baler was dangerous. Other customs, most notably perhaps headhunting and other acts of warfare or revenge killing, seem to have been particularly intractable and common in certain highlander regions. We see a glimpse of the complexity of highlander life and motivations in another example. He was taken to their settlements, and described them as pueblos a significant word choice , with well-proportioned and well-made houses, surrounded by extensive fields producing good yields.
Subsequently the Franciscans tried to staff these areas with one priest for the Yzalines and one for the Ylongotes, but shortages of clerical personnel short circuited that initiative. It is reasonable to suggest that such successful adaptation to the environment occurred elsewhere as well. We also can see that for some, perhaps many, of the highlanders exposure to Christianity and acceptance of baptism was attractive. Residence in and around the missions and Spanish pueblos apparently was not.
We also saw that highland settlements were not isolated enclaves, with significant movement of individuals to and from, settlements, and fields under cultivation. Trade with the lowlands seems to have been common, suggesting that reports of constant danger and warfare from and among highlander groups were at the very least exaggerated. What is clear, again, is that Filipinos are the central actors within that history. Violence by Spaniards was both systemic as well as ad hoc and individualized.
Systemic Violence against Filipinos The systemic abuses centered on Filipinos supporting the foreigners who ruled them through labor, productions, and payments. Secondly, forced labor polos: And, finally, forced purchases or cash repartimientos Bandalas: Of this precedent many of the alcaldes-mayor avail themselves for [their own] advancement, to judge by their unrighteous profits, with lamentable injury to the poor, which is general and well known in the provinces. And then in a short time, re-selling the items to the same Indios when there is a scarcity, but now at an exorbitant price.
The fact that the descriptions and concerns appear repeatedly in codes of conduct and royal pronouncements from the seventeenth well into the nineteenth centuries suggests that the problems and practices were endemic and pervasive. Another type of violence inflicted on Filipinos by the colonizers was the common practices of whipping and slaps. We know from a variety of evidence that slaps and whippings were common forms of correction and punishment throughout the Spanish imperial empire.
There is little material regarding slapping, there is more on the use of the lash. This may have been because a slap would be more spontaneous and in most cases not part of a mandated punishment. I found one example of a slap and have assumed that others occurred and were not noted in manuscripts. This example is from a letter but the incident dates from the late nineteenth century in Baler ca.
None of the Filipinos reacted nor did the gobernadorcillo complain. The priest in question was about 26 years old, the Filipino official was in his 40s. Apparently it was applied by missionaries throughout the Spanish colonial empire and was usual practice in other contexts as well. For instance, in colonial California, P. Guest notes that whipping played a significant role in Spanish culture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It was part of the domestic, social, and religious life of the people.
Children were whipped at home and in the schools. Criminals were flogged in prisons. Servants were beaten by their masters. Indian house boys and ranch hands in Mexican California were whipped by their employers much as they had been by the padres at the missions. Among clergy, religious, and lay people self-flagellation was practiced by the devout for religious reasons. Inclusion of self-flagellation in this quotation is disingenuous. We are talking not about suffering that was voluntarily chosen for religious reasons by pious believers.
Rather, we are discussing punishments inflicted by others against the wishes of those being whipped. Whipping or other punishments directed at upper class Filipinos also occurred, however, and in some cases seem to have prompted significant retaliation against the priests. One of the methods used was to try to pretend that the punishment came from another Filipino, probably a transparent stratagem. In the Philippines, for whippings decreed by parish priests for infractions, Filipinos were lashed usually by a Filipino church official, not by the priest personally.
The job of this fiscal is to disinterestedly and in truth to punish those indios in the pueblo who have been denounced and admonished by the priest for their sins. Twenty-five lashes were standard but twelve may have been more common. We do know that whipping was a well- established punishment in the colonial Philippines, at least in theory, until perhaps the early nineteenth century. Because of this they miss many days of fiesta, [fail] to attend Mass and [to learn and expound] the Doctrina Christiana. All were subject to the penalty, no matter social rank or tax category, using both the pre- Conquest and the Spanish colonial terms for social rank: There will be no distinction made between Chinese or mestizos, the principales and Maguinoos and the timagues and common folk, with punishment for non-compliance for the first time 25 lashes in the pillory … Moral infractions are also proscribed and under certain circumstances even women were to receive the lash: In addition the gobernadorcillo, subject to penalty as before, is not to permit in this pueblo gambling, nor drunkenness, nor the sale of alcohol … Nor is he to permit in this pueblo illicit friendships, punishing the woman the first time by putting her in an honorable house where she is to work for a month for her sustenance … [Second and third offenses lead to greater penalties, with the third case leading to loss of hair for both [the man and the woman], one hundred lashes to the man and fifteen to the woman, and exile from the pueblo for scandalous behavior.
Franciscans too could be stern in their expectations, if not as severe in their punishments, as seen in this source, which speaks to closing the church doors after parishioners have gathered for the obligatory Mass and lays out punishment for unexcused absence: Priest must be extra careful to close the door of the church in order to check on attendance at Mass. The [fiscal] celador will then verify if the absence is due to illness, and if not the person will be brought to the priest.
If after two such occasions with remonstrances by the priest the person fails to attend Mass one more time, that person will be punished with a dozen azotes. These lashes are to be administered on the person at the door of the church or … rectory …. Attendance at Mass is mandatory except for those … who alternate with others to guard their homes … Saturdays and Sundays the young girls and [young men] must be in church saying their prayers and reciting the Doctrina Christiana.
At Mass they will each in turn recite the rosary. It is both the doctor and the wise teacher when used frequently to help keep us on the correct road. I gave only six lashes to an indio houseboy who had failed to come to Mass on festive days, and that was sufficient because he came every day thereafter. I therefore charge you to correct your practice as regulated and set forth in the Constitutions. Only in this way can a good priest cultivate a good harvest in the pueblo. Undoubtedly the prevailing culture of pedagogical punishment played a role.
Other factors might have been the psychology of the priest, the colonial context, and the behavior and manner of the Filipino. One Franciscan in was clear that he wanted less freedom for the Filipino and more punishment, but that he was not advocating punishment at any time and without cause. The priests in the Visayas anticipated trouble and tried in vain to get Governor-General Diego Fajardo to rescind his order.
One center for Bisayan resentment and resistance was Palapag, the headquarters of the Jesuit northern Samar mission area and an important port in the galleon trade. Three Filipinos were the leaders of the resistance in Palapag. The most important of the three was Sumoroy. His father apparently was an important man in the pueblo, a Babaylan or priest of the pre-conquest religion.
Sumoroy himself was in charge of the fortress and its guard, was a skilled pilot and seaman, and was a result of ancestry and skills apparently numbered among the principales. Sumoroy had recently been reprimanded by the Jesuit parish priest for his love affair with a woman other than his wife. The priest had even moved the woman to another village in order to separate them. Sumoroy decided to kill the priest. As head of the armed guard, Sumoroy regularly reported to the priest in the evening.
On the 1st of June , he killed the Jesuit priest with a lance after entering the parish house on the pretext of making that report. The other Jesuits were not harmed. Two days later Sumoroy and his men evicted the Jesuits and proceeded to sack, burn, and profane the church and parish house.
The priest went on to mention that he had received word that there was heavy drinking and partying going on with the card games in some of the more remote parts of the pueblo. Some of these barrios are one, two, three or more leguas5 away … Since this pueblo is coterminous with the two provinces of Tayabas and Batangas, between which cross the majority of the indios [here] visiting family members or being engaged in small daily commerce—and on a smaller scale this occurs as well with movement to other pueblos and provinces farther away, including the capital … Thus it is that the indio who lives here today will tomorrow usually be living in the Camarines, in Manila, or in Bulacan ff. Sumoroy had recently been reprimanded by the Jesuit parish priest for his love affair with a woman other than his wife. Catarman sent rice to Albay and a variety of other products as well as tejidos de guinaras to Manila. On the 29th of May the Franciscan Provincial wrote a long and frank letter to a Franciscan colleague in Spain where he mentions that many Spaniards and their families fled from Manila and took refuge in Franciscan rectories in Laguna and in Tayabas. When Father Francisco saw that he could get no help from his companions in reaching out, he slipped away and went looking on his own. Filipino pueblo officials were expected to facilitate the collection of tribute, commodities, and labor for the Crown—and, in return, they were exempted from same.
The rebels then fled inland to a plateau which offered easy and secure defense. Other pueblos on the north coast of Samar joined in the rebellion, along with other and smaller outbreaks in Leyte, Albay, the Camarines, Sorsogon, Masbate, Cebu, and north and east Mindanao. Not all Filipinos supported the rebellion. The rebels continued to fortify their redoubt on the plateau but took time to return to Palapag once to burn the new church and kill the Jesuit priest officiating there.
The Spanish were caught by surprise and stretched thin. Only in were troops mustered and in July a successful assault was made and the rebel base captured. Juan Ponce was pardoned but later executed for subsequent crimes. Pedro Caamug had been among the first to surrender, received a pardon, and later became the gobernadorcillo of Palapag. Not every Franciscan faced conflict, but some of those who did recounted gripping incidents.
The third was after sending a man to Catbalogan with eight pesos and the church register: He used the money to get drunk and broke the book. He returned to Borongan intent upon killing me so I would not learn of his having spent the money and his other disgraces.
I sent datus to whip him for wanting to hear Mass, and he drew his knife to kill me. Another Franciscan in Borong was almost burned alive in July of when a fire burned down the parish house where he was sleeping, the church, and some houses. In addition, two days before the fire, the priest had publicly reprimanded this man for being very drunk and for using offensive language. Moreover, the cabeza and his followers had disappeared after the fire. I wish to focus on lesser-known examples of Filipino valor and violence in defense of the Spanish colony.
Before the walls were breached, Filipinos, particularly troops from Pampanga, suffered significant losses and finally withdrew, we are told, in disgust and anger at Spanish failures of leadership and valor. Along the way he met some patrols of Filipinos who also were fleeing the city. He was found guilty, denied the right of Confession, and killed.
Two others were killed and a woman was wounded. The lives of the two small children of the governor were threatened. On the 29th of May the Franciscan Provincial wrote a long and frank letter to a Franciscan colleague in Spain where he mentions that many Spaniards and their families fled from Manila and took refuge in Franciscan rectories in Laguna and in Tayabas. Before the fall of Manila to the British, Archbishop Rojo acting as Governor General sent Treasury funds to Laguna to prevent them from falling into the hands of the British.
The Archbishop, working with the British at this time, remembered the , pesos he had sent to Laguna and sent two representatives to bring it back in order to deliver it to the British. The envoys sent by the Archbishop were inside. The priests approached them and explained that the Filipinos would not leave until they were assured that the funds would not go back to Manila, would not go to the British. As they were discussing this, the Filipinos were getting louder and edging closer. The Franciscans took a hard stand and the envoys backed down, leaving the Treasury funds. Rebellion seems to have been directly caused by Spanish actions against the pilgrimage.
He was charged with promising miraculous cures in September and october of , attracting large crowds, and profiting from presents of money and goods given to him. Soon others were arrested for gathering to await a ship from a foreign country with a king to free them from the Spanish. They planned to move on to Tarangnan to pray to its patron saint, Saint Francis of Assisi; and then on to the barrio of Tinambacan to pray at its site to Saint Vicente Ferrer. People were coming from all over Samar to join the pilgrimage.
The Spanish governor of Samar, Enrique Chacon, reacted quickly, leaving from Catbalogan for Bonga on March 5th, and ended up arresting persons. The most common story told from the interrogations of the prisoners was that … the islands on which they lived were going to sink, the world was going to end. To evade this first cataclysm, they moved to the visita of Bonga where each paid one-half real to register and expenses of the cult organization. By the second half of March reports began to come in that Lucreo and armed men were gathering near Bonga, who planned to come to Catbalogan to free their companions.
Lucreo was said to be preaching that a great city would appear at Bonga which then would become a center where ancient customs would rule and a Bisayan king would reign. By the end of March Chacon had received reinforcements from Cebu and moved April 2 to confront what were now some 1, men drawn up on the beach in battle formation.
The clash was anticlimatic. The Filipino leaders died immediately, with the total of dead Filipinos numbering thirteen, with twenty-three wounded and nienty-five captured. Seventy-nine machetes, lances, and knives were confiscated.
Chacon was later criticized by his direct superior for both exaggerating the threat as well as somewhat contradictorily not acting more forcefully and sooner to take care of it. Even the parish priests were criticized for not having known of and dissuaded the pilgrimages and false beliefs. For our purposes, what is significant that Filipinos developed passionate beliefs within and beside the official religious orthodoxy, organized and traveled to sites to show devotion, and mobilized for violent defense against imperial forces when their beliefs, leaders, and movement were threatened by the Spanish.
Spanish response was active, with arrests and conflicts encountered in November near Pinabacdao, in October near Lanang and another near Calbayog, and more at the end of year near las Navas and others near San Sebastian. At times they responded with ideological and armed resistance to foreign attempts to rule them. One of the more persistent threats and extended series of conflicts was with the Malay marauders from the independent, southern portions of the archipelago, the Moros.
Paranas was devasted for two years in a row. Jim Warren has been the key historian to explain and describe the reasons, patterns, and effects in Sulu and western Mindanao of these raids. Its inhabitants were resettled by the colonial authorities to the village of Cabibihan. In November , the Moros attacked and destroyed Cabibihan, dispersing once more the hapless Cabibihan … inhabitants.
A more general observation with a direct, economic linkage, comes from Other effects of these Moro raids should be stressed: These are self-evident and only alluded to in the Franciscan manuscripts—e. In , a flotilla armadilla from Samar fought against Moro boats in September with success.
Moros from their own potentates in the southern regions of the archipelago were clearly not under Spanish dominion. Some Moros, though, were Filipinos in the sense I use, most commonly those who were born in the Spanish colony. Most of these would be those subsequently captured by Moro raiders, carried off to Moro polities, and subsequently joining Moro raids as slaves or paddlers, warriors or guides, for future attacks on their home regions. One source says that Moros had established a base in Burias and lived there year around. Filipinos, I am told, felt and feel passionately about their pueblo patron saints as well as about the titular saints and venerated images linked to their local church.
The expenses of such a fiesta were relatively speaking large, the popular participation tended to be passionate, and the draw and prestige of the celebration were of great importance. This was organized and directed by the church fiscal. In some pueblos decorated streets and houses were also part of the expected backdrop to the procession s and the general festivities.
The ceremonies during and after the Mass incorporated major Filipino and community participation. Then came a procession into the church organized strictly by rank with Filipinos at the head—the Fiscal mayor, the gobernadorcillo, and two other principales , followed by twelve young dancing girls las dalaguillas from the community, and so forth Balquiedra, While not the official patron saint, they also evoked similar patterns of activity, passion and devotion. These usually did not involve quite the detail and expense, since these were not subsidized through compulsory contributions, presumably based entirely on voluntary donations.
They might eliminate the theatrical presentations and cut back on the fireworks, and of course not include the procession with the Blessed Sacrament nor the Solemn Sung First Vespers Balquiedra, Attention to personal dress, presentations of fireworks, and cockfights would occur as well. Major fiestas would attract visitors from other pueblos, sometimes coming as a regular expression of piety.
Fiestas today, I am told, continue today to be the most visible manifestation of Filipino spirituality and good cheer. There was manifold participation by a spectrum of Filipinos, from church officials fiscal mayor or celador; Mayordomo de la iglesia, Sacristan mayor, fiscales menores or fiscalillos, cantor, organist , boys and girls as singers and dancers, pueblo officials and leading citizens the gobernadorcillo, Mayordomo de comunidad, and principales , and other Filipino adult women and men. The picture sketched seems so far to be reliable, but it is an ideal projection of a pueblo population gleefully and actively participating in church-sanctioned events as the center of their preoccupations and actions.
Not every day was a fiesta. With the Sunday Mass came mandated ceremonies and spiritual guidance. The pattern of the major Sunday Mass there was an earlier one as well, for those with obligations to tend the sick or children or protect the pueblo from fires and robbers began with the bells, summoning the parishioners to the church about 9 a. And so we come to the end of the day, marked by the Angelus and other routines Balquiedra, Such was the pattern for Sundays, with of course more detail and ritual on more special Sundays and less on the more routine holy days.
Without Filipinos we would have merely a building and a priest, unless he too were Filipino few Franciscans were Within the Church hierarchy, after the priest the importance and authority of the fiscal was supreme, followed by the sacristans, the maestro cantor and boy singers and acolytes, and so forth.
The fiscals, as we saw earlier, were responsible for the decorum of the audience who were to witness what was believed to be the divine miracle through the Mass. This must have been a position of remarkable importance and trust. Filipinos were active in ceremonies celebrating their faith, their church, and their pueblo.
Filipinos also celebrated in ways the priests and church rules decried. Representatives of the Roman Catholic church were unable to eradicate what they viewed as vices and occasions for sin. In Samar, the Jesuit Father Ignacio de Alcina observed that rancor and alcohol made a dangerous combination: This he would ordinarily not dare to do if he were in his right mind … For sometimes an Indio gets himself drunk so that with greater courage and less fear he can do something he would not know how or dare to do if he had all his faculties. Censorious judgments against drinking and gambling are found regularly in Franciscan reports.
Here are characteristic examples, taken from a Franciscan writing from Polo in May , criticizing habitual or excessive card playing: This last week there came to me a woman, crying, hungry and with a babe at her breast, asking for separation from her husband. He not only gambles every morning and afternoon …, but comes home angry from the game and beats her for not having food on the table. The father had lost two water buffalo, his land, rice, more than fifty pesos, and everything else that they had in the house.
The wife and children had nothing to eat. The priest went on to mention that he had received word that there was heavy drinking and partying going on with the card games in some of the more remote parts of the pueblo. Notwithstanding clerical concerns, gambling and drinking seem to have continued. Of course all was done by keeping the sites and activity hidden from the priest. They have a lot of carabao but their major commercial activity is to sell resin or pitch to boats from Capis, Iloilo, and Antiqui for the rice they need. They also use resin to pay their tribute.
Some couples formalized their unions in the church, though Norman Owen has found that proportions of women who never married officially at least could be significant: A significant proportion of women—5 to 10 percent in Nagcarlan, 15 to 25 percent in Tigaon—apparently never married at all, which suggests a society in which formal marriage, though normative, was not socially mandatory.
However, if there were a formal marriage, one source suggests that the parents of the young women arranged the marriages and would even resort to force to have their wishes obeyed by their daughters: Parents are accustomed to arrange marriages without the daughter knowing beforehand, from which stem not unimportant difficulties. Many times, perhaps most of the time, the parents give their okay to a marriage without consulting at all with their daughters to see if they are in favor of the groom. In other cases, the daughters have been in secret contact with one while their parents are arranging for a different groom.
The parents receive presents and labor in the home or in the field from the man they have chosen and the daughter … through fear of her parents does not dare to contradict their choice. Notwithstanding clerical concerns, the practices that diverged from Roman Catholic norms seem to have continued. The priests were against this because of the opportunity for pre-marital sexual intercourse by the engaged couple. The late eighteenth-century source by P.
Francisco Antonio Maceyra that we have used before describes the practice and the moral dangers he and other priests anticipated: If in time the young man displeases his future in-laws, they can easily dismiss him without paying him a thing for all of the work, leaving the door open then for a new candidate, with the same risks brought as with the predecessor. Priestly opposition notwithstanding, the practice seems to have been widespread and Filipinos continued to successfully resist persistent ecclesiastical efforts to eradicate it.
Many Filipinos appeared not to follow the teachings, expectations, and strictures of the imperial priests regarding religious beliefs and practices. For the sacraments in general, one Franciscan reported in that Filipino non-compliance was widespread. However, he himself noted that he had baptized children of two or three months of age ff. A study of parish records in Nagcarlan reports that the mean number of days between [birth and baptism] ranged from three to five for all the records examined. For those years [sampled], five to 33 percent of the infants of Nagcarlan [were] baptized within the first two days of birth, and between 67 and 90 percent [were] baptized within the first week of birth.
The trend was towards a shorter lapse between birth and baptism as the century wore on.
The same writer, P. Even those who went to Confession once a year were not always forthcoming in the confessional ff. It is certain that the sins of the Yndio are common knowledge to the Yndio while hidden from the magistrates who can punish them. It is true that the Yndio does not hide the commission of his fault from [another] Yndio, but he hides it from the parish priest who can correct him. It would be too much to hope that the officials of justice, not even the zelador of the pueblo, would report him, since they are all of the same sort and belong to a strict brotherhood [promising to] cover things up among themselves.
It is because of this that many bad things done by Yndios are hidden. I do not deny that the Yndio makes confession, though many do not, at least annually. They confess to the small and the great disobediences, to the reprimands and words of the devil … but they omit to mention adultery, incest, obscenities, and rash acts … the sins of the flesh, the harmful and vain observances, superstitions, and usury.
These they do not regard as great sins but rather as custom of the land from olden times, known to all and practiced by most. This statement and statements in other reports mention complicity of Filipinos in concealing those subject to recrimination or punishment by the priest. One should add the caveats, of course, that popular fervor might change from time to time; that priests differed in health and the physical ability to trek throughout the municipality, and population and settlement density might have changed, but overall we can be confident that Filipinos made decisions that did not always coincide with the expectations and strictures expressed by the Spanish imperial church and state.
One provocative set of figures, drawn I assume from both Franciscan and Secular diocesan parishes, apparently tried to measure Filipino performance of their annual confession against the number obligated to do so. We see here that about one out of every four individuals obligated by age and faith failed to make their annual confession, an obligation imposed by both king and their god, by both majesties. About twenty percent of those not taking communion apparently tried to do so but were disqualified due to ignorance of essential components of the Doctrina Christiana 19, out of 96, , about five percent of the total population.
The others were ill or absent or …, a remakable commentary on the inefficacy of priestly both Franciscan and Secular admonitions and alleged control. An overall average of Filipinos made choices, as we have just seen. Their remarkable range of decisions and actions are particularly evident in descriptions regarding attendance at Mass. How common was it that Filipinos regularly skipped Mass in spite of Franciscan efforts to compel or encourage it?
Here is a condensed summary from the Camarines and Albay in the early s, showing a mixed pattern of Filipino choices: Wickedness is common here. Milaor, three visitas and two sitios, whose populations is very dispersed but with good attendance at Mass and fiestas Minalabag, two visitas, one of which one hour away has residents who seldom hear Mass and are characterized as dissolute and depraved folks [Sus havitantes oyen Missa mui pocos … Libertinaje, y Vicios …]. One visita, two hours away, is notable for its wickedness and drunkenness, and one visita is particularly notable for its dispersed population.
Polangui, with five visitas. Quipayo has residents who are notable for hearing Mass only once a year, even less taking annual Confession or communion. Seventeen pueblos are listed here—I only noted the ones which gave some data regarding church participation. Six had good adherence to church expectations, two were okay or mixed, and nine pueblos had visita populations who were seen as poorly attending to expectations and behaviors.
Certainly the closer you were to the church the easier it would be to attend for Mass and other obligations regardless of weather, but disinclination to do so seemed to have been more important: Ideological reasons need also to be considered. Full-fledged alternative as well as Filipinized forms of Christianity show themselves again and again. Filipino creativity combining Christianity with indigenous beliefs and charismatic leaders are well known in the literature, from Apolinario de la Cruz well into the twentieth century. After forty minutes they arrived at the sitio of Mambuhan. The first thing that caught my attention was the ridge about one hundred brazas long and twelve in width, perfectly leveled and clean except for tall and leafy trees surrounding it as a protection from the sun.
They found on the walls drops of wax and shells that might have been used for candles. This appeared to the site called the Puerta de Jerusalem and the Jordan River where [believers] went to purify themselves. Higher up was a great rock with a cave inside called San Isidro, again with traces of candles. In fact I believe that no one knows what is the object of this cult. It is carried from one to another, passed from parents to children, and the custom is to hold some sites sacred ….
The site would appear to have been used by a popular form of Christianity. His informants apparently gave him the names of the river and the cult center. It appears to have been a site that attracted many people from a wide area. Many even came from Manila, with popular participation particularly marked during the Easter season.
The practice of Communion was neglected, usually only done according to this source on required days f. Another source suggests that customs after death also departed from strictly orthodox Spanish Catholic practice: While the work itself is good, it is one that has bad consequences, not only in impoverishing the surviving spouse … who has to feed them all … but also because both sexes and of all ages are together at night but [not in the practice] of our holy faith. The Indios have adopted the Chinese view that the soul of the deceased comes on the third day after death to visit the family members … For this reason it is convenient to order … that if they wish to continue such a pious act of prayer [for the deceased] that they do it in the church after Mass.
There were other beliefs and practices that Filipinos practiced that diverged from Roman Catholic orthodoxy. For instance, Filipinos are reported to have had strong beliefs in the Tigbalang, the Tamboli, the Osvang [aswang], the Patianac, the Sava, the Naanayo, the Tavac, Mutya, amulets, and the Nono.
And since some of the naturales performed maganittos or superstitious rites, they were rigorously punished, in public, both as a punishment and as an example to others. Domingo de San Lorenzo had a body in Malinao disinterred when he learned that it had been buried with … some superstitious [artifacts]. Alonzo de Zafra, former Provincial, Punished the Maestra of the girls in the pueblo and her assistants for [complicity in the practice of some] superstitious rite.
While Franciscans seem to have regularly decried certain practices, particularly when combined with neglect of the core sacraments and practices of the orthodoxy, the practices generally were perpetuated through time and space to become in some form part and parcel of Philippine religion, then and now. We have seen as well that they were active in other arenas as well, pursuing their own interests and activities. The patterns diverging from Spanish strictures that I have tracked are not simply individual and idiosyncratic. They seem to have been widespread among many ostensibly colonized Filipinos.
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