2.
PHILIPPINE NOVITIATE & THE MORO WARS
Garcia had
the vision to foresee that the Philippine vice-province could not adequately
supplied with men from Europe and America; it should as soon as practicable
draw at least a part of its membership from the Philippines itself. To do this, Garcia conceived the plan of
establishing a separate novitiate in Antipolo, but he ran into financial
difficulties and had to postpone his plan until 1606. Two years later, Captain Pedro de Britto and
his wife offered their huge estate in San Pedro Makati, a district near Manila,
for a novitiate. The offer was accepted
but the construction took so long that the novices were unable to occupy it
until 1622. Less than a decade later the
novices had to go back to the College of Manila because it was more economical
to support them in the College of Manila than in the separate community. The estate however remained obra pia under the auspices of the
Jesuits.
THE
PHILIPPINE JESUIT PROVINCE
In 1605, the
Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus was erected with Fr. Gregorio Lopez
as first provincial. It had a membership
of 67, distributed among 11 residences, namely, a college of secondary and higher
studies (the College of Manila), a residential college attached to it (the
College of San Jose), seven mission residences and two mission stations. Ten candidates, six for the priesthood and
four for the brotherhood, were undergoing their novitiate.
CURRICULUM AT
THE COLLEGE OF MANILA
The courses
at the College of Manila had been expanded and brought into conformity with the
Jesuit ratio studiorum or educational
code. They consisted of five years of
“grammar” (for which a year or two of primary schooling was prerequisite), and
a 2-year arts course leading to the degree of bachelor of arts, and a 4-year
theology course leading to the degree of licentiate in theology. “Grammar” of course meant the study of
languages and literature – Latin, Greek and Spanish. “Arts” meant philosophy and science. In 1603 there were 60 students in the grammar
class and 30 in the arts course. Of the
latter, about 20 were resident scholars of San Jose. There were eight theological students. Tuition was completely free as in all Jesuit
schools of the time. The San Jose
scholars paid for their board and lodging, but when the Figueroa endowment
became effective, a number of foundation scholarships were made available which
took care of even the board and lodging.
Subsequent donations by public-spirited citizens added to the number of
scholarships. A day school in which boys
were taught their first letters and prepared for entrance into the grammar
classes was attached to the college. We
have definite evidence of its existence in the early years of the 17th
century but we do not know exactly when it began.
THE VISAYAN
MISSIONS
The
principal difficulty encountered by the Jesuits in the Visayan missions was
that of persuading the people, whose way of life was based on shifting
agriculture, to abandon their dispersed clan villages and come together in
large, permanent towns where they could properly be instructed in the Chistian
faith and the arts of civilization. They
saw at once that mere compulsion was ineffective; for the change to be
permanent, the Visayans had to be made to realize the advantages and learn the
techniques of settled agriculture. While
this process, necessarily, slow was going on, the missionaies experimented with
several different ways of carrying on their work until they decided what they
considered to be most effective. This
was to form themselves into several groups (“task forces,” to borrow naval
terminology), each group consisting of 3 or 4 priests and 2 or 3 brothers,
based on a central residence. From this
residence they would go out in teams to visit the clan villages of their area
by turns, preaching, baptizing, administering the sacraments and providing
medical assistance. As soon as one team
returned to the residence, another set out, and so on throughout the year. Thus, until a settled parish life could be
evolved in which the people went to their priest, the priest went to the
people.
THE MORO
WARS
One big
obstacle to the formation of large settled communities in the Visayan islands
in the 17th century was the almost yearly expeditions made by the
Moros or Muslim Malays of Southern Philippines for the purpose of securing
slaves. The monopoly of the carrying trade of Southeast Asia established first
by the Portugese and then by the Dutch took away from seafaring communities
such as those from Maguindanau and Sulu archipelago their principal means of
livelihood. On the other hand the
increased demand for spices and other tropical products resulted in expanded
production and a call for plantation labor.
The Maguindanaus and Sulus were not slow to perceive that this fact
provided them with a highly profitable alternative to their former trading
activities. Their geographical location
placed them strategically between the slave markets of Indonesia and a vast
reservoir of human quarry, the unwarlike peoples of the Visayan islands.
With their swift, shallow-draft caracoas
or cruisers and their superlative seamanship they could steal upon an
unsuspecting seacoast village, fall upon it and be off with their captives and
booty before anyone had time to organize a defense. They started off with small hunting packs in the last years of the 16th century; but as the profits of the traffic came to be realized,
the raiding expeditions grew in size and scope until, in the latter half of the
17th century, predatory fleets of 30, 40 and more cruisers were
ranging as far north as Manila Bay itself.
The early
Spanish governors made several attempts to reduce the Moros to submission, but
without success. Rodriguez de Figueroa
the great benefactor of the Philippine Jesuits, perished leading one such
attempt. The government then resorted to
purely defensive measures. A fleet of
armed galleys was organized to patrol the interisland seas, but these heavy
vessels, built on the Venetian model, were too slow and lay too deep in the
water to be effective against the Moro cruiser.
The galley commanders themselves believed that the only way to stop the
raiders, short of carrying the war into their own country, was to establish a
base at the tip of the Zamboanga peninsula and thus control Basilan Straits;
for it was through these straits or past them that the Moros had perforce to
pass during the monsoon seasons in order to strike at the Visayas.
MINDANAO MISSIONS
The plan had
the full support of the Visayan Jesuits, whose missions were the hardest hit by
the raids. They had taken their own
measures of local defense, such as building watch towers, training and arming
militia, and fortifying their mission compounds to serve as citadels for the
flocks; but such measures were not always proof against surprise attacks. The government finally fell in with the plan
after repeated urging by Father Pedro
Gutierrez, the founder of the Jesuit Mission in Dapitan in northern
Mindanao. In 1635 the military and naval
base of Zamboanga was set up with an initial force of 300 Spanish and 1000
Visayan troops. Another Jesuit, Father
Melchor de Vera, designed and supervised the construction of the fort.
Soon
afterwards a new and vigorous governor, Don Sebastian Hortado de Corcuera,
decided to take the offensive. In 1637
he took Lamitan, the principal stronghold of the Magindanaus, by assault, and
two years later conquered and occupied Jolo, the capital of the Sulu sultanate. The Moros of the district around Lake Lanao,
faced with the simultaneous attack from north and south, submitted. In all these expeditions, Jesuits went as
chaplains to the troops and stayed to minister to the garrisons and to begin
the conversion of Moros.
It was
difficult and dangerous work. They had
the millennial tradition of hatred between Muslim and Christian to overcome,
besides the fact that the government with which they were necessarily
identified had come bringing not peace but a sword. They made sincere conversions chiefly among
the laboring classes and the slaves; the warrior class, if they accepted
Christianity at all, did so out of policy.
Yet even the most resolute Muslims among them could not altogether
withhold their friendship from such men as Father Alejandro Lopez, whose
absolute integrity and fair-dealing won their reluctant admiration. The Spanish government wisely chose Father
Lopez as its plenipoteniary to conduct the difficult negotiations leading to
the treaties of 1644 and 1645. Father
Lopez’s Peace, for we may justly call it that, lasted for a decade. It was broken in 1655; and when Father Lopez
went to Magindanau to piece it together again, they killed him. With him perished a fellow Jesuit, Father
Juan Montiel.
In 1663,
Governor Enrique de Lara took the hasty step of withdrawing all troops from
Mindanao, including the garrison in Zamboanga, in order to concentrate them in
Manila against the threat of Chinese warlord Koxinga (Cheng Ch’eng-kung). The attack did not materialize, but neither
was the Zamboanga station restored. It
was a serious blow to the Jesuit missions among the Moros, for at that time the
fathers had not won the confidence of the Moro rulers sufficiently to be able
to dispense with the support of the Spanish government.
Zamboanga
was not reoccupied until 1718. Once
again, the Moro missions were entrusted to the
Society. They made enough
progress to warrant the elevation of the Zamboanga residence to the status of a “college” – not in the
sense of a school, but of a central house which had dependent upon it a series
of mission stations extending southwards into the Sulu archipelago and
eastwards along the southern coast of Mindanao as far to Cotabato. In 1748, it even looked as though the Sultan
of Sulu, Alimud Din I, might become a Christian. The authorities whisked him to Manila and had
him instructed for baptism. He was
baptized, however, against the advice of the Jesuits who knew him best. Their cautiousness was confirmed by the
event, for the sultan soon belied his profession of Christianity. When the Spanish government put him under
arrest for treason, the Sulus mounted an offensive which was, in the judgment
of an expert, Fr. Thomas O’Shaughnessy S.J., “the most savage war in the
history of the archipelago.” The Visayan
settlements defended themselves heroically under the leadership of their Jesuit
and Recollect pastors. In northern
Mindanao, particularly, military honors were shared by the Recollect Fray
Agustin de San Pedro, surnamed El Padre
Capitan, and the Jesuit Francisco Duco, defender of Iligan. Strange honors for messengers of the gospel
of peace, but the times were desperate and demanded desperate measures.
