3. TAGALOG AND THE VISAYAN MISSIONS
Yet, although raiding Moros remained an ever-present peril,
the Visayan missions made considerable progress during the 17th
century. The massive mission churches of
Bohol, Leyte and Samar, many of which still stand, though they only now are
beginning to be appreciated as particularly splendid examples of Philippine
colonial architecture, prove that in the latter part of the 17th
century when they were built, the Jesuit missionaries had largely succeeded in
transforming the semi-nomadic tribes they had found upon arrival into a settled
Christian population. Among the
Tagalogs, they added to their original mission of Taytay-Antipolo the towns of
Silang, Indang and Maragondong, in the present province of Cavite, besides
accepting the chaplaincy of the troops and shipyard workers in the great naval
base of Cavite proper. They also took
charge of the island of Marinduque, off the southern coast of Luzon, and
mission stations along the east coast of Mindoro.
NON-SPANISH JESUITS
This, in spite of the fact that the supply of men from the
Spanish provinces of the Society was thinning down to a trickle. The noble Spanish nation, exhausted by its
magnificent effort to provide missionaries for half of the world, could do no
more. Fr. General Oliva sent out a call
for volunteers for the Philippines to the rest of the Society, and the
provinces of northern and central Europe rose to the challenge. It is not generally known that the Philippine
Province of the late 17th and early 18th centuries,
though still largely Spanish in composition, had a generous admixture of
Jesuits of other nationalities. The
reason is chiefly because these Belgian, Italian, German and Czech Jesuits sank
their individuality in the common cause to the extent of adopting not only the
Spanish language and Spanish ways, but even Spanish names. Who, without access to the catalogues
preserved in Jesuit archives, would suspect that Father Pable Clain, for
instance, was really Paul Klein of Bohemia, or Father Ignacio de Monte was
really Walther Sonnenberg of Switzerland, or Juan de Pedrosa was really Adolf
Steinhauser of Austria?
THE GUAM MISSION
With these reinforcements, the Philippine Jesuit Province
felt sufficiently strengthened to undertake a foreign mission of its own. In 1668, Fr. Diego Luis de Sanvictores and a
small band of companions founded the mission of Guam. The Guamanians did not at first take kindly
to their ministrations, killing several of them and their successors. Among the most illustrious of these martyrs
was the founder of the mission himself, who gave his life for Christ in 1672. The resulting drain on the personnel of the
province stopped further expansion of the time being, even within the
Philippines. It was resumed early in the
18th century with the establishment of a chain of mission stations
in the western half of Negros island, the reactivation of the Moro missions referred
to above, and the discovery, exploration and evangelization of the Palaus,
where two Belgian members of the province, Fathers Jacques Duberon and Joseph
Cortil, were martyred in 1711 or 1712.
HIGHER EDUCATION IN MANILA
Meanwhile the College of Manila and the affiliated College of
San Jose made slow but steady progress through the 17th
century. The former, although not a
university in the strict sense, granted university degrees in philosophy and
theology by virtue of the privileges conferred by the Holy See on colleges of
the Society of Jesus. Its right to do so
was challenged in 1648 but was confirmed by the Council of the Indies in 1652. In 1733, Philip V of Spain founded two regius
professorships in the college, one of canon and another of civil law. Starting from that date the institution is
frequently referred to in contemporary documents as the University of San
Ignacio. In 1750 Governor Ovando founded
a chair of mathematics, a discipline which at that time embraced certain applied
sciences such as navigation and military engineering.
The institution made important contributions to original
research in the fields of moral theology, botany, linguistics, history and
geography. In the early part of the 17th
century Father Juan de Ribera and Diego de Bobadilla were often consulted by
the government as well as the clergy and private persons regarding moral
problems arising from the often unprecedented conditions of European rule in an
Asian country.
PUBLICATIONS
From the printing press attached to the college issued many
grammars, lexicons and works in the native languages written by the Jesuit
professors or by Jesuit missionaries of long experience. A Czech botanist/pharmacist of the college in
the late 17th century, Brother Georg Kamel, corresponded with the
Royal Society of London and received a gorgeous if largely unperceived
immortality through the great Linneous naming a flower after him – the
Camellia.
In 1663,Francisco Colin published his Labor evangelica, a history of the Jesuit Missions in the
Philippines to 1616. Four years later
Francisco Combes came out with a history Mindanao and Sulu. And in 1749 Murillo Velarde brought Colin’s
narrative down to 1716. But
this author, for many years professor of canon law in the College of Manila, is
perhaps better known abroad for his canonical treatises which ran through
several editions in Mexico and the Europe after their first publication in the
Philippines, and above all for his famous map of the Philippines (1734),
beautifully engraved by the master printer of the college press, the Filipino
Nicolas de la Cruz Pagay. In the 1970’s
Juan Jose Delgado composed a Historia
General sacro-profana, politica y natural de las islas del poniente Ilamadas
Fiipinas. It was in short an
encyclopedia of the Philippines, and a good one, but which unfortunately
remained in manuscript until 1892.
TRAINING OF THE CLERGY
Although the residential College of San Jose was not founded
exclusively or even explicitly as a seminary for priests, it obviously lent
itself to this purpose. Many of the
scholarships founded in the institution in the 17th and 18th
centuries were burses for the training of secular priests. The college remained a small one by modern
standards. The highest recorded
enrollment is 49 in 1753. From its foundation to 1768, when the Jesuits
ceased to administer it, an estimated 992 passed through its halls. Among the alumni when it has been possible to
identify are one archbishop, eight bishops, 40 secular priests, 11
Augustinians, 11 Augustinian Recollects, three Dominicans, eight Franciscans,
46 Jesuits and 93 laymen.
SPIRITUAL MINISTRIES
The church built by Sedeño was so badly damaged by successive
earthquakes that it had to be replaced. Work
on the new church began in 1626 under the direction of an Italian Jesuit,
Father Gianantoni Campioni. It was
completed in 1632, a fine example of baroque architecture, with a cruciform
ground plan, an octagonal dome, and two towers on the façade, one a bell tower
and the other a clock tower. From the
very beginning the college fathers sought to make it the church of the
Filipinos and other non-Europeans who resided in the walled city either as
domestic servants, artisans or shopkeepers.
Sermons and instructions were given not only in Spanish but in Tagalog,
and a Sodality for Tagalogs was organized as well as one for Negroes (which
included Indians, victims of the slave trade).
Outside the walled city, the Jesuits had charge of the
Chinese parish of Santa Cruz and the Japanese parish of San Miguel. Closed retreats for laymen were conducted
both in the Manila college itself and in the San Pedro Makati residence, which
was used as a villa and house of retreats after the removal of the
novices. Closed retreats for women were
conducted in the house of a religious community which came to be known as the Beatas de la Compañia de Jesus, but
whose official title today is the Religious of the Virgin Mary. This, the first religious congregation of
women to be organized in the Philippines, was founded in 1684 by a
Chinese-Filipino mestiza of Binondo,
the saintly Ignacia del Espiritu Santo.
Mother Ignacia’s spiritual director, Father Paul Klein, helped her to
write the constitutions of the congregation, which she modelled closely on the
constitution of the Society of Jesus. It
was this, and the fact that the sisters lived near the college and performed
their devotions in the college church, which led to their being call beatas de la Compañia, although there
never was any juridical connection between the two communities.
Beginning in the second half of the 17th century
and continuing into the 18th century, the Manila Jesuits made the
giving of Lenten missions in Manila, its suburbs and the neighboring towns a
regular part of their ministry. Since
missions of this sort require a fairly stable parish organization to be
effective, they are an indication – one of many – that by this time the Tagalog
provinces were no longer mission territory in the strict sense. The same may be said of other long settled
provinces in Luzon and the Visayas. This
raised the question of what the Philippine Jesuits ought to do with those of
their mission stations which they had transformed into parishes. The provincial congregation of 1724 discussed
it at length, and although no decision was arrived at, a strong current of
opinion was that all stable parishes should be turned over to the secular
clergy in order that the society might expand its educational work. It was even proposed that provincial college
be specifically for the imparting of secondary and higher education to
Filipinos, as a necessary step towards the formation of a native clergy and
cultured laity – a remarkable foreshadowing of a later decision, in the 20th
century, to open provincial Ateneos imparting the same type of education as the
Ateneo de Manila.
EXPULSION AND SUPPRESSION
As it turned out, the Jesuits were soon relieved of the
responsibility of making a decision on this matter. In 1767 Charles III of Spain for reasons
which he preferred to keep locked in his royal bosom, decreed the expulsion of
the Society of Jesus from the Spanish dominions. The decree reached the Philippines the
following year. The Manila Jesuits were
immediately placed under arrest, their books and papers confiscated, their
houses sealed. Those in the provinces
were conveyed under escort to Manila. Of
the 140 members of the Philippine Province, 21 were certified by the government
physician as too ill to travel. The
remainder were sent in four groups to Spain between 1769 and 1771, and from
Spain deported to the Papal States.
The Jesuit parishes and missions in Leyte and Samar were
transferred to the Franciscans, those in Cebu, Panay, Negros, Bohol and
northern Mindanao to the Recollects, and those in the Tagalog provinces to the
secular parishes. All the buildings and
properties of the Order were confiscated by the Crown. to the secular clergy. An exception was made of the endowment of the
College of San Jose, which was regarded as a pious foundation administered but
not owned by the Society. Its
administration was transferred to the archbishop of Manila, along with the
physical plant of the College of Manila which Archbishop Sancho made over into a
diocesan seminary.
In 1773 Clement XIV, under pressure from the Bourbon courts
of France, Spain and Naples suppressed the Society of Jesus throughout the
world.
