The Franciscans in The Life and Works of Jose Rizal

University of San Carlos Publications
THE FRANCISCANS IN THE LIFE AND WORKS OF JOSE RIZAL

Author(s): Cayetano Sánchez
Source: Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, Vol. 11, No. 1 (March 1983), pp. 1-56
Published by: University of San Carlos Publications
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Philippine Quarterly of Culture & Society
11 (1983): 1-56
THE FRANCISCANS IN THE LIFE AND WORKS OF JOSE RIZAL
by Cayetano Sanchez*
Jose Rizal is one of the most outstanding and influential Asians in history,
comparable in richness of personality to the Asian giants of our days, Mahatma Gandhi
in India and Mao Tse-tung in China. While Rizal has been the object of study both
within and outside of the Philippines,1 the nature of the short but intense thirty-five
years of the life of this great hero of the Philippine Islands makes the discovery of
RizaPs true personality difficult. I think a true appreciation of the transcendence of his
message in his writings, his public stands, and, above all, his life has yet to be
achieved.
In the following pages I intend to study but one aspect of his life, an important and
unexplored dimension of the complex personality of Jose Rizal: his attitude personally
and as a novelist towards the Franciscans. After some brief paragraphs of biographical
background, I will illustrate the picture of the Franciscans Rizal presents in his two
novels, and then move into the major portion of the essay with an attempt to explain
RizaPs hostile attitude towards the Franciscans.
The Brief and Intense Life of an Exceptional Man
Jose Mercado y Alonso ? more commonly known by another of his names,

Rizal ? was born in 1861 in Calamba (Laguna), a primarily agricultural municipality
not far from Manila, into a family and environment distinguished economically, cul?
turally, and morally. His parents represented an admirable mixture of cultures in their
heritage, and many of the best characteristics of these civilizations were passed on to
their son Jose: Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and, of course, Filipino. His mother
Teodora was the daughter of Don Lorenzo Alberto Alonso, deputy to the Spanish
*Fr. Cayetano Sanchez is a Franciscan and former archivist of the Archivo Franciscano Ibero-Oriental,
Madrid. This essay was translated by Bruce Cruikshank (with the aid and suggestions of Fr. Sanchez and
Fr. Joseph Baumgartner, SVD) from the original, "Rizal frente a los franciscanos, ** published in Espafla
en Extremo Oriente: Filipinas, China, Jap?n. Presencia franciscana, 1578-1978, edited by Victor
Sanchez and Cayetano S?nchez Fuertes (Madrid: Publicaciones Archivo Ibero-Americano, 1979)
pp. 519-582. Some notes and minor changes in the text have been made for the English translation. It is
here published with the kind permission of the original publisher.
1For instance, Wenceslao E. Retana, Vida y escritos del Dr. Rizal (Madrid: Victoriano S?arez,
1907); Rafael Palma, Biografia de Rizal (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1949); Le6n Maria Guerrero, The
First Filipino (Manila: National Heroes Commission, 1963); and Austin Coates, Rizal, Philippine
Nationalist and Martyr (Hongkong: Oxford University Press, 19?8).
2 PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY OF CULTURE & SOCIETY
Parliament, and possessor of an unusually high level of education and culture for a
Filipina of that time; she spoke both Spanish and Tagalog and had talent in and fond?
ness for both poetry and mathematics, all nourished by a great love of reading. His
father Francisco Mercado was not as highly educated but was respected for his personal
integrity and diligence.
At eleven Jose entered the Jesuit-run Ateneo Municipal de Manila, where he
promptly began to attract attention for his sensitivity, independence, romanticism,
diligence, and integrity. It was apparent that he was blessed with an unusual intelli?
gence, read and studied without rest, excelled at all tasks, and surprised all with the
elegant and facile verse and prose compositions, in which he was beginning to express
his ideas. In 1882, having exhausted the best that Manila teaching had to offer, he
departed for the intellectual Mecca of all ambitious Filipinos of those times ? Europe.
First he went to Madrid, where in three years he gained two degrees (Licentiate) from
the University of Madrid, one in medicine and the other in arts and sciences. There too
he received his baptism of fire in the liberal ideas of his time, concepts which would
mark his thinking for the rest of Tiis life. From Madrid he moved on to such metropolitan
centers as Paris and Berlin, continuing the studies begun in Manila and Madrid but
also indulging his immense thirst for other intellectual achievements ? in this period,
for instance, he studied linguistics, literature, and agriculture. Nor did he neglect
political activity, applying his intelligence and sensitivity to the great social and political
problems facing his country and beginning the ceaseless task of imparting to his com?
patriots his sense of responsibility, dignity, and national identity. To these ends he
wrote first for newspapers, hut soon he concluded that it would be more effective to
write a patriotic novel, an idea which culminated with the publication in Berlin in 1887
of the famous Noli me t?tigere.
In that same year he returned to the Philippines, but after a short six-month stay he
journeyed once more to Europe. There he abandoned medicine for a struggle against the
clock in favor of major reforms in the social, political, and cultural dimensions of the
Philippines, still within the context of Spanish rule over the colony. Aiding him through
friendship and advice in these efforts was a handful of distinguished men, well-known
in a variety of fields: Segismundo Moret, Francisco Pi y Margall, Morayta, Fernando
Blumen tritt, Virchow, and others. He researched, wrote, and engaged in polemics. In
1891, he published in Belgium the second part of his controversial and famous novel,
under the title El filibusterismo. Given the tempest his life and writings had generated,
he decided that his presence in the Philippines was an inescapable demand and he
returned to his country on 26 June 1892 ? only to discover that the storm had become
a tropical typhoon with himself the epicenter.
Ten days after his return to Manila, he resignedly accepted arrest on 6 July and
subsequent deportation on 15 July to Dapitan. With the accompanying political silence,
he was plunged into a sea of misgivings about the sense of his personal and national
mission. But history had marked him with the seal of the hero, and the destiny of his
people made him a turning point and center of the most violent conflicts. And so it
came about that on the 30th of December of 1896, he fell mortally wounded on the
THE FRANCISCANS AND JOSE RIZAL 3
field at Bagumbayan, a few yards from the walled inner city of Manila, completing
what he had always seen as his personal destiny and sacred and unrenounceable
mission: to die for his country:
Ah, he too would like to die, to become nothing, to leave to his country a glorious name, to
die for her, defending her against foreign invaders, and let the sun afterwards shine on his dead
body, an immovable sentinel on the rocks of the sea! ... 2
His execution on that fateful morning in December 1896 was the symbol of the
violent and definitive death of an empire, the death of the Spanish empire. While Rizal
at his death had not yet achieved what he had wanted for his country, the seed of his
incomplete and blood-soaked life had fallen into the furrows of history and promptly
produced the desired fruit. While the Philippines would not achieve her independence
for many years, it did not matter. Jose Rizal, Malayan apostle of non-violence, Filipino
Christ, as his great Spanish admirer, Unamuno,3 called him, supreme figure of Asian
nationalism, never let himself be blinded by the idea of a premature political
independence. The search for full liberty for each and every one of his compatriots was
his goal, because only thus would a true and authentic political independence be
possible.
1. THE FRANCISCANS IN THE NOVELS OF RIZAL
The study of the work and the thought of Rizal would, in my opinion, remain
incomplete without a serious and detailed study of the important place conceded to the
Franciscans in his writings, especially in his novels. In the two novels the Franciscans
occupy a place reserved for the civil and religious protagonists of the first line, characters
for whose creation Rizal felt a pride he never dissembled.
A simple quantitative evaluation of the preponderance of references to Franciscans
in RizaPs fiction presents us with truly surprising statistics, whose significance I will try
to explain in the following pages. Thus, while Rizal mentions the Dominicans some 18
times in his novel Noli me t?tigere (plus 5 other times in which he refers to their Third
Order, The University of Santo Tomas, etc.), the Augustinians 6 times, and the Jesuits
4, the number of references to the Franciscans is overwhelming: 14 times Rizal refers to
Saint Francis, 11 to San Diego de Alcal?, 6 to the Franciscan Third Order, 6 to Santa
Clara, 5 to St. Anthony of Padua, 3 to St. Pascual Bail?n, and about 155 times to the
Franciscans in general, either as an institution or as individuals. With these dispropor?
tionate statistics in mind, one may almost say that the novel Noli me t?tigere is a Fran?
ciscan novel, albeit unfortunately one in a pejorative sense.
2
Words of Isagani in El filibusterismo, taken from pp. 195-196 of the translation by Le6n Ma.
Guerrero entitled The Subversive (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1962).
3Miguel de Unamuno, ' 'Epiloge* al libro Vida y escritos del Dr. Rizal, de W.E. Retana,'' in Obras
completas, VIII (Madrid: Ediciones Aguilar, 1966), p. 958.
Much more important than the statistical evidence is what Rizal writes of the
Franciscans, the opinion he holds of them and the parts they play in his works. Who are
the Franciscans for Jose Rizal? What do they represent, what ideals animate them,
what is the opinion of them held by the Filipino people? For the author of the Noli me
tang ere, the Franciscans are a group of eccentrically dressed friars, notable for their
fanaticism and ignorance, wealthy from the exploitation of their defenseless parishion?
ers, accomplices in extraordinary crimes, and held in disdain by the members of the
other religious orders in the Philippines. They deserve censure as well for their dubious
moral character, especially in the field of sexual behavior. Their sole positive qualities
would perhaps be their great sense of corporate identity, which sets them off from
others, and the strong ties of solidarity which exist between individual Franciscans.
This is, in general terms, the repulsive, belittling, and depressing image ? better,
the caricature ? of the Franciscans presented to the impartial reader of the Noli me
t?ngere, the more famous of the two novels by the Filipino hero. El filibusterismo, his
second novel, continues to present the degraded image of the Franciscans, but with less
insistence since Rizal (in response to obvious reasons of history and circumstance) had
felt himself obliged to center his most direct attacks on the Dominicans, with the
Franciscans relegated to targets of second rank.
Of course Rizal does not limit himself to this generalized and Voltaire-like picture
of the Franciscans in his country. Three of the most important protagonists, each
essential to the plot line, are Franciscans. Let us look at the part each one of them has
been assigned by this prolific Filipino writer.
1. Er. D?maso Verdolagas
Fr. D?maso Verdolagas, parish priest of San Diego, is one of the best-realized
fictional characters of Rizal and one of the most important protagonists in the develop?
ment of the action and the message of his novel, the Noli me t?ngere. He identified
himself fully with his parish, in which he had been assigned for twenty years, "and I
couldn't have known each and every one of them better if I had given them birth and
suck myself.',4 Built like a Hercules, with a happy and frank laugh but with a disquiet?
ing gaze, with hairy legs and bare feet in his sandals, he possesses a complex per?
sonality. Frequently giving way to anger he is carried to violence against his coadjutor
or gets entangled in slaps and blows with his sacristans or with students, all of which
had left him with the just and significant nickname of the ' 'priest with the stick.''
Ignorant and proud, his treatment of the other classes of society was no better than
his behavior towards his subordinates in the Church. He was olympically disdainful of
government officials, charging them with heresy and lack of reason; mocked students
4
The Lost Eden, Le6n Ma. Guerrero translation of the Noli me tang ere (New York: W.W. Norton
&Co., Inc., 1961), p. 6.
from Europe and Manila, categorizing them all as subversives; and labelled all liberals
with the disrespectful terms of crazies, idiots, or cry-babies. While he enjoyed great
fame among the Franciscans for his sermons, ironically these were given in an
unintelligible mix of Latin, Spanish, and Tagalog, and were made up of a mass of
follies, inconsistent panegyrics lifted from the sermons of Franciscan saints, and dirty
and degrading diatribes against the Filipinos.
But the gravest accusation that Rizal makes against Fr. D?maso is immorality. Soon
after Fr. D?maso has arrived in San Diego, he forges a close relationship with the two
most influential people in the municipality, Capit?n Santiago (better known as Tiago)
and the powerful Don Rafael Eibarramendia. The friendship between Fr. D?maso and
Don Rafael, though, quickly degenerates into mutual abuse and hatred. One day, Fr.
D?maso oversteps the limits of trust and enters into intimate relations with the wife of
Tiago, and the fruit of their intimacy is Maria Clara ? later on the fiancee of
Cris?stomo Eibarramendia, son of Don Rafael, both first-line characters in the Noli me
t?tigere. The break in the friendship between Don Rafael and Fr. D?maso seems to
have originated with the departure of the son for Europe in order to complete his
studies ? Europe, of course, for the parish priest of San Diego is the fountain of heresy
and anticlericalism.
Since then Fr. D?maso has censured Don Rafael from the pulpit, with personal
allusions at first, but after Don Rafael ceases to attend the services he is accused of
heresy and subversion for not attending Mass ? and all the people in the municipality
know that Don Rafael was blameless. One unfortunate day Don Rafael gets into an
argument with another Spaniard, and in the ensuing struggle the latter falls, strikes his
head on a rock and dies. For this accident, Don Rafael is accused of murder and incar?
cerated for many years, finally dying in jail. His corpse is buried not in the Catholic
cemetery but, on the orders of his former friend, Fr. D?maso, interred in the area
reserved for non-Christian Chinese. Later, igain on Fr. D?maso's order, the corpse is
exhumed and tossed into Laguna de Bay.
Meanwhile, unaware of the tragedy, Cris?stomo continues his studies in Europe.
When he returns to the Philippines, he gradually learns of the sad fate of his father.
Nonetheless, though deeply wounded by the affronts committed against his father, he
harbors no thoughts of vengeance against Fr. D?maso. On the contrary, he tries to
pretend not to know what has happened and to appear unconcerned. But the Franciscan
repeatedly provokes him with wounding comments and works against his most ambi?
tious plans, especially those concerning his relationship with Maria Clara, and the initial
5The relationship between Fr. D?maso and Don Rafael, including the tragic end of the latter, ought
not to be seen as an infrequent phenomenon in 19th-century Spain. Nor can the clergy be blamed
exclusively for it. For example, see the case of Jos6 Somoza and the parish priest of Piedrahita (Avila,
Spain) between 1842-1852 (of which Rizal might very well have known and which might have inspired
part of the Noli), which was a topic of discussion from counting house to tavern, discussed masterfully
by Jose Jimenez Lozano in his Los Cementerios civiles (Madrid: Taurus, 1978), pp. 84-102.
tension leads to an open break. Finally, Fr. D?maso, with the connivance of his suc?
cessor as parish priest (also a Franciscan), organizes a false plot against the Spanish
authorities, leading to the arrest of all the liberal elements in the municipality, begin?
ning of course with Crisostomo Ibarra, who is arrested and incarcerated in Fort
Santiago.
With Ibarra eliminated from the scene, Fr. D?maso now tries to marry Maria Clara
off to a common and characterless young Spaniard, distantly related to his family, but
Maria Clara denies her consent to the match and, full of anguish, retires to the
convent of Santa Clara in Manila. There she is persecuted by the zealous Fr. Bernardo
Salvi and dies a nun thirteen years later. Fr. D?maso, transferred first to Manila and
later to a municipality in the province of Tay abas, dies suddenly and mysteriously a day
after arriving in the new parish. Crisostomo Ibarra, on the other hand, is freed from jail
by his friend Elias and evading the pursuit of the Guardia Civil succeeds in secretly
escaping from the Philippines.
2. Fr. Bernardo Salvi
Rizal baptized his second major Franciscan figure with the name of Fr. Bernardo
Salvi. Salvi is the successor of Fr. D?maso in the parish of San Diego a few months
after the conflict between the Franciscan and Don Rafael, and he is apparently the
opposite of everything Fr. D?maso is: Salvi is slim, pale, emaciated, hollow-eyed,
meditative, and sickly, and enjoys the fame of saintliness among the people of the
municipality and the reputation of wisdom among fellow Franciscans. His parishioners
have given him the eloquent nicknames of ''hypocrite'' and ''kill-joy.'' He seldom
strikes his ecclesiastical subordinates, but he does engage in fining the sacristans and
pocketing the returns.
Despite his apparent fame of sanctity, Salvi is in reality the complement, not the
opposite, of his fellow Franciscan, Fr. D?maso. He leads a bitter life, victim of his
badly repressed sexual obsession for the young, beautiful and innocent Maria Clara,
whom (according to rumors) he visits frequently, even at nighttime. He is also thought
to have committed certain unpardonable crimes, such as raping a young woman,
daughter of Sisa, mother of Crispin and Basilio, two of his sacristans. In order to
intimidate the father of the violated woman and to evade justice, Salvi is the first to
come out with an accusation, charging the two boys with stealing from the convento,
for which they are severely punished. One of the two boys dies as a consequence of the
punishment, while the other tries to kill himself, though unsuccessfully. Their mother,
Sisa, unable to stand so much suffering and public shame, loses her mind, and her
husband, equally desperate, decides to flee to the mountains and join a bandit gang.
The most serious of Salvi's crimes is to help, with the complicity of Fr. D?maso, to
organize the false conspiracy in San Diego in order to eliminate from that municipality
all liberal elements, beginning with Crisostomo Ibarra. His plan, Machiavellian in its
design and detail, leads to a great upheaval and the indiscriminate arrest throughout the
islands of any person linked to liberalism, or anyone simply known as enemies of the
parish priest of San Diego.

The government investigation of the supposed plot is carried out hurriedly and
concludes that thanks to Fr. Salvi the plot was discovered, and that indeed it was a
serious conspiracy directed against the security of the government. In recognition of his
new stature, the Franciscans promote Fr. Salvf to the post of chaplain of the convent
of Santa Clara de Manila, where he reappears thirteen years later, invested with the
title of ecclesiastical governor of Manila, as a central figure in Rizal's second novel, El
filibusterismo. In this novel Fr. Salvi is quite old, feeble, and gray, but still present are
some of the more repulsive characteristics he had when still a parish priest in San Diego.
His laugh is like the grimace of a corpse, he prohibits a theatrical presentation as
immoral, and lives submerged in tremendous remorse, fruit of his hypocritical and
licentious life.
3. Fr. Camorra
Of the two Franciscans studied so far, only Fr. Salvi reappears in the second novel.
Rizal, though, conjures up yet a third Franciscan in the person of Fr. Camorra, nick?
named significantly by his parishioners Si Cabayo (Reverend Horse). Rather than a new
protagonist, Fr. Camorra appears more like a second edition of his fellow Franciscan,
Fr. D?maso, so faithful a portrait of the latter that he manages to surpass D?maso in
extravagances and escapades. Fr. Camorra is the parish priest of Tiani, where he dis?
tinguishes himself with his looks of an artilleryman, sounding off, gesticulating, and
discourteously interrupting others when they are speaking. Thanks to the novelistic
device of introducing this character in his second novel, Rizal succeeds in the pleasant
occupation of giving some more blows to the Franciscans along the same lines as before.
The eccentric and rash Camorra squeezes his parishioners unmercifully and cynical?
ly, demanding payment of Church fees in full, with no exceptions. Those who will not
pay faithfully he promptly christens ' 'subversives.'' He strongly backs the sayings
from a little book called Si Tandang Basic* Macunat, ridiculing the progressive reforms
of the schoolmaster of Tiani, and strongly and openly opposing the teaching of Spanish
to the Filipinos, because:
They should not be allowed to know it because afterwards, when they do, they start arguing
with us, and the natives have no business arguing; all they should do is pay and obey. . . As
soon as they know Spanish they become enemies of God and Spain.6
Fr. Camorra's flirtations and sexual escapades are as frequent and outrageous as
those of the other two Franciscans ? one of his amorous adventures even apparently
ends in tragedy, with the suicide of the young maiden, causing his transfer to Manila
6The Subversive, p. 82 (tr. by Guerrero).
and his punishment by his superiors. The ' 'punishment'' consists of the expiation of
his follies at Tiani through residence in ' 'a pleasure villa on the banks of the Pasig. "7
We meet him once more in the novel when three bandits armed with bolos break into
the convent, steal a small amount of money, and lightly wound Fr. Camorra.
II. THE QUESTION OF RIZAL'S ANTI-FRANCISCAN ATTITUDE
This brief summary of the parts assigned by Rizal to Franciscans in his novels
shows the nature of the accusations he made against them and what sorts of abuses any
reader would associate with them after reading the Noli me t?tigere and El filibusterismo.
One may readily deduce that Rizal might well have written these two novels from a
strong and specifically anti-Franciscan motivation. In fact, in addition to what has been
said about the way his Franciscan protagonists are presented, it is amazing to note that
the Franciscans in these novels are the most corrupt, base, and repellent of all the
figures in those works. No other character is painted so insistently nor so harshly.
Moreover, at no point in the novels do we encounter a single instance of a counter?
weight to this terrible feeling of frustration that one feels as a reader, from prologue to
epilogue.
These reflections inevitably suggest a series of questions related to our theme: Was
Rizal truly anti-Franciscan? What possible motives, public or secret, could have
impelled him to present such a devastating and humiliating image of the most popular
friars in history, not only in the Philippines but also in many other countries in the
world? In short, why this almost obsessive cloudburst of accusations throughout the
two novels?
The answer to all these questions is so complicated that it is possible that no
completely satisfactory explanation can be given. The problem is further complicated if
we bear in mind that Rizal presents us with a paradox: in the novels insistent and fierce
attacks directed against the Franciscans, whereas in his letters, diaries, and historical
literary essays we do not find the negative points which would serve as a basis for this
radical posture of attack against the Franciscans. On the contrary, in these more private
works we find signs of a special attraction for certain aspects of Franciscan life, an
attraction not paralleled by equivalent feelings for aspects of other religious Orders.
How, then, are we to explain this paradox, which I believe we can clearly detect in the
writings of Jose Rizal? In the following pages I will attempt to follow up certain clues
which may help lead us to a solution of this Rizalian enigma.
1. Rizal 's Romantic View of St. Francis
We have seen that Rizal used the Franciscans in his two novels as the consistent
1Ibid., p. 278.
background theme imparting logic and coherence to his plot lines. I have also noted
earlier how both of the novels, but especially the first, are salted with direct and
indirect allusions to the Franciscans, to Saints of the Order, and to organizations linked
with the Franciscans. Is this just mere chance, or a literary device demanded by the
plot, or does he just make use of the Franciscans because they represent a generally
known type of men? I believe not.
To begin with, there is a series of sources which prove without doubt that before
Rizal began his two novels he was not unfamiliar with the Franciscans and their history.
Presumably he knew more than one Franciscan personally. Calamba, his natal
municipality, is only some kilometers from Los Banos, a parish then under the
administration of the Franciscans, and Rizal travelled there fairly often, both as a child
and as a young man. We also know that some Franciscans occasionally visited
Calamba. His mother was imprisoned in the Franciscan parish of Santa Cruz, and there
Rizal visited her, and repeated his visits to Santa Cruz for other reasons. Finally, it
would seem highly unlikely that the insatiable observer and profoundly religious young
student did not know of the more prominent Franciscans of those times during his stay
in Manila, as student under Jesuits and Dominicans, as well as through his visits to the
municipality of Santa Ana, where one of his sisters was studying. None of this, of
course, give us the right to say with absolute certainty that these probable and sporadic
contacts with the Franciscans served as the basis for the creation of the fictional
personages of his novels.
On the other hand, it is well known that Rizal felt a special, indeed more than a
superficial, attraction to that universal figure, the founder of the Franciscans, Saint
Francis. I have already indicated the unusual frequency with which the name appears in
the two novels. At various times these references are preceded by such adjectives as
venerable, seraphic father, second Christ. Rizal knew of the appearance of wounds
similar to those of the crucified Christ on Francis and the form in which those wounds
were usually represented artistically. Perhaps, though, one can best perceive the familiar
and attractive image of Francis which Rizal had ? excepting those examples in which a
certain disdain manifests itself ? in the description of Fr. Damaso's sermon and in the
religious procession associated with the fiesta in the municipality of San Diego. The
old Tasio, skeptical but sympathetic, standing against a wall (or squatting, oriental
fashion, on his heels) as the procession passes, observes respectfully and attentively all
of the details. He carries on a friendly dialogue with each of the holy images as they
pass before his scrupulous inspection. The first of these statues which passes is that of
Saint John the Baptist, arranged rather casually on the old litter used to parade the
images around the town. Following the Baptist is the image of Saint Francis, carefully
placed on a rich and elegant float. The contrast between the two saints, whose per?
sonalities, historically speaking, have so much in common, plunges the old philosopher
into a profound meditation full of sparkling ironies:
Wretch ... It avails you nothing that you were the bearer of good tidings or that Jesus
humbled Himself before you; nothing, your deep faith and self-denial, or your dying for the
truth and your beliefs; all these count for nothing among men when one stands on his own
merits. It profits a man more to preach badly in the churches than to be the eloquent voice
crying in the wilderness ? the Philippines should teach you that. If you had eaten turkey
instead of locusts, worn silk instead of the skins of wild animals, if you had joined a religious
Order_
But the old man interrupts his harangue; St. Francis is coming along.
'Just what I was saying,' he continues with an ironic smile. 'This chap comes riding on a float
with wheels, and, God bless us, what a float! So many candles, such precious crystal globes!
You were never so well lighted, Giovanni Bernardone that was, before you became Francis!
And such music! Your sons made other music after your death. Venerable and humble Founder
of their order, if you were to come back to earth now, you would see only degenerate
counterparts of your excommunicated vicar, Elias of Cortona, and would perhaps share the fate
of Caesarius of Speyer, who was murdered in his prison cell by a brother in the Order for
daring to call for reforms!' 8
This rather long quotation appears to me to be extremely important for the factors it
presents which will help us judge the posture of Rizal towards St. Francis and the
Franciscans in the colonial Philippines. Rizal, a romantic, sentimental, and somewhat
radical student in a Europe torn with the late 19th-century conflicts, felt a special
attraction for poor, simple, and humble Francis, whose life and personality contrasted
so vividly with the ostentation, luxury and riches which surrounded St. Francis' sons in
the Philippines (and indeed they did), who he felt were out to parade their infidelity to
their Order's founder. Jose Rizal was sufficiently knowledgeable and interested in
Francis to know that Francis (the name by which he is universally known) was not his
baptismal name ? rather it was Giovanni (using the Italian form as well) and that his
surname was Bernardone. Rizal had carefully noted the internal struggles within the
Franciscan Order, centered around the controversies concerning the primitive ideals of
Francis, knowing as well the names of two of the most important protagonists in the
quarrel about Francis' rules for the Order: Fr. Elias de Cortona and Fr. Cesareo de
Spira.9 Rizal chose a very strong adjective to describe those who opposed the primitive
g
The Lost Eden, p. 241 (tr. by Guerrero).
9
This attention to detail about the conflicts in the Franciscan Order concerning the primitive ideals
is surprising. I do not know which source Rizal used to get this information, but his knowledge is
in accordance with the conclusions of those who have studied the early period, namely, thaHFr. Elias de
Cortona used his period of leadership to impose rules not very much in line with the ideas of the founder,
punishing strongly those who opposed him. One of those punished was Ces?reo de Spira, jailed and
murdered through maltreatment. Or so affirms Gratien de Paris in his Historia de lafundaci?n y evoluci?n
de la Orden de Frailes Menores en el sigh XIII (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Desclee, de Brouwer, 1947), p.
144. In the Philippines there had been various works published on Saint Francis, but it is doubtful that
they touched directly on this theme. It appears to me more probable that Rizal read something on this
difficult subject when he was in Germany, probably in the writings of Renan.
ideal of the Franciscans after Francis1 death, such as those who worked in the colonial
Philippines: degenerate. To judge from his novels, Rizal believed that the Franciscans
in his country were followers of the relaxation of discipline introduced by Elias in the
early years after the death of el Poverello, and thus they were not at all similar to St.
Francis.
2. Rizal's Family ? A Franciscan Household
When and how did Rizal encounter this romantic and simplistic picture of St.
Francis, whose attraction we are able to detect in his writings? The response to this
question appears to me to be obvious: from his very infancy and through his mother,
although it is probable that his picture was given additional depth from his stay in
Germany immediately before finishing the Noli me t?ngere. The mother of Rizal,
Teodora Alonso, a woman of sensibility and culture very superior to the normal level of
education and sensibility of most of her contemporaries, was a tertiary of the Franciscan
Order, and undoubtedly owing to her reputation as a blameless and educated woman,
occupied the office of celadora10 among the laity associated with the Franciscans in
Calamba, carrying out her duties with the scrupulousness and enthusiasm characteristic
of most of the Rizal family members. It is very likely that she joined the Franciscan
tertiaries in her birthplace, Meisic, a suburb of Manila, not far from Sampaloc, either
through the influence of her family or during her long residence there when a
student.11 It would not have been strange, given what we know of the profound
religious sense of Teodora, that she may have invited her daughters to join the
Franciscan Third Order, a religious group whose popularity and dynamism were
well-received over the centuries (as well as now) throughout the areas administered by
the Franciscans. Rizal undoubtedly was born and raised in a household strongly
influenced by the spirit of the Franciscan Third Order.
On the 4th of October of 1882, the tertiaries of St. Francis in Calamba celebrated a
fiesta for their founder with the solemnity, happiness and intimacy so typical of similar
occasions celebrated today in the Philippines. The soul of the fiesta, as was to be
expected, was Dona Teodora, aided especially by members of her family, including
1 ?The celadora carried out the duties of eldest sister of a group of tertiaries in a certain geographical
district. Usually she would be the link between the priest charged with the spiritual direction of the Fran?
ciscan Third Order and its members. Among her duties the most important was to inspire her group to
faithful observance of the Rule, to encourage fraternity among the members, and ensure that no sister
suffered any material or spiritual abandonment in illness. See Regia y ordenaciones municipales de la
V.O.T., etc. (Sampaloc: Cayetano Juli?n Enriquez, 1828), pp. 115-118.
This hypothesis is founded on the fact that Meisic was a dependency of Sampaloc, which in turn
was the seat of the Franciscan Third Order in the Philippines, the most active religious association in the
Philippines then.
Paciano, the elder brother of Rizal . It was Paciano who on 29 December wrote to Rizal
in Madrid, a Rizal notably homesick for his distant and beautiful country:
On the 4th of this month, St. Francis' Day, the male and female Third Orders celebrated his
fiesta with Mass and a procession in the patio. Afterwards the celadora gave breakfast and
lunch at her house to many members, some of the leading citizens of the municipality, and Fr.
Domingo. The women did not want to eat inside, prefering the kitchen. Since nothing was
prepared there, each one took her plate and attended to her needs as she desired. It is certain
that all was in confusion there. After breakfast, the most devout gathered around one who was
reading of the life and miracles of St. Francis, whereas the others formed another group where
somewhat profane jokes were permitted. ... At luncheon things were more orderly, since
they had prepared a table outside for those who did not want to eat inside. Afterwards the
terceros left and the fiesta was thus conduded. We helped out a little bit in this fiesta in order
to please Mother.12
This paragraph from a long letter from Paciano to Rizal should have evoked in Rizal
the many times he himself had enjoyed the atmosphere of sincere fraternity, lived in
Franciscan simplicity and intimacy. From Madrid on 13 February, almost by return
mail, Rizal answered his brother and commented with obvious interest on the news he
had just received. He regretted not having been able to attend the feast that Paciano
described, while also expressing a clear disdain for certain evidences of excessively
elaborate religious customs. He did not accept willingly the principal rcrie played by
Dona Teodora in such celebrations and even permitted himself to give his mother the
following religious counsel:
Tell Nanay [Mother] that as a true celadora she should not let the sisters seek the Franciscans
instead of seeking God.1 3
This warning from Rizal about the apparently sincere religious practices of the
Franciscan tertiaries in Calamba is disconcerting if one bears in mind that, according to
Filipino custom then and now, no child should permit himself or herself ever to offer
counsel to his/her mother. This admonition by Rizal is, as I see it, perfectly in accord
with sound theology and, therefore, even if perhaps written with hidden intentions, in
itself irreproachable. Equally, though, one should note that it reflects the liberal and
12
Paciano Mercado, Carta a su hermano Jose Rizal. Calamba, 29 de diciembre, 1882. In Cartas
entre Rizal y los miembros de la familia (Escritos de Jos? Rizal, vol. 2. Manila: Comisi?n Nacional del
Centenario de Jose Rizal, 1961; part one, p. 72). In this as well as in later letters we are given sufficient
information to be able to affirm with great probability that the processions and discussions between
Franciscan and Dominican terceros described in the Noli were evocations of scenes lived by Rizal in his
natal municipality of Calamba.
13Rizal, Carta a su hermano Paciano Mercado. Madrid, 13 de febrero, 1883. Ibid., part one,
p. 101.
anti-clerical sentiments then so predominant in Spain, beliefs which would slowly begin
to influence Rizal* s writings. In fact, he points out right away that in Spain any clerical
dress which is not a cassock is rejected by the people, and that whoever dares to
contravene this law is stoned. Nonetheless, it is important to note that there is no
allusion whatsoever, either direct or indirect, condemning the Franciscans. In later
letters Paciano again mentions the Franciscan tertiaries of Calamba, their activities and
rivalries with other religious associations, the superficiality of certain of their pietistic
practices, and so forth. All of this appears to indicate that the Franciscan tertiaries were
an integral part of the life of the Rizal family. Let us return now, though, to the letter
from Rizal to Teodora.
The rather blunt counsel from the young student in Madrid to his mother was
received by Teodora with surprise and displeasure:
From your letter14 it appears that our prayers in Church do not please you; I am going to say
that since you left here we have offered up special prayers for you. I have made numerous
requests for aid and support from those to whom I call in my prayers.1 5
RizaPs concise but piercing phrase must have deeply wounded Teodora, a sensible and
intelligent person, perhaps presaging for her the future tragedy of her son. Thus, once
more, in a letter on 11 December 1884, she insisted, in phrases deeply impregnated by
the Franciscan influence, on the necessity of maintaining the faith in which he had been
brought up and speaking on the value and role of science:
You don't know the sadness I feel every time that I hear members of my group speak of you.
Therefore I charge you to leave off activities that could throw shadows on my heart. . . . What
I most desire from you, my son, is that you not falter in your true Christian duties, which
appear sweeter to me than great learning, since learning is at times what carries us to more
mishaps.16
14 Logically this refers to the previously mentioned letter of 13 February 1883.
1 5Teodora Alonso, Carta a su hijo Jose Rizal. Calamba, 27 de novienbre 1883. Ibid., part one,
p. 151. The Spanish translation is barely intelligible. Here is the original Tagalog text: "Baquit baga sa
isa mong sulat, sinabi mo, anaquin ay hindi magaling sa iyo ang aming mafiga pagdalafigin sa simbahan,
sasabihin co sayo, mula ng icau ay umalis dito, bucod sa mga taftgi cong panata patungcol sa yo, inulutan
co nang labis ang paghahabilin sa tanquilic at ampon nang aquin manga dinadalannginan. Ngayon, bay
babain co isa isa ang manga utang cong bago sa Panginoon Dios.''
16Teodora Alonso, Carta a su hijo Jose Rizal. Manila, 11 de diciembre, 1884. In Cartas entre Rizal
y los miembros de la familia, part one, p. 170. Could Rizal have been thinking of this letter from his
aged mother when, moments before his death, he turned to the Jesuit Fr. March and said these words:
"All that the Jesuits taught me was good and holy. It was in Spain and overseas where I lost my
way. . . It was my pride, Father, which brought me here.'' See Pio Pi, Muerte cristiana del Doctor Rizal
(Manila: Santos Bemal, 1909), p. 32.
3. Spiritual Shipwreck
Perhaps this counsel from the faraway mother arrived too late to be accepted fully
by the then less-courteous, less-respectful, and less-deeply religious Jose, who had left
the Philippines only two years earlier. A little later, in a letter to his brother Paciano, he
reacted inexplicably in a brusque way towards what he considered alarmist and
excessively maternal warnings from Dona Teodora. He ended his letter with a strong
attack, apparently unjustified, against certain forms of religiosity then common in the
Philippines and against the clergy of his country:
. . . you [Paciano], through your example and the prestige you have there, ought to begin
to suggest that fiestas be abolished, as welFas other things which lack ready usefulness, such
as Thanksgiving Masses and others of that sort. Money which goes to certain coffers does not
circulate, and money which does not circulate impoverishes the country. In addition, we are
being exploited in every way there, and we ought to be tired of that by now. . .
Qn your recommendation I believe in the goodness of the parish priest, whom I greet from
here, but a consideration occurs to me. If the women in Calamba, with a parish priest not at all
fanatical, by their own initiative are so fond of candles and images, what will happen to them
when a fanatical and exploitative parish priest comes? One who will weigh on their conscience
like nighttime, and who will squeeze them like a press? You must agree that if your sex is little
advanced there, it is much more so than the other sex, which revolves and lives in that
atmosphere of the confessional and the sacristy, leading to great aberrations.17
During this same period Rizal was beginning the Noli me t?tigere; again I know of no
contention then or thereafter between the writer and the Franciscans.18
He wrote half of the Noli me t?ngere while in Madrid and then finished it in
France and Germany. In March of 1887 the first copies came off the Berlin press, and
in the middle of that same year Rizal unexpectedly appeared in Manila with some copies
17
Rizal, Carta a su hermano Paciano Mercado. [ 1885]. In Cartas entre Rizal y los miembros de la
familia, part one, pp. 175-176.
18
One knows, however, that tension existed between Rizal's family and the Secular priest Don
Ambrosio Villafranca, curate of Biftan (Laguna). When the priest at Calamba, Don Leoncio L?pez, died,
Fr. Villafranca quarreled with Rizal's father Francisco Mercado. These encounters were related by Paciano
to his brother in a letter of 26 May 1883 (Ibid., part one, pp. 111-112). About this same time, the
conflict between the Dominicans and the Rizal family started, as noted by Paciano in the same letter.
There had been earlier news on this subject, such as on 19 January 1883 in a letter written by Silvestre
Ubaldo, brother-in-law: "I understand that those with the white habits [the Dominicans] hate you
because of what you did in Barcelona, for what you published in the Diariong Tagalog. Therefore, be
careful there. Always be careful since you appear to be on their list" (Ibid., part one, p. 87). This same
year, though, Paciano in an undated letter advised his younger brother that since the family had received
so many favors from the Dominicans, one should annoy them as little as possible. In June 1885, hostili?
ties concerning the hacienda broke out between the Dominicans and the tenants, and Paciano sent along
details to his brother in a letter of 16 July 1885 (Ibid., part one, pp. 191-192). This conflict would not
come to an end until 1891 with the Madrid Supreme Court's decision in favor of the Dominicans.
in his luggage. His sudden appearance in the Islands, where abundant notices of his
political and literary activities had been received, along with the appearance of his
novel, caused enormous surprise and also produced a climate of tremendous tension.
Six months after his arrival, Rizal precipitously left the country. The brutal clarity,
sharp irony, and the Voltairian sarcasm of the Noli me t?ngere seemed to Spaniards
(both religious and civil officials) a jeer at all Spaniards and a slap in the face of Spain.
Dominicans and Augustinians, followed later by the Governor General, were the first
to condemn RizaPs novel, described as ' 'heretical, impious, and scandalous, as well as
anti-patriotic, subversive, and politically injurious to Spanish rule over the
Philippines.',19 Paradoxically, I know of no censure, either official or unofficial, by
the Franciscans against a book which had singled them out for such total, unjust, and
one-sided insults.
Two years later, in 1889, Jose Rizal brought out another of his major works, his
edition of Los sucesos de las Isias Filipinas, by Antonio de Morga.20 It was his
intention, absolutely commendable in principle, to write the history of his people from
the point of view of the Filipinos, that is, from the perspective of the colonized and not
of the colonizers, of the oppressed and not of the oppressors. He thus would carry on
his generalized attack against Spanish colonialism and against the Regular clergy,
overstepping the bounds of objectivity and impartiality. Once again the Franciscans
appear in a totally negative light, though the only historical data Rizal might have used
to justify this negative perspective concerned a Franciscan laybrother, who had been the
administrator in charge of the construction of the Hospital of Los Banos, a project
sponsored by the Government.21 In 1891, Rizal published the second novel, El
filibusterismo, in which, as we have seen, he once again spread around more
accusations and attacks against the Franciscans. As we will see, this still inexplicable
posture of Rizal 's was not the only one adopted by him. Meanwhile, the Franciscans on
their side continued to observe the most absolute silence in respect to Rizal and his
writings.
4. Encounter on the "Melbourne "
For Rizal the year 1891 was one of the most conflict-laden and unhappy years of
19
See the report of the University of Santo Tomas of Manila on the Noli me t?tigere, as reproduced
in Retana, Vida y escritos del Dr. Rizal, pp. 128-129.
20Antonio de Morga. Sucesos de las Isias Filipinos (Mexico: En Casa de Geronymo Balli por
Cornelio Adriano Cesar, 1609). The work is generally considered as the best authenticated history
written by a civil official of the events in the history of the 16th-century Philippines.
21
Sucesos de las Isias Filipinas, por el Dr. Antonio de Morga, ed. by Jose Rizal (Paris: Libreria de
Gamier Hermanos, 1890), p. 341, n3. Even more gratuitous and inobjective observations by Rizal exist
in the book, I think. For instance, Rizal suspected that Fr. Juan de Plasencia may have distorted some
historical facts (page XXXV, n2), and Rizal describes Fr. Jer?nimo de Jesus as a ' 'liar" (p. 149, nl) and
a "common diplomat" (p. 152, nl).
his life. Discouraged by the defeat of the Calamba lawsuit in the Madrid courts,
alienated from his companions in the Propaganda Movement, obsessed by the harm his
political activities were indirectly causing his family, Jose Rizal decided to say goodby
to Europe and once more return to Asia, even to the land that a few hours before 2his 2
death he would call "My worshipped motherland whose burden of grief I share. "
On 18 October the now famous Filipino revolutionary was in Marseilles (where he had
disembarked nine years ealier) and boarded the ship "Melbourne. " As usual when he
travelled, our illustrious passenger made minute observations on his surroundings,
scrutinizing the faces of his fellow passengers, speaking with each one of them, making
notes of personal observations and whatever impressions his exquisite artistic sensibility
noted. Little could he suspect what new emotions his trip was to bring forth.
The first dayvof his trip was for him a day of great and strong surprises. Among his
companions what drew his immediate and strong attention was a group of missionaries
led by a Bishop on its way to China. It was made up of Jesuits, Franciscans, and priests
belonging to the Pontificio Institute Missioni Estere (PIME) of Milan. Rizal, as an
educated person, was interested in contact with all sorts of people, and he immediately
made acquaintance with this group, which must have seemed to him to be both
picturesque and attractive at the same time. Of course the Jesuit world was already
familiar to him from his years at the Ateneo Municipal of Manila, but the Franciscans
and presumably the Bishop and (to a lesser degree) the missionaries were new territory.
Possibly for the first time in his adult life he was going to meet face-to-face the
'^scalced" friars, which he, along with Rizal's mortal adversary Canamaque, had
described as repellent, precisely because they did not wear shoes. And, of course, these
were the people he had described with so much bias in his novels.
Somebody must have introduced Rizal to the clergymen. The Bishop who led the
missionary expedition was Msgr. Simeone Volonteri, who 23 years before (that is, in
1868) had been in the Philippines. This led to the first great surprise for Rizal, for in
the dialogue which ensued after the salutations the talk shifted to the issues which
burned in the soul of the young Filipino: the Philippines, the Cavite Mutiny, the friars,
and so forth. Those active in the dialogue soon were reduced to three, as Rizal noted in
his diary a few hours after departure on 19 October: Volonteri, the Franciscans, and
the author of the Noli me tang ere. The presence of the friars must have upset Rizal and
focused his attention on them: "The Franciscans played a game of pastas (sic) with
us," he noted in his diary that night.23 In this same entry, after mentioning the
discussion with Volonteri about the Philippines and its problems, the events at Cavite,
2 2 Translation taken from Ramon Echevarrla "RizaPs last farewell ? a new translation of the
Ultimo Adios'' "Philippine Quarterly of Culture & Society, vol. 6 December 1978, p. 209.
23
[Probably a mistranscription of cartas, or "The Franciscans played a game of cards with us, "
which was a violation of Franciscan norms but apparently sufficiently common in the 19th-century world
that it occasioned no surprise to Rizal. Transl. ]
the role of the friars (especially the Dominicans) and their influence on the government,
he added that Volonteri had responded to an observation by the Franciscans by saying
' 'Because the Dominicans have a lot of influence with the Government.''24 When
darkness fell, Rizal retired to his bed in a pensive, sad, and ill-humored mood.
This was not surprising: no matter with what delicacy it was done, the
conversation and encounter had touched on the most sensitive and painful chord in
Rizal's soul, and in consequence a whirlwind of ideas and contradictory sentiments had
suddenly surged up into his consciousness. The conversation for this author of the two
most revolutionary novels in Philippine literature had struck deep, and he now saw
himself transferred willy-nilly into the world of the most questionable personages of his
creations. He felt the irresistible necessity of justifying himself, but did not do so in
the diary but rather three days later (22 October 1891) in a letter to his unconditional
friend and confidant, Ferdinand Blumen tritt. The letter is brief and mostly devoted to
this important confidence by Rizal:
On board with us are many missionaries ? Franciscans, Jesuits, and a Bishop, M?ns.
Volonteri, who 23 years ago was in the Philippines. This blessed old man spoke out against
the riches and abuses of the friars in the Philippines. I wish you could have heard him. He
thinks exactly as you do. He described the Philippines as a paradise, but exploited and
mistreated. / was deeply moved and his words have solidified and firmed up my convictions.
He still remembered the names of the executed priests, and spoke of them with compassion
and admiration. When he spoke of the friars he reiterated: Si, troppo ricchi, ma troppo ricchi!
(Yes, they are too rich, too rich).
The Franciscans (Italian) and the Jesuits (French) respect me. They don't know what I
have done, and I don't want to tell them, since I would rather not give pain to these simple
and good young men, who are going to China with such zeal. They are poor, pious, and in no
way proud. What a difference! Only one of them, who has been to China twice before, is
somewhat coarse, a kind of Fr. D?maso. But he is a good man, frank, and roared with laughter
at a little tale I told him. We enjoy playing chess together. He is from the Tyrol and is named
Fr. Fuchs. I call him Fr. Volpe when he pulls off a gambit. He is a good fellow, a Fr. D?maso
with no pride or malice.2 5
24Rizal, "Diario de viaje. De Marsella a Hongkong. 18 Oct. a 19 Nov. 1891," in Diarios y

Memorias por Jose Rizal (Escritos de Jose Rizal, vol. 1) (Manila: Comisi?n Nacional del Centenario de
Jose Rizal, 1961), pp. 235-236.
My emphasis. Carta a Fernando Blumen tritt, 22 de octubre 1891. In Cartas entre Rizal y el
Profesor Fernando Blumentritt (Escritos de Jose Rizal, vol. 2) (Manila: Comisi?n Nacional del
Centenario de Jose Rizal, 1961), part 2, pp. 774-775.
Fr. Gaspar Fuchs was born in Innsbruck in 1848 and began his missionary work in China in 1876.
He was returning to China from a vacation in his country, destined to Hupei, from where he went to the
Holy Land, dying in Bolzano in 1906. See Necrologium Fratrum Minorum in Sinis (Hong Kong: Tang
King Po School, Kowloon, 1978), p. 95.
There are numerous and important observations which may be drawn from these
compact paragraphs. One notices in the first place the impact that the words of
Volonteri produced on Rizal. Rizal, in spite of the apparent firmness of his
denunciations of the friars, especially the Franciscans, is aware that he does not have
direct and personal experience on which to base the accusations and ideas aired in his
writings. He feels relieved that no less than a Bishop is in accord with him that the friars
in the Philippines are rich and influential, although Volon teri apparently only refers to
the Dominicans in making these affirmations. But does this justify the crudeness of
his more important writings?26 Rizal does not seem to have been secure in the
self-appraisal of his work. The presence of these Franciscans who "respect'' him and
''enjoy playing chess" with him unnerves him and inspires self-questioning: "He is
conscious of the fact that he has generalized some actual defects and disclosed
them."27 He doubts the morality of his novel ("They don't know what I have
done"), but he counterattacks immediately with the only argument which could justify
his grave and irreparable action: ' 'They are poor, pious, and in no way proud. What a
difference [from the Franciscans in the Philippines]!'' But again he cannot be sure
since, as I have indicated before, he did not know the Franciscans in the Philippines
well. One last observation on these paragraphs: the encounter with friars of the same
Order which he had caricatured so unmercifully and compellingly in the Noli me t?tigere
could not but evoke the figure most loved of Rizal's creations, Fr. D?maso.28 Fr.
Fuchs appears to him a living example of the fictional priest of San Diego. So similar are
the two that one may only distinguish them by the lack of pride and malice in the
China-bound missionary.
The mutual admiration, almost identification, that existed between Rizal and the
Franciscans on the "Melbourne" began the very day he boarded the ship, and
throughout the almost month-long voyage grew as they passed small contretemps
and idle hours together on deck or in the salon. For the author of the Noli me t?tigere,
26
Rizal never doubted the basic Tightness of his enterprise: the dignifying and freeing of his nation.
On the other hand, in spite of his defenses in his letters to Fr. Pastells, he frequently questioned his
motivations and the ethics of his novel Noli me t?tigere. The best proof of his internal insecurity are his
almost morbid pride when meeting persons who approved this novel and the excessive importance that he
conceded to the infrequent opinions in his favor which appeared (that by Fr. Vicente Garcia, Filipino
Secular priest, being almost alone on his side). It is Unamuno who found the phrase which best
synthesizes pages of study when he characterized Rizal as "a Quixote playing at Hamlet" (Obras
completas, VIII, p. 939).
27
Leandro Tormo Sanz, "El obispo Volonteri 'combarcano' de Rizal, " Missionalia Hisp?nica, 33
(1976), p. 195.
28
This last affirmation is based on the following confession by Rizal in a letter of 14 August 1891
to Juan Zulueta: "I . . . have created no more than Fr. D?maso and a Capitan Tiago . . . " (In Cartas
entre Rizal y sus colegas de la Propaganda (Escritos de Jose Rizal, vol. 2) (Manila: Comisi?n Nacional
del Centenario de Jose Rizal, 1961), part 2, p. 679.
the journey became a type of world voyage with the characters he had created in his
novel, from whom he could not separate himself and which he was always observing
from close up. We can see all of this in his diary written during the trip:
29
25 October: ' 'The friars were on their knees" throughout the Mass.
28 October: He draws a silhouette of a Franciscan seen from behind.30 Biographers of

Rizal, noting the great admiration for Msgr. Volonteri Rizal expresses in this diary, have
thought that this portrait was of the old, sympathetic, and experienced China missionary, but
the hood and rope for a belt leave no doubt that the subject is a Franciscan.
30 October: ' 'The Franciscans and the Lombards this morning are arguing over every?
thing. I infuriated them when I asked who was the greatest saint . . . (el m?s grande santo in
Rizal's text): I asked who was the first person to go to heaven. . . Later I asked what the souls
in Limbo were up to when Christ passed through and the souls of the dead were revived. They
were furious. Then Fr. Fuchs appeared with a German translation of the Divine Comedy, and
another discussion began over whether the translation was necessarily bad. ..."
The same day Rizal pens another paragraph on the reactions of the friars to an apparent
case of injustice: "Those in second class on the ship [Rizal travelled first class] had a
contretemps. Two men took it badly that a servant of somebody travelling in first class took
his meals with them. They wanted the servant to eat by himself, away from them. The friars
and others protested, arguing that his fare had been paid and thus he had a right to eat there. It
appears they will appeal to the commissary to have the servant reinstated at the table. " 31
2 November: He tallies the passengers: "There are seven Jesuits, five Franciscans, three
Lombard fathers, and a Bishop with us. "32
6 November: He took a tour of Colombo, Ceylon, probably accompanied by the Italian

Franciscans from the ship: ' 'We visited the hospital under the care of the Franciscans, "33 and
strongly praised the work they were doing.
8 November: "Afterwards the Franciscans came and I have been talking about the
Franciscans in my country with them. " It was impossible for Rizal, obsessed as he was with
the real or apparent wealth of the Franciscans in the Philippines, not to raise the theme in
discussion, but the Franciscans from the ship limited themselves to this observation, working
from the information Rizal gave them: "If they are rich, then they are no longer Francis
29
Diarios y Memorias por Jose Rizal, p. 241.
3?Ibid., p. 242.
31 Ibid., p. 244-245.
32Ibid.,p. 247.
3 3T1 .
Ibid., p. 250.
cans. . . .',34 The conversation must have been prolonged in a calm and relaxed atmosphere:
"Seated on ropes and sails we chatted about these things. We discussed the miracles of St.
Francis, the niche behind the gate, the thorn changed into roses, etc. He [who?] gave me one
of the petals.,,3S Nowhere else in the diary and with no other passenger is such a dialogue
reproduced with such delicacy and respect. Clearly the admiration Rizal had for the saint of
Assisi, with whom he had so much in common, was sincere.
15 November, in Saigon: "All [the missionaries] praise the Annamite seminarians and
missionaries to me. 'They are angels,' said a poor Franciscan.''
After some months in Hong Kong, Jose Rizal arrived in Manila, a key figure in the
present and future events of Philippine history, and generator of a storm of conflicting
forces. Our writer and politician, conscious of his great responsibility and trying to
quiet the conflicting spirits around him and to remove grounds for possible
misunderstandings in regard to his person and presence, accepted the deportation to
Dapitan along with a voluntary silence, interrupted only by some letters to friends and
34
Ibid., p. 252. Their wealth (together with ignorance, pride, disdain of Filipinos, and non
observance of the rule of celibacy) is one of the most frequent charges which Rizal brings against the
Franciscans. He makes the accusation repeatedly in the two novels, but also in Los sucesos de las Isias
Filipinas, p. 346, n2. When Morga observes that the Dominicans and Franciscans (unlike other Orders,
such as the Augustinians and Jesuits) ' 'do not have nor do they permit income or property,'' Rizal adds
this note: ' 'This might have been true in Morga's time, but it appears that since then these Orders have
reformed themselves, for they now own property. ..." Rizal knew his topic well. He had studied the
early rules of the Dominicans and had investigated their comfortable economic situation in Hong Kong,
but I do not know if he did the same for the Franciscans. Of course, the Franciscans did not have a penny
invested in Hong Kong when Rizal passed by this English colony in 1888, nor does he mention the
Dominicans or the Augustinians. The property of the Franciscans he mentions was limited to the
convents in Manila proper and in San Francisco del Monte, situated then on an inhospitable and
impractical site some few kilometers outside of Manila. Nonetheless, as Fr. Felix Huerta himself has
noted, the Franciscans did not enjoy a reputation for poverty [See Archivo Franciscano Ibero-Oriental
(AFIO, henceforth), ms. 248/4-2]. Why was this so? Actually the Order as a whole does not seem to
have been in a very secure financial position in 1898, when Spain lost the colony, since they were
incapable of paying for tickets to Spain for the missionaries expelled from the country. At that time they
considered selling the San Francisco del Monte property, seat of the Provincial headquarters, in order to
raise the necessary funds. No other Order found itself in such a financial squeeze at this time. Perhaps
Rizal had heard of the bankruptcy of one of the most powerful business firms in the Philippines, Russell
& Sturgis, which occurred when he was a student in Manila, among whose creditors appeared (among
others) a Franciscan official and several parish priests of the same Order. This fact caused a certain
amount of scandal among Manila residents and was a cause for reprimands by fellow Franciscans [See
AFIO 297/4-2]. All in all, though, Rizal must have known perfectly well that the economic strength of
the Franciscans was minimal compared with that held by the Dominicans, Augustinians, Recollects,
Jesuits, etc.
3 SDiarios y Memorias por Jose" Rizal, pp. 252-253.
36Emphasis is mine. Ibid., p. 258.
investigators. On 4 October 1896 he is once again aboard a ship, this one the
' 'Castilla,'' anchored in the port of Barcelona. He had taken this ship from the
Philippines en route to Cuba, where he planned to serve voluntarily in the Spanish
army as a medical man. He was awaiting instructions when he noted in his diary: ' 'At
six o'clock, six cannonades rang out, apparently to celebrate the fiesta of St. Francis of
Assisi. ',37
Before I end this section on the irresistible attraction which Rizal felt towards
certain Franciscan values, it is convenient to make one final observation to complement
what I have said so far. It is well known that Rizal was an artist with significant talent
demonstrated since childhood in the plastic and pictorial arts. If we concede that what
an artist selects as objects of inspiration are usually very personal sources of attraction
and beauty, the presence of Franciscan motives in his artistic life are one more proof
that Franciscan values formed an important part of his personality. This, logically,
should come as no surprise after the points I have raised earlier. Thus we find that as a
child, in the first period of his artistic life, Rizal sculpted a clay model of St. Anthony of
Padua, the only saint (with St. Paul) that, to our knowledge, Rizal portrayed. With
this I should also mention the wood-carving of a Franciscan with a wine barrel on one
side, the portrait already mentioned of a Franciscan bust, and possibly a wood figure
entitled "El fraile al regreso,99 of which I have seen no picture.38 While these
examples are not numerous, their significance is considerable taken with the fact that
very few of his other works could be considered as religious.
III. THE KEY TO THE PROBLEM
Up to now I have indicated that with Rizal we have a dual picture regarding the
Franciscans: one of revulsion, condemnation, and disdain in his novels, on the one
hand; and, on the other, one of attraction, bordering on admiration, as shown clearly in
his intimate writings, such as in his letters and diaries. Is it possible to explain to our
satisfaction this clear dichotomy in the life and works of Jose Rizal? Are there elements
which may help us clarify the existence of this double current of contradictory emotions
in the greatest hero of the Malay race?
Lorenzo Perez, O.F.M., in the only place in which the tremendous prejudices Rizal
felt towards the Franciscans are discussed, appears to address this problem in an account
of one of the interviews held in June and July 1892 between the Filipino writer and
Governor General Despujol, immediately before his deportation to Dapitan:
37
Rizal, ' 'Diario de viaje. De Dapitan a Barcelona. 65 dfas sin tocar tierra. De Barcelona a Manila.
31 Julio a Nov. 1896,'' in Ibid., p. 284.
38
"Lista de las obras de arte de Rizal," in Pensamiento de Rizal. Bibliografia de los escritos de
Rizal. Lista de las obras de arte de Rizal (Escritos de Jos6 Rizal, vol. 10) (Manila: Comisi6n Nacional del
Centenario de Jose Rizal, 1962), pp. 93-103.
Governor General Despujol interviewed Rizal before deporting him to Dapitan. Rizal was
asked why the Filipinos were so discontented with the friars. Rizal responded: 'Because of the
friar estates'. 'Very well', replied Despujol 'but the Franciscans do not have friar estates. So,
why do you hate them'? Rizal answered, 'Because they are Spaniards'. 39
I do not know what really occurred during this supposed interview between Despujol
and Jose Rizal. Nor do I know why an intelligent man such as Lorenzo Perez could
accept as satisfactory this sort of response, which seems to me excessively superficial,
coming as it does from the intelligent writer and political figure Rizal. In any case, the
testimony from the renowned Franciscan Filipinista, Rizal's contemporary, proves one
thing at least: already Despujol, and perhaps others as well, were unable to understand
the paradoxical posture of Rizal towards the poorest and least influential of the Orders
in the Philippines, the Franciscans.
As far as I know, no biographer of Rizal has studied this problem, in fact none has
even asked the question.40 Certainly there have been efforts to arrive at a logical
explanation of his general antipathy toward friars, which is found in nearly all his
writings, but they have not given a clear, definitive and dispassionate answer to this
important problem. However, in an indirect way they can aid us in our search for a
better understanding of the theme which preoccupies us here.
One of the first explanations was given by Jesus M. Cavanna y Manso, CM.,
who thought that Rizal changed his attitude towards the friars owing to a series of com?
plex factors, among which one might mention the following: sharp incidents and
conflicts between RizaPs family and some members of one of the Orders; injuries and
mistreatment at the hands of the Government and some of its officials; personal
relations with Masons, liberals, freethinkers, and rationalists in Europe; and the
reading of impious and heretical books. His argument is that all of these elements
combined to produce a radical change in RizaPs life and beliefs, turning him into an
agnostic and rationalist; that, while he retained his faith and confidence in God, he
used at various times in his writings and conversations a heterodox language,
attacked and condemned various Catholic dogmas, and even on occasion blasphemed
by ridiculing the Church, the clergy, and canonic legislation.41
In the opinion of Ante Radaic, on the other hand, the anticlerical ideas aired by
Rizal in his novels stem from his romantic mentality and his deep sensibility towards the
problems of his country. Rizal, in the opinion of this Yugoslav writer, sought the best
for his country. His two novels, then,
39
Lorenzo Perez, O.F.M., Cuaderno de notas. Ms., AFIO 215/49, fol. 11.
4 0
The theme has been studied recently by Pedro Ruano, O.F.M., in his article, ' 'The Franciscans in
the writings of Dr. Jose Rizal," Philippiniana Sacra, 13 (1978), pp. 291-310; but not with the calm
and depth which the topic deserves.
41
Jesus Cavanna y Manso, CM. Rizal and the Philippines of his days (Manila[no publisher given],
1957), p. 99.
are not works of little Catholicism, but rather revealers of a clear antipathy toward the
externals of religion, against a formal Catholicism without moral conduct adjusted to the
professed creeds; counterpoised against an interior faith, without formulas and routines, of a
layman. . . Rizal called for the purity of the primitive Church. He was a Christian, and in his
writings and novels he has become a lay apostle voluntarily working for Christianity which he
sees always through his desire for the early simplicity and poverty of the primitive Church.42
Both of these viewpoints help us, I think, in bringing forth certain important
elements for the comprehension of Rizal's anticlericalism, but neither appears to help us
explain the apparent duality of RizaPs thinking about the Franciscans. Leon M.
Guerrero, in his biography of Rizal, has spoken against the apathy of Catholics towards
this theme and lamented the lack of a study detailing the evolution of Rizal 's religious
thought, a study which we still lack. Guerrero also notes the insufficient solutions
suggested by Cavanna and Radaic, and has suggested the possibility that Rizal had
arrived at the conclusion that in 1886, as earlier in 1872, the true enemies of reforms
in, and progress of, the Philippines were the friars. And he had concluded that his task
was at all costs to demythologize these men, even at the cost of injustice and lack of
charity in that work.43 This viewpoint, according to Guerrero, would confirm the sin?
cerity, impartiality, and absence of any resentment within Rizal when he began to write
his first novel.
1. A Permanent Obsession: 187244
Undoubtedly the hypothesis of Guerrero's has much more to recommend it than

those of Cavanna and Radaic, but again it leaves without a solution the specific
problem I have discussed since the beginning of this essay. While Guerrero may be
right concerning the point of departure for Rizal in the preparation of his novels, once
again we face the critical issue: why did Rizal single out the Franciscans for special
treatment, as the key figures responsible for the intolerable situation he was trying to
denounce? Why did he make them the foremost protagonists in the events he narrated,
albeit in a fictional form? Why did he not try to assign culpability more in accord with
historical fact? After all, the Franciscans had never been, either earlier or in 1886, the
richest or the most influential with the Government. Finally, why is Rizal alone in
adopting this discriminatory posture; why was his attitude not shared (at least in their
42
Ante Radaic, Jose Rizal, rom?ntico realista (Manila: Comision Nacional del Centenario de Jose
Rizal, 1961), p. 216.
4 3*
Le?n Ma. Guerrero, The first Filipino. A biography of Jose Rizal (Manila: National Historical
Commission, 1971), p. 136.
4 4
For a background to the ambience of the Cavite Mutiny and its socio-political repercussions, see
Rizalino Aquilino Oades, The Social and Economic Background of Philippine Nationalism, 1830-1892
(Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawaii, 1974), especially Chapter 7, pp. 334-395.
writings) by his fellow Propagandists ? not even those who were bom and grew up in
parishes administered by Franciscans, such as Marcelo H. del Pilar?
In my opinion we must look elsewhere for the point of departure to address these
questions. Jose Rizal wrote his novels for fellow Filipinos, not for Spaniards, as he
himself repeated over and over again. What was he trying to do? The response to this
query is, in my opinion, implied in his very writings: to show the Filipinos the true
beginnings and history of what occurred in Cavite in January and February of 1872 as
seen through the eyes of the ilustrados at about the year 1878, the year to which he
assigned the start of the events of his first novel.45 The center of the novel Noli me
tang ere revolves around the plot ' 'discovered" by Fr. Salvi and shown to the alferez of
San Diego, a plot designed by the Franciscan himself, as Rizal gives us to understand
(see my outline above, pp. 6-7). The scheme, artfully contrived by the priest, would
have evoked in the minds of Rizal 's Filipino readers the scene of Cavite in 1872. If one
reads this and the following chapters carefully, this evocation can be seen readily and
clearly.46
In addition, in the novel El filibusterismo, Rizal ignored no opportunity to relate
the story to the sorrowful events of Cavite. Fr. Florentino, in whom Rizal tried to
incarnate D. Leoncio Lopez, close friend of the Rizal family and former parish priest of
Calamba, represents the Filipino secular clergy and is a contemporary of the tragic
events of 1872. Like other compatriots, Fr. Florentino has been traumatized by the
Cavite events. The Spaniards understood this when they first read RizaPs novels. And
if there could be any doubt about this, there was the dedication of El filibusterismo to
the memory of the three priests, victims of that tremendous event, a point which should
serve to dissipate any lingering doubts.
For Rizal, the year 1872 not only was a momentous year, it was also the most
significant landmark for the history of the Philippines, the radical moment when
the young shoots of a new history had sprouted. He wanted to make this known to all
his compatriots. Cavite was the watchword for the trauma which had lain heavily on
the mind of his people, and Rizal wanted to provoke a catharsis that would free them
45
The date of 1878 is not an arbitrary one. Rizal, for reasons which I do not know, placed the
events in the Noli in that year. It was in that year that Rizal began his studies in medicine at the
University of Santo Tomas, as well as the year he wrote his first diary (retrospectively), under the
pseudonym of P. Jacinto, entitled "Memorias de un estudiante de Manila, 1878." See Diarios y
Memorias pox Jose Rizal, pp. 1-31.
4 6In addition to the points suggested above, the plot is even more significant since the friars are
made to appear responsible, as in the Cavite Mutiny, and the story told succeeds in evoking the very
ambience which Rizal experienced as a child when the events of 1872 occurred. In 1889, Marcelo H. del
Pilar had noted: ' 'One of the charges brought against the Noli me t?tigere by the Manila censorship was
that it evoked the memories of Cavite. The uprising in the novel, organized by Fr. Salvi but attributed to
Ibarra, in fact is somewhat similar to the events of Cavite. " (Marcelo H. del Pilar, "Noli me t?tigere
ante el odio monacal de Filipinas," in Rizal ante los ojos de sus contempot?neos [Escritos sobre Jose
Rizal], vol. 13, book 1) (Manila: Comisi?n Nacional del Centenario de Jose Rizal, 1961), p. 18.
once and for all from the fear, frustration, and deracination which resulted from the
event and of which they were the victims:
Without 1872 there would have been neither a Plaridel nor a Jaena nor a Sancianco. Nor
would there have come into existence the valiant and generous Filipino colonies in Europe.
Without 1872, Rizal would now be a Jesuit and in place of having written the Noli me
t?tigere, he would have written the opposite. At the sight of those injustices, though yet a
child, my imagination was awakened and I vowed to dedicate myself to avenge someday its
many victims. It is with this idea that I have studied, and it is this idea which one may read in
all my work and writings. God will one day give me the occasion to carry out this promise. 7
The events at Cavite followed Rizal like a specter wherever he directed his steps.
Manuel Jerez Burgos was a nephew of Fr. Jose Burgos, and it was through his influence
that Rizal had been admitted as a student to the Ateneo de Manila. It was in his house
Rizal lived during his first years in Manila (the same house where the unfortunate
priest himself had lived?). After stating that Jose Rizal was intelligent, but taciturn and
introverted, Manuel Jerez Burgos added: "He did not mix with the other students
except to make some comments on the events which had just disturbed the
archipelago.'*
Seen from this perspective, which to my mind reflects faithfully the state of mind of
Rizal, the novels of the great Filipino hero are very far from being merely literary tales,
loaded with folklore and romanticism, and easily intelligible and acceptable to most
Filipinos. They are rather novelistic histories, narrations of historical fact, ably
mixed with different levels of interpretation and with diverse literary styles. They are a
statement that the events of those sad days of January and February of 1872 survived
in their consequences and that the same or similar occurrences would repeat themselves
inexorably if the agents who intervened constantly and decisively in Philippine events
were not swept out without pity. These agents were, first and foremost, the friars,
despotic and corrupt; then an inept government; and the Filipino people, throttled by
the oppression and tyranny of a few. But the main cancer that with all his force he
4 7
Rizal, Carta a Mariano Ponce, 18 de abril, 1889. In Cartas entre Rizal y sus colegas de la
Propaganda, part one, p. 356.
4 8
Manuel Jerez Burgos, Declaraciones al diario Republica Filipina, 30 de diciembre, 1889, as
quoted in Retana, Vida y escritos del Dr. Rizal, p. 19. The title of the first novel iself by Rizal, if we are
to believe Emilio Reverter Delm?s, appears to have been taken from one of the last utterances made by
the unfortunate Fr. Jose Burgos. Here are the words from Reverter: When the executioner was about to
put Burgos to death, there was a certain unexpected movement in the crowd. "Both because his horse
reared as well as because the cry of grief from forty thousand people thronging around the scaffold
sounded suspicious, the head of the squad ordered his soldiers to face the crowd. Fr. Burgos, believing
perhaps that a pardon had come or that, perhaps, the crowd was about to mutiny to save him, raised
himself from the stool. The executioner forced him down. 'Noli me t?ngere', exclaimed the unfortunate
one. 'Don't touch me'." (Emilio Reverter Delm?s, Filipinas por Espafla. Barcelona: Centro Editorial de
Alberto Martin, 1897), vol. 1, p. 347.
intended to excise was the friars. The friars were the ones responsible for the events at
Cavite and thereafter, and Rizal felt himself morally obliged to destroy them, not
physically but morally, to unmask them before the credulous public who still had faith
in them. Rizal argued that
The friars will fake another uprising as they did with the Cavite one, and in doing that they
will cut the throats of many illustrious people, but the blood they spill will bring forth new and
fresh shoots. Before the catastrophe of 1872, there were fewer thinkers and fewer anticlericals
than now. After they sacrificed those innocent victims they now find themselves faced with a
new generation of youth, including women and maidens, all committed to the same cause. If
they repeat the slaughter, the executioners will have sealed their own fate.4 9
In my opinion, this is where Rizal believed he had made his great discovery.
Others before him, perhaps more crudely and directly, had publicized the moral abuses
of the Philippine-based friars, but no one (and certainly not a Filipino) until Rizal
published his novel had dared to present to a Filipino audience the friars expressly and
minutely as a truly malign tumor, a cancer poisoning the soul of the Filipino.51 It is
precisely in this context that I believe we find the key to the solution of why Rizal
assigned the greatest portion of responsibility to the Franciscans for what was going on
49Rizal, "La verdad para todos, " in Escritos politicos e hist?ricos por Jose Rizal (Escritos de Jose
Rizal, vol. 7) (Manila: Comision Nacional del Centenario de Jose Rizal, 1961), p. 99. As far as I
know, nowhere else did Rizal express himself so directly on the end he had in mind when he wrote the
Noli and the style employed than in the letter he wrote to Blumentritt on 2 February 1890. After men?
tioning the dialogue that he apparently had had with Fr. Faura about his novel, during which the Jesuit
pointed out the advantages of giving a more positive and edifying focus to his plot, Rizal wrote:
"I answered by saying that I wrote not for the thinking public but for the unthinking ones; that there are
many books which describe the ideal priest, but that they are used by the bad priests to cover their wolf?
like nature with sheep skins. I said that what I wanted was to awaken my countrymen from their deep
sleep, and to awaken them I needed not delicate and soft sounds but rather explosions and great blows"
(Cartas entre Rizal y el Profesor Fernando Blumentritt, book 2, part 2, p. 613).
50See, for example, Francisco Canamaque. Recuerdos de Filipinas. Vol. 1 (Madrid: J. Cruzado,
1877), pp. 150-153; and vol. 2 (Madrid: Aribau, 1879), pp. 71-85 and 224-256.
51 Rizal, Carta a Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, 5 de marzo, 1887: "The words 'Noli me tangere' are
taken from the Gospel of St. Luke and mean, 'Don't touch me.' My novel then contains things which no
one before us has spoken; things which are so delicate that no one dared to touch on them. In my case, I
have tried to do that which no one has wanted to do ? I have wanted to answer the calumnies that for
so many centuries have been heaped up against us and our country. I have wanted to unmask the
hypocrisy, disguised as religion, which was impoverishing and brutalizing us. I have distinguished true
religion from false religion and superstition, spoken of those who use the Holy Word to extort money
and try to make us believe in sorcery, things which would embarrass a true Catholic. ... All that I relate
is true and factual, and I can prove it. . . No one can doubt the objectivity of what I wrote. " (Cartas
entre Rizal y sus colegas de la Propaganda, part one, p. 91. See the original French text ibid.,
pp. 89-90). He expressed himself in similar terms in his 21 March 1887 letter to Blumentritt (Cartas
entre Rizal y el Profesor Fernando Blumentritt, book 2, part 1, pp. 106-107).
in the archipelago. It is true that neither in his diaries nor in his letters can we find a
single text which explains this disconcerting posture of Rizal's; nonetheless, if we
interpret Rizal 's repeated statements in the sense that he was narrating historical facts
centered around the (for him) extraordinarily important events of 1872, we cannot
ignore these facts and indulge instead in merely subjective interpretations.
2. Jose Burgos against Fr. Joaquin Coria
One of the most conspicuous victims of Cavite was Fr. Jose Burgos. There is no
doubt that Burgos was the Filipino hero most admired and studied by Jose Rizal. We do
not know if Rizal ever met Burgos, but we can be sure that he listened with admiration
to the comments about Burgos which he heard as a child. And we know that Burgos'
death affected Rizal strongly, traumatizing his delicate sensibility to the extent that he
never got over it. According to John F. Schumacher, when Jose Burgos succeeded to
the leadership of the large group of Filipino clergy after the death of his teacher, D.
Pedro Pelaez, he was promptly enveloped in sharp and polemical disputes with some
members of the Regular clergy, who saw in the liberal ideas and nationalistic concepts
of the young Filipino priest a clear challenge to their dominance and leadership in the
Philippines. The polemics degenerated into open verbal battle in 1863, then let up only
to break forth anew and even more virulently in 1869. By then the young priest of
the Manila cathedral had become the most outstanding figure of the archipelago, not
only among the Secular clergy but possibly (as an intellectual) among all in the islands
at that time. Paradoxically, the Franciscans, who throughout the 19th century had kept
to the sidelines of the long and odious litigation between the Secular clergy and the
Regulars over the secularization of the parishes, now took a frontline position thanks to
the actions of their procurador (Franciscan Commissary General) in Madrid and his duel
with this foremost figure of the indigenous clergy.
The situation developed in the following way. In 1869, the brothers Antonio and
Manuel Regidor, charged by Filipino liberals with the task of presenting their position
before the Madrid government, published anonymously a series of articles on the
situation in the Philippines in the Madrid newspaper La Discusi?n. In those articles,
among other charges and conclusions, they aired certain accusations against the Regular
clergy, that is, the friars, of the archipelago. The Franciscan procurador in Madrid was
Fr. Joaquin de Coria, and either on his own initiative or on behalf of the procuradores
of the other Orders, he felt obliged to refute these allegations ? without consulting
first with his superiors in Manila. He wrote three letters to the same newspaper in
answer to the articles by the Regidors, published on 20, 21, and 28 August, 1869.
52
The tense atmosphere of those years, during which Burgos was confronting Coria, has been
described in detail by Fidel Villarroel, O.P., in his Father Jost Burgos, University Student (Manila:
University of Santo Tomas, 1971), pp. 54-61 and 93-121.
On 13 October they were reprinted in the Conservative magazine Altar y trono. These
letters charged the Secular clergy with being antipatriotic and anti-Spanish, and, in
addition, challenged the anonymous authors of the original articles to reveal themselves.
Not content with this, the Franciscan procurador published almost simultaneously in
Madrid an even more inflammatory pamphlet entitled Memoria apologetica sobre la
utilidad y servicios prestados a Espafla por los religiosos misioneros de Filipinas, using
the pseudonym of ' 'Un misionero franciscano.9 ,s 3
The pamphlet in question is more than an eulogy on the missionary labors of the
Regular clergy. It is also a fierce apology for the achievements of the Franciscans since
their arrival in 1578 to date. Coria was trying to counter in his Memoria the effects
produced during the previous months by the critical articles appearing in the Madrid
press against the friars in the Philippines (do not forget that this was barely a year after
the Revolution of 1868 in Spain), reaffirming in the pamphlet the thesis presented in
his letters to the editor of La Discusi?n. His argument was mainly that the Philippines
owed everything to the friars ? and among them, of course, the Franciscans ? and
that the friars continued to be essential for the political stability of the Islands, owing to
their moral and intellectual superiority, especially when contrasted with the putative
faults of the Seculars. The unquestionable loyalty of the Friars to Spain was contrasted
with the alleged uncertain attitude of the Filipino clergy throughout Philippine history.
He heaped a series of vituperations on the heads of Filipinos and the Secular Filipino
clergy and concluded with a simplistic view of religion, reducing it almost totally to the
role of safeguarding the political interests of Spain and the privileges which the Orders
enjoyed peacefully in the archipelago.
As some Franciscans had already begun to fear, Coria ended by touching the match
to a polemic, which found his brethren unprepared to fight, over the ancient but always
explosive question of their control of Philippine parishes. Jose Burgos knew Fr. Joaquln
Coria personally and must have had good information on his life and character. He
responded with a letter to La Discusi?n replying to the charges presented by the
Franciscan against the Secular clergy five months earlier. The letter was dated 14
January 1870, signed by Fr. Jose Burgos and Fr. Jose Guevara, parish priest of
Quiapo. It was written on behalf of the Secular clergy of the Philippines and addressed
to the Governor General of the colony. It strongly condemned the allegations made by
Coria (while not naming him expressly) and affirmed the seculars' strong and uncon
5 3The AFIO has a copy of the second part of an autographed copy of this pamphlet by Coria, dated
and signed by him on 4 April 1869 (AFIO 102/29), as well as an undated letter by him stating that he
had written an essay on the Philippine missions (AFIO 100/38). Coria is expressly identified as the
author of the pamphlet by Valentin Marin y Morales, O.P., in his compendium Ensayo de una sintesis de
los trabajos realizados por las corporaciones religiosas en Filipinas (Manila: Santo Tom?s, 1901), v. 2,
p. 543; and by Wenceslao E. Retana in his Aparato bibliogr?fico de la historia general de Filipinas
(Madrid: Imp. de la Sucesora de M. Minuesa de los Rlos, 1906) v. 2, no. 820, and v. 3, no. 1,218.
ditional loyalty to Spain.54

Important as this document was, it remained unpublished, owing, according to the
editor,55 to lack of space or, according to Fr. Coria, to the pressure which he
exerted.56 On 20 March La Discusi?n did publish an article by Jose Burgos, in which
he took up the gauntlet thrown down by Fr. Coria and replied with a fierce critique of
the Franciscan thesis, making abundant use of the material presented before in his
1864 Manifiesto. In this article Burgos quoted at length from the procurador's
letters and mentioned Coria's name expressly and repeatedly. These two responses
were followed by three more, all published in La Discusi?n on 21 March, 12 April, and
11 May 1870, 57 which maintained the same pugnacious tone and the sharp and
personal nature of the first published essay. To none of them, as far as I know, did
Coria respond, probably because (as I will try to substantiate further on) he was not
permitted to do so by his superiors.
Why did Burgos wait until January 1870 to respond to Coria's articles? And why,
when he did respond, did he use such a direct style and write in such an agitated and
non-conciliatory way? I do not know with certainty the answers to these two
questions. Undoubtedly Burgos read the articles by Coria not in La Discusi?n but in
Altar y trono, whose first copies arrived in Manila in December 1869 and produced a
great uproar among the Secular clergy. Aside from a possible intervention by the
Regidor brothers, more or less direct, in this affair, it may be appropriate to bear in
mind what occurred during this time. During the last months of 1869 and into January
of 1870 there were various grave events which occurred in Manila, aside from the
student rebellions inspired by Felipe Buencamino, which could have contributed to the
misunderstandings between the Franciscans and Jose Burgos. On 14 May 1869
Burgos, promo tor fiscal, charged the Franciscan Raimundo Gallardo before the
Archbishop of Manila with assault against one Tomas Pine, and reaffirmed the charge
in a statement of 31 May. Some months later, Burgos intervened again in another
5 4Jose Burgos and Jose Guevara, Carta del clero secular de Filipinas al Gobernador General de
dichas Isias, Manila, 14 de enero, 1870. See the translation in the appendix, based on the ms. in AFIO
286/8-1.
S5JohnN. Schumacher, S.J. Father Jose Burgos, Priest and Nationalist (Manila: Ateneo University
Press, 1972), p. 134. I think that this is the first letter from Jose Burgos received by La Discusi?n, not
that of 29 March 1870 (as Schumacher, p. 135, seems to think), since it is chronologically earlier and
coincides in its content with the first one published on the 20th of the same month.
5 6Joaquin de Coria, O.F.M., Informe del P . . . , en calidad de comisario procurador de la provincia

de San Gregorio, al capftulo provincial de la misma sobre sus actividades en Espana. Madrid, 4 de abril,
18 70. Ms. orig. in AFIO 286/8-1.
57
Both the polemic between Coria and Burgos as well as the part played by Antonio Regidor in the
matter have been the object of study by Schumacher (see Father Jose Burgos. . ., pp. 26-28) and by
Leandro Tormo Sanz ("El obispo Volonteri 'combarcano* de Rizal,'' Missionalia Hisp?nica [23: 97-99,
1976], pp. 223-224). The letters of Jose Burgos have been republished recently by Schumacher in his
book on Burgos, pp. 134-193.
conflict, this time between the Franciscans Francisco Arriaga and Mariano Pardo on the
one hand and the Franciscan provincial (pressed by the Governor General of the
Philippines, Carlos Maria de la Torre y Navacerrada)58 on the other. The two
Franciscans had been accused of insubordination, liberalism, and anti-Church ideas,
and ended up being expelled from the Franciscan Order and deported to Spain at the
end of January 1870.5 9
About this same time, in January 1870, relations between the Secular clergy and
the Regulars were passing through a period of strong tension, as we can deduce from
the meeting between the Governor General, the ecclesiastical governor of Manila, and
the provincials of the Regulars,60 caused in part (at least) by the articles of Coria.
Circumstances were such as to exacerbate the nervousness and radicalization of the
parties affected, and in this tense atmosphere it was hardly surprising that Burgos
(with the instigation and support of the Regidor brothers) was led to believe it an
opportune time to burst forth with a public statement of the Secular position on the
delicate problem of loyalty to Spain, using the imprudent, unjust, and inopportune
attacks by Coria as the pretext.
Two years after this period, Jose Burgos, together with his fellow clerics Mariano
Gomez and Jacinto Zamora, was vilely garrotted at Bagumbayan, charged with
complicity in the fateful Cavite Mutiny.
3. The Franciscans and the Events at Cavite in 1872
Did the Franciscans have anything to do with the tragic occurrences at Cavite?
Who were the true conspirators behind that rebellion and what were their goals? The
Filipinos, both then and now, have never succeeded in obtaining a clear answer to these
questions. Nor can we today convincingly decide who was directly or indirectly
implicated in these events. We lack the firsthand documentation which would allow us
to arrive at definite conclusions on the series of events which so sullied the image of
Spain in the Philippines.61
58
In the original article the name of the governor is given as Jose de la G?ndara; however, according
to historical records he seems to have been replaced by this time by de la Torre, who arrived in June
1869. Transl.
59
Archivo del Arzobispado de Manila, Asuntos criminales, 1871-1878. Also see Carlos Quirino,
' 'A checklist of documents on Gomburza from the Archdiocesan Archives of Manila,'' Philippine Studies
21 (1973), p. 72; and Copia de los documentos pertenecientes a la cuesti?n de los PP. Francisco Arriaga
y Mariano Pardo, Ms. in AFIO 297/2-3.
6?Antonio Molina, The Philippines through the centuries (Manila: U.S.T. Cooperative, 1960),
v. 1, pp. 314-315.
61 Two authors in particular have tried, with only limited success, to clarify the facts of the Cavite
Mutiny and the flood of words written about it. See John N. Schumacher, S.J., "Published sources on
Nonetheless, at that time it was not long before hypothesis began to be bruited
about, attributing what happened to certain groups, though again (and still) without
the presentation of proofs which would have justified such affirmations or suspicions.
Some suspected that the black hand of the friars was involved behind the scenes, a
point of view which seemed sufficiently probable to the liberals in the Philippines. Even
Burgos noted that whenever the spiny topic of the parishes in the Philippines arose,
immediately rumors of plots against Spanish colonial rule appeared. The same
phenomenon occurred when Burgos wrote his letters against Coria's diatribes, and
Burgos did not hesitate, albeit in a veiled fashion, to point a finger at the friars.
It is thus not surprising that already by 18 March 1872, when the tragedy of
Cavite was weighing like a funeral slab on Filipino society, and arrests had spread
throughout the archipelago, the influential liberal newspaper El Eco Filipino, published
in Madrid by those who perhaps had engineered the confrontation between Coria and
Burgos, pointed to the friars as being behind the slaughter, either directly or indirectly.
In this connection it is necessary to insert a complete description of the events, the most
detailed we have, by Antonio Maria Regidor, although not published until 1900.
Regidor assigned prime responsibility to Fr. Joaquin de Coria for poisoning the
atmosphere immediately before 1872:
Such claims [ wrote Regidor on the activities of himself and his brother Manuel in Madrid]
alarmed the procuradores of the Orders in Madrid, most notably the Dominican Fr. Jose Checa
(a man of good qualities except for his mystical fanaticism) and the Franciscan Fr. Joaquin de
Coria, a poorly educated man, typical of the despotic and coarse manners of his brothers in the
Franciscan Order. 6 3
One is surprised at the parallelism between this description by Regidor of Coria

and the figure of Fr. D?maso created by Rizal for his Noli me t?ngere. It is possible
that Antonio M. Regidor in this passage was merely providing a retrospective
version of the facts, influenced by his reading of Rizal's novel, and with a perspective
motivated by his anticlerical and vengeful prejudices toward Coria. But it is also
possible that Rizal had encountered this version of the facts about Cavite before he
wrote his novels. We should not forget that Rizal had read some of the writings of
Burgos, and that Rizal's elder brother, Paciano Mercado, mentor and guide of Rizal
(with all the connotations of moral authority that these three titles confer on a person in
the Philippine culture, then and now) shared the ideals of Jose Burgos. Paciano in fact
was lodged in Burgos' house when the bitter polemic between Coria and Burgos
the Cavite Mutiny," Philippine Studies, 20 (1972), pp. 603-632; and Leandro Tormo Sanz, "La
Huelga del arsenal de Cavite en 1872,'' Anuario de Estudios Americanos, 25 (1978), pp. 283-378.
62
Schumacher, Father Jose Burgos, Priest and Nationalist, p. 154.
63
Filipinas ante Europa, num. 9, 28 de febrero, 1900, p. 73. Emphasis in the text is mine.
occurred, and was as well a key member of the more radicalized students in Manila, led
by Felipe Buencamino, Antonio Maria Regidor, Marcelo H. del Pilar, and others. This
second hypothesis appears rather more probable to me than the first one. In fact, the
anticlerical prejudices held by Rizal do not appear to have spontaneously formed in
Madrid, but rather to have existed earlier, and would thus help explain the radical tone
of his first letters from abroad.64 I will return to this below.
No one has been able to prove irrefutably that the Cavite Mutiny was engineered
by the Philippine-based friars in order to destroy the liberal and anticlerical elements in
the Islands. Equally unproven, and unprovable from the documents we have, is any
implication that the Franciscans were (or were not) involved in such a plot, though this
seems at least improbable. The provincial of the Franciscans, Fr. Sebastian Moraleda,
was in Pungcan at the time of the Mutiny, too far from the scene of the purported plot
to effectively manipulate any agents presumptively assigned to carry out such a delicate
mission. The very manner in which in his letter of 19 February (two days after the
execution of Jose Burgos, Jacinto Zamora, and Mariano G?mez) he reported what
happened to Fr. Gregorio Aguirre (afterwards Archbishop of Toledo) does not
conform close enough to what we now know about the actual events to have been
written by a manipulator of any plot:
The only news here is the uprising in the town square of Cavite on the 19th and 20th of
last month, an uprising which was suppressed at once. When it occurred, I was enroute for the
missions at Pungcan and others of the Cordillera [Caraballo], and it was in Pungcan where I
learned of the uprising. The news made quite an impact on us there, especially since the reports
were incomplete and we did not know what had happened to those in Manila and its suburbs.
Thanks to God, though, they have only received a good shock and nothing else.
The Government shot some of the rebels from the ranks of the military, while garrotting
some of the others on the 17th, among them two priests from the Cathedral, the parish priest
of Bacor [sic], and one other indio, a confidant of theirs. Many others are under arrest, and
new detentions occur daily; we expect the dragnet to extend to the provinces soon.
Nonetheless, all appears calm here.65
No proof seems to exist to substantiate any allegation of an intervention by Fr.

Felix Huerta in the Cavite events. He had been one of the first to condemn the
publications by Coria, precisely because they attacked the Secular clergy. Regidor
named Huerta as one of those involved in the conspiracy, but this seems to be based on
old resentments towards Huerta over differences concerning Huerta's auditing of the
64
The proofs of what I here affirm are multiple, but to itemize them would take us too far afield for
this essay. It may be sufficient to simply note that Rizal, as shown by his diaries, read when he was only
twelve years old the encyclopedia by Cesar Can tu, considered an openly anti-clerical work.
65Carta del P. Sebasti?n de Moraleda, provincial de San Gregorio, al P. Gregorio Aguirre. Manila,
19 de febrero, 1872. Ms. in AFIO 9/2, fol. 218 v.
Misericordia accounts, which substantially and adversely affected Regidor's personal

interests.
4. Development of a Political Consciousness
What was the concrete historical context in which Jose Rizal decided to write his
novels, and what influence could this have had on the focus and final results of the
project by the most politicized 19th-century Filipino novelist? No one seems to have
studied this subject, in spite of the evident importance it has for a correct understanding
and evaluation of these two important novels. Moreover, I think the topic is critical if
we are to understand the part assigned to the Franciscans in the Noli me t?ngere and, in
part, in El filibusterismo.
Although Rizal defended with confidence many of his denunciations of the friars
by alleging that they were based on fact, the truth is that his ill-will and prejudices
toward them do not appear to be based on a full and personal knowledge of actual
conditions in the Philippines. For instance, he scarcely travelled in the archipelago,
except between Manila and Calamba and nearby areas. The source of these charges is
more likely to be a series of complex factors arising from certain negative experiences
during his infancy and childhood ? experiences which were stored in the subconscious
and burst forth suddenly in later years after contact with Madrid and the intellectual
atmosphere of liberalism and anti-clericalism of the second half of the 19th century.
On 3 May 1882 we find him aboard the ' 'Salvadora,'' plunged into a sea of
depression and dark presentiments concerning the consequences of his trip to Europe,
the goal of all idealist and dissatisfied Filipinos of the time. The first shock he received,
which would produce unforeseen consequences, occurred when he overheard the next
day, while still in Philippine waters, a conversation among a group of Spanish civil
servants, also on their way to Spain:
There was a conversation this evening among Sres. Barco, Morl?n, Pardo, Buil, and others.
They talked a great deal about the government in the Philippines, and their condemnations
were abundant. / discovered that all Spaniards in my country, whether friar or civil servant,
desire to leech off the Indio. Certainly there are exceptions, but very few. From this stem the
grand evils and the enmities among those fighting over the spoils.6 7
6 6 Space does not permit a full discussion of Fr. Felix Huerta. I will only note that he was a man
abundantly occupied with charitable works. He was co-founder of the first Caja de Ahorros in the
Philippines, director of the Hospital de San L?zaro, and promoter of the attempts to increase the amount
of potable water in Manila. He was a tremendously active person, an indefatigable writer, and a man of
uncommon high ethical standards. He abundantly deserves a separate biographical study.
67
Emphasis is mine. Rizal, "Diario de viaje. De Calamba a Barcelona. 1 Mayo 1882, " in Diarios
y Memorias por Jose Rizal, p. 38.
These two sentences synthesize the fundamental thesis of the Noli me t?tigere. The
most important phrase of this paragraph is undoubtedly that in which Rizal says, "I
discovered.'' Is it possible that Jose Rizal, the young and very talented Ateneo
student, was heretofore not familiar with the abuses of the friars and civil servants in
his country? Certainly not, 68
and his diary from his childhood and youth is the best
witness for this conclusion. But it was only now that Rizal felt he had discovered the
missing piece of the puzzle, which allowed him to make sense of the conundrums which
had preoccupied him for years. The impact caused by his overhearing those
conversations would be followed by a series of encounters in the world of politics, of
arts and letters, all of which would cause a veritable slaughter among his innermost
ideas and convictions. He had scarcely arrived in Spain when he planned into a reading
of the works of Dumas, Voltaire, and Rousseau, as well as various studies on
revolution. He subscribed to the newspapers with the most radical tendencies, such as
El Liberal. He made friends with Morayta, Linares y Rivas, Pi y Margall, Moret,
and other prominent figures of the Spanish liberal movement, whose prescriptive ideas
he would accept with great enthusiasm.69 According to Retana, Rizal told his guard in
Dapitan, Ricardo Camicero, of the great impact that these first contacts with the great
figures of Liberalism had on him:
. . .in the first meetings I had with Pi and with Linares Rivas (when he belonged to the Liberal
Party) they told me things about my country that I, born there, did not know. Like these
gentlemen, I could tell you things that they also know concerning the life and miracles of the
friars in the Philippines.70
November 1884 was one of the most tragic late-19th-century months for the
student population in the Spanish capital. Rizal was there and was tremendously
Antonio Molina and P. Ortiz Armengol (see Rizal, dos diarios de juventud (1882-1884),
Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hisp?nica, 1960, p. 63) apparently would not agree with this opinion, since
they affirm that Rizal's words indicate that "he had not seen significant abuses" and, therefore, such
abuses "were not very evident." One must look elsewhere to explain Rizal's reaction and that state?
ment.
69
Blumen tritt has left us a good description of the impact and shock the liberal atmosphere and
general lack of affection for the clergy of Madrid made on the then young student Jose Rizal (see ' 'Sobre
la diferencia de las razas," in Escritos varios por Josi Rizal, Escritos de Jose Rizal, vol. 8, Manila:
Comision Nacional del Centenario de Jose Rizal, 1961, p. 645). Rizal himself expressed at various
times and in distinct ways his strong admiration for Voltaire and Rousseau. Concerning the former, we
know of no less than half a dozen pencil sketches of him, and he enthusiastically recommended to
Marcelo H. del Pilar that he read his works (January 1889 letter, in Cartas entre Rizal y sus colegas de la
Propaganda, part one, p. 274). Perhaps what he praised the most, though, was the body of work by
Francisco Pi y Margall, especially his work Las luchas de nuestros dlas, Primeros y segundos di?logos
(Madrid: Dionislo de los Rfos, 1887) ? see Escritos politicos e hist?ricos por Josi Rizal, p. 282.
Retana, Vida y escritos del Dr. Rizal, p. 274.
influenced by what he saw. Morayta had given the speech opening the university year,
in which he defended the right of professors to freely investigate and report their ideas
in the university environment, but some of his affirmations produced a critical and
condemnatory reaction from amongst some of the more traditional elements in the
Spanish Church. This reaction carried with it a prohibition by some Bishops of the
reading and dissemination of Morayta's speech, with the further recommendation that
all existing copies be destroyed. The students, stirred up by the liberals, reacted by
organizing a large demonstration (complete "with vivas and mueras" as Rizal noted),
that was brutally suppressed by the police, with the Rector, professors, and other
officials arrested. The very steps of the University were stained with blood, many were
wounded, and even more were arrested. Rizal himself was almost grabbed, but he
managed to escape by subterfuge on three separate occasions. One can well imagine
that Jose Rizal was under strong tension as a result of these events, and we can see it in
the following paragraph of one of his letters:
... no one would be honored to graduate from this dishonored, insulted, vilified, oppressed,
tyrannized University. Science ought to be free as should its professor. I will not take my
degree in medicine as long as Creus is the Rector ? I would not want that most glorious
diploma to be signed by a man detested by all. . . Were he to sign it I would tear it up.71
In this same year he came across a pamphlet which denigrated the Franciscans.
Rizal apparently read this with real enjoyment, judging from the number of times that
he mentioned it directly or indirectly, and judging too from the extensive use that he
made of it in the composition of the Noli me t?ngere and some of his other, less
important writings. The central theme of this tract was the deviation from the religious
vows and the sexual excesses committed by the Franciscan chaplain of the nuns at the
convent of Santa Clara de Manila.72 Soon afterwards, also in 1884, Rizal (animated
by his constant desire to work out on paper his most intimate experiences) sketched
out an article entitled ' '?/ pensamiento de un filipino, '' in which for the first time
(albeit in schematic form) we encounter the major arguments of his first novel.
This essay included the themes, characters, etc., without omitting the Franciscans, the
71
Rizal, a sus padres y hermanos, 26 de noviembre, 1884, in Cartas entre Rizal y los miembros de
lafamilia, book one, part one, pp. 166-168.
72
Escandaloso, horrendo y punible delito perpetrado en el monasterio de Santa Clara pot un fraile
franciscano, vicario de la misma (Madrid, 1883). See Doris Warner Welsh, A catalog of printed
materials relating to the Philippine Islands, 1519-1900, in the Newberry Library (Chicago: The
Newberry Library, 1959), no. 627. Schumacher attributes the authorship of this pamphlet to Jose Maria
Basa, influential Filipino living in Hongkong and closely linked to the Propagandists (The Propaganda
Movement: 1880-1895. The creators of a Filipino consciousness, the makers of revolution (Manila:
Solidaridad Publishing House, 1973, p. 108, n33).
convent of Santa Clara, and of course the events of 1872* In these circumstances,
strongly influenced by the events at the University of Madrid (in which the Church had
played a lamentable role, one contrary to any sort of tolerance towards the most
progressive tendencies in science and politics), and clearly conditioned by
anti-Franciscan prejudices (fruit of the reading of the pamphlet mentioned above), Rizal
now closeted himself in his rooms and wrote feverishly until the late hours of the night
most of the novel that soon would make him famous, the Noli me t?ngere.
As I see it, these are the elements that, together with the part played by Coria in
the dispute with Jose Burgos which I discussed earlier, impelled Rizal to present the
Franciscans as the direct protagonists of the events of Cavite, assigning them a
responsibility which was not theirs. I concede that this argument does not exclude
the possibility of a convergence of other motivations, since Rizal had difficulty in
comprehending, much less accepting, certain aspects of Franciscanism in general and
those of the Franciscans in the Philippines in particular. A case in point, for example, is
the scant importance conceded by Franciscans throughout their history to the sciences.
Rizal was a superlatively gifted intellectual and extremely ambitious (in the positive
sense of the word), with an almost unlimited faith in the possibilities for the
redemption of humanity through science and progress. Consequently, he was unable to
tolerate a certain scepticism toward what he considered the great hope for the liberation
of his countrymen.74 Finally, we should bear in mind that while Rizal dedicated much
of his life to the liberation of his people, he never was in contact with the masses, with
73
In Escritos politicos e hist?ricos por Josi Rizal (Escritos de Jose Rizal, vol. 7) (Manila: Comision
Nacional del Centenario de Jose Rizal, 1961),pp. 11-17.
74
Concerning the popularity of certain religious practices linked intimately with the Franciscans,
Joaquin Martinez de Zufiiga, O.S.A., wrote in his Estadismo de las Isias Filipinas (Madrid: Viuda de M.
Minuesa de los Rios, 1893, ed. by W.E. Retana), vol. 1, p. 543; as did Tom?s Ortiz, O.S.A., in his
Practica del ministerio, published in form of an appendix in the Estadismo just cited (Appendix A, pp.
18-19, 22-27). Concerning the excessive faith in science I ascribe to Rizal, it is significant to note the
following complaint of his concerning a supposed deficiency in the Gospels, which he expressed in the
following words: ". . . [they always] direct the person through the sentimental side, never through the
mind; we are told to have confidence in the future, without ever stimulating our energies; obedience and
submission are recommended to us, and the poor of spirit are preferred, with never a word of love for
those who try to cultivate their intelligences in order to be useful to their brothers ? I note here certain
deficiencies in the religion of the Nazarene" (Escritos politicos e hist?ricos por Josi Rizal, p. 280).
Perhaps these phrases explain the absence of Jesus in almost all of Rizal's works. It is therefore not
surprising to note that on more than one occasion Rizal categorized St. Francis as ignorant and naive, and
he was merciless with the Franciscans in the Philippines, with such wounding paragraphs as the
following, sent to the young women of Malolos in 1889: "... the habit or cassock by itself does not
create wisdom. Even after dressing up a captured rustic, the man will still be a peasant, who can only
deceive the ignorant and those with little will of their own. In order that this be even more conclusive,
get a Franciscan habit and let a female carabao wear it. Only a miracle could prevent the carabao from
becoming indolent by the very fact of wearing the habit" (MA las compatritias j?venes de Malolos,'' in
Cartas entre Rizal y sus colegas de la Propaganda, part one, p. 314).
the poor and the marginal of his country. On the contrary, he always lived in
comfortable circumstances ( which does not mean that some days he did not go hungry
in Europe), which allowed him to carry out his costly studies overseas and his trips to
numerous countries. Could Rizal under these circumstances feel admiration for the
Franciscans of his country, notorious for their limited education and their scant
economic resources (at least as a group) and lacking the political influence that other
groups in the Philippines prided themselves on? I do not think so.
For all of these reasons, the Franciscans were perhaps the religious group that best
lent itself to be used by Rizal as protagonists in the novelistic plot he designed to
denigrate all the friars in the Philippines, by accusing them of being reactionary,
exploitative, and antagonistic towards any sort of intellectual or economic progress.
IV. TOWARDS AN IDENTIFICATION OF THE FRANCISCAN PROTAGONISTS
Is it possible to identify the characters described by Rizal in his novels with persons
in real life from the times and events in Philippine society of his epoch? The theme is
most intriguing and of no little historical interest, but full of difficulty since Rizal,
equally with, or even more than, other novelists, works at the same time on different
levels, mixing and crossing them, sometimes clearly, on other occasions in totally
inexplicable ways. Rizal transfers personal data from some religious groups to others,
fuses history with fiction, and then very skillfully joins all of these elements and
creates a type of novel that is perfectly adapted to the political ends he pursued. This
ambiguity, consciously sought by Rizal, gives his characters a certain quality of
omnipresence. They appear like certain portraits which, thanks to the peculiar technique
of the artist, give the appearance of always looking at the observer, no matter from
which angle of the room they are observed.
Rizal's contemporaries, as is logical, felt a great curiosity to know whom Rizal
based his portraits on, but he responded always with evasions, for obvious reasons. He
expressly identified only three persons: Fr. Vicente Barrantes, in the chapter of the Noli
entitled "Patriotism and self-interest"; Fr. Florentino, an evocation of D. Leoncio
Lopez, parish priest of Calamba; and Crisostomo Ibarra (and Ellas in part), self-portrait
of Rizal. But it is not difficult to identify some others, among them Tasio, Sisa, and
Maria Clara. However, a full exploration of this theme would take us beyond the
bounds of this essay.75 I am therefore going to limit my attention to the Franciscans
alone. No one has tried to identify them before, and therefore the information we have
is very scarce.
75
Some observations on this topic can be found in Ante Radaic, op. cit., p. 176-180; and in
Antonio M. Abad, El tema de Rizal, in A Rizal Anthology. Trilingual Edition (Manila: National Heroes
Commission, 1964), pp. 253-286.
1. Fr. D?maso Verdolagas
In the light of what I have argued earlier, it would appear logical to suppose that
Fr. D?maso was modelled on Fr. Joaqufn de Coria. Although the few biographical and
topographical facts on this best-realized character by Rizal do not seem to be congruent
with Coria,76 nonetheless this hypothesis seems well-founded, given the facts I have
presented earlier and with what we know of the psychology of Coria, which tallies
surprisingly well with the description given us of Fr. D?maso. The most powerful
argument for this identification, though, stems from the published and unpublished
materials written by Fr. Joaquin de Coria, whose thesis Rizal ascribes to D?maso and
which Ibarra, Elias, Tasio, and other characters are made to rebut.
Coria's fundamental thesis, best expressed in his letters to La Discusi?n and his
Memoria apologetica, is condensed in the following paragraphs, taken from the latter
work:
The Filipino is a believer. In those Islands there are no sins against the Faith. In virtue of this
credulity he is obedient unto submission. The day that ideas contrary to this Faith begin to
dispute the control of souls will be the day that doubt enters, followed by the struggle of
disbelief. From the struggle over belief will come rebellion. Consequently it is necessary to
preserve there the Faith in all its purity in order to preserve our rule. Therefore we must strive
to prevent all the ways that his spirit might be carried to that state. It would be difficult to
achieve this task once he begins to learn Spanish.77
Perhaps, though, it is necessary to read carefully the whole of the Memoria in order to
appreciate it in all its crudity ? especially the manipulation to which Coria submits the
Faith for political ends, using it to maintain the status quo of an unjust socio-political
situation, to conserve at all cost the privileged economic and moral status of a minority
at the expense of the most basic human rights of the Filipino people.
One of the postulates most insistently defended by Coria, under the mantle of
patriotism, is the unconditional submission of the Filipino to the European, which, in
76
Thus, for example, if the municipality of San Diego is identified with that of Calamba (a probable
but not totally unambiguous premise), Fr. Coria does not square well since the Franciscans did not then
or later administer the home parish of the author of the Noli me t?tigere. Equally adverse to the argument
is the affirmation that Fr. D?maso had had "twenty-three years of rice and bananas, " i.e., had served in
the country for 23 years (The Lost Eden, p. 6), since Fr. Coria had served there for 35 years. Nor does
the place of death fit, since Fr. Coria died in Spain, not in Tayabas. Curiously, though, a very similar
phrase and the same number of years as a priest in the Philippines (23) are part of the credentials offered
by Fr. Manuel Crespo, O.F.M., in an article on the Philippines published in La Fe on 14 August 1880,
justifying his competence to write on the Islands. Had Rizal read this article on the Philippines, relatively
accessible to him during his student years in Madrid?
77
Joaquin Coria, O.F.M. Memoria apologetica sobre la utilidad y servicios prestados ? Espafia por
los Religiosos misioneros de Filipinas (Madrid: Imp. de R. Labajos, 1869), p. 54.
the opinion of this Franciscan, is sustained by the religious ideal of submission to his
superior, understood in the sense of intellectual, moral, and racial superiority. "To
draw back this veil," wrote the Franciscan procurador, "to attack this custom, would
be to put them on the road to emancipation.9 9 Thanks to the influence of the missiona?
ries, "the Filipino rejects all ideas of independence.'' He concludes: "It is absolutely
necessary to conserve and protect the influence of the missionary if the colony is to be
maintained.',79
For Coria, this logic explained the principal role played by the friars in all of the
rebellions which had occurred in the Philippines. Whatever autonomistic or
independence movement developed would be doomed as long as the mythical image of
the missionary and his almost unlimited influence over the indios were maintained.
After presenting a brief summary of the most important rebellions which had occurred in
the Islands, he affirms flatly, in reference to that of Novales: "... but then the friars
appeared, as always, and the rebellion was suppressed and the principal leaders
punished, some with capital punishment and others by exile to Europe under guard. "
In 1836, the anti-revolutionary role was assumed even more directly by the
Franciscans, according to Coria, who tells with obvious pride in his group the
adventures of his brothers of the cloth:
... the events in Spain in that period alarmed part of the military, who conspired to rebel and
were about to act when the Superior of San Francisco found out about it. Carried on the wings
of his patriotism, he conferred with Governor General Salazar and between them they worked
out the plan to save the Islands. Thanks to this plan, executed by the Governor General, the
revolution was short-circuited and its consequences minimized since the Governor General was
able to remove the leaders and nip the plot in the bud. He then went to the barracks and
lectured the soldiers, following the counsel of the Franciscan father.80
For Coria the Franciscan contribution to aborting revolutionary plans reached its apogee
with the rebellion of Apolinario de la Cruz in Tayabas: ". . . Captured by the
Franciscans [!], they opposed Apolinario's execution until he had named his
accomplices.',81
Another major obsession of Fr. Joaquin de Coria was the danger to political
stability (moral and religious issues interested him less), which might stem from the
teaching of Spanish, a topic about which he wrote with great aplomb: ". . . it is in this
that the friars find one of the most powerful reasons to deny education in Spanish [to
Ibid., p. 51.
79Ibid.,p. 39.
8?Emphasis is mine. Ibid., p. 18.
81Ibid., pp. 18-19.
the indios].''82 The independence of Spain's American colonies was made possible, or
at least easier, he argued, owing to the possession of a common language among
the colonized .
The quotations in the last two paragraphs immediately evoke the euphoric phrases
uttered by Fr. Salvi when he tells the alferez about the 'rebellion' being planned in San
Diego: "The important thing is to catch them alive and make them talk, or rather,
you '11 make them talk. . . All I ask is that you put it on record that it was I who warned
you." And, a little earlier, "... you'll see once again how important we religious
83
are; the lowliest lay brother is worth a regiment, so that a parish priest. ..."
Moreover, to read these paragraphs by Cori? (paragraphs not found in any other
Franciscan writer of the 19th century, neither literally nor even with similar ideas) is to
make more comprehensible the response given by Rizal to similar views in his novels.
So does the explanation of his position, clearly hard and excessively anticlerical, which
Rizal offered to Blumentritt on certain observations of Fr. Faura to Pardo de Tavera
concerning the publication of the Noli me t?tigere:
... I wanted to strike [a blow] against the friars. But since the friars use religion not only as a
shield but also as a weapon and a castle and fortress and a suit of armor, I saw myself obliged
to attack their false and superstitious religion in order to struggle against the enemy that was
hiding behind it.
. . . God should not be used as a shield and protector of abuses; even less should religion be
used that way. . . . And why shouldn't I attack this religion with all my force? It is the
primordial cause of all our sufferings and tears. The responsibility falls on those who abuse its
name!84
It has not been possible to find out enough about the personal life of Fr. Joaquin de
C?ria to verify if some of the facts attributed to Fr. D?maso by Rizal had a historical
basis in the life of the procurador of the Franciscans in Madrid. In the light of the
techniques followed by Rizal in creating his novels' characters, as I discussed earlier, I
do not think such an inquiry necessary. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to discover
if the central part of the plot of Noli me t?tigere ? namely, the sacrilegeous love of Fr.
D?maso, the fruit of which was Maria Glara, for whom in turn Fr. Salvi lusted ? is
founded on a certain historical fact, which Rizal could have learned about either directly
or indirectly when a child. I refer to the sexual misconduct of Fr. Serafin Terren, parish
priest of Sagnay (Camarines Sur), one of whose daughters was abused by his successor
as parish priest, also a Franciscan. We know of this through the confession the very
82 , ,
Ibid., pp. 83.
83
The Lost Eden, pp. 338 and 337, tr. by Guerrero.
84In Cartas entre Rizal y el Profesor Fernando Blumentritt, book 2, part 2, p. 602.
Terren made in a letter to a close friend, Mariano Garchitorena, dated 19 February

1872:
The day after my operation they told me that Titay was involved with the priest of
Sagnay. Fifteen days later, when my life was most in danger, I learned that Titay was
pregnant ? what a horrible thing to happen! Misfortunes never come singly. What a lesson! I
had already guessed it, but what can we do? This proves that God loves me greatly, and for
His own purposes, since he is punishing me in a way most hurtful to my heart in order to
heal the wound I have there. I only hope that the daughter does not turn out like the mother!
Poor Elisa ? I will watch over you! Now is when I see that I have gained much in every way
through staying here.
It is so comforting to reveal secrets to a friend, especially when the friend is a true one.
Now more than ever is when you ought to look after my little ones, and this will be the proof
of our friendship. Now you may answer me with frankness, since I know the unlucky
condition of Titay. God will pardon her, and him as well. I give you permission to educate
Elisa and insure that she will not see her mother involved with another not her father. I
delegate the right to represent me. I can do no more. Poor Elisa! Poor Quicoy! 8 5
Leandro Tormo Sanz, who published this letter, noticed the parallelism between this
confidential information of Fr. Terren's to his friend Mariano Garchitorena and the plot
in Rizal 's Noli me t?ngere ? a parallelism that may be extended to include the reaction
of the two friars concerning the future of their daughters, the painful conflicts which the
situation provoked in their consciences, all the way to the almost literal identity
between some of the phrases the two friars uttered. Tormo Sanz further suggests that
this parallelism could explain the fact that while Rizal did not know the Franciscans
personally, these were the friars about whom "something real was known, [and so]
they come to incarnate all the frictions and arguments against the friars."86 In my
opinion, as I argued earlier, the fundamental reason why Rizal centered his attacks
against the friars on the Franciscans is undoubtedly the arguments and actions of Coria.
Nonetheless, this does not exclude the possibility that Rizal could have learned of this
unfortunate historical event and used it as the basis for the dramatic content of the novel
Noli me t?ngere. In this connection, it is important to note that Pandacan, the parish
where Fr. Terren was assigned when he wrote the letter quoted above, was one of the
more important meeting places of the liberals in the Philippines in the years just before
the Cavite Mutiny ? and the Garchitorenas were strongly linked to liberalism.
Moreover, one should not forget that cases of nonobservance of the vow of
celibacy, more or less notorious, were frequent then in the Philippines in all of the
85
Leandro Tormo Sanz. 1872 (Manila: Historical Conservation Society (pub. no. 23), 1973),
p. 121.
86
Leandro Tormo Sanz, "El obispo Volonteri 'combarcano' de Rizal," Missionalia Hisp?nica,
33: 97-99 (1976), p. 195.
religious orders ? which is why sexual adventures of friars abound in contemporary

anecdotes, which Rizal could have used as inspiration for more than one politico-^erotic
novel. In fact, one year before Terren wrote this letter, the parish priest of Pandacan
was Fr. Francisco Lopez, about whose sexual exploits various authors have written.87
This is just on the Franciscan side ? similar and numerous cases occurred atuong the
Secular clergy as well as among the members of the other Regular Orders. One need
not go any further than the works of Francisco Canamaque, which while much criticized
by Rizal (but nonetheless read by him), carry on their pages abundant material for
anyone who wishes to devote himself to erotic literature in the Philippines . It was these
works, almost indisputably, which inspired Rizal to create such important characters as
Capit?n Tiago, while Canamaque paradoxically (another instance of this) never
denounced the Franciscans, at least not in express form.
2. Fr. Bernando Salvi
If it is difficult to identify with certainty the person who corresponds to the

novelistic creation of Fr. D?maso, it is no easier to do this in the case of Fr. Salvi. Just
as with Fr. D?maso, Salvi could have had a Franciscan as his inspiration, but all the
evidence seems to indicate that it was more likely a tertium quid, an amalgam of
historical fact and fiction attributable not to one but to a series of friars in the Philip?
pines in the years when Rizal was composing his novel.
If, though, Rizal did have a Franciscan in mind when creating this character for the
Noli me tang ere, he probably would have been either of the following: Fr. Felix Huerta
or Fr. Benito de Madridejos. The description that Rizal gives us of Fr. Salvi could well
have fit either of these two Franciscans, to judge by the few photographs of the two
which I have seen. However, any doubt concerning the morality of Fr. Felix Huerta
seems to me a clear injustice, lacking the slightest foundation, and if Rizal had used him
as the basis for Fr. Salvi, it would have been an excessive liberty and one difficult to
pardon. The hypothesis has more in its favor in the case of Fr. Benito de Madridejos,
since he was a contemporary of the era, one who was not very much disposed to
sympathize with the positions defended by Jose Burgos, ?nd was possibly seen by Rizal
when studying in Manila. In any case, in an area so full of conjectures, there is no point
in making a positive statement when we have no conciete information to serve as its
basis.
But when we turn to the acts attributed to Fr. Salvi ? leaving aside the sexual
transgressions, which could well have been inspired by the letter of Terren or drawn
from the books of Canamaque, as well as his alleged complicity in the Mutiny at Cavite
87
See, for instance, Carmen Navarro-Pedrosa, The untold story of Imelda Marcos (Rizal: Tandem
Pub. Co., 1969), pp. 17-18; and [Alfredo B. Saulo], Master of his soul The life of Norberto
Romualdez (1875-1941) (Manila: Govt. Print. Off., 1975), p. 42.
(possibly based on the grandiose claims of Coria, cited earlier) ? some have see*n
behind the punishment which Fr. Salvi inflicted on the two defenseless altar boys, the
figure of the Augustinian Fr. Antonio Piernavieja. Nevertheless, in the spirit of truth
and historical objectivity, one will have to mention that the tale told by Rizal in this
regard bears a certain resemblance to an act attributed to Fr. Simeon Bus tos, Franciscan
parish priest of Carrangl?n. When in 1864 he was robbed by one of his servants in
the convento, Fr. Bus tos turned the lad over the secular authorities for punishment, and
as a consequence of this punishment and an illness he was suffering, the young man
died the next day. The friar was then arrested but after a judicial hearing was
absolved.88
Nevertheless, even when we consider all the apparent similarities, once again a
jump to conclusions would be premature: while this occurred in Carrangl?n, similar
cases took place in other parishes and municipalities, and nothing authorizes us to
affirm that Rizal had the Carrangl?n case in mind when he was writing Chapter 15 of
the Noli me t?tigere. Other types of misbehavior, accompanied
89
with greater violence,
occurred with a certain frequency in the Philippines then. Finally, Fr. Salvi has
certain deeds attributed to him whose historicity is without doubt but whose
perpetrators in real life were neither Franciscans nor other friars, but rather members of
the Secular clergy.
3. Fr. Camorra
It will be perhaps easier to identify the third of the Franciscans presented by Rizal in
his two novels, while always bearing in mind the caveats mentioned throughout this
section of the essay. In 1885, Fr. Miguel Lucio y Bustamante published in Manila a
small pamphlet of a novelistic character, entitled Si Tatidang Basio Macunat, which was
received with great indignation by the liberals in the Philippines. They saw in it
indisputable confirmation of the veracity of the aforesaid accusations which had been
thrown at the friars over the years, since it opposed freedom of thought and of the
press, education of the Filipinos, and proposed that they be kept submissive and subject
to the unlimited authority and influence of the friars. It favored manipulation of religion
towards the political end of safeguarding the political stability of the archipelago, and
the strangling of any desire, not just for outright independence, but even for the
elemental right to a good government of the country.
To put it in the fewest words: the publication of this pamphlet could not have been
more inopportune since it gratuitously gave every excuse to those anticlerical elements
who wanted to continue the attacks initiated by the Noli me t?tigere. The blows against
88Felix Huerta, O.F.M., Necrologia, II, 51, Ms. of AHO, G/3.

89
See, for example, one Fr. Vicente Martinez, convicted and confessed murderer, who was expelled
from the Franciscan Order and condemned to imprisonment in May 1876. AFIO 286/86.
the ill-starred pamphlet rained in from all quarters, and all the members of the
Propaganda and its sympathizers, from Marcelo H. del Pilar to Fernando Blumen tritt,
raged against it. Rizal himself, as was to be expected, devoted special attention to it
and mentioned it more than half a dozen times in El filibusterismo.
Therefore the identification of Fr. Camorra with Fr. Miguel Lucio y Bustamante
appears quite probable. Camorra is presented as the parish priest not of San Diego but
of Tiani, a municipality which actually does not exist in the Philippines but which in
fact may be Tanay (in Rizal Province), disguised through manipulation of letters (a
practice of which Rizal was quite fond). And the author of Si Tandang Basio Macunat
was the parish priest of Tanay for many years. Nonetheless, we should note that Fr.
Camorra is not a lifelike portrait of Lucio y Bustamante, but rather a composite of
various persons with a corresponding series of historical events, some acted out by
Franciscans, others by religious from other Orders, and some by Secular clergy. To cite,
for instance, one instance of the historicity of the portrait, Fr. Miguel Lucio y
Bustamante was not present when the Franciscan procuracion on the Isla del Romero
was attacked on 15 January 1891, an event described by Rizal in his Chapter 36 of El
filibusterismo and could thus not have been one of those wounded by the bandits who
carried out that attack. However, the friars Gregorio Azagra and Eusebio Gomez
Platero were there ? and Rizal for good reasons felt little admiration for these two
V. OF FICTION AND FACT
What has been expounded so far of the image presented by Rizal of the Franciscans
in his country could produce the impression that these friars constituted the most
degenerate and disgraced religious Order in the Philippines, composed of reactionary
and morally degraded men beyond hope of redemption. Such an affirmation, though, is
false, absurd, and clearly unjust. Rizal's novels are neither a study of missionary
endeavor nor are they a history of the Church in the Philippines, but rather a political
weapon masterfully wielded by a talented man on the very edge of all claims to
objectivity and, in part at least, of any norm of morality. Jose Rizal the politician
desired to achieve certain concrete political ends and he chose the means most
appropriate to transmit to his readers the message able to change the mentality of his
people, in accord with his own ideals.
90
I know of no Franciscan who administered the diocese of Manila in the second half of the 19th
century, and thus no Franciscan in that position could have prohibited the presentation of any drama. On
the other hand, one Fr. Eugenio Netter, a vicario capitular of that diocese, did prevent the showing of the
comedy "Les cloches de Corneville." Netter also published in 1889 a Pastoral sobre propaganda
antireligiosa (Manila: Imp. de G. Memije, Santo Tom?s), many of whose paragraphs were directed
against the Noli me tdngere. Rizal attributes both of these actions to the Franciscan Fr. Salvi.
His novels and some of his historical writings contain a series of general
affirmations, whose veracity he never tried to prove, and which, for the same reason, it
is not possible for me to refute. The opinion he had of the Franciscans is shared by no
other writer of the time, Filipino or European, and Rizal's prejudices against the
Franciscans seem only explicable by the facts I have presented earlier ? especially
those related to Fr. Joaquin de Coria. These facts, nevertheless, do not justify an
attitude of hostility towards all Franciscans of that period, nor can one make them a
priori collectively responsible for the events presented by Rizal and the ideas defended
by Coria in his writings. Such a conclusion is false and lacks all basis in fact. It appears
to me quite logical and probable that Coria had a respectable number of brethren who
sympathized with his ideas and acted similarly. That the number of these constituted a
majority of the Franciscans appears to me not only less probable, but possibly even
false.
i. The Dubious Objectivity of Rizal
In the years that Fr. Joaquin de Coria was so very busy employing all the weapons
in his arsenal in defense of the supposed rights of Spain and of the Regular clergy,
supported by religion (interpreted in a manner open to question), a significant number
of Franciscans in the Philippines were pursuing a different course. Some of these other
Franciscans, among the most respected of the group for their intellectual achievements
and their religious inquietude, were fully conscious of the decadent state of the
Franciscan Province of San Gregorio. They not only denounced to the Pope the
lamentable abuses they observed, but also boldly struggled for a return to the purity of
the primitive ideal of the Franciscan Order, which they thought could only be
accomplished with a radical reform of the Province. Those who thought this way could
not, by any logic, feel any antipathy towards the intelligent and exemplary Filipino
priest, Fr. Jose Burgos, nor towards the ideals of reform he defended. It is fitting to
note the names of the most outstanding representatives of this group of Franciscans,
namely, friars Domingo de la Rosa, Jose Martinez, Francisco Jimenez, D?maso Calvo,
Domingo Ufert, Francisco Arriaga, and Mariano Pardo.
In 1869, Arriaga and Pardo developed a plan for reforms consisting of 49
propositions, some of which equalled or far outstripped the reform plans Jose Burgos
had been propounding since 1863 concerning the Regular clergy in the Islands. Here
are some of the more significant of the 49 theses:
Since the fact of a Franciscan acting as a parish priest, by the very circumstances of the
demands of decorum and attributes of the position, will lead in a short time to the ^observance
of many precepts of the Franciscan Rule, the superiors of the Franciscan Order must supplicate
and intimate to the Bishops the necessity of looking for replacements with able and learned
ecclesiastics, who will take over the care of the well-established Christian populations who
have been well-catechized and indoctrinated already by the Franciscans.
Since the reasons given for preferring friars to Secular clergy as parish priests are no longer
tenable, the Bishops ought to establish in Spain and in the Philippines seminaries where
well-trained ecclesiastics as well as patriotic citizens could be formed.
The superiors of the Province of San Gregorio are not in good conscience fulfilling the
providentially-established aims for which the Franciscan Order was founded.91
One could fill pages with these citations, but the three chosen prove unequivocably
what I said at the start of this section. However, although there existed in the Province
a clear conviction of the urgent necessity of reform, it was not carried out, for reasons
which are not relevant to this essay. In 1880, the friars Domingo Ufert and D?maso
Calvo sent a long report to the Sacred Congregation of Religious, in which they
denounced once again the lamentable state in which the Philippine-based Franciscans
lived. They requested that the Pope intervene directly in order to correct the abuses and
insure a profound reform of the structure and the personnel of the Order. The Holy See
did send an emissary to investigate, but the form of investigation was perfunctory and
did not get to the roots of the problem.92
Another point to mention is that the relations between the Franciscans and Fr. Jose
Burgos do not appear to have been limited merely to ties of sympathy and affinity. If
we are to believe Antonio Ma. Regidor, there existed between the parish priest of
Sampaloc, Fr. Mariano Dur?n, and Fr. Burgos a true friendship. Dur?n, like every other
parish priest of the,area, would join with the priests Jose Guevara, Justo Guazon,
Miguel Laza, Jacinto Zamora, and others to pass periods of relaxation in their houses or
in his own house. Such a meeting took place in the convento of Sampaloc the night of
20 January 1872, on the initiative of Fr. Dur?n, in order to celebrate the barrio fiesta
of San Antonio. The best known secular clerics of the Manila area attended to indulge
their love for card-playing. The Franciscan invited, in a friendly and humorous note,
among others, Fr. Jacinto Zamora to participate in the fiesta ? and it was this note,
found in his house, which led to Fr. Zamora's arrest and subsequent execution.93 It is
most unlikely that a Franciscan who feels quite at home with men such as these, close
friends and fellow-workers of Fr. Jose Burgos, could have been his irreconcilable
91
Mariano Pardo, O.F.M. Pun tos de reforma propuesto al provincial de San Gregorio, P. Benito
de Madridejos, por el P. ... y suscritos por el P. Francisco Arriaga. Undated ms., AFIO 219/5-1. Fr.
Arriaga two years later returned to the theme of the necessity of a profound reform of the Province in his
pamphlet, Historia de la provisi?n de una C?tedra (Madrid: Imp. J.E. Morete, 1871).
9 2 Memorial enviado a la Congregaci?n de Religiosos por varios miembros de la provincia de San

Gregorio denunciando los abusos existentes en la misma. [ 1880] AFIO 297/19-1.
93
Antonio Maria Regidor. Filipinas ante Europa (Madrid: Imp. J. Corrales, 1900), p. 74.
94
enemy.
One might argue, though, that what I have established does not necessarily
invalidate the apparent hostility observed by the Provincial of the Franciscans and the
ruling council of the Province of San Gregorio ? legitimate and authentic
representatives of the Franciscans in the Philippines ? towards Fr. Jose Burgos.
However, such an argument is not self-evident and, in fact, the documentation
available to us not only does not support such an indictment ? indeed, it appears to
prove the opposite. Fr. Coria never acted as an official or semi-official spokesman of
the Franciscans, but only on his own initiative.
The Provincial of the Franciscans then was Fr. Benito de Madridejos. Though this
man was close to Coria in his ideas and mentality, when he received the first copies of
Coria's Memoria apologetica in the middle of September 1869, he concluded that the
Franciscan procurador in Madrid was doing a disservice for the Province by publishing
such writings. And Fr. Madridejos told Fr. Coria this in a letter of 13 October of the
same year. Madridejos pointed out that some friars not only had criticized Coria's
publication, but considered it
unnecessary and inopportune, and perhaps harmful, for they regarded it as too harsh [blank
space in ms.] on the Secular clergy. One notes [added the Provincial, using diplomatic
language that shows clearly the annoyance which the publication of the pamphlet had caused]
that the haste with which you brought out the pamphlet did not allow time for editing. If there
had been time for revisions or a critical review, it is probable that the pamphlet would not have
been published without some modifications.7 5
Around December of the same year, 1869, the first copies of the issue of Altar y Trono
which contained the reissue of Coria's letters to La Discusi?n must have arrived in
Manila, which greatly contributed to deepening the profound wound caused by the
publication of his Memoria apologetica. At this point, Fr. Madridejos wrote again to
Coria, in order to point out, among other things, that "you cannot realize the evil
which you have let loose; " and Fr. Madridejos ordered Coria henceforth not to write
anything or, if he did, not to commit the imprudence of signing it as a representative of
the Franciscans.9 6
94
The relations between the Franciscans and the Secular clergy were not tense either at the institu?
tional level. For instance, in 1863, when the Manila Cathedral was destroyed in an earthquake, Fr. Jose
Burgos (official of that Cathedral) "was constrained to celebrate the choral and religious services at the
small church of the Third Order of St. Francis, provisionally made available for this purpose" (See Villa
roel, op. cit., pp. 57-58). Since the reconstruction of the Manila Cathedral did not begin until 1873, it
follows that Fr. Jose Burgos, parish priest of the Parroquia del Sagrario, carried out his office not at its
normal seat (the Cathedral) but in the Church of the Venerable Third Order of the Franciscans.
95AFI0 9/2, fol. 138.

96Ibid.
As might be expected, this situation produced strong tensions among the members
of the ruling council of the Franciscan Province. Four months later this council stripped
Coria of his commission as representative of the Franciscans in Madrid and thus
implicitly condemned his propagandistic activities against the Secular clergy of the
Philippines. Fr. Huerta links the two categorically, expressly affirming that the reason
for the dismissal of Coria was the publication of his writings "without previous
clearance and review by the Provincial;'' with the consideration as well that such
writings "wounded persons and groups in the Islands; " and that Coria had "had the
audacity to sign such writings as representative of the Province of San Gregorio.',97
The Franciscans do not appear as actors in any further conflict, either as individuals
or as a group, until 1885 with the publication of the already-mentioned pamphlet by
Fr. Miguel Lucio y Bustamante, Si Tandang Basio Macunat, which evoked such violent
and wide-spread reactions in the Philippines and in Spain. Were the tremendous attacks
launched by Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar, and others against the Franciscans justified by
the publication of this insignificant pamphlet? I do not think so, for the same reasons
put forth in the previous paragraph: the thesis proposed in the work by Lucio y
Bustamante did not represent the opinion of the majority of the Franciscans, nor did it
represent the official opinion of the Order. The fact that between its approval for
publication and its actual appearance two years passed ? something which did not
happen with any other publication of the era, as far as I know ? makes me suspect
that there were misgivings as regards the convenience of its publication. What is
without any doubt, though, is that "few copies were published, " and that the impact
produced by the first ones which appeared was so unpleasant that the Franciscans
themselves (surprised by this negative reaction) thought to bum the whole edition.
They were unable to carry out this plan, though many copies were destroyed. The
archivist of the convent of San Francisco de Manila, Fr. Pablo Rojo, writing before
1890, noted that so rare were copies of this work that in that house he knew only of
97
Huerta, Necrologia, II, p. 361. Retana in his Aparato bibliogr?fico, vol. 2, no. 820, affirms (I
do not know on what basis) that when Coria took over as professor of Tagalog in 1871, the Franciscans
' 'had to expel him from the Order since the Regulars in the Philippines did not want any peninsulares to
learn any language" of the Islands. I think this statement is erroneous and contradictory, given my earlier
argument concerning Coria and the reactionary and conservative views of the Franciscan. Much truer
seems to be the hypothesis of Leandro Tormo, who argues that the true cause of Coria's secularization
was that "the Franciscans who stemmed from the Alcantarine reform, such as those in the Province of
San Gregorio de Filipinas, were prohibited by their Rule from personally accepting academic positions and
titles" ("El obispo Volonteri 'combarcano' de Rizal," Missionalia Hisp?nica, 33: 97-99 (1976),
p. 224). But even this explanation does not seem to me to be entirely satisfactory. First, because I am
not so sure that such rules concerning academic positions and titles were still extant when the friction
between Coria and the Franciscan ^provincial occurred. Second, because Fr. Huerta, a contemporary of
Coria's, who knew him personally quite well from having worked with him in many administrative
tasks, gives us interesting first-hand details on the genesis of the separation of Coria from the Province,
details which do not appear to be in accord with the points of view of Retana and Tormo Sanz. Huerta in
one, the one owned by Miguel Lucio y Bustamante himself.98

Later, in spite of the turmoil aroused by Si Tandang Basio Macunat, Lucio y
Bustamante apparently wrote another book in Tagalog, expounding more or less the
same ideas and intended as a reply to the criticisms which had showered down on the
first work. It was entitled Mahina ni. . ., but its publication was absolutely prohibited
by the Order and the manuscript has disappeared.99 For the same reason, permission
was denied to publish certain essays by Fr. Mariano Martinez, another man fond of
scribbling pages for the printing press, with ideas less radical than, but close to, those
his Necrologia, after some biographical data on Joaquin de Coria, writes: "In Madrid he succeeded in
achieving the inauguration of the Consuegra training school, but the eagerness to be known through his
writings (a defect which he had already exhibited in the Philippines) brought him such bad luck that
everything he wrote resulted in censures against it. He began in Madrid with letters to newspapers of
little Catholicity, without previous approval and review by the provincial, taking advantage of the
freedom of the press there. These writings wounded persons and groups in the Islands, and, to make it
worse, he had the audacity to sign such writings as representative of the Province of San Gregorio. This
greatly compromised the Province, especially since the public could hardly doubt that the Provincial had
approved the publications. Because of this in the Chapter Meeting of 4 June 1870, Coria was removed
from office and re-appointed as chronicler of the Province, while offering him the choice of living in one
of the training colleges in Spain or returning to the Philippines. However, when Coria received word of
this, he wrote the Government in Madrid trying to have the results of the Chapter Meeting annulled.
When this did not succeed, he entered the competition for the position of Professor of Tagalog in the
University of Madrid, to which he was appointed by the Government in January 1871. News of this
reached the Philippines in March 1871. The Province had summoned him but he had not obeyed. He
was not declared an apostate, in order to avoid scandal, but today he is considered by all the friars and
reasonable people as an apostate" (Huerta, Necrologia, II, pp. 360-361).
98
Pablo Rojo, O.F.M. Apuntes bio-bibliograficos sobre escritores franciscanos. Undated ms.,
AFIO 106/33, fol. 246. Marcelo H. del Pilar affirms on the one hand that it was very difficult to find
copies in the convent of San Francisco de Manila, but adds, on the other hand, that the parish priests in
the provinces (including non-Franciscans) were distributing copies free (Marcelo H. del Pilar, La
soberania monacal en Filipinas, Barcelona: Emp. de F. Fossas, 1888, p. 13). The fact is that even then
copies of the work were extremely scarce (AFIO itself now only owns one copy), which seems to support
Rojo's position. Doris Warner Welsh, in her Checklist of Philippine Linguistics in the Newberry Library
(Chicago: The Newberry Library, 1950), no. 990, annotated the entry for Si Tandang Basio in these
words: ' 'This pamphlet, which ridiculed the efforts of the Filipinos to acquire the same education as that
possessed by the Spaniards, created such an unfavorable impression that it was withdrawn from
circulation by the Friar authorities." This information seems to have been literally copied from
Encarnaci?n Alzona, A history of education in the Philippines, 1565-1930 (Manila: The University of
the Philippines Press, 1932), p. 96.
99
Mariano Martinez, O.F.M. Libro de apuntes. Undated ms., AFIO 141/7, fol. 189. It may be
interesting to point out that Si Tandang Basio Macunat (Manila: Imp. de Amigos del Pais, 1885) is the
only novel in Tagalog published by Lucio y Bustamante. In 1882, he published another novel, in
Spanish, entitled Benito y Rosalia (Binondo: M. Perez, hijo, 1882), set in Spain. This would seem to
indicate that, at least until 1882, Miguel Lucio y Bustamante did not think it unwise that the Filipinos
learn Spanish and read books in that language. What caused the later change in his ideas? Could it have
been the publication of the anti-Franciscan pamphlet cited in note 72?
held by Coria and by Lucio y Bustamante.

Much more important is the positive evidence that various Franciscans published
earlier or very close in time to the publication date of the work by Lucio y Bustamante
grammars in Spanish and some of the languages of the archipelago ? with the purpose
of enabling Filipino children to learn Spanish. For instance, Fr. Santos Herrejon
published in 1882 in Binondo his Lecciones de gram?tica bicol-hispana, writing in the
preface:
Your Excellency, in accordance with your predecessors, has demanded that we try to dis?
seminate the Spanish language in our parishes so that as soon as possible the natives will know
our beautiful language. However, are we able to carry out these plausible desires of yours
given the lack of books and, above all, the lack of a basic grammar text for the schools for both
sexes? I do not think so.
For his part, Fr. Antonio Sanchez de la Rosa published in Manila in 1887 (the very
year that the Noli me t?ngere appeared in Berlin) his Gram?tica hispano-bisaya, con
algunas lecciones pr?cticas, intercaladas en el texto, que facilitan a los ni?os de las
provincias de Leyte y S?mar la verdadera y genuina expresi?n de la lengua castellana. In
the dedication to Terrero y Perinat, Sanchez de la Rosa expounded the intention behind
the publication of this work in these words: "to instruct the indios in a language that
would put them in contact immediately with the rivers of knowledge. . . .''
I know of no other religious Order which made an effort of this sort in favor of the
teaching of Spanish to the Filipinos. These facts contradict directly some of the
arguments proposed so enthusiastically by Rizal, including a good number of his most
virulent denunciations of the Franciscans. Nonetheless, none of this information seems
to have been considered by the most famous Filipino writer and hero, which does not
speak well of his proclaimed desire for sincerity, impartiality, and disinterested search
for truth.
In any case, it is a historical fact that the Franciscans were not the only ones who opposed the
teaching of Spanish in the Philippines. Among the others were other Orders, of much stronger influence,
among them men of exceptional intelligence and thoroughly committed to the progress of the Filipino.
When Fr. Francisco Gainza, O.P., voted against the teaching of Spanish in the meeting called by the
Government to compose a law for elementary education, he did so with the following explanation:
"The principle of the teaching of Spanish is sanctioned in the Code of the Indies and encouraged by
many zealous functionaries in the name of Progress. Nonetheless, it should be seen as retrogressive for
the country in both religious and political terms. The parish priests instinctively detest that one speaks the
language of the metropolitan country in the municipalities, and experience has taught us that this instinct
is a rational one" (See Wenceslao E. Retana, Vida y escritos del Dr. Rizal (Madrid: Librerfa General de
Victoriano Su?rez, 1907), p. 196).
2. The Franciscans and Rizal
Before ending this essay, it will perhaps be of interest to ask one final question,
directly related to the theme that I have studied here. We know now something of the
attitude of Rizal towards the Franciscans. What did the Franciscans think, on their side,
of Jose Rizal, the most famous writer of the Philippines, who, for not entirely clear
reasons, had made them the target of his most destructive and cruel attacks?
I have looked through hundreds of bundles of documents in the Archivo
Franciscano Ibero-Oriental, the private archive of the Philippine-based Franciscans,
searching for a response to this question ? with almost no success. It appears as if the
friars of St. Francis, though strongly affected by the accusations thrown at them in such
a brutal and unexpected manner, had dropped an impenetrable curtain of silence over
what must have convulsed the entire Province of San Gregorio. Possibly, at bottom,
they felt that they had been faithfully portrayed in more than one page of the novels of
Rizal ? I have already indicated earlier how the Franciscans themselves were
repeatedly denouncing the abuses which existed among them. Moreover, though, they
could not honestly admit to being the only ones or even the most responsible for the
evils condemned by Jose Rizal. Was there a possibility of a serious and constructive
dialogue with this person who had attacked them so passionately and violently? They
must have thought, prudently, that such a dialogue was impossible, and opted for a
respectful silence. This muteness of theirs signified three things: 1) sincere acceptance
of part of the blame for the moral decadence in the Philippines; 2) a posture of
non-violence in both the physical and the moral sphere, an attitude very much in accord
with the Franciscan spirit; and 3) a generous pardon to the person who had degraded
them so irreparably before the common people, who had such faith in and gratitude and
admiration for the Franciscans.
This picture of the Franciscan response to Rizal may appear improbable, taking into
account the gravity and publicity of the crimes and misbehavior that the author of the
Noli me tang ere attributed to them. The facts, however, appear to confirm the
argument. I have already described the reaction which the publication of the Noli me
tang ere unleashed in certain political and religious circles in the Islands. Nonetheless,
contrary to what one might expect, there is no known censure (either official or
semi-official) by the Franciscans in this regard, and the very few private opinions which
were uttered were always surprisingly vague, courteous, and so general as to make one
think of the possibility of an order coming down from the higher administrative circles
of the Province of San Gregorio demanding an absolute silence towards a writer and a
work which profoundly, one-sidedly, and unjustly offended the Franciscans in the
Philippines.
In 1888, soon after he had felt himself obliged to leave the Islands, and deeply
affected by the hostile attitude noted among some who until then he had considered his
friends, Rizal complained to Ferdinand Blumen tritt that because of their mutual
friendship the Jesuits and Augustinians had broken off communication with the learned
Austrian ethnologist.101 On the other hand, he made no mention of the Franciscans,

some of whom we know definitely to have maintained (and continued to maintain) a
close relation by letter with Blumentritt. This leads me to think that the Franciscans did
not want to break relations with him. Moreover, they do not seem to have taken
reprisals against the family of Rizal, since later, in mid-1889, when his brother-in-law,
Mariano Herbosa, was buried in unconsecrated ground for the apparent reason of not
having received the sacraments before death, Rizal rejected this argument, alleging
among other reasons that Herbosa was in the habit of making his confession to the
Jesuits and to the parish priest at Los Banos, a Franciscan.
Fr. Lorenzo Perez, O.F.M., well-known missiologist, contemporary of Rizal, and
secretary of Msgr. Martin Alcocer, Bishop of Cebu, during the time Rizal published his
novels and other writings, never permitted himself to write a single wounding or
possibly vengeful phrase against Jose Rizal. He did refer once to Rizal, respectfully, in
order to dissent from certain opinions of the Filipino writer little favorable to the
Franciscans. This attitude of Lorenzo Perez, characterized by great delicacy, contrasts
manifestly with the hard words that, in the same paragraph and for identical reasons, he
uttered against a fellow Spaniard, Montero y Vidal.102
I do not know what is the basis in historical fact for the oral testimony given by Fr.
Antolin Abad that I am about to recount. The friars Jose Castano, Nicolas Acebal, and
Felix Pinto, all contemporaries in the late 19th century, recalled that the superior of the
rectory of San Francisco de Manila had prohibited all his priests, subject to severe
canonical penalties, attendance at the public execution of Dr. Jose Rizal on 30
December 1896. In any case, this valiant and conciliatory attitude, until the last
moment, in accordance with the faith by which they tried to live, while indisputably
achieved only on a limited scale, is in line with the posture of humility, open
understanding, and generous pardon that most of the Franciscans in the Philippines
observed always vis-?-vis the person who had sown the most hatred against them in
the Islands, Jose Rizal. It is only just to note that at the same time, according to these
same sources, Rizal replied to this so deeply Christian and conciliatory gesture of the
Franciscans by requesting a Jesuit Father, moments before falling mortally wounded at
Bagumbayan, to present his thanks to the superior at San Francisco for the Franciscans'
decision not to attend his public execution.103 Whatever one is to make of this
evidence, this posthumous gesture of Rizal's is not at all unbelievable or contradictory,
given the path of nobility and sincerity that he followed for most of his career, even in
1 ? 1Rizal, Carta a Fernando Blumentritt. Londres, 1 de noviembre, 1888. In Cartas entre Rizal y el
Profesor Fernando Blumentritt, book two, part two, p. 372.
102Lorenzo Perez, O.F.M. "Sublevaci?n de los chinos en Manila en el aflo de 1603," Archivo
Ibero-Americano 25 (1926), pp. 149-150.
103Antolm Abad, O.F.M. "Los franciscanos en Filipinas," Revista de Indias 24: 97-98 (1964),
p. 439.
the most dramatic moments of his life.

Perhaps, in spite of all that has been brought out in these last paragraphs, the
guileless and thankful Filipino people never felt hate or rancor towards the Franciscans.
On the contrary, they expressed gratitude, admiration, and friendliness, shown not
only in times of peace but also during the confused days of the greatest revolutionary
unrest, notwithstanding the agitation by a small, unscrupulous, and vengeful minority,
as shown in the numerous diaries and letters existing in the Archivo Franciscano
Ibero-Oriental. Apparently not a single Franciscan was assassinated, nor were any
tortured, during the revolution against Spain ? an unusual state of affairs that holds
true for no other of the religious Orders denounced by Rizal in his novels.
CONCLUSION
The attitude of Jose Rizal towards the Franciscans, the most popular friars in the
Philippines at the end of the 19th century, is one of the most paradoxical aspects of the
personality of this great Malayan hero. On the one hand, Jose Rizal did not hide his
strong attraction and sympathy for the figure of St. Francis, although the picture of the
Saint from Assisi was made up of only the more romantic and perhaps superficial aspects
of an extremely rich personality. Francis captivated and fascinated him. On the other
hand, though, Rizal felt an antipathy and revulsion towards the Franciscans working in
his country, one totally disproportionate to the scant contact he had with them
personally as well as to the relatively low socio-economic and cultural influence that
the Franciscans exercised in the Philippines. These facts would appear to indicate that at
the root of his prejudices against the Franciscans were certain personal experiences
which caused in him an insurmountable trauma, which in turn led him to generalize
condemnable acts and repulsive attitudes of some of them, among whom one may
single out the figures of Fr. Joaquin de Coria and Fr. Miguel Lucio y Bustamante.
Undoubtedly the socio-political circumstances in which Rizal carried out his labors
in defense of the rights of his people make the darker pages of the Noli me t?tigere and
El filibusterismo more comprehensible. Nonetheless, it is undeniable, at the same time,
that such pages are in open contradiction with the ethical principles that the author of
those works had proposed to follow in his life, and that they many times gravely
wounded (owing to their bias) through calumny and defamation the fundamental rights
of human beings which he claimed to be defending.
In spite of this, though, the Franciscans have always seen the figure of Rizal with
much understanding, and the Filipino people in turn have continued to maintain their
sincere appreciation for the work the Franciscans did for them during the 400 years they
have been in the Philippines.
APPENDIX
Letter of the Secular clergy of the Philippines to the Capit?n General of the Islands,
declaring their faithfulness and loyalty to Spain and denouncing the accusations made
against this same body of clerics. Manila, 14 January 1870. *
Ms., AFIO, 286/8-1
Dear Editor:
As proof of the conflict between the Secular clergy and the Regulars in the
Philippines, caused by the intolerance of the Regulars and the great abuses that they
(through the innumerable and incredible privileges and protection given them by the
highest authorities in the Islands) commit against the Seculars ? marked by tyranny
and mistreatment in word and deed ? and so that Spain of the 19th century will
realize that friars everywhere and at all times are the same, we send you for publication
in your esteemed newspaper the following exposition, which we sent to the Capit?n
General on behalf of the Secular clergy. This statement speaks to the Government and
the Spanish people of the necessity of suppressing in these islands the Regular Orders
there, or at least regulating them through assigning them the job of converting the
thousands of pagans who inhabit the forests ? and who continue in their paganism
because of the apathy of these Regulars and their failure to carry out the duties of their
ministry, rather than through their own fault, because if (the former) had attended to
their religious mission, (the latter) would no longer roam the forests.
* According to the well-known French traveller and writer Edmund Plauchut, the Archbishop of
Manila wrote a letter to the Madrid Government in 1870 in defense of the Secular clergy of the
Philippines. At one point the Archbishop called to the Palace the priest of the Manila Cathedral, Fr. Jose
Burgos, and invited him to write with his friends a special testament of loyalty to Spain. Burgos, after
some vacillation, acceded to the desires of the Prelate and set about collecting signatures. Somewhat later
this statement was called a revolutionary manifesto and the 300 or so who signed it were categorized as
"traitors, revolutionaries, and agitators" (Edmund Plauchut, La algarada cavitefla de 1872 [Manila:
Imprenta "Manila Filatelica," 1916], pp. 12-13). This "special testament of loyalty to Spain"
appears to be what we print below, copied by the Franciscan Joaquin de Coria and included in one of his
untitled reports sent to his superiors in Manila, and signed Madrid, 4 April 1870.
The Exposition
Excellency:
The situation is sad, very sad, your Excellency, when one is made the target of the
darkest calumny, of the most horrible accusations, and forced to suffer the
consequences without the means to vindicate oneself.
Surely the perspicacity of your Excellency recognizes that the target to which we
refer are the natives of this country, and in particular the Secular clergy. Today we have
the high honor of conveying to your Excellency the severe affliction which we feel in
our hearts.
Alarming rumors, news of the most evil nature, are being aired by men who
complacently wish to see the Secular clergy delivered over to public execration,
presented as nothing less than an evil son, a rebellious subject, a conspirator against the
Spanish Government. They have succeeded in unsettling some and wounding to the
utmost the highly patriotic sentiments of a respectable social class, while this same class
is made odious to a beneficent nation. But this social class has always identified itself
with this nation, has always obeyed, revered, and loved it with a completely true
loyalty throughout the not inconsiderable period of 300 years.
This Clergy knows very well, your Excellency, the necessity that in a matter of
such importance, when the public well-being and State interest seem to be
compromised, that you adopt the most energetic means and however many resolutions
necessary in order to make the Filipino people realize that you do not govern these
Islands in vain; that it is not for nothing that you have vowed to the country to govern
and protect and save them for their own sakes.
Our greatest grief, your Excellency, is not that the law may fall on us with all its
weight, which under these circumstances your illustrious honor may determine. As
victims of this calumny, we are resigned to sacrifice our lives for the country, but our
blind obedience, full loyalty and suffering will make their way on the wings of fame
throughout the civilized world and our name will be blessed by succeeding generations.
That which does pain us, that which our hearts are not prepared to suffer, your
Excellency, is that our mother country, even for a short time, would think us unworthy
to stand beside the noble sons of Pelayo. This would be the most ignominious insult
which could occur in this remote comer of the world, whose inhabitants would rather
have their loyalty, subservience, and nobility compared with those of the most civilized
nations of wise and illustrious Europe. Permit us to say, your Excellency, that the
grandest glory for Spain in these Islands consists in the total surrender to these generous
sentiments by all of its children.
Far be it for us, your Excellency, to justify ourselves, because what do we have to
justify? Our conscience is tranquil, our hearts are calm, and the accusations made
against us are of such a nature that in time they will disappear, like a mist that evapo?
rates after exposure to the wind.
We beg you, therefore, your Excellency, in order to prevent bad consequences,

that you do not receive with suspicion news of such a nature carried to you about us.
You must demand of those who bring such reports to you that they reveal their origins,
until you get at the bottom of the reports and their sponsors. If your investigations
reveal that the facts alleged are true, their authors must indeed suffer the full severity of
the law, even (if called for) capital punishment. However, if, on the other hand, the
reports are calumnies generated solely for ill-conceived reasons, you will recognize,
your Excellency, that the perpetrators of such reports attacking a social class should not
with impunity succeed in disturbing the peace and tranquility of the general public.
May God grant you his fullest benediction and preserve your important life for
many years, your Excellency.
In the name of the Secular clergy of these Islands, your Excellency. Jose Burgos,
priest of Manila, and Jose Guevara, priest of Quiapo. Manila, 14 January 1870.

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THE FRANCISCANS IN THE LIFE AND WORKS OF JOSE RIZAL

THE FRANCISCANS IN THE LIFE AND WORKS OF JOSE RIZAL

The Brief and Intense Life of an Exceptional Man

Jose Mercado y Alonso ? more commonly known by another of his names,

1. THE FRANCISCANS IN THE NOVELS OF RIZAL

1. Er. D?maso Verdolagas

2. Fr. Bernardo Salvi

parish priest of San Diego.

6The Subversive, p. 82 (tr. by Guerrero).

II. THE QUESTION OF RIZAL'S ANTI-FRANCISCAN ATTITUDE

1. Rizal 's Romantic View of St. Francis

2. Rizal's Family ? A Franciscan Household

14 Logically this refers to the previously mentioned letter of 13 February 1883.

24Rizal, "Diario de viaje. De Marsella a Hongkong. 18 Oct. a 19 Nov. 1891," in Diarios y

28 October: He draws a silhouette of a Franciscan seen from behind.30 Biographers of

6 November: He took a tour of Colombo, Ceylon, probably accompanied by the Italian

3 SDiarios y Memorias por Jose" Rizal, pp. 252-253.

36Emphasis is mine. Ibid., p. 258.

III. THE KEY TO THE PROBLEM

1. A Permanent Obsession: 187244

Undoubtedly the hypothesis of Guerrero's has much more to recommend it than

2. Jose Burgos against Fr. Joaquin Coria

ditional loyalty to Spain.54

5 6Joaquin de Coria, O.F.M., Informe del P . . . , en calidad de comisario procurador de la provincia

3. The Franciscans and the Events at Cavite in 1872

One is surprised at the parallelism between this description by Regidor of Coria

No proof seems to exist to substantiate any allegation of an intervention by Fr.

Misericordia accounts, which substantially and adversely affected Regidor's personal

4. Development of a Political Consciousness

Retana, Vida y escritos del Dr. Rizal, p. 274.

IV. TOWARDS AN IDENTIFICATION OF THE FRANCISCAN PROTAGONISTS

1. Fr. D?maso Verdolagas

Terren made in a letter to a close friend, Mariano Garchitorena, dated 19 February

religious orders ? which is why sexual adventures of friars abound in contemporary

2. Fr. Bernando Salvi

If it is difficult to identify with certainty the person who corresponds to the

88Felix Huerta, O.F.M., Necrologia, II, 51, Ms. of AHO, G/3.

V. OF FICTION AND FACT

i. The Dubious Objectivity of Rizal

9 2 Memorial enviado a la Congregaci?n de Religiosos por varios miembros de la provincia de San

95AFI0 9/2, fol. 138.

one, the one owned by Miguel Lucio y Bustamante himself.98

held by Coria and by Lucio y Bustamante.

2. The Franciscans and Rizal

Austrian ethnologist.101 On the other hand, he made no mention of the Franciscans,

the most dramatic moments of his life.

We beg you, therefore, your Excellency, in order to prevent bad consequences,

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