their very children for food; children did the same by their parents; and this sort of avarice (or rather of cruelty) was still more common among kinsmen by marriage or blood, so that they did no kindness without doing an injury. Now, by the grace of God, all these things are reversed, and these people delight in doing to others as they would be done by; and on that account the hospital which has been built never wants for necessaries, and always has some, even of high rank, who rejoice in giving themselves to the service of the poor.
Moreover, this hospital is supported thus: during the week a basket is placed before the doors of the church, in which every one puts what he pleases, according to his ability, either of food or herbs, to be carried to the hospital. On Sundays, besides, each village in turn serves the sick, after the following manner. Those whose turn it is go hunting boars or stags, and on the appointed day bring flesh, boiled or roasted, with rice, or bring some equivalent food, for the sick. Now this tribe, which is at this time so Christian, formerly observed the custom of never going hunting without consulting their idols. When they perceived that the fathers of Ours detested this custom, and indeed wholly annulled it, some of them asked them what they ought to do then when they went out on such enterprises. When they were told that they should go to some church and beseech God through the Virgin Mother of God to give them success in their hunting, they did so; and at noon of that very day they killed twenty-two boars and stags not far from the village. When they came home loaded with their game, every one marveled greatly; and they said: “Ah, Father, how good is the God of the Christians! The gods that we used to worship would scarcely grant us, in return for long continued implorations, at last two boars or stags, and most often nothing; but now the true God after having been barely prayed to has freely given us all these beasts in a short time.” The pious example of these people having been followed by others in another village, they too had slain five and twenty of this kind of game within three or four hours; and they went about shouting: “Away with you, lying bailans, who were about to destroy us and all that we had! For us there will be henceforth no God but Jesus Christ, who has displayed so great liberality to us who have recently turned to Him.” I might say more as to the Gospel of St. John, the saving sign of the cross, and other mysteries of the Christians, whose marvelous efficacy these tribes have experienced; but I would not be prolix. Let it be enough to state that seven or eight sick persons at least have been cured by amulets of this sort.
Establishment at Dulac, Carigara, Tinagon, and Palapag
IX. At the establishment at Dulac Ours have often had the better of the devil, and the devil of them. They certainly believe that what has happened can have had no other author. They had appointed the festival of which we have spoken above; and when they were all assembled in the church and were waiting for divine service, a messenger suddenly appeared and announced that the Mindanaos, their ancient enemies, were at Carigara. As soon as the Indians heard that, they poured out of the church all together in consternation, each trying to pass the other; and leaving the priest, for the mass was not yet finished, they fled from the village and took refuge in the mountains. The priest, when he had finished the divine office, and arranged his affairs as well as time permitted, began himself to think of flight, that the shepherd might be with his flock. However, being detained by an Indian chief, whose wife he had been about to bury, he remained, and performed the rites for the woman—one who had deserved well of the Christians, and who, as her husband testified, had been visited by the Blessed Virgin, In the mean time a messenger brought a more certain report, to the effect that a few small villages on the island had been visited by some five or six ships at Caragara; and that they had captured only twenty Indians, the rest having taken refuge in flight.
They all came back then from the mountains, and in a few days the work of many was accomplished. The number of those who confessed the faith increased so rapidly that the long days seemed short. This, I am sure, grieved the devil not a little; and no less did what Father Christoforo Ximenez effected after he returned to Manila where he put into print the catechism of Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino, translated into the Bisayan language.15 He went by the order of his superiors to Alongala, then without a priest. When he had remained there up to the beginning of Holy Week, and had made the people ready and active in all works of piety, it happened that a certain idol-worshiper of that island, a man of very high rank, Malacaia by name—who owned over sixty slaves, and who was reverenced by all the Indians most highly, even as a father—was once looking on, and wondering to see many of the natives busied in pious works, and so seriously engaged in scourging themselves. In amazement he said, “Shall I do that, Father?” “Do,” replied Ximenez, “what they are doing, and scourge thyself.” “Will that scourging do me any good?” asked Malacaia. “It will do thee no little good,” answered the father. The other instantly took off his tunic and girded himself for the work, and walking upon the stage with the others, the Christians, he so tragically worked upon himself that, not content with one scourge, although it was rough with little sharp studs, he also snatched the scourge from one standing near, and, as with a two-edged sword, fearfully smote himself upon the back as if with thunderbolts. These scourgings reached even to the man’s soul, although at the time he knew not what he was doing; for this noble deed was an example of great profit to others, and he himself, moreover, received at this time the desire for baptism, for which he is now being prepared as a catechumen.
X. The Christians taught by the fathers at the establishment at Cangara have this in common with those at Dulac, that they receive a mighty protection from the services of the church when duly celebrated. For as the former, by setting up a cross in the fields and by the use of holy water, drive the swarms of locusts from their grain, so the latter by bearing palm-branches and seeds to the church effect the same result. An old custom of theirs has been condemned—namely setting up in the fields great beams, which they call Omalagars, upon which they believe the souls of the dead to sit. Here fifty have been initiated in the Christian mysteries, and more would have been if ministers had not been wanting. Forty couples have been joined with a more holy bond. Several persons were found by the marvelous providence of God (for it would be impious to regard that as a chance which was wrought for Ours, kept safe in so many perils), who, being scattered over the mountains, so that they could have no one else, begged for a father to whom they might confess their sins. There were also found in a little island forty lepers loathsome with filth and stench, unclothed, and without food, lacking everything. To all of them first the teaching of Christ, then baptism, and finally food and clothes were given. But one man found God sterner, who, though warned by Ours to desist from his impious habit of swearing, yet never obeyed. He was often wont to use an expression by which he devoted himself to the crocodile; and not long after, being made the prey of one, he taught others by his evil fate to do that which he had refused to do before. As compared with his death all the more happy was that by which Father Alfonso Roderico was taken from us. He had professed the four vows, and was dear alike to Spaniards and to Bisayans. He was so devoted to the good of both that he was not satisfied with the narrow space of twenty-two years, during which he was permitted to live among us, but at his death used the very words of St. Martin: “Lord, if I am still needed by thy people, I do not refuse to labor.”
XI. The attention of Ours at Tinagon has wisely been given to the women, since they are more ready to take an interest in sacred things, and are more seldom absent from the village—except when one or another makes her escape from the hands of some procurer, preferring to pass the nights in the forests and mountains in the midst of serpents, rather than at home to suffer danger to her chastity among men that are as deadly. As for the other affairs of this establishment, they may nearly all be included under two examples, one of divine compassion, the other of divine justice. An Indian woman was carelessly crossing a stream, and was carried off by a ferocious crocodile. She screamed, she cried, she prayed to God for pardon, and for only so much time as should serve her to make her confession. Her husband, who was not far away, ran up quickly, threw himself into the water to attack the monster, struck it, and at last dragged his wife from its claws; but she was so mangled and lacerated that there was no hope for her life. What were the good people to do in a village without a priest, and far distant from the residence where the fathers lived? The woman was in such a condition that it was impossible to take her there before her death. Yet a way out
See Vol. IX, note 13. Roberto Bellarmino, born in 1542, entered the Jesuit order in 1560, becoming one of its most famous theological writers. He was long connected with the college at Rome, and later was successively provincial of Naples, a cardinal of the Roman church (from 1599), and archbishop of Capua (1602–05); he died at Rome, September 17, 1621, Perhaps the most widely known of his works is the
