The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume 31, 1640 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century

Title-page of Historia de la provincia del Santo Rosario de Filipinas, tomo primero, by Diego Aduarte, O.P. (Zaragoca, 1693); photographic facsimile from copy in library of Harv...

Even if the religious in this province of Nueva Segovia had done no other good than bringing to an end or preventing so many sins of idolatry as these Indians used to commit, ev...

[Since the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist is so high and difficult a thing to teach a people whose heathen state makes them opposed to ideas so lofty, the religious in thi...

[In spite of the sufferings of the religious in this region--the heat, the strangeness, the homesickness, the poverty of their life--they had great joy in their work. The aniter...

By the ships which came to these islands from Nueva España in 1596, arrived the sad news of the death of their father and first bishop, Don Fray Domingo de Salaçar. This was one...

The conformity of the good bishop with the divine will, and his desire to be approved before the pure eyes of that heavenly Lord with whom he always desired most intimately to u...

[It is not strange that the Lord should have honored the virtues of the bishop by working many marvels through him. Many of these have fallen into oblivion because he strove to...

There was but a short space of time between the death of the first bishop of this region of which we have just spoken, and that of his associate and vicar-general, father Fray C...

[When father Fray Juan de Chrisostomo went to Rome to get the documents necessary for founding the new province, he carefully looked in every one of the convents that he visited...

[After father Fray Alonso Ximenez had completed his provincialate, he went to Camboxa to preach the gospel there. Circumstances seemed to make this absolutely necessary. In 1595...

[By the sufferings and danger which we had passed through, the Lord had prepared us to endure those which were to follow. To protect the ship, some of the men had encamped on a...

[On the same day on which we reached the ships, Captain Juan Xuarez Gallinato arrived. He was told of our experience with the Chinese and with the Cambodians, and of the good-wi...

On the fifteenth of June, 1596, the fathers assembled in the convent of Manila to elect a provincial, because father Fray Alonso Ximenez had finished his term. The definitors (w...

[In spite of the wretched state of the noble knight Don Luis, the Portuguese of Macan, who were only seven leguas away, were so far from pitying him that they rather made bloody...

Though the procurator whom this province had in España [i.e., Benavides] had become bishop of Nueva Segovia, he gave his main attention to the augmentation of the province, havi...

[Father Fray Pedro de Soto was a native of Burgos, and assumed the habit in the convent of San Andres at Medina del Campo, where he professed, and whence he went to study in the...

[On the second of June, 1600, the electors assembled in the convent of Manila to elect a successor to father Fray Bernardo de Sancta Cathalina. The example of father Fray Bernar...

In the year of our Lord 1602, the voting fathers assembled in their intermediate provincial chapter, at which was accepted the house of San Juan del Monte, which is situated a l...

[Christianity in the kingdoms of Japon took its origin from the Society of Jesus, the first preacher and apostle therein being St. Francis Xavier. The fathers of this Society ha...

In España many times the conquest of Camboja, Sian, and Champan, neighboring kingdoms, was much discussed. The theologians whom his Majesty consulted declared that this conquest...

The city of Manila is the finest and richest of its size known in all the world. It is of great strength, being almost surrounded by the sea and by a large river, which wash its...

On May 9, 1604, father Fray Juan de Santo Thomas having completed his term as provincial, there was elected in his place father Fray Miguel de San Jacintho, a religious of much...

The religious who were coming to the province, although they had been diminished in number by the savages of Guadalupe, were of great use. They were fourteen in number, and, tha...

hopes. The father provincial, fearing to lose him, promised to give a minister to Nasiping if the sick man recovered. Father Fray Francisco recovered, and the provincial fulfill...

[In the church of the village of Pia there was an image of our Lady on one of the side altars. It had been made in Macan, and had been first set up in the church of our order in...

Among the great kindnesses and benefits which our province, and indeed all these islands, have received from the Lord, one of the greatest was His having given them father Fray...

[At this time there were taken away by death a number of the most superior religious, the lack of whom was greatly felt. In the year of our Lord 1604 one of the definitors in th...

On April 16, 1606, an intermediate chapter was held in Manila, at which notice was given of the brief of Pope Clement VIII, De largitione munerum. Directions were given to obser...

[The circumstances in Japon were such that many of the converts were obliged to spend six, or eight, or even fifteen years without confessing, while some of them had not seen a...

In the year 1605 the missionaries to Pangasinan, not contented with the fruitful results of their labors in the level region of that province, took under their charge the villag...

In the month of August, 1607, at the octave of the Assumption of our Lady, a church was erected in the village of Nalfotan, the chief village among those which are called the vi...

In April, 1608, the electors, assembled in the convent of Sancto Domingo at Manila, chose as provincial father Fray Baltasar Fort, minister of the holy gospel in the province of...

[The kingdom of Japon is subject to constant changes and novelties, as may be known by those who have lived in it, and by those who have read what historians have to say of it....

[Death fell heavily upon our fathers in this year, seizing the best on every side. In Manila it cut short the thread of the life of father Fray Bartolome de Nieva. Father Fray B...

[The events which happened in the case of this father are such as God rarely manifests, even in the case of those who are nearest to Him; and I should not dare to bring them to...