Pangasinan State University

Bayambang Campus
Bayambang, Pangasinan

RIZAL
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF
SANTO TOMAS

Submitted by:
MYLENE M. DE GUZMAN
JEFFREY F. MADRONIO
MELANIE GUMOBAO

Submitted to:
MRS. SANDRA PALAD
Objectives:
 Discuss the reason why his mother opposed that he pursue a higher
education.
 Identify Rizal’s course choices.
 Discuss his romances with other girls.
 Discuss his experience with the brutality of an officer.
 Discuss Rizal’s important literary works.
 Determine the factors that affect his academic performance.

RIZAL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS

After graduating with the highest honors from the Ateneo, Rizal had to go to
the University of Santo Tomas for higher studies. Both Don Francisco and Paciano
wanted Jose to pursue higher learning in the university. But Doña Teodora, who
knew what happened to GOMURZA, opposed the idea and told her husband:
“Don’t send him to Manila again; he knows enough. If he gets to know more, the
Spaniards will cut off his head.” Don Francisco sent Rizal to Manila accompanied
by Paciano to continue studying, despite their mother’s opposition. He enrolled in
the University of Santo Tomas, which was in Intramuros at that time and was
founded and governed by the Dominicans.
In April 1877, Rizal who was then nearly 16 years old, enters the university
taking the course on Philosophy and Letters. He enrolled in this course for two
reasons. First is his father liked it and he is still uncertain to what career to pursue.
He had written to Father Pablo Ramon, Rector of the Ateneo, who had been good
to him during his student days in that college, asking for advice on the choice of
career. But the Father Rector was then in Mindanao so that he was unable to
advise Rizal. During Rizal’s first-year term (1877-78) in the University of Santo
Tomas, Rizal studied Cosmology, Metaphysics, Theodicy, and History of Philosophy.
Rizal also studied in Ateneo in this term taking up the vocational course leading to
the title of ‘perito agrimensor’ (expert surveyor). Then as usual, Rizal excelled in all
subjects in the surveying course in the Ateneo, obtaining gold medals in
agriculture and topography. At the age of 17, he passed the final examination in
the surveying course, but he could not be granted the title as surveyor because he
was below age. The title was issued to him on November 25, 1881. Then in the
term 1878-79, Rizal received the Ateneo Rector’s advice to study medicine. He
took up the medical course as what the Rector’s advised him. Another reason why
he chose medicine for a career was to be able to cure his mother’s growing
blindness. Although Rizal was then a Thomasian he frequently visited Ateneo not
only to his surveying course, more because of his loyalty to Ateneo, where he had
so many beautiful memories. He continued to participate actively in the Ateneo’s
extra-curricular activities.
Notwithstanding his academic studies in the University of Santo Tomas and
extra-curricular activities’ in the Ateneo, Rizal had still time for love. Shortly after
losing Segunda Katigbak, he paid court to a young woman in Calamba. In his
student memoirs, he called her simply “Miss L”. Nobody today knows who this
woman was. Rizal himself did not give her name. He has two reason why he
change his heart, first was because of the sweet memory of Segunda that was still
fresh in his heart and his father did not like the family of ‘Miss L”. Several months
later he courted Leonor Valenzuela also known as Orang which was his next-door
neighbor when he boarded in the house of Doña Concha Leyva. He sent her love
notes written in invisible ink. Rizal taught Orang the secret of reading any note
written in the invisible ink by heating it over a candle or lamp so that the words
may appear. But, as with Segunda, he stopped short of proposing marriage to
Orang. Rizal’s next romance was with another Leonor. Leonor Rivera which is his
cousin from Camiling. In 1879, at the start of his junior year at the university, he
lived in “Casa Tomasina”, at No. 6 Calle Santo Tomas, Intramuros. His landlord-
uncle, Antonio Rivera had a pretty daughter, Leonor. Jose and Leonor sprang a
beautiful romance, they became engaged. In her letters to Rizal, Leonor signed
her name as “Taimis”, in order to camouflage their intimate relationship from
their parents and friends.
Rizal was a victim of Spanish officer’s brutality. One dark night in Calamba,
during the summer vacation in 1878, he was walking in the street. Not knowing
the man passing him due to darkness, he did not salute nor say a courteous “Good
Evening”. The man turned out to be a lieutenant of a Guardia Civil, that whipped
out his sword and brutally slashed the latter on the back of Rizal. The wound was
not serious, but it was painful. When he recovered, he reported the incident to
General Primo de Rivera, the Spanish Governor of the Philippines at that time. But
nothing came out of his complaint, because he was an Indio and the abusive
lieutenant was a Spaniard.
 In the year 1879 the Liceo Artistico-Literario (Artistic-Literary Lyceum) of
Manila, a society of literary men and artists, held a literary contest. It offered a
prize for the best poem by a native or a mestizo. Rizal who was then eighteen
years old, submitted his poem entitled A La Juventud Filipina (To the Filipino
Youth). The Board of Judges, composed of Spaniards was impressed by Rizal’s
poem and gave it the first prize which consisted of a silver pen, feather-shaped
and decorated with a gold ribbon. A La Juventud Filipina poem is a classic in
Philippine Literature because it was the great poem in Spanish written by a
Filipino, whose merit was recognized by Spanish Literary authorities and it
expressed for the first time the nationalistic concept that the Filipinos, and not
the foreigners, were the “Fair Hope of the Fatherland”. The following year (1880)
the Artistic-Literary Lyceum opened another literary contest to commemorate the
fourth centennial of the death of Cervantes, Spain’s glorified man-of- letters and
famous author of Don Quixote. This time the contest was opened to both Filipinos
and Spaniards. Many writers participated in the contest. Rizal submitted an
allegorical drama entitled El Consejo de los Dioses (The Council of the Gods). It
became an literary classic based on the Greek classics. Rizal also won the first
prize but many Spaniards opposed it knowing that he was an Indio. Aside from
the two prize-winning works mentioned above, Rizal produced other poems and
zarzuela, this zarzuela was Junto al Pasig (