Philippines after seven years of studying in Europe.

His father, Don Rafael, passed away shortly before his

return, and Crisóstomo soon learns that he died in prison after accidentally killing a tax collector and
being falsely accused of other crimes by Father Dámaso, the longtime curate of the church in Crisóstomo’s
hometown of San Diego. Crisóstomo returns to San Diego, and his fiancée, María Clara, joins him there.
After the schoolmaster tells him that Father Dámaso and the new curate, Father Salví, interfere with his
teaching, Crisóstomo decides to build a new modern school in San Diego.

On a picnic with María Clara, Crisóstomo goes on a fishing boat and helps the pilot, Elías, kill a crocodile.
Elías later warns Crisóstomo that there is a plot to murder him at the ceremony for the laying of the
school’s cornerstone, and indeed, as Crisóstomo is placing mortar for the cornerstone, the derrick holding
the stone collapses. Although Crisóstomo escapes injury, the derrick operator is killed. At a dinner later,
Father Dámaso insults the new school, Filipinos in general, Crisóstomo, and Don Rafael. An enraged
Crisóstomo attacks him, but María Clara stops him from killing the priest. Later her father breaks off her
engagement to Crisóstomo and arranges for her betrothal to a young Spanish man, Linares.

Father Salví plots with Lucas, the brother of the deceased derrick operator, to organize a strike on the
barracks of the Civil Guard and to convince the attackers that Crisóstomo is their ringleader. Father Salví
then warns the head of the Civil Guard of the impending assault. When the attack fails, the rebels say that
Crisóstomo was their leader, and he is arrested. Elías helps Crisóstomo escape from prison, and they flee
by boat on the Pasig River with members of the Civil Guard in pursuit. Elías dives into the river to distract
the pursuers and is mortally wounded. It is reported that Crisóstomo was killed, and a distraught María
Clara insists on entering a convent.

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In the novel’s dedication, Rizal explains that there was once a type of cancer so terrible that the sufferer
could not bear to be touched, and the disease was thus called noli me tangere (Latin: “do not touch me”).
He believed that his homeland was similarly afflicted. The novel offers both a panoramic view of every
level of society in the Philippines of the time and droll satire. Its description of the cruelty of Spanish rule
was a catalyst for the movement for independence in the country. It later came to be regarded as a classic
of Philippine literature, though it is more frequently read in English or Tagalog translation than in its
original Spanish.

Patricia Bauer
LEARN MORE in these related Britannica articles:

Philippine Revolution
 …novel Noli me tángere (1886; The Social Cancer, 1912) exposed the corruption of Manila Spanish
society and stimulated the movement for independence.…

José Rizal

…novel, Noli me tangere (The Social Cancer), a passionate exposure of the evils of Spanish rule in the
Philippines. A sequel, El filibusterismo (1891; The Reign of Greed), established his reputation as the
leading spokesman of the Philippine reform movement. He published an annotated edition (1890; reprinted
1958) of…

novel

Novel, an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively
with human experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a
 specific setting. Within its broad framework, the genre of the novel has encompassed an extensive range of
types…

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José Rizal
FILIPINO POLITICAL LEADER AND AUTHOR
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José Rizal
Filipino political leader and author
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Alternative Title: José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda

José Rizal, in full José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda, (born June 19, 1861, Calamba,
Philippines—died December 30, 1896, Manila), patriot, physician, and man of letters who was an
inspiration to the Philippine nationalist movement.

The son of a prosperous landowner, Rizal was educated in Manila and at the University of Madrid. A
brilliant medical student, he soon committed himself to the reform of Spanish rule in his home country,
though he never advocated Philippine independence. Most of his writing was done in Europe, where he
resided between 1882 and 1892.

In 1887 Rizal published his first novel, Noli me tangere (The Social Cancer), a passionate exposure of the
evils of Spanish rule in the Philippines. A sequel, El filibusterismo (1891; The Reign of Greed), established
his reputation as the leading spokesman of the Philippine reform movement. He published
an annotated edition (1890; reprinted 1958) of Antonio Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, hoping to
show that the native people of the Philippines had a long history before the coming of the Spaniards. He
became the leader of the Propaganda Movement, contributing numerous articles to its newspaper, La
Solidaridad, published in Barcelona. Rizal’s political program included integration of the Philippines as a
province of Spain, representation in the Cortes (the Spanish parliament), the replacement of Spanish
friars by Filipino priests, freedom of assembly and expression, and equality of Filipinos and Spaniards
before the law.

From Britannica.com