READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

Course Title: Readings in Philippine History

No. of Units: 3

OBJECTIVES:

At the end of the semester, the students will be able to:

1. Become aware of the values and beliefs of the people shaped and changed by socioeconomic and geopolitical influences brought
by western colonizers;

2. Analyze the factors that gave birth to Filipino nationalism;

3. Understand the struggle of the people for reforms and national independence during the Spanish colonial era;

4. Look into the circumstances surrounding the birth of the Filipino nation;

5. Understand the reasons behind the formation of militant groups;

6. Discuss the issues and problems of the country after the recognition of the country’s sovereignty;

7. Reevaluate the policies of the past administrations;

8. Relate the events in other countries with the Philippines; and

9. Assess the socioeconomic and cultural development of the country through the years.

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Course Description:

Philippine history viewed from the lens of selected primary sources in different periods, analysis, and interpretations. The course
aims to expose students to different facets of the Philippine history through the lens of eyewitnesses. Rather than rely on secondary
materials such as textbooks, which is the usual approach to teaching Philippine history, different types of primary sources will be
used—written (qualitative and quantitative), oral, visual, audio-visual, digital—covering various aspects of Filipino life (political,
economic, social, cultural). Students are expected to analyze the selected readings contextually and in terms of content (stated and
implied). The goal is to enable students to understand and appreciate our rich past by deriving insights from those who were actually
present at the time of the event. Context analysis considers the following: a) the historical context of the source (time and place it
was written and the situation of the time), b) the author’s background, intent (to the extent discernible), and authority on the
subject, and c) the source’s relevance and meaning today. Content analysis, on the other hand, applies appropriate techniques
depending on the type of source (written, oral, visual). In the process, students will be asked to identify the author’s main argument
or thesis, compare points of view, identify biases, and evaluate the author’s claim based on the evidences presented or other
available evidence at the time. The course will guide the students through their reading and analysis of the texts and require them to
write reaction essays of varied length and present their ideas in other ways. Lastly, the course analyzes Philippine history from
multiple perspectives through the lens of selected primary sources coming from various disciplines and of different genres. Students
are given opportunities to analyze the author’s background and main arguments, compare different points of view, identify biases
and examine the evidences presented in the document. The online discussions will tackle traditional topics in history and other
interdisciplinary themes that will deepen and broaden their understanding of Philippine political, economic, cultural, social,
scientific, and religious history. Priority is given to primary materials that could help the students develop their analytical and
communication skills. The goal is to develop the historical and critical consciousness of the students so that they will become
versatile, articulate, broad-minded, morally upright, and responsible citizens.

The course introduces the students to the development of the Philippines as a nation from Pre-Colonialism to the formation of its
government as a Republic. It will have a general survey of the significant events that shaped the Filipino nation while at the same
time traces our national and cultural heritage. Thus, it will be presented in sequential and chronological order. The course is also a
study of the significant historical stages that formed the economic, political, social and cultural development of the country through
an analysis of the relationship of past events with the present condition of the nation.

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Number of Hours: 3 hours every week for 18 weeks or 54 hours in a semester

Week Topic
1-2 a) Meaning and Relevance of History

1. Old/Traditional Understanding and New Understanding

2. What is Historiography?
3. Importance of History
4. Distinction Between Primary and Secondary Sources
5. Important Sources of History (Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources)
6. Evaluation of Primary and Secondary Sources
7. External and Internal Criticism
b) Role of Historian
c) Summary of Primary and Secondary Sources
1. Categories of Primary Sources
2. Secondary Sources
3-6 d) INDIGENOUS BELIEFS
1. Reading: "Bangka, Kaluluwa at Katutubong Paniniwala" by Dr. Maria Bernadette L. Abrera

e) BAYBAYIN
1. Reading: "Baybayin Revisited" by Damon L. Woods
https://www.baybayan.ph/

f) INDIGENOUS ASTRONOMY
1. "Balatik: Katutubong Bituin ng mga Pilipino" by Dr. Dante L. Ambrosio

g) SPANISH COLONIALISM AND THE PINTADOS

1. Reading: "Catechism of the Body" by Resil Mojares

7-10 h) HISTORY OF FILIPINO SURNAMES

1. Reading: Catalogo Alfabetico de Apellidos by Narciso Claveria
2. Reading: "Claveria's Catalogue" by Paul Morrow

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 i) REDUCCION, POLO Y SERVICIOS AND TAXATION
1. "Reduccion sa Bohol sa Dantaon 16 hanggang 19" ni Amelia S. Ferrer

j) TAGABAYAN VS TAONG LABAS

1. Lecture: “Si Mariang Makiling” ni Jose Rizal
2. "Ang mga Taong Labas, ang Kabayanihan, at ang Diskurso ng Kapangyarihan at Kasaysayan" ni Dr.
Francis A. Gealogo

11-14 k) PROPAGANDA MOVEMENT AND THE ILUSTRADO CLASS

1. Reading: “Dasalan at Tocsohan” ni Marcelo H. Del Pilar

l) "One past but many histories": controversies and conflicting views in Philippine history
   1. Site of the First Mass
   2. Cavite Mutiny
   3. Retraction of Rizal
   4. Cry of Balintawak or Pugadlawin
15-18 m) Social, Political, Economic and Cultural Issues in Philippine History
Mandated topics:
      1. Agrarian Reform Policies
      2. The Philippine Constitution:1899 Malolos Constitution; 1935 Constitution; 1973 Constitution; 1987
Constitution
      3. Taxation
n) Critical evaluation and promotion of local and oral history, museums, historical shrines, cultural
performances, indigenous practices, religious rites, and rituals, etc.

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Learning Plan

Let me ask you four simple questions and you decide for yourself:

(a) Do you appreciate the preservation of our old buildings?

(b)  Do you have the intention of visiting the historical places in Cavite?

(c) Would you watch historical movies or documentaries?

(d)  Have you ever been to the National Museum?

Meaning and Relevance of History

This module emphasizes the relevance of studying Philippine history in the 21 st Century. It focuses on analyzing Philippine history
from multiple perspectives based on selected primary sources from various disciplines and genres.

WHAT IS HISTORY?

OLD/TRADITIONAL UNDERSTANDING NEW UNDERSTANDING

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 Study of the past Greek word historia – knowledge acquired through inquiry or
 A chronological record of significant events (such as those investigation.
affecting a nation or institution) often including an  Account of the past of a person or of a group of people
explanation of their causes through written documents and historical evidences
 Sources are oral traditions in forms of epic and songs,
artifacts, architecture, and memory.

WHAT IS HISTORIOGRAPHY?
 Is the history of history
 The writing of history, especially the writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of particular
details from the authentic materials in those sources, and the synthesis of those details into a narrative that stands the test
of critical examination. The term historiography also refers to the theory and history of historical writing.

IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY
- to unite a nation
- to legitimize regimes and forge a sense of collective identity through collective memory
- to make sense of the present
- to not repeat mistakes of the past
- to inspire people to keep their good practices to move forward

Distinction between Primary and Secondary Sources

This section discusses the basic difference between primary source and secondary source materials, and their
importance in getting a better picture of what really transpired in Philippine history. It also identifies the different kinds of
primary sources and their possible repositories.

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 IMPORTANT SOURCES OF HISTORY

Evaluation of Primary and Secondary Sources

This section explains how to evaluate primary and secondary source materials. This also elaborates on the primacy of primary
sources over secondary sources. In addition, this presents the different points of consideration in analyzing both types of sources.

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EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL
CRITICISMS

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Example: Sa Aking Mga Kabata – attributed to Rizal

It was a long –held belief that the poem Sa Aking Mga Kabata (To My Fellow Children) was written by Dr. Jose Rizal. According to
popular belief, Rizal wrote the poem in 1869 to express the importance of loving one’s native tongue. This is the poem where one
finds the popular line, Ang Hindi marunong magmahal sa sariling wika, masahol pa sa hayop at
malansang isda (English: 'He that knows not to love his own language, is worse than beasts and
putrid fish')

However, in his recent book Rizal: Makata, National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario clarifies
that the poem was not by Jose Rizal. Almario provides pieces of evidence to prove his point, and
one of these is a letter wrote to his brother Paciano in 1886. In the letter, Rizal admitted to finding
it difficult to translate into the Filipino the German word freiheit, or the Spanish word libertad
(freedom or liberty in English), which Rizal found in the story of William Tell.

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It was in Marcelo H. Del Pilar’s translation of Rizal’s article, El Amor Patrio (Ang Pag-Ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa), that Rizal saw the word
“malaya” or “kalayaan” as the Tagalog equivalent of the word “libertad.”

According to Almario, since Rizal only discovered the Tagalog word Kalayaan when Del Pilar translated El Amor Patrio in 1882, it was
unlikely that Rizal wrote Sa Aking mga Kabata, which uses the word Kalayaan, in 1869.

Role of the Historian

- To look at the available historical sources and select the most relevant and meaningful for history and for the subject
matter that he is studying.
- To organize the past that is being created so that it can offer lessons for nations, societies, and civilization.
- To seek for the meaning of recovering the past to let the people see the continuing relevance of provenance, memory,
remembering, and historical understanding for both the present and the future.

In conclusion, Choosing history allows you to acquire a combination of skills and insights that will
• broaden your understanding of the world

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• develop you as a person
• prepare you for a future career
• enable you to participate fully in society

SUMMARY OF PRIMARY and SECONDARY SOURCES

        The secondary source is the evidence of someone who was not present at the time of occurrence of the event e.g., books
written by historians. The secondary source is also of great historical importance to historians. Although the secondary source is
itself dependent on primary sources.

       A primary source may contain secondary information e.g., newspapers are usually considered primary sources but the
information provided by the newspaper is not all based on primary sources. Such as certain incidents reported by the paper may be
such which the correspondent saw or in he actually took part while certain offer information may be based on official information or
sources considered reliable.

Categories of Primary Sources

(1) Contemporary Records:

These types of primary sources are in the form of the instruction documents, stenographic and phonographic records. The business
and legal paper and autobiographies, etc. The instruction documents may be in the form of an appointment notification, and
direction from a foreign office to the ambassador, etc. Generally, such documents have very little chance of error but it is essential
to ascertain their authenticity.

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The Business and legal letters consist of the bills, journals, leases, wills, tax records which gives an insight into the working of the
firms as well as the persons. The autobiographies are a credible source of history because they are very close to the events with
which they deal and written by a person himself. These are non-prejudicial.

(2) Confidential Reports:

The confidential reports are not intended for a general audience and are less reliable than the contemporary sources. These types of
reports are generally in the forms of military and diplomatic dispatches, Journals, diaries or memoirs, and personal letters.

(3) Public Reports:

The public reports are meant for the general public and less reliable. There are three types of public reports and each possesses a
different degree of reliability, such as— Newspaper reports and dispatches are more reliable which depends upon the agency from
which it originated and the newspaper in which it is published; Memoirs and autobiographies are another public reports which are
written for the public at the close of the life when the memoirs of author is fading and are, therefore, not very reliable and the
official histories of the activities of government or business house are also an important kind of public reports. They possess
incriminating material and less reliable.

(4) Government Documents:

Numerous government documents are compiled which are also a source of vita. Importance to historians such as statistics about the
fiscal, census and vital matters which can be made use of by the historians. All these reports have first-hand importance but require
proper evaluation before the use.

(5) Public Opinion:

The public opinion as expressed in editorials, speeches, pamphlets, letter to the editor is another important source available to the
historian, But the authenticity of this must be corroborated by other evidence because public opinion may not be always reliable,
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(6) Folklores and Proverbs:

The folklores which reveal the stories of legendary heroes are also an important source of history. They tell us about the aspirations,
superstitions, and customs of the people among whom- the stories developed, e.g. “Alla-Uddal” the hero Rajputana.

To make the use of these folklores the historian should not only possess a thorough knowledge of the history of the period but also
able to distinguish between the legendary and authentic elements. Similarly, proverbs can give us an idea but scholars must have a
thorough knowledge of the customs and traditions.

Secondary Sources:

The primary sources can be of great help to the historian if he has acquired a thorough knowledge of the background
through the study of secondary sources, i.e. the works of the great and important historians of the proposed area and period of
research. On the basis of this knowledge, he can utilize the contemporary document at relevant places and can correct the
secondary sources.

INDIGENOUS BELIEFS
Reading: "Bangka, Kaluluwa at Katutubong Paniniwala" by Dr. Maria Bernadette L. Abrera

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BAYBAYIN
Reading: "Baybayin Revisited" by Damon L. Woods 

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 INDIGENOUS ASTRONOMY
"Balatik: Katutubong Bituin ng mga Pilipino" by Dr. Dante L. Ambrosio

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SPANISH COLONIALISM AND THE PINTADOS
Reading: "Catechism of the Body" by Resil Mojares

philippine studies
Ateneo de Manila University • Loyola Heights, Quezon City • 1108 Philippines

The Life of Miguel Ayatumo:

A Sixteenth-Century Boholano

Resil B. Mojares

Philippine Studies vol. 41, no. 4 (1993): 437–458 Copyright © Ateneo de Manila University

Philippine Studies is published by the Ateneo de Manila University. Contents may not be copied or sent via email
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Please contact the publisher for any further use of this work at philstudies@admu.edu.ph.

http://www.philippinestudies.net Fri June 27 13:30:20 2008

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The life of Miguel Ayatumo: A Sixteenth-Century Boholano

Resil B. Mojares

In Spanish colonial texts of the Philippines, the nabve stands dis- tanced, peripheral, and dimly visible. Dissolving the remoteness,
fore- grounding the native, has been an important project in current Philippine historiography.' In this project, however, one
contends not merely with the crude and simple exclusions of racial or political bias, but with the historicity of modes of
representation. To study these modes may not resurrect the native in full-bodied form but, in enchancing our appreciation for
the processes of saying, it will lead us to a clearer sense of the unsaid—even if, for the moment, it must remain so.

There is perhaps no mode of representation more intriguing in this context than human lives. What vre conjure today as
biographies, autobiographies, or memoirs, promise a direct apprehension of per- sons, defined in time and space, promising history
at a most infi- mately empirical level. Yet, the promise is illusory. Notions of per- sonhood, or of biography (“the inscribing of lives”),
are not univer- sal. Lives do not always offer what, to our liking, are lives. We can illustrate this by exploring early examples of the
”life” (Spanish, ñfn) in Spanish colonial literature.

What may be the earliest published ‘biography of a Filipino” is an account of the life of an early Christian convert in Bohol
named Miguel Ayatumo (1593—1609). Entitled Vida de un mancebo Indio, flamndo Migiief Ayatumo, rintiirnl de BohoJio en
£ilipiitos, this 49-page account is appended to a manual on the good Christian life by Jesuit Pedro de Mercado, Ef Crisfinno
virtuoso.' Mercado, a Spanish creole born in Riobamba, Ecuador, was rector of the Jesuit coJegio5 of Tun ja (Colombia), Honda
(Colombia), and Quito (Ecuador). He was never in the Philippines (as far as I can determine) and, in his book, he addressed
himself to Spaniards. His vida of Ayatumo is an embellished Spanish version of a report in Latin by Jesuit Pedro Aunonio {Pedro de
AuñonJ, contained in the Anuas of the Society of Jesus for the year 1609. It is Aunonio (1575—1655) who is the wit- ness to the life of the
young Ayatumo, Aunonio having served in the Bohol mission around 1603 to 1655.°

I take Mercado’s text as a point of departure in this article.‘ My interest lies in what the text opens out to, what it tells us of a par- ticular
Boholano at the turn of the seventeenth century and of the historical realities of this time and place. More important, 1 am inter- ested in the
text itself, how it "constructs" a life and what this mode of construction might tell us about the ways in which reality is rep- resented in early
biography and history.S The present article, de- scribes the text, sketches something of its historical context, reflects on the problematics of the
text, and offers a few conclusions.

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 Fr. Pedro de Mercado’s El Cris hnno virtuoso (16731 is an example of a ubiquitous genre in Philippine colonial literature: the mnxitel de
urbanidad or ’&ok of conduct." Derived from European tradition, this encompasses various guidebooks on how to live the good Chris- tian
life, which may take the form of a scholarly disquisition on the virtues of a good Christian (usually in the form of "exercises" or ejer- cicios), a
simple inventory of do’s and don’t’s of daily Christian be- havior, or an exemplary narrative into which are woven lessons of good manners and
right conduct.^
The main text of £1 Crisiiano virtuoso runs to 399 pages and con- sists of 80 chapters lcepitulosl organized into 10 ’9x›oks" (librosl. In a
scholastic manner, it begins by defining and classifying the state of virtue into five general categories and then indicating the specific virtues
in each category: virtues of thought (e.g., contemplation, prudence, discretion, docility, circumspection, studiousness); virtues of the will (e.g.,
hope, charity, peace, compassion, beneficence, jus- tice, piety, friendship, gratitude); virtues of the emotions lepetito iros- cibleJ (e.g., fortitude,
magnanimity, magnificence, confidence, clemency); virtues of the carnal appetites (apetito concupisciblel (e.g., temperance, abstinence,
sobriety, patience, perseverance, humility, poverty, silence); and virtues of the body (e.g., modesty, cleanliness, physical penitcnce).
Each chapter takes up a virtue or a facet of it. The characteristic method is to begin with a definition and citations of authorities (with Latin
quotations from the Bible, the Fathers of the Church, and reli gious authors), proceeding to an elaboration of the concept through
classification, differentiation, or analogy, and then ending with guides or injunctions for application of the virtue lactose and short
illustra- tive cases from the lives of saints and other ecclesiastical sources. The book has both a learned and practical character,
oscillating as it does between bookish disputation and the simple enumeration of practi- cal, everyday actos.

The vida of Miguel Ayatumo comes as an appendix to the book, a kind of summarizing exemplum. Divided into 20 short
“chapters,” it begins with the author’s preface {intento y protests) and then pro- ceeds, in more or less chronological order, to
recount the life of Miguel Ayatumo.

The narrative content of the vida is brief. In a place called Boholio (Bohol) is born to pagan parents an exceptionally attractive
“Indian” child fnixo Indiesitol. At the age of seven, he is baptized in the Holy Catholic Faith by Jesuit father Gabriel Sanchez and is
named after the Archangel St. Michael (hence his name Miguell. For five years after baptism, he lives with his parents (who
have themselves taken the rite of baptism) and so amazes everyone because, even at a ten- der age, he is filled with fervent
piety, fasting, praying as he walks from house to school, and even flagellating his young body.

At the age of 12, Miguel enters the Jesuit boarding school (semi- rinrio) where his faith so increases that he becomes a “model of
per- fection” for all. For four years in the school, Miguel is like an “an- gel,” performing all his temporal and spiritual duties with
utmost zeal and fidelity. He would accompany the Jesuit fathers in their missionizing forays into the surrounding territory, going

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ahead of them to cut a path through the foliage with his bolo, acting as car- rier and cook, and standing guard at night as the priests
slept. He spends all his days in prayer and meditation.

At age 13, he makes a personal vow of chastity. He applies him- self to his studies with such dedication that even in the hours
when the other boys are out playing in the fields, he is studying and writ- ing for catechetical use on topics like devotion to Virgin
Mary, ex- amining one’s conscience, or making a good confession, all of which he never fails to present to the priests for
examination and correc- tion. So focused is Miguel on the Faith that he molds his whole life as a preparation for a Christian
death.

On 19 November 1609, Miguel woke up early and went to the sacristy to help prepare for the mass. The mass over, he went to the
river to assist six other boys who were there washing clothes. As he descended the steps leading to the water, he slipped and
fell, striking his chest against the prow of a moored boat. Crying out Jesus, Maria, y Joseph and murmuring the names of his titulary
saints, the sixteen-year-old Miguel received the last sacraments as he ex- pired. Dressed in a tunic, a fresh palm in his hand, his head
adorned with a crown of flowers, he was later buried, to the sorrow of all. Thus ended the brief and blessed life of Miguel Ayatumo,
the young Boholano.

The Context

What is striking about this early example of ‘biography” is how it conveys so little historical information. To begin with, there is, of
course, the biographical subject. What can one expect from the bi- ography of someone dead at the age of sixteen? More
important, there is the motive behind this reconstruction of a life, and the prin- ciples that shape its writing.

The life of Miguel Ayatumo takes place against the background of the early Jesuit missionary efforts in the island of Bohol. The
Jesu- its opened their mission in Bohol in November 1596 when two priests, Juan de Torres and Gabriel Sanchez (the priests who
bap- tized Miguel), established a mission post in Baclayon and, shortly after, in Loboc. It is in Loboc where our story takes place
(Mercado does not feel the need to specify the place, content merely to cite Boholio, which he refers to both as a pueblo and an isla
in some in- definite place called £ilipirtns). An inland market village where the littoral fisherfolk and the upland dwellers met to trade
and exchange goods, Loboc (taken from Loboq, i.e., “muddy, turbid waters,” the name of the river in the district) was chosen by Fr.
Juan de Torres as a church site and nucleus of a pueblo. While this establishment of a Christian pueblo was accomplished with

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seeming earn, Loboc as a town was still in the process of formation as of 1600. It was a major Jesuit post in Bohol, its inhabitants
known for their steadfast- ness in the new faith.'

In 1605, the Jesuits established a boarding school in Loboc, sup- ported by the stipends received by the Bohol missionaries. By April
l6£f›, there were sixteen boys in the school, “all of them from the leading families of the island,” under a schoolmaster named Juan
Maranga. Marapga was a Leyteño, an alumnus of the Jesuit board- ing school in Dulag (Leyte), established in 1595, and after
which the Loboc school was modelled. He was what was called a donado, a lay helper attached to the Jesuit community.'

Available records menbon four boys who studied at the seminario (Miguel Ayatumo, Miguel de la Panga, “the son of Dumagan,” and
“the son of Balios”) but it is only Ayatumo whose “life story” was recorded by the Bohol missionaries at some length."

From other sources, we also see more of the social background that Mercado leaves largely unsketched. The boarding school at
Loboc (like the one at Dulag) was aimed at educating native boys in good manners and right conduct, in the knowledge of the
Catho- lic faith and the Spanish language, and in other things pertaining to the culhvation of Christian virtue. Boys, mostly under
18, were chosen from among the “ruling families” of the region and educated to the end that they could be teachers and leaders of
their people. Their length of stay at the school was not fixed, but usually lasted several years.

This semirtnrir de indios was not only a means for incorporating natives into a Christian order, it was also an instrument for decul-
turation. On the day of their entrance into the school, new boys made a general confession of their past lives and received Holy
Communion as a sign of their entry into a new life. The seminario was a site for “seminating” a class of new persons.

The standard daily regimen had the boys rise at the sound of a bell every morning; perform a short meditation before the Blessed
Sacrament in the chapel; go around the town in procession, chant- ing the catechism, so people could fall in line behind them and
fol- low to the mission church for mass; attend class (held morning and afternoon on weekdays, and which included lessons in
reading and writing in Spanish and Visayan); return to the church after the af- ternoon class to recite the rosary and sing the Salve
Regina; engage in approved recreation activihes; take supper (with the boys seated at long refectory tables, European fashion, and,
in the evening, at- tend what might be called a workshop or practice session, during which one of the boys gave a catechetical
lesson for an exemplary tale, as he would when the time came for him to do mission work. The boys end the day with an
examination of conscience and night prayers at the chapel.

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Recruiting boys from the leading families, training them, and then having them go out to proselytize was a strategy of mission work
already tested by Spanish missionaries in the New World. Speaking of the training of boys in Dulag, a Jesuit father said in 1601:
“What a rich source of manpower this is that Our Lord has opened to the Society, manpower to help us in every phase of our
work for souls .”io

The drama of conversion is the immediate historical context of the life of Miguel Ayatumo. It is a stirring drama. The early years of
Christianization in the Philippines read as something epic and apoca- lyptic. What can one say of a handful of foreign missionaries
strik- ing forth into the heart of darkness, braving death, confronting pa- gans speaking strange tongues, and then, with what
seemed like the workings of the miraculous, converting hundreds and thousands of souls in so short a period of time?

This seems to be the story of Bohol. In 1600, just four years after they first appeared on the island, the Jesuits reported four
churches established, four pueblos in the process of formation, and 700 Chris- aans in an island with an estimated population of
9,500. The reports of the missionaries themselves tell a more impressive story: that the inhabitants of the towns of Baclayon and
Loboc were converted ”in only eight months;” that “more than two thousands souls" in Bohol were baptized in just two months in
16fD; that if only there were a few more priests the entire island of Bohol could be converted in no time at all. What is even more
striking is the fervor with which the natives took to the new faith: literally begging to be baptized, crowding into the churches (in
Loboc, usual attendance at Sunday Mass was 600-700 in a population estimated at 1,000 in 1600), and performing religious acts with
an intensity that amazed even the priests themselves.

Fr. Pedro Chirino writes that in 1600—1601 “the flame that Our

Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of Cod, came down upon the earth to kindle, yearning that it be turned into a blaze, was fanned with
great vigor in the island of Bohol.”" Fr. Valerio de Ledesma, Jesuit rector in Cebu, visiting Bohol in May-June 160), reports:

There was so great a hunger and longing to hear the things of God and to learn the doctrine that all night long they never
ceased, now one group and now another, to sing and pay homage to God in their home. Morning and evening, in the fields and in
church, nothing was to be heard save praises to the Lord.

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Perhaps anticipating the wonder (or incredulity) with which the account may be read, Father Ledesma asks: “Who imparted to them
so much fire and fervor, these people having been so lukewarm by inclination?” He answers: “I do not know what I can say ...
other than Oigitus Det est hic (This is the finger of GodJ.”' 2

In this context, therefore, the story of Miguel Ayatumo is not exceptional. It comes to us as one more instance (albeit more ex-
tended than the “cases” with which the missionaries usually illus- trated their reports), a kind of microcosm of the larger drama of
conversion.

Problematlcs: Reduction

What is new in the story of Miguel Ayatumo? On one hand, not much—if one is looking for “historical informaaon” in the way of a
few more dates or a few more names, places or events, or if one is looking for the kind of psychological depth, of rich circumstantial-
ity, which we have come to expect of “biographies.” On the other hand, there is much to be found if we confront the problem of the
text itself, its mode, its particular, historically determined way of constructing or representing a ’life.”

£1 Cristiano virtuoso brings together two genres of medieval writ- ing: the ejercicio (“book of spiritual exercises”) and the Sila (the
key example of which is the aim saucer, “saint’s life”). Both forms are concerned, whether through prescription or illustration, with
the edification of readers in the Christian ideals of “moral perfection.”'° In Mercado’s book, the two are kept separate, but in
other (particu- larly, later) works, the manual of conduct and the life story (whether of a person historical or fictional) are
combined.

The introduction of the “narrative” to the essentially static frame of the ejercicio problematizcs the text since narration tends to
break out the disorderliness of historical space and time. In medieval rheto- ric, however, nartatio does not mean “narrative” in the
modern sense but, broadly, an “exposition of the facts,” in which persons, places, and events arc not so much the substance of a
social world as count- ers in an intellectual schema or tropes in a rhetorical plan. In early books of conduct (Mercado’s included),
the nonnarrative impulse dominates and keeps reality bounded and contained.

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The life of Ayatumo is writtcn in the hagiographic mode. Pat- terned and conventionalizcd, it is concerned less with biographical
reconstruction as with panegyric and cdification. It is, in the man- ner of saints’ lives, an epideictic narrative, it aims at persuasion
rather than authentication. At the time Mercado was writing, the vita sancti was already a well-established form that expressed
received tradition, in which exemplary lives were offered as paradigms for a community of believers. Thomas Heffernan, in his
study of medie- val sacred biography, states the aim of the vita sancti thus:

its avowed primary goal is not the presentation and interpretation of the record of the Vita but rather the celebration of modes
of behavior which exist as cultural symbols and not as autonomous sui genesis acts."

Ayatumo, however, is not a saint whose life has already been given a canonical form and who can therefore be easily reproduced
for the purposes of religious instruction. Neither is he a poetical invention, empty space to be filled with a rhetorician’s topoi, a fic-
tional character that can be freely manipulated to illustrate the themes of hagiography. He is a historical person with a life outside
the text, overdetermined, with a “surplus of meaning.”

How does Mercado deal with the surplus, if at all? Two aspects of this problem are discussed here-in particular, two principles by
which the Ayatumo vida is directed and organized.

The first is what I call the principle of reduction. (I use the term advisedly: reduccion, after all, is a key concept in both the temporal
and spiritual colonization of the Philippines. I use it also to remind ourselves that what the Spaniards “reduced” were not just
villages and towns but intimate bodies, minds, and “souls.”)” Reduction involves an ethnocentric bias: it remolds the colonized in
the image of the colonizer. It also involves an essentializing process: it reduces phenomena to certain a prioristic essentials both as a
way of explain- ing them and governing them.

In the Mercado text, the author provides just enough information to establish the historical presence of his subject, Miguel
Ayatumo— a place (Boholio en filipinos); a people (a nacion fleetingly referred to as Pintados and Bisayenses); a few temporal
markers (corresponding to the “high points” in the convert’s life: the age at which he was baptized, the age when he entered the

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seminary, and the date of his death: 16 Nauiembre 1609, which, at first glance, seems curiously ex- act, but may be explained by the
fact that his death, after all, is the most important point in his life, everything else being a preparation for it); and then a few more
facts (e.g., the name of the priest who baptized him). Everything else remains shadowy: there are references.

to Miguel’s parents, an uncle, a cousin, the other boys in the school, even a haiI«na who visited Miguel once when he was ill
and was turned away, but they are all unnamed and undescribed, just shadowy figures hovering around the virtuous youth.
The text is not moved by an appetite for the circumstantial: that the specific locale is called Loboc is not mentioned, what the
seminario or the church or the environs look like does not engage the authors interest, or who exactly these people called the
Pintados are is not directly dealt with.

Yet, indeed, why should we expect the author to deal with such questions? In his opening paragraph, Mercado indicates what he
considers relevant:

In the Philippine Islands there is a town named Boholio where live some Indios who are called Pintados. Here emerged into the light
(as fine gold from the coarse earth) an Indio child of an appearance most pleasing, alive, and bright, it seemed drawn by the Divine
Hand. His parents are Indios and when the child was born they were Gentiles and for this reason the child’s corporal genealogy did
not merit honor or admiration, which the world gives solely to those of illustrious dent, and who, after another spiritual birth, gain
the honor of being creatures of heaven.'•

Mercado goes on to say that it was only after Miguel was “reborn (renaciendo) by Holy Baptism” that, though of “low lineage," he
at- tained that nobility, honor and esteem accorded those with “the light of the Catholic Faith.”

“Corporal genealogy" does not interest the author low it is only with Miguel’s "spiritual birth" that he becomes, as it were, “pres-
ent" to the church and to the author. It is as though the Faith is a circle of light, and whoever or whatever is within it is illumined,
and what is without is in darkness. There are fugihve references in the text to the old native religion: native curers and shamans
Ebay- Inn), the myth of dead ancestors returning in a ship of gold, ancient mortuary practices, the worship of crocodiles, and a god
named Raon. Mercado, however, mentions these only in passing. He is largely indifferent to the particulars of such phenomena.

71
They are merely signs and manifestations of sin, anarchy, and error, of what, since Adam and Eve, is already known, the ancient
realm of the Devil that, in the light of Faith, will be dispelled as phantasms and illusions.

Reduction is also in the nature of the formation that Miguel un- dergoes as a Christian. The dominant theme in this formation is one
of “renouncing the world” fdesprecinr el mundo}, of turning away from the world in a process of deculturation and denaturation. In
the first, Miguel turns away from his own cultural world. He leaves his par- ents to live with the Jesuits. His devotion to St. Joseph
and the Vir- gin Mary becomes, as it were, symbolic of his joining a new “fam- ily.” He turns his back on the world of his ancestors.
When he hears of idolatrous rites being performed, he exhorts the people (though he is but a child) to forsake these practices;
when he is ill and is visited by a bailana, he cries out to her to go away; when an uncle dies and all mourners are loudly weeping (as
is the custom), he alone does not weep, placing his trust in his newfound God.

In the second, Miguel turns away from his own body. He goes on extended fasts (even when it is not obligatory), makes a personal
vow of chastity, flagellates himself, and engages in other acts of abstinence and self-mortification to extinguish the appetites of the
flesh. Believing that curiosity (ociol is the “origin of all evils,” he watchfully stands guard at the “doors” of his body—the eyes (not
looking at a woman or a man unless it is necessary), the mouth (refusing to partake of meat on Friday), and the ears (reprimanding
a cousin for “bad speech” and asking that the boy be punished). He guards the body itself, dressing himself in a tunic that reaches
to his feet when he goes to sleep, afraid that, asleep, he may appear immodest to others."

Reduction guides Mercado’s style of presentation. Mercado follows the pattern of saints’ lives by roughly breaking down the life of
Ayatumo into a three-part development: renunciation, testing, and consummation. The first stage of the narrative consists of
Ayatumo’s denial of his “pagan” origins. He leaves his parents, enters the semi- nary, and cuts himself off from the culture of his
people. The next stage, the testing of the young man’s faith, is shown (if largely undramatized, in the way of much of the narrative)
in the tempting of Ayatumo. On one occasion, a bailana attempted to visit the sick Ayatumo and was vigorously turned away. On
another, enticements were offered him to marry a young woman, but these were turned down by the virtuous youth. The
consummation in the story comes with Ayatumo’s death. Though this falls short of the martyrdom with which many saints’ lives are
climaxed, Mercado invests the event of Ayatumo’s death with such correspondences with Christ’s own Death that it resonates as a
divine consummation.

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Mercado parcels Miguel’s life into exemplary acts that illustrate the virtues of a good Christian: fidelity to the rules of the Church,
humility, abstinence, self-mortification, zeal, chastity, obedience, poverty, and others. So focused is the text on the catalogue of ges-
tures and deeds that these seem to have a life of their own, disem- bodied, sliding out of biography into a realm of archetypes. We
never really get to see, clearly in our mind, the face of Miguel nor do we hear him speak in his own words. This structuring of the
vida derives from the fact that it is, after all, intended to be an illustra- tion of the main text with its scholastic, segmented
disquisition on virtues. Yet, it does express the tendency to reduce the complexity and motion of a life into a regulated set of ethical
categories and exemplary acts.

Finally, the reductive tendency is expressed in the choice of sub- ject itself. The choice of a sixteen-year-old may have followed
estab- lished tradition: the ’blessed child” who confounds unbelievers is a familiar topos in sacred biography. Yet, it expresses as well
certain predispositions concerning natives and converts, predispositions both political (the colonial characterization of native
subjects as “children,” niños, who need to be guided by the more rational, mature Europe- ans) and religious (for natives new to the
faith must perforce be young.) What faith more transparent is there than that of a child? What, in fact, makes Miguel Ayatumo so
divine is that he does not have a history. He “emerged into the light as fine gold from the coarse earth.” In the final chapter of the
vida, Mercado uses a Latin quotation to sum up the life of Miguel Ayatumo: “l am like a tab-

let, a stretched canvas on which the Divine Painter paints what He likes.•^Ifl

P*ob}e Ucs: Flguidon

The second principle organizing the Mercado text is the principle of figurahon. In it, events in a person’s life-that life itself—are
taken as an enactment of something that happened already, “figured” in God’s Plan, and of something simultaneously caught up in
the tem- porality of earthly life and in the timelessncss of God’s design. In Christian thought, the thoughts and actions of mcn must
be directed towards prefigurin$ that which is fulfilled in God."

Jitiilatio Christi, the imitation of Christ, is the motive that shapes the Christian’s life. This is to be seen in Miguel’s story. He sought

73
ways of “sculphng into his soul” God’s image and asked, on sev- eral occasions, for licen in ›tiemoria of the Passion—to be hung
from a Cross for one whole night, or be bound hand and foot and be beaten and spat at, or to perform the dolorous Stations of
the Cross (from the schoolhouse to the church) with himself as Christ stripped to the waist and his companions playing the roles of
crier, trumpeter, and i›erdugo or executioner.

The figural impulse underlies the universalizing and delocalizing strategies of the text. In the manner of the vita sancti, Mercado’s
account is replete with theological allusions, citahons, and quotations, from St. Augustine and St. Bernard to such early churchmen
as Ti- tus, the fourth-century bishop of Bostra (Tito Bostrense), and Peter the Venerable, the twelve-century abbot to Cluny (Pedro
Clunincense). Such textual devices serve to direct the readers attenaon away from the local to the metaphysical or “universal” plane.
Correspondences are drawn between the deeds of Ayatumo and those of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and such figures as St. Raphael, St.
Michael, and St. Ignatius. By providing such ’background,” the author leads the reader toward the apprehension of paradigmatic
actions, to see Ayatumo’s life as the enactment of a divinely ordained script.

As Miguel orders his life as a reenactment of the life of Christ, so does Mercado represent Miguel’s life. This is most clear (and most
figural) in the way the text interprets the last days of Miguel. Mer- cado concludes how, even in death, Miguel imitated Christ: as
Christ shared the Last Supper the day before His death, so did Miguel; as Christ died violently, so did Miguel; and as Christ died on a
Fri- day, so did Miguel.

So thoroughly does Miguel become a “Christian” that he disap- pears as a native. At his grave (so the Aunonio text
suggests) the Jesuits inscribe a long honorific inscription in Latin as his epi- taph, in which the young Boholano whose native
name we do not, with certainty, even know is thus, in Latin, named: MICHAELEM AYATUMUM. 2’

Imitation is not a static concept. The drama of a life that seeks to mold itself after an ideal is fraught with the tensions of the
tragic. Yet, one already sees in the Mercado text that dogmatic and peda- gogic trend that infects a great deal of ecclesiastic
literature with sterility by reducing the workings of grace in human life into a set of prescribed ejercicios (exercises) and actos
(acts).

It is erroneous to suggest that the whole “Christian-figural” inter-

pretation of human life is reductivc. It expresses a religious bias

74
(which remains to be justified); it also leaves unexamined the oblique assumption that the “native,” pre-Christian representation of
human life is different (that is, nonfigural, more complex). I leave the latter question for another time and I do not fully engage the
former. I argue, however, that the Mercado text restricts the possibilities of the figural mode. This mode is not necessarily nor
wholly reductive: it expands the representation of life, giving it a depth of ’background” that extends beyond the sensory and the
actual, heightening the thoughts and actions of an obscure native on an obscure island by connecting them to the grand events and
personages of “universal history.” Furthermore, the use of the figural mode in literature (as Erich Auerbach’s masterly essay on
Dante shows) can heighten re- ality not only by connecting the local to the universal, the earthly to the divine, it can also invest
the local and the earthly with an integrity and intensity of their own.2'

This is not the case in the Mercado text. Here the categories and their use have become rather conventional. This is not merely to
conclude that Mercado is no Dante (to compare a modest 49-page tract with the DiNxa Commedin would be grossly misplaced.) It is
to point out how a variant of figural writing (of which Mercado is only an example) indexes a limited moral and literary imagination.

The problems in the Mercado text are, to begin with, problems of mode. The vita sancti is governed by an ideology that subordi-
nates the historical and the particular to the ideal and the metaphysi- cal. What the vita seeks to narrate is not so much history as
theo- phany (“the appearance of the inbreaking of the divine in the world”). In effect, the essential subject of the sacred biography
is not the individual person but the paradigmatic actions of Christ as these arc incamated again and again in the lives of men.

The ideology shapes conceptions of time, space, event, and per- sonhood. The vita unfolds in cosmic time, in a teleological
movement that begins and ends with God. The events it narrates are traces or signs, the speculum which reveals God’s
omniprescnce. The mise en scene of the saints life is not Boholio or Filipinas but a dark lapsar- ian world that God summons into
light as His grace works in the lives of those He chooses to touch. Personhood in the vita is not (as modems are wont to see) that
highly particular self which history and society shape but the “spiritual substance” which is realized through the love of God, the
observance of His precepts, and the aid of divine grace.

The basic strategy of the vita, therefore, is reductive and figura- tive. It achieves its purposes of proof and persuasion by tracing the
tripartite pattern of renunciation, testing, and consummation in the saint’s life, by using various rhetorical devices to draw the
readef s attention away from the person towards the theological dimension, and by dissolving (as it were) foreground in favor of
background.

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By virtue of the originality of its subject, the life of Ayatumo re- tains a certain raw authenacity not to be found in other lives of
saints and ‘Loks of conduct’ in Philippine colonial literature. Nev- ertheless, Mercado’s text shows how the writing of the vita has al-
ready been so conventionalized that only fitfully, vaguely, do we glimpse “what the Boholano, and Bohol, must have been like.”

Our misgivings draw, in large part, from our own historical po- sition as readers of the text. These are occasioned by initially ap-
proaching the text as a modern, empirically-minded student of his- tory and biography and as a reader interested in “learning
something about the Philippines in the sixteenth century.” We need to acknowl- edge that it is the bias of the empiricist to ask for
“Ayatumo as the man he really was.” The past is accessible to us, not only on the basis of extant traces but, more important,
according to how (and for what ends) we interrogate it. Furthermore, it is a cultural bias to seek “data” about early life in the
Philippines in a book that has no interest in the subject.

An analysis of the Ayatumo text, therefore, is most fruitful when it seeks to explain not merely its contents but its symbolizing
struc- tures and what these structures might say about the collective con- sciousness of those who wrote such texts and those for
whom these texts were written. This is not all, however. An inquiry into such texts must be alive as well to how, through time, such
symbolizing structures are constituted, broken down, or reformed. One must at- tend not only to the integrity of a symbolic
structure, but to the tensions it harbors, that interplay of dominant, residual, and emer- gent elements which points to other,
alternative ways in which both lives and texts can be generated.

Like other modes of representahon, the vita is not static. It is not innocent of history. There are tensions and contradictions in the
text that, under the pressure of historical realities, threaten the effective- ness of the form’s strategy of comprehending or
containing history. It is in these contradictions that one finds other possibilities, the submerged presence of what, in the act of
saying, is left unsaid.

Recalming History

The sacred biographer grapples with a basic dualism, that of presenting, on one hand, the historical, empirical, and individual (the
record of a person’s life), and, on the other, the metahistorical, meta- physical, and exemplary (traces of the divine indwelling in
human life). As Heffernan points out, the vita sancti moves between prsxis (in which life is summed up in a chronological manner)

76
and efhos (the somewhat rigorous and interpretive discussion of character). If the text is “weighted too far towards the
supernatural, we lose the man, while if the exemplary is underemphasized, we end up with- out our saint.” 22

In medieval saints’ lives, as well as in numerous examples of the form in Spanish colonial literature in the Philippines, the balance
weighs too heavily towards the metaphysical and the exemplary. An immediate explanation for this, as we have noted, is that these
are primarily epideictic texts addressed to a community of believers (in the case of Mercado’s book, Spaniardsl. Their aim is not to
discover and document local lives, but to enhance the faith of the faithful by bringing back to them (across time or space) the news
that God is everywhere.

This, however, must mean a loss of particulars. A specific prob- lem posed by the Ayatumo text is that we are dealing here not with
a specimen from that body of routinized redactions of the lives of distant European saints (which constituted a large part of the
printed literature in Spanish colonial Philippines) but an original rebelling of the life of a local, historical person who has not been
canonically processed as a “saint.” The subject of Ayatumo is made further problematic by the fact that he is an indigene from a
heathen world. He is one of the “new peoples” crowding into the European imagi- nation in the Age of Exploration and Discovery,
whose presence threatens the old conceptions of a “universal history,” and must therefore be explained.

This is not only a theological issue, but a political one as well. The project of religious conversion in the Philippines (and in the New
World) was also a project of political colonization since the formation of communities of the faithful involved military and civil acts of
resettlement, regulation, and control. The shaping of the g‹›od Christian was inextricably linked to the creation of the good colo-
nial as well.

The manner in which history is shaped and "contained" in the Ayatumo text works not only in one small text, or in one given
form (vita sancti), but in the social history of Philippine colonization as well.*

The problem of the Ayatumo vida does not only say something of changing conceptions of biography but of the variant ways in
which "history" is comprehended and recorded. Furthermore, we deal here not just with problems of thinking and trailing but with
what was done in the history of colonialism. In short, we are faced with a problem not merely philosophical, but one distinctly politi-
cal. How people imagine and write texts is a political act, and it is so not only in the mind but in the world.

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Let me return once more to the drama of conversion in the Philip- pines. Readers of this drama have been perplexed: How
does one explain the seeming ease with which thousands of natives were converted to the Catholic Faith? How does one explain
what Chirino calls "the heavenly conflagration" of souls, the intense fer- vor with which natives embraced a new Faith? Answers
have been given to these questions: that what took place was not true conver- sion, that natives en masse simply followed their
chiefs, that the zeal- inflamed missionaries exaggerated, that the old and new faiths were so analogous the "transfer" was quickly
facilitated, and that the natives were simply exchanging an old magic for a new one (e.g., drinking Holy Water for healing).
Moreover, there was such volatil- ity to the times (such that natives kneeling before a priest, begging for baptism, one day,
would, in the next, go on a raid to burn a church or kill a priest) that we need to attend to the specific condi- tions of a region at
a given time (for instance, in Bohol, the role of the Portuguese threat, the so-called "Moro" raids, internecine war- fare,
epidemics, and the like, in heightening religious susceptibilities). All these are parts of the context within which we can understand
the drama of conversion. Yet, we need to understand as well the texts in which the drama is framed. The missionaries saw
themselves as participants in the "plot" of a "universal history," one already ordained and told. They set out not so much to
discover the un- known as to actualize that which was already known. It was thus that the drama of Filipino conversion was
plotted and framed. The early missionaries carried in their heads, and inscribed with their pens, a kind of modular plot that said
as much (and, in cases, more) of their own mental assumptions as of the actualities of the socie- ties they had entered. If today,
we find many missionary texts exas-

peratingly thin in the stories we want to hear, it is because these are not the stories they tell.

The missionaries embarked on a perilous journey to a heathen land in order to find the "presence" of God. In this presence, all
else is absence. We complain that Spanish histories of the Philippines privilege the Spaniards: they are not histories of the
Philippines but chronicles of what the Spaniards did in the Philippines. But why should we expect them to be otherwise? We should
not, moreover, interpret in all cases that these texts are conscious acts of political exclusion. In the "meaningful" world of the
Other’s texts, we may not be the excluded, we are simply the absent. In this presence, all else is absence.

Yet, it is not as simple as this formulation suggests. The bounda- ries of presence and absence, in faith as in history, are not fixed and
must be negotiated because, in faith as in history, there is always a tension between being and becoming.

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To illustrate this by returning to the Ayatumo text. No matter how exemplary the life may be, it remains problematic. Deprived of a
history and dead at sixteen, the life of Miguel is emptied of dramahc movement and change. This is ironic since, after all, the story of
a young native so possessed by a strange religion that he turns away from his blood-kin and people is the stuff of high drama. We
have hints of this tension: Miguel, beset by a child’s fears, wept in his first days in the seminary, and undoubtedly, his going forth
among his people, a child-teacher chastising his elders, must have been fraught with tension. Yet Mercado reduces the story into a
kind of theologi- cal closet drama and Miguel’s struggle with body and soul is par- celled into "acts," each in high relief, but behind
them the grayness of backgrounds. Locked into the posture of Faith, he merely (as it were) acts out the final actos of his fate.

We are confronted, however, not with a statue or a bas relief but by a written text, and not by a tract but a quasi-narrative. And
narrative texts are extensive-they tend outwards, they tend to over- flow. The narrative has gaps through which other meanings
present themselves.

Take the matter of Miguel Ayatumo’s being an indio. This is clearly a problem for Mercado. He is not only apologetic for having to
translate from the original Latin to "vulgar Spanish," he takes pains to explain the choice of an indio as a model and, in the first
and last chapters of the vida, he says it is not his intention to raise up this young indio as saint or beato (bienauenlurado). He says
he only

wishes to inspire his Spanish readers: “If the lowly and contempt- ible Indios can go to heaven with a good life, shall we, with the
nobility of our blood, go to hell? 2‘ Throughout his account, he marks out Miguel as exceptional, deculturalized, an indio who is not
really an indio: he “emerged into the light like fine gold from coarse earth;” unlike the natives, who are of unbridled appetites, he is
given to fasting and absanence; he is an "angel,” a little St. Michael and St. Raphael; he is an ave raro in the land of his people; and,
unlike the indios, who are so deficient in "understanding and will,” he performs "mental prayers” loracion mentall Wi th ease and
skill.

There is an emergent and unresolved tension here, a straining to fit an "anomaly” into a received pattern. No matter how carefully
Mercado marks boundaries, the fact is that indios (whether in Latin America or the Philippines) are breaking out into the light,
break- ing out of "absence” into "presence” (appearing in history as breath- ing individual persons with names and faces), such that
they must be explained. And the old explanations are put under strain, in time raising questions theological as well as political: How
then can you deny them equal rights, deny them the vow of priesthood, deny them freedom, deny them their history?

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Gonclusion

There are radical differences in conceptions of a "life.” Today (blithely unconscious of our own historical contingency) we look for, in
a biography, depth of motives, thick circumstantiality, multilay- eredness, and dramatic tension. Moreover, we look for "historical
background," for the dialectics between an individual arid the social world in which he is embedded.

These elements are undoubtedly in the life of Miguel Ayatumo. Despite his youth, Miguel, after all, is a historical person who in-
habits, and contains in himself, a critical juncture in Philippine so- cial and cultural history. Yet, the important point is that this is
elided or suppressed in the text. The processes of reduction and figuration shape Miguel’s life, in the world and in the text, according
to a re- ligious ideology (which is not called Christianity but rather a historical variety of it) with its conceptions of what make for
"fullness” and "perfection” in human life. Where today’s reader looks for the texture and detail, dynamic tension and extension, of
the novel or film, Mercado offers a fixed series of medieval friezes. Where the reader looks for a “life," Mercado presents (in a sense
not necessar ily pejorative) an “anti-life."

In the historical reading of texts, however, one pays attention not only to what is included but to what is excluded. More important,
one attends to how the processes of inclusion and exclusion create problematic texts which, between the said and the unsaid, are
them- selves a form of saying something about their present and our past. Texts contain lives, but lives, like God (He who keeps
breaking forth in so many unexpected places), will slip from being fully con- tained. We must not only recognize such slippages,
such “surplus of meaning," but attend to the ways they open out into larger histories as well as a deeper faith.

HISTORY OF FILIPINO SURNAMES

Reading: Catalogo Alfabetico de Apellidos by Narciso Claveria

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CATALOGO ALFABETICO DE APELLIDOS: LIST OF FILIPINO SURNAMES

Facsimile of the Catalogo alfabetico de apellidos

The following is the list of Filipino surnames in the Catalogo alfabetico de apellidos (Alphabetical catalog of surnames), a book of last
names made as per Governor General Narciso Claveria's decree dated November 21, 1849. See if you can find yours in a list of more
than 2,300 surnames! (The list was compiled and encoded by Hector Santos.)

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Note: Through time, last names may have changed by one or more letters. It is likely that your last name is a derivative of the
surname listed in the catalog. Also, more common surnames such as Cruz and Santos were excluded by Claveria's decree to reduce
the "confusion."

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86
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88
89
90
91
92
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94
95
96
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 Reading: "Claveria's Catalogue" by Paul Morrow

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108
REDUCCION, POLO Y SERVICIOS AND TAXATION
"Reduccion sa Bohol sa Dantaon 16 hanggang 19" ni Amelia S. Ferrer

(26 pages)

https://jcsibayan.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/reduccion-sa-bohol-amelia-ferrer.pdf

TAGABAYAN VS. TAONG LABAS

1. Lecture: “Si Mariang Makiling” ni Jose Rizal
2. "Ang mga Taong Labas, ang Kabayanihan, at ang Diskurso ng Kapangyarihan at Kasaysayan" ni Dr. Francis A. Gealogo

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PROPAGANDA MOVEMENT AND THE ILUSTRADO CLASS
Reading: “Dasalan at Tocsohan” ni Marcelo H. Del Pilar

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Week 11-14

"One past but many histories": Controversies and Conflicting Views in Philippine History

This module analyzes the different controversies and conflicting views in Philippine history through the use of primary and
secondary sources. It synthesizes four historical events in Philippine history, namely, (1) the first mass in the Philippines; (2) the
Cavite Mutiny; (3) the retraction of Rizal; and (4) the cry of Balintawak. These historical events need to be understood carefully to
better contextualize present-day Philippine society in terms of culture, economy, and qualities.

Intended Learning Outcomes

At the end of this module, the students are expected to:

1. Analyze and synthesize facts from primary and secondary sources in reconstructing and understanding significant events
in Philippine history;
2. Develop critical skills in analyzing primary sources;
3. Present arguments using justifiable proofs and claim; and
4. Communicate insights effectively for better understanding of the issues and concerns being discussed.

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 1. Site of the First Mass

On March 31, 1521, an Easter Sunday, Magellan ordered a Mass to be celebrated which was officiated by Father Pedro
Valderrama, the Andalusion chaplain of the fleet, the only priest then. Conducted near the shores of the island, the First Holy Mass
marked the birth of Roman Catholicism in the Philippines. Colambu and Siaiu were the first natives of the archipelago, which was not
yet named "Philippines" until the expedition of Ruy Lopez de Villalobos in 1543, to attend the Mass among other native inhabitants.
During the stay of Magellan and his crew in the inhabited island of Humunu as what Pigafetta has documented in his Chronicles,
according to (Tomas “Buddy”) Gomez, argues that the "first mass" on Philippine soil was not in ''Agusan'' nor Southern ''Leyte'' and
pointed out Palm Sunday must have been celebrated first before the mass on Easter Sunday, which is obviously practiced up until
today.
In the account of Pigafetta, Gomez noticed that he failed to mention some points of the journey where the masses were held, one
example is when they were at the port of San Julian. Pigafetta mentioned about a mass held on Palm Sunday which was held on April
1, 1520 during their voyage to the west but never mentioned about Easter Sunday. Same situation happened when the fleet arrived
in the Philippines, Pigafetta only mentioned about the Easter Sunday Mass while he is silent on the Palm Sunday.
[1] For further investigation, some points at Pigafetta's account was translated as follows: ''“At dawn on Saturday, March 16, 1521,
(feast of St. Lazarus, Gomez inserted) we came upon a highland at a distance… an island named Zamal (Samar)… the following day
(March 17, Sunday) the captain general desired to land on another island (Humunu) …uninhabited… in order to be more secure and
to get water and have some rest. He had two tents set up on shore for the sick.”'' ''“On Monday, March 18, we saw a boat coming
towards us with nine men in it.”'' ''This marks our first human contact with Europeans... giving signs of joy because of our arrival.”
“At noon on Friday, March 22, those men came as they had promised.” “And we lay eight days in that place, where the captain every
day visited the sick men who he had put ashore on the island to recover.”''
[sic] As observed by Gomez, the instance wherein Pigafetta had written about the mass said it had two things in common; they are
both held in the shores and there are Filipino natives present. Another passing evidence, a document found concerning the landing
of Magellan's fleet in Suluan ''(Homonhon)'' and the treaty with the natives featured in a blog post in 2004.  It first came out in an
article published in 1934 in Philippine Magazine featured by Percy Gil, and once again featured by Bambi Harper in her column at the
Philippine Daily Inquirer back in 2004.

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Historical Controversies

Masao
Some Filipino historians have long contested the idea that Limasawa was the site of the first Catholic mass in the country.Historian
Sonia Zaide identified Masao (also Mazaua) in Butuan as the location of the first Christian mass.The basis of Zaide's claim is the diary
of Antonio Pigafetta, chronicler of Magellan's voyage. In 1995 then Congresswoman Ching Plaza of Agusan del Norte-Butuan City
filed a bill in Congress contesting the Limasawa hypothesis and asserting the "site of the first mass" was Butuan. The Philippine
Congress referred the matter to the National Historical Institute for it to study the issue and recommend a historical finding. Then
NHI chair Dr. Samuel K. Tan reaffirmed Limasawa as the site of the first mass.

Bolinao
Odoric of Pordenone, an Italian and Franciscan friar and missionary explorer, is heartily believed by many Pangasinenses to have
celebrated the first mass in Pangasinan in around 1324 that would have predated the mass held in 1521 by Ferdinand Magellan. A
marker in front of Bolinao Church states that the first Mass on Philippine soil was celebrated in Bolinao Bay in 1324 by
a Franciscan missionary, Blessed Odorico.
However, there is scholarly doubt that Odoric was ever at the Philippines.Ultimately, the National Historical Institute led by its
chair Ambeth Ocampo recognized the historical records of Limasawa in Southern Leyte as the venue of the first Mass, held on March
31, 1521.

Confusion on meeting the king of Butuan

According to Bernad (2002), the confusion originated on the misinterpretation of some of the 17th century historians such as Colin
and Combes, often yielding incorrect representation of Magellan’s voyage, which ultimately led to the misconception of the first
mass being held at Butuan, rather than Limasawa. The writings of the previous historians failed to depict the correct route of
Magellan’s ships toward the Philippines. Some write-ups accounted for the entrance of the ships from the southern part of the
country whereas the account of Antonio Pigafetta revealed the entrance from the eastern part of the country, from the direction of
the Pacific region.

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Of utmost significance other than the non-verisimilar picture of the route of the voyage is the confusion on the encounter between
the explorer Ferdinand Magellan and the two datus when the former reached the island of Limasawa, formerly called "Mazaua".
According to the previous writings, after the Spaniards visited the island, they went, together with the two native kings
to Butuan and there erected a cross on top of a hill to symbolize friendship with the natives and to serve as a sign to future Spanish
explorers. After the erection of the cross and going about the events in the first mass, the men went to Cebu, by the initiative of
Magellan, in search for resources.
This account rooted from the misunderstanding of the meeting between the three persons. According to Pigafetta, Magellan met
the datu of Limasawa, and another datu, whom the scribe himself called “one of his brothers”, namely the king of Butuan. This
highlights the origin of the confusion – Magellan in fact never went to Butuan; he and his men celebrated the first mass on the island
of Limasawa, together with the two datus: one from the island and another from Butuan, before proceeding to Cebu.
Previous historians, in difference from Pigafetta’s account, thought that Magellan went to Butuan and there held the first mass on
the basis of the explorer’s meeting with the island’s king. In reality, Magellan’s route never included  Butuan as one of its
destinations. From the eastern part of the Philippines, reaching the island of Homonhon, Magellan proceeded to Limasawa and
thereupon met two kings, namely the datu of Limasawa and the datu of Butuan. After celebrating the first mass in that same island,
the explorer and his men set out for Cebu in search for greater resources.

   2. Cavite Mutiny

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