Emerging Nationalism

Vocabulary
Episcopal visitation - an official pastoral visit conducted by the bishop on a diocese to examine the
conditions of a congregation; often done once every three years.

Garrote - an apparatus used for capital punishment in which an iron collar is tightened around a
condemned person’s neck.

Polo - system of forced labor that required Filipino males from 16 to 60 years old to render service for a
period of 40 days.

Regular clergy - priests who belong to religious orders.

Secular clergy - priests who do not belong to religious orders and are engaged in pastoral work.

Tributo - system of taxation imposed by the Spanish colonial government on the Filipinos in order to
generate resources for the maintenance of the colony.
Cavite Mutiny

➢ January 20, 1872

○ approximately 200 Filipino soldiers and workers rose in revolt at an arsenal in Cavite.
○ 11 Spaniards were killed during the mutiny, but an immediate assault led by the government forces put
an end to the uprising after three days.
➢ Governor-General Rafael de Izquierdo
○ he released a decree (reason for the mutiny) which ordered that the arsenal workers would no longer
be exempted from the tributo and polo; a privilege they had enjoyed in the past.
➢ Official accounts argued that the revolt was part of a larger movement which aims to overthrow the Spanish
government and asserting independence.
○ official reports claimed that the leaders of the mutiny had expected the support of close to 2,000 men
from regiments based both in Cavite and in Manila.
○ the plan was to begin the revolt after midnight in Manila with rebels setting fires in Tondo to distract the
authorities. A signal by way of fireworks would then be sent to the rebels in Cavite who would lay siege
to the arsenal.
Cavite Mutiny continued…

➢ In reality, the mutiny began earlier in the evening and many of those who pledge support defected
and vowed loyalty to Spain.
➢ The mutiny failed and the Spanish government used the incident as a means to suppress the
increasing calls for a more liberal administration.
➢ Among those who clamored for reforms were Filipino secular priests.
Secularization Movement

➢ The introduction and strengthening of the Catholic faith were largely through the efforts of two
types of clergy:
➢ The regular priests; whose jurisdiction fell on their elected prelates
■ were better prepared for missionary work because of their standards of discipline and
asceticism.
■ their job then was to introduce faith, convert the natives, and establish religious
communities.
■ in the Philippines, five religious orders took on this task:
● the Augustinians who arrived in 1565;
● the Discalced Franciscans who arrived in 1578;
● the Jesuits who arrived in 1581;
● the Dominicans who arrived in 1587; and
● the Augustinians Recollects who arrived in 1606
Secularization Movement continued…

➢ The secular clergy, were priests who “live in the world.’

○ they were under the authority of bishops and not members of religious order.
○ their primary task was the management of the religious communities and ideally, the
continuation of the work already laid down by the regular clergy.
○ they are also tasked the management of the parishes.
➢ Two issues were particularly contentious among the clergy in the Philippines:
○ The first issue had to do with episcopal visitations, when Pope Adrian VI passed an
omnimoda bull in 1522 which allowed the regulars to administer the sacraments and act as
parish priests independent from the authority of the local bishops.
■ this bull conflicted with reforms established in the Council of Trent (1545-1563) which
declared that no priests could care for the souls of laymen unless they were subjected
to episcopal authority that often came in the form of visitations.
○ the second issue had to do with the management of the parishes.
■ regular priests maintained control over the parishes in the early stages of
Christianization out of necessity because of the scarcity of secular priests to whom the
parishes would be passed on.
Secularization Movement continued…

➢ beginning in the late 17th century, efforts were intensified to produce and train Filipino secular
priests and constituted a big number by the 19th century.
➢ the regular clergy usually contested, if not outright refused, the rights of the secular clergy to the
parishes:
○ the Philippines still remained an active mission, en viva conquista espiritual, with groups not
yet Christianized.
○ they would argue that the Filipinos were not yet ready to be turned over to the secular clergy.
○ the regulars refusing to give up the parishes that generated large profits for them.
○ that Filipino secular clergy were unqualified and incompetent.
○ some views the secular clergy as leaders of any future separitist movement.
➢ Fr. Mariano Gomez and Fr. Pedro Pelaez drew up expositions to the government on behalf of the
secular clergy, but their efforts were proved futile.
Execution of Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora

➢ Governor-General Izquierdo, ordered the arrests of several priests and laymen as a result of the
revolt in Cavite. Among the priests were:
○ Fathers Jose Burgos
○ Jacinto Zamora
○ Jose Guevara
○ Mariano Gomez
○ Feliciano Gomez
○ Mariano Sevilla
○ Bartolome Serra
○ Miguel de Laza
○ Justo Guazon
○ Vicente del Rosario
○ Pedro Dandan
○ Anacleto Desiderio
Execution of Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora continued…

➢ among the laymen were lawyers and businessmen:

○ Gervacio Sanchez
○ Pedro Carillo
○ Maximo Inocencio
○ Balbino Mauricio
○ Ramon Maurente
○ Maximo Paterno
○ Jose Basa
➢ these Filipinos were sentenced to varying terms of exile in Guam.
➢ the three Priests, Burgos Gomez, and Zamora, other hand, was condemned to death by garrote on
February 15, 1872.
Edmund Plauchut’s account of the GOMBURZA execution

Late in the night of the 15th of February 1872, a Spanish court martial found three
secular priests, Jose Burgos, Mariano Gomez and Jacinto Zamora, guilty of treason as the
instigators of a mutiny in the Kabite navy-yard a month before, and sentenced them to death.
The judgement of the court martial was read to the priests in Fort Santiago early in the next
morning and they were told it would be executed the following day… Upon hearing the
sentence, Burgos broke into sobs, Zamora lost his mind and never recovered it, and only
Gomez listened impassively, an old man accustomed to the thought of death.

When dawn broke on the 17th of February there were almost forty thousand of
Filipinos (who came from as far as Bulakan, Pampanga, Kabite and Laguna) surrounding the
four platforms where the three priests and the man whose testimony had convicted them, a
former artilleryman called Saldua, would die.
Edmund Plauchut’s account of the GOMBURZA execution continued…

The three priests followed Saldua: Burgos ‘weeping like a child’, Zamora with vacant
eyes, and Gomez head held high, blessing the Filipinos who knelt at his feet, heads bared and
praying. He was next to die. When his confessor, a Recollect friar , exhorted him loudly to
accept his fate, he replied: “Father, I know that not a leaf falls to the ground but by the will of
God. Since He wills that I should die here, His holy will be done.”
Zamora went up the scaffold without a word and delivered his body to the
executioner; his mind had already left it.
Burgos was the last, a refinement of cruelty that compelled him to watch the death of his
companions. He seated himself on the iron rest and then sprang up crying: “But what crime
have I committed? Is it possible that I should die like this. My God, is there no justice on earth?”
Edmund Plauchut’s account of the GOMBURZA execution continued…

A dozen friars surrounded him and pressed him down again upon the seat of the garrote, pleading with
him to die a Christian death. He obeyed but, feeling his arms tied round the fatal post, protested once
again: “But I am innocent!”

“So was Jesus Christ,’ said one of the friars.” At this Burgos resigned himself. The executioner knelt
at his feet and asked his forgiveness. “I forgive you, my son. Do your duty.” And it was done.
Excerpt from Apolinario Mabni’s La Revolucion Filipina:

The friars wanted to make an example of Burgos and his companions so that the
Filipinos should be afraid to go against them from then on. But that patent injustice, that
official crime, aroused not fear but hatred of the friars and of the regime that supported them,
a profound sympathy and sorrow for the victims. This sorrow worked a miracle: it made the
Filipinos realize their condition for the first time. Conscious of pain, and thus conscious of
life, they asked themselves what kind of a life they lived. The awakening was painful still, but
one must live. How? They did not know, and the desire to know, the anxiety to learn,
overwhelmed and took possession of the youth of the Philippines. The curtain of ignorance
woven diligently for centuries was rent at last: fiat fux, let there be light, would not be long in
coming, the dawn of a new day was nearing.