regular ecclesiastics, and over the subjection of friar-curates to
ordinary jurisdiction had filled many pages of Philippine history
in every century. But, when revived under somewhat new forms from
about 1863 on, as remarked in the introduction to these notes, they
speedily assumed a new and rather distinct phase. The introduction
has noted the connection of the Jesuits' return with the encroachment
upon the Filipino secular priests and with the counter demand for the
belated subjection of the friar-parishes to the ordinary ecclesiastical
legislation and jurisdiction of the Church; under the encouragement
of the 1868 revolution in Spain, these demands grew apace from 1868
to 1872, and became interlaced with strictly political demands,
until finally we may regard the cause of the Filipino clergy as a
part of the campaign for Filipino nationalism. The reaction of 1872
and immediately subsequent years checked it, and it has found full
expression only since Spanish sovereignty was overthrown; but it is
best considered in its broadest scope, as a part of the Filipino
movement toward nationality, though it may have been but dimly or
not at all felt as such by some of its most active protagonists.
For the documents showing what was the modern phase of the question
regarding parishes in its beginnings, see the pamphlets cited in the
List of the Library of Congress under Agu[a]do (p. 64), and in Pardo
de Tavera's Biblioteca under the same name and numbers 681, 873,
1,348 and 1,962. [116] We must come down to the period of American
rule for full statements of the case of the Filipino clergy against
the friars. A Spanish cleric, formerly an Augustinian friar-curate,
who was excloistered on his own petition some time before the end
of Spanish rule and has since continued to reside in the islands,
has been the chief spokesman for the Filipino clergy. He is Salvador
Pons y Torres, and, apart from frequent contributions on the subject
to the press of Manila since 1898 and various pamphlets, he undertook
to review the entire subject in his Defensa del clero filipino and
its supplement El clero secular filipino, both published at Manila
in 1900; while in connection with the visit of Delegate Chapelle, a
campaign was being conducted for fuller recognition of the Filipino
clergy by the Vatican. [117] Their claims are set forth in Memorial
elevado á Sa Santidad El Papa León XIII por el Pueblo Filipino (Manila,
1900). [118] For the full exposition of the question, one must study
it under the Filipino revolution against the United States and in
the history of the Aglipay schism since 1903. [119]
Revolt of 1872.--That the chief victims of this episode were prominent
Filipino priests connects it rather with religio-political than with
purely political matters. The civilians who were arrested for too great
activity in agitating for political privileges were deported to Guam,
whence their escape to foreign ports was perhaps winked at, while after
a time some of them returned to the Philippines. [120] But the three
most prominent priests who were tried for complicity in the mutiny
at Cavite (Burgos, a Spanish-Filipino, Zamora, a Chinese-Filipino,
and Gomez, a pure-blooded Filipino) were condemned to death by a
very speedily summoned court-martial and were promptly executed. If
we had the record of the proofs submitted before this court-martial
(which acted very summarily and under pressure of official and other
demonstrations of indignation, not to say vindictiveness), and the
statement of its conclusions, we should be in better position to judge
whether or not a great injustice was done. But neither officially
nor semi-officially was the guilt of the condemned ever shown, and we
have either to accept very vehement and intemperate assertions about
it having been proved, or to incline to the belief that these men
were struck down by a power which stretched out its hand in the dark,
and that their death was a punishment for having ventured under the
preceding Liberal administrations to advocate the withdrawal of the
friars as curates of parishes. Certainly this became the belief of
the Filipino people, propagated from year to year by word of mouth
(acquiring thus exaggerated and distorted details as being of sober
truth), and occasionally finding expression in print. [121] The usually
sober and colorless Montero y Vidal becomes very rabid in his recital
of this episode in Philippine history and is very positive not only
in denouncing the priests who were executed and the deportees as
guilty but in proclaiming their movement as actually separatist
in character. He ridicules at length the account of the Frenchman
Plauchut in the Revue des deux mondes for 1877; but Plauchut, as well
as Montero y Vidal himself, was resident in or near Manila at the
time of these occurrences. Finally, Dr. Pardo de Tavera, a nephew of
one of the prominent Philippine Spaniards who were deported, supports
Plauchut's version and impeaches Montero y Vidal's. [122]
Reforms and Demands for more. "Assimilation."--The reactionists had
regained the saddle in the Philippines even before the Republic in
Spain came to an end; they used the incident of the Cavite mutiny as
a "horrible example," and succeeded in repealing or nullifying all
reforms not to their taste even in educational or purely administrative
matters. Till after 1880, the "Filipino cause" was in hiding. But
meanwhile young Filipinos of wealth were going abroad for education,
and above all a new generation of Filipinos were coming from the new
middle class produced by the better industrial opportunities consequent
upon expanding trade and commerce, were breathing in popular ideas
of hostility to the friars in the more advanced rural districts, and
were exchanging ideas, and imbibing in the exchange a new sentiment
of nationality, when they met, in constantly increasing numbers,
in the colleges and normal school at Manila, Tagálogs, Ilokanos,
Bisayans and others of the hitherto separate communities. Regional
feeling was still strong, but it was beginning to break down. [123]
Those who went abroad for education soon began to propagate the idea,
already half expressed at home, that Philippine education, even with
the improvements, was still archaic and in some ways anti-modern;
and every avenue out of this condition was found to be blocked by the
friars. If in reality the men of Spanish blood (in whole or part)
who had agitated for greater political liberties during 1868-72,
had aimed at separating the Philippines from Spain--and all the
reasonable probabilities are opposed to such a belief--at any
rate, the new generation of Filipinos who took up the cause in the
eighties were ardent and, for some time at least, sincere advocates
of Spanish-Philippine union. They carried the matter, indeed, to the
extreme, in the campaign for "assimilation," which has already been
characterized as unpractical.
Reforms of a partial nature, any statesman could predict, would breed
the demand for more. So, during the eighties, when most headway was
made in administrative and legal reforms under Liberal administrations,
we find the Filipinos formulating demands for the first time; and
it is significant that they all centered about the friars. Under the
liberal Governor-General Terrero, and with sympathetic Spaniards in
the posts of secretary of the civil administration and civil governor
of Manila, officers of some of the Tagálog towns ventured to display a
sense of independence of the traditional friar-dictatorship in local
affairs, even (in the case of Malolos and the Binondo district of
Manila) to carry contests with the friars over the personal tax-lists
before higher authority; the friars' tenants around Kalamba, where
José Rizal's parents lived, challenged the administrator of that
Dominican estate, and aired their protests publicly in 1887; [124]
and in 1888 a public demonstration against the friars, and especially
Archbishop Payo, took place in Manila, and a petition for the removal
of the friars was addressed to the Queen Regent. In 1887 these
civil authorities of Liberal affiliation had issued official orders
regarding cemeteries and church funerals, contravening, on grounds
of public health, long-standing practices of the friar-curates; and
the friars, even the archbishop, had been almost openly intransigent
about the matter, indicating the belief that they would soon upset
this régime of affairs by the exercise of their power at Madrid. The
demand on the part of some Spanish periodicals of Manila that the
proposed government trade school should not be surrendered to the
Augustinians was another indication of the current of the times. [125]
In form at least, there was nothing in any of these demonstrations
or representations which would not be perfectly legitimate under
any free government. Yet, even before the expiration of Terrero's
term, he was prevailed upon to send home Centeno y García, the civil
governor of Manila, and the processes of law had been set in action by
judicial authority against some of the participants. And, even before
the downfall of the Liberal ministry at Madrid, the mere display of
a disposition on the part of Filipinos to speak for themselves as
a people had started the currents of reaction there. Weyler was the
successor of Terrero as Governor-General. The friars' representations
at Madrid obtained, while the Liberal minister Becerra [126] was
still in office, the omission of the provisions for civil marriage and
registration from the Civil Code as it was extended to the Philippines
in 1889. Weyler used force to quell the subsequent disturbances at
Kalamba, and among the score or so of deportees were some of Rizal's
family. [127]
The Propagandists.--A full history of the Filipino Propaganda would
list a large number of names, both of members of the Filipino colonies
abroad and of secret agitators and wealthy contributors at home. But
the story must be developed from the various sources to be cited, and
we are concerned here with those who figured most actively by their
writings. Of these, Marcelo H. del Pilar and José Rizal were altogether
the most notable, their prominence indeed leading to the formation
of factions about them and the display of those personal jealousies
which wreck or threaten to wreck every Filipino movement. [128] It is
significant that the propagandists coming to the front in the eighties
were, one may say, genuine "sons of the people" though associated with
them were others who were sons of the half-caste aristocracy. It is
significant also, that, though these two leaders Del Pilar and Rizal,
came from Bulakan and Laguna provinces respectively, the heart of the
more advanced communities of Tagálogs around Manila, yet the islands as
a whole were beginning to be represented in the propaganda, notably by
the Lunas, from Ilokos, and Graciano Lopez Jaena, a Bisayan. The latter
started the first Filipino periodical of consequence, La Solidaridad,
and published eighteen numbers of it at Barcelona up to October 31,
1889, when Del Pilar took charge of it, transferred it to Madrid and
edited it there as a fortnightly till 1895. It was face to face with
La Política de España en Filipinas from 1891, and, as the latter
is the chief source for the pro-friar and anti-liberal side of the
controversy, so La Solidaridad, which circulated among the educated
Filipinos in many parts of the archipelago despite the censorship,
is the chief source for the writings of the propagandists. [129]
Marcelo H. del Pilar had taken an active part in stimulating
opposition to the friar-curates, particularly in matters of local
government, in his native province (Bulakan) for some years before
the troubles of 1888. When the pendulum swung towards reaction, he
left his family (being then a man of middle-age) and went to Spain
to carry on the fight close by the center of government, support of
his campaign being pledged by a committee who undertook to secure
Filipino subscriptions, certain wealthy Filipinos being identified
privately with the cause. Del Pilar's writings show nothing of the
poet or dreamer, as do Rizal's; he had, in some degree, an "economic
mind," though entirely untrained in that line, and he was at the
outset of the active propaganda in Spain (1889) a maturer man than
Rizal. Coming straight from the problems of actual life among his
people, he stated their grievances with more practical reference to
direct and immediate remedies and with special reference to their
economic status; while Rizal, as a student in contact with modern
European life and thought, dreamed of and preached, in more general
terms but on a far wider scope, the social regeneration of his people
and the expansion of their political rights. Del Pilar would have
made a good representative of his people in the Cortes. But Rizal
was a genius, who with the touch of imagination and satire lifted the
cause of the Filipinos to a place in the thought of the world, and at
the same time, as poet and patriot combined, fired the enthusiasm of
his own people and became their idol. And, in the course of events,
it was Rizal who proved the soberer, the more mature as time went
by. He was opposed to means of violence, even to the last, and the
whole record bears out his protestations on this score; he still
looked to the future as a dreamer-patriot, but he also looked to
the present state of his people and saw that the most vital problem
was the teaching them that they must raise themselves by their own
efforts, must deserve a better destiny. Del Pilar, disappointed
by the failure to achieve greater immediate, practical results by
relying upon the progress of Liberalism in Spain, after seven years
of propaganda along these lines, was starting for Hongkong or Japan,
to conduct there a really revolutionary campaign, when death overtook
him shortly before the Tagálog revolt in 1896. He had, apparently,
lost faith in the ideals of "assimilation," of Spanish-Filipino unity,
which he had set forth in glowing phrases in 1888 and 1889. He had
also, apparently, become convinced that the upper-class Filipinos,
especially the most wealthy and prominent, were too lukewarm or too
prone to temporize for safety's sake, that the time had come to make
the cause more distinctly one of the people as a whole. He is credited
with having suggested and outlined the organization of the Katipunan,
and he seems to have concluded that it was time for the Filipinos to
resort to Cuba's example and not to political petitions only. [130]
Even in Noli me tangere, first published under his own eye at Berlin
in 1887, when Rizal, at the age of twenty-six, was just fairly setting
out in life, there are many evidences that the author, if he meant
primarily to set before the world the backwardness of the existing
social and political régime in the Philippines, its stifling of
thought, and its many tyrannies, had also in mind to set before his
people, in some of his instantaneous photographs of Philippine life,
their own defects. In El filibusterismo (Ghent, 1891), the more
mature reformer preached yet more plainly the necessity of social
and political progress beginning from below, and not simply inspired
from above. That his people took the lessons meant for themselves
(and take them still today) less to heart than they responded to the
satire and invective directed against the form of rule imposed upon
them, was the fault not of Rizal but of human nature, prone to apply
the preacher's words only to the other fellow.
It is a great misfortune that we have in English no real translation
of Noli me tangere, [131] and none at all of El filibusterismo,
which, as a political document, is the stronger of the two. [132]
It is no less regrettable that no biography of Rizal, tracing his
mental development and his relation with the events of 1880 to 1896,
nor even a good biographical sketch of him, has been published in the
English language. Retana's biographical and bibliographical notes,
published in a Madrid monthly, Nuestro Tiempo, 1904-06, and about to
appear in book form, are indispensable as the only comprehensive work
on the subject, and resort must be had to them for a full array of
citations, as also for many documents not available elsewhere. [133]
Rizal's edition (Paris, 1890) of Morga's Sucesos de las islas Filipinas
has already been cited in connection with that work in VOLS. XV and
XVI of this series (see note 3 of former). Its annotations are Rizal's
chief contribution to the history of his people, and it must be said
that his political feeling has crept into them to the damage often
of their scientific value. [134] There also deserve mention here
Rizal's discussion in 1889 of the future of his people, [135] and
some of Blumentritt's writings about Rizal and in his defense. [136]
Masonry, Liga Filipina, etc.--In almost all the Spanish writings
about the Philippine insurrection, especially those by friars, we find
it ascribed primarily to "Franc-Masonería," the terrible bugaboo in
naming which the Spanish friar sums up in one word his notion of all
that is pernicious in modern life since the French Revolution, and
the chief cause of the loss by Spain of her American colonies. So,
as to the Philippines, the argument is, had not Spanish Masons been
able secretly to organize there, and to pervert the minds of certain
Filipinos, the colony would have remained in its loyalty of primitive
simplicity and happiness. The truth is that Masonry played a very
secondary part in the Filipino agitation for reform, furnishing simply
a convenient medium for conducting the propaganda. Up to the last
ten years of Spanish rule, only a few lodges of Spanish Liberals and
foreigners, into which some of the half-castes and more well-to-do
Filipinos had been admitted, had been organized in the Philippines,
and had led a rather irregular existence. At about the time when La
Solidaridad was moved to Madrid, a Spanish-Filipino Association was
there formed, in which Spaniards and Filipinos combined to agitate
for reform. This circle was virtually identified in membership with
a certain Spanish Grand Lodge (probably spurious, as regards the
legitimate parent organization of Free Masonry), which delegated
agents to conduct the active organization of new Philippine lodges
dependent upon it. It appears certain that this was done with the idea
definitely in view of being able thus to propagate liberal political
ideas and secretly distribute such literature among the Filipinos,
also the more easily to raise funds for the work. But had not such
a favorable means of conducting the propaganda been presented, it
would have been improvised. One must subject to critical examination
the Spanish writings, and will readily discover their exaggerated
deductions from such facts as came to light. [137] Interesting reading
is afforded by the confidential Royal Order of July 2, 1896, addressed
to Governor-General Blanco. [138] It approves his deportation of the
principales, or headmen, of Malolos and Taal (who had defied the
local friar-curates), and orders him to have provincial and other
officials watch and report confidentially on all secret organizations
(forbidden by the Laws of the Indies, as recited in Royal Order of
August 2, 1888) and list all persons of whom "there may be indications
enough to believe that they are affiliated," etc. (opening up thus
a splendid opportunity for private denunciations). He is to use in
this secret work only officials who are Peninsulars, never natives;
so also he is to invite coöperation of "the parish-priests who belong
to the religious orders." As to punishments, it is preferable to deport
the "suspected," fixing their residence in the Moro country or Guam,
rather than to exile them, as they would then join the colonies abroad
and conduct a propaganda.
The project of Marcelo del Pilar for an association called Solidaridad
Filipina, [139] which came to nothing practical, and the Liga Filipina,
organized by Rizal just before his deportation from Manila in July,
1892, though in part modeled after Masonry, are among the things
which show that the Filipino propagandists did not confine their
efforts to Masonic organization. Our Spanish sources would have it
that the Liga Filipina was really separatist in character, and the
prosecution deliberately based upon this charge the demand for Rizal's
conviction in 1896. It remains unproved, and the statutes of the League
as prepared by Rizal [140] entirely support his assertion that the
design of the League was to foster coöperation among the Filipinos,
to "raise the arts and sciences," and develop Filipino commercial and
economic interests generally. The organization was a fraternal society,
in effect, the aim being to bring Filipinos closer together in a
"brotherhood," and incidentally to undermine the control of Chinese
and others upon the trade of the country--in which respects it would
likely have proved mostly utopian, even had not political conditions
and Rizal's deportation brought it virtually to naught. In the pledges
of its "brothers" to stand by each other for the "remedy of abuses"
as well as for other things, the League very plainly looked toward
unity of action in matters social and political, and no doubt the
idea of bringing his people together for such political action as
might become possible was foremost in the mind of Rizal and its other
organizers. But this does not prove the charge that it merely covered
up a plan to get arms and rise in rebellion as soon as possible.