XIII. In addition to our accustomed labors with the Spaniards and
Indians of Arevalo, there has been another of no small importance
with a large force of troops, who undertook an expedition to the
Malucas. No trifling benefit was carried to the foreigners by Father
Francisco Gonzalez, who had been called back thence to the town of
Zebu to take the four vows. On his journey he brought back into the
way the Indians everywhere, who were turning aside to their madness
and their idols. He reestablished Christian customs, baptized children
and adults, made stable their fickle and inconstant marriages, and
did many more things of the same kind--which, though unwritten, are
understood. The following event should not lack a pen. A man entangled
by lewd delights, but moved by the fact that he had no example among
the repentant people, or by the influence of a festival just then
announced, had settled himself to a proper life; but rising in the
middle of the night he went out from his house, and was longing for
his accustomed delights. While he was doing so, behold two specters,
very large and horribly black, wrapped in hanging cloaks, appeared to
him. The unhappy man dared to annoy them by approaching and speaking
to them. Without answering, they snatched him up and carried him high
in air, filling everything with his screams and cries, and struggling
in vain. His neighbors, awakened and following the sound of the voice,
went round the whole village without finding anything. At last at dawn
they found the man among the thick bramble-bushes on the mountains,
his body all bruised, and himself half-dead and speechless. When they
found him, they took him to our church, and the prayers of many were
offered for him, and remedies were applied. At last he recovered his
senses and his speech, and cried aloud that he had been punished by
the just judgment of God, since he had for a long time neglected
the precepts that he had received at confession, and had not done
the things becoming a Christian. He then went on to say that when
the demons carried him off, they took him to a deep black cave; and
just as they were about to hurl him down into it, he was delivered
by the intervention of God, to whom he had commended himself. Thus,
having confessed his sins, he put on a better way of living.
XIV. The member of the Society who accompanied the general of the
Philippines on the expedition to the Malucas, Father Angelo Armano,
[16] did his duty during the whole time of the voyage and the war,
not without peril on land and sea. He did with energy what could
be done in the midst of arms, the noise of artillery, the ambushes
of the enemy, and the slaughter. And surely there was great hope of
extending religion by this expedition, for the native king himself,
when detained at Manila with his son and other chiefs for five years
often used to promise the governor that if he would send a fleet to the
Malucas again, he himself would give into subjection and obedience to
his Catholic Majesty all his vassals, who are estimated at about two
hundred thousand souls. This has seemed the quickest way to liberate
the Malucan Christians from the new yoke of the Dutch heretics, by
which they are oppressed. The multitude of those who have thus far
professed the Christian faith there can be estimated only from the
Amboynans, of whom the number reaches above twenty thousand. Therefore,
although the general came back, home in glory from this expedition,
after winning a victory, yet he has expressed his grief more than once
that the welfare and salvation of all this great number of islands
and tribes should be insufficiently provided for on account of the
lack of priests; and he has affirmed that he wishes more earnestly
for nothing than that he might have the opportunity of sending forth
many of the Society of Jesus on this divine work.