The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume 32, 1640

Chapter XLIV
The life and death of father Fray Thomas Gutierrez, vicar provincial of the province of Ytuy

[Father Fray Thomas Gutierrez was a native of the city of Origuela in the kingdom of Valencia; and he assumed the habit in the convent and college of the order there. When the opportunity offered he went to the province of Sant Hipolito de Oaxaca in Nueva España. Here he learned the language of the Mistecs, whose minister he was for some years. Coming to the Philippinas, he was assigned to the province of Pangasinan, where in a few months he learned the language so well that he surpassed many of the very natives. He rebuked the vices of the Indians with such efficacy that they called him “Thunder,” because he frightened them like the thunder, which they greatly fear. He was a rigid observer of the rules of the province and was notable for his modesty. He went courageously among the savage Indians, who often attack those who are traveling along the paths – not for their purses, but for their heads, he who cuts off the greatest number being the most highly esteemed among them.] On one occasion he came to a village of these Indians called Managuag. While he was there, more than four hundred of these Zambales, as they are called, appeared in the village, with their bows, arrows, lances, and daggers such as they use – which are so keen that in a single instant they strike a head to the earth. They came into the unsuspecting village with such a noise and shout that the poor inhabitants, being unarmed, almost died of fear. Some fled to the mountains, and some sixty Christian Indians took refuge in the house of a chief. When they saw that they were lost, having no weapons nor any means to defend themselves, they put themselves in the hands of God, and decided to make use of prayers in place of weapons; so they fell on their knees, and began in a loud voice to pray in their language. The Zambales, hearing them, surrounded the house and undertook to go up to it. Without knowing what held them back, they were several times obliged to retreat when they were half-way there. They finally set fire to it, though against their will, for they thought much of being able to take with them the heads of its inmates. It was burned to the ground in a few moments, with those who were within. Although God did not deliver them from the fire, He showed by a miracle that He had delivered them from the fires of hell, and perhaps from the fires of purgatory, exchanging those for this fire; for they were all found dead in a circle, untouched by the fire, and on their knees, with their elbows on the ground and their heads on their hands. Most of them took refuge in the church under the protection of the father and of God. These availed them; and the father, without attempting to close doors or windows, took in his hands a Christ that was on the altar, from whom he and the people (who were about him) all begged for mercy, which the Father of Mercies granted them. It was a marvelous thing that though the cemetery in front of the church had a wall the height of which was only from a few palmos up to two varas, the enemy were unable to cross it; and one of them, who leaped over it, was struck dead by a stray arrow. The roof of the church and the convent was of nipa, which is like so much dry straw to the fire. Upon it fell many brands and more than fifty burning arrows, none of which kindled it, though it was so inflammable. God, choosing to show who it was that defended this place, by the prayers of His servant Fray Thomas, permitted an Indian who was with him in the church, and who thought he was not safe there, to go out, thinking that he might escape by running. The enemy caught him and cut off his head in an instant. Not an arrow touched even the clothes of one of those who remained with the father, though these fell as thick as grass, and though many arrows passed among them, for they came in at the doors and windows of the church like showers of rain. Finally the enemy, frightened – although, being barbarians, they could not understand – when they saw that the fire would not catch, though there was nothing to prevent it, and that their arms would not injure these people, though disarmed, retreated with some heads (the spoils which they most desire) and with some captives. The father, when the disturbance was over, immediately set about burying the dead and putting the village in a situation to defend itself from any other similar attack.

On a mountain chain near two villages, one of which is one of the most important in the province of Pangasinan, which are called Binalatongan and Balanguey, there were some unpacified Indians so savage and barbarous that they knew no occupation but cutting off heads. They were even more cruel than the ones just referred to, and came down into the valleys, to the fields of the peaceful Indians and to the roads, to hunt the latter like so many deer. Father Fray Thomas was much grieved by this, and did not know what to do to prevent it. To keep them back by arms he had not the strength; and, as for arguments, these were not people who would accept them. He therefore made use of a means which the event showed to have been revealed to him from above, because according to carnal reason it seemed to be very contrary to the rules of prudence. He directed two Christian Indians to go up the mountains to the settlements of their enemies, totally unarmed, and to carry to them a certain message from him. They went, for the Indians did not know how to refuse to do what the father directed them; but they went as if they were going to the slaughter. When they came to the place, they made signs of peace; but the barbarians, who knew no more about peace than about theology, were on the point of killing them without listening to them. But one of the savages themselves diverted them from this purpose by saying that they would better listen to them first; that there would be time to kill them afterwards, because they could not escape. They called our Indians, and asked them what they wished; and they answered that they were bringing a message from father Fray Thomas their father; this was, that he begged them earnestly to do no more harm to these Indians their neighbors, who were to him as sons. He desired them to come down and settle in the plains wherever they pleased, promising that he would regard them likewise as his sons, and would show them great kindness. They were not acquainted with the father, and did not know his name; and some of them were of the opinion that they had better slay the simple ambassadors. Others, contrary to their usual practice, defended the latter, treated them well, and showed them hospitality. Among those who were thus kind to them were two chiefs, of whom one – who was, as it were, the leader of all – was named Duayen; the other was named Buaya. Their hearts, which were harder than the hearts of tigers, God softened without any other application than that which has been described. They sent back his ambassadors to the father with an escort to defend them in dangerous places, and to take them safe to his presence; and by them they sent the answer that they were very ready to do with a good will what he commanded them, and that they would come down to the plain and settle in three places, so situated that the father might visit and teach them. They did not delay in carrying out their promise. They built their villages, and in them churches and dwellings for the father. In one of the churches were baptized immediately a son and two daughters of Duayen, together with many other children, twenty of them boys. Thus was sown the seed of the gospel, which has grown luxuriantly, at no further cost than has been recounted. Father Fray Thomas was indefatigable in striving for the good of souls. For the benefit of souls he made journeys of twelve leguas on foot, over very bad roads and in the heat of the sun. He sometimes went among warlike Indians who cut off the heads of others, while he and those who went with him saved theirs. It seemed to his companion, when he took one, that even though the companion was weak, a contagion of strength went out from the father, so that his associate was able to follow him, and they both went on long journeys without being much exhausted. Father Fray Thomas was not grieved that the direction of his superior occupied him in different posts, and called him from one place which was already cultivated well to another which was not so, but very ill – an effect which might have resulted from various causes. In the province of Ylocos – which is next to that of Pangasinan, and between it and that of Nueva Segovia, all of them being in this island of Luçon – there is a large village called Nalbacan, the instruction of which was entrusted to secular clergy. As they were quickly changed, one after the other, and as some of them did not know the language of the natives, the village was in great lack of religious instruction. The bishop of these provinces, Don Diego de Soria, determined to give this village to the order, that it might minister to it. The father provincial who held that office at the time, charged father Fray Thomas with this duty. He set out there immediately, and began on the way to learn something of the language of the country, of which he had already a vocabulary and a grammar. Though it is different from that of Pangasinan, he preached in it at the end of twenty days after he arrived there, and before the bishop and other priests who were there, and before the natives, to the wonder of all. He began to fill his office so acceptably to the Indians that some came from the most remote parts of the province to confess to him and to receive his counsels. He was given the name of “the holy father,” and, whenever they spoke of him, they used this name. As this is the appellation of the supreme pontiff of the church, whom the Indians had never seen, and still less had any dealings with him, those who were not acquainted with the secret were surprised to hear them speak until they came to understand it. Father Fray Thomas remained here a year, and his teaching and example were easily perceived in the improvement of the Indians and of those who were under his direction. All this province of the Indians is under the care of Augustinian fathers, who have in it many places where they give Christian instruction. They accordingly claimed this of Nalbacan, which was the only place outside of their jurisdiction. The order was very willing to yield it, and in exchange for it the Augustinians gave to our order another, which they had among our ministries in Pangasinan; and thus each order remained with its province complete, with its own tribe and language. When the Augustinian fathers came to take possession of the house of father Fray Thomas, as they did somewhat in advance of the time, he departed with nothing but his cloak, his hat, his breviary, and his staff, setting out for the province of Nueva Segovia, which was very near, to wait for the order of his superior, and to be disposed of as he pleased. Desiring not to be idle in the interim, for he did not wish to be idle a single hour – and if he did not know the language he would have to be idle many hours – he learned the language of that country with the facility which God had given him. He was aided by the fact that the languages of these three provinces of Indians are somewhat alike, and resemble each other in their idioms and in their syntax – which does not seem to have been invented by a barbarous people, but by a race of intelligence and keenness of mind. He remained but a short time in this province, being sent by the order of his superior to his former province of Pangasinan, whose language he understood as if it were his mother-tongue. In this language he wrote many books of devotion, sermons, and treatises, which he distributed while he was alive among the fathers who were ministers to that people; and he left others behind him at his death, as his estate, for he had no other estate except instruments of penance. From these long journeys on foot, through these rough and hot regions, a sickness resulted in Pangasinan which threatened to be the last of his life, and obliged him to give up the ministry to the Indians, much against his will. He suffered from this very much more than from the pain of the illness; but what he could not gain in this life he laid up for the other by his admirable patience and fortitude. Finally God restored his health, without medicines or comforts, for which there is little provision here; and there was less then, because things were nearer the beginning, when everything was barrenness and extreme poverty. With all these merits, he still lacked one thing to fill up the measure of his deserts. The common enemy of souls guessed this, and once appeared to him, while he was reading a book of devotion, in a hideous and shocking form; and although the father made the sign of the cross, the enemy did not flee so quickly but that he had time to say that, if it were not for the stones on the father’s neck, he would be revenged upon him. This was the rosary, which the father took off neither by night nor by day, that he might be at all hours armed against him who may attack at any hour, and will do so whenever he is permitted. His zeal for souls increased with age, contrary to what often happens; for with the old age of the body, the weakening of the strength, and the increase of infirmity, old age often attacks the spirit – as St. Paul says (Hebrews, viii), Quod antiquatur et senescit prope interitum est⁵⁶– which is as true of the spirit as of the body. When the father had reached the age of seventy years, he implored father Fray Francisco de Herrera, who was provincial at the time, to send him to Japon on the occasion when the large mission thither was planned which, afterward, God did not see fit to permit to be carried out. I think that this was not the first time that he proffered this request to his superiors. In proportion to the dangers and hardships promised by this mission, of which father Fray Thomas was not ignorant, was his earnestness in the desire to be a member of it. This is a proof of his vigorous spirit in venerable old age. His urgent request was not admitted, on the ground of his age; but he did not lose the merit of it, since he made it without any hypocrisy. God preserved him for another mission (that described in the previous chapter), which he undertook in the province of Ytui. He had made a beginning there in former years, but had not carried it on because of the obstacle there mentioned. He had now come to three years beyond seventy, and undertook the difficult expedition already described with as much spirit and energy as if he had only half his years. Yet he was much bowed with infirmities, as well as with age; and between them he seemed, as he walked, to be dragging along his body and his bowels. The words which the church sings of the holy old Simeon are not inappropriate, Senex puerum portabat; puer autem senem regebat.⁵⁷ This same God whose name he, as His vassal, desired to carry to all regions, directed him and strengthened him, so that he undertook enterprises so far beyond the strength of one bowed with years and infirmities. In this period of his life he began to learn the language of this province, accomplishing his purpose in three months, and beginning to preach to the natives in it. He went to attend them in their spiritual needs whenever they summoned him, however far away he was, without heeding rain, or sun, or difficult roads. Though very compassionate to all, he was rigorous to himself alone, and that throughout his life. Every night he took a rigorous discipline; and never after he entered the order did he eat meat, except in case of grave necessity. He did not complain of his food when it was scanty or ill prepared, in sickness or in health. To the fasts of the order he added others. After the festival of the Resurrection he added another Lent up to Whitsunday, and another afterwards to the day of our father St. Dominic, so that the whole year was to him fasting and Lent. On Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays throughout the year, and on the eves of the festivals of Christ our Lord, of the Virgin his most holy Mother, and of our father St. Dominic, and of the saints of the order, he fasted on bread and water. As a result he possessed that which follows such fasting – a heroic degree of chastity. Finally the last illness of his life came upon him, being occasioned by a fall from a precipice, while he was in the work of his ministry. During the whole time of his illness, his companion could not persuade him to accept a sheet of very coarse cotton, or to permit his bed to be changed. On the bed which he had in health, which was a frame of cane-work covered with a patched blanket, he desired to await the hour of his death. Before his death he made a general confession, covering his whole life from the time before he reached years of discretion. Though his confession covered so many years, it lasted about a quarter of an hour. After he had most devoutly received the other sacraments, he died in the Lord, March 30, 1633. The following provincial chapter, in giving notice to the province of his happy death, said: “In the province of Ytui father Fray Thomas Gutierrez ended his days, an aged priest and father, most observant of the rules of the order, severe to himself and most gentle to others. He labored in this province for the good of souls for the space of five and thirty years, with such devotion that the very Indians, by whom he was most beloved, held and regarded him as pious and a saint. This aroused the ill-will of the devil, who appeared to him while he was at prayer; and the wicked enemy was able to arouse in him great fear and terror, but not to harm him, because he found him protected with the impregnable rosary of the Virgin. Of him we have the pious faith that, full of years and of virtue, he has flown to heaven.”

Chapter XLV
The election as provincial of father Fray Domingo Gonçalez, and the state of the province

On the sixteenth of April in this year 1633, the fathers of the province assembled in Manila to elect a superior. Their minds were in such agreement that without difficulty they unanimously elected, on the first ballot, father Fray Domingo Gonçalez, prior of the same convent, not one vote being lacking for the election but his own. He was very acceptable to the estates, both secular and ecclesiastical, of this region, as have been all of the other provincials; since the electors have always exhibited great zeal for the good of the order, and have made their choice without considering personal predilections. In general, the election has not previously been discussed, so that the provincial is elected before anyone suspects who he is. Often a person is elected with regard to whom no one imagined any such thing, so that the city is not a little edified. He who was elected at that time was in España a student at the college of San Gregorio, where he was for many years a teacher of theology. After filling all the offices of the order, he became commissary of the Holy Office in these islands – as he still is, with which we must bring to an end all that may be said with regard to him.

The provincial and the definitors found nothing to occupy themselves with in the reformation of the province. Advice was received of a new ordinance of the chapter-general held in Roma in 1629, in which permission is given to the provinces to discontinue the intermediate chapter as being the source of much expense and trouble to all the order – and, in this province, of much interference with the systematic instruction of the Indians in our charge, many of whom are entirely without ministers during the whole time spent in coming to these intermediate chapters. In their place were very prudently substituted the councils, which, being reduced to a much smaller number of religious, the picked men of the province, are almost as useful and much less expensive, and are not followed by the bad results spoken of. This permission was accepted, and the precedent has since been followed.

In this year the order was extended so far throughout these kingdoms that it had never before reached such limits. Although the number of the religious of this province is very small, they have taken up a jurisdiction so extended and so large that, even though many hundreds and even thousands of companions were to come to their aid, they would have enough to provide all these with labor, without needing to seek for or even to accept anything else, all of them being occupied with that which has already been acquired and gained. For the lack of ministers, the Indians are still untaught, and remain in their heathen state; while if they had ministers they would embrace and follow the law of God, as those have admitted and professed it who by the favor of heaven have been able to obtain ministers.

[The persecution in Japon was still increasing in intensity and cruelty. The authorities of Japon now offered a reward of a thousand taes (which amount to almost as many ducados of Castilla) to anyone who would reveal the place of hiding of a minister, in addition to full pardon for all offenses previously committed. Besides this, a new and dreadful method of execution was devised for the Christians, inasmuch as their crime was regarded as so vile that the ordinary methods of execution – decapitation, or burning alive over a slow fire – should not be used as a punishment for them. The condemned Christians were hung, head downward, in a pit, in such a manner that they could not move their bodies, and that the blood ran out of their mouths, noses, eyes, and ears until they bled to death in horrible torment.⁵⁸ In this way father Fray Domingo de Erquicia was martyred. Father Fray Jacobo de Sancta Maria,⁵⁹ a Japanese by nation, who had assumed the habit in our convent of Manila, August 15, 1624, was martyred in this year. He had returned to Japon in 1632. He went by way of the islands of the Lequios; and the champan in which he traveled with some Japanese fathers of the Society encountered storms, and was cast upon the shores of Coria. The sufferings of this voyage were such that his hair turned gray. At the end of five months he reached Satzuma, where he labored for about three months. His father, who was a Christian, was tortured by water until he revealed the place where his son was hidden; and on the seventeenth of August father Fray Jacobo died, after three days of torture, by the method of hanging described. In this year two preachers of our order made their way to Japon. One was the glorious martyr, father Fray Jacobo; the other was a Sicilian, a very thorough master of the Chinese language, who was called Fray Jordan de San Estevan. He had assumed the habit in Sicilia, after having studied arts and theology in Aragon and Castilla. He barely escaped capture immediately on his arrival; and the whole crew of Chinese who had been hired to bring him were executed for the crime of bringing a priest into the kingdom.

In this year, thirty-three, the cruel old emperor died; and in the commotions which followed it seemed as if all parties turned their hands against the Christians. Many other martyrs of other orders were executed at this time. Among them were Father Manuel Borges, of the Society of Jesus; fathers Fray Melchor and Fray Martin, Augustinian Recollects – Spaniards, who were caught before they learned the language; father Fray Jacobo Antoni, a Roman, of the Society of Jesus; fathers Fray Benito Fernandez (a Portuguese) and Fray Francisco de Gracia, of the Order of St. Augustine; and a Japanese father of the Society named Pablo Saito, who had accompanied father Fray Jacobo from Manila. In this year father Fray Thomas de San Jacintho reported that thirteen religious were captured in Nangasaqui, besides two of the Order of St. Francis who were prisoners in Usaca. Besides these, there were Fathers Antonio de Sousa and Juan Mateos, and Father Christoval Ferreyra, all Portuguese Jesuits; father Fray Lucas del Espiritu Sancto, a father of our order; besides many Japanese, both lay and religious.

Father Fray Lucas del Espiritu Sancto was a son of the convent of Sancto Domingo at Benavente. An account is given of his labors in the chapter dealing with the year thirty-one. From his prison he wrote an account of his labors and travels in Japon, in which he told how he had gone through the most distant parts of the empire from east to west. Most of these fathers and many of their companions were tortured while in prison, and father Fray Lucas wrote a long letter describing their imprisonment and torture. In this letter he makes the following statement: that if he should die on the day of St. Luke, he would be exactly thirty-nine years of age; that he assumed the habit in 1610 in the convent of Sancto Domingo at Benabente, whence he went to study at Trianos and hence to Valladolid, coming to the Philippinas in 1617, and being assigned to duty in Nueva Segovia. He reached Japon in 1623. His letter is dated October 16, 1633, and two days later he was put to the torture of the hanging described, being respited for a time and afterward executed.]