Note 99 — Chapter XXIV

While father Fray Lúcas de la Reina, who was one of the foremost religious in the Bisayan province—a [257] fine linguist, and one who added much to the sacristies, and was very discerning in things pertaining to the altar—was prior in the same village, he heard that a wretched mestizo woman in his district was leading a dissolute life; for on that occasion the encomendero Don Agustín Flores was there. This man came at the head of a number of blinded and unruly Spaniards. The religious had the woman seized and placed in a private house. A mestizo brother of hers grieved so sorely over this that, trusting in the favor of the encomendero, he tried to kill the religious. For while the said father was standing at the church door after the Salve on a Saturday, surrounded by Spaniards, the mestizo came in at one side, and struck at him with a dagger. The father warded it off, and protected himself from it with his hands, without a Spaniard offering to aid him. A lay brother, named Fray Andrés García,99 was coming toward the convent; he was making a small flat-bottomed boat [chatilla] there for the house at Manila. He was truly a religious of great virtue and example. He had formerly been a soldier in Flandes and Italia, and was one of the chosen men sent to Ginebra [i.e., Geneva] by Felipe IV, to carry despatches to the duke of Saboya [i.e., Savoy], the king’s brother-in-law, who was trying to take that rebellious city. As soon as father Fray Lúcas spied the brother, he cried out and begged for aid. Fray Andres hastened to him, and although now a man well along in years, he had not forgotten the vigor of his youth. And in such manner did he comport himself, that those Castilians went away. The mestizo was punished, and the [258] father was healed. The religious have suffered, and still suffer, innumerable things like the above, for making those Indians sincere Christians, for teaching them civilization, and for serving your Majesty in pacifying the country for you. Eight religious, who accompanied father Fray Andrés de Aguirre hither, began this work. Although that father returned to the Filipinas Islands simply to aid Ours in the work here, and to die in the country discovered by him, yet the province, finding that its affairs, past and present, were known to him, elected him provincial; he was therefore constrained to bend his shoulders to receive that load—which is not light, to one who knows it.