Note 17 — Letter Written by a Citizen of Manila to an Absent Friend

The friar commenced to read his act, and, at the commencement of the reading, the governor asked the friar to hand it to him. Seeing that this was the beginning of disturbances in the community, he ordered an adjutant to conduct those friars courteously to their convent at the port of Cabite, and charge their superior to retain them there and look after them well; and that they should not disturb the peace of the community for him, nor talk with the freedom and levity that they had displayed to him. The fathers of St. Dominic took occasion from that to utter innumerable evil reports about the governor, so that there was no place where they did not murmur aloud about him. Father Fray Sebastian de Oquendo of the Order of St. Dominic, in especial, went one morning to the auditor-general of war, Manuel Suarez, with a bull which he declared had been promulgated by Pius V; and having read it, he declared that the governor was excommunicated for preventing the exercise of the Inquisition’s authority (although the governor declared that he did not prevent it but that he was maintaining, as he ought, the royal jurisdiction); that he was deposed, that he was not governor, and could not act as such; and that the senior auditor should immediately assume the government, and arrest Don Sebastian and place him in a fort. The auditor-general referred all the above to the governor; and, as a confirmation of this and other rumors that were current through the city, the same fathers of St. Dominic brought a friar from Cabite, named Fray Francisco Pinelo,17 a man of talent and eloquent in the pulpit, in order that he might preach on the second Sunday of Advent, December 9, 1635. He did in fact preach [on that day], and before beginning his sermon, he said that he had called and invited the people to read a bull that he declared was given by Pius V, and was translated from Latin into Romance, in which his Holiness regards those who prevent the exercise of the Holy Inquisition’s authority as infamous, and incapable of holding offices and dignities, and as ipso facto deposed from them. The said father asserted all the above with such tones and manner, and at such a time, that it was clearly seen that he meant it for the governor; and that he was scoffing at him as an infamous person, and as one deposed from the government of these islands, because he had sent to Cabite the two friars who had been sent to him. He began his sermon after that, and it was throughout a satire on the Society, on the judge-conservator, and on the governor and the royal Audiencia. He said of the fathers of the Society that they were the cats of the Church, and a damnable and corruptible milk, who were trying by their deceits to influence other religious not to go to Japon. He added that such as they were members that had been lopped off from the Church; and that by their shrewdness and political methods they were insinuating themselves into everything. Of the judge-conservator he said that one would believe him a canon of London rather than of the cathedral of Manila; that the Jesuits had made him a pope or popelet, and that through him they had undertaken to give them [i.e., the other orders] pap;18 that he was a gambler, and that he had lost some thousands of pesos, which I know is not the case. Of the governor, the preacher said that he was a Pilate, and even much worse; since Pilate had refused to intervene in the death of Christ, while the governor was trying to take part in the controversies with the archbishop; he also compared him to Herod. He talked very venomously about an auditor, and, although he did not name him, it was just as if he had done so, for one could plainly infer of whom he was speaking. He characterized him as unjust and vicious, and all without other foundation than his having declared that the judge-conservator was legal, contrary to what the fathers of St. Dominic claimed. The muttering and commotion among the audience were very marked. It is a fact that many of us think that the preacher had no other aim or motive than to disturb and rouse the crowd so that there should be an uprising, as there had been in Nueva España. And as I have already begun this matter of sermons, and so that I may not afterward interrupt the thread of my discourse, I shall say somewhat here to your Grace of the many disorders that have happened in this direction.