Note 36 — Chapter XXX

For the holding of the intermediate chapter [in 1627], an ancient custom in the Order of St. Dominic, devout fathers had assembled. Although the day was at hand, the provincial was absent, being occupied in the new conversion in the island of Hermosa. He had not returned from there since the previous year, when he had made the journey. As the accidents of the sea are so various, the religious were anxious; but the Lord relieved them from their anxiety on the day before the holding of the chapter, the morning of Thursday. The coming of father Fray Bartolome caused joy in all the community; and in recognition of the good news which he brought and of the labors which he had undergone, the governor Don Juan Niño de Tavora, invited him and the fathers who constituted the chapter to dine with him on the following day, which was Friday. That evening they discussed that which they were to do on Saturday the twenty-fourth of April; and on that day they elected as definitors fathers Fray Balthasar Fort and Fray Miguel Ruiz, who had been provincials; Fray Antonio Cañiçares, vicar of Babuyanes, and Fray Marcos Saavedra, a son of Villaescusa, vicar of San Raymundo de Malagueg. By this time the Indians who not long before had revolted and apostatized from the faith in Mandayas (and especially those of Fotol and Capinatan) had been reduced to subjection, and, as a result of the efforts of the religious, had gone down to their old villages. Recognizing the error which they had committed, and desirous of atoning for it by amending their lives, they built churches, reëstablished the villages, and returned to the quiet which they had enjoyed in their earlier age of gold, giving up their age of hard iron36 which they had been deluded into entering.