Volume 32 / Book 2 — Chapter XXVIII

Father Fray Juan de Rueda and de los Angeles, who died a martyr

[Father Fray Juan de Rueda was a native of the mountains of Burgos, and had assumed the habit in San Pablo at Valladolid, whence he came to the Philippinas in the year 1603, being sent, as soon as he arrived, to the kingdom of Japon. Here he assumed the name of Fray Juan de los Angeles. When the priests were banished, father Fray Juan was one of those who remained in hiding to aid and fortify the Christians there. In 1619 he came to Manila in order to obtain more religious. He reaped a great harvest in Arima. He was devoted to the holy rosary. He translated into Japanese the devotion of the holy rosary while he was in Manila. His anxiety to return was such that he strove to make his way back by the islands of the Lequios, where his arguments in favor of Christianity convinced those who heard them that he was a Spanish priest. He was therefore imprisoned for a time in an island called Avaguni, where he profaned a thicket which was dedicated to an idol, and for this suffered death, but on what day was never known.

While this provincial chapter was being held in Manila, there died in Nueva Segovia father Fray Miguel de San Jacintho, a native of Caceres in Estremadura. He was a son of the convent of San Estevan at Salamanca. He volunteered for the Philippinas in 1594, and in Mexico was elected a superior of the company, the vicar who had led them having died; he was assigned to Nueva Segovia. He was a most devoted minister, a diligent student of the language of that nation, and a most zealous and devoted religious. He prayed the Lord that he might not die a superior, and his prayer was granted; for after he had been vicar of many convents, vicar-provincial of Nueva Segovia, prior of the convent of Manila, and twice provincial of the province, the Lord called him to himself when he was living in Masi, one of the first villages which he converted. He died suddenly, on the twenty-fifth of April. The Indians of the villages of Abulug, Masi, Pata, and Cabacungan gave him the most costly funeral honors within their power, and made up a subscription for more than five hundred masses, which at four reals apiece come to more than two thousand. This they did as a token of their great love for him, and the great debt which they owed him for bringing them to the Catholic faith.]

Another matter was that, although father Fray Alonso was not a very skilful linguist, and not one of those who had made the greatest progress in speaking the language of that tribe, yet when he was wounded by the first blows and was urging the Indians not to flee, and telling them of the harm which would come to them if they did so, he spoke with such elegance and precision that the Indians were amazed to hear him; and they noted this as a striking fact at the time, and told of it afterward. He was very charitable, and was in the habit of praising all and of speaking of the defects of himself alone. He came to the Philippinas in the year 1622, and lived in the province of Nueva Segovia—where, in his third year, he met with the happy death which keen knives, directed by hands of apostates from the faith, bring to ministers of the holy gospel. The intermediate chapter of 1628 made mention of these two religious in the following words: “In the province of Nueva Segovia father Fray Alonso Garcia, a priest, and brother Fray Onofre Palao, a lay brother, died happily by the hands of impious apostates, an uprising of the Indians to whom they ministered having occurred.” In the place where father Fray Alonso was cut to pieces, there was afterward raised in his honor a small shrine. The Indians were brought back in the following year, and this tribe used devoutly to frequent this shrine. The dwelling of the religious had stood where Fray Onofre had been killed, and here it was erected again. Since the first building was burned, it was supposed that the fire had consumed his body at the same time—although some Spaniards have some small bones which they value, believing that these are his, because they found them where he was decapitated.