Volume 34 — LETTER FROM DOMINGO DE SALAZAR TO FELIPE II

Royal Cæsarean Majesty:

There is another more urgent reason that makes me dare to petition your Majesty to concede this favor to the fathers, or rather, to me and to this city and these islands, namely, that although this seems to be an expense and drain to the royal estate, it really is not so, but a saving of the expenses and drain. For your Majesty cannot neglect to annually send ministers, either seculars or religious, or some of both, for the discharge of your royal conscience, in order that they may work at the conversion and maintenance of these natives. Since the way is so long the expense is necessarily very heavy; and it is a pity that after a friar has been brought here at so great trouble and expense, on his arriving here, he finds that the land is not to his taste nor the Indians what he expected, and consequently he desires to return immediately. Further, if one oppose this, it means the useless detention of one who will attain his end. Experience has shown us that this does not happen from one man or for only one time. Pursuing the argument those who come from that country accustom themselves to the land very slowly, and many years elapse before they know languages by which they may profit the natives, and some do not even begin to study them, while many leave the land after they have learned them. Therefore if this college be established, your Majesty will save great expense, since ministers will be reared therein (and they will really be reared there) who can profit the natives much, your Majesty will not be obliged to send so many religious from España as you would have to if none were reared here; and consequently the expense will not be so heavy. In addition, the inconveniences found in those who come from España will not be met in those reared here, for a minister of our own can be turned out here in the time that it would take one to come here. Those who are reared here are accustomed to the manners and customs here: and the college will graduate masters thoroughly instructed for necessary work among the Indians. If this college is established, the soldier whom God touches will resolve to become a secular upon seeing a place where he can study, and I shall have persons to appoint from their number to the church service and to the villages of the Indians. Those villages are innumerable and have no person to tell them that there is a God. I know that there are many who neglect to change their status [i.e., to become priests] because they see the poor disposition at the present, and some of them are so excellent interpreters that they would prove very useful. This college would also be profitable for the religious who are here, for the graduates from it would be ready to be received into the orders. Those who are received at present remain as ignorant as when they enter, inasmuch as they have no arrangements for study. That causes me no slight scruple when they present themselves before me for ordination, while the inconveniences ensuing from men so ignorant having charge of the administration of so many Indians as at present, are not few. The above reasons and my obligation to procure and consider the welfare of this land have given me the boldness to petition your Majesty to please have the said college instituted in which the fathers of the Society may live for the purposes above mentioned. If your Majesty bestow this concession upon us it will give life to this land and give it an impetus for great onward growth. Of a surety, your Majesty should not hold the dignity of this city in small consideration, but should exalt it, for as I say in another place, your Majesty has nothing of more importance anywhere in the Yndias than this city. If this college is not built, I do not know how we can maintain ourselves in the ministry of these Indians, nor where we can get ministers who will serve the Church. For seven or eight students whom I ordained with the hope that there would be someone to teach them, remain in the same condition as when they were ordained because there is no one to teach them. They are disconsolate, and I am troubled because I ordained them. Many, as I have remarked, hesitate to become seculars although they desire it, because of the poor arrangements that they see for it. Therefore, I humbly petition your Majesty to order the fathers of the Society to come to this city either in the above manner or in any other way that your Majesty may prefer, for by their aid and by their solicitude in caring for the interests of the community, I trust that this city will once more lift up its head, for it is now fallen very low.

The above is not the only good that is claimed for, and hoped from, this college, but there is another of equal and even greater importance, namely, the aid of the Indians. The fathers claim that they will aid them and have already asked me for villages so that they may begin to treat with the Indians. But since the Society is wont to have a seminary wherever it goes, where those who take the habit of their order are reared so that each one may go thence to work in the salvation of souls either of Spaniards or Indians, according to the order of their superiors, those fathers say that if they do not have such a college they cannot persevere in this land, for the above is their manner of preservation and the source of their profit to their neighbors.

Confident in your Majesty’s kindness, I have prevailed upon those fathers not to write their general of their intention of departing, but on the contrary to write him to send others to live with them. I have assured them that when your Majesty sees the necessity of their coming here, your Majesty will be pleased to have this concession that we beg bestowed upon us, or some other which will be better for all of us. In the meanwhile I shall endeavor to support and to aid them here in everything, for they also aid me and all this community considerably, by which your Majesty is not slightly served.

Inasmuch as fathers of the Society will come to this land if your Majesty grant us this favor, and many will take their habit here (and I hope religious of my order as well who have not come here as yet), it will be necessary for your Majesty to issue a royal decree ordering those religious who have more Indians in charge than they can conveniently instruct to allow the religious who shall come later or the seculars who shall come from that country or those who shall be here to enter upon the instruction of those Indians whom the former are unable to instruct, in order that I may not have quarrels and strife with the religious who are here now. The decision of this matter should be for the bishop and not for the religious, for by embracing a large territory and by preventing others from entering their districts, they have taken in this entire bishopric, so that they are trying to occupy with one friar the space that four or five could not suitably fill. Whenever I endeavor to relieve this situation the friars complain that I am preventing them from exercising their prerogatives, and they prefer to allow souls to perish rather than to allow other friars to enter to help them. If your Majesty do not correct this, we must necessarily be at strife, for I cannot, on my conscience, avoid aiding those souls whom I see to be perishing. May our Lord preserve your Majesty’s royal Catholic person for many years for the good of His holy Church, and the conservation of so many and so great kingdoms as our Lord has placed under your Majesty’s protection. Manila, June 18, 1583. Royal Cæsarean Majesty, your least servant and chaplain kisses your Majesty’s royal hands.

Fray Domingo, bishop of the Filipinas.

[Endorsed: “Have a decree issued ordering the president and the bishop to discuss together how the contents of this letter may be best complied with and with what income. In the meanwhile let them settle and determine how the adequate instruction that the Society petitions may be best obtained.”]