Note 52 — Chapter XXV

The capitular members assembled in the Manila convent, and all were unanimous in [their purpose to] elect as provincial father Fray José de la Cuesta, prior of Bulacán, an able religious. He was very learned and experienced in the Greek language, which chair he had filled by substitution in the university of Salamanca, because of the death of his father, Master Andrés de la Cuesta Olmedo, the regularly-appointed professor of that subject. But that hope was frustrated, for God had taken him to himself two days before the chapter, to the general sorrow of all the province—especially of our father Fray Diego de Ordás, who had brought him from his province of Castilla in the fine mission that entered this province in the year 1635. Accordingly, the chapter was convened under the presidency of father Fray Juan de Borja, the third definitor, because of the deaths of the [two] others, Fray Pedro Mejía and Fray Pablo Maldonado. Our father, Fray Alonso Coronel,52 a religious of great virtue and prudence, and such an one as the times needed—also of the said mission conducted by our father Fray Diego de Ordás—was elected, April 29, 1662. The definitors elected in the chapter were fathers Fray Gonzalo de la Palma,53 Fray Luis de Medina,54 Fray Isidro Rodríguez, and the lecturer Fray Antonio Carrión, and the visitors, father Fray Juan de Vergara55 and Fray Juan de Isla.56 They passed the acts necessary for the efficient government of the province and for the administration of the doctrinas where were missions of new reductions of people, especially on the outskirts of the province of Ilocos—which is also the farthest [from Manila] in this great island called Luzón. There father Fray Benito de Mena57 was progressing finely with the conversion of the Indians of Aclán and Vera in the mountains contiguous to Cagayán, of which we shall treat more fully hereafter.