Note 76 — Chapter XXX

Near the boundaries of the province of Ilocos, in the mountains of Cape Engaño, near the province of Cagayán, belonging to the mission of the convent of Bacarra, the conversion of the natives of the villages of Aclán and Vera (now Bangbanglo) was commenced that year by the ardent zeal and diligence of father Fray Benito de Mena, a native of Manila and son of our Manila convent San Pablo; he was a religious of great virtue, and one very fluent in the tongues of Ilocos and Cagayán. Those villages are more than twenty leguas distant from the central town Bacarra; and their people are a barbarous and spirited nation, and for that reason are feared by the Indians round about. They are known by the name of Payaos.76 That nation had not received the light of the holy gospel, because of the ruggedness of their mountains. They were living in the darkness of their blind paganism, protected by the inaccessibility of those lofty mountains, and exempt from the yoke of subjection—the only means by which one is able to introduce the evangelical preaching among barbarous nations. For since they are the last nations whom the Celestial Paterfamilias invites to the banquet of glory, which so many noble and civilized nations have despised, in them is verified the command to make them enter by means of force: Compelle intrare, ut impleatur domus mea.77...