Note 25 — Chapter VI

6. Other minor matters pertaining to Manila were overlooked by me, which it is not proper to bury in silence. One is of a seminary for boys, called San Juan de Letran. It was founded by a religious, a lay-brother of my order, one Fray Diego de Santa Maria.25 In my time it had more than two hundred boys, and was of great benefit to those islands. The way in which the boys were managed was inimitable in any other seminary. They were taught reading, writing, grammar, and music there. Those who studied the arts and theology went to our college. They were given two suits of clothes per year, and received religious instruction. In the morning, before breakfast, they recited aloud in chorus one-third of the rosary, at noon another third, and at evening the remaining third, and the salve chanted with the litany of our Lady; and at midnight of important feasts, the matins. While they were eating at dinner and supper one of them read at the table. They confessed and took communion every month, and were punished or rewarded. Some of those boys became soldiers, some secular priests, and some took the habit in the convents of St. Francis, St. Augustine, and St. Dominic, so that the seminary was a general camp of soldiers, both temporal and spiritual. An encomienda was obtained from his Majesty to aid in their support. Alms were obtained from burials26 and also from the Indians. It is certainly a heroic work. I am told that they have been taken inside the city now, and the most influential religious of the province live there, and, during these later years, those who have been provincials of the order.