Note 21 — Chapter IV

608. Thus did the above-mentioned father provincial, Fray Juan de San Phelipe, write to our father vicar-general under date of July 5, of the same year. And after, on June 26, 1674, he adds that, according to the relations sent to the chapter by the father prior of Bislìg, that district had increased by two hundred tributes. This, according to the reckoning in vogue there, means eight hundred souls. They had all been allured from the mountains and from the horrors of their paganism to become inhabitants of the villages already formed, and to live in civilized intercourse among the pleasant lights of the Christian name. This well premeditated idea has since then been followed as has been possible by the successors of our father, Fray Juan de San Phelipe, whenever the small number of religious has not rendered it impossible. For in some chapters of that holy province, repeated determinations are seen to place a minister in residence at Catèl, so that he may exercise the means conducive to that end. Hence it is that father Fray Juan Francisco de San Antonio has inserted the following narrative in his seraphic chronicle. He says: “Some of the Tagabalòyes are living now in old villages who have become Christians, and others are being reduced by the zeal and cultivation of the discalced Augustinian fathers, who hold them as inhabitants of Bislìg.”21 And it is confirmed that although the district of Bislìg was formerly one of the smallest in the number of its parishioners, it is now one of the largest in Mindanào, and there is no other reason for its increase.