Note 30 — Chapter IX

788. Let us now speak of its spiritual conquest, which is the principal object of our consideration. In the year 1543 the Observant religious, the sons of the best beloved Benjamin, our common father, San Agustin (to whom fell the first and greater part of the possession for the conversion of the heathen, so far as that archipelago is concerned) made the Philipinas Islands happy by their presence by commencing to establish their apostolic preaching;30 and later in the year 1565, they settled in order to complete what they had begun. Like stars rain-laden with the evangelical doctrine those most zealous ministers fertilized their Philipinas inheritance with their voluntary showers. So much did they do so, that when the new laborers, the sons of the seraph Francisco arrived at the field, there was scarce an island which had not produced most abundant fruit for the granaries of the Church because of the work of the first sowers; as is shown in several places of his history by father Fray Gaspàr de San Agustin;31 and that lover of truth, father Fray Francisco de San Antonio confesses it, thus honoring as he ought the Augustinian Hiermo [sic]. The island of Mindòro also shared in this good fortune. In its cultivation were employed fathers Fray Francisco de Ortèga and Fray Diego de Mòxica. They, after having founded the village of Bàco, endured innumerable misfortunes in a painful captivity, hoping for hours for that death, which they anxiously desired in order to beautify their heads with a painful martyrdom. But in order that one might see that although the former worked above their strength, much remained to be done by their successors, I shall cite here the exact words of father Fray Gaspar de San Agustin in his Historia. “The convent,” he says, “that we had in that island [of Mindòro: added by Assis] was in the village of Bàco. Thence the religious went out to minister to the converted natives. The latter were very few and the religious suffered innumerable hardships because of the roughness of the roads and the bad climate of some regions.”32