Note 12 — Chapter I

The latter went out from the hall, leaving the capitulars within under the guard of the soldiers, so that these should prevent the fathers from going out of the room until they should elect another provincial who should not be father Fray Francisco de Medina Basco; for father Fray Juan Caballero was not canonically elected, for lack of one more than half of the ballots of the voters. All that day, until evening, they remained shut up in the chapter-hall, experiencing great harshness; for the guards would not allow even a pitcher of water to be given to them, a cruelty very unlike the kindly nature of Don Manuel de León. The provisor and vicar-general of the vacant see, Doctor Don Francisco Pizarro Orellana, came out in defense of the ecclesiastical immunity, which had been violated by that compulsion; and it resulted in the religious being allowed to go to their cells, weak from hunger and thirst. But the governor ordered that two soldiers should be stationed at the door of each cell, so that the fathers could not leave their cells or communicate with one another. In these disturbances passed that Saturday until sunset, the limit peremptorily allotted by our holy constitutions within which the chapter can proceed to the election of a prior provincial; and, when that time was spent, the authority for such election devolved upon our very reverend general [of the order]. But as this adjustment of the limit was made by violence, this prescription of the limit was, in a case so irregular as this, invalid. What I can assert, on the best information, is the great patience and humility which all the fathers of the chapter displayed in these tribulations, enduring great privations in this imprisonment, which lasted through Saturday and Sunday. Finally, recognizing that their strength was very inferior to that which was opposing them, and that further effort was only to struggle against the current of a freshet, they, acting on the advice of the said provisor, again assembled in the chapter-room on the following Monday, and made a new choice, that of father Fray Jerónimo de León—a native of Mexico, a son of the convent of Manila, quite advanced in years; he was an excellent minister in the province of Tagalos, and formerly prior of the convent of Bulacán, and was much beloved by all for his devout religious spirit and peaceable conduct. They appointed as definitors Master Fray José de Mendoza, father Fray Isidoro Rodríguez, father Fray Luis de Montufar, and father Fray Juan Bautista Bover; and for visitors father Fray Carlos Bautista and father Fray José Duque.12 As for father Fray Francisco de Medina Basco, they appointed him prior of the convent at Cebú and vicar-provincial of that island, which he accepted with much resignation and humility. The tempest in the chapter ceased, and the province again enjoyed its former tranquillity for some time.