Note 2 — THE COLLEGE OF SAN JOSÉ

353 [i.e., 153]. A few months after the foundation of the congregation,2 a beginning was given to the college and seminary of San Joseph, which was not less desired by the principal citizens of Manila than was the congregation. It had been discussed already before this, and Governor Don Luis Perez Dasmariñas had enacted, on the fifteenth of the month of August one thousand five hundred and ninety-five, an act in regard to it, in obedience to and in execution of a royal decree of one thousand five hundred and eighty-five, in which his Majesty commands Doctor Santiago de Vera, his governor in these islands, or the person in whose charge should be their government, to ascertain in what manner a college and seminary, where the sons of the Spanish inhabitants of these islands, under the care and management of the fathers of the Society, can be instructed in virtue and letters, may be instituted. Although the act was given out from that time by the governor, at the advice of Doctor Don Antonio de Morga, lieutenant general and assessor of the governor, on account of difficulties which always exist in whatever depends on the royal treasury, that work was suspended until the arrival of the father visitor, Diego Garcia,3 with his ardent desire of putting into execution all the means for the service of God and the greater welfare of his neighbors. From the mountains of Antipolo, where he was, he charged Father Pedro Chirino, rector of the college of Manila, independently of the said act, to treat with Governor Don Francisco Tello, the auditors of the royal Audiencia (which had been reëstablished in these islands), and the two cabildos (ecclesiastical and secular), in regard to this matter.4 The father found them all not only kind but desirous of its execution, for some of them had sons or nephews without the necessary education, for lack of the college.