Note 3 — MATTA’S REPORT, 1843

For accounts of the confraternity of San José, see Manuel Sancho’s Relacion expresiva de los principales acontecimientos de la titulada Cofradía del señor San José (first published by W. E. Retana in La Política de España, no. 21, et seq.); Memoria histórica de la conducta militar y politica del Teniente General D. Marcelino Oraá (Madrid, 1851), probably written by Pedro Chamorro; and Montero y Vidal, Hist. gen., iii, pp. 37–56. This confraternity was founded by Apolinario de la Cruz, a Tagálog, a native of Lucban in the province of Tayabas, who was a donné in the hospital of San Juan de Dios in Manila. The new confraternity soon had many adherents in the provinces of Tayabas, Laguna, and Batangas, and in the middle of 1840 began to hold meetings in Lucban, to which both sexes were admitted, and at which letters from Apolinario were read. The attention of the friar parish priests was directed to the confraternity, and the meeting of October 19, 1840 was surprised and about 243 persons out of the 500 or 600 attending it, arrested. The governor of Tayabas province, however, who regarded the matter as entirely one of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, ordered the prisoners to be released. Through the representations of the parish priest of Lucban, the provincial governor finally intervened, and the adherents to the confraternity thereupon held their meetings secretly in Majayjay in Laguna Province. The meeting of Sept. 19, 1841, at the latter place, was surprised and some arrests made, although but few, as information of the intended raid had been received. The departure of the provincial governor of Tayabas, Joaquin Ortega, for Manila, was favorable to the new sect, as a native adherent or sympathizer was left in charge of the government. Through his acquiescence, the members of the confraternity who had gathered in armed bands at the village of Bay in Laguna (where they were joined by Apolinario, who had fled from Manila), were allowed to ensconce themselves in Igsaban, Tayabas. From thence they opened negotiations with the government at Tayabas to be allowed to occupy that city, the substitute governor requesting from the parish priest that they be allowed to hold a novena in his church. Negotiations failed, and Ortega, returning on the twenty-second of October, ordered the natives to disperse, and on their refusal attacked them the next day with a force of over three hundred men. The natives, aided by a band of Negritos who had joined them, repulsed this force and killed Ortega, and then retired to Alitao to celebrate a novena. There they were attacked on the first of November by a force composed of troops sent by Oraá, and those of the province of Tayabas, and after a severe engagement the natives were defeated. Apolinario, who fled, was soon captured and shot on the fourth, others of the leaders being also arrested. Apolinario was but twenty-seven years old, and evidently worked on the superstitious nature of his countrymen, who believed that he was immune from danger and that the rebel forces would be aided by the direct intervention of heaven. His followers baptized him under the name of “The king of the Tagálogs.” No one except pure-blooded natives were allowed to become members of the organization, from which circumstance the Spaniards have always professed to believe that the confraternity was political in nature and that religious motives were merely a blind. Some (as in Vindel’s Catálogo biblioteca filipina, no. 1895) assert that the confraternity was a sort of Katipunan. It is quite probable, however, that its origin was entirely religious, but religion mingled with superstition and fanaticism. The fact that Apolinario attempted to legalize the existence of the organization through both ecclesiastical and government centers, which was refused in both instances, indicates that the insurrection was forced by the Spaniards, through either fear or contempt. It is highly unlikely that the organization had at the beginning any political motive, and its attempted suppression was a mistake of the religious and civil authorities. ↑