Jose Rizal Biography

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (Spanish: [xoˈse riˈsal], Tagalog: [hoˈse riˈsal];

June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896) was a Filipino nationalist, writer and polymath active at the
end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is considered the national hero
(pambansang bayani) of the Philippines. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer
and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which advocated political reforms for the
colony under Spain.
He was executed by the Spanish colonial government for the crime of rebellion after the Philippine
Revolution broke out; it was inspired by his writings. Though he was not actively involved in its
planning or conduct, he ultimately approved of its goals which eventually resulted in Philippine
independence.
Rizal is widely considered one of the greatest heroes of the Philippines and has been recommended
to be so honored by an officially empaneled National Heroes Committee. However, no law,
executive order or proclamation has been enacted or issued officially proclaiming any Filipino
historical figure as a national hero.[9] He wrote the novels Noli Me Tángere (1887) and El
filibusterismo (1891), which together are taken as a national epic, in addition to numerous poems
and essays.
José Rizal was born on June 19, 1861 to Francisco Rizal Mercado y Alejandro and Teodora Alonso
Realonda y Quintos in the town of Calamba in Laguna province. He had nine sisters and one
brother. His parents were leaseholders of a hacienda and an accompanying rice farm held by
the Dominicans. Both their families had adopted the additional surnames of Rizal and Realonda in
1849, after Governor General Narciso Clavería y Zaldúa decreed the adoption of Spanish
surnames among the Filipinos for census purposes (though they already had Spanish names).
Like many families in the Philippines, the Rizals were of mestizo origin. José's patrilineal lineage
could be traced to Fujian in China through his father's ancestor Lam-Co,
a Hokkien Chinese merchant who immigrated to the Philippines in the late 17th century.[12][13][note 1]
[14]
 Lam-Co traveled to Manila from Xiamen, China, possibly to avoid the famine or plague in his
home district, and more probably to escape the Manchu invasion during the Transition from Ming to
Qing. He decided to stay in the islands as a farmer. In 1697, to escape the bitter anti-Chinese
prejudice that existed in the Philippines, he converted to Catholicism, changed his name to Domingo
Mercado and married the daughter of Chinese friend Augustin Chin-co.
On his mother's side, Rizal's ancestry included Chinese, Japanese, and Tagalog. His mother's
lineage can be traced to the affluent Florentina family of Chinese mestizo families originating
in Baliuag, Bulacan.[15] He also had Spanish ancestry. Regina Ochoa, a grandmother of his mother,
Teodora, had mixed Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog blood. His maternal grandfather was a
half Spanish engineer named Lorenzo Alberto Alonzo.
From an early age, José showed a precocious intellect. He learned the alphabet from his mother at
3, and could read and write at age 5.[13] Upon enrolling at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, he
dropped the last three names that made up his full name, on the advice of his brother, Paciano and
the Mercado family, thus rendering his name as "José Protasio Rizal". Of this, he later wrote: "My
family never paid much attention [to our second surname Rizal], but now I had to use it, thus giving
me the appearance of an illegitimate child!" This was to enable him to travel freely and disassociate
him from his brother, who had gained notoriety with earlier links to Filipino priests Mariano
Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora (popularly known as Gomburza), who had been accused
and executed for treason.
José, as "Rizal", soon distinguished himself in poetry writing contests, impressing his professors with
his facility with Castilian and other foreign languages, and later, in writing essays that were critical of
the Spanish historical accounts of the pre-colonial Philippine societies. By 1891, the year he finished
his second novel El filibusterismo, his second surname had become so well known that, as he writes
to another friend, "All my family now carry the name Rizal instead of Mercado because the name
Rizal means persecution! Good! I too want to join them and be worthy of this family name.
Rizal first studied under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna, before he was sent to Manila.
[18]
 He took the entrance examination to Colegio de San Juan de Letran, as his father requested, but
he enrolled at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila. He graduated as one of the nine students in his class
declared sobresaliente or outstanding. He continued his education at the Ateneo Municipal de
Manila to obtain a land surveyor and assessor's degree, and at the same time at the University of
Santo Tomas, where he studied a preparatory course in law and finished with a mark of excelente or
excellent. He finished the course of Philosophy as a pre-law.[19]
Upon learning that his mother was going blind, he decided to switch to medicine at the medical
school of Santo Tomas, specializing later in ophthalmology. He received his four-year practical
training in medicine at Ospital de San Juan de Dios in Intramuros. In his last year at medical school,
he received a mark of sobresaliente in courses of Patologia Medica (Medical Pathology), Patología
Quirúrgica (Surgical Pathology) and Obstretics.
Although known as a bright student, Rizal had some difficulty in some science subjects in medical
school such as Física (Physics) and Patología General (General Pathology).[20]

Rizal as a student at the University of Santo Tomas

Without his parents' knowledge and consent, but secretly supported by his brother Paciano, he
traveled alone to Madrid in May 1882 and studied medicine at the Universidad Central de Madrid.
There he earned the degree, Licentiate in Medicine. He also attended medical lectures at
the University of Paris and the University of Heidelberg. In Berlin, he was inducted as a member of
the Berlin Ethnological Society and the Berlin Anthropological Society under the patronage of the
famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow. Following custom, he delivered an address in German in April
1887 before the Anthropological Society on the orthography and structure of the Tagalog language.
He wrote a poem to the city, "A las flores del Heidelberg", which was both an evocation and a prayer
for the welfare of his native land and the unification of common values between East and West.
At Heidelberg, the 25-year-old Rizal completed his eye specialization in 1887 under the renowned
professor, Otto Becker. There he used the newly invented ophthalmoscope (invented by Hermann
von Helmholtz) to later operate on his mother's eye. From Heidelberg, Rizal wrote his parents: "I
spend half of the day in the study of German and the other half, in the diseases of the eye. Twice a
week, I go to the bierbrauerie, or beerhall, to speak German with my student friends." He lived in a
Karlstraße boarding house then moved to Ludwigsplatz. There, he met Reverend Karl Ullmer and
stayed with them in Wilhelmsfeld. There he wrote the last few chapters of Noli Me Tángere, his first
novel, published in Spanish later that year.
Rizal was a polymath, skilled in both science and the arts. He painted, sketched, and made
sculptures and woodcarving. He was a prolific poet, essayist, and novelist whose most famous
works were his two novels, Noli Me Tángere (1887) and its sequel, El filibusterismo (1891). These
social commentaries during the Spanish colonial period of the country formed the nucleus of
literature that inspired peaceful reformists and armed revolutionaries alike.
Rizal was also a polyglot, conversant in twenty-two languages.
Rizal's numerous skills and abilities was described by his German friend, Dr. Adolf Bernhard Meyer,
as "stupendous." Documented studies show Rizal to be a polymath with the ability to master various
skills and subjects. He was an ophthalmologist, sculptor, painter, educator, farmer, historian,
playwright and journalist. Besides poetry and creative writing, he dabbled, with varying degrees of
expertise, in architecture, cartography, economics, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, dramatics,
martial arts, fencing and pistol shooting. Skilled in social settings, he became a Freemason, joining
Acacia Lodge No. 9 during his time in Spain; he became a Master Mason in 1884.