José Rizal

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Laong Laan" redirects here. For the railway station, see Laon Laan station.
In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Mercado and the second or
maternal family name is Realonda.

José Rizal
 Rizal c. 1890s

Born José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda[1]

June 19, 1861[2]

Calamba, Laguna, Captaincy General of the

Philippines, Spanish Empire[2]

Died December 30, 1896 (aged 35)[3]

Bagumbayan, Manila, Captaincy General of the

Philippines, Spanish Empire[3]

Cause of death Execution by firing squad

Resting place Rizal Monument, Manila

 Daet, Camarines Norte

Monuments
 Manila

 Calamba, Laguna

Other names Pepe, Jose (nicknames)[4][5]

 Alma mater  Ateneo Municipal de Manila (BA)

 University of Santo Tomas

 Universidad Central de Madrid (MD)

Organization(s) La Solidaridad, La Liga Filipina

Notable work Noli Me Tángere (1887)

 El filibusterismo (1891)

Movement Propaganda Movement

Josephine Bracken
Spouse

(m. 1896)
[6]

Parents  Francisco Rizal Mercado (father)

 Teodora Alonso Realonda (mother)

Relatives  Saturnina Hidalgo (sister)

 Paciano Rizal (brother)

 Trinidad Rizal (sister)

Signature

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda[7] (Spanish: [xoˈse riˈsal, -

ˈθal], Tagalog: [hoˈse ɾiˈsal]; 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 a national hero (pambansang bayani) of the
Philippines.[8][9] 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.[10][11]

Early life

José Rizal's baptismal register

Francisco Rizal Mercado (1818–1898)

Teodora Alonso Realonda (1827–1911)

Rizal's parents
 José Rizal in ₱2 note
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 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.[16] José Rizal's maternal great-great-grandfather, Eugenio Ursua, was of
Japanese ancestry.[17][18]

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!"[19] 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..." [19]

Education

Rizal, 11 years old, a student at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila

Rizal first studied under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna, before he was sent
to Manila.[20] 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 simultaneously 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.[21]

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).[22]
 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).[note 2] 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.[note 3][note 4][23][24]

Rizal's numerous skills and abilities was described by his German friend, Adolf
Bernhard Meyer, as "stupendous."[note 5] Documented studies show Rizal to be
a polymath with the ability to master various skills and subjects. [23][25][26] 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.[27]

Personal life, relationships and ventures

Rednaxela Terrace, where Rizal lived during his self-

imposed exile in Hong Kong (photo taken in 2011)
José Rizal's life is one of the most documented of 19th-century Filipinos due to the vast
and extensive records written by and about him.[28] Almost everything in his short life is
recorded somewhere. He was a regular diarist and prolific letter writer, and much of this
material has survived. His biographers have faced challenges in translating his writings
because of Rizal's habit of switching from one language to another.

Biographers drew largely from his travel diaries with his comments by a young Asian
encountering the West for the first time (other than in Spanish manifestations in the
Philippines). These diaries included Rizal's later trips, home and back again to Europe
through Japan and the United States,[29] and, finally, through his self-imposed exile in
Hong Kong.

Shortly after he graduated from the Ateneo Municipal de Manila (now Ateneo de Manila
University), Rizal (who was then 16 years old) and a friend, Mariano Katigbak, visited
Rizal's maternal grandmother in Tondo, Manila. Mariano brought along his sister,
Segunda Katigbak, a 14-year-old Batangueña from Lipa, Batangas.

It was the first time Rizal had met her, whom he described as
"rather short, with eyes that were eloquent and ardent at times and languid at others,
rosy-cheeked, with an enchanting and provocative smile that revealed very beautiful
teeth, and the air of a sylph; her entire self diffused a mysterious charm."
His grandmother's guests were mostly college students and they knew that Rizal had
skills in painting. They suggested that Rizal should make a portrait of Segunda. He
complied reluctantly and made a pencil sketch of her. Rizal referred to her as his first
love in his memoir Memorias de un Estudiante de Manila, but Katigbak was already
engaged to Manuel Luz.[30]

Business card showing José Rizal is an ophthalmologist

in Hong Kong
From December 1891 to June 1892, Rizal lived with his family in Number 2
of Rednaxela Terrace, Mid-levels, Hong Kong Island. Rizal used 5 D'Aguilar Street,
Central district, Hong Kong Island, as his ophthalmology clinic from 2 pm to 6 pm. In this
period of his life, he wrote about nine women who have been identified: Gertrude
Beckett of Chalcot Crescent, Primrose Hill, Camden, London; wealthy and high-minded
Nelly Boustead of an English-Iberian merchant family; Seiko Usui (affectionately called
O-Sei-san), last descendant of a noble Japanese family; his earlier friendship with
Segunda Katigbak; Leonor Valenzuela, and an eight-year romantic relationship
with Leonor Rivera, a distant cousin (she is thought to have inspired his character
of María Clara in Noli Me Tángere).