MEANING AND RELEVANCE OF impression at all at the time they occurred, or
HISTORY have since been forgotten. A fortiori, the
Topic: Meaning of History and
Historical Sources
Presentation of Contents
What are "History" and "Historical
Sources"?
By: Louis Gottschalk
The Meaning of "History"
The English word history is derived from the
Greek noun utopia, meaning learning. As used
by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, history
meant a systematic account of a set of natural
phenomena, whether or not chronological
ordering was a factor in the account; and that
usage, though rare, still prevails in English in
the phrase natural history. In the course or
time, however, the equivalent Latin word
scientia (English science) came to be used
more regularly to designate non-chronological
systematic accounts of natural phenomena;
and the word history was reserved usually for
accounts of phenomena (especially human
affairs) in chronological order.
By its most common definition, the word
history now means "the past of mankind.”
Compare the German word for history
Geschichte, which is derived from geschehen,
meaning to happen, Geschichte is that which
has happened. This meaning of the word
history is often encountered in such
overworked phrases as "all history teaches” or
“the lessons of history.”
It requires only a moment’s reflection to
recognize that in this sense history cannot be
reconstructed. The past or mankind for the
most part is beyond recall. Even those who are
blessed with the best memories cannot re-
create their own past, since in the life of all
men there must be events, persons, words,
thoughts, places, fancies that made no
experience of a generation long dead, most of
whom left no records or whose records, if they
exist, have never been disturbed by the
historian s touch, is beyond the possibility of
total recollection. The reconstruction o1 the
total past or mankind, although it is the goal of
historians, thus becomes a goal they know full
well is unattainable.
"Objectivity" and "Subjectivity"
Sometimes objects like ruins, parchments, and
coins survive from the past. Otherwise, the
facts of history are derived from testimony and
therefore are facts of meaning. They cannot be
seen, felt, tasted, heard, or smelled. They may
be said to be symbolic or representative of
something that once was real, but they have no
objective reality of their own. In other words,
they exist only in the observer's or historian's
mind (and thus may be called "subjective"). To
be studied objectively (that is, with the
intention of acquiring detached and truthful
knowledge independent of one's personal
reactions), a thing must be first be an object; it
must have an independent existence outside
the human mind. Recollections, however, do
not have existence outside the human mind;
and most of history is based upon recollections
that is, written or spoken testimony.
A vulgar prejudice exists against "subjective"
knowledge as inferior to "objective"
knowledge, largely because the word
"'subjective has also come to mean "illusory"
or "based upon personal considerations," and
hence either "untrue" or "biased." Knowledge
may be acquired, however, by an impartial and
judicially detached investigation of mental
images, processes, concepts, and precepts that
are one or more steps removed from objective
reality. Impartiality and "objectivity," to be
sure, may be more difficult to obtain from
such data, and hence conclusions based upon
them may be more debatable; but such data
and conclusions, if true, are not necessarily
interior to other kinds of knowledge per se.
The word subjective is not used here to imply
disparagement of any sort, but it does imply
the necessity for the application o1 spec1a1
Kinds of safeguards against error.
Artifacts as Sources of History
Only where relics of human happenings can be
found a potsherd, a coin, a ruin, a manuscript,
a book, a portrait, a stamp, a piece of
wreckage, a strand of hair, or other
archeological or anthropological remains- do
we have objects other than words that the
historian can study. These objects, however,
are never the happenings or the events
themselves. If artifacts, they are the results of
events; if written documents, they may be the
results of the records of events. Whether
artifacts or documents, they are raw materials
out of which history may be written.
To be sure, certain historical truths can be
derived immediately from such materials. The
historian can discover that a piece of pottery
was handwrought, that a building was made of
martared brick, that a manuscript was written
in a cursive hand, that a painting was done in
oils, that sanitary plumbing was known in an
old city, and many other such data from direct
observation of artifacts surviving from the
past. But such facts, important though they are,
are not the essence of the study of history. The
historian deals with the dynamic or genetic
(the becoming) as well as the static (the being
or the become) and he aims at being
interpretative (explaining why and how things
happened and were interrelated) as well as
descriptive (telling what happened, when and
where, and who took part). Besides, such
descriptive data as can be derived directly and
immediately from surviving artifacts are only a
small part of the periods to which they belong.
A historical context can be given to them only
if they can be placed in a human setting. That
human beings lived in the brick building with
sanitary plumbing, ate out of the handwrought
pottery, and admired the oil painting that were
mentioned above might perhaps easily be
inferred. But the inference may just as easily
be mistaken, for the building might have been
stable, the piece of pottery might have been
from a roof-tile, the painting might have been
a hidden-away relic with not admirers
whatsoever; and an infinity of other
suppositions is possible. Without further
evidence the human context of these articles
can never be recaptured with any degree of
certainty.
Historical knowledge Limited by
Incompleteness of the Records
Unfortunately, for most of the past we not only
have no further evidence of the human setting
in which to place surviving artifacts; we do not
even have the artifacts. Most human affairs
happen without leaving vestiges or records of
any kind behind them. The past, having
happened, has perished forever with only
occasional traces. To begin with, although the
absolute number of historical writings is
staggering, only a small part of what happened
in the past was ever observed. A moment’s
reflection is sufficient to establish that fact.
How much, for example, of what you do, say,
or think 1s ever observed by anyone (including
yourself)? Multiply your unobserved actions,
thoughts, words, and physiological processes
by 2,000,000,000, and you get rough estimate
of the amount of unobserved happenings that
go on in the world all the time. And only a part
of what was observed in the past was
remembered by those who observed it, only a
part of what remembered was recorded; only a
part of what has survived has come to the
historian's attention; only a part of what is
credible has been grasped; and only a part of
what has been grasped can be expounded or
narrated by the historian. The whole history of
the past (what has been called history-as-
actuality) can be known to him only through
the surviving record of it (history-as-record),
and most of history-as-record is only the
surviving part of the recorded part of the
remembered part of the observed past of that
whole. Even when the record of the past is
derived directly from archeological or
anthropological remains, they are yet only the
scholar's selected parts of the discovered parts
of the chance survivals from the total past.
In so far as the historian has an external object
to study it is not the perished history that
actually happened (history-as-actuality) but the
surviving records of what happened (history-
as-record). History can be told only from
history-as-record; and history as told Spoken-
or-written-history) is only the historians
expressed part of the understood part or ten
credible part of the discovered part of history-
as-record. Before the past is set forth by the
historian, it 1s likely to have gone through
eight separate steps at each of which some of it
has been lost; and there is no guarantee that
what remains is the most important, the
largest, the most valuable, the most
representative, or the most enduring part. In
other words, the "object" that the historian
studies is not only incomplete; it is markedly
variable as records are lost or rediscovered.
History as the Subjective process of Re-
creation
From this probably inadequate remainder the
historian must do what he can to restore the
total past of mankind. He has no way of doing
it but in terms of his own experience. That
experience, however, has taught him (1) that
yesterday was different from today in some
ways as well as the same as today in others,
and (2) that his own experience is both like
and unlike other men's. It is not alone his own
memories interpreted in the light of his own
experience that he must try to apply to the
understanding of historical survivals; it is the
memories of many other people as well, but
one's own memories are abstract images, not
realities, and one's reconstructions of others’
memories, even when reinforced by
contemporary records and relies, are likely to
be even more abstract. Thus the utmost the
historian can grasp of history-as-actuality, no
matter how real it may have seemed while t
was happening, can be nothing more than a
mental image or a series of mental images
based upon an application of his own
experience, real and vicarious, to part of a part
of a part of a part of a part of a part of a
vanished whole.
In short, the historian's aim is verisimilitude
with regard to a perished past – subjective
process – rather than experimental certainty
with regard to an objective reality. He tries to
get as close an approximation to the truth
about the past as constant correction of his
mental images will allow, at the same time
recognizing that the truth has in fact eluded
him forever. Here is the essential difference
between the study of man's past and of man' s
physical environment Physics, for example,
has an extrinsic and whole object to study –
the physical universe – that does not change
because the physicist is studying it, no matter
how much his understanding of it may change;
history has only detached and scattered objects
to study (documents and relics) that do not
together make up the total object that the
historian is studying – the past of mankind –
and that object, having largely disappeared,
exists only in as far as his always incomplete
and frequently changing understanding of it
can re-create it. Some of the natural scientists,
such as geologists and paleozoologist , in so
far as the objects they study are traces from a
perished past, greatly resemble historians in
this regard, but differ from them, on the other
hand, in so far as historians have to deal with
human testimony as well as physical traces.
Once the historian understands his
predicament, his task is simplified. His
responsibility shifts from the obligation to
acquire a complete knowledge of the
irrecoverable past by means of the surviving
evidence to that of re-creating a verisimilar
image of as much of the past as the evidence
makes recoverable. The latter task is the easier
one. For the historian history becomes only
that part of the human past which can be
meaningfully reconstructed from the available
records and from inferences regarding their
setting.
Historical Method and Historiography
Defined
The process of critically examining and
analyzing the records and survivals of the past
is here called historical method. The
imaginative reconstruction of the past from the
data derived by that process is called
historiography (the writing of history). By
means of historical method and historiography
(both of which are frequently grouped together
simply as historical method) the historian
endeavors to reconstruct as much of the past of
mankind as he can. Even in this limited effort,
however, the historian is handicapped. He
rarely can tell the story even of a part of the
past "as it actually occurred," although the
great German historian Leopold von Ranke
enjoined him to do so, because in addition to
the probable incompleteness of the records, he
is faced with the inadequacy of the human
imagination and of human speech for such an
'actual re-creation. But he can endeavor, to use
a geometrician's phrase, to approach the actual
past "as a imit." For the past conceived of as
something that "actually occurred" places
obvious limits upon the kinds of record and of
imagination that he may use. He must be sure
that his records really come from the past and
are in fact what they seem to be and that his
imagination is directed toward re-creation and
not creation. These limits distinguish history
from fiction, poetry, drama, and fantasy.
Imagination in Historiography
The historian is not permitted to imagine
things that could not reasonably have
happened. For certain purposes that we shall
later examine he may imagine things that have
happened. But he is frequently required to
imagine things that must have happened. For
the exercise of the imagination in history it is
impossible to lay down rules except very
general ones. It is a platitude that the historian
who knows contemporary life best will
understand past life best. Since the human
mentality has not changed noticeably in
historic times, present generations can
understand past generations in terms of their
own experience. Those historians can make
the best analogies and contrasts – that is – the
widest range of experience, imagination,
wisdom, and knowledge. Unfortunately, no
platitude tells how to acquire a wide range of
those desirable qualities and knowledge or
how to transfer them to an understanding of
the past. For they are not accumulated alone
by precept or example, industry and prayer,
though all of these may help. And so
historiography, the synthesizing of historical
data into narrative or expositions by writing
history books and articles or delivering history
lectures, is not easily made the subject of rules
and regulations. Some room must be left for
native talent and inspiration, and perhaps that
is a good thing. But since precepts and
examples may help, an effort will be made to
set forth a few of them.
History of Historical Method
Historical method, however, not only can be
made the subject of rules and regulations; for
over two thousand years it has been.
Thucydides, who in the fifth century B.C.
wrote his famous history of the Peloponesian
War, conscientiously told his readers how he
gathered his materials and what tests he used
to separate truth from fiction. Even when he
invented speeches to put into the mouths of
contemporaries, he tried to make them as like
the originals as his sources of knowledge
permitted. He hoped to conform both to the
spirit of the speaker and the letter of the
speech; but since stenographic reports were
not available, he had sometimes to supply the
speaker's words, "expressed as I thought he
would be likely to express them."
Since Thucydides' day, many historians have
written, briefly or at length, upon historical
method. Outstanding examples are Lucian, Ibn
Khaldun, Bodin, Mably, Voltaire, and Ranke,
though sometimes their studies have dealt with
the scope rather than the techniques of history.
With Emst Bernheim's Lehbuch der
historichen Methode und de
Geschichtsphilosophie (1" ed., Leipzig, 1889).
The modern and more academic discussion of
the subject may be said to have begun. Since
Bernheim's exposition a number of other
textbooks have been published. Although none
of them surpass his masterpiece, peculiar
merits intended for particular kinds of readers
are found in some. Notable examples are the
Langlois and Seignobos volume for Frechmen;
the Johnson and the Nevins volumes for
Americans; the Harsin and the Kent booklets
for younger students; and the Wolf, the
Hockett, and the Bloch and Renouvin books
for students of specialized fields of history.
In all of these works and literally dozens of
others like them there is a striking degree of
unanimity regarding the methods of historical
analysis. For our purposes these methods will
be considered under four headings: (l) the
selection of a subject for investigation; (2)
collection of probable sources of information
of the subject: (3) the examination of those
sources for genuineness (either in full or in
part), and (4) the extraction of credible
particulars from sources (or parts of sources)
proved genuine. The synthesis of the
particulars thus derived is historiography,
about which there is less unanimity among the
textbooks. For purposes of clarity we shall
have to treat analysis and synthesis as if they
were discreet processes, but we shall see that
at various stages they cannot be entirely
separated.
Sources
The historian's problem in choosing a subject
and collecting in formation upon it (the latter
sometimes dignified by the Greek name of
heuristics) will be discussed in Chapter IV.
Historical heuristics do not differ essentially
from any other bibliographical exercise in so
far as printed books are concerned. The
historian, however, has to use many materials
that are not in books. Where these are
archeological, epigraphical or numismatical
materials, he has to depend largely on
museums. Where they are official records, he
may have to search for them in archives, court
houses, governmental libraries, etc. where they
are private papers not available in official
collections he may have to hunt among the
papers of business houses, the muniment
rooms of ancient castles, the prized
possessions of autograph collectors, the
records of parish churches, etc. having some
subject in mind, with more or less definite
delimitation of the persons, areas, times, and
functions (i.e., the economic, political,
intellectual, diplomatic or other occupational
aspects) involved, he looks for materials that
may have some bearing upon those persons in
that area at that time functioning in that
fashion. These materials are his sources. The
more precise his delimitations of persons, area,
time, and function, the more relevant his
sources are likely to be (see Chapter X).
The Distinction between Primary and Other
Original Sources
Written and oral sources are divided into two
kinds: primary and secondary. A primary
source is the testimony of eyewitness, or of a
witness by any other of the senses, or of a
mechanical device like the Dictaphone – that
is, of one who or that which was present at the
events of which he or it tells (hereafter called
simply eyewitness). A secondary source is the
testimony of anyone who is not an eyewitness
that is, of one who was not present at the
events of which he tells. A primary source
must thus have been produced by a
contemporary of the events it narrates. It does
not, however, need to be original in the legal
sense of the word original – that is, the very
document (usually the first written draft)
whose contents are the subject of discussion
for quite often a later copy or a printed edition
will do just as well; and in the case of the
Greek and Roman classics seldom are any but
later copies available.
“Original” is a word of so many different
meanings that it would have been better to
avoid it in precise historical discourse. It can
be, and frequently is, used to denote five
different conditions of a document, all of
which are important to the historian. A
document may be called "original" (1) because
it contains fresh and creative ideas, (2) because
it is not translated from the language in which
it was first written, (3) because it is in earliest,
unpolished stage, (4) because its text is the
approved text, unmodified and untampered
with, and (5) because it is the earliest available
source of the information it provides. These
five meanings of the word may overlap, but
they are not synonymous.
Unfortunately, the phrase "original sources"
has become common among historians, and it
is desirable to define its usage accurately. It is
best used by the historian in only two senses –
(1) to describe a source, unpolished, uncopied,
untranslated, as it issued from the hands of the
authors (e.g., the original draft of the Magna
Carta) or (2) a source that gives the earliest
available information (i.e. the origin)
regarding the question under investigation
because earlier sources have been lost (in the
sense that Livy is an "original source for some
of our knowledge of the kings of Rome). In
using the phrase historians are frequently
guilty of looseness. An effort will be made to
use it here only in the two senses just defined.
Primary sources need not be original in either
of these two ways. They need be "original"
only in the sense of underived or first-hand as
to their testimony. This point ought to be
emphasized in order to avoid confusion
between original sources and primary sources.
The confusion arises from a particularly
careless use of the word original. It is often
used by historians as a synonym for
manuscript or archival. Yet a moment's
reflexion will suffice to indicate that a
manuscript source is no more likely to be
primary than a printed source, and that it may
be a copy rather than the "original”. Even
where it is a primary source, it may deal with a
subject upon which earlier information is
already available. Hence a manuscript source
is not necessarily "original" in either of the
two relevant senses of that word. It should be
remembered that the historian when analyzing
sources is interested chiefly in particulars and
that he asks of each particular whether it is
based on first-hand or second-hand testimony.
Hence it makes small difference to him
whether a document is original in the sense of
"as written by its actual author" or a copy,
except in so far as such originality may aid
him to determine its author and therefore
whether it is primary or, it is secondary, from
what more independent testimony it is derived.
Students of history readily depend upon
specialists in editorial skills and archival
techniques to publish collections of
manuscripts and are willing to use them in
printed form.
Primary Particulars Rather than Whole
Primary Sources Sought
As has been indicated, the historian is less
concerned with a source as a whole than with
the particular data within that source. It is easy
to conceive of a source essentially primary that
will contain secondary (and therefore less
usable) data. The general who writes a
communiqué thereby provides a source that
may be for the most part primary but for many
details secondary, because he must necessarily
depend upon his subordinates for information
regarding much that he reports. The newspaper
correspondents may, like Aeneas, tell about
things "all of which he saw and part of which
he was and yet may also have to depend upon
"an official spokesman or "source usually
considered reliable" for some of his
information. The careful historian will use all
the statements of such military communiqué or
newspaper dispatches with equal confidence.
On the other hand, should he find, as he
frequently does, that a book that is essentially
secondary (like a biography or even a work of
fiction) contains, for example, personal letters
or touches of directly observed local color, he
may well use them as first-hand evidence if
they are genuine and relevant.
Sources, in other words, whether primary or
secondary, are important to the historian
because they contain primary particulars (or at
least suggest leads to primary particulars). The
particulars they furnish are trustworthy not
because of the book or article or report they
are in, but because of the reliability of the
narrator as a witness of those particulars.
The Document
The word document (from docere, to teach)
has also been used by historians in several
senses. On the one hand, it is sometimes used
to mean a written source of historical
information as contrasted with oral testimony
or with artifacts, pictorial survivals, and
archeological remains. On the other, it is
sometimes reserved for only official and state
papers such as treatises, laws, grants, deeds,
etc. Still another sense is contained in the word
documentation which as used by the historian
among others, signifies any process of proof
based upon any kind of source whether
written, oral, pictorial, or archeological. For
the sake of clarity, it seems best to employ the
word document in the last, the most
comprehensive meaning, which 1s
etymologically correct, using written
document and official document to designate
the less comprehensive categories. Thus
document becomes synonymous with source,
whether written or not, official or not, primary
or not.
The Human and the "Personal" Document
The human document has been defined as "an
account of individual experience which
reveals the individual's actions as a human
agent and as a participant in social life." The
personal document has been defined as "any
self-revealing record that intentionally or
unintentionally yields information regarding
the structure, dynamics and functioning of the
author's mental life." The first definition is by
a sociologist and emphasizes experience… In
“social life” as an element of the human
document. The second definition is by a
psychologist and emphasizes "the author's
mental life" as an element of the personal
document have been used interchangeably.
The two kinds of documents seem to have one
essential characteristic in common; a human,
personal reaction to the events with which they
deal. To both sociologist and psychologist it is
the degree of subjectivity in these documents
that distinguishes them from other documents.
The best examples seem to be documents
written in the first person -like autobiographies
and letters - or documents written in the third
person but describing human reactions and
attitudes like newspaper accounts, court
records, and records of social agencies.
To the historian the difference between first-
person and third-person documents is not of
major significance. That is true for at least
three reasons. (1) Often an apparently third-
person document is in fact first-person (as, for
example, the Mémoires of Lafayette or The
Education of Henry Adams). (2) Genuinely
third-person documents in so far as they are
"historicable" must ultimately rest on first-
hand observation (whether by the author or by
someone consulted by the author). (3) Every
document, no matter how thoroughly the
author strove to be impartial and detached,
must exhibit to a greater or lesser extent the
author's philosophies and emphases, likes and
dislikes, and hence betrays the author's inner
personality. Edward Gibbon's Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire, Johann Gustav
Droysen's Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen
or Hippolyte Taine's French Revolution may
be regarded as secondary, third-person
accounts of remote history, or they may be
(and indeed have been) regarded as
autobiographical writings of Gibbon, Droysen,
and Taine. Scholarly reviews of scholarly
books ought to be among the least likely
places to hunt tor personal reactions (except,
as sometimes happens with the best reviews,
the reviewer deliberately sets out to present his
own point of view); and yet how often private
philosophies, attitudes, likes, and dislikes are
unintentionally betrayed by the most sober
reviewers! Whether a documents is to be
examined for what it reveals about its subject
or for what it reveals about its author- whether,
in other words, it is a third-person or a first-
person document thus depends upon the
examiner's rather than the author's intention.
For the same reason the term personal
document is to the historian synonymous with
the term human document. These terms were
invented by social scientists. The historian is
not likely to employ them. To him they appear
tautalogous. All documents are both human
and personal, since they are the work of
human beings and shed light upon their
authors as well as upon the subjects the
authors were trying to expound. Sometimes,
indeed, they betray the author's personality,
private thoughts, and social lite more
revealingly than they describe the things he
has under observation. Here, too, a document's
significant may have greater relationship to the
intention of the historian than to that of the
author. Sometimes the historian may learn
more about the author than the author intended
that he should.
Topic: The Problem of Authenticity and
Credibility
Chapter VI
Excerpt from "The Problem of
Authenticity, or External Criticism"
by Louis Gottschalk
So far it has been assumed that the documents
dealt with have been authentic. The problem of
authenticity seldom concerns the sociologist or
psychologist or an anthropologist, who
generally has a living Subject under his eye,
can see him as he prepares his autobiography
and can cross-examine him about doubtful
points. Even in the law courts the question of
authenticity of documents becomes difficult
problem only on rare occasions, when the
writer or witness to the writing cannot be
produced. But for historical documents those
occasions are not rare. They are in fact
frequent for manuscript sources; and if doubt
as to authenticity arises less often for printed
sources, it is because usually some skilled
editor has already performed the task of
authenticating them.
Forged or Misleading Documents
Forgeries or documents in whole or in part
without being usual, are common enough to
keep the careful historian constantly on his
guard. "Historical documents" are fabricated
for several reasons. Sometimes they are used
to bolster a false claim or title. A well-known
example is the Donation of Constantine, which
used to be cited on occasion to bolster a theory
that popes had a wide territorial claim in the
west. In 1440 Lorenzo Valla proved, chiefly
by means of anachronisms of style and
allusion, that it had been forged. At other times
documents are counterfeited for sale.
Counterfeit letter of Queen Marie Antoinette
used to turn up frequently. A Philadelphia
autograph dealer named Robert Spring once
manufactured hundreds of skilful forgeries in
order to supply the demand or collectors. A
recent notorious example of forgery was the
"correspondence" of Abraham Lincoln and
Ann Rutledge, palmed off on the Atlantic
Monthly in 1928.
Sometimes fabrication is due to less mercenary
considerations. Political propaganda largely
accounts for protocols of the Elders of Zion, a
"document” pretending to reveal a ruthless
Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.
Sometimes historical "facts" are based only on
some practical joke, as in the case of H.L.
Mencken's much cited article on the "history"
of the bathtub, or of Alexander Woollcott's
mocking letter of endorsement of Dorothy
Parker's husband (of which he never sent the
original to ice supposed addressee, although he
did send the carbon copy to the endorsee). The
Memoires of Madame d' Epinay are a striking
example of fabrication of a whole book that
has beguiled even respectable historians.
Sometimes quite genuine documents are
intended to mislead certain contemporaries
and hence have misled subsequent historians.
A statement supposed to be that of Emperor
Leopold II's views on the French Revolution
misled Marie Antoinette and subsequently
even the most careful historians until it was
exposed in 1984 as a wishful statement of
some French emigrés. In days when spies are
expected to open mail in the post, writers of
letters would occasionally try to outwit them
by turning their curiosity to the advantage of
the one spied upon rather than to that of the
spy or his employer. And when censors might
condemn books to be burned and writers to be
imprisoned, authors could hardly be blamed if
they sometimes signed others names to their
work. For instance, it is hard to tell whether
some works actually written by Voltaire are
not still ascribed to others. It is thus possible to
be too skeptical about a document which may
be genuine though not what it seems.
Bernheim has provided a list of documents
that were once hypercritically considered
unauthentic bur are now accepted. Perhaps it
was hypercriticism of this kind that led
Vincent Starrett to write his verse entitled
“After Much Striving for Fame”
It would be rather jolly, I think,
To be the original authority
On some obscure matter of literature or
faith
Upon which, in one's leisure,
 One had jotted down an inaccurate
pamphlet
And forever there after
To be quoted by all post- Vincentian
borrowers
In a pertinacious footnote.
Occasionally misrepresentations of the nature
of printed works result from editor‘s tricks. It
is still a matter of dispute which of many
writings attributed to Cardinal Richelieu were
in fact written or dictated by him, and little of
the so-called Mémoires de Jean de Witt and
Testament politique de Colbert were in fact
Written by John de Witt and Colbert. The
memoirs attributed to Condorcet and to
Weber, foster-brother of Marie Antoinette, and
several works ascribed to Napoleon l are by
others than their alleged authors. Even issues
of daily newspapers have been manufactured
long after the dates they bear. The Moniteur
furnishes some good examples. Several diaries
have been made up by others from his
writings. The Circumstances of The forgery or
misrepresentation of historical documents may
often themselves reveal important political,
cultural, and biographical information - but not
about the same events or persons as if they
were genuine.
Tests of Authenticity
To distinguish a hoax or misrepresentation
from genuine document, the historian has to
use tests that are common also in police and
legal detection. Making the best guess he can
of the date of the document, he examines the
materials to see whether they are not
anachronistic: paper was rare in Europe before
the fifteenth century, and printing was
unknown, pencils did not exist there before the
sixteenth century; typewriting was not
invented until the nineteenth century, and
India paper came only at the end of that
century. The historian also examines the ink
for signs of age or for anachronistic chemical
composition. Making his best guess of the
possible author of the document, he sees if he
can identify the handwriting, signature, seal,
letterhead, or watermark. Even when the
handwriting is unfamiliar, it can be compared
with authenticated specimens. One of the
unfulfilled needs of the historian is more of
what the French call "isographies - dictionaries
of biography giving examples of handwriting.
For some period of history, experts using
techniques known as dictionaries of biography
giving examples or handwriting for some
period of history, experts using techniques
known as paleography and diplomatics, first
systematized by Mabillon in the seventeenth
century, have long known that in certain
regions at certain times handwriting and the
style and form of official documents were
more or less conventionalized. Seals have been
the subject of special study by sigillographers,
and experts can detect faked ones.
Anachronistic style (idiom, orthography or
punctuation) can be detected by specialists
who are familiar with contemporary writing.
Often spelling, particularly of proper names
and signatures (because too good or too bad or
anachronistic), reveals a forgery, as would also
unhistoric grammar.
Anachronistic references to events (too early
or too late or too remote) or the dating of the
document at a time when the alleged writer
could not possibly have been at the place
designated (the alibi) uncovers fraud.
Sometimes the skillful forger has all too
carefully followed the best historical sources
and his product becomes too obviously a copy
in certain passages, or where, by skillful
paraphrase and invention, he is shrewd enough
to avoid detection in that fashion, he is given
away by the absence of trivia and otherwise
unknown details from his manufactured
account. Usually, however, if the document is
where ought to be- for example, in a family’s
archives, or among a business firm's or
lawyer's papers, or in governmental bureau’s
records (but not merely because it is in a
library or in an amateur’s autograph
collection) - its provenance (or its custody, as
the lawyers call it), creates a presumption or
its genuineness.
Garbled Documents
A document that in its entirety or in large part
is the result of a deliberate effort to deceive
may often be hard to evaluate, but it
sometimes causes less trouble than does the
document that is unauthentic only in small
part. For such parts are usually the result, not
of studied falsehood, but of unintentional
error. They occur most frequently in copies of
documents whose originals have disappeared,
and are generally due to that kind of error of
omission, repetition, or addition with which
anyone who have ever made copies soon
becomes familiar. Sometimes they are the
result, however, not of carelessness but of
deliberate intention to modify, supplement, or
continue the original. Such a change may be
made in good faith in the first instance, care
being exerted to indicate the differences
between the original text and the glossary or
continuations, but future copyist are often less
careful or more confused and make no such
distinctions.
This problem is most familiar to classical
philologists and Bible critics. For they seldom
have copies less than eight centuries and
several stages of reproduction removed from
the original-that is to say, copies of copies of
copies and sometimes copies of translations of
copies of translations of copies, and so0 on.
The philologists give to this problem of
establishing an accurate text the name textual
criticism, and in Biblical studies it is also
called lower criticism. The historian has
borrowed his technique from philologist and
Bible critics.
The Restoration of Texts
The technique is complicated but can be
briefly described. The first task is to collect as
many copies of the dubious text as diligent
search will reveal. Then they are compared. It
is found that some contain words or phrases or
whole passages that are not contained in
others. The question then arises: Are those
words, phrases or passages additions to the
original text that have found their way into
some copies, or are they omissions from the
others? To answer that question it is necessary
to divide the available copies into one or more
"families" - that is, groups of texts which
closely resemble each other and therefore
seem to be derived, directly or indirectly, from
the same master copy. Then by a comparison
of the texts within each family an effort is
made to establish the comparative age of each
in relation to the others. If the members of the
same family are largely copied from each
other, as this arrangement in families
frequently shows, the oldest one is all
probability (but not necessarily) the one
nearest the original. This process is continued
for all the families. When the copy nearest the
original in each family is discovered, a
comparison of all of these "father" copies will
usually then reveal words and passages that
are in some but not in others. Again the
question arises: Are those words and passages
additions to the copies that have them or
omissions from the copies that do not? The
most accurate available wordings of the
passages added or omitted by the respective
copyists are then prepared. Changes in
handwritings, anachronisms in style, grammar,
orthography, or factual detail, and opinions or
errors unlikely to have been those of the
original author frequently reveal additions by a
later hand. When the style and contents of
passages under discussion may be attributed to
the author, it is safe to assume that they were
parts of his original manuscript but were
omitted by later copyist; and when they cannot
be attributed to the author, it is safe to assume
that they were not parts of his original
manuscript. In some cases, a final decision has
to await the discovery of still more copies. In
many instances the original text can be
approximately or entirely restored.
By a similar method one can even guess the
contents, at least in part, of a “father”
manuscript even when no full copy of it is in
existence. The historian Wilhelm von
Giesebrecht, a student of Ranke, attempted to
reconstruct a text that he reasoned must be the
ancestor of several eleventh-century chronicles
in which he had noted striking similarities. By
adding together the passages that appeared to
be "descended" from an unknown chronicle,
he made a guess as to its contents. Over a
quarter of a century later the ancestor
chronicle was in fact found and proved to be
extensively like Giesebrecht's guess.
Identification of Author and of Date
Some guess of the approximate date of the
document and some identification of its
supposed author (or, at least, a surmise as to
his location in time and space and as to his
habits, attitudes, character, learning.
associates, etc.) obviously form an essential
part of external criticism. Otherwise it would
be impossible to prove or disprove authenticity
by anachronisms, handwriting, style, alibi, or
other tests that are associated with the author's
milieu, personality, and actions. But similar
knowledge or guesses are also necessary for
internal criticism, and therefore the problem of
author-identification has been left for the next
chapter.
Having established an authentic text and
discovered what its author really intended to
say, the historian has only established what the
witness's testimony is. He has yet to determine
whether that testimony is at all credible, and if
s0, to what extent. That is the problem of
internal criticism.
Chapter VII
The Problem of Credibility, or Internal
Criticism
The historian first aims in the examination of
testimony to obtain a set of particulars relevant
to some topic or question that he has in mind.
Isolated particulars have little meaning by
themselves, and unless they have a context or
fit into a hypothesis they are of doubtful value.
But that is a problem of synthesis, which will
be discussed later. What we are now
concerned is the analysis of documents for
credible details to be fitted into a hypothesis or
context.
What is Historical Fact?
In the process of analysis the historian should
constantly keep in mind the relevant
particulars within the document rather than the
document as a whole. Regarding each
particulars he asks: Is it credible? It might be
well to point out again that what is meant by
calling a particular credible is not that it is
actually what happened, but that it is as close
of what actually happened as we can learn
from a critical examination of the best
available sources . This means verisimilar at a
high level. It connotes something more than
merely not being preposterous in itself or even
than plausible and yet is short or meaning
accurately descriptive of past actuality. In
other words, the historian establishes
verisimilitude rather than objective truth.
Though there is a high correlation between the
two, they are not necessarily identical. As far
as mere particulars are concerned, historians
disagree relatively seldom regarding what is
credible in this special sense of "conforming to
a critical examination of the sources. It is not
inconceivable that, in dealing with the same
document, two historians of equal ability and
training would extract the same isolated
"facts" and agree with each other's findings. In
that way the elementary data of history are
subject to proof.
A historical "fact" thus may be defined as a
particular derived directly or indirectly from
historical documents and regarded as credible
after careful testing in accordance with the
canons of historical method. An infinity and a
multiple variety of facts of this kind are
accepted by all historians: e.g., that Socrates
really existed; that Alexander invaded India,
that the Romans built the Pantheon; that the
Chinese have an ancient literature (but here we
introduce a complexity with the word ancient,
which needs definition before its factual
quality can be considered certain); that pope
Innocent III excommunicated King John or
England, that Michael Angelo sculptured
"Moses"; that Bismarck modified the dispatch
from Ems of King Williams secretary; that
banks in the United States in 1933 were closed
for four days by presidential proclamation; and
that "the Yankees” won the “World Series” in
1949. Simple and fully attested "facts" of this
kind are rarely disputed. They are easily
observed, easily recorded (it not self-evident,
like the Pantheon and Chinese literature),
involve no judgments of value (except with
regard to the antiquity of Chinese literature),
contradict no other knowledge available to us,
seem otherwise logically acceptable, and
avoiding generalization, deal with single
instances.
Even some apparently simple and concrete
statements, however, are subject to question. If
no one disputes the historicity of Socrates,
there 1s less agreement regarding Moses and
earlier figures of Hebrew folklore. If no one
doubts that Michael Angelo sculptured his
"Moses, a few still think that Shakespeare's
plays were in fact written by Francis Bacon.
Doubt regarding concrete particulars is likely
to be due, however, to lack of testimony based
on first-hand observation rather than to
disagreement among the witnesses. In general,
on simple and concrete matters where
testimony of direct observation is available,
the testimony can usually be submitted to tests
of reliability that will be convincing either pro
or con to most competent and 1mpartial
historians. As soon as abstractions, value
judgments, generalizations, and other
complexities enter into testimony the
possibility contradiction and debate enters
with them. Hence, alongside the multitude of
facts generally accepted by historians, exists
another multitude debated (or at least
debatable) by them.
The Interrogative Hypothesis
In analyzing a document for its isolated facts,"
the historian should approach it with a
question or a set of questions in mind, The
questions may be relatively noncommittal.
(E.g Did Saul try to assassinate David? What
were the details of Catiline’s life? Who were
the crusading companions of Tancred? What
was the date of Erasmus birth? How many
men were aboard De Grasse's fleet in 1781?
What is the correct spelling of Siėyes? Was
Hung Hsui-chun' an a Christian?) It will be
noted that one cannot ask even simple
questions like these without knowing enough
about some problem in history to ask a
question about it and if one knows enough to
ask even the simplest question, one already has
some idea and probably some hypothesis
regarding it, whether implicit or explicit,
whether tentative and flexible or fformulated
and fixed. Or the hypothesis may be full-
fledged, though still implicit and in
interrogative form (E g.: Can the Jews be held
responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus? Did
the medieval city develop from the fair? Why
did Anabaptists believe in religious liberty?
How did participation in the American
Revolution contribute to the spread of liberal
ideas among the French aristocracy? Why did
Woodrow Wilson deny knowledge of the
"secret treaties”?) In each of these questions a
certain implication is assumed to be true and
further clarification of it is sought on an
additional working assumption.
Putting the hypothesis in interrogative form is
more judicious than putting it in declarative
form if for no other reason than that it is more
noncommittal before all the evidence has been
examined. It may also help in some small way
to solve the delicate problem of relevance of
subject matter (see Chapter X below), since
only those materials are relevant which lead
directly to an answer to the question or
indicate that there is no satisfactory answer.
The Quest for Particular Details of
Testimony
As has already been pointed out, every
historical subject has four aspects - the
biographical, the geographical, the
chronological, and the occupational or
functional. With a set of names, dates, and
key-words in mind tor each of these aspects,
the historical investigator combs his document
for relevant particulars or “notes”, as he is
more likely to call them). It is generally wise
to take notes on relevant matter whether or not
it at first appears credible. It may turn out that
even false or mistaken testimony has relevance
to an understanding of one’s problem.
Having accumulated is notes, the investigator
must now separate the credible from the
incredible. Even from his "notes" he has
sometimes to extract still smaller details, for
even a Single name may reveal a companion
of Tancred, a single letter the correct spelling
of Sieyes, a Single digit the exact number of
De Grasse s Crew, or a single phrase the
motives of Wilson's denial. In detailed
investigations, few documents arc significant
as a whole; they serve most often only as
mines from which to extract historical ore.
Each bit of ore, however, may contain flaws of
its own. The general reliability of an author, in
other words, has significance only as
establishing the probable credibility of his
particular statements. From that process of
scrupulous analysis emerges an important
general rule: for each particular of a
document, the process of establishing
credibility should be separately undertaken
regardless of the general credibility of the
author.
Identification of Author
As has already been pointed out, some
identification of the author is necessary to test
a document’s authenticity. In the subsequent
process of determining the credibility of its
particulars, even the most genuine of
documents should be regarded as guilty of
deceit until proven innocent. The importance
of first establishing the author's general
reliability is therefore obvious. Where the
name of the author can be determined and he
is a person about whom biographical data are
available, identification is a relatively easy
task. Because, in most legal and social science
investigations, the witness or the author of a
document is personally known and available to
the investigator, that question generally
presents no insurmountable difficulties to
lawyers and social scientists.
The historian, however, is frequently obliged
to use documents written by persons about
whom nothing or relatively little is known.
Even the hundreds of biographical dictionaries
and encyclopedias already in existence may be
of no help because the author's name is
unknown or, if known, not to be found in the
reference works. The historian must therefore
depend upon the document itself to teach him
what it can about the author. A single brief
document may teach him much if he asks the
right questions. It may, of course, contain
explicit biographical details, but to assume that
would be begging the question. Even where it
is relatively free from first-person allusions,
much may be learned of the author's mental
processes and personal attitudes from it alone.
Let us take the usual text of Lincoln's
Gettysdurg Address, and assume for the same
of example that we have no knowledge of it
except for what its own contents may reveal:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers
brought forth on this continent, a new
nation, conceived in Liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
testing whether that nation, or any nation
so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure. We are met on a great battle-field
of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field, as a final resting
place for those who here gave their lives
that that nation might live. It 1s altogether
fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-
we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-
this ground. The brave men, living and
dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little
note, nor long remember what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did
here. It is for us the living, rather, to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work
which they who fought here have thus far
so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be
here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us-that from these honored dead
we take increased devotion to that cause
for which they gave the last full measure
of devotion-that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in
vain- that this nation, under God, shall
have a new birth of freedom-and that
government of the people, by the people,
for the people shall not perish from the
earth.
Even a hasty examination will suffice to make
clear that the author, at the time of writing,
was planning to use it as a speech ("we are
met, what we say here"), that he wrote English
well, that his address was a funeral oration
("we have come to dedicate portion of that
field as a final resting place"), that he was
probably a prominent citizen, that he
presumably was an American ("our fathers,"
"this continent," "new nation," four score and
seven years ago"), that he was an advocate of
liberty and equality (or at least desired his
hearer to think so), that he lived during the
American Civil War, that he was speaking at
Gettysburg, or possibly Vicksburg ("great
battlefield," "four score and seven years ago),
and that he wanted his side in the war to be
thought of as fighting for democracy
("government of the people, by the people, for
the people"). If we forget the controversy
among historians as to whether the words
under God were actually delivered or were
only afterward inserted, we may assume that
he subscribed, or wished to appear to
subscribe, to the belief in Supreme Being.
From a short document, it would thus appear,
it is possible to learn much about the author
without knowing who he was. In the case of
the Gettysburg Address a trained historian
would probably soon detect Lincoln's
authorship, if it were unknown. But even if he
had never heard of Lincoln, he would be able
to tell that, in attempting to judge the truth of
the particulars stated in that address, he would
have to consider it as probably a public
exhortation by a prominent antislavery
Northerner after a major victory over the
Confederate States in the American Civil War.
Many documents, being less modest and less
economical of words than the Gettysburg
Address, give their authors away more readily.
Determination of Approximate Date
It would be relatively easy, even if the
Gettysburg Address were a totally strange
document, to establish its approximate date. It
was obviously composed tour-score and seven
years after the Declaration of Independence,
hence in 1863. But few strange documents are
so easily dated. One has frequently to resort to
the conjectures known to the historian as the
terminus non-post quem (“the point not after
which"). These termini, or points, have to be
established by internal evidence by clues given
within the document itself. If the date 1863
were not implicit in the Gettysburg Address,
other references within the speech could point
obviously to the beginning of the American
Civil War as its terminus non ante quem and
since the war was obviously still going on
when the document was composed, its
terminus non post quem would be the end of
the Civil War. Hence its date could be fixed
approximately, even if the first sentence had
been lost, as somewhere between 180l and
1861; and if we were enabled by other data to
guess at "the great battlefield,” we might even
narrow that margin. Some documents might
not permit even a remote guess of their
termini, but where the author is known, one
has at least the dates of his birth and death go
by.
The Personal Equation
This analysis of the Gettysburg Address (under
the false assumption that its authorship is
unknown) indicates the type of question the
historian asks of both anonymous and avowed
documents. Was the author an eyewitness of
the events he narrates? If not, what were his
sources of information? When did he write the
document? How much time elapsed between
the event and the record? What was his
purpose in writing or speaking? Who were his
audience and why? Such questions enable the
historian to answer the still more important
questions: Was the author of the documents
able to tell the truth; and if able, was he
willing to do so? The ability and the
willingness of a witness to give dependable
testimony are determined by a number of
factors in his personality and social situation
that together are sometimes called his personal
equation," a term applied to the correction
required in astronomical observations to allow
for the habitual inaccuracy of individual
observers. The personal equation of a historian
is sometimes also called "his frame of
reference”, but it probably will be found more
expedient to restrict the latter term to his
conscious philosophy or philosophies of life in
so far as they can be divorced from personality
traits and biases of which he may or may not
be aware.
General Rules
In a law court it is frequently assumed that all
the testimony of a witness, though under oath,
is suspect if the opposing lawyers can impugn
his general character or by examination and
cross-examination create doubt or his veracity
in some regard. Even in modern law courts the
old maxim falsus in uno, jaisus in omnibus
tends to be overemphasızed. In addition,
hearsay evidence is as a general rule
excluded;" certain kinds of witnesses are
"privileged" or unqualified" and therefore are
not obliged to testify or are kept from
testifying: and evidence obtained by certain
means regarded as transgressing the citizen’s
rights-such as "third degree," drugs, wire-
tapping, or lie-detector – are ruled out or some
courts. The legal system of evidence, Says
James Bradley Thayer, "is not concerned with
nice definitions, or the exacter academic
operations of the logical faculty. . . Its rules. . .
are seeking to determine, not what is or is not,
in its nature, probative, but rather, passing by
that inquiry, what among really probative
matters, shall, nevertheless, for this or that
practical reason, be excluded, and not even
heard by the jury. Courts of law, in the Anglo-
Saxon system at least, go on the assumption
that it one side presents all the permissible
testimony in its favor and if the other side
presents all the permissible testimony in its,
the truth will emerge plainly enough for judge
and jury from the conflict or harmony of the
testimony, even if some kinds of testimony are
not permissible; and possibly where much and
recent testimony is available, the innocent
suffer less often by such an assumption than
the guilty escape.
The historian, however, is prosecutor, attorney
for the defense, judge, and jury all in one. But
as judge he rules out no evidence whatever if it
is relevant. To him any single detail of
testimony is credible even if it is contained in
a document obtained by force or fraud, or is
otherwise impeachable, or is based on hearsay
evidence, or is from an interested witness
provided it can pass four tests:
1. Was the ultimate source of the detail
(the primary witness) able to tell the
truth?
2. Was the primary witness willing to
tell the truth?
3. Is the primary witness accurately
reported with regard to the detail under
examination?
4. Is there any independent
corroboration of the detail under
examination?
Any detail (regardless of what the source or
who the author) that passes all four tests is
credible historical evidence. It will bear
repetition that the primary witness and the
detail are now the subjects of examination, not
the source as a whole.
Ability to Tell the Truth
(1) Ability to tell the truth rests in part upon
the witness's nearness to the event.
Nearness is here used in both a
geographical and a chronological sense.
The reliability of the witness's testimony
tends to vary in proportion to (a) his own
remoteness from the scene in time and
space, and (b) the remoteness from the
event in time and space of his recording of
it. There are three steps in historical
testimony: observation, recollection, and
recording (not to mention the historian's
own perception of the witness's record). At
each of these steps something of the
possible testimony may be lost.
Geographical as well as chronological
closeness to the event affects all three steps
and helps to determine both how much will
be lost and the accuracy of what is retained.
(2) Obviously all witnesses even if equally
close to the event are not equally competent
as witnesses. Competence depends upon
degree of expertness, state of mental and
physical health, age, education, memory,
narrative skill, etc. the ability to estimate
numbers is especially subject to suspicion.
The size of the army with which Xerxes
invaded Greece in 480 B.C. was said by
Herodotus to have numbered 1,700,000 but
it can be shown to have been considerably
less by the simple computation of the
length of time it would have taken that
many men to march through the
Thermopylae Pass even unopposed. More
recently by a similar computation doubt
was thrown upon the veracity of a
newspaper report from Moscow that one
million men, women, and children paraded
through the Red Square in celebration of
the thirty-second anniversary of the
 October Revolution (November 7, 1949) in
five and one-half hour demonstration, for it
would require more than fifty persons a
second to march abreast past a given point
to complete a parade of one million in five
and one-half hours. With some notable
exceptions, such as the Domesday Book of
William the Conqueror, historians have
been warned against using any source of
numbers before the end of the Middle
Ages. The careful keeping of vital statistics
was a relatively late innovation or the end
of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth century. Previous to that time
tax rolls and incomplete parish records of
baptisms, marriages, and burials were the
best indications. Even battle casualty
statistics before the nineteenth century are
suspect, and historians still disagree on the
cost in human life of wards up to and
including those or Napoleon I, and, in some
instances, beyond.
(3) Degree of attention is als0 an important
fact in the ability to tell the truth. A well-
known story, no less illustrative if it be
apocryphal, tells of a psychology professor
who deliberately staged a fight in his
classroom between two students, which led
to a free- for-all. When peace was restored,
the professor asked each member of the
class to write an account of what had
happened. There were, of course,
conflicting statements among the accounts,
but, what was most significant, no students
had noticed that the professor in the midst
of the pandemonium had taken out a
banana and had peeled and eaten it.
Obviously the entire meaning of the event
rested upon the unnoticed act, it was an
experiment in the psychology of attention.
Because each student's interest had been
fixed upon his own part in the drama, each
had given an erroneous interpretation of
what had occurred. Magicians similarly
depend upon their ability to divert attention
from things they are doing to perpetuate
some of their tricks. The common human
inability to see things clearly and whole
makes even the best of witnesses suspect.
(4) We have already discussed the danger of
the leading question (p. 104). Such
questions, by implying the expected
answer, make it difficult to tell the whole
truth. Lawyers also count the hypothetical
question ("Supposing you did agree with
me, would you act as 1?"), and the
argumentative or "loaded" question ("Have
you stopped beating your wife?") and the
coached answer as belonging to kindred
categories. Such questions are especially
liable to be misleading If they have to be
answered "Yes" or "No." Allport gives a
striking illustration of the kind of
misinformation that can be derived from
the witness whose narrative is
circumscribed by the questioner. He
mentions an investigator who *secured fifty
topical autobiographies, forcing all writers
to tell about radicalism and conservativism
in their lives," and who from those
biographies almost (but fortunately not
quite) came to the conclusion that
"radicalism-conservativism constitutes one
of those first-order variables of which all
personalities are compounded."10
(5) In the last instance the investigator barely
missed reasoning n a circle -from premise
back to premise again. It has been
contended also that one of the reasons why
religious problems and events receive so
much attention in the history of the Middle
Ages is that its principal sources were
written by clergymen. lf medieval
architects, landowners, Soldiers, or
merchants had written more, they might
have asked and answered different kinds of
questions and given writings of our own
intellectuals should prove to be the major
source for future accounts of our age, future
historians will be misled into thinking that
intellectuals had a greater influence upon
human affairs in our time than they actually
have. This sort of circular argument must
be especially guarded against when an
effort is being made to ascribe unsigned
writings to a supposed author, for it is easy
to assume that the ideas of the writings are
characteristic of the supposed author if
 those very articles are the basis of the
assumptions regarding the author's
characteristics.
(6) One almost inescapable shortcoming of the
personal document is its egocentrism. It is
to be expected that even a modest observer
will tell what he himself heard and what he
himself did as if those details were the most
important things that were said and done.
Often it is impossible for him to tell his
story in any other terms, Since that is the
only way he knows it. This observation is a
more or less inevitable corollary of the
caution with regard to attention discussed
above. The famous speech of the Comte de
Mirabeau after Louis XVľ's Royal Session
of June 23, 1789, provides a pat illustration
of how easily such egocentrism may
mislead the historian. Mirabeau (though
speaking in the third person) told how he
has said something about the necessity of
force: "For we shall leave our seats only by
the power of the bayonet." He failed to
mention that several others were expressing
a similar determination at about the same
time, though probably in more moderate
language. Therefore, historians trusting too
confidently to Mirabeau's testimony have
sometimes made him the heroic center of a
desperate crisis, still it 1s more probable
that he was not so conspicuous or the
situation so dramatic as he implied.
In general, inability to tell the truth leads to
errors of omission, rather than commission,
because of lack of completeness or lack of
balance n observation, recollection, or
narrative. Such errors may give a picture that
is out of perspective because it subordinates or
fails to include some important things and
overemphasızes those it does include.
Willingness to Tell the Truth
The historian also has to deal with documents
whose authors, though otherwise competent to
tell the truth, consciously or unconsciously tell
falsehoods. There are several conditions that
tend especially toward untruthfulness and
against which the experience of mankind has
armed lawyers, historians, and others who deal
with testimony."
(1) One of the most elementary rules in the
analysis of testimony is that which
requires the exercise of caution against
the interested witness. A witness's interest
is obvious when he himself may benefit
from perversion of the truth or may
thereby benefit some one of some cause
dear to him. Certain kinds of propaganda
are perhaps the worst examples of
deliberate perversion of truth out of a
desire to benefit a cause. In the
seventeenth century the word propaganda
was applied to Catholic missionary word
without disparagement. Since the
nineteenth century, however, it has been
used more or less derogatorily to
designate any kind of concerted
movement to persuade and the
instruments of such persuasion. The word
may be modem, but propaganda and its
methods have been familiar since efforts
were first made to influence public
opinion.
(2) Often the benefit to be derived from a
perversion of the truth is subtle and may
not be realized by the witness himself. In
such a case the cause of prevarication
probably is bias. If the witness's bias is
favorable to the subject of his testimony,
it is frequently designated studium. If it is
unfavorable, it may be designated odium
or ira. The Latin words are derived from
a declaration by Tacitus that he would
write history since ira studion (thereby
setting a standard that few historians,
including Tacitus, have been able to
achieve). Studium and odium, bias for and
bias against, frequently depend upon the
witnesses' s social circumstances and may
operate in a fashion of which he himself
may not be aware. it becomes important
to the historian to know what the
witness's Weltanschauung (or "frame of
reference") may be, as well as his
 religious, political, social, economic,
racial, national, regional, local, family,
personal, and other ties (or personal
equation). Any of these factors may
dictate a predilection or a prejudice that
will shade his testimony with nuances that
otherwise might have been absent.
(3) The intended hearers or readers of a
document, it has already been remarked
(p. 90), play an important part in
determining the truthfulness of a
statement. The desire to please or to
displease may lead to the coloring or the
avoidance of the truth. Speakers at
political rallies and at banquets, writers of
wartime dispatches and communiqués,
makers of polite letters and conversation
are among the numerous producers of
documents that may subtly pervert fact
for that reason. Akin to and often
associated with interest and bias, which
are often socially determined, this motive
is nevertheless different from them, being
usually personal and individual. It may
occasionally stand alone as an
explanation of prevarication.
(4) Literary style sometimes dictates the
sacrifice of truth. Epigrams and
notoriously- slogans of war and politics
(“L ètat c'est moi", *The Old Guard dies
but never surrenders), if properly
discredited in the interests of accuracy
and truthful reporting, would be robbed
pithiness and color. Authors of
autobiographies and letters, especially
when they write for private amusement,
may feel tempted to state as fact what is
only hearsay or tradition or even fiction;
and frequently narrators and reporters
(especially of they hope for large
audiences) seek to appear omniscient
rather than to use the less Vigorous word,
the less striking phrase, the ifs and buts,
the there-is-some-reason-to- believe and
the it is perhaps-safe-to-say of more
precise discourse.
The anecdote is especially suspect. Much too
often it is a subsequent invention to throw
into humorous or striking relief some
spectacular figure or episode. The more
apposite the anecdote, the mode dubious
it is likely to be without corroboration.
And yet the existence of an especially pat
anecdote has a historical significance of
its own as showing the sort of thing
believed of or imputed to the subject. A
well-known Italian proverb describes
such anecdotes as felicitous (ben trovato)
even if untrue.
(5) Laws and conventions sometimes oblige
witnesses to depart from strict veracity.
The same laws of libel and of good taste
that have encouraged the hiding of the
"resemblance to persons now living or
dead” in fiction and moving pictures have
precluded complete accuracy in some
works of history. Some of the notorious
inaccuracies of Jared Aparks as a
historian were due to his writing of living
characters from testimony by living
witnesses who requested him not to use
certain data. Etiquette in letters and
conversation, conventions and formalities
in treaties and public documents require
politeness and expressions of esteem that
are obviously false or empty. A
successful comedy, James Montgomery's
Mothin but the Truth (1916), was written
around the valiant effort of a young man
to go through a whole day without saying
anything that was untrue; it nearly cost
him all his friends. Religious concepts
like the Christian Scientist's interpretation
of the ideas of evil, disease, and death
may lead to misunderstanding.
Corporations, commission, and societies
are sometimes required by their articles of
incorporation or constitutions to meet
periodically, but when their numbers are
small, the minutes ot their meetings may
be much more formal than the actual
meetings.
(6) Closely akin to this category are the many
instances of inexact dating of historical
 documents because of the conventions
and formalities involved. For example,
the official text of the Declaration of
Independence is dated “In Congress, July
4, I776.” To the unwary reader it would
appear that those who signed it were
present and did so on that day. In fact, the
formal signing took place on August 2,
1776, some members did not sign until a
still later date. Some medieval rulers used
to date documents as of certain towns
though they were not at those towns on
the dates indicated. The modern official's
and businessman's habit of sending letters
on office stationery regardless of where
they may be or of dictating but not
reading their letters, which are signed by
a rubber stamp or a secretary, may make
it very difficult for future biographers to
trace their itineraries. Bank checks,
having the city of the bank's location
printed on them, may also prove
misleading as to the signer's whereabouts.
(7) Expectation or anticipation frequently
leads a witness astray. Those who count
on revolutionaries to be bloodthirsty and
conservatives gentlemanly, those who
expect the young to be irreverent and the
old crabbed, those who know Germans to
be ruthless and Englishmen to lack humor
generally find bloodthirsty Germans and
humorless Englishmen. A certain lack of
precision is found in such witnesses
because their eyes and ears are closed to
fair observation, or because, seeking, they
find; or because in recollection, they tend
to forget or minimize examples that do
not confirm their prejudices and
hypotheses. (This sort of attitude is only a
special kind of bias and might be
regarded merely as a subdivision of
Paragraph 2 above.)
Topic: A Guide for Using Primary
Source or Original Source Documents
A Guide for Using Primary Source or
Original Source Documents
Minnesota Humanities Center
Origin, Purpose, Value and Limitation
(OPVL) is a technique for analyzing historical
documents. It is used extensively in the
International Baccalaureate curriculum and
testing materials, and is incredibly helpful in
teaching students to be critical observers. It is
also known as Document Based Questions
(DBQ).
OPVL can be adapted to be used in any grade.
Younger students can answer more concrete,
factual questions about a document, while
older students have more capacity for abstract
reasoning, placing documents in historical
context, and drawing conclusions.
Origin:
In order to analyze a source, you must first
know what it is. Sometimes not all of these
questions can be answered. The more you do
know about where a document is coming from,
the easier it is to ascertain purpose, value and
limitation. The definition of primary and
secondary source materials can be
problematic. There is constant debate among
academic circles on how to definitively
categorize certain documents and there is no
clear rule of what makes a document a primary
or a secondary source.
Primary – letter, journal, interview, speeches,
photos, paintings, etc. Primary sources are
created by someone who is the “first person”;
these documents can also be called “original
source documents. The author or creator is
presenting original materials as a result of
discovery or to share new information or
opinions. Primary documents have not been
filtered through interpretation or evaluation by
others. In order to get a complete picture of an
event or era, it is necessary to consult
multiple--and often contradictory--sources.
Secondary – materials that are written with the
benefit of hindsight and materials that filter
primary sources through interpretation or
evaluation. Books commenting on a historical
incident in history are secondary sources.
Political cartoons can be tricky because they
can be considered either primary or secondary.
Note: One is not more reliable than the other.
Valuable information can be gleaned from
both types of documents. A primary document
can tell you about the original author’s
perspective; a secondary document can tell
you how the primary document was received
during a specific time period or by a specific
audience.
Other questions must be answered beyond
whether the source is primary or secondary
and will give you much more information
about the document that will help you answer
questions in the other categories.
 Who created it?
 Who is the author?
 When was it created?
 When was it published?
 Where was it published?
 Who is publishing it?
 Is there anything we know about the
author that is pertinent to our
evaluation?
This last question is especially important. The
more you know about the author of a
document, the easier it is to answer the
following questions.
Purpose:
This is the point where you start the real
evaluation of the piece and try to figure out the
purpose for its creation. You must be able to
think as the author of the document. At this
point you are still only focusing on the single
piece of work you are evaluating.
 Why does this document exist?
 Why did the author create this piece of
work? What is the intent?
 Why did the author choose this
particular format? •Who is the
intended audience? Who was the
author thinking would receive this?
 What does the document “say”?
 Can it tell you more than is on the
surface?
If you are teaching at the high school level, try
to steer students away from saying “I think the
document means this...” Obviously, if
students are making a statement it is coming
from their thinking. Help them practice saying
“The document means this...because it is
supported by x evidence.”
Value:
Now comes the hard part. Putting on your
historian hat, you must determine: Based on
who wrote it, when/where it came from and
why it was created...what value does this
document have as a piece of evidence? This is
where you show your expertise and put the
piece in context. Bring in your outside
information here.
 What can we tell about the author
from the piece?
 What can we tell about the time period
from the piece?
 Under what circumstances was the
piece created and how does the piece
reflect those circumstances?
 What can we tell about any
controversies from the piece?
 Does the author represent a particular
‘side’ of a controversy or event?
 What can we tell about the author’s
perspectives from the piece?
 What was going on in history at the
time the piece was created and how
does this piece accurately reflect it?
It helps if you know the context of the
document and can explain what the document
helps you to understand about the context.
Limitation:
This is probably the hardest part. The task
here is not to point out weaknesses of the
source, but rather to say: at what point does
this source cease to be of value to us as
historians?
With a primary source document, having an
incomplete picture of the whole is a given
because the source was created by one person
(or a small group of people?), naturally they
will not have given every detail of the context.
Do not say that the author left out information
unless you have concrete proof (from another
source) that they chose to leave information
out.
Also, it is obvious that the author did not have
prior knowledge of events that came after the
creation of the document. Do not state that the
document “does not explain X” (if X happened
later).
Being biased does not limit the value of a
source! If you are going to comment on the
bias of a document, you must go into detail.
Who is it biased towards? Who is it biased
against? What part of a story does it leave out?
What part of the story is MISSING because of
parts left out?
 What part of the story can we NOT
tell from this document?
 How could we verify the content of
the piece?
 Does this piece inaccurately reflect
anything about the time period?
 What does the author leave out and
why does he/she leave it out (if you
know)?
 What is purposely not addressed?
This is again an area for you to show your
expertise of the context. You need to briefly
explain the parts of the story that the document
leaves out. Give examples of other documents
that might mirror or answer this document.
What parts of the story/context can this
document not tell?
Topic: History of the Philippine Islands
by Antonio de Morga
Antonio de Morga wrote his scholarly work
Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (Events in the
Philippine Islands) which was published in
1609 in Mexico. It is a primary source that was
read and annotated by Dr. Jose Rizal. This
book contains Morga's personal experiences
and documentation from eye-witnesses of the
events in the country. In contrast to the
religious chronicles, the book is known to be
the first history of the Philippines to be written
by a layman. Filipino historians, then and now,
find it as a valuable document accounting the
state to Filipinos’ socio-economic, political,
and religious beliefs before the coming of the
Spaniards. However, some narratives of
Morga are often distorted facts with erroneous
conceptions about Pre-Hispanic Filipino
cultural practices. His writing is a good
example of how colonial history has presented
the Pre-Hispanic time as a period of "darkness
or backwardness” to justify Spanish conquest
and Filipino's conversion to Christianity.
As an eye-witness, Antonio de Morga was
primarily a lawyer who joined the government
Service in 1580. Thereafter, he was appointed
in 1593 as Lieutenant Governor in Manila, the
second most powerful position ii the colony,
next only to the Governor General of the
Philippines. In 1598, he resigned this post to
assume the office of oidor or Judge in the
Audiencia (Ocampo, 1998).
The following text is an excerpt of Sucesos de
las Islas Filipinas of Antonio de Morga
particularly focused on Chapter 8. It discusses
the economic system, antiquity, customs, and
government, both during the period of their
paganism and after their conquest by the
Spaniards. For present-day Filipinos, chapter
eight, according to Ambeth Ocampo (1998), is
the most interesting because it gives a
description of the prehispanic Filipinos, or
rather the indios, at the Spanish contact. This
same chapter was indispensable for Rizal, not
only for its ethnographic value but more so in
helping him reconstruct the prehispanic
Philippines which Rizal wanted to present to
his countrymen.
History of the Philippine Islands
Antonio de Morga
Chapter 8
In various parts of this island of Luzon are
found a number of natives black in color. Both
men and women have woolly hair, and their
stature is not very great, although they are
strong and robust. These people are barbarians,
and have but little capacity. They possess no
fixed houses or settlements, but wander in
bands and hordes through the mountains and
rough country, changing from one site to
another according to the season. They support
themselves in certain clearings, and by
planting rice, which they do temporarily, and
by means of the game that they bring down
with their bows, in the use of which they are
very skilful and certain. [217] They live also
on honey from the mountains, and roots
produced by the ground. They are a barbarous
people, in whom one cannot place confidence.
They are much given to killing and to
attacking the settlements of the other natives,
in which they commit many depredations; and
there is nothing that can be done to stop them,
or to subdue or pacify them, although this is
always attempted by fair or foul means, as
opportunity and necessity demand.
The apparel and clothing of these natives of
Luzon before the entrance of the Spaniards
into the country were generally, for the men,
certain short collarless garments of cangan,
sewed together in the front, and with short
sleeves, and reaching slightly below the waist;
some were blue and others black, while the
chiefs had some red ones, called chinanas.
[218] They also wore a strip of colored cloth
wrapped about the waist, and passed between
the legs, so that it covered the privy parts,
reaching half−way down the thigh; these are
called bahaques. [219] They go with legs bare,
feet unshod, and the head uncovered, wrapping
a narrow cloth, called potong [220] just below
it, with which they bind the forehead and
temples. About their necks they wear gold
necklaces, wrought like spun wax, [221] and
with links in our fashion, some larger than
others. On their arms they wear armlets of
wrought gold, which they call calombigas, and
which are very large and made in different
patterns. Some wear strings of precious
stonescornelians and agates; and other blue
and white stones, which they esteem highly.
[222] They wear around the legs some strings
of these stones, and certain cords, covered
with black pitch in many foldings, as garters.
[223]
There were no kings or lords throughout these
islands who ruled over them as in the manner
of our kingdoms and provinces; but in every
island, and in each province of it, many chiefs
were recognized by the natives themselves.
Some were more powerful than others, and
each one had his followers and subjects, by
districts and families; and these obeyed and
respected the chief. Some chiefs had
friendship and communication with others, and
at times wars and quarrels. [310]
These principalities and lordships were
inherited in the male line and by succession of
father and son and their descendants. If these
were lacking, then their brothers and collateral
relatives succeeded. Their duty was to rule and
govern their subjects and followers, and to
assist them in their interests and necessities.
What the chiefs received from their followers
was to be held by them in great veneration and
respect; and they were served in their wars and
voyages, and in their tilling, sowing, fishing,
and the building of their houses. To these
duties the natives attended very promptly,
whenever summoned by their chief. They also
paid the chiefs tribute (which they called buiz),
in varying quantities, in the crops that they
gathered. The descendants of such chiefs, and
their relatives, even though they did not inherit
the lordship, were held in the same respect and
consideration. Such were all regarded as
nobles, and as persons exempt from the
services rendered by the others, or the
plebeians, who were called timaguas. [311]
The same right of nobility and chieftainship
was preserved for the women, just as for the
men. When any of these chiefs was more
courageous than others in war and upon other
occasions, such a one enjoyed more followers
and men; and the others were under his
leadership, even if they were chiefs. These
latter retained to themselves the lordship and
particular government of their own following,
which is called barangai among them. They
had datos and other special leaders
[mandadores] who attended to the interests of
the barangay.
The superiority of these chiefs over those of
their barangai was so great that they held the
latter as subjects; they treated these well or ill,
and disposed of their persons, their children,
and their possessions, at will, without any
resistance, or rendering account to anyone. For
very slight annoyances and for slight
occasions, they were wont to kill and wound
them, and to enslave them. It has happened
that the chiefs have made perpetual slaves of
persons who have gone by them, while bathing
in the river, or who have raised their eyes to
look at them less respectfully and for other
similar causes. [312]
The natives' laws throughout the islands were
made in the same manner, and they followed
the traditions and customs of their ancestors,
without anything being written. Some
provinces had different customs than others in
some respects. However, they agreed in most,
and in all the islands generally the same usages
were followed. [314] There are three
conditions of persons among the natives of
these islands, and into which their government
is divided: the chiefs, of whom we have
already treated; the timaguas, who are
equivalent to plebeians; and slaves, those of
both chiefs and timaguas.
The slaves were of several classes. Some were
for all kinds of work and slavery, like those
which we ourselves hold. Such are called
saguiguilires; [315] they served inside the
house, as did likewise the children born of
them. There are others who live in their own
houses with their families, outside the house of
their lord; and come, at the season, to aid him
in his sowings and harvests, among his rowers
when he embarks, in the construction of his
house when it is being built, and to serve in his
house when there are guests of distinction.
These are bound to come to their lord's house
whenever he summons them, and to serve in
these offices without any pay or stipend. These
slaves are called namamahays, [316] and their
children and descendants are slaves of the
same class. From these slaves saguiguilirs and
namamahays are issue, some of whom are
whole slaves, some of whom are half slaves,
and still others one−fourth slaves. It happens
thus: if either the father or the mother was free,
and they had an only child, he was half free
and half slave. If they had more than one child,
they were divided as follows: the first follows
the condition of the father, free or slave; the
second that of the mother. If there were an odd
number of children, the last was half free and
half slave. Those who descended from these, if
children of a free mother or father, were only
one−fourth slaves, because of being children
of a free father or mother and of a half−slave.
These half slaves or one−fourth slaves,
whether saguiguilirs or namamahays, served
their masters during every other moon; and in
this respect so is such condition slavery.
In the same way, it may happen in divisions
between heirs that a slave will fall to several,
and serves each one for the time that is due
him. When the slave is not wholly slave, but
half or fourth, he has the right, because of that
part that is free, to compel his master to
emancipate him for a just price. This price is
appraised and regulated for persons according
to the quality of their slavery, whether it be
saguiguilir or namamahay, half slave or
quarter slave. But, if he is wholly slave, the
master cannot be compelled to ransom or
emancipate him for any price.
The usual price of a sanguiguilir slave among
the natives is, at most, generally ten taes of
good gold, or eighty pesos; if he is
namamahay, half of that sum. The others are in
the same proportion, taking into consideration
the person and his age.
No fixed beginning can be assigned as the
origin of these kinds of slavery among these
natives, because all the slaves are natives of
the islands, and not strangers. It is thought that
they were made in their wars and quarrels. The
most certain knowledge is that the most
powerful made the others slaves, and seized
them for slight cause or occasion, and many
times for loans and usurious contracts which
were current among them. The interest,
capital, and debt, increased so much with
delay that the borrowers became slaves.
Consequently all these slaveries have violent
and unjust beginnings; and most of the suits
among the natives are over these, and they
occupy the judges in the exterior court with
them, and their confessors in that of
conscience. [317]
These slaves comprise the greatest wealth and
capital of the natives of these islands, for they
are very useful to them and necessary for the
cultivation of their property. They are sold,
traded, and exchanged among them, just as
any other mercantile article, from one village
to another, from one province to another, and
likewise from one island to another. Therefore,
and to avoid so many suits as would occur if
these slaveries were examined, and their origin
and source ascertained, they are preserved and
held as they were formerly.
The marriages of these natives, commonly and
generally were, and are: Chiefs with women
chiefs; timaguas with those of that rank; and
slaves with those of their own class. But
sometimes these classes intermarry with one
another. They considered one woman, whom
they married, as the legitimate wife and the
mistress of the house; and she was styled
ynasaba. [318] Those whom they kept besides
her they considered as friends. The children of
the first were regarded as legitimate and whole
heirs of their parents; the children of the others
were not so regarded, and were left something
by assignment, but they did not inherit.
The dowry was furnished by the man, being
given by his parents. The wife furnished
nothing for the marriage, until she had
inherited it from her parents. The solemnity of
the marriage consisted in nothing more than
the agreement between the parents and
relatives of the contracting parties, the
payment of the dowry agreed upon to the
father of the bride, [319] and the assembling at
the wife's parents' house of all the relatives to
eat and drink until they would fall down. At
night the man took the woman to his house
and into his power, and there she remained.
These marriages were annulled and dissolved
for slight cause, with the examination and
judgment of the relatives of both parties, and
of the old men, who acted as mediators in the
affairs. At such a time the man took the dowry
(which they call vigadicaya), [320] unless it
happened that they separated through the
husband's fault; for then it was not returned to
him, and the wife's parents kept it. The
property that they had acquired together was
divided into halves, and each one disposed of
his own. If one made any profits in which the
other did not have a share or participate, he
acquired it for himself alone.
The Indians were adopted one by another, in
presence of the relatives. The adopted person
gave and delivered all his actual possessions to
the one who adopted him. Thereupon he
remained in his house and care, and had a right
to inherit with the other children. [321]
Adulteries were not punishable corporally. If
the adulterer paid the aggrieved party the
amount adjudged by the old men and agreed
upon by them, then the injury was pardoned,
and the husband was appeased and retained his
honor. He would still live with his wife and
there would be no further talk about the
matter.
In inheritances all the legitimate children
inherited equally from their parents whatever
property they had acquired. If there were any
movable or landed property which they had
received from their parents, such went to the
nearest relatives and the collateral side of that
stock, if there were no legitimate children by
an ynasaba. This was the case either with or
without a will. In the act of drawing a will,
there was no further ceremony than to have
written it or to have stated it orally before
acquaintances.
If any chief was lord of a barangai, then in that
case, the eldest son of an ynasaba succeeded
him. If he died, the second son succeeded. If
there were no sons, then the daughters
succeeded in the same order. If there were no
legitimate successors, the succession went to
the nearest relative belonging to the lineage
and relationship of the chief who had been the
last possessor of it.
If any native who had slave women made
concubines of any of them, and such slave
woman had children, those children were free,
as was the slave. But if she had no children,
she remained a slave. [322]
These children by a slave woman, and those
borne by a married woman, were regarded as
illegitimate, and did not succeed to the
inheritance with the other children, neither
were the parents obliged to leave them
anything. Even if they were the sons of chiefs,
they did not succeed to the nobility or
chieftainship of the parents, nor to their
privileges, but they remained and were
reckoned as plebeians and in the number and
rank of the other timaguas.
The contracts and negotiations of these natives Single men are called bagontaos, [327] and
were generally illegal, each one paying girls of marriageable age, dalagas. Both
attention to how he might better his own classes are people of little restraint, and from
business and interest. early childhood they have communication with
one another, and mingle with facility and little
Loans with interest were very common and
secrecy, and without this being regarded
much practiced, and the interest incurred was
among the natives as a cause for anger.
excessive. The debt doubled and increased all
Neither do the parents, brothers, or relatives,
the time while payment was delayed, until it
show any anger, especially if there is any
stripped the debtor of all his possessions, and
material interest in it, and but little is sufficient
he and his children, when all their property
with each and all.
was gone, became slaves. [323]
As long as these natives lived in their
Their customary method of trading was by
paganism, it was not known that they had
bartering one thing for another, such as food,
fallen into the abominable sin against nature.
cloth, cattle, fowls, lands, houses, fields,
But after the Spaniards had entered their
slaves, fishing−grounds, and palm−trees (both
country, through communication with them---
nipa and wild). Sometimes a price intervened,
and still more, through that with the Sangleys,
which was paid in gold, as agreed upon, or in
who have come from China, and are much
metal bells brought from China. These bells
given to that viceit has been communicated to
they regard as precious jewels; they resemble
them somewhat, both to men and to women. In
large pans and are very sonorous. [324] They
this matter it has been necessary to take action
play upon these at their feasts, and carry them
to the war in their boats instead of drums and The natives of the islands of Pintados,
other instruments. There are often delays and especially the women, are very vicious and
terms for certain payments, and bondsmen sensual. Their perverseness has discovered
who intervene and bind themselves, but lascivious methods of communication between
always with very usurious and excessive men and women; and there is one to which
profits and interests. they are accustomed from their youth. The
men skilfully make a hole in their virile
Crimes were punished by request of the
member near its head, and insert therein a
aggrieved parties. Especially were thefts
serpent's head, either of metal or ivory, and
punished with greater severity, the robbers
fasten it with a peg of the same material
being enslaved or sometimes put to death.
passed through the hole, so that it cannot
[325] The same was true of insulting words,
become unfastened. With this device, they
especially when spoken to chiefs. They had
have communication with their wives, and are
among themselves many expressions and
unable to withdraw until a long time after
words which they regarded as the highest
copulation. They are very fond of this and
insult, when said to men and women. These
receive much pleasure from it, so that,
were pardoned less willingly and with greater
although they shed a quantity of blood, and
difficulty than was personal violence, such as
receive other harm, it is current among them.
wounding and assaulting. [326]
These devices are called sagras, and there are
Concubinage, rape, and incest, were not very few of them, because since they have
regarded at all, unless committed by a timagua become Christians, strenuous efforts are being
on the person of a woman chief. It was a quite made to do away with these, and not consent
ordinary practice for a married man to have to their use; and consequently the practice has
lived a long time in concubinage with the been checked in great part. [328]
sister of his wife. Even before having
Herbalists and witches are common among
communication with his wife he could have
these natives, but are not punished or
had access for a long time to his
prohibited among them, so long as they do not
mother−in−law, especially if the bride were
cause any special harm. But seldom could that
very young, and until she were of sufficient
be ascertained or known.
age. This was done in sight of all the relatives.
There were also men whose business was to
ravish and take away virginity from young
girls. These girls were taken to such men, and
the latter were paid for ravishing them, for the
natives considered it a hindrance and
impediment if the girls were virgins when they
married.
In matters of religion, the natives proceeded
more barbarously and with greater blindness
than in all the rest. For besides being pagans,
without any knowledge of the true God, they
neither strove to discover Him by way of
reason, nor had any fixed belief. The devil
usually deceived them with a thousand errors
and blindnesses. He appeared to them in
various horrible and frightful forms, and as
fierce animals, so that they feared him and
trembled before him. They generally
worshiped him, and made images of him in the
said forms. These they kept in caves and
private houses, where they offered them
perfumes and odors, and food and fruit, calling
them anitos. [329]
Others worshiped the sun and the moon, and
made feasts and drunken revels at the
conjunction of those bodies. Some worshiped
a yellow−colored bird that dwells in their
woods, called batala. They generally worship
and adore the crocodiles when they see them,
by kneeling down and clasping their hands,
because of the harm that they receive from
those reptiles; they believe that by so doing the
crocodiles will become appeased and leave
them. Their oaths, execrations, and promises
are all as above mentioned, namely, May
buhayan eat thee, if thou dost not speak truth,
or fulfil what thou hast promised,and similar
things.
There were no temples throughout those
islands, nor houses generally used for the
worship of idols; but each person possessed
and made in his house his own anitos, [330]
without any fixed rite or ceremony. They had
no priests or religious to attend to religious
affairs, except certain old men and women
called catalonas. These were experienced
witches and sorcerers, who kept the other
people deceived. The latter communicated to
these sorcerers their desires and needs, and the
catalonas told them innumerable
extravagancies and lies. The catalonas uttered
prayers and performed other ceremonies to the
idols for the sick; and they believed in omens
and superstitions, with which the devil
inspired them, whereby they declared whether
the patient would recover or die. Such were
their cures and methods, and they used various
kinds of divinations for all things. All this was
with so little aid, apparatus, or foundation
which God permitted, so that the preaching of
the holy gospel should find those of that region
better prepared for it, and so that those natives
would confess the truth more easily, and it
would be less difficult to withdraw them from
their darkness, and the errors in which the
devil kept them for so many years. They never
sacrificed human beings as is done in other
kingdoms. They believed that there was a
future life where those who had been brave
and performed valiant feats would be
rewarded; while those who had done evil
would be punished. But they did not know
how or where this would be. [331]
Topic: History of the Philippine
Province of the Society of
Jesus by Pedro Chirino, S.J.
Antonio de Morga and Father Pedro Chirino
are the early chroniclers who wrote about the
pre-hispanic Filipinos. However, they differ in
writing because Pedro Chirino was more
religious-accounting the functions, roles and
achievements of Spanish missionaries. Since
his focus is on ecclesiastical history, his
narrative is more on church history and
contains a lesson purposely reinforcing
Christianity and developing religious vocation.
On the other hand, the writing of Morga is
more secular or general history, he being a lay
writing about his experiences in the
Philippines.
To Filipino historians, the writings of Chirino
was more of a chronicle of a missionary priest
rather than a history of the Philippines. His
writing is another primary source showing the
darkness or backwardness of the early
Filipinos as well as their advancement or
enlightenment after their Conquest and
conversion to Christianity.
The following text is an excerpt of History of
the Philippine Province of the Islands of the
Society of Jesus of Pedro Chirino. Chapter 15
describes the Filipinos pagan false religion,
idolatries and sacrifices while Chapter 12
narrates the Filipinos' concept of usury and
slavery. The text highlights that the
prehispanic Filipinos had no religion, at least
from the eyes of western culture and
evangelical Christianity. Such historical
interpretation was a good way of justifying the
Filipinos' conversion to Christianity to save
them from the snares of the devil.
Excerpts from History of the Philippine
Province of the Society of Jesus
Pedro Chirino, S.J.
But, since the devil, heartless waster of holy
comforts, does not sleep while our Fathers
were hunting these beasts, rushed at the least
turn of one’s eyes to sow the bad seed among
the best of our wheat, namely, in the village of
San Juan del Monte. Though all there had been
baptized and the Christians were many and
very good, the same Christians gave notice of
the spark of idolatry, which voraciously was
devouring our harvest. To better appreciate it,
it will first be good t superstitions in a separate
chapter. Then we shall describe what was
happening in Taytay and how it was ended.
Chapter 15 - The Pagan False Religion,
idolatries, and sacrifices of the Filipinos
Although on climbing to the dark peak of so
much blindness of idolatry, I find so much
confusion of very vile, abominable things
characteristic of their creator, and on digging
into the wall of this infernal cave, I uncover
something frightful that made my hair stand on
end, seeing so many beetles, stupid,
loathsome, that came only from hell, with the
light of faith as our guide, we shall put them in
order so that we may praise before the all
powerful God all who on opening the eyes,
found ourselves bathed with the eyes of faith,
and commiserate with those who, blind in their
darkness love it obstinately, miserably buried
in it, unaware of their miserable situation, nor
take into account the evil that oppresses and
tyrannizes them. We shall then discuss, first,
what pertains to the wrong belief the Filipinos
had of the divinity of their idols, then their
priests, the ministers of their abominable
sacrifices, their sacrificial rites, and the
excesses and barbaric vulgar Superstitions.
I. The Idols to which the Filipinos Attribute
Divinity
Although all these islanders, especially the
Tagalogs as the more reasonable people, had,
like the ancient philosophers, some hints of a
supreme god whom they used to call
"Bathalang Maykapal" which means God the
Creator, or Maker, they had no knowledge of
him, for they imagined him to be enveloped
and hidden n clouds, as he was for them with
the black cloud of paganism. Like other
idolaters, they had better knowledge of created
things, considering them divine, and offering
them impious sacrifices, according to the role
and work which to each one they assigned. As
the ancients Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans to
their Jupiter, Mercury, Minerva, Venus,
Saturn, Mars, and the outer false gods, so they
first adored these others, animals and birds,
like the Egyptians; the sun and the moon, like
the Assyrians. They attribute special divinity
to the rainbow, as though learned from the
Poets, who made it the messenger of the gods.
The Tagalogs gave the name “Bathala” to a
bluebird as big as the thrush, which in Castile
we call “avejuruco”. The crow they adored,
like the ancients, as god Pan or the goddess
Ceres, but naming it “Mavlupa”, which means
lord of the soil. They deeply venerated the
crocodile. In all their thinking, whenever they
saw him in the water, they addressed it
“Nono”, grandfather. With tender affection,
they prayed to him not to cause them harm,
and for this reason, they offered something
from what they brought in boat, which they
threw into the water. There was a catalonan
who was so intimate with one of them in the
Manila river, that she treated it like a domestic
pet, which not only awaited what she gave it to
eat, but allowed her to touch it and be anointed
with her oils. Not difficult for Aristotle, who
says that these beasts can be tamed like the
others who eat flesh, and Strabo affirms that
there were tame geese in Egypt adored more
than in the Philippines, and to surprise of
foreigners the priests fed them with their own
hands. There was no old tree to which they
attribute divine powers, and it was a sacrilege
to think of felling them for any reason- misuse
of the eastern Indios born of their appreciation
of the tree's age or the big size, or, more
correctly, of diabolic astuteness, which in our
own beginnings made war against us with the
tree. Pliny in his time affirms people having
also made use of this aberration, in this
barbarity exceeding those who were content
with raising their altars and putting their
statuettes under the shadow of their saintly
prophets, zealous for God's honor.
What else? The very stones, peaks, crags, and
headlands of seashores and river they adored,
going as far as to offer something which they
let on the rock or crag itself when passing by.
Both quite ancient idolatrous practices for we
find them condemned by one of the ancient
councils and the most ancient Saints, and
furthermore, by God himself.
Many times I saw in the river of Manila a rock
which for many years was an idol of this
unfortunate people. It scandalized and gave
occasion to serious evils, until the Augustinian
Fathers who live close by in their holy zeal
broke it into pieces and in its place put up a
Cross.
Sailing around Panay Island, I saw on a rock at
the point they call “Naso” near Potol plates
and other clay utensils, which navigators were
offering. On Mindanao island, between Canela
and the river, a sharp point protrudes above a
dangerous and deep coast. On these points the
sea always suddenly becomes agitated, and
risky and hard to round. As it is very high,
they used to shoot arrows aimed with such
force that they were embedded on the rock
itself, as a sacrificial offering to the gods to
allow them to sail by. With my eyes I saw that,
enraged at such a cursed superstition, the
Spaniards set them on fire, and burned an
uncounted number; but in less than a year
there were embedded again more than 4,000
arrows so they appeared to us who were
sailing by- hence, they called it “Punta de las
Flechas” [Arrow Point].
Only the rivers they failed to adore, like the
Parthians and Persians, who in reverence
refrained from spitting in them or washing
their hands in their waters. The Filipinos, on
the other hand, do not drink from the river,
although its water is very good, repelled both
by the number of persons without exception
bathing in it and the numberless and various
services to which it is applied. For drinking,
they make use of the various holes they dig on
the riverbank itself, which at a shallow depth
provides the water they need, like the
Egyptians when their river turned into blood.
They also used to adore individual idols
inherited from their elders, which the Visayans
used to call “diwata”, the Tagalogs “anito”.
They had idols for their fields, whose
permission they asked when crossing without
risk; an anito for the crops, to whom they
recommended that they be fertile, and besides
sacrifices, left there food to eat, anito for
water, from whom they asked for ran for their
crops; anito for the sea, to whom they
recommended their fishing and navigation,
anito for their palm trees, from whom they
asked protection from rats and birds which
destroyed their crops; anito for infants, to
whom they offered at birth; and anito when
these began to suck. Among these they
included their ancestors, men and women,
whom they invoked first in their foils and
dangers. They kept small idols as souvenirs,
rather badly sculpted of stone, wood, gold,
bone or ivory, which they called “likha” or
“larawan” just as the devil propagated the false
worship of his Pluto, Pan, Neptune, Nundina,
and the other infernal monsters, with which he
has tyrannized the world, though with changed
names.
They also included among their god all who
died by the knife, those devoured by the
crocodile, or killed by some lightning, whose
souls they said climbed to heaven by the
rainbow, which they call “Balangao”. Many
times during their funerals they sacrificed
slaves to serve them in a paradise of their
dreams, a superstition which seems similar to
that of the Greeks and Romans, and even of
the ancient Scots and other nations, who
deeply honor those who died in war, of whom
Cicero wrote much.
As the beginning of the earth, they had only
the sky and water, and a kingfisher between
the two. Tired of flying and finding nowhere
to perch, he decided to provoke war between
sky and the water. It ended with the victory of
heaven, which kept the water at a distance,
allowing it reach only to the shoulders, and
filled it with islands and rocks, thus allowing
the kingfisher to satisfy its desire for a perch to
build its nest.
Like Estatius producing his arcades from
ashen and laurel trunks, the Filipinos drew the
first man from a big bamboo, which we said
grow all over the east. It was only of two
nodes, but floating on the water, it reached the
feet of the kingfisher standing on the shore.
Irritated that it should touch its feet, for even
the kingfishers have a sense of their own
dignity and could avenge insults it cracked
[the bamboo] open with its beak. From one
node a man came out, from the other a woman.
A serious controversy followed recognized by
many arbiters, for the woman refused to be
married to the man, her brother. So natural is
the women's decency that even the diabolical
fables of the barbarians make the man an
aggressor, the woman modest and shy. These
people strictly hold on to this when arranging
marriages, considering it the greatest insult for
a woman to initiate the discussion, or anyone
on her behalf, even if she dies unmarried.
Anyway, since the counsel of the fishes and
the birds, which affirmed they were married
without dispensation, was unsatisfactory, they
appealed to one of the gods, namely, the
earthquake, on whose advice they married and
had several children. From these several
brothers descended the various races of
peoples and states. They said that angered at
having so many idle and profitless sons in the
house, like the eagles, the two agreed that,
pretending anger, the father, intending to
punish them with a stick in his hand,
something they never had known, drove them
away. Some escaped to the clothes room,
others to the closet in the house, and from
these they say the chiefs descend; others fled
outside, and these are the freemen, whom they
call “timawa”; still others to the kitchen and
under the house, and these are the slaves, and
finally others to other points, and these are the
different nations. A story to entertain, not
badly put together and spread around.
They had their own version of the flood, glory,
punishment, and the other life, hostile demons
before whom they trembled and tremble very
much. All quite erroneous, in none with
verisimilitude, just as the ancient gentiles with
theirs, for some describe them in one way,
others another, such that one can see they are
all lies and legends without beginning or end. I
shall add only one example here as a brief
chapter of one which Fr. Cristobal Jiménez
sent me from Visayas in April 1560. It says:
I have collected important matters of the errors
of these pagans spread in 130 islands, where
they say their dead proceed. There they laugh
and sing, the old become young and live a
special life. The trees, whose roots are chains,
bear already ripe fruit, utensils, bells, and
"pánicas" are of gold; the sand on the riverbank
unhusked rice; there is a sea of milk for the
children and another of “linugao” for the old.
They lived and died, return to life, and they die
so many times as to become Iike very tiny ants.
There is a sea of blood, on whose shore are
rosebushes, which for that reason are called
colored. There are islands so thick with bones
that these are the only firewood used, and the
pots used for cooking are skulls. Our race they
say descends from a bamboo. The monkey
came out of a second bamboo or node, and so is
quite like man. And as the bamboo grew, they
developed and other animals appeared. All men
die because they disobeyed Laon, the greatest
of the gods, by killing the fish which
entertained him. And all, young and old die,
because when they shook the tree of the
delicious fruit, the small and big fruits fell.
What else shall I add? I will never end. Let
this suffice, that Your Reverence may
laugh, when your tasks allow you.
Thus far, Father Jiménez, who adds words of
the region, assuming that he was writing to
someone who would understand them. And
although there are only five of them, I want to
mention them for the pleasure of whoever may
read this: isines are pieces of cotton cloth;
panicas, golden earrings; linugao, rice with
milk or oil; tacorongas are flowers similar to
colored marshmallow plants. Their tale of the
small size to which the soul is reduced at the
end of so many Pythagorean transmigrations
corresponds to the error of the Japanese who
offer viaticum to the souls because they are
small and delicate, otherwise they will die of
exhaustion before reaching Paradise, a three
days' hike. And while we mention it once, it
reappears in all of these errors.
It will be clear that, in their time, Saint Justin
Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian,
Eusebius of Caesarea, and, in our time, the
Mexicans and Peruvians, the learned Fr. José
de Acosta of our Society, mentioned it, all of
whom agree in a certain way with our Catholic
truth, covered and darkened by falsehood, like
an erased image of which nothing remains
except some outlines and traces. Their errors,
then, for some are predispositions towards the
faith, for others are blocks. Some are based on
the truth shining and brightening their dark
shadows; others are blinded with so much light
after keeping their eyes on the darkness of
their lies, like the stubborn pharaoh with the
lights of his magicians.
They had no special temples, like the Parthians
and Persians, no public days of general
festivities common among the ordinary people.
We saw in Tanay only that many houses had
another small one, like a small bamboo tower,
a bit quaintly built. From the main house they
pass to it through a short bridge, also of
bamboo. Here they kept their clothes and other
handicrafts, to cover the mystery of their
intamous outhouse. But as some coverts
informed me, they are really dedicated to the
anito, even if they did not sacrifice there, and
it served only to make them claim it as their
own, like the rest of their possessions. For that
reason they maintained in it something they
valued, particularly a rooster, like the ancient
pagans.
They then had to have an outhouse, out of their
need to pass by it when going on a journey, as
Elias said on the others. We had them taken
down, until not one was left.
The Visayans, too, had at the entrance to their
villages a rather bad small bamboo outhouse,
which served as a place for sacrifice. In other
places, these are scattered in the forests,
hidden from the ministers of justice, especially
after the faith arrived. In general, however, it
was rare to have a common temple, unlike the
ancient pagans, nor did they come for
celebrations by law or tradition. They had no
special place for sacrifice which they offered
for the entire community; but each one
individually offered a sacrifice for his
intention or whim on the village or on the
fields. They elected for it a minister, male or
female- there were a number of them out of
devotion or desire. They invited all from their
village and other from around according to the
solemnity of the sacrifice and the resources of
the one offering it. I saw in Mindanao in one
place attached outside of houses bamboo
galleries wrought not badly; but, yes, inside,
badly sculpted idols of spongy pole, like
wrought bamboo. In front I saw an earthen pot
with some embers and a little smoke, which
must have been of the sacrifice.
II. The Ministers of Their Sacrifices
Although they had no temples or feast day,
they had priests, male and female, whom the
Tagalogs call "catalonan," the Visayans
“babaylan”. He, or she, was one who with
greater shrewdness yielded to the devil to be
fooled by him, or deceive the blinded people.
Fr. Antonio Sedeño related that when he was
in Florida, he exposed before the natives one
of these cheats who had been deceiving them,
by claiming he could cure them by placing
reed on the most painful spot the patient felt
and through the mouth drew out from the
opposite part the air inside. Then he spat out
three pebbles he claimed came from the body
and were the cause of the sickness. Father
once successfully made him spit out the
pebbles before applying the reed and in this
way uncovered the falsehood.
In Eastern India there were some beans the
Portuguese say are from Malacca, and are the
physicians' Anacard. One of these, cut by a
knife point and brought near the flame of a
candle, throws off sparks, ashes, and flames
when it starts burning. These leading cheats
need nothing more to make them believe that
in those flames they see the spirits which tell
them as much as they lie, which, since they are
barbarians, people easily believe.
By this scheme, other used to concoct a
thousand tricks on the simple Filipinos,
especially in times of sickness, which afflict
and worry them very much. Then, they would
want the cure, and the one who brings or
promises it they esteem, trust, adore, and give
all they have. Actually, there are, however,
some who have a special link with the devil,
who assists and provides with a very special
help, speaks to them through their idols or
anitos, pretending they are their dead whom
they adore. At other times, they cause them to
utter things that frighten and scare those
present.
More than twenty years after writing this, it
came to my notice, around 16l6, that on the
island of Bohol some poor women used to
deceive sick people, in order to earn some pay,
by telling them a particular leaf of a tree or a
reed inside them was causing the sickness,
which they would remover to cure them. They
carry it hidden, and touching the sick, they
showed it, telling them they had removed it
from the body. This happened to someone with
an injured foot. After saying what caused it,
the woman soon showed a piece of bamboo
which she claimed she had taken out and after
paying her, the patient could be cured. Then
the leg started to become painful and
developed a hard scar, with such great pain
that for two months the patient cried out with
pain. She finally became lame, but at her own
cost, realizing how little they benefit from
such lies.
This despicable dignity is preserved by
teaching the office out of friendship or blood
ties, or leaving it as an inheritance. But it was
a profession and means of earning for lazy
people who live on someone else's sweat.
Hence, after the occasion has passed, when
they were rather curious to know what would
happen- sickness, a battle, a journey, or a
voyage- people no longer respected them; nor,
except for this reason only, were they
esteemed among them, unless besides, they
have power or wealth, as we said.
III. The Barbarity of Their Sacrifices
Since the honor of the catalonans and
babaylans did not come from respect and
reverence, their sacrifices are not offered out
of devotion or religion, but out of curiosity to
know want would result and in passing, if one
would benefit by regaining one's health. Many
times, then, if the catalonan did not ask for it,
people did not remember to offer it, although
ordinarily it was considered a matter of honor.
Hence, when they note that the sickness begins
to weaken, they called their catalonan and
asked for a sacrifice to see if the sickness was
deadly or not. The leaders again built a house
purposely for this sacrifice, big and spacious
according to their possibilities. Since many
came to help and the materials were readily at
hand, it was quickly finished.
The patient was moved in when the house was
finished, the catalonan came and a slave had
to be sacrificed (they used to kill as many as
three), or instead, a sea turtle, which abounds
here in the east, or also mollusks, gigantic, big
as shields, and had the best sea eggs. With no
altar or anything like it, they placed the
offering beside the patient, for the bed is
merely a mat of palms that they call "banig"
Distributed on the floor, they placed as many
as the number of guests small tables without a
table cloth as is customary in this Archipelago,
but with different dishes. After the catalonan
had killed the hog, she anointed the patient and
those present with its blood. Then taken out
for skinning and cleaning, it served as the first
dish. Speaking through her teeth, with her
mouth still full of the meat, she opened and
examined in everyone's view the entrails, like
the ancient augurers of Tuscany, of whom the
perceptive Pacuvius said he knew more of
others’ entrails than their own. Next, the devil
took hold of her like the ancient Pythonesses,
or she pretended it with grimaces and
movements of hands and feet, frothing in the
mouth, and returning to herself she declared
the patient would live or die. If the first, they
continued eating and chanting the epic stories
of the patient's ancestor; or to honor the anito,
for whom the feast is held, and danced until
they collapsed. If death, they migrated the
prospect of death by praising the sick, now
chosen by the anito to make him one of them,
because of his good qualities, while entrusting
themselves to him once he was in his
Kingdom, and a thousand other lies and
flatteries, with which the unfortunate person
could swallow death. His relatives and friends
the catalonan commanded to honor him,
naturally, as an anito and consider him one,
while giving him more food and drink in the
short time that remained for him to live. And if
in effect he dies, as could happen by auto-
suggestion, they proceeded in the manner we
shall describe when we talk of their burials.
Whatever happened, the catalonan left with no
moderate profit. Besides the offering and the
fee for her work all who came in and all who
so wished, offered some gold, some rice, some
cotton, some chicken, threads, cloth as well as
other fruits and vegetables of the land.
Identical practices were held for war and
journeys, to know the result, following in
detail the catalonan's tricks, like Ahab, the
King of Israel, his false prophets. But even
without reason or need, although for a few
times, others used to do the same thing out or
pure boasting and vanity. These great public
festivities they called “feast of the great god”,
to honor although without knowing him, like
the Athenians who used to celebrate it under a
roof of leaves next to the house which the
chief fixed as he wanted, put up even if only
temporarily, covered as in the old days with
palm leaves, completely surrounded by
tapestries in their styles, like those of the
Moors, the whole thing sewn together from
several varicolored pieces. When those of the
village and invented guests from the area had
come together the catalonan ordered that the
most beautiful and best dressed girl to perform
the duty of dancing and piercing the hog with
a lance, which was cut into pieces and
distributed like consecrated bread. Even with
other hogs were killed, and they ate it with
other dishes, this was the one most liked and
taken reverently; although, as always, there
was more drinking, accompanied by music and
dancing.
Marriage likewise is solemnized with a
sacrifice. Once the union is agreed on the
dowry given, the catalonan and the hog came
like the practice in Tuscany. The ceremonies
we described are performed, while the spouses
are seated in their room in the presence of a
pair of old women who acted as sponsor.
These offered them with their hands food and
drink on the plate and glass, a Galatian
ceremony. The groom is from their mothers,
not even the wise Athenians from their
legitimate sisters, something rather unworthy
of intelligent people. Let us not admire the
Incas of Peru who consider this a noble thing,
and let us keep in mind that the Filipinos are a
more intelligent people that the Incas and
Athenians.
Chapter 12 - Usury and Slavery among the
Filipinos
With the other vices common among these
nations, effect of idolatry the source and abyss
among them, one is insatiable greed,
mentioned by the evangelist Saint John among
the three that tyrannize the world. This makes
them unmindful of the natural affection we
owe one another, uncaring of others in times
of need, without a guarantee of profit, when
one's food on traveling was consumed, as
indicated.
But in lending, the father his son, a son his
mother or brother, and much less their
relatives, they would not be able to come to
their aid, even when they saw them in extreme
and utter need, without guarantee of double
repayment. If one failed to pay on the
deadline, or before, unless it had been agreed
beforehand, the debtor became a slave. It was
the same when they ransomed someone from
enemies’ hands. Hence, what the captive won
was enslavement under his relative, brother or
son, and after him his descendants.
Many enslaved themselves, like good buoys
for galleys, offering themselves to some
leading person for a moderate price. Others
who failed to obtain enough for the dowry
enslaved themselves to his future wife. Since it
is the custom for the firstborn son to belong to
the father, he has to be the mother's slave, and
so on with the third and the fifth, and the rest
accordingly, and not only the mother but also
her brothers, too, unless they were ransomed,
as we shall see later. Since the second son, the
fourth and so on belonged to the mother, they
were therefore free like her, and lords of the
father and his other brothers. But if the son is
the only one, or the third, of the last of so
many children, half belonged to the father and
other to the mother, and therefore was a half-
slave. This same arrangement was followed
when divorced, and when a slave married a
free women, or, slave of several masters-
today there are many- and they served by turns
for months, or as their masters allowed.
They also enslaved through tyranny and
cruelty, in revenge or as penalties for trifles,
but which they made pretexts for damages, or
as if they were, most of the time falsely,
dishonesty, abusively, in the manner of the
impious Jezebel.
For picking up grain in the field, a root or fruit
in an orchard, or some fish in the pen, snare, or
net: or if one spoke to anyone or to his wife
strongly, or spoke a word that did not sound
proper, or, if while quarreling in one’s house a
leading man was passing by and overheard an
injurious word; if chaff from the mortar when
pounding rice fell on someone; if in front of
that house the knot of the mantle his wife was
wearing loosened, or the wind blew away what
the women use as a hat, if someone
unsuspecting pass by while one was bathing-
on these and other uncounted serious and quite
atrocious cases of this style and these
circumstances, they deprived other miserable
people of their freedom with the tyranny of the
Neros, enslaved them and their children, and
many times their wives and relatives.
They say of the King of Borno, which is in the
interior of Ethiopia near the sources of the
Niger River, that he greatly values the African
horses which in Rome are esteemed and
known as barbarian, and offers for one 15.20
slaves eager for battle against the surrounding
nations. Our Filipinos, with fewer horses and
without the possibility of war, kept them
indoors. Can there be a worse evil than to
lodge a guest from another village or from one
own, principal or timawa, and while feasting,
depart from his house and leave him alone
with his wife in order to trap him thus, that he
was soliciting her; or, provoke him to anger
and impose a penalty or enslave him?
In their fights, they also captured those they
could. Since these were so ordinary, although
cruel acts were more often, the slaves were
uncounted, not of distant nations, but of their
own regions and villages, and even of their
relatives, against all divine and human law.
Idolatry is so heartless. They valued them
much, kept them, after gold, as their greatest
aches. Hence, there was, and today there is a
principal with 100, 200, or even 300 slaves. A
single judge emancipated more than 2,000 in
one Visayan province. He was the accountant
Bustamante, visiting the province in the
Catholic King's name, in 1581.
Although the number of slaves is not as big as
those of the Hebrews, Persians, and Romans,
who had them in the thousands, and even of
our Castilians in the sugar and livestock farms
in these Indies, since these slaves of the
Filipinos are so deared but cruelly treated, 100
slaves of any single master would be
excessive.
It is true that slaves were, as in the old days,
were almost on an equal footing with their
masters. They carry out the commands and sit
at table beside them, as if they had read about
it in Seneca. Many have a house and dwelling,
wife, children, and property, like the slaves of
the ancient Germans. I have known one, like
Zyba, Jonathan's slave, almost as rich, with his
own slaves, like his master.
Still, despite this, they take it bad not enjoying
freedom, which is worth more than all the gold
there is. Still, there are more vassals than
slaves, and hence are called “aliping
namamahay” among the Tagalogs,
“namamalay” among the Visayans. Their only
obligation is to serve annually with the certain
amount of their harvests, accompany the chief
on his war campaigns, after which the master
and the slaves share the half of the booty each,
and in peace time they are at his summons,
They also aided greatly in constructing and
repairing the house, sometimes with the crops,
something they do only for a meal, they could
not be sold, but are inherited. But if the heir
was of or transferred to another village, he
could not bring them there.
The true slaves, among Tagalogs called
“sagigilid” and among Visayans “halom” were
the war captives, or those condemned in
punishment, or made by depts., born as slaves
in the house, and these could be sold. But the
last considered as relatives, they never sold.
They kept them in the house, and what they
earned belonged entirely to the master, which
determined the random price, for which they
made savings.
If the master sired a child with his slave, she
was freed and the infant became an heir, as is
discussed in its place. But if the slave woman
belongs to another, the infant remains a slave,
if the father refuses to acknowledge and raise
it, while the master pays its mother a half- tael
of gold in compensation for lost service due to
her pregnancy, otherwise, the infant remains a
slave.
As big fish devour the small, so, too, the slaves
destroyed one another, if anyone among them
wants a good master, all one did was to escape
from the old master and take refuge in the
house to another, who, even at a loss, could be
sold at a lower price, even if perhaps one could
be solve higher.
A Slave, if due to debt, redeemed himself by
merely paying the usurious double rate on the
deadline. Otherwise, the debt doubled by the
month, until it lasts for a year. Like other
nations, they marked the month by the moon,
as well as by the trade or southwest winds
seasons, planting, harvesting, or gleaning
times. At the end of the year, if the principal
and the interest are paid, the slave is free; it
not, there is no other solution than to be
hereditary slaves, in this manner.
Ransom for hereditary slaves is 10 gold taels,
equivalent to 80 reales de echo, besides half of
the slave's more or less house jewelry. One
had to give half of everything, even if only one
out of two pots, a price perhaps not cheaper
than that of the Romans. To make this
payment, the slave prepared a banquet for his
master, even if several come like flies to
honey. The ransom is paid during the meal,
and witnesses from those present attest that the
master was satisfied and grants the poor slave
his desired freedom.
Topic: The Kartilla of Katipunan
Emilio Jacinto, the so-called the "Brains of the
Katipunan" crafted the Kartilla as he believed
in the necessity and value of a guidebook in
instructing and helping new recruits to accept
and embody the ideals of the KKK. The
guidebook provided a code of conduct with
fourteen "teachings" in which the members of
the society are required to read and to live by.
The Kartilla was basically an intellectual and
moral foundation for the katipuneros. Its
ultimate goal was to create an egalitarian
society and develop a morally upright Filipino
nation. Intellectually, its teachings provide
higher ideals of reasons as well as a new
mental paradigm for the Filipinos in creating
and defining a nation for themselves free from
colonial restraints. Morally, it echoes moral
lessons about freedom, equality and
participation as well as social or collective
justice.
Understanding the Kartilla is a great source of
Filipino moral consciousness. It provides a
meaningful insight on the Filipinos' idea on
what constitutes a good society and the ideal
individuals living in it. It is also a rich source
of ethical values in educating the Filipinos
toward broader societal goals that are essential
in changing the Philippines for the better.
Thus, the Kartilla of Emilio Jacinto is
presented in this reading.
The next reading is entitled Kartilla of the
Katipunan by Jim Richarson. It presents the
importance, teachings, and metaphors used by
Emilio Jacinto in developing the ethical and
moral fibers of the katipuneros. It also defines
the ideals of the Katipunan as an organization
and its model of a good person and society.
The Kartilla of Katipunan
Jim Richarson
Taught in schools and debated in universities,
the Kartilya is the best-known of all Katipunan
texts. Making manifest the KKK's principles
and teachings, it was printed as a
small pamphlet for new members. It is the
only document of any length set in print by the
Katipunan prior to August 1986 that is known
to be still extant.
The earliest reference to the Kartilya yet found
is in the minutes of a Supreme Assembly
meeting held in December 1895, which say the
manifesto (pahayag) will be priced at 4 kualta
per copy. Whether it is the KKK branches or
the individual recruits who are to be the
charged this amount is not clear, and nor is it
known whether the title phrase – “To those
who want to join this Katipunan" – truly
means potential recruits, or in practice should
be taken to mean, "To those who have joined
this Katipunan". If copies were sold to
potential as well as actual recruits, needless to
say, there was a heightened risk they might fall
into the wrong hands.
The Kartilya was still in use during the first
phase of the revolution, and Bonifacio was
planning to print more copies shortly before he
was killed." it may still have been used during
the second phase of the revolution, for a
version survives in the Philippine Insurgent
Records that is stamped with the seal used by
Artemio Ricarte in 1899. This version contains
basically the same text as is transcribed here,
but it bears a different title -"Final Declaration
on Admission to the Katipunan (Katapusang
pamamanayag sa pagpasok sa K.)- and it
omits the famous footnote that says "the word
Tagalog means all those born in this
archipelago."
Authorship of the Kartilya has always been
credited to Emilio Jacinto, and there is little
doubt this attribution is sound: it dates back to
the Sensacional memoria of Isabelo de los
Reyes, whose sources included several senior
KKK veterans, and it has never been
challenged. Bonifacio, the story goes, had
originally intended that his “Decalogue”
should be printed and handed to new recruits,
but then read Jacinto's Kartilya and decided it
was superior. The two texts, though, are not
really comparable. Bonifacio seeks only to
enumerate the duties of Katipunan members,
Jacinto couches his primer, four times as long
rather as a statement of aspirations and ethical
values. Bonifacio lists ten obligations, Jacinto
presents twelve "guiding principles and
fourteen "teachings."
In its structure the Kartilya resembles the
declaration used in Manila's masonic lodges, a
declaration that had presumably been written
in Spain around 1889, when the grand order to
which the lodges were affiliated – the Gran
Oriente Espanol – had been founded by
Miguel Morayta. The Kartilya is addressed
"To those who want to join the Katipunan'";
the masonic document to los profanos que
deben inscribirse en la Sociedad. The
preamble of the Kartilya echoes the masonic
document's stated purpose, which is to ensure
that candidates fully understand the
association's objectives before making a
commitment they might later repent. The
division in the Kartilya between principles
(layon) and teachings (aral) broadly parallels
the division in the Gran Oriente's manifesto
between the "Programa Masonica" and the
"Codigo Masonico". And the Kartilya, finally,
like the document used in the lodges, asks
neophytes to pledge their allegiance to the
associations' objectives and to affirm with their
signature that they are becoming members of
their own free will (ninais ng loob ko).
There are also parallels between the content of
the two documents. Recruits to the lodges
were advised that masonry considera como
hermanos todos łos hombres; that they should
renounce todos los vicios; and should
defender' al oprimido. Within the katipunan,
said the Kartilya, "all are equal and true
brethren." Members had to renounce
disorderly habits" and to "defend the
oppressed".
Other influences may be identified more
tentatively. The admonitions to regard a
woman as a "helpmate" rather than a
"plaything", and to "have due regard to her
weakness " may he biblical in origin. The
adage that "honorable man's word in his bond"
may be traced back to Cervantes; and the
thought that "time lost is lot forever" may have
come from Benjamin Franklin. One precept is
perhaps taken from Rizal. A "life which is not
dedicated to a great idea is useless," declares
Rizal's fictional insurrectionist Simoun in El
Filibusterismo: “It is a pebble lost in the field,
when it should form part of some building”.
Life which is not consecrated to a lofty and
sacred cause" Jacinto writes, varying in the
metaphor, "is like a tree without shade, if not a
poisonous weed"
To emphasize Enlightenment influences on
Katipunan thinking, some say, effaces the
originality of documents like the Kartilya,
which may be found in the nuances of their
Tagalog and their resonance with the native
psyche, familial bonds, folk Christianity,
indigenous dissident traditions, and so on.
Such arguments may be true up to a point, but
often they seem nebulous, reliant more on
wishful assertion than on substantiating
chapter and verse. The Tagalog words that
resound loudest in the Kartilya, beyond doubt,
are the equivalents of the Enlightenment's
defining watchwords: Liberty (Kalayaan),
equality
(lahat ng tao y magkakapantay), Fraternity
(kayong lahat ay magkakapatid), Reason
(Katuiran), Progress (kagalingan), and
Enlightenment itself (Kaliwanagan). Most,
perhaps all, of these Tagalog events had
already been employed by ilustrado writers
like Rizal and Del Pilar before KKK was
founded. The revolutionary originality of the
katipunans lay on its idiom, but in its
objectives and its deeds.
Mga Aral nang Katipunan ng mga A.N.B.
(Teachings of the Katipunan of the Sons of the
People)
1. Ang kabuhayang hindi ginugugol sa isang
malaki at banal na kadahilanan ay kahoy na
walang lilim, kundi damong makamandag.
(A life that is not dedicated to a great and
sacred cause is like a tree without a shade, or
a poisonous weed.)
2. Ang gawang magaling na nagbubuhat sa
pagpipita sa sarili, at hindi sa talagang nasang
gumawa ng kagalingan, ay di kabaitan.
(A good deed lacks virtue if it springs from a
desıre for personal profit and not from a
sincere desire to do good.)
3. Ang tunay na kabanalan ay ang
pagkakawang gawa, ang pagibig sa kapua at
ang isukat ang bawat kilos, gawa't
pangungusap sa talagang Katuiran.
(True charisty resides in acts of compulsion,
in love for one's fellow men, and in making
true reason the measure of every move, deed,
word.)
4. Maitim man at maputi ang kulay ng balat,
lahat ng tao'y magkakapantay; mangyayaring
ang isa' y higitan sa dunong, sa yaman, sa
ganda....; ngunit di mahihigtan sa pagkatao.
(Be their skin dark or pale, all men are equal.
One can be superior to another in knowledge,
wealth, and beauty...but not in being.)
5. Ang may mataas na kalooban inuuna ang
puri sa pagpipita sa sarili; ang may hamak na
kalooban inuuna ang pagpipita sa sarili sa puri.
(A person with a noble character values honor
above self-interest, while a person with an
ignoble character values self-interest above
honor.)
6. Sa taong may hiya, salita'y panumumpa.
(An honorable man's word is his bond.)
7. Huag mong sasayangin ang panahun, ang
yamang nawala'y magyayaring magbalik
nguni't panahong nagdaan na'y di namuli pang
magdadaan. Value of time
(Don't waste lime; lost wealth may be
recovered, but time lost is lost forever.)
8. Ipagtanggol mo ang inaapi, at kabakahin
ang umaapi.
(Defend the oppressed and fight the
oppressor.)
9. Ang taong matalino'y ang may paiingat sa
bawat sasabihin, at matutong ipaglihim ang
dapat ipaglihim.
(An intelligent man is he who takes care in
everything he says and keeps quiet about whal
must be kept secret.)
10. Sa daang matinik ng kabuhayan, lalaki ay
siyang patnugot ng asawa't mga anak; kung
ang umaakay ay tungo sa sama, ang
palulunguhan ng iaakay ay kasamaan din.
(Along the thorny path of life, the man leads
the way and his wife and children follow. If
the leader goes the way of perdition, then so
do those who are led.)
11. Ang babai ay huag mong tignang isang
bagay na libangan lamang, kundi isang
katuang
at karamay sa mga kahirapan nitong
kabuhayan; gamitan mo ng buong
pagpipitagan ang
kaniyang kahinaan, at alalahanin ang inang
pinagbuhata’t nagiwi sa iyong kasangulan.
(Do not regard a woman as a mere plaything,
but as helpmate and partner in the hardships
of this existence. Have due regard to her
weakness, and remember the mother who
brought you into this world and nurtured you
in your infancy.)
12. Ang di mo ibig na gawin sa asawa mo,
anak at kapatid, ay huag mong gagawin sa
asawa, anak, at kapatid ng iba.
(What you would not want done to your wife,
daughter, and sister, do not do to the wife,
daughter, and sister of another.)
13. Ang kamahalan ng tao y wala sa
pagkahari, wala sa tangus ng ilong at puti ng
mukha, wala sa pagkaparing kahalili ng Dios
wala sa mataas na kalagayan sa balat ng lupa,
wagas at tunay na mahal na tao, kahit laking
gubat at walang nababatid kundi ang sariling
wika, yaong may magandang asa, may isang
pangungusap, may dangal at puri; yaong di
napaaapit di nakikiapi, yaong marunong
magdamdam at marunong lumingap sa baying
tinubuan.
(A man s worth does not come from him being
a king, or in the height of his nose and the
whiteness of his face, or in him being priest, a
REPRESENTATIVE OF GOD, or his exalted
position on the face of this earth. Pure and
truly noble is he who, though born in the
forest and able to speak only his own tongue,
behaves decently, is true to his word, has
dignity and honor, who is not an oppressor
and does not abet oppressors, who knows how
to cherish and look after the land of his birth.)
14. Paglaganap ng mga aral na ito at
maningning na sunikat ang araw ng manal na
Kalayaan dito sa kaabaabang Sangkalupuan, at
sabugan ng matamis nyang liwanag ang
nangagkaisang magkalahi't magkakapatid ng
ligaya ng walang katapusan, ang mga ginugol
na bunay, pagud, at mga tiniis na kahirapa y
labis nang nalumbasan. Kung lahat ng ito'y
mataruk na ng nagiibig pumasuk at maakala
niyang matutupad ang mga tutungkuin,
maifatala ang kaniyang ninanasa sa kasunod
nito.
(When these doctrines have spread and the
brilliant sun of beloved liberty shines on these
poor Islands, and sheds its sweet light upon a
united race, a people in everlasting happiness,
then the live lost, the struggle and the
suffering will have been more than
recompensed.)
Unit III “ONE PAST BUT MANY
HISTORIES”: CONTROVERSIES AND
CONFLICTING VIEWS IN PHILIPPINE
HISTORY
TOPIC: The site of the first Mass in the
Philippines
The site of the First Mass in the Philippines is
one of the historical controversies in
Philippine historiography. Two competing
schools of thought provide different evidences
on where the seed Christianity was planted.
According to the first school of thought, the
first mass happened in Limasawa Island in the
Province of Leyte. As claimed by the second
school of thought. It was celebrated in Mazaua
Butuan, Agusan del Norte.
People debating on the first mass story find it
as a religious and geographical matter.
Religiously, it marks the birthplace of
Christianity in the Philippines. Geographically,
it challenges the “accuracy” of Spanish
narratives about the Philippines spaces and
places and their movements between the
places. In March 1998, however, the disputed
issue was officially settled when the National
historian Institute (NHI) declared Limasawa to
be the site of the first catholic mass. Despite
the foregoing verdict, the pro-Masao group has
not stopped from asserting its claim until
today. But as a Filipino, what is the
significance of this first Eucharistic
celebration issue? The value of this
controversy rest on the fact that the conduct of
the first Holy Mass is associated with the
introduction of Christianity on Philippines soil.
Historically, it corrects geographical distortion
contained in the Philippine historiography.
Butuan or Limasawa? The site of the first
Mass in the Philippines;
A Reexamination of Evidence
Miguel A, Bernad
Here is a controversy regarding the site of the
first Mass ever celebrated on the Philippine
soil. Pigafetta tells us that is was held on
Easter Sunday, the 31st of March 1521, on an
island called “Mazaua.” Two native chieftains
were in attendance: the Rajah of Mazaua and
the Rajah of Butuan. After the Mass the party
went up a little hill and planted a wooden cross
upon the summit. The subject of controversy is
the identity of this place with Pigafetta called
“Mazaua” there are two conflicting claims as
to its identity; one school of thought point top
the little island south of Leyte which on the
map is called Limasawa; the other school
rejects that claim and point instead to the
beach called Masao at the mouth of the
Agusan River in the northern Mindanao, near
what was then the village (now the city) of
Butuan. In this paper we shall try to reexamine
and reassess the evidence for these two claims.
And we shall begin with the Butuan tradition.
I. The Butuan Tradition
The Butuan claims rests upon a tradition that
was almost unanimous and unbroken for three
centuries namely the 17th, the 18th and the 19th.
The monument was brick pillar on which was
a marble slab that contained an inscription
which be translated as follow.
To the Immortal Magellan” the People of
Butuan with their Parish Priest and the
Spaniard resident therein, to commemorate his
arrival and the celebration of the First Mass on
this site on the 8th of April 1521. Erected in
1872, under the District Governor Jose Ma.
Carvallo.
The monument was erected apparently at the
instigation of the parish priest of Butuan, who
at the time was a Spanish friar of the Order of
Augustinian Recollects. The date given for the
first Mass (8 April 1521) may be an obvious
error, or it may be clumsy and anachronistic
attempt to translate the original date in terms
of the Gregorian calendar. In any case that
monument is a testimonial to the tradition that
remained vigorous until the end of the 19 th
century, namely, that Magellan and his
expedition landed at Butuan and celebrated
there the first mass ever offered in Philippine
soil.

th
The other Jesuit writer of the mid-17 century
was Father Francisco Combès S.J. (1620-
1665) who, like Colin, had lived and worked
as a missionary in the Philippines, and whose
Historia de Mindanao y Jolo was printed in
Madrid in 1667, two years after the author’s
death and five years after Colin’s work was
published. Combès History of Mindanao was
also reissued 230 years afterwards in a
handsome edition edited by Wenceslao Retana
assisted by father Pastells. In his account of
Magellan voyage, Combès give a somewhat
different version of the route take by the
Discoverer. Here is his account:
The first time that royal standard of the
Faith were seen to fly in this island (of
Mindanao) was when the Archipelago was
first discovered by the Admiral Alonso (sic) de
Magallanes. He followed a new and difficult
route [across the pacific], entering by the Strait
of Siargao, formed by that island and that of
Leyte, and landing at the island of Limasawa
which is at the entrance of that Strait. Amazed
by the novelty and strangeness of the [Spain]
nation and the ships. Barbarians of that island
welcomed them and gave them good
refreshments.
While at Limasawa, enjoying rest and
good treatment, they heard of the River of
Butuan, whose chieftain was more powerful.
His reputation attracted our men thither to see
for themselves or be disillusioned, their
curiosity sharpened by the fact that the place
was nearby. The barbarians [chief] lived up to
our men’s expectations, providing them with
the food they needed… Magellan contented
himself with having them do reverence to the
cross which is erected upon a hillock as a sign
to future generations of their alliance… the
solemnity with which the cross was erected
and the deep piety shown by the Spaniards,
and by the native following the example of the
Spaniards, engendered great respect for the
cross.
The Evidence for Limasawa
We now come to the evidence in favor of
Limasawa. The evidence may be outlined as
follows:
1. The evidence of Albo’s logbook
2. The evidence of Pigafetta
a. Pigafetta’s testimony
regarding the route
b. The evidence of Pigafetta map
c. The two native kings
d. The seven days at “Mazaua”
e. An argument from omission
3. Summary of the evidence of Albo and
Pigafetta
4. Confirmatory evidence of the Legaspi
Expedition
I. The evidence of Albo’s logbook
Francisco Albo joined the Magellan
expedition as a pilot (“contramaestre”)
in Magellan’s flagship “Trinidad”. He
was one of the eighteen survivors who
returned with Sebastian Elcano on the
“Victoria” after having
circumnavigated the world. Albo
began keeping his own diary – merely
only a log-book - on the voyage out,
while they were sailing southward in
the Atlantic along the coast of South
America. Off Brazil. His account of
their entry into Philippine waters (or,
as it was then called, the archipelago
of san Lazaro… may be reduced to the
following points:
1. On the 16th of March (1512) as they sailed
in a westerly course from the Ladrones,
they saw land towards the northwest; but
owing to many shallow places they did not
approach it. They found later that its name
was Yunagan.
2. They went instead that same day southward
to another small island named Suluan, and
there they anchored. There they saw some
canoes but these fled at the Spaniard’s
approach. This island was at 9 and two –
third degree North latitude.
3. Departing from those two island, they
sailed westward to an uninhabited island of
Gada where they took in a supply of wood
and water. The sea around that island was
free shallows. (Albo does not give the
latitude of this island, but form Pigafetta’s
testimony, this seems to be the “Acquada”
or Homonhon, at 10 degree North latitude
4. From that island they sailed westward
towards a large island named Seilani which
was inhabited and was known to have gold.
(Seilani – or, as Pigafetta calls it “Ceylon”
– was the island of Leyte.)
5. Sailing southward along the coast of that
large island of Seilani, they turned
southwest to small island called “Mazava.”
 That island is also at a latitude of 9 and two
– thirds degrees north.
6. The people of that island of Mazava were
very good. There the Spaniards planted a
cross upon a mountain - top , and from
there they were shown three island to the
west and southwest, where they told there
was much gold “they showed us how the
c=gold was gathered, which came in small
pieces like peas and lentils.
7. From Mazava they sailed northward again
toward Seilani they followed the coast of
Seilani in a northwesterly direction,
ascending up to 10 degrees of latitude
where they saw three small island.
8. From there they sailed westward some 10
leangues, and they saw three islets, where
they dropped anchor for the night. In the
morning they sailed southwest some 12
leagues, down to a latitude of 10 and one -
third degree. There they entered a channel
between two island, one of which was
called ”Matan” and the other “Subu”
9. They sailed down that channel and turned
westward and anchored at the town (la
villa) of Subu where they stayed many days
and obtained provisions and entered into a
peace-pact with the local king.
10. The town of Subu was on an east – west
direction with the island of Suluan and
Mazava. But between Mazava and Subu,
there were so many shallows that the boats
could not go westward directly but had to
go (as they did) in a round-about away.
The Evidence from Pigafetta
The most complete account of the Magellan
expedition is that by Antonio Pigafetta
entitled Primo viaggio intomo al mondo
(First Voyage around the World). Like
Albo, he was a member of the expedition
and was therefore an eyewitness of the
principal event which he describes,
including the first Mass in what is now
known as the Philippine Archipelago., but
which Magellan called the islands of Saint
Lazarus. Of Pigaffeta’s work there are two
excellent English Translation, one
Robertson (from Italian) and another by
Skelton (from French)
(a)Pigafetta’s Testimony Regarding the
Route
The route taken by the Magellan expedition
may be reconstructed if we follow Pigafetta;s
account day by day. Here is a summary of his
account.
1. Saturday, 16 March 1512. –
Magellan’s expedition sighted a “high
lnad” named “Zamal” which was
some 300 league westward of
Ladrones (now the Maraian) Island.
2. Sunday, March 17. “The following
day” after sighting Zamal Island, they
landed on “another island which was
uninhabited” and which lay “to the
right” of the above-mentioned Island
of “Zamal.” (To the right here would
mean on their starboard going south or
southwest.) They set up two tents for
the sick members of the crew and had
a sow killed for them. The name of
this Island was “Humunu”
(Homonhon). This island was located
at 10 degrees North latitude.
3. On that same day (Sunday, March 17)
Magellan named the entire archipelago
the “Island of Saint Lazarus”, the
reason being that it was the Sunday in
the Lenten season when the Gospel
assigned the Mass and liturgical
Office was the eleventh chapter of St.
John, which tells of the Raising of
Lazarus from the dead.
4. Monday, 18 March. – In the afternoon
of their second day on that island, they
saw a boat coming towards them with
nine men in it. A exchange of gifts
was effected. Magellan asked for food
supplies, and the men went away,
promising to bring rice and other
supplies in “four days”.
5. There were two spring of water on that
island of Homonhon. Also they saw
there some indication that there was
gold in these islands Consequently
Magellan renamed the island and
called it the “Watering Place of Good
Omen” (Acqauda la di bouni
segnialli).
6. Friday, 22 March - at noon the native
returned. This time they were in two
boats, and they brought food supplies.
7. Magellan’s expedition stayed eight
days at Homonhon: from Sunday, 17
March, top the Monday of the
Following week, 25 March.
8. Monday, 25 March. – In the afternoon,
the expedition weighed anchor and left
the island of Homonhon. In the
ecclesiastical calendar, this day (25
 March) was the Feast-day of the
Incarnation, also called the feast of the
Annunciation and therefore “Our
Lady’s Day.” On this day, as they
were about to weigh anchor, an
accident happened to Pigafetta: he fell
into the water but was rescued. He
attributes his narrow escape from
death as a grace obtained through the
intercession of the Blessed Virgin
Mary on her feast-day.
9. The route taken by the expedition after
leaving Homonhon was toward the
west southwest, between four islands:
namely, Cenalo, Hiunanghan, Ibusson
and Albarien.” Very probably
“Cenalo” is a misspelling in the Italian
Manuscript for what Pigafetta in his
map calls “Ceiolon” and Albo called
“Seilani.”: namely the island of Leyte.
”Hiunanghan” (a misspellinh of
Hiniunangan) seemed to Pegafetta to
be a separate island, but it is actually
on the mainland of Leyte (i.e
“Ceylon”). On the other hand,
Hibuson (Pigafetta’s Ibusson) is an
island of Leyte’s South Trip.
10. Thursday. 28 March. – In the morning
of Holy Thursday, 28 March, they
anchored off an island where the
previous night they had/
11. They remained seven days on Mazaua
Island. What they did during those
seven days, we shall discuss in a
separate section bellow, entitled
“seven Days at Mazaua.”
12. Thursday, 4 April. – They left
Mazaua, bound for Cebu. They were
guided thither by the king of Mzaua
who sailed in his own boat. Their
route took them past five “Islands”:
namely: “Ceylon, Bohol, Cnighan,
Baibai, and Gatighan.”
13. At Gatighan, They sailed westward to
the three islands of the Camotes
Groups, namely. Pora, Pasihan and
Ponson. (Pigafetta calls the “Polo,
Ticobon, and Pozon.”) Here the
Spanish ships stopped to allow the
king of Mazaua to catch up with them,
since the Spanish ships were much
faster than the native balanghai – a
thing that excited the administration of
the king of Mazavua.
14. From the Camotes Island they sailed
(south-westward) toward to “Zubu”.
15. Sunday, 7 April. – At noon on Sunday,
the 7th of April, they entered the
harbour of “Zubu” (Cebu). It had
taken them three days to negotiate the
journey from mazaua northward to the
Camotes Island and then southward to
Cebu.
(b) The evidence of Pigafetta’s Map
Both the Ambrosian and the Nancy
codies of Pigafetta’s narrative are
illustrated with maps, or more
precisely, diagrams or sketches.
Pigafetta was no cartographer and his
map has probably no value as
navigational charts. But they are
extremely useful in helping to identify
the island which he mentions in the
narrative, and they help to establish
the relative positions (and even the
relative sizes) of those island.
One such map (Blair and Robertson,
vol. 33) shows the Irge island of
Samar (in the map it is spelt Zzamal)
and the smaller island of suluan,
Abarien, Hiunangan, and “Humunu”
(Homonhon), which is also describe as
“Aguada ly boni segnaly.”
A second map (BR 33) is really
adouble map. One map shows the
island of Mindanao or Maguindanao
(the map spell it Mamgdanao). It
shows on the northern shore a deep
indentation which is recognizably
Panguil Bay. To the west of that is
“Cippit”. To the extreme east,
bordering on the Pacific, are Butuan,
Calagan, and Benasan (spelt in the
map Butuam. Calagam, Benasam).
The other map shows the southern tip
of Zamboanga, the island of Basilan,
and the Sulu archipelago.
A third map (BR33) is the one most
pertinent to our present investigation,
because it shows the island of Mazaua
(the map spells it Mazzana) in relation
to the “island of “Ceilon” and
“Baibai” (i.e Leyte) and to those of
Bohol, Gatighan and the three island
 of the Camotes group (in the map
called Polon, Pozon and Tocobob).
From a comparison of these maps, the
following inferences seems justified:
1. Mazaua (Mazzana in the map) is a
small island which lies off the
southwest tip of the large island of
Ceilon (Southern Leyte), and is to the
east of the island of Bohol. It lies near
passage between bohal and the westen
coast of “Ceilon” (Leyte).
2. The island of Mazaua in Pigafetta’s
map, therefore lies in a position
roughly equivalent to the actual
position of the island of Limasawa.
3. In no way can Mazua be identified
with Butuan, which is situated in
another and much larger island (which
we now call Mindanao), the same
island in which “Calagan”, “Cippit”,
and “Mamgdanao” are also located.
(c) The Two Kings
There is confirmation evidence in the
presence of two native “kings” or
rajahs at Mazaua during the Magellan
visit. One was the “king” of Mazaua –
who later guided the Magellan
expedition to Cebu. The other was a
relative (“one of his bother” as
Pigafetta says), namely the king of
rajah of Butuan.
Of this latter individual, Pigafetta says
that he was “one finest looking man”
that he had seen in those parts (We
shall have more to say about him
later). At the moment, the relevant fact
is that he was a visitor to Mazaua. His
territory was Butuan, which was in
another island:
(d) Seven Days at Mazaua
In that island of “Mazaua” – which
according to both Pigafetta and Albo
was situated at a latitude of and two-
thirds degree north - the Magellan
expedition stayed a week. “We
remained there seven days,” says
Pigafetta. What did they do during
those seven days?
Was it possible (as some writers have
suggested) that the expedition left
Mazaua, went south to Butuan, offered
Nass there, and thened to Mazaua
before, proceeding to Cebu?
The answering must be sought in
Pigafetta’s day-by-day account of
those seven days. Here is the summary
of his account:
1. Thursday, 28 March. – In the morning they
anchored near an island where they had seen a
light the night before. A small boat (boloto)
came with eight native, to whom Magellan
threw some trinkets as presents. The native
paddled away, but two hours later two larger
boats (balanghai) came, in one of which the
native king sat under an awning of mats. At
Magellan’s invitation some of the natives went
up the Spanish ship, but the native king
remained seated in his boat. An exchange of
gifts was effected. In the afternoon of the day,
the Spanish ship[s weighed anchor and came
closer to shore, anchoring near the native
king’s village. This Thursday, 28 march was
Thursday in Holy week: i.e Holy Thursday.
2. Friday, 29 march. – “Next day. Holy Friday,”
Magellan sent his slave interpreter ashore in a
small boat to ask the king if he could provide
the expedition with food supplies, and to say
that they had come as friend and not as
enemies. In reply the king himself came in a
boat with six or eight men, and this time went
up Magellan’s ship and the two man
embraced. Another exchange of gift was made.
The native king and his companions returned
ashore, bringing with them two members of
Magellan’s expedition as guest for the night.
One of the two was Pigafetta.
3. Saturday, 30 March. – Pigafetta and his
companion had spent the previous evening
feasting and drinking with the native king and
his son. Pigafetta deplored the fact that,
although it was Good Friday, they had to eat
meat. The following morning (Saturday)
Pigafetta and his companion took leave of
their hosts and returned to ships.
4. Sunday, 31 March. – “Early in the morning of
Sunday, the last of March and Easter day”,
Magellan sent the priest ashore with some men
to prepare for the mass. Later in the morning
Magellan landed with some fifty men and
mass was celebrated, after which a cross was
venerated. Magellan and the Spaniards
returned to the ship for the noon – day meal,
but in the afternoon they returned ashore to
plant the cross on the summit of the highest
hill. In attendance both of the mass and at the
 planning of the cross were the king of Mazaua
and the king of Butuan.
5. Sunday, 31 March. – On that day same
afternoon, whi9le on the summit of the highest
hill, Magellan asked the two kings which ports
he should go to in order to obtain more
abundant supplies of food than were available
in that island. They replied that there were
three ports to choose from: Ceylon, Zubu and
Calagan. Of the three, Zubu was the port with
the most trade. Magellan then said that he
wished to go to Zubu and to depart the
following morning. He asked for someone to
guide him tither. The king replied to the pilots
would be available “any time.” But later that
evening the kings od Mazaua changed his
mind and said that he would himself conduct
Magellan to Zubu but that he would first have
to bring the harvest in. he asked Magellan to
send him men to help with the harvest.
6. Monday, 1 April. – Magellan sent men ashore
to help with the harvest, but no work was done
that day because the two kings were sleeping
of their drinking bout of the night before.
7. Tuesday, 2 April, and Wednesday, 3 April. –
Work on the harvest during the “next two
days.” Tuesday and Wednesday, the 2nd and 3rd
of April.
(e) An Argument from Omission
If “Mazaua” were Butuan, or in the
vicinity if Butuan, ther is a curios
omission in Pigafetta’s account which
would be difficult to explain. Butuan is a
riverine settlement. It is situated on the
Agusan River. The beach called Masao is
in the delta of the river. If the Magellan
expedition were at that delta, and if the
Mass were celebrated there, why is there
no mention of the river?
The Legazpi Expedition
There is confirmatory evidence from the
documents of the Legazpi expedition, which
sailed into the Philippine water in 1565, forty-
four years after Magellan. One of the places
that Legazpi and his pilots were anxious to
visit was precisely Mazaua, and to this end
they inquired about “Mazaua” from Camotuan
and his companions, natives of the village of
the Cabalian at the southeaster end of the
island of Leyte, guided by these native, the
Legazpi ships rounded the island of “Panae”
(Panaon), which was separated from Leyte by
a narrow strait, and anchor4ed off “Mazaua”
–---- but they found the inhabitants to be
hostile, aparrently as a result of Portuguese
depredations that had occurred in the four-
decade interval between the Legazpi and the
Magellan expedition.
IV. The Geography of “Mazaua”
The question may be asked: If “Mazaua” is the
little island of Limasawa, why did Magellan
go there? Why go to an insignificant little
island; why not instead to the larger island?
The answer must be sought in geography. He
was coasting southward down the eastern coast
of Leyte (Albo’s “Seilani”; Pigafetta’s
“Ceylon”) with Hibuson Island on his left.
This took him down to the southern tip of
Panaon. The wind was blowing westward from
the pacific. It was late march and April in this
part of the Philippines, the east wind is strong.
It is what the people of Limasawa call the
“Dumagsa”, the east wind. Sailing with the
wind, Magellan’s vessels would find
themselves going west or southwest, toward
the island of Limasawa. Having seen a light on
the island one night, they deeded the following
day to anchor off it.
It is unfortunately that in the controversy that
has arisen between the supporters of Butuan
and those Limasawa, this question of
geography has been given little notice.
If the island of Limasawa is the “Mazaua” of
Pigafettaand and the “Masava” of Albo, why
then is now called Limasawa? Were Pigafetta
and Albo wrong? Or were the historian and
map-maker wrong from the 17th century
onward?
We do not have the answer to that question.
Except to state that in the southern part of
Leyte, the island is istill refrred to by the
fisherfolk as “Masaoa”, not Limasawa.
V. Why Then the Butuan Tradition?
How then did the strong three-century tradition
in favour of Butuan arise? Here we are in the
realm of conjecture, but a number of reasons
could be adduced to account for the tradition.
First, it must be remembered that the tradition
is based on second-hand information. One
author repeats (and often distorts) what
previous author have written, and is in turn
copied (and distorted) by subsequent authors.
In such a chain, one author making a mistake
could easily start a tradition that could last
three centuries.
A second reason is suggested by Pastells.
Magellan and his men got to know the rajah of
Butuan at Masaua. According to Pigafetta.
That rajah was at Masaua only on a visit. But
it is easy to see how the fact that Magellan had
known the rajah of Butuan could be
misunderstood by later historians as meaning
that he had known him at Butuan.
There is a third reason. It must be remembered
that the Butuan Tradition, while erroneous as
to the site of the first Mass, is not entirely
without validity. Magellan expedition,
Magellan’s death, visited several places
Mindanao, very probably including Butuan.
Issues for Discourse
1. Will Butuan lose its historical and
cultural value if the first mass not
happened in it? Why?
2. Do you think it was beneficial or
detrimental for the Filipino to be
Christianized by the Spaniards? Why?
TOPIC: THE CAVITE MUTINY
The Cavity Mutiny is one of the events in the
annals of Philippine history that had numerous
controversies. Differing accounts in reference
to this event show that each account presents
different sides of the story. Significantly, the
accounts were written those who lived at the
time of the event (first-hand accounts) and
those who had received their information from
contemporaries of the events or who, because
of their relationship to such men (second-hand
accounts).
Reexamining whose "story" is more credible
and reliable about the Cavite Mutiny is very
important and critical as this event resulted to
the martyrdom of the three priests
(GOMBURZA) and ushered in the Philippine
Revolution of 1898. Among all accounts,
however, John N. Schumacher (1972), who
made an extensive reexamination of the
primary and secondary sources of the event,
points two valid and reliable documents. One
is that of Trinidad Hermenigildo Pardo de
Tavera, a Filipino scholar and researcher and
the other is that of Jose Montero y Vidal, a
prolific Spanish historian.
According to Schumacher, "the account of
Pardo de Tavera, prescinding from the
emotional anti-friar tone that pervades it, gives
evidence of being the most reliable, even
though fairly general, account except for its
failure to recognize that De la Torre had also
been suspicious of the Filipino reformists.
That of Montero, apart from its anti-Filipino
tone and its supposition of a revolutionary
conspiracy, contains the most details and, to
all appearances, most reliable account of the
actual course of the revolt itself, as well as of
the execution of the three priests."
In this context, the following accounts of
Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Jose Montero y viu
and the Official Report of Governor Izquierdo
on the Cavite Munity of 1872 were considered
for this reading. These persons have different
interpretations about the mutiny because they
interpreted it for different purposes. Each of
them used their own their reference in
analyzing the event and every reader is
enjoined to discriminate closely claims and
supporting evidences.
Spanish Version of the Cavite Mutiny of
1872
By Jose Montero y Vidal
The Spanish version of the Cavite Mutiny of
1872 was written by the Spanish historian,
Jose Montero y Vidal, in his book entitled
Historia General de Filipinas (Madrid, 1895,
Vol. III, pp 566-595. This narrative of
Montero y Vidal, normally a good historian,
was so woefully biased that Dr. T.H. Pardo de
Tavera commented that he, "in narrating the
Cavite episode, does not speak as a historian;
he speaks as a Spaniard bend on perverting the
facts at his pleasure; he is mischievously
partial" Unsupported by positive documentary
evidence, this Spanish historian exaggerated
the mutiny of a few disgruntled native soldiers
and laborers into a revolt to overthrow Spanish
rule - a seditious movement and involved the
innocent Filipino patriotic leaders including
Fathers Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora, Jose Ma.
Basa, Antonio Ma. Regidor, Joaquin Pardo de
Tavera, and others. Montero y Vidal's version
of the Cavite episode of 1872 in English
translation follows:
With the establishment in Spain of a
government less radical than the one that
appointed La Torre, the latter was relieved
from his post. His successor D. Rafael de
lzquierdo, assumed control of the government
of these islands April 4, 1871. The most
eventual episode in his rule was the Cavite
Revolt of 1872.
The abolition of the privileges enjoyed by the
laborers of the Cavite arsenal of exemption
from the tribute was, according to some, the
cause of the insurrection. There were,
however, other causes.
The Spanish revolution which overthrew a
secular throne; the propaganda carried on by
an unbridled press against monarchical
principles, attentatory of the most sacred
respects towards the dethroned majesty; the
democratic and republic books and pamphlets;
the speeches and preachings of the apostles of
these new ideas in Spain; the outbursts of the
American publicists and the criminal policy of
the senseless Governor whom the
Revolutionary government sent to govern the
Philippines, and who put into practice these
ideas were the determining circumstances
which gave rise, among certain Filipinos, to
the idea of attaining their independence. It was
towards this goal that they started to work,
with the powerful assistance of a certain 7 of
the native clergy, who out of spite toward the
friars, made common cause with the enemies
of the mother country.
At various times but especially in the
beginning of the year 1872, the authorities
received anonymous communications with the
information that a great uprising would break
out against the Spaniards, the minute the fleet
at Cavite left for the South, and that all would
be assassinated, including the friars. But
nobody gave importance to these notices. The
conspiracy had been going on since the days of
La Torre with utmost secrecy. At times, the
principal leaders met either in the house of the
Filipino Spaniard, D. Joaquin Pardo de Tavera,
or in that of the native priest, Jacinto Zamora,
and these meetings were usually attended by
the curate of Bacoor (Cavite), the soul of the
movement, whose energetic character and
immense wealth enabled him to exercise a
strong influence.
The garrison of Manila, composed mostly of
native soldiers, were involved in this
conspiracy, as well as a multitude of civilians.
The plan was for the soldiers to assassinate
their officers, the servants, their masters, and
the escort of the Captain-General at
Malacańang, to dispose of the governor
himself. The friars and other Spaniards were
later to have their turn. The pre-concerted
signal among the conspirators of Cavite and
Manila was the firing of rockets from the walls
of the city. The details having been arranged, it
was agreed that the uprising was to break out
in the evening of the 20th of January, 1872.
Various circumstances, however, which might
well be considered as providential, upset the
plans, and made the conspiracy a dismal
failure.
In the district of Sampaloc, the fiesta of the
patron saint, the Virgin of Loreto, was being
celebrated with pomp and splendor. On the
night of the 20th, fireworks were displayed
and rockets fired into the air. Those in Cavite
mistook these for the signal to revolt, and at
nine thirty in the evening of that day two
hundred native soldiers under the leadership of
Sergeant La Madrid rose up in arms,
assassinated the commander of the fort and
wounded his wife.
The military governor of Cavite, D. Fernando
Rojas, dispatched two Spaniards to inform the
Manila authorities of the uprising but they
were met on the way be a group of natives
belonging to the Guias established by La
Torre, who put them instantly to death. At
about the same time, an employee of the
arsenal, D. Domingo Mijares, left Cavite in a
war vessel for Manila, arriving there at
midnight. He informed the commandant of
Marine of what had occured, and this official
immediately relayed the news to Governor
Izquierdo.
Early the next morning two regiments, under
the command of D. Felipe Ginoves, Segundo
cabo, left for Cavite on board the merchant
vessels Filipino, Manila Isabela I and Isabela
II. Ginoves demanded rendition and waited the
whole day of the 21st for the rebels to
surrender, without ordering the assault of their
position in order to avoid unnecessary
shedding of blood. After waiting the whole
day in vain for the rendition of the rebels,
Ginoves launched an assault against the latter's
position, early in the morning of the 22nd,
putting to the sword the majority of the rebels
and making prisoners of the rest. On the same
day an official proclamation announced the
suppression of the revolt.

As a result of the declarations made by some
of the prisoners in which several individuals
were pointed out as instigators, Don Jose
Burgos and D. Jacinto Zamora, curates of the
Cathedral, D. Mariano Gomez, curate of
Bacoor (Cavite), several other Filipino priesis,
Antonio Maria Regidor, lawyer and Regidor of
the Ayuntamiento, D. Joaquin Pardo Tavera,
Consejero de Administración, Pedro Carillo,
Gervacio Sanchez and Jose Mau de de Leon,
lawyers Enrique Paraiso and Jose and Pio
Basa, employees, and Crisanto Reyes, Maximo
Paterno and several other Filipinos, were
arrested.
The council of war, which from the beginning
look charge of the causes in connection with
the Cavite uprising, passed the sentence of
death on forty-one of the rebels. On the 27th of
January the Captain-General fixed his
"cumplase" on the sentence. On the 6th of the
following month, eleven more were sentenced
to death, but the Governor General, by decree
of the day following, commuted this sentence
to life imprisonment. On the 8th, the sentence
of death was pronounced on Camerino and ten
years imprisonment of eleven individuals of
the famous "Guias de la Torre," for the
assassination of the Spaniards who, on the
night of January 20th, were sent to Manila to
carry news of the uprising.
The same council on the 15th of February,
sentenced to die by strangulation the Filipino
priests, D. Jose Burgos, D. Jacinto Zamora,
and D. Mariano Gomez, and Francisco Saldua;
and Maximo Inocencio, Enrique Paraiso and
Crisanto de los Reyes to ten years
imprisonment. Early in the morning of the
seventeen of February, an immense multitude
appeared on the field of Bagumbayan to
witness the execution of the sentence. The
attending force was composed of Filipino
troops, and the batteries of the fort were aimed
at the place of execution, ready to fire upon the
least sign of uprising. Gomez was executed
first, then Zamora, then Burgos, and lastly,
Saldua.
On the 3rd of April, 1872, the Audience
suspended from the practice of law the
following men: D. Jose Basa y Enriquez, D.
Joaquin Pardo de Tavera, D. Antonio Ma.
Regidor, D. Pedro Carillo, D. Gervacio
Sanchez and D. Jose Mauricio de Leon.
Izquierdo had requested the sending to Manila
of Spanish troops for the defense of the fort as
most of these found here were natives. In
pursuance of Izquierdo's request, the
government, by decree of April 4, 1872,
dissolved the native regiment of artillery and
ordered the creation of an artillery force to be
composed exclusively of Peninsulares. The
latter arrived in Manila in July, 1872. On the
occasion of the arrival of the troops, the Sto.
Domingo Church celebrated a special mass at
which high officials of the government, the
religious corporations, and the general public,
attended, upon invitation by the Governor and
Captain-General of the Philippines.
Filipino Version of the Cavite Mutiny of
1872
Dr. Trinidad Hermenegildo Pardo de Tavera
The Filipino version of the bloody incident of
Cavite in 1872 was written by Dr. Trinidad H.
Pardo de Tavera, Filipino scholar, scientist,
and historical researcher. According to him,
this incident was merely a mutiny by the
native Filipino soldiers and laborers of the
Cavite arsenal against the harsh policy of
despotic Governor and Captain-General Rafael
de Izquierdo (1871-1873) which abolished
their old-time privileges of exemption from
paying the annual tribute and from rendering
the polo (forced labor). The loss of these
privileges was naturally resented by the
soldiers and laborers. Some of them, impelled
by volcanic wrath, rose in arms on the night of
January 20, 1872, and killed the commanding
officer of the Cavite Arsenal and other Spanish
officers. This was easily suppressed by the
Spanish troops which were rushed from
Manila. This turbulent incident, which was
magnified by the Spanish officials and friars
into a revolt for Philippine independence, is
narrated by Pardo de Tavera, as follows:
The arrival of General Izquierdo (1871-1873)
was the signal for a complete change in the
aspect of affairs. The new governor soon made
it clear that his views were different from
those of La Torre - that there would be no
change in the established form of government
- and he at once announced that he intended to
govern the people "with crucifix in one hand
and a sword in the other."
His first official act was to prohibit the
founding of a school of arts and trades, which
was being organized by the efforts and funds
raised by natives of standing in the
community, but the founding of which did not
tally with the views of the religious orders.
Governor Izquierdo believed that the
establishment of the new school was merely a
pretext for the organization of a political club,
and he not only did not allow it to be opened
but made a public statement accusing the
Filipinos who had charge of the movement.
All of those who had offered their support to
ex-Governor La Torre were classed as
personas sospechosas (suspects), a term that
since that time has been used in the Philippine
Islands to designate any person who refused to
servilely obey the wishes and whims of the
authorities. The conservative element in the
islands now directed the governmental policy,
and the educated Filipinos fell more and more
under the displeasure and suspicion of the
governor.
The peace of the colony was broken by a
certain incident which, though unimportant in
itself, was probably the origin of the political
agitation which, constantly growing for thirty
years, culminated in the overthrow of the
Spanish sovereignty in the Philippine Islands.
From time immemorial the workmen in the
arsenal at Cavite and in the barracks of the
artillery and engineer corps has been exempt
from the payment of the tribute tax and from
obligation to work certain days each year on
public improvements. General Izquierdo
believed the time opportune for abolishing
these privileges and ordered that in the future
all such workmen should pay tribute and labor
on public improvements. This produced great
dissatisfaction among the workmen affected
and the men employed in the arsenal at Cavite
went on a strike, but, yielding to pressure and
threats made by the authorities, they
subsequently returned to their labors.
The workmen in the Cavite arsenal were all
natives of that town and of the neighboring
town of San Roque. In a short while the
dissatisfaction and discontent with the
government spread all over that section and
even the entire troops became disaffected. On
the night of January 20, 1872, there was an
uprising among the soldiers in the San Felipe
fort, in Cavite, and the commanding offer and
other Spanish officers in charge of the fort
were assassinated. Forty marines attached to
the arsenal and 22 artillerymen under Sergeant
La Madrid took part in this uprising, and it was
believed that the entire garrison in Cavite was
disaffected and probably implicated. But if the
few soldiers who precipitated the attack
believed they would be supported by the bulk
of the army and that a general rebellion against
Spain would be declared in the islands, they
were deceived. When the news of the uprising
was received in Manila, General Izquierdo
sent the commanding general to Cavite, who
reinforced the native troops, took possession
of the fort, and put the rebels to the sword.
Sergeant La Madrid has been blinded and
badly burned by the explosion of a sack of
powder and, being unable to escape, was also
cut down. A few of the rebels were captured
and taken to Manila and there was no further
disturbance of the peace or insubordination of
any kind.
This uprising among the soldiers in Cavite was
used as a powerful lever by the Spanish
residents and by the friars. During the time
that General La Torre was chief executive in
the Philippine Islands the influential Filipinos
did not hesitate to announce their hostility to
the religious orders, and the Central
Government in Madrid has announced its
intention to deprive the friars in these islands
of all powers of intervention in matters of civil
government and of the direction and
management of the university. Moret, the
colonial minister, had drawn up a scheme of
reforms by which he proposed to make a
radical change in the colonial system of
government which was to harmonize with the
principles for which the revolution ' in Spain
had been fought. It was due to these facts and
promises that the Filipinos had great hopes of
an improvement in the affairs of their country,
while the friars, on the other hand, feared that
their power in the colony would soon be
completely a thing of the past.
The mutiny in Cavite gave the conservative
element - that is, those who favored a
continuation of the colonial modus vivendi -
an opportunity to represent to the Spanish
Government that a vast conspiracy was afoot
and organized throughout the archipelago with
the object of destroying the Spanish
sovereignty. They stated that the Spanish
Government in Madrid was to blame for the
propagation of pernicious doctrines and for the
hopes that had been held out from Madrid to
the Filipino people, and also because of the
leanings of ex-Governor La Torre and of other
public functionaries who had been sent to the
Philippine Islands by the Government that
succeeded Queen Isabella. The fall of the new
rulers in Spain within a few days, as well as
other occurrences, seemed to accentuate the
claims made by the conservative element in
the Philippine Islands regarding the peril
which threatened Spanish sovereignty in the
islands; it appeared as though the prophecies
were about to be fulfilled. The Madrid
authorities were not able to combat public
opinion in that country; no opportunity was
given nor time taken to make a thorough
investigation of the real facts or extent of the
alleged revolution; the conservative element in
the Philippine Islands painted the local
condition of affairs in somber tints; and the
Madrid Government came to believe, or at
least to suspect, that a scheme was being
concocttu throughout the islands to shake off
Spanish sovereignty. Consistent with the
precedents or their colonial rule, the repressive
measures adopted to quell the supposed
insurrection wer strict and sudden. No attempt
appears to have been made to ascertain
whether or n0t u innocent suffered with the
guilty, and the only end sought appeared to be
to inspire tero in the minds of all by making
examples of a certain number, so that none in
the uui should attempt, nor even dream of any
attempt at secession.
Many of the best known Filipinos were
denounced to the military authorities, and
they,the sons of Spaniards born in the islands
and men of mixed blood (Spanish and
Chinese), as well as the Indians of pure blood,
as the Philippine Malays were called, were
persecuted and punished without distinction by
the military authorities. Those who dared to
oppose themselves to the friars were punished
with special severity; among others may be
mentioned the priests Burgos, a half-blood
Spaniard, Zamora, a half-blood Chinaman, and
Gomez, a pure-blood Tagalog, who had
vigorously opposed the friars in the litigation
over the curacies in the various provinces. The
three priests mentioned were condemned to
death by a military court-martial, and Antonio
M. Regidor, a lawyer and councilman of
Manila, Joaquin Pardo de Tavera, lawyer and
members of the administrative council, P.
Mendoza, curate of Santa Cruz, Guevarra,
curate of Quiapo, the priests Mariano Sevilla,
Feliciano Gomez, Ballesteros, Jose Basa, the
lawyers Carillo, Basa, Enriquez, Crisanto,
Reyes, Maximo, Paterno, and many others
were sentenced to life imprisonment on the
Marianas Islands. The Government thus
secured its object of terrorizing the Filipino
people, but the punishments meted out were
not only unjust but were from every point of
view unnecessary, as there had not been the
remote intention on the part of anyone to
overthrow the Spanish sovereignty. On the
contrary, the attitude of Moret, Labra, Becerra,
and other high officials in the Madrid
Government had awakened in the breasts of
the Filipinos a lively friendship for the home
government, and never has the ties which
bound the colony to Spain been as close as
they were during the short interval between the
arrival of General La Torre and the time when
General Izquierdo, in the name of the home
government, was guilty of the atrocities
mentioned above, of which innocent men were
made victims.
A careful study of the history and documents
of that time brings to light the part which the
religious orders played in that sad drama. One
of the results of the so-called revolution of
Cavite was to strengthen the power of the
friars in the Philippine Islands in such manner
that the Madrid Government, which up to that
time had contemplated reducing the power of
the religious orders in these islands, was
obliged not only to abandon its intention, but
to place a yet greater measure of official
influences at the service of the friars, and from
that time they were considered as an important
factor in the preservation of the Spanish
sovereignty in the colony.
This influence was felt throughout the islands,
and not only were the friars taken into the
confidence of the Government, but the Filipino
people looked upon the religious orders as
their real masters and as the representatives,
powerful and unsparing, of the Spanish
Kingdom.
But there were other results following upon
the unfortunate policy adopted by Governor
Izquierdo. Up to that time there had been no
intention of secession from Spain, and the only
aspiration of the people was to secure the
material and educational advancement of the
country. The Filipino people had never blamed
the Spanish nation for the backward condition
in which the islands existed, nor for the
injustices committed in the islands by the
Spanish officials; but on the contrary it was the
custom to lay all the blame for these things on
the individual officers guilty of
maladministration, and no attempt had been
made to investigate whether or not the evils
under which the islands suffered were due to
fundamental causes. The persecutions which
began under Governor Izquierdo were based
on the false assumption that the Filipino
people were desirous of independence, and
although this was an unfounded accusation,
there were many martyrs to the cause, among
whom were found many of the most intelligent
and well-to-do people, without distinction of
color or race or nationality, who were
sentenced to death, to imprisonment, or were
expatriated because they were believed to
aspire to the independence of these islands.
The fear which the people felt of the friars and
of the punishments meted out by the
Government was exceeded only by the
admiration which the Filipino people has for
those who did not hesitate to stand up for the
rights of the country. In this manner, the
persecutions to which the people were
subjected served as a stimulus and an
educative force, and from that time the
rebellion was nursed in secret and the passive
resistance to the abuses of the official power
became greater day by day.
No attempt was made to allay the ill-feeling
which existed between the Filipinos and the
Spaniards, especially the friars, caused by the
mutiny in Cavite and the cruel manner in
which the punsihment was meted out. Many
years would have been necessary to heal the
wounds felt by the large number of families
whose members were made the victims of the
unjust sentences of the military courts-martial.
Nothing was done by the Government to blot
out the recollection of these actions; on the
contrary, it appeared to be its policy to
continually bring up the memory of these
occurrences as a reminder to the mal-contents
of what they had to expect; but the only thing
accomplished was to increase the popular
discontent. It was from that time that every
disagreement between the Spaniards and
Filipinos, however trivial, was given a racial
or political character; everytime a friar was
insulted or injusred in any way, it was claimed
to be an act of hostility to the Spanish nation.
Official Report of Governor Izquierdo on
the Cavite Mutiny
Rafael Izquierdo
Governor General Rafael Izquierdo reported to
the Spanish Minister of War, dated Manila,
January 23, 1872, blaming the Cavite Mutiny
on the native clergy, some local residents,
intellectuals, and even El Eco Filipino, a
Madrid-based reformist newspaper.
Significantly, he calls the military mutiny as
"insurrection", an "uprising", and a
"revolution". The textof the report is as
follows:
From the summary of information received-
that is, from the declaration made before the
fiscal it seems definite that the insurrection
was motivated and prepared by the native
clergy, by the mestizos and native lawyers,
and by those known here as abogadillos. Some
are residents of Manila, others from Cavite,
and some from the nearby provinces.
The instigators, to carry out their criminal
project, protested against the injustice of the
government in not paying the proVinces for
their tobacco crop, and against the usury that
some (officials) practice in (handling)
documents that the Finance department gives
crop owners who have to sell them at a loss.
They encouraged the rebellion by protesting
what they called the injustice of having
obliged the workers in the Cavite arsenal to
pay tribute starting January 1 (1872) and to
render personal service, from which they were
formerly exempted.
To seduce the native troops, they resorted to
superstitions with which the indios are so
prone to believe; persuading them that the
Chief of State (hari) would be an ecclesiastic
and the rest or the clergy who baked the
uprising would celebrate daily for its success.
Thus the rebellion could not fail because God
was with them; and those who would not
revoltmthey would kill immediately. Taking
advantage of the ignorance of those classes
and the propensity of the Indio to steal, they
offered (to those who revolted) the wealth of
the Spaniards and of the regular clergy,
employment and ranks in the army; and to this
effect they said that fifteen native batallions
would be created, in which the soldiers who
revoltea would have jobs as officers and
chiefs. The lawyers and abogadillos would
direct the affar's of government of the
administration and of justice.
Up to now it has not been clearly determined if
they planned to establish a monarchv or a
republic, because the indios have no word in
their language to describe this different form
of government, whose head in Tagalog would
be called hari; but it turns out that they would
place at the head of the government a priest;
and there were great probabilities nay, a
certainty that the head selected would be D.
Jose Burgos, or D. Zacinto Zamora parish
priests of S. San Pedro of Manila.
All the Spaniards, including the friars, would
be executed except for the women; and their
belongings confiscated. Foreigners would be
respected.
This uprising has roots, and with them were
affiliated to a great extent the regiments of
infantry and artillery, many civilians and a
large number of mestizos, indios and some
illustrados from the provinces.
To start the revolution, they planned to set fire
to the district of Tondo. Once the fire was set
and while the authorities were busy putting it
out, the regiment of artillery with the help of
the part of the infantry would seize Fort
Santiago of this Capital (they would then) uo
cannons to inform the rebels of Cavite (of their
success). The rebels in Cavite counted on the
artillery detachment that occupied the fort and
on the navy helped by 500 natives led by the
pardoned leader Camerino. This person and
his men, located at the town of Bacoor and
separated from the fort of San Felipe by a
small arm of the sea, would cross the water
and reach the fort where they would find arms
and ammunition.
The rebels (in Cavite) made the signals agreed
upon by means of lanterns, but the native
civilians (in Bacoor) although they tried it,
failed because if the vigilance of the (Spanish)
navy that had placed there a gunboat and
armed vessels.
Loyalists who went to arrest the parish priests
of Bacoor found an abandoned vessel loaded
with arms, including carbines and revolvers.
The uprising should have started in Manila at
midnight abetted by those in Cavite, but the
rebels of this city went ahead of time. The
civil-military governor of Cavite and the
commanders of Regiment 7 took very timely
precautions; they knew how to keep the
soldiers loyal (although these hadd been
compromised) and behaved with valor and
gallantry, obliging the rebels to take refuge in
the fort of San Felipe.
Such is your Excellency, the plan of the rebels,
those who guided them, and the means they
Counted upon for its realization. For a long
time now, through confidential information
and others ofa vaguer character, I have been
told that since 1869- taking advantage of a
group tnat had left behind plans for an
uprising, but was carried out because of the
earthquake of 1862 there existed in Manila a
junta or center that sought and found
followers; and that 4s a pretext they had
established a society for the teaching of arts
and trades. Months ago I Suspended it
indirectly, giving an account to Your
Excellency in my confidential report No. 113
dated August 1, (1871) to which Your
Excellency has not yet replied.
It has also been said that this center or junta
received inspiration from Madrid, where
newspapers of advanced ideas flourish; to
sustain them subscriptions are (locally)
solicited; in effect, newspapers such as El Eco
Filipino were sent here from Madrid, which
were distribted by persons now imprisoned,
whose articles thundered against everything
that be found here.
As in the case of my worthy predecessor, I
have continously received anonymous letters,
but because I was confident that I could put
down and punish any uprising, I gave no credit
to these reports) in order not to cause alarm;
and instead continued a vigilant watch
whenever possible within the limited means at
my command. I had everything ready (for any
untoward possibility), taking into account the
limited peninsular force which composes the
army.