The Augustinian Recollects’ Role in Quelling the Dagohoy Revolt (1827-1829)1

by Manuel Carceller, OAR Great were the hardships encountered by the Augustinian Recollects in

Bohol Island in their apostolic task and effort for the civilization of its people, primarily because of the rebellious unbelievers in the mountains and forests. They disturbed the missionaries no end and inflicted destruction and injury upon the Christian people who lived peacefully in their towns.

As they searched for solutions to such situation, our missionaries sometimes climbed those mountains in order to deal with them through persuasion and at other times through information dispatched to the civil government so it would take appropriate measures in order to subjugate the island completely.

The subjugation was almost completed during the three-year term (1791-1794) of the prior provincial Father José Pardo de Santa Orosia due to the decisions made by the Philippine authorities as a result of the information and warnings issued by the abovementioned religious prelate. This was following his provincial visit to the ministries of Bohol. However, despite the good will and effort exerted by the missionary priests, for some reasons2 the bad situation was never put to an end. On the contrary, during the years we are dealing with, the conditions just turned for the worse. For the peace-loving inhabitants of Bohol, the vexations wrought by the upland rebels who perpetrated them became more and more excruciating. The rebels destroyed their harvests, stole their livestock and razed their houses to the ground. In one

1 This article Pacificación de Bohol en la que intervienen los recoletos is in

Historia de la Orden de Recoletos de San Agustín x: 1808-1836 (Madrid 1962) 526-538.

2 Some causes are mentioned in Gregorio OCHOA, Historia general de la Orden de Agustinos Recoletos VIII: 1755-1796 (Zaragoza 1928) 600.

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word, they had inflicted massive damage on the townspeople and their properties.3

The new prior provincial Father Pedro de Santa Rita was informed about all this during his visit to the island. Upon his return to Manila, the prior provincial made the captain general Mariano Ricafort aware of it and urged him to remedy that rueful situation. Thus the captain general exerted effort with respect to that and ordered the alcalde mayor of Cebu to organize an expedition. Consequently, the provincial governor did as he was told and took as chaplains the Calced Augustinian Father Julián Bermejo, parish priest of Boljoon, Cebu, and the Augustinian Recollects—Father Miguel de Jesús, parish priest of Danao also in Cebu, and Father Narciso de Jesús María,4 parish priest of Guindulman in Bohol. The three priests voluntarily offered their services.

The operations commenced in the first half of May 1827. They were carried out under strict orders from the captain general himself to handle it with greatest prudence possible in order to shun too much bloodshed despite the resistance posed by the upland rebels. After twenty-nine days, over twenty-two thousand rebels surrendered. A great number voluntarily presented themselves on account of the good services of the three abovementioned chaplains who had given evident proofs of their enthusiasm for religion and country. For this reason, they were recommended—together with others who distinguished themselves in that occasion—to the Spanish

3 The full account is found in Oficios, ff. 122ss, ARCHIVO PROVINCIAL DE SAN

NICOLÁS DE TOLENTINO in Marcilla, Navarra, Spain. 4 Narciso Hernández was born in Pandacan, Manila, on 5 August 1789.4 His parents

were José Apolonio and Paulina Bini, according to Father Francisco Sádaba. He professed the vows in 1813 in Manila. Manuel Carceller writes in page 44, volume XI of his Historia general that Father Narciso was surnamed Hernández in the folio page 140 of the Book of Necrologies of Manila, now kept in Marcilla, Navarra. He served the parish of Paminguitan [now Cortes] in 1815. On 4 January 1819, he received the canonical collation as parish priest of Guindulman. He was its curate for 45 years. He remained in this parish a little before his death which took place in Pandacan on 21 May 1865.

Francisco Dagohoy ‘s rebellion started in 1744 and lasted almost five decades after his death in the 1780s.

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ruler in order to acknowledge and thank them as the monarch might be pleased to do.

However, the desired and expected outcome was not acquired and, furthermore, there lay a danger of wasting what had been gained because the alcalde mayor Cairo was in a real hurry to withdraw to Cebu with his troops that were then sent back home. A small group of soldiers stayed behind and was put under the command of a captain without giving any instruction at all to him to preserve the gains or improve on them.

The two Recollect chaplains reported the matter to the prior provincial. Father Provincial in turn informed the captain general about what had been reported by the two Recollects for the purpose of compelling the alcalde mayor of Cebu to stay in Bohol until everything was put in order, as Father Narciso had requested the religious prelate. At the same time, he pointed out to the prior provincial the need to make Bohol independent from the provincial government of Cebu, by creating for that island a corregimiento or comandancia or alcaldía militar, as the Province of Saint Nicholas had petitioned so many years ago, even as it had been always requesting the conquest of that aforesaid island, but had always encountered—on account of this or that thing—a thousand obstacles and indulgences.

And, if the powers of the captain general did not authorize him to proceed with that establishment, the prior provincial promised him that the procurator general [in Madrid] would have recourse to the Spanish monarch to obtain the confirmation of that event.

On the 4th December of that year [1827], the prior provincial once more wrote to the captain general several letters. In one letter, after congratulating him for so many measures he had taken into order to finish the total subjugation of Bohol, the Recollect prelate informed him that the provincial governor, the vicar provincial Bohol and the governor general told him that they had pulled out from their respective parishes Father Miguel de Jesus and Father Narciso de Jesús María, and had put them in charge of the administration of Mandao and Canaugay, new towns created from more than eight hundred tributes and families, whose appointment were willingly accepted by these religious for the sake of the two Monarchs [God, the King of Heaven, and the Spanish monarch].

Then the prior provincial informed him that—with the priority need of choosing the sites where the new towns would be created from the settlements which had been conquered but were left scattered in the mountains—he had wanted Father Miguel de Jesús, endowed with hands-on knowledge, good decision and dealings with the natives to be authorized, coupled with the

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assistance of the commander of the troops to be deployed in the island to select the site of the new towns. He would suppress those settlements considered prejudicial to the new town, thus avoiding that the towns might be not be healthful and sparsely populated, since their happiness and wellbeing consisted in their being reunited, in the local situation and in the abundance of arable lands. All this should be taken into account according to the abovementioned religious.

In another letter, the provincial again went on to cite the two parish priests’ insistence on the need of permanent troop deployment in the center of the island so that the conquest of the uplands would lead to its total perfection. In a third letter, he told the governor general—in accordance to the recommendation of oft-cited Father Miguel de Jesús—to order that the new reducciones of recent rebel returnees established from the town of Jagna up to the town of Loon be regrouped in small resettlements or in one sole town where they could be administered. Otherwise there would be a sure danger that the malcontents would seduce them and that the armed conflict would be protracted. The war tolled heavily on the people of Bohol who had been constrained to wage it for their own survival even without the necessary provisions.

Another letter referred to the fact that Father Narciso de Jesús María had established the town of Batuanan where many returnees presented themselves for the census. Batuanan was a visita or annex village of the new town of Canaugay5 that Father Narciso continued to administer. And finally, in a fifth letter, the provincial made it clear that the parochial ministry of Inabanga, also in Bohol, consisted of ten visitas with very few houses and with a great distance from the town center of Inabanga. It was for this reason that the parishioners could not be administered in both spiritual matters by their minister and in civil affairs by the authorities. Numerous upland residents presented themselves in these visitas for the census-taking in order to take advantage of the privileges given to the newly resettled people. However, later on they did not reappear in the visitas anymore, even though they had to be sought after. That is why it was of utmost importance that not only those rebel returnees who voluntarily descended in the last conquest but also all those who lived in the old settlements should be compelled to be resettled in one,

5 Historian Dr. Jes B. Tirol informed this translator/editor in a text message that

Canuagay could be the present-day Camangay, a barangay of Dagohoy municipality. This is a more feasible statement since the proximity of Canuagay to the town of Guindulman where Father Narciso was the parish priest. However, if Canuagay is the actual barangay of Kanoan, Dr. Tirol went on [but this is a far-fetched conjecture], it is now part of the far-flung town of San Miguel.

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two or three towns, by selecting the sites most healthful and most convenient for them. There they might be grouped together for the general instruction by the parish priests and it might be possible to defend them from the Moros since up to the present time there had been only kidnappings in that part of Inabanga.

In a decree dated 5 February 1828, the governor general informed the prior provincial that the conquest of Bohol would proceed with the greatest effectiveness until the subjugation of the last person who remained in rebellion in the mountains. The Spanish viceroy further ordered that as they would be subjected to reduction new population centers would be established in best suited places complete with water supply, land for cultivation, mountain and pasture for livestock. When the site had been designated for the town, a gobernadorcillo and a church minister would be designated, and both officials—by common agreement and in conformity with the duties of each one—would take the census of the town and instruct people in the obedience to authority and in the mysteries of our religion. Furthermore, lands would be apportioned to the people who should be treated with all gentleness and consideration.

On the 14th of the same month of February, the prior provincial informed the archbishop of Manila who was the administrator of the Diocese of Cebu sede vacante that the alcalde mayor had written the vicar provincial of Bohol Father Blas del Carmen and the vicar general of the diocese of Cebu so that they would agree to designate ministers in the towns with the greatest number of resettled people—Mandao and Canaugay—convinced that these ministers were to be practical and virtuous, experienced and tested in the work with the unbelievers and they had offered to them the two said ministries to the abovementioned Father Miguel de Jesús and Father Narciso de Jesús María, who having left behind the conveniences of their curacies in Danao, Cebu and in Guindulman, Bohol, respectively, “exchanging what is sweet with what is bitter,” willingly accepted and in the month of December had moved to their new residences. Once the decree had officially come to their attention—in the final words of the prior provincial—not only did he approved what was decided by the vicar provincial but also did he write the royal vice patron and governor general Mariano Ricafort, by proposing to him the need to give the immediate approval upon what was provided for by the alcalde mayor and the two vicars [vicar provincial and vicar provincial] already mentioned and that these new resettlements be declared as missions, and ordering that he assisted the two missionaries with compensation due them and they might be exempted from what the law had provided for with respect to sacred ornaments, etc.

In March, the prior provincial communicated to the vice patron and governor general about the separation of the respective towns of Father

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Miguel de Jesús and Father Narciso de Jesús María for their transfer to the new resettlements. He received in reply the vice patron’s approval of the vice patron to the recommendation of the general assessor of the government, who said the following:

With the abolition of the Law of Concordance by the royal cédula of 1 August 1795 and the re-establishment of the common right, no canonically appointed and installed parish priest can be removed without a lawsuit, without hearing his defense or without his renouncing the position definitely, nor any curacy be declared vacant by any government ruling without exposing itself to terrible consequences. And, as from the letters issued by the metropolitan archbishop of Manila and by the prior provincial of the Recollects, it appears that this legal provision was not taken into account, and your Excellency deigned to reply to them by reminding them about its prompt compliance.

The prior provincial gave the following reply on the 19th of April:

Your Excellency:

Having received the superior decree of Your Excellency on the 12th of the current month, wherein it is ordained that the curacies of Danao and Guindulman cannot be declared vacant; in order to comply with this superior decree, I have ordered that these two religious who had left those parishes in December to fulfil the mandates of the superior government in the new town centers in the Island of Bohol, to return to their old curacies because their separation and voluntary departure from their towns had not been granted Your Excellency’s approval, by abandoning the comforts offered by the towns—old, established and very regular for their subsistence—but moving to the center of the forests of Bohol in order to set up towns consisting of coerced people and enemy of God and State, without any support and comforts except the hardships posed by the mountains, lacking in of food provisions, without a roof on their heads, without a church and in continuous jolts whether from the newly resettled or by those who rejected resettlement and who ambushed, cajoled and induced the resettled folks so they would abandon their new lands or lifestyles and return to the ancient customs. All this was their recompense, Your Excellency, that the religious Father Miguel de Jesús and Father Narciso de Jesús María, who even as they believed they were doing a new sacrifice for Religion and a new service to the State, have sought and have made themselves available for this new conquest, with whose motive and not with that of the royal cédula of the Concordance,

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from which our minds have been very remote in order to take advantage of it, the vicar general of Cebu invited by our alcalde mayor, and my vicar provincial in that island, invited by both of them, who granted the permission to the abovementioned priests so that they would move when there would be a reduccción to take charge of it. It was furthermore evident to them that there were no others more suitable for that situation [than the two] since they have been familiar for many years with the Visayan character [visayismo] whether for the exemplary conduct and, above all, for their prudence they were endowed with, so necessary when dealing with some beasts who were rational only because they had rational souls but were bereft of culture. If it had been believed that it was me who had presented him to the diocesan prelate so that he as the administrator of that bishopric would approve what would be within his jurisdiction to establish new missions and to remove those curacies and that through the conduct of his Excellency it would be raised to the royal vice-patron who was to approve or disapprove what had been done, if this deed, in my opinion, would please his Excellency, it would seemingly need the approval of wanting to make use of the royal cedula of the Concordance, I must likewise say that my mind has been very remote from this deed, if I had acted the way I had just said, it was because your Excellency in your superior decree of 5 February, by which you declare and order the continuance of the conquest of Bohol until not a single person would remain in the mountains, and in like manner you order me to petition this and everything deemed to lead to the good success of the conquest and its preservation, and as

I had already made your Excellency aware—through a separate communication—the need for the creation of these missions, with many other things pertinent to that conquest, and the said communications had been accommodated solely to the principal cause, without having taken the channels separately from that, and so it was that—believing that the other these matters would be activated because they had already issued his Excellency, to which office they had to be forwarded for his approval, I took the opportunity of this channel with no other end than what had been expressed.

Lately I had to be specific, although with much emotion and pain, to have to inform your Excellency that it was necessary that the illustrious archbishop, the administrator of that see, must of course provide those missions or new settlements with ministers since my Province presently does not have anyone to substitute those two religious in the missions in Bohol. The old religious who would assist them were well-placed and would suffer the same hardships as the incumbent [parish priests], when

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perhaps there would be no one who might want to emulate the two afore-named priests.

The young ones have only a year of existence on earth, newly ordained, without having mastered the language yet; and so for now it would please your Excellency that they are able to replace the ministers either in an acting capacity or with canonical collation that the illustrious Lordship might want to order whether they be clerics or anyone from the religious corporation that might accept it, while let it be made clear that it is not my intention to reserve for me any right to these foundations or resettlements.

Although this topic does not correspond to the history of the present triennium [1825-1828], we can say here that until 1829, the total subjugation of the island of Bohol did not materialize. With a great number of several towns of reducidos have been established, our religious were put in charge of their administration. The enormous task that weighed upon the shoulders of these religious can be culled from Sinopsis histórica de la Provincia de San Nicolás de Tolentino.6 We can mention Father Manuel Plaza de San Benito, the first minister of one of those towns, Balilihan. This new town was erected as a parish in May 1829 and it consisted of three hundred twelve tributes and two hundred non-believers. This young religious belonged to the second missionary expedition that headed out of Alfaro7 and was assigned to said parish in September of that same year 1829. “Upon the arrival of this priest, the natives of Balilihan lacked everything, living an uncivilized lifestyle. They had no farms or bananas. The priest had to start—simultaneously imparting spiritual instruction to them —by teaching them how to till the land, how to make plantations, how to plough. He did it all by himself in order to give example because they abhorred those labors and considered them as superstition on account of the many illnesses they had been victims of. This minister brought the first bananas from Baclayon, planted coconuts and cacao. It was something new for his parishioners. Furthermore, he opened roads to adjoining towns.”

6 Licinio RUIZ, Sinopsis histórica de la Provincia de San Nicolás de Tolentino de las Islas Filipinas I (Manila 1925) 709.

7 Alfaro in La Rioja, Spain, was the first convent of the Province of Saint Nicholas that trained future missionaries. Before its canonical establishment in 1824, the vicar provincial used to go to various Recollects convents in Spain and recruit volunteers to the Philippines. The convent was short-lived because in 1829 the convent of Monteagudo in Navarra was canonically erected where thereafter Recollect missionaries took up their novitiate, philosophy and initial theological formation.

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Sources and Bibliography

I. Archival Manuscripts.

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B. Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid, Spain. Extractos de las cartas de los padres de la extinguida Compañía en la Provincia

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Cosas notables de Catigbian, Legajo 66, Núm. 3. Mateo Joaquín RUBIO DE ARÉVALO, Carta a Francisco Díaz Durana, Cebú, 31

julio 1782, Legajo 66, Núm.1. Breve relación sobre los principales sucesos de conquista de los monteses de

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