Beschreibung:

DOMINGO DE SALAZAR (1512-1594), FIRST BISHOP OF THE PHILIPPINES Letter signed ('El ob[is]po de las filipinas') TO PHILIP II, KING OF SPAIN ('Ill m o Señor'), n.p., n.d. [1585], in Spanish, one page, folio , appended to and endorsing a copy of a letter to the King from Fray Ju[an] de Placencia and Fray Diego al Baxer on the state of the evangelical mission in the Philippines, Manila, n.d. [1584], in Spanish, 5 pages, folio (some staining to margins). THE STRUGGLE TO CHRISTIANISE THE PHILIPPINES. Salazar's letter refers to the accompanying text, which had originally been sent to the King via Malacca in the previous year, and endorses its contents, complaining that 'everything which they wrote in the letter then is now much worse than then and if Your Majesty does not remedy the situation they can no longer endure it'. The original letter complains at some length of the interference in their missionary work of the royal courts which had been established in the Philippines to protect the rights of the Filipinos: the courts have sided with 'the land owners and tax collectors, the magistrates and the other Spaniards in these islands' in opposing the evangelical activities of the holy orders, in particular by accusing them of infringing the royal jurisdiction by punishing 'the Indians'. They do not deny that they had on occasion confined their charges to the stocks and punished them in other ways, but assert that they 'treat them as schoolmasters, or rather as parents with their children, sometimes praising them and sometimes scolding them, sometimes punishing them in an appropriate fashion so that they refrain from the vices to which they are very inclined'. The courts' suspension of this discipline has had a catastrophic effect: 'once it was known among the Indians that the priests were not allowed to punish them, more was lost in six months than had been achieved since we came here, because with the liberty they now have, they do not even wish to come to Mass nor bring their children to be baptized ... and the chaste people we had created will be ruined and they are going into the mountains where they can live more freely being hidden from view and in many places they are performing their old rites as before ...'. A veteran of forty years' missionary work in Mexico and Florida, Domingo de Salazar arrived in the Philippines as their first bishop in 1581; he was to be known for tireless work in espousing the cause of the Filipinos, and for carrying out structural and charitable reforms, and died on a visit to Spain to plead the cause of his flock, shortly after having been elevated to the rank of Archbishop. Philip II might be supposed to have taken a special interest in the state of a group of islands which had been colonised on his instructions, and were named after him. The present letter was published in translation in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society , vol.38, 1998-9, pp.315ff. A copy of the translation accompanies the lot.