My husband’s French connexion
ON 11 January 1897, 12 days after the Spanish colonial government executed Jose Rizal at Bagumbayan, it was the turn of Don Francisco Roxas. With 12 other Filipino patriots, his life was snuffed out by a firing squad. As if that were not horrifying enough, Cornelio, a servant of the Roxas family, was savagely beaten and kicked by the cruel Guardia Civil because he rushed to the bloody corpse of his dead master, to take it home. Manila society convulsed with fear and dread at the series of executions that abruptly ended the holiday season.
Like Jose Rizal, Don Francisco Roxas was both object and victim of the wrath of the ever powerful Spanish friars.Yet, had it not been for that dastardly political crime committed a century ago, a fleur de lis would not have blossomed in the family tree of the patriarch Don Antonio Roxas and his wife Doña Lucina Arroyo.
Don Antonio and Doña Lucina had 14, or perhaps as many as 17 children. In the 2oth century, the most famous was Felix because he was the first licensed Filipino architect who became a mayor of Manila. He was also a prolific writer, a regular contributor to a Manila newspaper. Years later, his essays were collected by Salvador Araneta for the Filipiniana Book Guild, Inc., which published a nostalgic book, The World of Felix Roxas. Another son, Felipe, became a famous painter in France. Andres was an haciendero whose progeny converted the land he bequeathed into the Hidden Valley resort. Daughter Lucina married Enrique Brias of the San Miguel Brewery family; they left for Brazil and settled there. There were other sons – Mariano Leon, ancestor of the Araneta-Zaragoza line of my husband, and Juan, the father of the unfortunate Don Francisco Roxas and great-grandfather of Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, the fleur de lis of that immense family tree.
After the execution of Don Francisco, his distraught widow fled to France with their orphaned brood – Salvador, Maria Vicenta, Celerina, Juan, Carmen, Presencion, Javier, and with the loyal Cornelio in tow. Vicenta later married Count Charles de Moulins d’Amieu de Beaufort. So, if the Monseigneur is the great-grandson of Don Francisco Roxas, he must be the son of one of Vicenta’s children with the Count de Moulins d’Amieu de Beaufort.
Monseigneur Eric de Moulins Beaufort, only 56, was the Vicar General and Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of Paris when he was appointed Archbishop of Rheims by no less than Pope Francis I, last 18 August 2018. He succeded Monseigneur Thierry Jourdan who had reached the retirement age of 75. Msgr. Eric de Moulins-Beaufort was installed as the 111th Archbishop of Rheims in the presence of Monseigneur Luigi Ventura, Papal Nuncio in France, last Sunday, 28 October 2018 at the venerable Notre Dame de Rheims Cathedral where 33 of the kings of France were crowned.
My source is Mrs. Lina Araneta Santiago, my husband’s cousin and daughter of Salvador and Victoria Araneta. She knows I am an admirer of her late father, Tito Salvador, and that I have read and re-read his works, so Lina often sends me interesting details about the Araneta family. With regard to their French connection, Lina wrote: “Thus, this Filipino family of one large tree with branches spreading to fourteen or seventeen offsprings, depending on which family tree you are looking at, (there are three, apparently) while deeply rooted in Philippine soul and soil is still in search of the other descendants of Don Francisco Roxas. We now have closer ties to the French side of the family, after their Filipino cousins took them to the Chapel of Our Lady of Victory in Malabon when they came last 25 February 2010. ”
A couple of years ago, when one of their French cousins came to town, I told Tonypet, my husband, to take her to the “Path to Glory,” a wooded plot near the Gomburza marker at the Rizal Park. Tonypet did not know that there is such a place and that Don Francisco Roxas’ name is engraved there along with other Filipino patriots who were executed for love of country in 1897.
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