A Jesuit chronicle of the Philippines, newly discovered and published in Spain

JESUIT priest Diego de Oña (1655 to 1721) spent most of his missionary life in the Philippines and finished writing an ecclesiastical chronicle in 1701. However, his work remained unpublished and almost forgotten for hundreds of years. A few days ago, it was finally rescued and published by Editorial Sílex (Madrid). The task of the editors, A. Coello de la Rosa and V. Peña Filiu, both of them experts in the Spanish monarchy in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, was not easy, as they had to transcribe and annotate more than 900 pages of text. I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Coello de la Rosa about this outstanding recovery:

How did you become interested in colonial Philippines?

I was interested in ecclesiastical history since I published my dissertation on El Cercado in colonial Lima (1568 to 1606), where the Jesuits were stationed until they were expelled from the Americas and the Philippines (1768 to 69). From colonial Peru, I moved to the Philippines following my “beloved” Jesuits.

Who was Father Oña?

He was a professed father who was working in different missions in the Visayas. He was in charge of writing the second part of Francisco Colin’s Labor Evangelica (the first official Jesuit chronicle of the Philippines, published in 1663). The result did not prove satisfactory to the Jesuit superiors (provincial, rector), and after Oña finished the manuscript in 1701, they decided not to publish it. In my opinion, his work was not good enough. His style was rough, what it demonstrates is that Oña was not a good writer. However, I think he was clearly censored because of the opinions he expressed in the manuscript.

How and where did you discover Fr. Oña’s chronicle? Was it known to other historians?

It was a coincidence after going to ARSI (the Jesuit archives) in Rome. It is part of the Philippine collection (20 volumes). His was a censored history that the Society of Jesus refused to publish in Oña’s lifetime. Believe it or not, only a few historians cited him; among them, Filipino historian Fr. Horacio de la Costa, who barely cites him in his voluminous Jesuits in the Philippines.

Does it deal only with religious issues or does it also tackle the life of Filipinos during the colonial period?

The Labor Evangelica, Second Part, deals with many aspects, mostly related to Spanish activities during 17th-century Philippines. Nonetheless, there are also sketches about Filipino lives and beliefs.

What do you think is the main difference between this history and the ones written by Chirino, Colín or Murillo Velarde?

Chirino was mostly interested in natural history. He was not interested in political issues because he thought that Antonio de Morga had already covered this aspect of the history of the Philippines. Francisco Colín’s Labor Evangélica focused on religious and political issues until 1616. From this date to 1716, Murillo Velarde wrote a general history of the Jesuits in the Philippines. It is composed of four books, like Oña’s, but it included information on the Mariana Islands. This was one of the reasons why Oña’s Labor Evangélica was not published. In 1700, Luis de Morales, the Jesuit provincial of the Jesuits in the Philippines, had been procurator in Europe, and most important, he was about to die while on a mission to the Marianas. The fact that Diego de Oña’s Labor Evangélica did not cover the martyrs who died there — among them, Pedro Calungsod — did not benefit Oña’s publication. Rather the contrary. His manuscript was not accepted because it did not pay homage to his fellow Jesuits in the far-flung Marianas. A mistake that was solved by Pedro Murillo Velarde’s History (Manila, 1749), a book that was no less important, that was published in Manila.

The first important task, the proper recovery of the text, has been carried out. As often happens, there is a necessary second task remaining for the Filipino people: its translation.