Christianity’s role in the early years of Spanish colonization

here is no denying that Christianity is among the most influential forces in Philippine society—and I do not mean this in an aggressive way, but rather as a constant fixture. That it had shaped and reshaped the country over a span of 500 years is proof of this. Surely, this is a milestone, but for a religion (and culture) that has existed for over 2,000 years, this really shouldn’t come as a surprise.

As the Philippines celebrates Christianity’s quincentennial, some see it as also a reminder of a colonial past, one that many are rather too quick to dismiss. To do so, however, would be a disservice to the country’s history. The fact remains, whether one likes it or not, that the Philippines has a colonial past. And that is not necessarily a bad thing.

This article, however, is not going to be about the merits of Philippine colonial history. That is for another discussion. Instead, it is interesting to revisit how Christianity came to be in the Philippines and how, because of it, the Spanish approach to colonizing these islands was different from the approach they took to subjugating their Latin American territories.

Those who are familiar with even a bit of world history would know that the Spaniards conquered much of Latin America, arriving in Mexico in 1519 and then in Peru in 1526. In between, Portuguese explorer Fernando Magallanes arrived in what-would-be the Philippines in 1521, bringing with him the Christian faith.

But let us go back to Latin America. Mexico and Peru are interesting examples largely because of how the Spanish conquistadores who led the exploration of these places also oversaw the destruction of the civilizations already present there. There were the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru. Arguably, no such thing happened with the arrival of the Spaniards in the Philippines. Sure, there were conflicts left and right, beginning with one Magellan got himself embroiled in out of a desire to impress Raja Humabon of Cebu, to the skirmishes between Miguel López de Legazpi and the natives when he arrived in 1565, to his conquest of Manila in 1571. None of these, however, led to a systematic slaughter of a civilization.

It can be argued that this is due to the contributions of Christianity in the shaping of Spanish policy when it came to the New World, in the governance of its territories outside of Europe. Chief among those who contributed to the building of this policy was a Spanish Roman Catholic philosopher named Francisco de Vitoria.

To cut the long story short, de Vitoria, who belonged to the Dominican Order, was a firm believer in the rights of the natives of the territories Spain had conquered (and would conquer). He affirmed the rights of the natives to property and the jurisdiction of their chiefs over their respective tribes. Eventually, what de Vitoria espoused came to be embodied in a set of laws called the Laws of the Indies, which Spain followed from the 16th to the 18th century in ruling their colonies. It is in this regard that many considered de Vitoria to be among the “fathers of international law.” Although this has been branded as anachronistic by modern scholars, it is still worth noting that de Vitoria influenced what could have been the first set of laws applied on a global scale.

A student of de Vitoria who also firmly adhered to his stand with regard to the rights of the natives in Spanish colonies was another Dominican, Domingo de Salazar, who would later become the first Archbishop of Manila. He was known to have been strongly against the enslavement of the natives in the Philippines. In fact, he held the first synod of Manila in 1582, which included among its points for discussion penances for Spaniards who owned native slaves. Although reality is often far from the ideal, it is not a stretch to assume that Salazar worked fervently to enforce his beliefs on Spanish colonists.

While it is obvious that Christianity was very much part of the Philippines’ colonial history, to follow the narrative of “God, gold, and glory” would be an oversimplification of an otherwise complex episode in Philippine history. Christianity was not simply an “excuse” to conquer. It also served as an anchor for a more humane kind of exploration and conquest for Spanish colonists, which was applied in the case of the Philippines.