TALK AT SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
April 17, 2010
The Denigration of the Babaylans in Colonial Writings
This talk is taken from a comparative study between the leadership of Mary Magdalene in proto-Christianity and that of the babaylan in the pre- and early Hispanic Philippines. Both women were leaders whose positions were gradually eroded by the patriarchal elements in their respective communities. In this talk, the task is to trace the denigration of the portrayal of the babaylan initially by changes in her names or descriptions and eventually by her actual persecution by the missionary friars in the Philippines.
A deconstruction and reconstruction of the babaylan portrayal in the Spanish records present not only a realistic image of the babaylan, but also give her back the voice deliberately silenced in the colonialists’ accounts. These accounts resonated with the portrayal of Mary Magdalene as being possessed by the devil in the gospels of Mark[i] and Luke,[ii] and a sinner and a whore in the post-biblical era. The fate of the babaylan was similar to that of Mary Magdalene. From a position of leadership, the babaylan was also demonized and banished from society.
A Glimpse of the Pre-Colonial Philippines
In 1521, the Spaniards first sighted one of the numerous islands of the archipelago.[iii] It marked the beginning of the transformation of the history of the inhabitants. For more than 300 hundred years, the natives would be subjugated and silenced. The silence, however, would not be a complete one. For many natives, particularly the women, would raise their voices as a sign that resistance to the invaders has not completely ceased.
In seeking an understanding of the ultimate questions in life and explanations for why things existed as they were and changed as they did,[iv] the ancient Filipinos developed a world view. Basic to this world view was the conviction that, side by side with the material world, there existed another world – “an invisible and powerful spirit-world, contiguous with or congruent to, and impinging upon, the human world.”[v] There was a hierarchy of deities and spirits,[vi] the first and foremost of whom was the Supreme Deity, Bathala Meicapal. Between the space of higher divinities and that of the living, there was a dimension inhabited by the spirits of the dead ancestors – the nonos or anitos. Although their abode was in another dimension, they could still be present, though always in invisible state, among the natives.
The veritable influence and invisible presence of the anitos, either benign or spiteful, permeated the everyday life and aspect in the village. Without exception, everyone in the village, including the chieftain, recognized this as a fact of life. Consequently, when the chieftain had to make an important decision, it must have the stamp of divine approval. He had to ensure that he had the blessing of the anitos. But he could only approach them through a medium, the priestess or babaylan. The babaylan was the only person who had direct access to the world of the spirits. The villagers’ belief in the anitos and in the power of the babaylan was unquestionable. A villager could go against the wish of the village chieftain; to consider a similar action to the babaylan was unthinkable. The powers of the spirit world were much greater and more immediate. Consequently the villagers looked up to the babaylan more than to the chieftain. In possession of the powers of the spirit world, she was more powerful than the village head. Literally, she had the power of life and death in the village.
The Fate of Babaylanism
On delineating the path on which babaylanism has taken down in history, the specific question to tackle is what happened to babaylanism, and more specifically to the priestesses, in the christianized regions in the island archipelago. Babaylanism has survived but it assumed different forms. Initially, the office and function of babaylanism were in the hands of the priestesses.
In the missionary friars’ struggle against babaylanism, they exerted more efforts in eliminating the priestesses than their native male counterparts. The friars developed the deep conviction that for the Christian religion to successfully supplant the native religion, they must concentrate their efforts on the priestesses. For the friars, the existence of priestesses was a violation of the law of nature. Only the males could assume leadership. The concept of female leadership in early Christianity typified by Mary Magdalene was completely alien to the friars. So in the veritable war against the native religion, the friars employed all possible means to wipe out its leaders, the priestesses.
How the Friars battled Babaylanism
The babaylans were first described in a neutral or innocuous manner. In 1521, the Italian chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta, described them as femine Vequi, vequie[vii] and certe vequie,[viii] that is, ‘very old women,’ ‘old women’ and ‘certain old women.’ In 1572, an unnamed chronicler referred to “certain old women who are considered as priestesses”[ix] who were offering sacrifice for the recovery of a sick chieftain.[x] In 1573, another document reported that the natives had priests called bailanes[xi] who they believed communicated with their gods. In 1582, Miguél de Loarca referred to a baylana, a sort of a priestess (una baylana ques como saçerdotisa[xii]). In describing the sacrifices over which the women officiated, he called them las mugeres saçerdotisas,[xiii] that is, female priestesses. Loarca also observed that the sacrifices could also be offered by male priests known as baylanes[xiv] in the Visayas and catalonans[xv] in Luzón.
Linguistic Annihilation of the Babaylans
It was a friar who started the so called linguistic annihilation of the babaylans. The Dominican Diego de Aduarte reported in 1587 that “a few old women who acted as priestesses, and who were called catalonans”[xvi] were influencing the baptized natives. For the first time, the priestesses were polemically depicted as “most subtle witches . . . [who] had wrought great evils.”[xvii] In the province of Pangasinán, Aduarte referred to the priestesses as managanito who “used to conjure the devil.”[xviii] They were called “ministers of their idols, who among them were old women – as it were, priestesses.”[xix] They were also known as aniteras, a “wretched class of people and with reason despised on account of their foul manner of life;” into them “the devil entered” when they offered sacrifices.[xx]
While the term catalonan was used by Loarca for male priest, the Franciscan Juán de Plasencia would employ it in 1589 for both male priest and priestess.[xxi] He would, however, band them together as “priests of the devil,”[xxii] into whose bodies “the devil was liable to enter.”[xxiii]
In 1595, the first identification of priestesses with proper names was made with two women – Fulangan and Cabacungan. The former was polemically branded as hechicera[xxiv] (witch or sorceress) or la hechicera desaparecío[xxv] (the disappearing sorceress), while the latter as diablesa,[xxvi] that is, a female devil or she-devil. Another priestess was also properly named as Caquenga. She was described as una hechicera sacertodiza and mala mujer . . . diabolica aquella anitera maldita[xxvii] (a sorceress priestess . . . that diabolical, evil anitera). In 1608, Caquenga so earned the hatred of the friars for her successfully persuading the natives in her region to revolt so that they further depicted her with a series of vituperative titles: sacerdotisa del infierno[xxviii] (priestess of hell), una hechicera (a sorceress), sacerdotisa del demonio[xxix] (a priestess of demon) and anitera maldita[xxx] (cursed priestess) and “wicked woman . . . a devilish anitera.”[xxxi]
In 1615, more slanderous labels were ascribed to the native priestesses with phrases such as las viejas, sacerdotisas del demonio ó hechicheras[xxxii] (old women, demon’s priestesses and sorceresses) and aniteras ó hechicheras[xxxiii] (priestesses or witches). Some converted aniteras also used to be called “priestesses of the devil.”[xxxiv]
In keeping with the polemics initiated by Aduarte, the Jesuit, Pedro Chirino, would identify the “priests and priestesses”[xxxv] as a “band of worthless women, of the Catolonas.”[xxxvi] They are “ministers of the devil”[xxxvii] and “infernal ministers”[xxxviii] who “vied with each who could best contrive with the Devil (who deceived them) to take advantage of the blindness of the people, to deceive them by a thousand frauds and artifices.”[xxxix]
Physical Annihilation of the Babaylans
The friars of the various orders differed a little in their approach to the evangelisation of the natives. In regards to the policy on how to deal with the babaylans, they seemed to have adopted a unified approach in the efforts to wipe them out and erase any vestiges of their existence in the islands. At the forefront of this concerted campaign were the Dominicans.
The first Dominicans landed at the port of Cavite on July 21, 1587 on the eve of the feast of St. Mary Magdalene. Consequently, they took her to be the patroness of the new ecclesiastical province of Manila.[xl] The Dominicans also chose her as a special advocate, being the apostola de los apostoles, “by whose aid which they had a thousand times experienced in the order, they hoped for the most complete and glorious undertaking.”[xli] It is ironic that Mary Magdalene, whose image had been eroded in its portrayal through the centuries, was very likely invoked by the Dominicans in their persecution of the babaylans.
Barely two months after their arrival, the Dominicans replaced the Augustinians, Franciscans and secular priests in Bataan. Having considered that ignorance of the local dialect was a factor in the failure of their predecessors, the Dominicans undertook the policy of learning the local language. The Dominicans, however, discovered that it was the persuasive influence on the people of “old women who acted as priestesses, and who were called catalonans”[xlii] to adhere to the ancient beliefs and practices and to reject the foreign teaching. The priestesses were a force to reckon with as they were “ingenious in concealing their wickedness,”[xliii] that is, in leading in ancestor worship and presiding over sacrifices where the natives were readily present. The friars persuaded certain converted natives to locate the places of worship. Before destroying the sacrificial vessels, they were first given to young boys dragged them like toys through the village. The priestesses had to flee to the forests where they continued the sacrifices and the rites of ancestral worship without the harassment and persecution of the friars. Eventually, the friars came to regard these women as the principal “stumbling block to the successful conversion of the people to Christianity and their pacification” so that they seemed to have become “more fearful of female priestesses than their male counterparts.”[xliv] The friars’ disdain towards them was often expressed in polemical abuses describing the priestesses as “most subtle witches . . . [who] had wrought great evils.”[xlv]
The employment of certain natives as spies and children as desecrators of the priestesses’ sacred vessels was also made in Pangasinán and Cagayán. In some instances the friars themselves destroyed the idols, “burnt and broke the boxes with offerings; took the gold and the stones, and all the other offerings; and burnt and ground to dust everything.”[xlvi] In one case a friar ordered the children to destroy the sacrificial vessels. Then he commanded them, “Now throw them into the privies . . . and let the [other] children perform the necessities of nature on them.”[xlvii] The chronicler added that the children had “obeyed his order instantly and made a mockery and jest of those instruments.”[xlviii] The audacity of the friars would sometimes pay off. Observing that the terrible things they expected to happen to the friars did not materialize, the natives would agree to be baptized. The action of the boys and the loss of the sacrificial vessels affected the priestesses personally and financially, because the natives were making donations of gold and precious stones during the sacrifices. In reporting the success of the Dominicans, Aduarte claimed that even a priestess had recognized their achievement.[xlix]
In other places in the archipelago, the religious authorities did not hesitate in putting the priests and priestesses to death. In 1663, in a religious uprising in Panáy, a priestess, branded as a “shameless prostitute”[l] with no explicitly sexual offences on record, was impaled alive, and when she died, her body was thrown into a river,[li] presumably to be eaten by crocodiles. Even after death, the friars continued to haunt the priestesses. In the town of Sibalon, a group of friars dug up the remains of a priestess and threw them into a waste pit. Her grave had been considered so sacred that, when the people, more particularly the women, had passed by it, they would veil their faces.[lii] The friars’ action could only be interpreted as a calculated and deliberate desecration of a priestess and everything she had stood for on the eyes of the people.[liii]
Responses of the Babaylans
Path to open resistance
In reaction to the efforts of the friars to subjugate them, the priestesses resorted to a number of responses. One path they took was to openly resist the friars who were bent in wiping out the native religion, which they were convinced was the devil’s work, and in eliminating every vestige of its female leadership. The priestesses’ drastic resistance to the Spaniards’ occupation of the land was a notable characteristic of the babaylans. They assumed the dominant role in leading the natives to confront the foreign occupation and christianization.[liv] But later on the mantle of the priestesses’ leadership in the native religion would gradually pass into the hands of the male babaylans.
In response to the government’s reducción policy to force those in distant settlements to live in larger villages, the priestesses instigated the people to resist the policy and rise in revolt. In 1608 Caquenga persuaded the people in Nalfotan, Nueva Segovia to revolt against the authorities. The rebellion spread to several neighbouring towns and villages where the natives destroyed the Christian images and chapels.[lv] The fate of Caquenga was lost in history. It was most certain that she had remained free until her death. For if she had been caught, the authorities would have certainly publicized this matter. In 1615, Aduarte reported that the “priestesses of the devil, or witches”[lvi] provoked the people to open rebellion (alboroto).[lvii] The rebellion became so widespread that the governor general himself sent a large military force to quell the uprising.
From the mid 17th century, signs of syncretism that married the old beliefs with the new ones began to appear. In Gapán, Nueva Ecija, a rebellion broke out in 1646 where the leader was known as Padre Eterno and his two generals as Dios Hijo and Dios Espiritu Santo. A native priestess called Santa Maria assisted them.[lviii] The prior of Gapán and his assistant personally led a contingent of soldiers sent by the governor general to hunt down the rebels. By ‘blood and fire,’ they crushed the rebels with the leader, Padre Eterno, and his female assistant, Santa Maria, among the dead.[lix]
The relentless persecution of the priestesses with its tragic repercussion on her followers weakened their will to support her. They turned to a warrior-leader who could be pitted against the friar. For the pre-Hispanic political/military and religious leadership “largely differentiated along gender lines”[lx] has now been conflated in the hands of the friar in the local level. This was facilitated by the collaboration of native political elite who sold out to the colonial powers “for the sake of their self-enrichment and aggrandizement.”[lxi] Although villagers’ recognition of and respect to the priestess has not diminished, she was not male like the friar. With his gift of healing, supernatural powers and the capability to lead and wage war, the male babaylan non-asog warrior eventually emerged and took over.[lxii] The babaylan identity was therefore
‘reconstructed’ from a “feminine gendered one to a male gendered one possessing combined political leadership and military prowess, the strength of which would be drawn from the ultimate power of spiritual potency so as to be able in a sense to ‘fight fire with fire’.[lxiii]
The people’s response to the male babaylan’s assumption to power through political and religious leadership was not a “wholesale renunciation of women’s impotence in the spiritual domain,”[lxiv] because they believed that “spiritual potency was [still] . . . dependent on identification with the feminine – whether the biological sex was female or male.”[lxv] They understood that the arrangement was just “a pragmatic and ‘temporary’ step taken to unite against a common enemy to regain first and foremost self determination.”[lxvi] The leadership of the male babaylans became prominent with the success of leaders like Tamblót in Bohól and Francisco Dagohóy in the Ilocos region in their respective revolts against the colonial authorities.
The path to alignment
Some female religious leaders came to realize that the only way to maintain their religious leadership was to align themselves with the emerging centres of power in the becoming permanent colonial order. They recognized the power of the colonialists and the “influence and the prestige of the religious practitioners of the new colonial order.”[lxvii] They adopted Christianity without completely abandoning many nativist beliefs and practices. Among these women were those who became the beatas and members of the ‘third orders’ who were the precursors of the now more than two hundred female religious orders and congregations in the archipelago. A sector of these religious communities has members among whom “a consciousness of continuing the babaylan/catalonan tradition is certainly emerging [and whose] qualities of leadership, resistance, courage and innovativeness in working for the reclamation of women’s spiritual heritage have frequently been acknowledged.”[lxviii] Many of these women adopted the name Maria and/or Magdalena when they opted for the religious life in the colonial order. Indeed, Madalena, or Magdalena, was a frequently recurring name among the Filipino beatas and nuns.[lxix] The case of the two blood sisters, Sór Dionisia Mitas Talangpáz de Santa María and Sór Cecilia Rosa Talangpáz de Jesús, is worthy of note. They established the first beaterio solely for the native girls in the islands. Luciano P. R. Santiago[lxx] claimed that a biographical study of the two sisters offered a “rare opportunity to trace and integrate the evolution and transition of a Filipino family and their towns of origin as well as those of a religious institution (priestesses/beatas) from a pre-Christian to a Christian culture.”[lxxi] In assuming the religious names, the two sisters retained their ancestral name ‘Talangpáz’ which refers to a cliff, crag or rock face, a favourite haunting place of the divinities and of sacrificial worship.[lxxii]
The qualities of the babaylan religious leadership can also be found among the women who have realigned themselves with the colonial order, but have not maintained the visible and public role of religious leadership. Their descendants are now found among lay women whose religious leadership is exercised by freely working in the town parishes where priests cannot fully function without their assistance. In particular in the villages, these women have led in organizing the feast of the village patron saint, the public praying of the rosary during May and October, saying the last prayer on a person’s deathbed, and the like.
The path to flight
A sector of women who had taken the covert and less radical form of resistance to the colonial order, managed to preserve their female religious leadership. Subjected to ostracism by the Catholic religious elite, they sought refuge in the forests and mountain where they could continue the religious leadership function among the people who followed them. This religious leadership went on “through to the early nineteenth century when “seven priestesses (six of whom are named) . . . withdrew . . . to the crater of Mount Banahaw, the sacred volcano of the Tagalogs . . . to be able to perform ‘maganito’ rituals undisturbed.”[lxxiii] The seven women became known as the pioneers of the “revival of the mountain as the center of the native cult now infused with Christian symbols.”[lxxiv] Their descendants now form more than the 30 religious groups who inhabit the sacred mountain where they “continue, into contemporary times, practicing elements of pre-Hispanic religiosity intertwined with aspects of Christianity.”[lxxv]
Conclusion
The descendants of the priestesses who took the radical and overt path of resistance may have been lost in history as their religious leadership has been taken over by the male babaylans. The successors of the priestesses who opted for the non-violent form of resistance have survived and are now typified by the modern babaylans in the likes of Isabél Suarez, the current head of the Iglesia del Ciudád Mística de Diós in the peripheral Christianity, Sr Mary Mananzán, OSB, in the ‘radical’ faction of the Catholic Church, and the countless women who have continued to carry out the function of female leadership in their chosen fields or vocations. The responses of the women who have taken the non-violent path of resistance did not in any way stand for sheer acquiescence to the colonial order. These alternative responses can be described as “creative and pragmatic forms of response that enabled women to claim a place within the new order from which to continue aspects of their pre-Hispanic religious beliefs, blended and redressed in the outer forms of the Spanish worldview.”[lxxvi]
José M. Vergara, Ph.D. Theol (Cand.)
School of Theology
Australian Catholic University
Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aduarte, Diego de. “Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario de la Orden de Predicadores.” In The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, edited by Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson. Vol. 30: 1640, translated by Henry B. Lathrop, 115-321. Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973.
Aduarte, Diego de. “Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario de la Orden de Predicadores.” In The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, edited by Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson. Vol. 32: 1640, translated by Henry B. Lathrop, 19-298. Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973.
Alcina, Francisco. “Historia de las islas e indios bisayas, 1668” edited from the only completed codex dated 1784 by Vicente Yepes, Consejo Superior d Investigaciones Scientificas, Madrid, 1996.
Artieda, Diego de. “Relation of the Western Islands called Filipinas.” In The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, edited by Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson. Vol. 3: 1569-1576, translated by Alfonso de Savio, 190-208. Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973.
Avanceña, María Cecilia. “Portrait of the Filipina in Early Spanish Chronicles,” in Women and Religion: Desire and Resistance: 108-142.
Brewer, Carolyn. Holy Confrontation: Religion, Gender and Sexuality in the Philippines, 1521-1685. Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Raintree Publishing Inc., 2001.
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[i] “Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons” (Mk 16:9).
Many scholars are convinced that the description of Mary Magdalene as one from whom Jesus expelled seven demons is not in the original form of the gospel of Mark.
[ii] The gospel writer, Luke, made a more specific reference to the women who followed Jesus:
“. . . as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources” (Lk 8:2-3).
It can be pointed out that the eventual demonization of Mary Magdalene in later Christianity can be traced to that phrase “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out” in Lk 8:2.
[iii] “At dawn on Saturday, March sixteen, 1521, we came upon a high land at a distance of three hundred leguas from the islands of Latroni – an island named Zamal [i.e., Samar].” (Antonio Pigaffeta, “The First Voyage Around the World,” in Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robinson [eds.], The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898. Vol. 33: 1519-1522. Tr. by James Alexander Robertson [Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973]: 103).
[iv] T. Valentino Sitoy, Jr., A History of Christianity in the Philippines: The Initial Encounter, Vol. 1 (Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers, 1986), 1.
[v] Sitoy, A History of Christianity in the Philippines, 1.
[vi] Sitoy, A History of Christianity in the Philippines, 12-17.
[vii] Pigaffeta, “The First Voyage Around the World”: 168, 170.
[viii] Pigaffeta, “The First Voyage Around the World”: 167.
[ix] Miguél Lopez de Legaspi, “Relation of the Filipinas Islands and of the Character and Conditions of Their Inhabitants,” in Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson (eds.), The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 3: 1569-1576 (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973): 60-61.
[x] “Conquest of the island of Luzon,” in Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson (eds.), The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 3: 1519-1522. Tr. by J. G. Hill (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973): 164.
[xi] Diego de Artieda, “Relation of the Western Islands called Filipinas,” in Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson (eds.), The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 3: 1569-1576. Tr. by Alfonso de Salvio (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973): 198.
[xii] Miguél de Loarca, “Relacion de las Yslas Filipinas,” in Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson (eds.), The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 5: 1582-1583. Tr. by Alfonso de Salvio and Helen Emma Blair (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973): 129, 173.
[xiii] Loarca, “Relacion de las Yslas Filipinas”: 133.
[xiv] Loarca, “Relacion de las Yslas Filipinas”: 133.
[xv] Loarca, “Relacion de las Yslas Filipinas”: 173.
[xvi] Diego de Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario de la Orden de Predicadores,” in Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson (eds.), The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 30: 1640. Tr. by Henry B. Lathrop (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973): 117.
[xvii] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 30: 179.
[xviii] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 30: 190.
[xix] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 30: 243.
[xx] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 30: 286.
[xxi] Juan de Plasencia, “Customs of the Tagalogs” in Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson (eds.), The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 7: 1588-1591. Tr. by Frederic W. Morrison (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973): 190.
[xxii] Plasencia, “Customs of the Tagalogs”: 192.
[xxiii] Plasencia, “Customs of the Tagalogs”: 190.
[xxiv] Aduarte, vol. 30: 306; Ferrando, Juán. Historia de los PP. Dominicos en las islas Filipinas y en sus Misiones del Japón, China, Tung-Kin y Formosa, en su palan, en su formas y en su estilo, por el M.R.P. Fr Joaquín Fonseca, Tomo I, Imprenta y Estreotipia de M. Rivadeneyra (Madrid, 1870). 339-340. Cited Carolyn Brewer, Holy Confrontation: Religion, Gender and Sexuality in the Philippines, 1521-1685 (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Raintree Publishing Inc., 2001), 166.
[xxv] Ferrando, Historia de los PP. Dominicos, 339-340. Cited in Brewer, Holy Confrontation, 166.
[xxvi] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 30: 307.
[xxvii] Milagros C. Guerrero, “Sources of Women’s Role in Philippine History: 1590-1898 Texts and Countertexts,” unpublished paper, Department of History, University of the Philippines, no date, 7.
[xxviii] Ferrando, Historia de los PP. Dominicos, 545. Cited in Brewer, Holy Confrontation, 166.
[xxix] Diego de Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario de la Orden de Predicadores,” in Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson (eds.), The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 31: 1640. Tr. by Henry B. Lathrop (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973): 267
[xxx] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 31: 267.
[xxxi] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 31: 270.
[xxxii] Diego de Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario de la Orden de Predicadores,” in Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson (eds.), The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 32: 1640. Tr. by Henry B. Lathrop (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973): 55-57.
[xxxiii] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 32: 55-57.
[xxxiv] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 30: 35.
[xxxv] Chirino, “Relacion de las Islas Filipinas,” Vol. 12: 263, 268.
[xxxvi] Chirino, “Relacion de las Islas Filipinas,” Vol. 12: 271.
[xxxvii] Chirino, “Relacion de las Islas Filipinas,” Vol. 12: 267, 287, 288.
[xxxviii] Chirino, “Relacion de las Islas Filipinas,” Vol. 12: 268.
[xxxix] Chirino, “Relacion de las Islas Filipinas,” Vol. 12: 268.
[xl] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 30: 129.
[xli] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 30: 208.
[xlii] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 30: 174.
[xliii] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 30: 178.
[xliv] Guerrero, “Sources of Women’s Role in Philippine History,” 4.
[xlv] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 30: 179.
[xlvi] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 31: 155.
[xlvii] Vicente de Salazar, “The Dominican Missions, 1670-1680,” in The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, ed. Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson, Vol. 43: 1670-1700, tr. James A. Robinson (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973): 53.
[xlviii] Salazar, “The Dominican Missions, 1670-1680”: 53.
[xlix] Speaking under the influence of the anito Apolaqui, the priestess was said to have lamented to the natives:
I am weeping to see fulfilled that which for years I have dreaded: that ye should receive among you strangers with white teeth, wearing cowls, and that they should place in your houses some sticks of wood laid across each other to torment me . . . And now I am going from among you, seeking to find someone to follow me, since ye have abandoned me for strangers, though I am your ancient Lord. (Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 30: 182).
In another account of the work of the Dominicans, Aduarte would again report the story in a more vivid manner:
The devil greatly resented their coming, and complained and uttered howlings through the mouths of his priestesses or aniteras. The coming of the missionaries and the building of churches forced him to show himself in his true light to his deluded followers. He often appeared to them in dreams, bidding them resist to become Christians. When they reminded him that he did not resist, he answered that he could not endure the sight of those [barbaros de dientes blancos, that is,] barbarians with white teeth”. (Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 31: 139).
[l] Pedro Murillo Velarde, Juán Diaz et al., “Insurrection by Filipinos in 17th Century,” in The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson (eds.), Vol. 38: 1674-1683 (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973), 223.
[li] Velarde, Diaz et al., "Insurrection by Filipinos in 17th Century": 223.
[lii] Francisco Alcina, “Historia de las islas e indios bisayas, 1668” edited from the only completed codex dated 1784 by Vicente Yepes, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Scientificas, Madrid, 1996. Cited in María Cecilia Avanceña, “Portrait of the Filipina in Early Spanish Chronicles,” in Women and Religion: Desire and Resistance: 118.
[liii] Avanceña, “Portrait of the Filipina in Early Spanish Chronicles”: 118.
[liv] Fe B. Mangahas, “Ang Heograpikong Distribusyon ng salitang Babaylan at Katalonan sa Tatlong Bansang Austronesyano/Malay: Pilipinas, Indonesia at Malaysia” in Nilo S. Ocampo (ed.) Adhika: Mga Pag-aaral sa Kasaysayang Bayan (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 1999), 120-121.
[lv] Guerrero, “Sources of Women’s Role in Philippine History,” 8.
[lvi] Aduarte, “Historia de la Provincia,” Vol. 32: 55.
[lvii] Guerrero, “Sources of Women’s Role in Philippine History,” 8.
[lviii] Gaspár de San Agustin, Conquista de las Islas Filipinas (Madrid, 1668). Cited in María Cecilia Avanceña, “Portrait of the Filipina in Early Spanish Chronicles,” 118.
[lix] Guerrero, “Sources of Women’s Role in Philippine History,” 9.
[lx] Drum, Mary. Women, Religion and Social Change in the Philippines: Refractions of the Past in Urban Filipinas' Religious Practices Today, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. Geelong, Australia: School of Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Deakin University, March, 2001, 96.
[lxi] Drum, Women, Religion and Social Change in the Philippines, 136.
[lxii] Maria Milagros Geremia-Lachica, "Panay's Babaylan: The Male Takeover," in Review of Women's Studies, (1996) Vol. 6: 57. Cited in Drum, Women, Religion and Social Change in the Philippines, 135. It should be noted that the leaders of the numerous uprisings were mostly male babaylans. These revolts were the seeds of the conflagration that would lead to a nationwide revolution in 1898 that ended the Spanish colonialization. The babaylans would again be in the forefront of the continuing struggles against the new colonizers, the Americans.
[lxiii] Drum, Women, Religion and Social Change in the Philippines, 135.
[lxiv] Drum, Women, Religion and Social Change in the Philippines, 136.
[lxv] Brewer, Holy Confrontation, 34.
[lxvi] Drum, Women, Religion and Social Change in the Philippines, 135.
[lxvii] Drum, Women, Religion and Social Change in the Philippines, 129.
[lxviii] Drum, Women, Religion and Social Change in the Philippines, 131.
[lxix] The missionaries promoted the veneration of the woman saint as a repentant sinner rather than as the first apostolic witness of the Risen Christ or as the “Apostle to the Apostles,” her traditional designation. Thus the second Filipino nun was Sor Madalena de la Concepcion (1637); the first book published by a woman in the Philippines was a novena to Santa Maria Magdalena (ca. 1838); and one of the beaterios founded by a Filipina was called “La Magdalena” (1887). (Lucian P. R. Santiago, To Love and to Suffer: The Development of the Religious Congregations for Women in the Spanish Philippines, 1565-1898 [Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2008], 42.
[lxx] Luciano P. R. Santiago, “Talangpaz: The Foundresses of the Beaterio de San Sebastian de Calumpang (now the Congregation of the Augustinian Recollect Sisters) 1691-1732, viewed 01 June 2007, http://www.talampaz.com.
[lxxi] Santiago, “The Foundresses of the Beaterio de San Sebastian de Calumpang ” http://www.talampas.com/
talangpaz1.htm
[lxxii] Pedro Chirino, “Relacion de las Islas Filipinas,” in Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson (eds.), The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 12: 1601-1602, Tr. by Frederic W. Morrison and Emma Helen Blair (Mandaluyong City, Philippines: Cachos Hermanos, 1973): 266; Colin, “Native Races and Their Customs”: 70.
[lxxiii] Luciano P. R. Santiago, “To love and to suffer: the development of the religious congregations for women in the Philippines during the Spanish Era (1565-1898),” Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1995: 160.
The six known women were Hermana Francisca who was the leader, Hermanas Nicolasa Alinea, Matea Aguila, Ana, Cleta and Rosa.
[lxxiv] Santiago, To Love and to Suffer, 20.
[lxxv] Drum, Women, Religion and Social Change in the Philippines, 125.
[lxxvi] Drum, Women, Religion and Social Change in the Philippines, 134.
