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opled by Indians who were almost all apostates from religion, has now in great part embraced the faith through the efforts of the religious, who scarcely ten years ago founded a new village peopled by families of the said Indians. It is not many years since the wild Indians [Zimarrones] were feared in the island of Masbate but these are now so few, through the persuasions of the religious, that one can cross the island without danger. The villages have increased greatly with the people who have been reduced to a Christian life and civilization. The village of Camasoso is a new colony peopled by that before indomitable people; and the same has happened in the island of Burias. Now then, I ask, since this is so (and it is a fact, and one that can be proved whenever necessary), in what are these ministries or curacies different from those in Nueva Espana and Peru, when St. Pius V conceded the exemption of the regulars? What difference is there between those missions or parishes and those founded in the Philipinas Islands when they began to be subject to the crown of Espana? There appears to be no difference. If the privilege conceded to the religious in America with those circumstances was considered justifiable, and was also observed in the said islands at the beginning, our discalced religious will proceed quite conformably with right in resisting any change with all their strength, as long as their individual parish priests are also, as stated, engaged as missionaries. 740. More force is given to this argument if one considers that, even in carrying on missions in infidel lands, our religious could not suffer greater hardships than those which they endure in the said ministries. That it may be seen that this is not imagination, I shall give a rough outline of what happened recently from the year 1720 until the present. I shall do it as briefly as possible, for those regrettable tragedies will occasion great extension to this history in due time. It is well known that our villages are the most exposed to the invasions of the Moros; consequently, they always serve as the theater of war and as the object of disasters. In the said year, then, they attacked the province of Calamianes with a powerful fleet. Landing on the island of Linacapan they burned the village, convent, and church; outraged the sacred images; and killed with lance-thrusts the venerable father, Fray Manuel de Jesus Maria, a native of Lupiana in Alcarria
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