illumine the dark shades of idolatry and paganism, served
as the original basis for the spread of the faith. After that, they
continued to found many other villages dependent on the first, which
were then considered as visitas or subject villages. Some of those
villages came in later times to be the residences of our Recollect
ministers, according to the available number of religious that the
corporation possessed, or according as the necessities or growth of
population in the said subject villages demanded.

Our predecessors also succeeded in getting to the lake of Malanao,
and the village of Iligan, and Bayug. As there were certain questions
regarding the spiritual jurisdiction, his Majesty defined them,
marking out the limits of religious zeal between the two families
(who were equally inflamed with the desire for the salvation of
souls), by drawing a line from the point of Suloguan to the cape of
San Agustin, and assigning the administration on its western side
to the most religious fathers of the Society of Jesus, while our
peaceful possession was marked on the eastern side. Lastly, when
the reverend Jesuit fathers left the islands, the administration of
Zamboanga was adjudged to us in the year one thousand seven hundred
and sixty-eight, as well as the villages of Lubungan, Dapitan, and
Misamis (and consequently their barrios--some of which, as time went
on, came to be villages).

Present administration of the Recollects

Her Majesty Dona Isabel II decreed the establishment of the house of
Loyola on October nineteen, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two,
with permission to go to the missions of Mindanao and Jolo. September
ten, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, another royal order
was issued, declaring that the missionaries of the Society of Jesus
have exclusive rights in the planting and successive development of
the effective missions in Mindanao; and that the same were to take
charge of the administration of the curacies and missions already
reduced by the Recollect Augustinian religious as fast as these were
vacated by the death or transfer of those who serve them with canonical
collation or under title of temporary incumbent. Her Majesty, desiring
at the same time to concede an indemnification, and to give proof of
the appreciation with which she views the services bestowed on the
Church and on the state by the above-mentioned Augustinian religious,
has been pleased to grant to the province