RELIGION AND COLONIALISM PDF

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KINAADMAN XXI (1999) RELIGION AND COLONIALISM Ma. Elizabeth Olavides-Soriano Filipino historians view the intimate relationship between the Catholic religion and Spanish colonialism differently. Each opinion focuses on the role religion played in colonialism during the 15th to the 17th centuries. Re...

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KINAADMAN XXI (1999)

RELIGION AND COLONIALISM Ma. Elizabeth Olavides-Soriano

Filipino historians view the intimate relationship between the Catholic religion and Spanish colonialism differently. Each opinion focuses on the role religion played in colonialism during the 15th to the 17th centuries. Renato Constantino believes that religion served as the idealogical justification for the expeditions in order to conceal the crass motives of the Kings. In this view the Church evolved from a colonial accessory to the principal apparatus of colonial appropriation and exploitation (p.82). Teodoro Agoncillo asserts that while the laws of Indies had vested in the Church the duty to defend the natives (defensores de los indios), the Church itself caused much oppression and suffering among the masses (p.89). In contrast, Gregorio Zaide glorifies the achievements of the missionaries and insists that the Church was the real hero in the Spanish conquest of the Philippines because of its contributions which resulted in the good will of the natives (p.159). Which opinion is valid and acceptable? Is it correct to reduce the role of the Church during colonial times to good or evil? The Church and Spanish Colonial Policies In 1492, when Christopher Columbus left for the voyage to the Indies, the Spanish monarch consulted jurists and

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ecclesiastics about justification in taking possessions of new found territories. Unlike the Portuguese, the Spaniards had no pontifical documents to provide moral rights over newly discovered lands. Hence, Spain appealed to the Roman pontiff for an outright pontifical grant. The Inter caetera bull was issued in 1493 dividing the world between Spanish and Portuguese spheres of influence. Along with the bull was the emergence of the Patronato Real de las Indias which was an arrangement between the Roman Catholic Church and the Spanish Crown allowing the latter to claim a special mandate to convert the people of the Spanish overseas empire (de la Costa p. 7). Through this arrangement, colonialism became a joint undertaking of Church and State with the latter as the leading proponent. In institutions like Pase Regio the ecclesiastics were required to seek royal consent or permission to undertake missionary work in the colonies. The Spanish Crown held the prerogative to choose a bishop for a given diocese thereby strengthening the bonds between the bishops and the Crown. The governor-general, who represented the Spanish king in the colonies, appointed the parish priests. The Royal Exequatur demanded that all communications between the Church in the Indies and Rome be approved by the Royal Council of the Indies prior to acceptance and implementation of guidelines. (Cushner, p. 98). Moreover, the Spanish Crown undertook the obligation of financially supporting the Church in the Indies. Each missionary represented a considerable outlay by the Crown. In the 16th century, it cost 129, 526 maravedis to send a Jesuit from Spain to the Philippines (de la Costa, p. 8). As paymaster, the Spanish

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Crown commanded respect and allegiance. Because of this, it was not difficult to force churchmen to also perform civil functions. By royal edict, parish priest were appointed supervisors of government schools and dominated the Permanent Commission of Censorship which controlled the press and entry of books and other printed matter. This turned the Spanish clergy into political agents of the state. Without probably realizing it and probably not having any choice at all, the Church became a tool for conquest and the perpetuation of Spanish rule in the colony. Symbolic of the subordination of religion to Spanish colonial policies in the Philippines was the fact that Magellan was the central figure in the preaching of the Gospel to Humabon and the Cebuanos in 1521 and not Father Pedro Valderrama, a secular priest who accompanied the voyage (Schumacher, p. 12). In the New World, the Dominican Bartolome de las Casas, then chaplain to Narvaez’s troops, also revealed the weakness of the Church’s prestige when he was not able to prevent the massacre of the Caonao natives in Venezuela (Todorov, p. 167). Whenever jurisdictional struggles occurred between civil and ecclesiastical officials in the colonies, the Spanish monarch never looked lightly on any infringement of their patronato as shown in the cases between the Augustinians and Governor Ronquillo and between Archbishop Hernando Guerrero OSA and Governor Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera (Cushner, p.115). Attempts at Justification In Spain throughout the 16th century, the legitimacy of the King’s authority over the Indies was a burning issue. The

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controversy centered on the precise meaning and scope of the papal bull, Inter caetera. It was not clear whether the bull involved political sovereignty or simply a special commission to spreads the Gospel. The view of the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria sustained later by another Dominican Bartolome de las Casas, loomed impressive and commanding. Its impact was so strong that Charles V at one point seriously considered giving up Spain’s hold on the New World. It was resolved that the legitimacy of the Spanish rule in the New World should rely on the native’s free consent. Upon royal orders, this consent was sought through a procedure called requerimiento. This procedure was conceptualized by the royal jurist Palacios Rubios in 1514 which regulated conquest by demanding submission from native subjects of their own accord to the Spaniards and become serfs or be subjugated by force and be reduced to slavery. This procedure which was read in Spanish to nonSpanish speaking natives, however, did not leave much of an alternative. In the Philippines, the Spanish friars from the very start took seriously their role as the conscience of the Spanish King. Fray Martin de Rada, the Augustinian provincial who accompanied Legazpi, wrote to the Viceroy of Mexico and exposed the atrocities committed by the Spaniards against the Filipinos. Fray Diego de Herrera denounced the Spanish encomienda system. All these efforts were concretized by Bishop Domingo Salazar O.P., who had been known as a fighter for justice in Mexico, and who arrived in the Philippines in 1581 (Schumacher, p.18).

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The turn-about in the relationship of the Church and the Spanish Crown took place in 1581 with the arrival of Bishop Salazar in Manila and the assembly of the Manila Synod in 1582. It was during the last quarter of the 16th century that complaints of the Augustinians, who first criticized the Spanish abuses on the natives, were acted upon. The Jesuits who first came to the Philippines with Bishop Salazar in 1581 played a significant role in the Synod of Manila through the Jesuit Alonso Sanchez. This Synod made a forceful attempt to defend the rights of the native population and to define the duties and obligations that justice demanded of the Spaniards (Bernad pp. 270-271; Gutierrez, p. 28). Conclusion Religion, as a constitutive part of colonialism, became initially an accomplice of the state in the subjugation of the natives and, yet, because of its human nature, attempted to be a protector of the natives in whose subjugation it participated. In its effort to bring the Christian faith to every corner of the earth, the Church was an instrument of the Spanish Crown in the pacification of the natives in the 15th and early 16th centuries. But eventually the Church freed itself from the role and asserted itself as a champion of the oppressed native subjects. It would be incorrect to say that the Church was helplessly used by the Spanish Crown. There was a deliberate effort by the Church to assert its true function of making the Christian society an egalitarian society.

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Whether the Church was an auxiliary to the State or a protector of the native subjects is a reflection of the debate in the realm of consciousness. The philosophical battle regarding the role of religion in colonialism still brings us back to the equation of principles justifying Spanish colonialism. From an old story of Divine Right, Rubios and Matias de Paz based the rights of the Spanish conquerors upon a papal grant overriding the natural rights of the Indians. Gregorio Lopez contraposed that the Spanish Crown derived its right of conquest from the apostolic concession but such concession forbade the use of force except as a final resort. John Major contributed in the justification of conquest on the ground of duty to bring civilization in a secular sense to barbarous people. Sepulveda said that hierarchy, not equality, was the natural state of human society. But Francisco de Vitoria in his Relectiones de Indis denied that the Pope and the emperor had temporal jurisdiction over the princes, Christian or infidel. He emphasized the fact that no title could be found to justify the enslavement of the Indians or the confiscation of their property except in the case of prisoners taken in the act of an unjust war or rebellion (Parry, p. 26). It is incorrect to pursue the concept of the Church as an enemy of the natives nor is it valid to see the role of religion as an unproblematic given of colonialism. The fact that the Roman Catholic religion outlived Spanish colonialism is proof that even when the Church became part of the imperialist scheme of the Spanish Crown, the Church rose above the level of Spanish colonialism....