The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803; explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commericial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century; [Vol. 1, no. 13]

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THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

[VoL 13

tion-which, as we have already stated, were customary in cases of sickness or death-since in this
confraternity are the people who are most prominent,
most Christian, and most trustworthy in those villages. Moreover, they take the utmost care to ascertain who in the village may be sick or dying; and
they aid the families of both the sick and the dead
by frequent visits - in such cases not only exercising
perfect piety and charity, but preventing the abuses,
superstitions, idolatries, intoxications, dirges, music,
and wailing which had been their own custom when
they were pagans, as now among these others. These
confraternities have rendered Christianity in those
regions most glorious, and for their good deeds are so
highly esteemed that he is not considered a person of
worth who is not received into one of them. On two
special occasions they made processions, in excellent
order, and with great solemnity and concourse of the
people, and attended mass and preaching; and very
many frequented the communion. One of these was
at the foundation of a confraternity; the other was
occasioned by a plague of locusts which had been devastating all those islands for two years. In order to
obtain from God a remedy for this evil, they chose the
most holy Virgin Mary as their intercessor, and made
a vow to celebrate the feast of her most pure conception, and to give on that occasion liberal alms as aid
for the marriages of the poor and the orphans. They
fulfilled their promises, and our Lord received their
humble tokens of service and showed them that He
was well pleased, by turning aside the locusts from
their crops, and giving them that year very abundant
harvests. All the people of the village have now directed to the church that recourse and dependence