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. 24]

I630-I634]

MEDINA'S HISTORIA

77

Fray Miguel Garcia was provincial, he was elected
definitor, and now we see him provincial; and in the
succeeding triennium we shall see him return to the
office because of the death of the holder of it, which
is in accordance with the rules. Within a little more
than a month after he had taken the office, we shall
see him choked to death. Thus he served as an
official in the province for scarcely one and one-half
years before he was at the head of it. But so great
fortune in temporal affairs announced such a misfortune.
At that chapter presided the definitor, namely, our
father, Fray Francisco Bonifacio; for, by the resignation of our father visitor-general, the rules summoned him for it. As definitors were elected in the
chapter: our father Fray Juan Enriquez, father
Fray Pedro Garcia; 29 second, our father Fray Alonso
de Mentrida; third, father Fray Alonso Ruiz;30 and
29 Fray Pedro Garcia Serrano, a native of the town of Chinch6n, in the province of Madrid, took his vows in the province of
Castilla. He had considerable reputation as an orator, and was
given the title of master in sacred theology some time after his
arrival at the islands in 1613. He filled many posts in the order,
among them that of vicar-provincial, definitor (I629), and prior
of Guadalupe (1624-I629), as well as that of commissary of the
Inquisition and calificador of the Holy Office in the archbishopric
of Manila. He died in Mexico in 1631, while on a voyage to
Spain, having been appointed definitor of the general chapter and
commissary-procurator. He wrote some moral sermons in the
Pampanga dialect, while exercising the care of missions in that
province. See Perez's Catdlogo, p. 90.
80 Fray Alonso Ruiz was a native of Coimbra, Portugal, and
professed in the Salamanca convent in I574. He was minister of
the village of Aclan in I602, and of San Nicolas de Cebu in I607,
sub-prior of the convent of Manila and master of novitiates in
I611, definitor and prior of Guadalupe in I617, and prior of
Taal in I620. He afterward served in a number of Pampanga
villages, and died in that of Minalin in 1640. See Perez's
Catdlogo, p. 70.