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. 36]

I649-I666]

ROYAL FUNERAL RITES

33

had entered, the royal crown was placed on its royal
catafalque - or rather a funeral pyre of fire, crowned
with candles as is the firmament with stars, where
the brilliant and the majestic glowed in competition.
I leave the description of that for the crown of this
historical compilation. Those in the procession
took possession of and even filled all the seats which
were provided for the tribunals and the communities, distributing themselves therein according to the
same order of their seniority. With this began the
vespers for the dead, which was in charge of the
chaplain-in-chief, assisted by the royal chaplains,
with all the requisites of solemnity and pomp, accompanied by the piety, devotion, and silence of so
grave an assembly who were present, at the verge of
tears. They paid with fervent suffrages the debt of
their love and the obligations of their loyalty to the
prince, their deceased sovereign, whose obsequies
they were performing; and they refreshed their
memories with his heroic virtues, and his brilliant
deeds in the tender and flowery years of his agegifts that assured us that he was glorious and
triumphant in the court of Heaven. The complement of the solemn splendor of that day was the
reverend father, Fray Vicente Argenta, of the seraphic order, and past provincial of this province of
San Gregorio. He, occupying the pulpit, took up
the space of an hour with a funeral panegyric, where
his eloquence had an opportunity to exercise itself
in all its colors, and in a beautiful variety of erudition, both divine and human. He roamed through
the spacious and extensive field of the virtues of our
most serene prince, with so impressive discourse adjusted to the gravity and meaning of the subject,