by letters from Rome received this year, to the great delight and approval of all; which letters have much promoted the worship of the most blessed Virgin, and have also kindled those who are reckoned among the first in the city to accept the advice to join a sodality.  By these means cares have been turned aside, and four bitter family quarrels, in which the very heart of life and salvation was attacted, not without public scandal, were brought to an end with the desired success.

Bohol Establishment

VII.  The harvest of souls at Bohol has increased with the decrease of the audacity of the enemy, and of the almost annual invasion by the people of Mindanao.  As many as a thousand have been baptized, if children and adults are reckoned.  In this number are several bailans, or priests of idols; and one there was who, before his baptism, did nothing but rage, and attack with teeth and nails those who passed by, who came forth from the waters of the sacred font, gentle and in his right mind.  And when some Indians saw this, snatching the cause from the fact, they went to the father and begged him to sprinkle a dying Indian woman with the same healing waters.  Our father, suspecting that they made this request with the the purpose of enabling the woman to avoid the trouble of learning the catechism refused, unless she would first learn what Christians know.  “Father,” said they, “that ought not to be the way in which you act; we want her baptized to keep her alive.”  “And I,” said one, “when I was lying near to death, was by the command of another father sprinkled by an Indian cantor, and as soon as I was sprinkled immediately I began to recover.  Then that madman, as you know, washed away his madness in the same font; and this companion of mine, who was already despaired of, when he received baptism was restored to himself and his kinsfolk.”  The father yielded to all these arguments, ordered the sick woman to be carried into the church, and after putting the questions demanded by the occasion and the need, cleansed her with that purifying sacrament:  she immediately began to improve, and soon recovered all her former strength.  Every day several feel the healing power of this font.  An equally great miracle is that the chiefs of this tribe, who have been very ill disposed towards us, and from whom not even the lives of Ours were safe, have been so suddenly changed at the sight of one of our fathers that they not only—­themselves, without being urged—­have submitted to the Christian ordinances, but also seek out the barbarians, even in the mountains, where they wander and are dispersed like wild beasts; and partly by the exercise of their authority, partly by persuasion, bring them down to the villages, and offer them to the fathers for instruction and baptism.  Together with these there were once offered more than seventy idols, the spoils of the bailans, which were publicly