Foundation of the convent of Masinglo

With just reason can this house be [regarded as] the most precious and esteemed jewel that the Augustinian Reform venerates, as it was the fort that was raised against the devil in the lands of the infidels, which the devil had usurped from the cross and the gospel, when our religious, after so many labors and sufferings, tamed the untamable Zambales.  That village, before called Masinloc, was suitable for the foundation, as it was in a location from which they could attend quickly to the service of God our Lord and of souls.  Accordingly, they chose it, although its inhabitants were more ferocious than the rest of their neighbors because they had no one to drive away their errors and illumine their darkness.  Father Fray Andres del Espiritu Santo, then, accompanied by two other religious, planted that holy bulwark to oppose all hell.  With great care and helpfulness they tried first to adorn it with the example of their virtues, so that the neophytes should become fonder of the law which we profess.  At that time the recently baptized amounted to eight hundred, with whom great efforts were exerted in separating them from their former evil habits, more especially that of idolatry, to which was joined that of intoxication; they were given to these in excess, by the habit that they had acquired in both things from childhood.  With the lapse of time the converted have surpassed two thousand, because of the reduction of certain more terrible Indians who lived in the mountains, without houses and away from the coast.  The latter were continually at war with others who are called Negrillos [i.e., “little blacks"], for they seem to be such, and they are very black.  One may now consider the vigilance it must have cost to attract those brutes, in order to make them live a social life in accordance with reason, in peace and quiet—­things that were never seen among them until our religious undertook to tame them and to bring them into rational intercourse.  The jurisdiction of that convent has extended fourteen leguas, and it has ten visitas which are villages.  The missionaries generally go to those villages to care for their souls, and do not allow them to continue their former wickedness.

It happened in that village of Masinglo that, an Indian woman finding herself at the end of her days, they summoned father Fray Bernardo de San Lorenco so that he might baptize her, for she was then asking for it.  He went to her house, and as he thought that she was but slightly sick, he judged that it would be well to delay the sacrament until she knew her prayers well and the other mysteries that any Christian must know in order to be confessed.  He began to instruct her, and to persuade her with efficacious reasons to hate her idolatries and to have sorrow for her sins.  He tried to leave her in this way until next day, but she, crying out and moaning, said to him:  “Baptize me, Father, baptize me,