Introduction to Secular Clergy in the Philippines, 1565-1898©
May 2015, June 2023
Lists of Clergy are Posted by Surname
One of the frustrations of work in Philippine history is the lack of information when one comes across names, particularly names of Filipinos. These lists are a start--and I hope others will add to them--towards identifying and tracking Secular priests in the Spanish Philippines. It is very preliminary, set against “one of the ironies” (as Luciano Santiago has stated) that often until recently we have not “known the names of [the] first native sons who became priests of the universal church.”[1] That we know those names and some of their assignments today is largely due to the work of Regalado [Ricky] Trota Jose and Luciano P. R. Santiago.[2]
I am extremely grateful to Ricky Jose’s prompt and generous willingness to make it possible to work with and draw extensively from his important work,, Curas de Almas. His help in this endeavor evidences exactly the sort of cooperation I hoped for by using the electronic medium of the www. Almost all of the individuals whose names and assignments he has listed are from the nineteenth century, mainly after 1834. However, he does list some from earlier, even a handful from the end of the eighteenth century. Even by the standards of my hopes his generosity and help are quite special and very much appreciated.
I acknowledge as well Luciano P. R. Santiago for his work on the early Secular clerics in the Islands. He has literally resurrected about 150 individuals who worked in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and who heretofore had been unknown to scholars of the Philippine past. One of the serendipities of his and Jose’s work is that their areas of periods covered complement each other, especially when the Spanish 17th-century clerical names from the article by Mesquida Oliver are added.[3]
The total number of names indicates how impressive the work of these two scholars has been. I estimate that they, plus a dozen or so from my own work, have brought to light well over fifteen hundred individuals,[4] most of whom served in parishes outside of Manila.
Errors in transcription or presentation are of course my fault, and I would appreciate learning of them so that I could correct the mistakes. Additional information and detail is also welcomed.
Please contact me at dbc_research_institute@yahoo.com with any information you would like to share; or with comments and criticisms on the material.
Bruce Cruikshank
Independent Scholar
Nebraska, U.S.A.
[1] Luciano P. R. Santiago, “The Hidden Light: The First Filipino Priests.” Philippine Studies, 31: 2 (1983), 129-188; here, 129.
[2] The bulk of the entries are from Regalado Trota Jose, Curas de Almas: A Preliminary Listing of Parishes and Parish Priests in the 19th Century Philippines based on the Guias de Forasteros, 1834-1898. Manila: University of Santo Tomas, 2008 (4 volumes). For the sources by Luciano P. R. Santiago, please see the Bibliography, which also has other references of some utility.
[3] Juan Mesquida Oliver, “La Población de Manila y las Capellanías de Misas de los Españoles: Libro de Registros, 1642-1672.” Revista de Indias, 70: 249 (2010), 469-500. Provided to me by courtesy of the author in May 2015, contributing seventy-four more names of Secular clergy.
[4] If one conservatively estimates that there are eight Secular clerics on each complete page (with the entries from less than full pages added in separately), the total comes to 1,623; if one uses the figure of nine priests for each complete page and again adds the extras manually, the total comes to 1,815. There are almost certainly others we have not yet unearthed, particularly in the dioceses of Cebu, Nueva Caceres, and Nueva Segovia.