ching of Ours in various
places in the Philipinas. The death of two religious in Talavera de
la Reyna with great reputation.

The year 1677

Sec. I

The evangelical trumpet resounds in various territories of Philipinas,
and especially in the ridges of Linao, and in the mountains of Cagayan,
in the island of Mindanao, by the means of our missionaries; and many
heathens are converted to the Christian religion.

714. It has ever been a very common complaint among historians of the
order, and all make it, of time the destroyer of all things and of
the neglect in leaving advisory news thereof. There is no doubt that
for these two reasons the memory of many valiant deeds of excellent
religious, who have filled our discalced Recollect order with honors in
the Philipinas Islands, who have extended the Catholic faith untiringly
at the cost of unspeakable hardships, and destroyed the abominable
altars of heathen blindness, have been lost. But never more than at
present does that complaint appear justifiable, when we begin to treat
of the progress of Christianity in the districts of Linao and Cagayan,
villages of the island of Mindanao, one of the Philipinas. There was
the evangelical trumpet heard by dint of members of our reformed order,
with memorable fruit.... Let us pass then to mention what we have been
able to bring to light from the confused memories which time excused.

715. In the year 1674, father Fray Joseph de la Trinidad, a native of
Zaragoza, was elected provincial in Philipinas. That apostolic laborer
had always had great zeal for the conversion of souls. Agitated
by that sacred fire that burned without consuming his heart which
fed it, he worked in his own person, as much as he who did most,
so that all the heathens of that distant archipelago should embrace,
believe, and reverence the faith of the true God, in whose name only
is found salvation. For that purpose he went not only once into the
highest peaks of Zambales, in order to illumine their darkness with the
Catholic light or to lose his life in so heroic an act of charity. He
desired with unspeakable anxiety to be given the opportunity to
make a sacrifice of his blood by shedding it in so good warfare,
in confirmation of the truth which he was preaching. "When shall
I have the desirable happiness," he exclaimed to his pious fellow
countryman, San Pedro Arbues, "of being made a good martyr from a
bad priest by the merciful God?" That desire we se