illed
with buckthorns of idolatry and even with thorns hardened in the
perfidious sect of Mahomet. Three religious, who glorified that
district, attended to so divine an occupation, stealing for it from
the rest of the moments that were left to them from the spiritual
administration which was the first object of their duty. They extended
their work toward the part of Tagaloan, and even penetrated inland
quite near the lake of Malanao through all the mountains of their
jurisdiction. There like divine Orpheuses they converted brutes into
men by the harmonious cithara of the apostolic preaching and those who
were living, in the most brutish barbarity to the Christian faith,
which is so united to reason. Thus did they reduce more than one
hundred tributes to the villages of the Christians. That was a total
of five hundred souls who were all drawn from their infidelity or
apostasy. That triumph was so much more wonderful as at that time
the war of the Malanao Moros against the presidio of Cagayan was
more bloody, and it is verified by experience that in all contests,
the Catholic faith generally advances but little amid the clash of
arms. But their increases, which we have related (as obtained in the
triennium of the venerable father, Fray Joseph de la Trinidad, which
was concluded in April, 1677) appear from several letters written
in Manila by the most excellent religious in June and July of the
above-mentioned year, and directed to our father the vicar-general,
Fray Francisco de San Joseph, which have been preserved in the archives
of Madrid.

[Section ii of this chapter relates a number of miraculous
occurrences in the villages of Butuan, Linao, and Cagayan, and their
districts--miracles which were greater than the recovery of health on
receiving baptism, at the reading of the gospels, or after drinking
the water left in the chalice after the sacrament, all of which were
very common and little regarded. Those miracles had great weight
in reducing those people to the Christian faith. For instance the
dato above mentioned, Putig (or Pistig) Matanda, was converted after
the successful exorcism of demons that had troubled his village. It
is related in this section that "for reasons that seemed fitting,
the convent and church of Butuan were moved to the beach from their
previous location; but it was afterward reestablished there, one
legua from the sea upstream." One of these years also the village
of Cagayan suffered great