diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

poverty for the country. Besides, in all sense, we continue being exploited and weought to tire of that now . . . .On your word I believe in the goodness of the pastor whom I greet from here. Butan idea comes to me. If the women of Calamba despite a pastor not at all a fanatic,are so devoted spontaneously to vigils and statues, what will happen if a fanaticand abusive pastor comes, someone who will weigh heavily on their consciencelike a [dark] night, someone who squeezes like the printing press? You have toagree that if there your sex is hardly advanced, it is much better than the oppositewhich turns and lives in that atmosphere between the confessional box and thesacristy, [and] leads to serious aberrations.15It is around this time, approximately, when there is no known previous orexisting dispute between him and the Franciscans that Rizal began his novel,the Noll me tangere.16He wrote one half of the work in Madrid, and the rest in France andGermany. In March 1887, the first copies were off the press in Berlin, and inthe middle of this year, Rizal arrived unexpectedly in Manila with a fewcopies in his bag. His sudden appearance in Manila, where sufficientinformation of his political and literary activities and some copies of hisrecent novel had already reached, first, caused great surprise, and, second,created a climate of great tension, precipitating his immediate departure sixmonths after his arrival. The brutal frankness, pointed irony, and Voltaireansarcasm of Noll me tangere seemed to the Spaniards, both friars and laymen,a mockery of everything Spanish and a slap on the race. Dominicans andAugustinians, and much later the Governor General, were the first tocondemn Rizal's book as "heretical, impious, and scandalous in the religiousaspect, and antipatriotic, subversive in the political"" Paradoxically,however, we are unaware of any censure, official or otherwise, by theFranciscans of the book which attacked them globally, unjustly, and onesidedly.Two years later, in 1889, Rizal published one of his better preparedworks, anedition of Antonio de Morga's Los Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas.'sHis intention, totally laudable in principle, was to write a history of his peoplefrom the viewpoint of the Filipinos, i. e., of the colonized and not of thecolonizers, the oppressed and not bf the oppressors. But he continued hissweeping attacks of Spanish colonial policy and the regular clergy, goingbeyond the limits of objectivity and impartiality. The Franciscans againappeared under a totally negative light, and yet, the only historical fact thatseems to provide Rizal a base on which he could justify his antipathy to themwas a lay Brother's participation, in his capacity as administrator, in theconstruction of the Los Banos Hospital subsidized by the government."126