diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

form, the entire dramatic argument of his first novel, including the themes,protagonist, etc. Nor are the Franciscans, the monastery of Santa Clara, and,of course, the events of 1872 missing.In these circumstance, that is to say, strongly influenced by the culturalatmosphere around him, clearly conditioned by friends and the books theyprovided for him, deeply disturbed by the incidents he was witnessing as astudent, and considerably affected by anti-Franciscan prejudices resultingfrom reading Arriaga, the handbill just mentioned, etc., Rizal enclosedhimself in his room until the late hours of midnight and wrote feverishly,"night and day for the space of many months"' the greater portion of thenovel which soon after would make him famous, Noli me tangere. In it JoseRizal analyzed his country's condition from a grossly distorted—in ouropinion—perspective created by lenses through which he read the recenthistory of his country.In our view, these are the factors which, together with Joaquin de Coria'srole in his controversy with Jose Burgos, pushed Rizal to portray theFranciscans as the direct manipulators of the events of Cavite, imposing onthem a responsibility they did not incur. But, of course, we must admit therecould be,a convergence of other motivations we are still unaware of.Besides the Franciscan participation in the events of Cavite, Rizal couldhardly accept certain facets of Franciscan culture. I refer particularly to acertain skepticism towards the value of learning and science detectable inwide circles of the Franciscan order. Jose Rizal, a young man gifted with amore than average intellectual capacity, thirsting for excellence, and imbuedwith an almost unlimited faith in the possibilities of science to liberatehumanity, must have looked with disapproving eyes on the feeble enthusiasmfor science and progress among a good number of Franciscans.'nFinally, we must keep in mind that even if Rizal dedicated much of hislife to the cause of his people's freedom, he was never in contact with themasses, with the poor and the marginalized of his country. On the contrary,he always lived in relatively comfortable economic circumstances. This doesnot exclude that one day or so he suffered hunger, but which made it possiblefor him to carry out expensive studies abroad and travel to several countries.It was hard for this Rizal to feel an admiration for the Franciscan in hiscountry, given their simplicity and chronic lack of economic resources, atleast on the corporate, level, and deprived of the political clout whichapparently other religious orders in the Philippines made much of.For all the reasons indicated, the Franciscans, perhaps more than anyother religious order, lent themselves as good protagonists in a fictitious176