diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

more radically anticlerical politicians and thinkers of Spain in the second halfof the nineteenth century. These were the men who, reacting to the excessivelyconservative stance of the Church and the religious orders in Spain,initiated after the Spanish revolution of 1868 a fierce campaign to discreditboth the regular and the secular clergy, although, for political more than forany other reasons, in the Philippines their attacks centered on the friars.'"In my opinion, Jose Rizal makes the Franciscans the target of hisdenuntiations of the friars in the Philippines mainly because of the writings oftwo of those friars, Joaquin de Coria and Francisco Arriaga, writingspublished at a time of the greatest dialectical tension in the Madrid pressbetween the liberals and the conservatives during the years 1868-1872.The socio-political and cultural circumstances in which Rizal carried outhis program to defend the rights of his people certainly explain the blackestpages of his novels, Noll me tangere, and El Filibusterismo. At the same time,however, one should never forget these pages are in open contradiction to theethical principles which he himself was claiming to have set up as norms toguide his own life, and quite deeply and with an irreversible effect because oftheir partiality—closely bordering at times on calumny and defamation—thefundamental rights of the Franciscans.Despite it all, the simple people of the Philippines did not seem to haveshared the theories of Rizal about the Franciscans. On the contrary, even inthe most intensely patriotic moments of the Philippine revolution, theyexpressed their gratitude, sympathy, and admiration for them. Hatred anddisdain for them was the attitude rather of a minority of extremist, vengefuland unscrupulous moralists. Not only does it appear that not a singleFranciscan was killed; it is not on record that they had even been tortured, anunusual thing if we remember what the members of the other religious orderssuffered.Several Franciscans were given a safe-conduct, by the revolutionaryleaders, to protect them from molestation. Their former parishioners servedthem their meals when they were imprisoned. When Fray Mateo Atienza,pastor of Pilar, Sorsogon, returned after the revolution to his former parish,he was received with real joy.'But perhaps the most relevant and meaningful experience in regard to theattitude of the people towards the Franciscans is that of the Franciscan Bishopof Cebu, Martin Garcia Alcocer. His personal relations with both the Filipinoclergy and the Filipino people were not only not broken by the events beforeand after the revolution; they were even more solidified. Martin GarciaAlcocer was the only Spanish bishop who remained as head of a dioceseI80