diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

eal rulers were, to all intents and purposes, the superiors general of themonastic orders and the archbishops of Manila—if only by the fact that theChurch could build upon a stability which the Crown lacked. In the last 150years of Spanish rule in the Philippines, 41 governors changed places inManila, but only 5 archbishops.The friars had a decisive say in all areas of public life and they were thedeclared enemies of progress or any kind of reform which in their opinionendangered Spanish rule in the Philippines. The self-importance of the clergywas best expressed in the slogan, "a friar outweighs a battalion of soldiers."Was Blumentritt oblivious of all this, or was it of no concern to him? Washis aim merely to perfect himself as an ethnologist or a linguist, a historian ofthe Philippines? But if the welfare and the emancipation of the Filipinos werealso his concern, it would not take him long to confront those forces that rancounter to Filipino democratic and modern aspirations, namely, the monasticorders.The moment seemed to have arrived sooner than expected. In a letterdated 22 August 1886,' barely a month after the correspondence betweenRizal and Blumentritt had started, the former sarcastically retorted in answerto the latter's praise of the friars, that these had been well compensated withwordly as well as heavenly riches, nay, in truth, had opted for the land of thenatives' ancestors in exchange for the heavenly. And Rizal adds:Dear Sic you know our country through the books written by the friars andSpaniards who copied one another. If you had grown up, in our villages as I hadand had seen the sufferings of our country folk, you would have a very differentidea of Catholicism in the Philippines. I have had an opportunity to study thereligions in Europe. There I found Christianity beautiful, sublime, divine;Catholicism attractive, poetic . . . . Our country folk do not know thesedifferences. Pardon my frankness which may perhaps seem strange to you for nothaving heard such a thing before . .It must have sounded strange indeed to Blumentritt who suddenly wassurprised with a new territory opening before his eyes, a world of problemshis studies had never yet touched. It is difficult to estimate how long it tookthe Austrian scholar to change his opinion or even when his research didresult in a new attitude. The first expression of this new approach towardsreligion and the friars did not appear in Blumentritt's letters to Rizal but inAustrian and German magazines.In a report on the Philippine system of government2 written some twoyears after the first exchange between the two friends, that system is defined229