diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

invasion of the year 714 and added that the only solution was theproclamation of a new crusade."And so we can fully understand the personal drama Rizal must haveundergone when he had to choose between two quite contrary alternatives.Could there be a middle way? Perhaps, but it was not easy.2. Labra and the Izquierdo ArchivesAnother consequence which seems to have followed from the friendshipbetween Rizal and a good number of famous persons of the political andcultural circles of Spain at that moment was probably the access it allowedhim to a collection of books and documents belonging to one of the men whodirectly participated in the bloody incidents after the Cavite mutiny of1872, namely, Rafael Izquierdo, successor of Carlos Ma. de la Torre, whosegovernorship in the beginning raised great expectations and hopes, but was adisappointment in the end.I have earlier indicated how among the personalities belonging to thewider political world with whom Rizal had struck an acquaintance wasRafael Ma. de Labra. (Of him more below). We have sufficiently weightyevidence to say that several important documents concerning GeneralIzquierdo became the property of Labra, who sold them much later to IgnacioBauer and from him passed on to the Royal Academy of History (Madrid), tobe used by Rizal in preparing his Noli"Even from this we could have a satisfactory answer to the problem of thesource or sources Rizal used when narrating a series of rather importantepisodes connected with the most salient characters of his novel. Forexample, the sacrilegious loves of Fray Damaso echoing real problems ofanother Franciscan of flesh and bones, Fray Fermin Terren (a fact we passover because it has already been fully discussed elsewhere by Dr. LeandroTonno Sanz)," the existence of a true mutiny with a political and separatistaim, the anomalies committed by the political and judiciary authorities at thevery moment when those truly responsible for it had to be identified, therefusal by Archbishop Meliton Martinez of Manila to condemn the Filipinopriests Burgos, Gomez, and Zamora as complices without first examining theacts of the trial, and, finally, the refusal to defrock these priests because of theclear hesitation shown by Izquierdo to carry out a full investigation that couldlead to an impartial verification of the facts. Of all this, it seems Rizal wasinformed.''In his Noli, Rizal seems to assert that what happened in Cavite in 1872was another of those revolutions taking place both in Spain and in the65