Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Bibliography of Recent Work in Early Modern Spanish Pacific Studies
- 1 “Indescribable Misery” (Mis)translated : A Letter from Manila’s Chinese Merchants to the Spanish King (1598)
- 2 The First Biography of a Filipino: The Life of Miguel Ayatumo (1673)
- 3 Other Agents of Empire in the Spanish Pacific World (1755)
- 4 A Chinese Ethnography of Spanish Manila (1812)
- 5 On the Legal Grounds of the Conquest of the Philippines (1568)
- 6 A Catholic Conceptualization of the Pacific Ocean : The Mental Geography of Giambattista Lucarelli on His Journey from Mexico to China (1578)
- 7 From Manila to Madrid via Portuguese India : Travels and Plans for the Conquest of Malacca by the Soldier Alonso Rodríguez (1582–84)
- 8 Frustrated at the Door : Alessandro Valignano Evaluates the Jesuits’ China Mission (1588)
- 9 A Spanish Utopian Island in Japan (1599)
- 10 Two Friars Protest the Restriction on Missionaries Traveling to Japan (1604?–5)
- 11 A Layman’s Account of Japanese Christianity (1619)
- 12 The Sound and the Fury : A Vigorous Admonition from the King of Spain to the Audiencia of Manila (1620)
- 13 The Deportation of Free Black People from Seventeenth-Century Manila (1636–37, 1652)
- 14 The Deportation of Free Black People from Seventeenth-Century Manila (1636–37, 1652)
- 15 Race, Gender, and Colonial Rule in an Illustrated Eighteenth-Century Manuscript on Mexico and the Philippines (1763)
- 16 Censoring Tagalog Texts at the Tribunal of the Inquisition in New Spain (1772)
- Index
2 - The First Biography of a Filipino: The Life of Miguel Ayatumo (1673)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Bibliography of Recent Work in Early Modern Spanish Pacific Studies
- 1 “Indescribable Misery” (Mis)translated : A Letter from Manila’s Chinese Merchants to the Spanish King (1598)
- 2 The First Biography of a Filipino: The Life of Miguel Ayatumo (1673)
- 3 Other Agents of Empire in the Spanish Pacific World (1755)
- 4 A Chinese Ethnography of Spanish Manila (1812)
- 5 On the Legal Grounds of the Conquest of the Philippines (1568)
- 6 A Catholic Conceptualization of the Pacific Ocean : The Mental Geography of Giambattista Lucarelli on His Journey from Mexico to China (1578)
- 7 From Manila to Madrid via Portuguese India : Travels and Plans for the Conquest of Malacca by the Soldier Alonso Rodríguez (1582–84)
- 8 Frustrated at the Door : Alessandro Valignano Evaluates the Jesuits’ China Mission (1588)
- 9 A Spanish Utopian Island in Japan (1599)
- 10 Two Friars Protest the Restriction on Missionaries Traveling to Japan (1604?–5)
- 11 A Layman’s Account of Japanese Christianity (1619)
- 12 The Sound and the Fury : A Vigorous Admonition from the King of Spain to the Audiencia of Manila (1620)
- 13 The Deportation of Free Black People from Seventeenth-Century Manila (1636–37, 1652)
- 14 The Deportation of Free Black People from Seventeenth-Century Manila (1636–37, 1652)
- 15 Race, Gender, and Colonial Rule in an Illustrated Eighteenth-Century Manuscript on Mexico and the Philippines (1763)
- 16 Censoring Tagalog Texts at the Tribunal of the Inquisition in New Spain (1772)
- Index
Summary
Abstract
The “Life of an Indigenous Boy, Named Miguel Ayatumo, a Native of Bohol in the Philippines” (1673) regards the biography of a teenager who devoted himself from an early age to a life of penitence. His short biography is an example of the baroque narrative of “death in life [muerte en vida],” the extreme will to reach Heaven by voluntarily refusing all the pleasures of life and by embracing suffering. The life of this Indigenous boy from the Philippines was meant to serve as an admonition to Catholic Europe. The implicit message was clear: if even a person of so low lineage as this boy could live such a perfect life, what is the excuse of Christians in Europe who do not emulate him?
Keywords: Jesuit literature, hagiographies, colonial Philippines, Bohol.
The “Vida de un mancebo indio llamado Miguel Ayatumo, natural de Boholio, en Filipinas [Life of an Indigenous boy, named Miguel Ayatumo, a native of Bohol in the Philippines]” first appeared in Spanish in 1673 as an appendix to a manual on religious life titled El christiano virtuoso (The virtuous Christian). It was authored by the Jesuit Pedro de Mercado (1620–1701), a native of Riobamba, Ecuador. Father Mercado, who spent most of his life exercising ecclesiastical responsibilities in the New Kingdom of Granada, was a prolific and popular author of spiritual and devotional literature, almost all of which was printed in Spain. The inclusion of the life of this Filipino adolescent as an appendix to his work was undoubtedly due to its exemplary value. Ayatumo's life of renunciation and holiness perfectly illustrates the argument of Mercado's moralizing text.
Mercado notes in the opening lines that the original Latin text of Ayatumo's biography had appeared fifty-eight years earlier as part of a collection of Jesuit missionary letters. Its author was the Jesuit Pedro de Aunón, who had sent the story to his provincial in Manila, Gregorio López, who in turn decided to send it to Europe to be published, as the story demonstrated the success of missionary activity in Bohol. The narrative of the life of Ayatumo (1593–1609) must have dazzled European ecclesiastics and became a publishing success. It was included in a popular collection of Christian young lives attributed to the German Jesuit Johann Niess (1584–1634).
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- Information
- The Spanish Pacific, 1521-1815A Reader of Primary Sources, pp. 51 - 64Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2024