Editors’ Note: This historical book was originally published in 1985 by Fr. Vitaliano Gorospe, SJ and Fr. Rene Javellana, SJ. Re-publishing with permission from Fr. Rene Javellana, SJ, we feature this book in three parts, starting in our June edition and on through September, the month of the Peñafrancia festivities.

Mother of Our Hearts

INA. They call her Ina.

There is no word more intimate, more cherished, or more meaningful to the Bicolano devotee than Ina, mother. Not the regal term “Señora,” the theologically significant “Virgen” but Ina. Before a mother from the barrio lights a candle or waves a handkerchief for the child she cradles in one arm, while pointing with the other to the image of the Peñafrancia riding high over the murky waters of the Bicol River, she whispers to the babe in hand, “Oya na, Nonoy, si Ina” (My most cherished son, there is your mother). Or on the eve of the fiesta, set on the Saturday nearest the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, a little girl led by hand to kiss the manto (cape) of the image enshrined in the Cathedral explanation. “Mahadok kita ki Ina” (We will kiss Mother).

If it is only with a term of endearment that the Bicolano can refer to the Virgin Mary under her title Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia, the reasons we might divine in these stories.

Alfred So suffered his first heart attack in December 1981. A year later in September enroute to Legaspi, he stopped by Naga’s cathedral where the image of the Peñafrancia was being enshrined for the novena of prayers that preceded the feast. As Alfred stood before the altar, all turned to a blur, except for the niche where stood the image. “She is only a little girl- why call her the Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia?” queried Alfred as he left the Cathedral perplexed. Then while billeted at the Holiday Hotel where he had a clear view of the palanquin where the image rode, Alfred saw the little girl again. While watching a pageant that evening, Venancio, an acquaintance, whispered “Alfred, the little girl is asking if you are coming back to the fiesta next year. “What girl?” Alfred retorted. “The little girl on the altar,” was the answer. The following year, Alfred’s heart condition grew worse that he was brought to the Philippine Heart Center in Manila for an operation. While recuperating in the ICU, and still groggy from anesthesia, he saw glittering sparkles light the blank brick wall of his room. Then, the lights which seemed to dance came together and formed the likeness of a little girl with a black dog, larger than her, beside. Alfred knew in his heart that he had been visited by Ina.

Every year Oscar prepares himself for the gruelling task of the boyador. One among the many sturdy rowers from Milaor, this fisherfolk and dock hand has been rowing the frail boats that pull the pagoda of the Divino Rostro and Peñafrancia images. Imbibing with his fellow rowers a swig of alcohol to give them lakas loob for the fluvial procession, Oscar recalls: “Once you are under the andas, you are squeezed willy-nilly, pushed every which way as the swaying of the human tide ebbs and flows and sucks one into a whirlpool of sweaty bodies. There is no fresh air to breathe, and everywhere the smell of sunburnt flesh and alcohol. All you see is the back of the one before you. Resounding cries of ‘Viva la Virgin’ pierce the ear. But after the ordeal, a great, enervating feeling washes over you, as if your sins and problems are drawn away by the tide.” Every year Oscar fulfills the role of a boyador because of panata (a pledge to Ina) which his parents made for him as a child.

Every year, Lake Michigan becomes a tributary of the Bicol River as the Bicolanos of the Great Lakes in the United States hold a fluvial procession to coincide with the festivities in Naga. A replica of the Ina at St. Rose of Lima Church in South Ashland, Chicago, binds Bicolanos with family and friends an ocean away in the Camarines.

Bicol identity is ineluctably involved with the devotion to the Virgin Mary. Invoked by various titles, Inmaculada Concepción (Naga), Soledad (Buhi), Salvación (Tiwi, Albay), Sapao (Camarines Norte), Lourdes (Iriga City), it is as Peñafrancia that, as a lodestone, it draws back the people of Bicol home. There are different reasons for returning a miracle experienced, a cure received, a vow to fulfill, or a need to assert one’s identity in a foreign land—but all are drawn by the remembered countenance of one whom a popular Bicol verse calls:

O malinigon na Ina

O mahal na gayong Ina Inang orog calodoc nin samong manga puso

O mahamison na Ina!

(O purest mother; O especially beloved mother Mother most poignant in our hearts; O sweetest Mother!)

Theotokos: Mother of God

The Christian Bible called her the “favored one,” the chosen one to whom the Angel Gabriel said, “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.” This child was to be conceived through God’s power and not through any human agency, except the “Yes” of Mary. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God,” said the angel (See Lk 1:26-37).

Over the centuries Christians, especially Catholics, recognized the singular role Mary played in God’s plan. Because her son was divine, she was called in Greek, “Theotokos,” Mother of God. From this title of respect and honor grew the practice of referring to Mary by various names. In Spanish Catholicism, Mary was given titles associated with shrines where there was a special devotion to her, hence, Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia for a shrine on a mountain top in the region between Caceres and Salamanca. She was also given titles associated with her actions, like healing, de los Remedios or with her characteristics, like Dolorosa, for the sorrows in her life.

This practice of giving her sobriquets persisted when devotion to Mary was introduced in the Philippines in the 16th century. Hence, names like Birhen ng Caysasay, for a place in Batangas, or Our Lady of Manaoag for a shrine in Manaoag, Pangasinan. She was called Virgin of Peace and Good Voyage because she was the patron of the galleons that plied the trading route between Manila and Acapulco, Mexico.

Pope John Paul II bestowed on her the newest Marian title by calling her Mother of the Church.

Caceres in the East Indies

The devotion to Ina began as a footnote to Bicol Church history, then grew to become the principal text. A private devotion which eventually gained wide acceptance, the devotion started a little more than a hundred years after the establishment of the dioceses of “Caceres in Indiis Orientalibus.”

In 1595, Pope Clement VIII, upon representation by the Spanish crown, raised Manila to the status of archdiocese and created three new dioceses as its suffragans: Nueva Segovia (then in Lal-lo, Cagayan), Cebu, and Nueva Caceres (Naga). The bull “Super specula militantis ecclesiae” defined the territory of Caceres as “the provinces of Camarines and Albay as far as and including the islands of Ticao, Masbate, Burias, and Catanduanes; the province of Tayabas as far as and including Lucban; and in the contracosta of Mauban to Binangonan, Pilo, Baler, and Casiguran.”

The Ciudad de Caceres, present-day Naga City, began when Juan de Salcedo, dispatched by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi to find the gold mines of Bicol, left on a second expedition that brought him to San Miguel Bay. Travelling south by following the course of the Bicol River he arrived at its headwaters in Bato Lake. On his return he left an occupation garrison under Capitan Chavez at a rancherria, or village of the local people, near the confluence of the Bicol River and a tributary. At a later time, and not far from the garrison, Capitan Chavez founded a city for Spanish nationals and named it after Caceres in Spain, the birthplace of Francisco de Sande, who succeeded Legazpi as Governor General.

Christianity was first preached in the Bicol region in 1569 by the Augustinian Fray Alonso Gimenez who came with the party of Capitan Luis Enriquez de Guzman. Reaching the islands of Masbate, Ticao, and Burias the party made its way to the place called by the Spaniards “Ibalon de Region de Camarines,” a barrio in Magallanes, Sorsogon. They went inland and reached Camalig where they found a flourishing village abounding in “camalig,” storehouse for grain, hence the Spanish name “Tierra de Camarines.” A second group of Augustinians arrived in 1573 from the north, through Paracale and San Miguel Bay, to Libon in Albay. A third group came from the east in 1576 and landed in Balantay in Catanduanes Island.

But the Catholic missions did not progress until the Franciscan friars were assigned on a permanent basis to Bicol. Fray Pablo de Jesus and Fray Bartolome Ruiz established the first four parishes in Naga, Quipayo, Nabua, and Bula in 1578. On 27 April 1594, Philip II assigned the Franciscans to be the sole evangelizers of “Tierra de Camarines” and there they remained until the end of the Spanish regime.

Early Spanish chroniclers described the Bicolano as tractable and receptive to the Catholicism. By the beginning of the 17th century, the Franciscan chronicler, Marcelo de Ribadeneira (1601), describing the Bicolanos’ comportment at Mass, wrote:

During its (the Mass) whole duration they are always kneeling on the ground, and they try to hear it every day. Not content with just one if they can hear many Masses, sometimes some of them are there the whole morning, hearing all the Masses which are said. They feel so bad not to have Mass when the minister goes to some other place or when there is no church in their own place because of its smallness, that they go to other places, even at great distance, to hear Mass (Schumacher 1979: 83-84).

Ribadeneira wrote approving of the Bicolanos’ rigorous practice of penance, especially when preparing to receive communion. The picture, Ribadeneira paints is one of steady progress in the Christian missions.

But the Franciscans were not unqualified successes. Chronically lacking in personnel, hindered by tall mountains and impenetrable rain forests, felled by disease, pummeled by bad weather, the missionaries were unable to bring Christianity to the mountainous regions. Following riverine passage ways and the littorals, missions and parishes were established where access was easy. The result was a classic dichotomy spawned by colonization between the taga-bundok (mountain people) and the taga-baba (lowlanders). The mountain peoples remained animistic and traditional in their lifeways well into the 20th century while the lowlanders became Christianized and Hispanized. The mountain people were generically called monteses (mountain people) or cimarrones (wild horses) and regarded as inferior by lowlanders.

But the burdens of colonial rule did not sit well even among some lowlanders. Fleeing to the safety of the mountains, these indigenes sought to recreate life before taxation, forced labor, and the exacting regime of mission life. They were called remontados (returnees to the mountains). Thus, the mountains came to be regarded in contradictory lights as a refuge and the place of freedom and in the same breath as the habitation of the uncivilized.

It was one group of cimarrones, the Aeta, a dark- skinned, short, and stocky people, descendants of one of the earliest inhabitants of the Philippines, that were to figure in the establishment of the Peñafrancia devotion in Bicol.

Bicol: A Land of Islands, Rivers and Volcanoes

Bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the East, by Ragay Gulf to the West, and the San Bernardino Strait to the South, the Bicol peninsula is the southeastern extremity of Luzon Island. The rugged Bicol peninsula is divided into four provinces: Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur, Albay, and Sorsogon, and with the islands of Masbate, Burias, and Ticao on its southern flank, and Catanduanes to its east.

From 1565 -1818, the Bicol peninsula was divided into only two provinces: Camarines Province, composed of the Partidos of Iraya, Rinconada, Bicol, and Camarines; and Albay Province, composed of the Partidos of Sorsogon, Tabaco, Lagonoy, and Catanduanes. Camarines was split into a north and south in 1829, merged in 1845, split again in 1858, then merged again in 1893. In 1919, by an act of Philippine Legislature, the province was split into Camarines Norte and Camarines Sur. And so it has remained.

Generally mountainous, except for the great Bicol Valley which stretches through the whole length of Camarines Sur up to northern Albay, the peninsula’s landscape is dominated by four volcanoes: Iriga and Isarog in Camarines Sur, Bulusan in Sorsogon, and the majestic Mayon in Albay. Mayon, the most active Philippine volcano, has erupted at least 44 times within recorded history, in a cycle of approximately ten years. The vanished town of Cagsawa, north of Legazpi City, attests to Mayon’s fury.

During the Spanish colonial period, the Bicol peninsula was inhabited by the mountain-dwelling Agta (Ayta), Dumagat, strand dwellers, and Malayan descendants, lowland dwellers. The influx of Spaniards and Chinese brought about a change in the ethnic composition of Bicol. The region came to be known by the name Tierra de Ibalon. Today, the people call themselves collectively as Bikolnon, hispanized into Bicolano, and the land they love and live in as Bicol.

About the authors

FR. VITALIANO “GEORGE” R. GOROSPE, SJ (b. September 22, 1925 – d. January 28, 2002) was a professor and former chairman of the Department of Theology at the Ateneo de Manila University, where his years of service spanned 37 years. He was 76 years old when he passed on January 28, 2002. He entered the Society of Jesus on July 30, 1942 and was ordained a priest on June 16, 1956. He introduced and taught the Theology of Liberation course which became the inspiration for the college seniors immersion program and led to the formation of the Jesuit Volunteers of the Philippines. He is best remembered as a vivacious teacher, prolific author, Jesuit priest who has given himself so unselfishly to his students, fellow teachers, and companions.

FR. RENE PIO B. JAVELLANA, SJ teaches Church History at the Loyola School of Theology. He is also a professor of Fine Arts, the Coordinator for Art Management, Fine Arts Program, School of Humanities at the Ateneo de Manila University and the Cultural Heritage Series Editor at the Ateneo de Manila University Press. He concurrently serves as the Provincial Archivist of the Philippine Jesuit Province. He graduated from the Ateneo de Manila University, with a BA degree in Philosophy, minor in Education (1971) and a MA degree in Theology (1981). He completed his Doctorate in Ministry, Pacific School of Religion, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California (1994).