Of the villages of Antipolo and San Juan del Monte. Chapter XXXX.


So great was the increase of that mission throughout those two years
[1597-98], by the continual arrival of people who came to us, as we
have already stated, from those mountains and deserts, that besides two
entire villages which were established near Antipolo, at a distance
convenient for the instruction of the people, more than a hundred
persons came down from the mountains with some children, who were
at once baptized. Among these were three ministers of their idols,
who, upon arriving at Antipolo, went to Father Almerique, and, making
avowal of the evil employment which they had up to that time practiced,
renounced it before him and many others who were then present. They
promised never again to resume it, and asked that this declaration
be given them in writing, as a proof of their conversion, and that
no one in times to come might attribute to them guilt for what they
had done in the mountains when they had no knowledge of the true God.

In each of these two villages there was formed a confraternity,
which, besides other works of piety and devotion, practices two
that act as a preservative against the two great evils of idolatry
and intoxication--which, as we have already stated, were customary
in cases of sickness or death--since in this confraternity are the
people who are most prominent, most Christian, and most trustworthy
in those villages. Moreover, they take the utmost care to ascertain
who in the village may be sick or dying; and they aid the families
of both the sick and the dead by frequent visits--in such cases
not only exercising perfect piety and charity, but preventing the
abuses, superstitions, idolatries, intoxications, dirges, music,
and wailing which had been their own custom when they were pagans,