THE

FRIAR
LANDS
It is said that the reason the Roman Catholic priests are
required to take the vow of celibacy is to prevent the
establishment of dynasties within the church and the birth of
progenies who may become potential claimants to church
lands and properties. The Catholic Church is supposed to
have only one heir to all its temporalities and that is the
Vatican.
During the Spanish colonial period, the Philippines
was called “The Empire of the Friars.” Studies of
available historical and economic data from that
epoch prove that the description is accurate.

Christianity was brought to these islands by

missionary religious orders which already had
well-established religious corporations in Spain.

The Augustinians arrived in the Philippines in 1565,

the Franciscans in 1578, the Jesuits in 1581, the
Dominicans in 1587 and the Recollects in 1606.
Ironically, the landowning friars of the Spanish period
were actually members of the mendicant orders who
ostensibly combines monastic life with missionary work in
the outside world and were not supposed to own either
personal or community property.

The Jesuits and friars of the Augustinian Order were the

first of the religious congregations to acquire land in the
Philippines. The Dominicans and Recoletos following suit
as they also succumbed to the lure of acquiring vast
tracts of lands.
During the Conquista, there was the institution of the
encomienda, a territorial entrustment or grant, given by the
Spanish Monarchs to a Spaniard—more often than not part
of the contingent of conquistadors—who were sent out to
explore and claim land for the Spanish Crown.

The encomendero collected tributes from the inhabitants of

his domains, and to participate in the military defense of the
province and should the need arise, address the needs of
the clergy of the villages.

In return, the clergy administered to the spiritual needs of the

inhabitants of the encomienda. Through the time, a
symbiotic relationship was forged between the
encomendero and clergy, the former collected tributes
while the latter accumulated souls.
 That was, in fact, the essence of the Patronato Real, a
system by which the Spanish Monarchs received the
blessings of the Pope to conquer lands provided the
souls within these territories are converted to the one
True Faith. Thus, the cost of sending missionaries of the
religious orders to the Indies was shouldered by the
Spanish Crown. Eventually the Church in the colony
became the ally and official adviser of the colonial
government.

As a result of the Patronato, King Philip II of Spain

divided the Philippines into ecclesiastical territories.
As it came to pass, the provinces in central, northern
and southern Luzon and most of the lands situated in
Panay and Cebu were assigned to the Augustinians.
The Franciscans received the verdant territories
surrounding Laguna de Bae and Camarines, while the
King Philip II militant Jesuits were sent to the Visayas and Mindanao
and to some areas in the Tagalog region mostly in
Cavite province. The Dominicans got Bataan,
Zambales, Pangasinan and parts of Northern Luzon.
The array of the religious orders, each with territorial jurisdictions
outlined by the Spanish King, slowly led to the acquisition of
more territories. Lands were acquired from the original
encomenderos who had been given grants by the Spanish
Crown, or from their legitimate or illegitimate descendants.

At times, earthly domains were acquired through sale,

mortgage, or donation. Lands acquired from the king were
often sold by the Spanish encomenderos because most of
them were hidalgos or Spanish gentry and not inclined to till
the land with carabao and plow, nor crack the whip at a
battalion of farm hands.
Moreover, land donations were obtained by crafty
friars with deathbed manner, in exchange for a
higher place in heaven, or perpetual masses for the
eternal repose of a sinner’s soul.

All two thousand hectares of Hacienda de Orion in

Bataan were acquired by the Dominicans in 1678 in
exchange for perpetual masses addressed to the
soul of the donor. In some insidious instances,
deathbed absolutions were obtained and sins
remitted after ownership of terrestrial dominions
changed hands.
The occurrence of two events expedited the division and
distribution of landed estates in the Philippines. The first was
the creation of a Special Commission of Land Grants and
Composition of Titles by virtue of a Cedula Real dated
October 30, 1692. The mandate of the royal decree was
carried out in the Philippines by Don Juan de la Sierra
Ossorio and Don Juan Ozaeta y Oro—Justices of the royal
Audiencia in Manila. They revised the titles of numerous
haciendas and had them surveyed with boundaries clearly
marked by monuments.

The second was the summary expulsion of the Jesuit Order

from all Spanish dominions and the consequent seizure of all
their properties as decreed by King Charles III’s royal edict of
April 2, 1767 which was extended to the Philippines by virtue
of a decree dated May 1, 1767.
The Jesuit Order—the Society of Jesus—at the time
of their expulsion was one of the richest and most
influential landowners in the Philippines and some
of the vast tracts of land which were later
denominated as “friar lands” were originally
owned by them. A special board was created
specifically to take charge of the seizure of the
Jesuit lands, later sold by way of public auction in
compliance with the Cedula Real of May 12, 1792.
Most of the Jesuit lands were already identified, its
boundaries delineated, though not all were fully
developed. Thus, the Dominicans who took over
the Calamba Estate found the land ready for
agricultural use.
The acquisition of lands by the religious orders was in
itself a glaring contradiction because the religious
orders were sworn to the vows of poverty. For
example, in Spain, the Recollect branch of the
Augustinians were descalzos, i.e., unshod to show their
adherence to the vow of poverty. The Recollect Order
was the product of a reform movement in the 16th
century and founded by a former prisoner of the
Moors, the Venerable Tomas de Jesus.

This saintly monk introduced frequent fasts to test the

will, the wearing of bears to show differentiation, and
midnight prayers to prove resolve. In 1614, the
descalzos obtained independence from the
Augustinian Order and Pope Gregory XV approved Tomas de Jesus
their Constitution.
In 1602, Fulvius of Ascoli, the Augustinian General formally
divided the Philippine branch of the Order into two provinces.

Those who adhered to the old rule retained the name

“Augustinian” and belonged to the Province of Santisimo
Nombre de Jesus; the barefooted Recollects were of the
Province of San Nicolas de Tolentino.

The Augustinian Order, conservative and divided, in a meeting

held at Bologna, Italy also adopted in their Constitution the
Franciscan vow of poverty; renouncing all rents and material
and temporal possessions. Thus, the Augustinians of the Santisimo
Nombre de Jesus became a mendicant order wholly dependent
on charity and alms for their daily needs.
The Order of Preachers or Dominicans were just as adept at acquiring lands
as gathering souls for God. Founded by Saint Dominic, the Order was
sanctioned by Pope Innocent III in the 13th century.

The Dominicans followed the cannons of St. Augustine but they also had their
own rules like the exercise of silence, fasting almost without intermission from
September 14 to Easter, and a rigorous vow of poverty. The Dominicans were
popularly known as the “Black Friars” because over a white habit and an
ample scapular, they wore long black cappa or cape.
 As for the Franciscans, it was St. Francis of Assisi
himself who founded this medicant order in the
13th century. History tells us that a twenty-five
year old Francis stripped off the luxurious clothing
given by his father and embraced a life of
extreme poverty, a vow St. Francis eventually
prescribed to his followers.

He espoused twenty-seven precepts, among

them: manual labor, prohibition of the use of
money even through intervention of third persons,
and the renunciation of all kinds of private
property. In obeisance to these precepts, various
popes have declared that violation by any friar of
St. Francis of Assisi
the vows of the Orders, which included poverty,
would be considered a mortal sin.
History clearly shows that in the Capitania–General de
Filipinas, the friar was the liaison between the colonial
government based in Manila and the colonial subjects
of the archipelago.

Although not a secular priest, the friar was assigned a

parish where he was practically indispensable. He
became the health officer, civil registrar, educator, tax
collector, adviser of charitable works and electoral
commissioner; provincial board member, president of
the Prison Board, and censor of the municipal budget.
In many instances, the friar also acted as a councillor for the
Municipal Council. He also selected the members of the
police force and censored all plays and drama to protect
public morals.

In the collection of taxes, the friar often certified to the

authenticity of the cedulas, the Indio’s only proof of tax
payment. Because he had a certain level of education, he
was also president of the Board of Statistics and it was within
his power to declare whether a young man was physically
fit or not for conscription especially when the youth’s name
was the quinta, or the fifth in a lot drawn for military service.
More important, the friar was a member of
the board partitioning the lands of the
Spanish Crown. After a parcel of land is
surveyed and segregated, the board would
deliberate upon the question of its
ownership. Friars acted as secretaries of the
gobernadorcillos, usually natives.

These petty governors did not understand

Spanish and relied on the friars to answer
official communications of each town
addressed to the central government. Of
course, replies were written to ensure benefit A typical
to the friar’s agenda. Gobernadorcillo
 Each religious order had a representative in Madrid who
facilitated communication between the Orders and the civil
authorities in Spain who had the final decision over matters
pertaining to the colonies. However, there were friars who
were astute enough to go over the heads of Madrid officials
and appeal directly to the King of Spain.

Whenever the Office of the Governor-General was vacant,

the Archbishop in Manila acts as Officer-in-Charge.
Governors-General usually served for a period of four years,
sometimes less, depending on the political situation of the
Empire but a friar could remain in control of his parish in the
Philippines as long as he lived.

Sinebaldo de Mas, a Spanish investigator, reported that

undoubtedly, the true rulers in the Philippines were the friars
of the religious orders and with their vast tracts of land, had
Sinebaldo de Mas absolute hegemony over the life and the afterlife of the
inhabitants of the archipelago. Without them, the Spanish
colonial government would crumble.
Jose Rizal, whose family in Calamba was
among those who leased land from the
Dominicans, wrote a petition to the Spanish
Crown. Despite the unremitting increase of
rents after the tenants had invested time and
money clearing uncultivated land and making
the land more desirable, the Dominicans
continued to neglect education, agricultural
development, and the welfare of their tenants.
Only a few cavans of rice were distributed among the workers
during a locust invasion and a token amount spent for dikes that
turned out to be badly constructed. Rizal also pointed out that
rentals were and upward spiral even if the tenants themselves
were constrained to spend for much needed improvements.

Infuriated, the Dominicans secured a favourable judgment from

the colonial government and evicted many of the tenants who
refused to pay the increased rents, including the Rizal family. The
Calamba controversy was a celebrated case that emboldened
tenants in other friar haciendas especially in the neighbouring
province of Cavite, to protest against abuses and thus awakened
their desire to be freed from friar bondage.
Before the Philippine Revolution, the friars perceived where the
wind would eventually blow, so they began to form holding
companies in order to hide the true ownership of the friar lands.
The vehicle that clothes this task with legality was the simulated
Deed of Sale, a transaction by which the conveyance of real
property was made to a person who was actually only an agent
or representative of the seller.

There was no legal impediment since the power to sell lands was
expressly conferred by a royal decree, dated December 4, 1890,
to religious corporations in the Philippines, notwithstanding the
reason justifying land ownership was to serve God by
propagating the Christian faith.
In 1893, the Augustinians organised in Madrid the Compania Agricola
de Ultramar. Immediately after its formation, a simulated sale was
made by the Augustinian friars of the San Francisco de Malabon,
Malinta, Tala, and Piedad estates. Thereafter, other friar orders
followed the Augustinian example.

In 1900, the Imus Estate was sold by the Recoletos to the British
Manila Estates Company after the same was previously transferred by
the Recoletos to another holding corporation in 1894.

The British Manila Estates Company was organised in London in 1898.

The only purpose for tis creation was to hide the ownership of the friar
lands. Thus, the friars had to resort to the formation of a corporation
with a fake British accent.
The Dominicans followed suit through its holding company, the
Philippine Sugar Estates Development Company. This
company absorbed through simulated sale the Dominican
landholdings of Biñan, Santa Rosa, Lolomboy, Naic, Oriano,
Sta. Cruz de Malabon, Sta. Maria de Pandi, and Calamba. It
was a realm so vast that the lands could have comfortably
accommodated “the entire population of the Philippines at
that time.”

The obvious intention of friars in resorting to holding

corporations was to hide the true ownership of the friar lands.
The fancy names concealed both purpose and nationality.
In the Report of the Philippine Commission for the years of 1900–1903, it
was indicated that the Dominicans conveyed their holdings amounting
to 60,461 hectares to a person named Andrews wo was an Englishman
living in Manila. Such conveyance was made in the guise of a
“promoter’s contract.”

Andrews then organised a company known as the Philippine Sugar

Estates Development Company (Limited) to which he delivered all the
Dominican lands conveyed to him with the exception of a small estate
called San Juan Del Monte with 156 hectares.

The Augustinians as early as 1894 or before the revolution, already

started transferring their landholdings to the Compania Agricola de
Ultramar; and the Recoletos in turn transferred the Imus Estate containing
an area of 18,419 hectares to the holding company which they
organised in Hong Kong.
 The treaty was vigorously opposed in the U.S.
Senate as inaugurating a policy of “imperialism”
in the Philippines and was approved on Feb. 6,
1899, by only a single vote. Two days earlier,
hostilities had begun at Manila between U.S.
troops and insurgents led by Emilio Aguinaldo.
For more than three years the Filipinos carried
on guerrilla warfare against U.S. rule.