As I opened the latest edition of a popular map of Cavite province, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the land form of the Cavite peninsula. It appears like a giant mechanical clamp or hook strategically poised to clear any obstruction, menacing every enemy intending to encroach on the serenity and beauty of Manila Bay. Thus, centuries ago, it must have likewise impressed the mighty global power that was Spain who quickly transformed it into a naval base, galleon-building facility and launching pad for evangelical campaigns to the more remote areas of the country. As function follows form, the peninsula became known as “Kawit”, the Tagalog word for “hook”, and eventually hispanized to “Cauite” and its present-day name “Cavite”. Next month, in celebration of Christendom’s holiest season, many roads will once again converge in Cavite, just a few dozen kilometers from the metropolis. Some roads will lead to its popular sandy beach resorts, others to the exclusive enclaves of power and privilege, yet many more to the homes and hospitality of family and friends.A recent day trip convinced me that, this summer, some roads will also find their way to Cavite to rediscover old churches and appreciate these solid structures of stone, monuments of history, and places of worship wrapped with a wealth of miracles.
Some churches I visited will surely fulfill the faithful’s observance of the visita iglesia, or quench the history-lover’s curiosity or simply satisfy the itch of peripatetic pedal-pushers.
Stanley Cabigas** (http://www.flickr.com/people/estan/) captures the heart and soul of these sacred temples in the accompanying photographs.
1. St. Michael Parish Church, Bacoor
If you think Bacoor is the town of mussels and green shells from the sea, salt from salt beds or “salinas”, or fruits and other agricultural produce, think again. The only town in the Philippines with 2 SM malls, Bacoor has seen an influx of new companies and workers boosting what could be the country’s fastest growing township economy – and the densest population. With dormitory subdivisions sprouting all over and the Manila-Cavite Expressway at its doorstep, it is, in fact, Cavite’s gateway to Metro Manila.
The development push, however, has not obliterated the imprints of its historical past. Like a mute witness, the beautiful church of St. Michael sits just beside the municipal hall and a rather narrow town square or plaza. For 48 years this was the parish administered by Fr. Mariano Gomez, the most senior of the three priests, a.k.a. Gomburza, who were executed by the Spaniards on the garrote vil for allegedly instigating the Cavity mutiny in 1872.
The parish itself was established by Royal Decree on January 18, 1752. It was administered by the secular clergy until 1872 when it passed on to the Recollect missionaries. The church is an imposing structure of stone with a three-tiered octagonal bell tower. Its annual fiesta on 8 May features a caracol or boat procession.
2. St. Mary Magdalene Parish Church, Kawit
During the late 16th century, Chinese merchants exchanged porcelain, silk, and tea in the town of Kawit, only 23 kilometers from Manila, for silver coins brought by galleon from Acapulco.Kawit produced what must undisputedly be its most famous son in Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, himself part Chinese, and who became the president of the first Philippine Republic. From the balcony of his stately home the Decree of Independence was read, the flag was raised and the national anthem, sometimes known as Marcha Filipina Magdalo, sung for the first time on June 12, 1898. Every year, on Independence Day, national attention invariably returns to this historical place making it almost a requirement for every freedom-loving Filipino to come and visit this town.
The other historical landmark in the vicinity is the towering church of St. Mary Magdalene where Aguinaldo was baptized. The parish was first administered by the Jesuits in 1624. A wooden church was erected in 1638 by six Filipino families from the towns of Maragondon and Silang and this was replaced by a stone church in 1737 which was devastated by a strong typhoon in 1831. It was administered by the secular priests in 1786 and then by the Recoletos in 1894. A recent renovation revealed original brickwork which now characterizes the remarkable architecture of the church accentuated by a tall hexagonal belfry with a glistening tin roof.
The Kawitenos are a deeply religious lot and they manifest their faith through their fiestas, caracol, processions, and most especially the Maytinis Festival, a Christmas Eve event reenacting Joseph’s and Mary's search for shelter, to the edification of locals and tourists alike.
3. St. Francis of Assisi Church, Gen. Trias
The town derives its name from Gen. Mariano Trias y Closas who was Fiscal of Bgy. Mapagtiis, Minister of Justice and Vice-President of Aguinaldo’s revolutionary government which replaced the Katipunan. A mural in the town plaza, features him in one of his brave exploits in a revolutionary encounter. The plaza itself is surrounded by buildings new and old: a modern municipal hall and a new office building for the police and fire departments fronting the seventeenth-century Spanish church.
Dona Maria Josefa deYrrizarri y Ursua, Condesa de Lizarraga, who died in 1782, must have been an important personage and benefactress as her tombstone is prominently located near the church’s massive wooden doors.
The church altar is decorated with many ornately-carved statues of Catholic saints set upon a multi-tiered retablo of carved wood.
4. Diocesan Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Naic
Traveling along the road between Tanza and Naic, we were flanked on one side by irrigated rice fields and on the other by the beach where many resorts are located. Naic or “Canayic”, meaning “from the other side”, is a fishing town and a favorite embarkation point for sports fishermen looking for triggerfish, locally called “papacol” or “baget”.
There’s nothing fishy about the church perched on a higher part of town, though. It is simply massive, and must be the biggest church in the whole province. An image of La Purisima Concepcion on the façade of the gothic-inspired church looks down on the front courtyard where winged archangels stand guard. The Jesuits had jurisdiction from 1693-1768 as part of the Hacienda de San Isidro. In 1796 it became a parish and two years later went to the administration of the secular clergy who built the stone church in 1835 and the convent in 1857. The Dominicans took over the parish from 1865 until 1899 when at the height of the revolution the parish became Aguinaldo’s headquarters and later the hospital for injured revolutionaries.
Reconstruction work is on-going especially on the old convent built by Fr. Modesto de Castro from proceeds of the book “Urbana at Felisa”. Fr. de Castro was a learned and respected diocesan priest who preferred to preach in Tagalog rather than in Spanish which he also mastered. Among others, he wrote Cartas de Urbana Y Felisa or Pagsusulatan Nang Dalauang: Binibini Na si Urbana at Felisa or simply Urbana at Felisa which set the socially acceptable norms of behavior of the time, much like what Emily Post did in her columns. The book was first printed in 1864 and reprinted and translated many times.
The huge square bell tower still uses 3 of the 4 bells in the church, and what used to be a lookout for marauders from the sea is still an impressive promontory from which to view the slower-paced parade of life in the town and surrounding areas. La Casa Hacienda de Naic, beside the church, now houses the Naic Elementary School.
5. La Asuncion Church, Maragondon
Miguel de Loarca in 1582 wrote about the indigenous people living in Maragondon, who enjoyed a distinct culture and social organization, in what used to be known as “Cavite Viejo”. When the Franciscan missionaries arrived in 1585, Maragondon was a visita of Silang, together with Indang. It was turned over in 1611 to the Jesuits who described in a report in 1618 that the town had a church and an image of the Virgen procured with contributions from the townspeople amounting to seventy pesos (PHP 70.00). When it became a parish in 1627 it was placed under the patronage of Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion.
The first stone church was built in 1633 but ordered destroyed during the Spanish-Dutch war in 1646-1649. The Jesuits rebuilt the stone church in 1650 and constructed a wooden convent beside it. The Recollects came and put up the stained glass window with the symbol of San Nicolas de Tolentino; a pigeon on a plate surrounded with 7 stars.
Although not as huge as the one in Naic, the church as it stands today more than makes up for its deficiency in size with its excellence in workmanship. The wooden doors of the principal entrance are intricately carved with designs of flowers, towers and galleons at sea. Inside, an even more elaborate pulpit matches the main retablo and its two side altars with wood carvings polychromed in gold, blue and red. Not content, the craftsmen even carved Latin verses on the ceiling beams: “Dignareme laudarete Virgo sacrata da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos”, imploring the Holy Virgin for strength against the enemies.
The Somoza family have a place reserved for their remains in this church especially mandated by the Archdiocese of Manila. The most illustrious of the clan is Don Vicente Cua-Peco Somoza, who was one of the 92 signatories of the Malolos Constitution and who, in 1903, founded the Camara de Commercio Filipino.
6. Sto. Nino de Ternate
Three things impressed me on my visit to the much smaller church of Ternate: the Merdicas, Chavacano, and the Santo Nino.
The Merdicas or Mardicas were a tribe of Malays of Ternate in the Moluccas which was a small Portuguese colony before it passed on to the Spaniards. Mardicas, meant "People of the Sea" and were called the spiritual children of St. Francis Xavier. There were originally seven families, whose family names were De Leon, Ramos, De la Cruz, Estibar, Pereira, and Nigoza. In 1574, the Merdicas volunteered to come to Cavite to support the Spanish against the threat of invasion of the Chinese pirate, Limahong. The invasion did not occur but the community of Merdicas settled in a place known as "Barra de Maragondon", a sandbar at the mouth of the Maragondon River in 1663. Today, the place is called Ternate, after their place of origin.
The community of Merdicas continues to use broken Spanish which came to be called Ternateño or Ternateño Chavacano. The older Ternatenos will still venture into conversations in Chavacano but they are a dying breed. The younger generation prefers to use Tagalog or English.
The image of the Sto. Nino was allegedly brought into the county by the Merdicas but it stayed in the Maragondon church since 1663 until Ternate acquired its own church in 1863. The image is renowned in the Tagalog region and devotees from as far as Laguna and Batangas flock to this church on December 31 each year to attend the ritual of bathing the image before his feast on January 3. The bath water is used as a cure for various illnesses and the Sto. Nino has also been known to help infertile couples find a solution to their problem.
7. St. Gregory the Great Church, Indang
Back on the road, I was thinking about the Spaniards and the Dutch, when my reverie was broken by a road sign pointing to, what do you know, London! We had come to Indang, where the British International School and the Indang British Village are located. After some more twists and turns in this upland town we got to the parish church in the center of town. It was a jewel to behold! Both from the outside as from the inside it looked like the quintessential Spanish iglesia, spacious and with tall windows. The altars were serene with fewer embellishments. The ceiling, however, proved to be the piece de resistance. Painted in the chiaroscuro style of San Agustin church in Intramuros, the bright peach and darker grey colors bathed the interior of the church with a light that was clean and pure. Naturally, I lifted my head up high, bent my knees, and was transfixed into a sense of awe before the divine presence. This is the experience churches intend to create. This particular church, dedicated to the memory of a great pope, created the effect with little effort.
The parish was established in 1625 but the church was built from 1672 and completed in 1710. In 1768 it was passed on to the secular clergy and in 1891 to the Dominicans.
8. Our Lady of Candelaria Church, Silang
Night had fallen when we reached Silang, on the highway to Tagaytay City. With good fortune and the blessings of the parish priest, Fr. Temmy Lumandas, we were allowed into the precincts of the church.
The Franciscans began evangelizing Silang in 1585 but it was not established as a parish until ten years later, in 1595, with jurisdiction over the whole of southern Cavite from Carmona to Ternate including Marinduque. The Jesuits took over in 1599 and built the stone church from 1637-1639.
In 1640 the miraculous image of the Blessed Virgin “La Anunciata” was found and today many miracles are attributed to her intercession. Her feast is known as the Feast of Our Lady of Candles or “La Candelaria”, and the whole town comes alive with many devotees from nearby towns and cities from February 1-3. During this feast, candles are blessed during a procession, then taken home to protect the house and land against danger.
The parish was successively administered by the secular clergy (1769), the Recoletos (1853), the CICM missionaries, the Columbans and reverted to the diocesan priests in 1978.
What is remarkable about the main retablo is the profusion of images of the Virgin and the saints depicted in intricate tableaus. It is in effect an educational tool used to instruct the faithful, at the same time sacred and beautiful. Legend has it that the church simply miraculously appeared overnight (“sumilang”) during Spanish times. Others claim that it was created through forced labor.
Religion never escapes controversy but in the end it is always about what you believe in and what makes you whole again. Well, in the case of the old churches of Cavite, I am hooked and I shall be back time and again, for the quest for wholeness never ends.
-end-
*On weekdays Richard works as the Head of Guest Relations at Enchanted Kingdom. On weekends he organizes tours to benefit Bahay Tuluyan, an NGO that promotes the rights of children.
**On weekdays Stanley is a network engineer. On weekends he is a photographer of old stone churches and a collector of rare Philippine beetles.
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