Prelude to Filipino Catholicism The Hispanization of the Christian Mission (15th to 16th Centuries)

Abstract

: This article presents the two most influential factors in the Hispanization of the Christian Mission in the Philippines during the 15th and 16th centuries: (1) the Spanish Catholicism; and (2) Spanish Royal Patronage. The Spanish Catholicism emerged from the much earlier Catholic Reform in Spain, which anteceded the Ecumenical Council of Trent (1545 – 63), and the vitality coming from the Spanish Reconquest of the last Muslim Emirate (1492) in the Iberian Peninsula. These elements had animated and forged the Catholic identity in Spain, wherein the newly -formed nation and its people identified their destiny with the Catholic faith. Thus, both the Spanish conquistadores and the Spanish friars conducted their military conquest and missionary expansion, respectively, in the sense of “messianic mission." The Spanish Royal Patronage was the result of papal concessions, through a series of papal bulls, to the Spanish Crowns in the evangelization of the lands of America and Asia. In these concessions, the Supreme Pontiffs granted the Spanish Monarchs ecclesiastical privileges and rights in the conquered non-Christian lands in return for their patronage of the missionary enterprise, thus, yielding complete control of the Christian mission in these territories. The consequences of this patronage to the lands mentioned above resulted in much fiery debate in its legitimacy. Both of which equally determined the kind of Catholicism that reached the shores of the Philippine Islands.