The Coming of the Black Christ
The Feast of the Black Nazarene is traditionally held on January 9 in Quiapo, a district of Manila. This year 2.6 million people gathered along the procession route hoping to touch the Black Nazarene and be cured of their sickness or be blessed with good luck and perhaps other miracles. Belief in the power of this physical contact, this laying on of the faithful’s hands, is so strong that some believers rub the statue with cloths in the hope of carrying some of its power home.
The Black Nazarene is a 400 year old wooden, life-sized sculpture of Jesus Christ carrying his cross. This is Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno, the Black Christ. Legend has it that the figure was carved by an Aztec woodworker in Mexico, and transported to the “new world” by Augustinian Friars who arrived in Manila on a Spanish galleon in 1606. According to church history, the ship went up in flames on arrival and the image was burnt “black”, but safe. It has been honored as the Black Nazarene from then on. Further increasing the relic’s mystique is the fact that it has survived the fires that destroyed Quiapo Church in 1791 and 1929, the great earthquakes of 1645 and 1863, and the extensive bombing of Manila during World War II.
In the year 1787, the Black Nazarene was ordered by Manila’s Archbishop Basilio Sancho de Santas Junta y Rufina to be transferred to its current home, relegating its patron saint, St. John de Baptist to a permanent status of lessened reverence. At the time of the image’s arrival, Quaipo was an complex of intersecting rivers, canals, and marshes, abundant with the water lily “Kiapo”, from which it derives its name. In the Manila of the olden times, a house beside an “estero” was actually desired, for these then-pristine streams supplied water for the gardens as well as an efficient route of transportation by water taxi. Quiapo thus became a flourishing center of commerce, the home of the elite ‘illustrados’ and the new rich who came to build their luxurious homes and mansions next to them.
Time and change have ravaged the Quiapo of historical past. Now it stands transformed, its estero networks hopelessly clogged into stagnant pools, while the splendid heritage houses of the wealthy have deteriorated or have been replaced with cheap commercial architecture. People and vehicles congest what were once grand avenues and leafy streets. Hawkers illegally convert the few remaining open spaces into makeshift markets offering cheap prices on native handicrafts as well as on pirated movies, software and pornographic videos.
And yet, Quiapo Church remains one of the most famous churches in the country – as the Black Nazarene draws thousands every Friday to light a candle in supplication. For over 400 years, this wooden image has spawned a culture of devotion and idolatry, (in a country well known for devotion and idolatry), drawing countless devotees, paying homage in all piety, some in open humility, walking on their knees to the altar, for a favor, for a miracle, for penance, for giving thanks.
In February 1606, a group of ten priests and four brothers boarded the Espiritu Santo in Acapulco for the annual voyages of the Galeones de Manila-Acapulco to the New World. According to the historical accounts of the voyages derived from the Archivo General de Indias (General Archive of the Indies, Seville, Spain) the convoy of three ships reached Cebu on the 10th of May and arrived Manila on 12 May 1606.
The Manila galleons or Manila-Acapulco galleons were Spanish trading ships that sailed once per year across the Pacific between Manila and Acapulco, Mexico. Service was inaugurated in 1565 when Andrés de Urdaneta (an Augustinian Friar), discovered a return route from the Philippines in 1565. Attempting the return, Urdaneta reasoned that the trade winds of the Pacific might move in a gyre as the Atlantic winds did. If in the Atlantic, ships made a wide swing (the “volta“) to the west to pick up winds that would bring them back from Madeira then, he reasoned, by sailing far to the north before heading east, he would pick up trade winds to bring him back to te coast of North America. Though he sailed to 38 degrees North before turning east, his hunch paid off, and he hit the coast near Mendecino, California then followed the coast south to Acapulco.
A total of 110 Manila galleons set sail in the 250 years of the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade (1565 to 1815) with three or more ships sailing annually from each port. The Manila trade was so lucrative that the merchants of Spain petitioned King Philip, complaining of their losses, and secured a law in 1593 that set a limit of only two ships to sail each year from either port, with one kept in reserve in Acapulco and one in Manila. An “armada”, or an armed escort was also allowed.
With such limitations, it was essential to build the largest possible galleons. In the 16th century, they averaged from 1,700 to 2,000 tons, were built of Philippine hardwoods and could carry well over a thousand passenger (the Espiritu Santo carried a crew and passenger manifest of 1600 souls according to the records).
The galleons carried spices, porcelain, ivory, lacquerware, processed silk cloth gathered from both the Spice Islands and Asia-Pacific, to be sold in European markets. After landing the cargoes in Acapulco, the cargoes were transported by land across Mexico to the port of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico, where they were loaded onto the Spanish treasure fleet bound for Spain. This route avoided the long and dangerous trip across the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope.
Of the original group of ten priests and four brothers who boarded the Espiritu Santo in Acapulco, one of them died in passage, one of 40 such deaths recorded on the outbound leg of the voyages. Members of the Augustinian Recollects, a monastic order of men and women founded in 16th century Spain. They are a reformist offshoot from the Augustinian hermit friars and follow the Augustinian Rule.
The work of the Augustinians includes teaching, scientific study, the cure of souls, and missions. In any history of education there will be frequent mention of Augustinians as they distinguished themselves in the Enlightenment as professors of philosophy and theology at the great universities of Europe, including Padua, Pisa, Naples, Oxford, Paris, Vienna, Prague, Heidelberg, etc. This tradition of education continued in the Philippines where the Recollects administer two universities, three colleges, as well as four secondary schools.
The Recollect tradition of education and scientific study is worthy of note, particularly when one considers that much of the original history surrounding the Black Nazarene seems to contradict historical records.
The fact that the Black Nazarene was transferred to its current home in 1787 and that prior to this the Black Nazarene was worshipped in the Saint Nicholas Tolentina Parish Church in the original walled city of Intramuros are matters of historical record. Also a matter of historical record is the date of April 21, 1621, the date on which the Confradia de Jesus Nazareno was established – a of the devotion that the Recollet Fathers maintained over 15 years. (The confraternity obtained Papal approval on April 20, 1650, from His Holiness Pope Innocent X.)
What is not supported by historical record is that the image was actually displayed at the first Recollect church in Bagumbayan (now part of the Rizal Park), or more importantly that that the ship carrying the image was burnt (either at sea or soon after arrival depending on the source) and that the image “miraculously” survived. Specifically, the historical records of the Archivo General de Indias make no mention of a fire and clearly state that the Espiritu Santo, the Santa Ana and the Neustra Senora de la Antiqua all arrived in Manila. Certainly, a major fire or catastrophe would merit mention.
Secondly, the Recollect’s history bears no mention of a fire or the miraculous survival of the Black Christ. This fact is noteworthy when one considers the fervor and devotion with which the early Recollects worshipped the Nazarene. The Black Nazarene maintains a central role in their faith, yet no historical texts make mention of the original “miracle”. There is one other minor point, which is that the original Recollect church in Bagumbayan had as its patron saint John the Baptist. You would think that having just witnessed a “miracle” that you would dedicate the church in which it was housed to the Black Nazarene.
My hypothesis is that there was no fire and in fact that the image of the Black Christ was not brought to the Philippines by the Augustinian Recollects. There was no “miracle” in that sense. Instead, I ascribe his arrival in Manila to two seemingly unrelated factors – Tokugawa Ieyasu and the weather.
Japan in the early 1600’s was not a welcome place for Christians. In the late 1590’s Hideyoshi, a powerful Japanese Daimyo unified Japan. Once he became the ruler of Japan, Hideyoshi began to pay attention to external threats, particularly the expansion of Spanish and Portugese power in East Asia. By 1587, Hideyoshi had become alarmed and produced an edict expelling missionaries from many areas of the country. In 1597, he then ordered Nagasaki under his direct rule to control Portuguese trade and as an example ordered 26 “Kirishitan” followers executed.
The early Japanese Christians suffered all sorts of persecutions. They were wrapped in straw sacks, piled in heaps of living fuel, and set on fire. All the tortures that barbaric hatred or refined cruelty could invent were used to turn thousands of their fellow-men into carcasses and ashes. Yet few of the faithful quailed, or renounced their faith. They calmly let the fire of wood cleft from the crosses before which they once prayed consume them, or walked cheerfully to the blood-pit, or were flung alive into the open grave about to be filled up.
On a trip to Japan several years ago, I attended a lecture on the early European settlements in Japan. I remember the speaker commenting that many Christians were persecuted and churches dismantled. The Japanese, knowing that the images of Christ were holy, did not want to offend these foreign gods, so they wrapped them in bundles of straw, covered them in tar and set them adrift.
A second data point – according to historical records on July 22, 1606, a Spanish ship left Cavite en route to Japan. It was August 20th when they reached the 20th parallel. There they had a fierce storm in which it was necessary to unstep the topmast and to lower and take in all the sails. Such was the fury of the wind and the violence of the waves that the tiller was broken and the ship was left in such a great distress that it was necessary to lighten it of everything it had on deck. The storm grew worse and the night came on very cloudy and dark with hurricane winds and terrific thunder. About 10 o’clock at night the wind increased in such a way that the ship was heeled over until the sails touched the water, and the side of the boat was submerged. In such distress the sailors and the Captain promised a lamp of 150 pesos to our Lady of Rosary in Manila. God was pleased to hear the prayers of His servants and a little while afterwards the ship entered the port of Fucajari, but two leagues below Nagasaki.
Now, if you draw a line from Nagasaki to Manila (as was done in the attached figure by the historian who compiled the storm data) you will see that it is quite possible that the Black Nazarene washed up on the shores of Manila Bay driven by the typhoon of August 1606. Wrapped in bundles of straw and tarred, the image of Christ bending under the weight of the cross, was taken by the local fisherman to the nearest Church – the newly commissioned Recollect Church of John the Baptist.
To the priest and four brothers who had made the long journey from Cadiz in Spain, the arrival of an image of Christ on the shores of Manila Bay, would truly qualify as a miracle. The fact that he was the Black Nazarene might even have served to confirm that the Philippines was indeed their chosen spiritual home.
