Manila (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) - Barefoot men in white T-shirts and old women in maroon clothes accented by yellow tasseled belts make their way to Quiapo this Sunday (January 9), the Feast of the Black Nazarene.
The ancient image was carved in Mexico and arrived in Manila on a galleon accompanied by Augustinian Recollect Missionaries in 1606. It was enshrined in a church in Bagumbayan, the "new town" outside Intramuros. Tradition says the Nazareno was originally of fair skin, but a fire on the galleon burned him black. Expert examination should tell us what kind of wood the image is made of and whether the black color is natural or burned, but this only matters to curious historians, not devotees.
In 1608 the Nazareno was moved from Bagumbayan to the Recollect church of San Nicolas de Tolentino in Intramuros where it was venerated for over a century until Basilio Sancho de Santas Justa y Rufina, Archbishop of Manila, had the image moved to Quiapo. The annual feast on Jan. 9 celebrates the "translation" or transfer of the image from Intramuros to Quiapo in the late 18th century.
The traditional procession route makes its way through the narrow streets of downtown Manila, causing traffic gridlock, accidents and sometimes casualties. Why doesn't it take a historically accurate route tracing the earlier translations of the image from Bagumbayan (now Rizal Park) to Intramuros, to Quiapo? A Mass at the Quirino grandstand can accommodate more people, who can then line the wide streets back to Quiapo and venerate the Nazareno en route without crowding. But then the crowding and mayhem make this fiesta a spectacular photo shoot for Facebook and the front-page of our newspapers.
Quiapo church is relatively new, having been built after a fire completely destroyed the previous one in 1928. Designed by National Artist for Architecture Juan Nakpil, the church was remodeled and expanded in 1984.
Quiapo church is the center of what was once known as "downtown" in a city that has seen better days. Pete Lacaba once described Quiapo as the armpit of the nation. Maybe a better description would be navel-- as in pusod ng Maynila, pusod ng Pilipinas.
Outside Quiapo church, vendors peddle candles, rosaries and novenas alongside herbal medicines, amulets and assorted anting-anting. Here you can pay to have your fortune told by cards or palm reading. If bad fortune is foretold, you can either buy an amulet or pay someone to pray the rosary or novena for you. Here you see the convergence of the old and the new, a Catholic religion that covers and co-exists with a pre-Spanish belief system.
If we look beyond the modern Quiapo church way back to the first church of bamboo and nipa built by Franciscan missionaries in the late 16th century, we realize that the Spanish could not have laid the foundations of Quiapo in 1586 because it already existed before they arrived. Quiapo was named after a green, floating plant, kiapo (pistia stratiotes Linn.), also known in English as "tropical duck weed" or "water lettuce" or sometimes "swamp cabbage." Kiapo is now scarce, but is often found in aquariums or floating along with tea candles in antique basins in Martha Stewart-style home d�cor. Kiapo is edible, according to the ancient Chinese, the young leaves particularly good.
Kiapo has also been used as a diuretic, laxative, eye-wash, or a cure for coughs, asthma and an assortment of skin diseases, including boils and syphilitic eruptions. Kiapo like May nila--not nilad!--are place names from plants abundant in those areas long before the Spaniards "discovered" the islands and imposed the name Filipinas on them.
That Quiapo pre-dates the Spanish conquest is evident in a land dispute between natives and the Jesuits that prompted Philip III to order Juan de Silva, governor-general of the Philippines, to investigate and report back:
"Don Miguel Banal has informed me, in a letter (dated July 15,1609) that, at the instance of the natives of the village of Quiapo, the late archbishop of that city wrote to me that the fathers of the Society of Jesus, under pretense that the metropolitan dean of Manila sold them a piece of arable land which lies back of the said village, have appropriated it for their own lands, taking from them more than the dean granted--to such an extent that there hardly remains room to plant their crops, or even to build their houses.
"And the said Miguel Banal, who is the chief of that village, having built a house, one of the Society, called Brother 'Nieto,' came into his fields, together with many blacks and Indians, with halberds and other weapons; and they demolished the house, to the great scandal of all who saw them, and without paying any attention [to the remonstrances of] the alcalde-mayor of the village. He entreats me, for assurance of the truth, to command you to make an investigation regarding it; and in the meantime not to disturb them in their ancient possession, which they have inherited from their fathers and grandfathers."
Translated from the original Spanish and found in Vol. 17 of Blair and Robertson, the order is dated Dec. 7, 1610 signed in the hand of Philip III with the words "Yo el rey (I, the King)." This letter documents an early demolition resulting from an agrarian dispute.
Quiapo can teach us more history beyond the Nazareno.
source: ph.news.yahoo.com/
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