Not too long ago, October was a high point in the religious and cultural life of Old Manila. High society and commonfolk trooped to the gothic temple of Santo Domingo in the Walled City to venerate a centuries-old Marian icon in return for favors granted -- protection from foreign invasion, calamities, even personal miracles like safe childbirth. Prominent business families like the Zobels, Sorianos, Roxases, Ayalas, and Ortigases led the nation in keeping the annual tradition.
The often repeated lamentation is that the festivities have since been forgotten, more noticeably by high society. Four centuries later, however, the religious and cultural tradition has not lost its luster, as evidenced by the multitude of devotees who continue to witness the lavish parade of 27 Dominican icons led by the Lady of the Rosary, La Naval de Manila. The haunting Spanish hymn, “Despedida a la Virgen,” is still the highlight of the novena. To be sure, the La Naval feast has built a wider, solid following dominated by the resilient Filipino middle class.
It is also an informed devotion. The story is told over and over again: In 1646, two rickety trading ships, hurriedly fitted with artillery uprooted from the Cavite naval base, were able to defeat a formidable armada from Calvinist Holland (reputedly 18 galleons), which was bent on taking over the Catholic colony of Spain. The David vs. Goliath victory was attributed to La Naval. The then Spanish governor-general had pledged to march barefoot to Santo Domingo if granted victory. A choir sung the rosary nonstop as the sea battles raged.
The ships Encarnacion and the Rosario, manned by Spaniards and the natives, emerged practically unscathed after five battles off the coasts of Bolinao, Marinduque, Mindoro, Lubang and Mariveles. The impossible naval victory brought to mind the epic Battle of Lepanto scarcely a century earlier, in which Spain warded off the vastly superior navy of the Ottoman Turks and therefore “saved” Europe from Muslim invaders.
Like Lepanto, the 1646 naval victory against the Dutch was declared by ecclesiastics a product of heavenly intercession. In a church investigation years later, witnesses testified how, miraculously, a volley of Dutch cannon balls missed the ill-equipped Spanish vessels, or how the wind stopped blowing to render the enemy ship immovable.
La Naval’s cultural and historic significance is documented in a new coffee-table book, The Saga of La Naval: Triumph of a People’s Faith, published by the Dominican Order in time for the centennial of the Marian image’s canonical coronation, outlining how it has reached “saga” proportions after witnessing countless political and social upheavals.
The book is made up of essays by such writers as Regalado Trota Jose, Ramon Villegas and Maximo Noche, and is edited by Lito Zulueta.
“The image of Our Lady of the Rosary of La Naval reminds us that once upon a time, in the middle of the 17th century, Filipinos fought unafraid, prayed unashamedly, and later walked barefoot at dawn in solemn fulfillment of a promise made to God. Such heroism, to which this image was a witness, was repeated throughout our history: in the revolts for our independence from Spain and America, in the People Power Revolution of 1986, and many other occasions where the world witnessed the greatness of the Filipino,” writes the Dominican scholar Fr. Rolando V. de la Rosa, O.P.
The adulation has been enormous considering, as the late Nick Joaquin had described, that La Naval started out as a “poor” queen after being commissioned in 1593 by acting governor-general Luis Perez Dasmarinas. It was not imported from Mexico or other places, like many popular religious icons of the Philippines. Rather, it was crafted by a Chinese artisan under the direction of a Spanish captain. The indigenous statue with ivory head, hands, and Christ child has never been duplicated.
The 1646 naval victory was followed by more miracles, and people began to regard it as the protector of the islands against “tremors, earthquakes, the dangers of childbirth, lightning, and barbaric powers,” writes Regalado Trota Jose in The Saga of La Naval: Triumph of a People’s Faith.
People began donating jewels, rich garments, even entire estates to the church in the image’s name. When the Japanese bombed Intramuros in 1941, La Naval and an accompanying load of precious items had to be kept in a thickly walled underground vault, retrieved the morning after the destruction of 10 churches in the city to preempt looting. The image and its treasures were quietly transported to the University of Santo Tomas in Sampaloc, where it stayed for the next 13 years until the new Santo Domingo Church was built in Quezon City in 1954.
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| Photo from lanavaldemanila.blogspot.com |
That it is a rich icon often associated with aristocracy has not intimidated legions of followers from places like Bacolor, Pampanga and Sta. Maria, Bulacan. When La Naval was crowned canonically in 1907 -- the first Marian image in the Philippines to have received the prestigious papal approval -- the torrential October rains did not drive away the estimated 120,000 attendees (about 4% of the Philippine population at the time, says historian Maria Eloisa G. Parco de Castro).
Rain continues to hound the annual procession, but Santo Domingo Church has only become even more crowded.
Only the British were successful in shipping out substantial loot from the old Santo Domingo Church when they occupied Manila for two years beginning 1762, at the height of the Seven Years’ War in Europe. La Naval’s ivory head was chopped off in the rush to steal the treasures. Ramon N. Villegas notes that up until the 20th century, treasures from Manila were still being sold in England.
New crowns for the Lady and the Infant Jesus had to be made in 1811, most likely a donation from Santo Tomas coinciding with its bicentennial. Almost a century later, another set of crowns was commissioned for the coronation ceremonies attended by Asian church leaders in front of the Aduana in Intramuros -- 18-karat gold sourced from all over the Philippines decorated with more than 1,700 gemstones.
Wearing an imperial crown, La Naval is depicted as baroque royalty, dressed like a lady in the court of the Spanish monarchs Felipe II and Felipe III, says Mr. Trota Jose in an image biography of the icon. The emphasis is on Mary being queen in heaven, rather than Mary as mother. The image is taken to represent a triumphant church.
No less than heirloom pieces have been bequeathed by devotees to La Naval, legendary among them is the locket of Ana Roxas given in 1872 by King Norodom I of Cambodia, who could not take her as one of his wives.
The cross on top of the aureola (the circular frame on the back of the image’s head) was said to have been the pectoral cross of the controversial Bernardino V. Nozaleda, archbishop of Manila during the Philippine revolution and the execution of Jose Rizal. The latest addition is the National Artist medallion of Nicomedes “Nick” Joaquin, proclaimed by the new La Naval book as the “Lady’s Minstrel” for his nostalgic essays on Old Manila and La Naval and for his “Ballad of the Five Battles” immortalizing the victory of 1646.
The 1907 coronation was not without incident, the book recounts. Shortly after Pope Pius X approved the petition in 1906, a movement was also launched to declare La Naval “Patroness of the Philippines.” Dominicans faced opposition from all sides: secular as well as religious clerics (suspected was a Jesuit connection, the Jesuits being promoters of the Lady of the Immaculate Conception). The Inmaculada Concepcion was already Patroness of Spain, the Americas, and the Indies, and such patronage extended to the Philippines. The dispute was not put to rest until 1935 when Pius XI gave the title to the Virgin of Guadalupe.
In the Philippines, “Immaculate Conception” parishes outnumber those named after the Lady of the Rosary -- 1,000 versus 600 -- but the rosary cult promoted by La Naval remains influential, with the 400-year-old image continuing to stand amid major upheavals.
Santo Domingo opened its doors to the funeral of slain senator and Marcos foe Benigno Aquino, Jr. in 1983, and the image was brought to EDSA in 1986 and 2001. More recently, the church was also the venue of the funeral of defeated presidential candidate Fernando Poe, Jr., making the shrine even closer to the masses that idolized the movie star.
“This miraculous image reminds us that heroism will never die among Filipinos. Despite the doomsday predictions of modern prophets that we Filipinos, because of our ‘damaged culture,’ [have] a tendency to self-destruct, that we cannot get our act together, there is within us a courage, a strength to overcome difficulties despite ourselves. This image is a symbol of what is good in our character as a people, what is true in our culture, what is powerful in our faith,” says Father de la Rosa.
BusinessWorld, October 5, 2007
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