The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home

CHAPTER LXIII 308
[73] "Listening Sister," the nun who acts as spy and monitor over the girls studying in a convent.--TR.
[74] "Más sabe el loco en su casa que el cuerdo en la ajena." The fool knows more in his own house than a
wise man does in another's.--TR.
[75] The College of Santo Tomas was established in 1619 through a legacy of books and money left for that
purpose by Fray Miguel de Benavides, O. P., second archbishop of Manila. By royal decree and papal bull, it
became in 1645 the Royal and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas, and never, during the Spanish régime,
got beyond the Thomistic theology in its courses of instruction.--TR.
[76] Take heed lest you fall!
[77] Ferdinand and Isabella, the builders of Spain's greatness, are known in Spanish history as "Los Reyes
Católicos."--TR.
[78] These spectacular performances, known as "Moro-Moro," often continued for several days, consisting
principally of noisy combats between Moros and Christians, in which the latter were, of course, invariably
victorious. Typical sketches of them may be found in Foreman's The Philippine Islands, Chap. XXIII, and
Stuntz's The Philippines and the Far East, Chap. III.--TR.
[79] "The Willow."
[80] The capital of Laguna Province, not to be confused with the Santa Cruz mentioned before, which is a
populous and important district in the city of Manila. Tanawan, Lipa, and Batangas are towns in Batangas
Province, the latter being its capital.--TR.
[81] "If on your return you are met with a smile, beware! for it means that you have a secret enemy."--From
the Florante, being the advice given to the hero by his old teacher when he set out to return to his home.
Francisco Baltazar was a Tagalog poet, native of the province of Bulacan, born about 1788, and died in 1862.
The greater part of his life was spent in Manila,--in Tondo and in Pandakan, a quaint little village on the south
bank of the Pasig, now included in the city, where he appears to have shared the fate largely of poets of other
lands, from suffering "the pangs of disprized love" and persecution by the religious authorities, to seeing
himself considered by the people about him as a crack-brained dreamer. He was educated in the Dominican
school of San Juan de Letran, one of his teachers being Fray Mariano Pilapil, about whose services to
humanity there may be some difference of opinion on the part of those who have ever resided in Philippine
towns, since he was the author of the "Passion Song" which enlivens the Lenten evenings. This "Passion
Song," however, seems to have furnished the model for Baltazar's Florante, with the pupil surpassing the
master, for while it has the subject and characters of a medieval European romance, the spirit and settings are
entirely Malay. It is written in the peculiar Tagalog verse, in the form of a corrido or metrical romance, and
has been declared by Fray Toribio Menguella, Rizal himself, and others familiar with Tagalog, to be a work of
no mean order, by far the finest and most characteristic composition in that, the richest of the Malay
dialects.--TR.
[82] Every one talks of the fiesta according to the way he fared at it.
[83] A Spanish prelate, notable for his determined opposition in the Constituent Cortes of 1869 to the clause
in the new Constitution providing for religious liberty.--TR.
[84] "Camacho's wedding" is an episode in Don Quixote, wherein a wealthy man named Camacho is cheated
out of his bride after he has prepared a magnificent wedding-feast.--TR.