NOTE: This series is based on the findings of a study done in 2018 made possible by a grant from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). It is Sisay Kita?’s modest contribution to the observance of the Dicoese of Virac’s Golden Jubilee come August 27, 2024.
In Part 1, we proposed that the ermitas of Virac constitute a singular aspect of the town’s heritage, something that is quite unique to it, a source of collective pride and a defining facet of the people’s character and identity. In this scond part, we trace the historical development of what may be termed as the “ermita establishment” of the local church that functions as an organizing and operating framework of the local practice of faith. In doing so, we will demonstrate two propositions, that 1) the ermita is a product of both pre-colonial and Spanish influences, and 2) the ermita derives impetus from the people’s initiative, a testament to their creativity, resourcefulness, industry and abiding faith.
Evolution of the ermita
At first glance, the ermita easily appears to be thoroughly the result of Spanish colonization, specifically the introduction of Catholicism. A more incisive analysis, however, reveals that the practice has roots in our animist, pre-conquest religious tradition. There is clear evidence that the ermita evolved from the “kinallobong” tradition of the folk in Virac which arguably was pre-Catholic in origin . Specifically, the line of evolution goes as follows: kinallobong-to-cruz-to-ermita. We have already elaborated on the ermita in Part 1, but what are the kinallobong and the cruz?
The kinallobong is a temporary altar built for specific purpose such as communal praying of the novena. Typically built in an outdoor setting, the kinallobong is also created as roadside shrine along procession routes during Holy Week. It is made of indigenous materials like nipa or coconut fronds and decorated with flowers or swatches of cloth and lighted with candles or torches. It is a form of folk art. In pre-colonial times, it was customary of the natives to build such provisional sacred spaces to perform their rituals to invoke the gods for favors or offer gratitude such as in a harvest festival. This latter type seems to be the predecessor of the tinagba practice during Corpus Christi procession where agricultural products are offered at the makeshift altar.
The assumption is that the kinallobong had been recast for Catholic purposes. It was a cultural appropriation employed as the natives’ animist religiosity was taken over by the Catholic religion. Through the years, the kinallobong had been increasingly upgraded and modernized to become the lavish roadside shrines during Holy Week that feature live tableaus and expensive construction works and elaborate decorating. In any case, the kinallobong is something that is torn down after serving its purpose, something not meant to last.
When a group or community decides to regularize their devotional observance, say on an annual basis, they would build a sacred enclosure that could last longer to house their practice. The kinallobong then becomes a more permanent structure and is now properly called a “cruz.” Its make-up depends upon the resources of the group. At first, it is a modest shed of wood or bamboo roofed with nipa but may take on more presentable and durable constitution. Good examples are the cruzes of the para-sila (fisherfolk) groups in San Pablo and Rawis, which saw incremental upgrading through time, becoming concrete and well-appointed structures as members of the devotion acquire the necessary economic capacity
Some of these cruz-based devotion get to expand their scope of operation, like becoming the core community that eventually becomes a sitio or indeed a barangay. In my study, I have documented several such cases. The ermitas of Gogon, Talisoy, Sto. Cristo and Mislagan were originally cruzes catering to a small core of devotional community. Both Talisoy and Sto. Cristo keep written documents that narrate this historical development. A case-in-point is Sto. Cristo which used to be a sparsely populated sitio of Cabihian. Records show that in 1933, four pioneer families in the area started a devotion to Jesucristo Cruxificado and for which they built a modest cruz. Then the devotion started to expand to include the other families that eventually settled in the vicinity. Through the years the remote sitio became increasingly populated such that the devotion also expanded in membership. In 1952, a priest came to bless the cruz, celebrated the first mass there and swore in a set of officers headed by a matanda. The originally autonomous devotion was legitimized under the formal oversight of the institutional church. By 1958, the records indicated a barangay Sto. Cristo that had apparently seceded from its mother barangay Cabihian. Henceforth, the people of Sto. Cristo pushed to convert their house of worship into a proper ermita.
The kinallobong-cruz-ermita evolution is quite clearly demonstrated in the case of Mislagan. In the early 70s, Mislagan was not even a sitio but an expanse of rice lands cultivated by farmers residing in nearby barangays such Sta. Elena, Capilihan and Rawis. It happened that some of the farmers started a devotion to the Nstra. Sra. de Salvacion to coincide with the harvest during the dry season. They held a nine-day novena that culminated in May 27. So they created a kinallobong under the very mango tree where they would gather to rest, eat their meals and exchanged pleasantries during a day’s toiling in the fields. They stretched a blanket to serve as backdrop of a provisional altar where the Salvacion icon is enshrined for the novena praying.
Eventually, some of the farmers permanently settled in the area which started what would become a sitio of barangay Capilihan. The devotion to Salvacion became a central enterprise that cemented community life in the area. Along this line, the menfolk built a more permanent structure to house the devotion, a cruz made of light materials available in the vicinity. The holding of the yearly novenario became more elaborate. They needed to organize into cabos, one each for a day in the nine days of praying. Through time, the cruz took on cumulative improvements. When presentable enough, they invited a priest to come and say mass for the katapusan in May 27, together with a choir from the parish church. Instead of offering a regular mass stipend to the priest, the farmers filled a cart with farm produce which was ferried by a carabao to the convent, a virtual tinagba. Eventually, Mislagan was officially recognized as a sitio of Capilihinan. As such, the folk ventured into the building of a proper ermita of reinforced concrete and GI roofing and organizing the concomitant pastoral council headed by a matanda.
Hispanic colonial context
Clearly, the ermita has been serving as a catalyst for community-making at the basic levels of the sitio and barangay. This function can be traced back to the very beginnings of Spanish colonization of the Philippines. It has become a truism that the Spaniards employed a two-pronged strategy for effective conquest and sustainable occupation. First, they used the sword to compel submission by the natives. Then the cross was employed to win their hearts and minds. In practical terms, this was operationalized in a policy of pacification known as reduccion. It entailed the gathering of the natives into one compact settlement for easy supervision and monitoring by the new masters.
Among the first measures for effective control of the conquered territory was to build a church around which the natives were required to re-establish their residences. The simbahan played both symbolic and practical functions. It represented a concrete and imposing presence of the new masters. The bell tower particularly, the tallest structure in the area, served not only as symbol of domination but as observation tower to survey the surroundings, while the ringing of the bells on various hours of the day regimented the people’s routines according to the colonial imperatives. At one time it announced that the day of toil has begun, at another time it called everybody to come back to the community for the night. On occasion it gathered people to the church for prayers or important announcements. Indeed, it was said that life under Spanish rule was about living bajo de la campana or “under the bell.”
But more importantly, the simbahan was the headquarters for the conversion of the natives to a new faith which served the colonial enterprise well because acquiescence need not anymore be maintained by coercion. They became willing subjects. The conversion was quite effective, the Filipinos so loved the new faith, they embraced it as their very own way after the proselytizers have left.
The Viracnon’s faith and the ermita
It is quite clear now that the building of the simbahan was instrumental in reconfiguring the social structure of the native society to suit the aims of the colonial project. This was employed at all levels from the national to the local, all the way to the basic communities. In Virac, the ermita played the same function among the barangay folk – as catalyst for the community formation – but according to justifications quite fundamentally different from the colonizers. There was apparently a reversal of motives the along the way. How did it happen?
If the Filipinos had in the long term come to embrace Catholicism like their very own, perhaps more so for the Virac folk, and the great proliferation of ermitas all over town is one unimpeachable proof. Here, the essence of the ermita is not so much in the building itself (although it has its own merits) than in the circumstances they came to be. While the simbahan of the Spaniard’s initiative was tool for the imposition and consolidation of foreign power, the ermita of the Virac folk is the expression, the outcome, of the people’s empowerment.
It must be pointed out that contrary to common perception the old stone ermitas were not really built during the Spanish period but rather in the following regime of the Americans. What the Spaniards did build were the large-scale parish churches based in the town centers. At the grassroots level what may have obtained in the 19th century or earlier were modest cruzes to house respective devotions of nascent communities many of whom were not yet properly separate barangays. For example, San Pablo, San Juan and Concepcion were simply known as Ilawod, with San Pablo called “Silangan” because of its location on the eastern seaside.
The stone ermitas of Talisoy, Antipolo, Hawan Grande and Magnesia, all relatively remote areas at that time, were built well into the first decades of the 20th century. In both Talisoy and Gogon, I gathered from accounts that their ermitas started from cruzes built by the initiative of the pioneering folk for their religious observances. Talisoy was established in 1903 by a handful of pioneering families. By 1912, they ventured into the building of a stone chapel. As for Gogon, the present stone edifice was finished in 1918. The northern rural barangays for their part were administered for religious purposes (and arguably in the secular sense; separation of church and state came slow at the basic levels) by two visitas, namely Sto. Domingo and Buyo that brought into their orbits barangays and sitios around them. Both these barangays built stone ermitas. Calatagan started out as sitio of Danicop so the latter’s ermita came to be earlier than that of the now more famous ermita of the former.
We have already seen that the religious fare of the cruzes were folk-initiated and maintained. Based on a chosen patron saint, it is mainly about praying the nine-day novenario that can be done without the ministration of the clergy, but by lay people who have their own traditional prayer leaders called the parapoon. Aside from the devotion to the patron saint, a cruz typically maintains a line-up of similar activities for various intentions throughout the seasons. Depending on the industry of the leaders of the cruz, this observance includes the santacruzan in May and aurora in October. Occasionally, they would do the perdon during epidemics or natural calamities.
When a cruz gets upgraded into a proper ermita, the same relative autonomy is maintained, except that it gets formally embraced into the institutional structure of the parish with its own pastoral council under the matanda and a set of coordinators or cabos. As such, it is afforded the privilege of a priest celebrating mass for the annual fiesta. The relative autonomy of the ermita establishment and its essentially lay character owes to the fact that it is an outgrowth of the cruz. The ermita simply represents the maturation of the religiosity initiated and nurtured by the common people, enough to merit the legitimation of the institutional church.
What may be called “ermita religiosity” takes significance as the genuine “Church of the People” that is animated by its own dynamism. In Part 1, we have described how the building of the ermita was an enterprise assumed by the folk, one that engendered them into a community. The vitality of the ermita community was such that they were able to carry through their devotional fare even with minimal institutional presence. For example, barangays such as Buyo was visited by a priest only once a year for the fiesta mass. This was anyway the period when there was yet a dearth of priests. This would change in the wake of Vatican II reforms and the establishment of a separate diocese in the island-province.
To sum up, the ermita is testament to the folk’s creativity, resourcefulness, industry and abiding faith. Inscribed in the ermita are the various forces that interfaced to bring forth the historical becoming of the Viracnons as a people. To understand the ermita is to gain intimate knowledge of what Virac is all about. The ermita’s roots in the kinallobong demonstrate synthesis rather than break between pre-conquest and colonial cultures, while its essential lay character proves that the institutional church mandate derives vitality from the popular constituent.
In Part 3, we will expound on the socio-cultural practice aspects of ermita religiosity.