UST secretary general Fr. Isidro C. Abaño served as introductory speaker in an event celebrating the 400th year of UST recently. His speech begun with genuine informality: "Hi, it’s me again." That sent many laughing.
Being an art iconographer, he reminded us that the statue of Miguel de Benavides in the grounds along España points to heaven as in spunto nel cielo, making "a puncture in the sky." That’s reminiscent of "structures pointing up to heaven, like the lofty pointed spires of the Gothic churches that provided a puncture in the sky, so that the divine and the human could reach out to each other," he said.
"During Fr. Benavides’ time in the 16th century, this art iconographer maintained Baroque art highly elaborated the idea of celestial perforation by allowing the viewers from below to raise their eyes to the glory of Christ painted on the ceiling of the Church’s domes. Rays of light intertwined with all sorts of angels winging their flights on the walls of the Church," he added.
It seemed like a borderless communion between heaven and earth. How often have we stood in awe at God’s churches, such magnificent structures? If you become once again naive and childlike, you may feel these celestial blessings through a "puncture in the sky."
"It took Fr. Fidel Villaroel, an eminent historian, an expert archivist and a staunch devotee of the University of Santo Tomas, to breathe renewed life and bring motion to that bronze statue crafted to immortalize the memory of the Dominican Order," Fr. Lana said.
Commending Fr. Villaroel, Fr. Lana made it known that, "These threads of our founding father’s wisdom are woven in Fr. Fidel’s biographical account of the life of Benavides as he provides an accurate source of a zealous and pioneering evangelizer, a profound contextualized theologian in the tradition of Victoria and Las Casas, and a champion of human rights of Filipinos against the abusers of colonizers and encomenderos."
"In a well-documented account of this segment of the life of Benavides, Fr. Fidel described how Benavides struggled to protect the rights of the natives by obtaining the royal approval for the organization of a referendum. That would enable the people to express freely their allegiance to or their rejection of the authority and protection of monarch," he added. "Accordingly, this plebiscite, which was carried out in 1599 with favorable results, was an exceptional event in modern colonial history, and yet it was passed over in silence by our historians and history textbooks. Certainly this historical insight – or is it hindsight? – is Fr. Fidel’s contribution to the ongoing study and debate on the impact of Spanish colonization in our country."
So, do get a copy of this book from the UST Printing Press, which is managed by Dr. Mecheline Intia-Manalastas.
I remember my tiny teacher, all of 4’11" or five feet short, at the school’s archives, smiling and explaining stupendous historical events so swiftly in Spanish that I was grateful my parents forced the Spanish language on me.
He generously shared piles of archival materials, which we held like a precious newborn baby. For Fr. Villaroel, those documents have always been sparkling diamonds. My time at the archives would fly so fast with a tiny man who left his family to spend the rest of his life on an island and return home only when tragedy would strike or compulsory vacations. It’s admirable how a man with the thickest eyeglasses I know can still read every day of his life. Surely Fr. Villaroel’s kindness carried me, his student, far into the intellectual world of a doctoral degree.
Mabuhay ka, Fr. Fidel Villaroel!