William C. Repetti

On March 1st, 1966, an American Jesuit priest died in Washington D.C. who had spent most of his life in the Philippines. He was Father William C. Repetti S.J.

His name should be well known to seismologists, for it was as a seismologist that he worked in the Manila Observatory at Padre Faura Street. One of his contributions to that science was the discovery of the existence of what has been called the Repetti Layer of Discontinuity, which helps to explain earthquakes.

But besides his main work as seismologist, he spent his free time studying Philippine history. He became an expert in the history of the Jesuits in the Philippines. His published works in that field include three monographs and a number of articles in journals. But his principal opus was a multivolume manuscript on Jesuit history in the Philippines covering the period from the arrival of the first group of Spanish Jesuits (1581) to the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Philippines in 1768 (and from all other Spanish territories) ordered by King Carlos III of Spain.

Unfortunately, being a scientist, Father Repetti wrote in a dry matter-of-fact style which did not please the Jesuit censors who were literary men who wanted books to be written in a popular style that would please the multitude. Repetti’s manuscripts were rejected for publication.

The Jesuit Superior at that time, Father John F. Hurley, found a way to have Repetti’s material (if not his own manuscripts) published. Father Hurley commissioned a young Jesuit scholastic, Horacio de la Costa, to condense Repetti’s many volumes into one readable volume. The result was De la Costa’s first book, Light Cavalry, written in the exuberant Chestertonian style of his early years.

De la Costa later published a more solid, more soberly written book (published by Harvard University Press in 1967) using the same material but enriched with his own independent research in the archives of Rome and Spain.

As for Repetti, in 1942, when the Japanese Army confiscated the Manila Observatory with its buildings and equipment and its magnificent library, Repetti hid his manuscripts and thus saved them. The hiding place was ingenious.

The Ateneo at that time had an Auditorium said to be "the best theatre in Asia". (That was what the Japanese said.) It had splendid acoustics, even a stage whisper could be heard throughout the theatre. Part of its acoustic equipment was a dry well under the stage. It was like an open tomb, rectangular in shape, with cement sides but earth floor. It was in that well that Repetti buried his manuscripts. (He showed me the burial place so that if anything happened to him I could retrieve them.) He himself however survived the Japanese concentration camp in Los Baños to retrieve the manuscripts himself. They are now in the archives of Georgetown University in Washington where he spent his last years as archivist.

This column pays a small tribute to a humble, self-effacing American Jesuit priest who spent most of his life in the Philippines dedicated to Philippine interests, both as seismologist and as historian.