A Prohibition on Digging Up the Bones of the Dead (1813)

Abstract

In 1813, the Bishop of Cebu, Joaquín Encabo de la Virgen de Sopetrán, issued an edict prohibiting the exhumation of the dead, written primarily in the local language of Cebuano Visayan. This document from the archives of the Roman Catholic parish of Patrocinio de Maria in Boljoon, a town in the Philippine province of Cebu, suggests that inhabitants of the diocese were digging up the bones of the dead in order to hold rituals for a secondary burial along traditional, non-Christian lines. Ino Manalo discusses the edict in light of the emphasis placed by Spanish colonialism on urbanism and literacy, and outlines the ways in which it provides evidence of the persistence of traditional beliefs and practices centuries after the introduction of Christianity to the Visayas.