Provenance: From the collection of renowned scholar and bibiliophile Epifanio de los Santos.

ABOUT THE WORK

José Rizal would refer intimately to this very book, “De la Imitation de Cristo (The Imitation of Christ),” in his very first letter to his former spiritual adviser at the Ateneo, the Jesuit priest Fr. Pablo Pastells. Fr. Pastells, in a letter dated 12 October 1892, Manila, had begun a famous correspondence with his former pupil while he was in exile in distant Dapitan. In explaining the intent of the ‘Noli’, José Rizal had written, “I was aiming at the friars, but since they were shielding themselves in the rites and superstitions of a certain religion, I had to free myself from it in order to strike at the enemy behind it.*** Those who abused its name must bear the responsibility.” Fr. Pastells would lead the charge to bring Rizal back to the fodl of the Church, the Jesuits, and Madre España. This spiritual handbook, “Imitation of Christ” by Thomas á Kempis, was part of his arsenal in that battle. Rizal was obviously moved. He wrote in a letter from Dapitan, a month later, on 11 November 1892 : “My Dear Very Reverend Father, Before answering your precious letter, I ought to thank you for the copy of Kempis which you sent me as a gift. I have gone over the French translation and I enjoyed reading it so much that I think it no mean fortune to have now a copy of my own and in Spanish at that, although people assure me it reads even better in the original Latin. Every page contains pearls of wisdom and I can hardly come upon a sentence which my poor understanding cannot grasp. No wonder it has been translated into almost all languages, even into Tagalog by Father Vicente Garcia, one of the canons of the Cathedral.” - José Rizal Fr. Bonoan wrote in his landmark book on the ‘Rizal - Pastells Correspondence’: “The defection from the Church of so brilliant, exemplary, and devout an alumnus as José Rizal was a great shock and a source of no small embarrassment to the Jesuits at the Ateneo. Similarly, his involvement in the Propaganda Movement as well as the espousal of liberal, reformist ideas by growing numbers of Ateneo graduates provoked charges of lack of patriotism against the Jesuits. By reason then of their special relationship with Rizal, they took it upon themselves to win him back for the Church as well as for Spain. “There were altogether three distinct attempts to carry out this wish: The first was occasioned by Rizal’s first return to the Philippines in 1887 (through Rizal’s teachers at the Ateneo.) “The second attempt was (this) Correspondence. The third attempt was to take place in the prison cell in Fort Santiago (in 1896 before Rizal’s execution.)” The Jesuit selected for this important but delicate second enterprise was Fr. Pablo Pastells who Fr. Bonoan described as Rizal’s spiritual adviser, beginning in his student days in the Ateneo and while Rizal was a prefect of the school’s Sodality of Our Lady. Thomas à Kempis was a medieval theologian who wrote the book that has been called the second most important book after the Holy Bible. “The Imitation of Christ” would become an influential spiritual handbook through the centuries, attracting among others St. Augustine, patron saint of the Jesuits. Calling for the rejection of the trappings of the world, it provided steps to build a rich inner life. It was the perfect antidote to Rizal’s painful exile in Dapitan, coming as it did after several years spent in the world’s greatest and most glorious capitals. Rizal was so touched by the book that he asked for a second copy during his last days in Fort Santiago. While awaiting execution, he would dedicate an identical copy to Josephine Bracken, “To my dear and unhappy wife”, on the night before his death, on 29 December 1896. That copy is now in the collection of the Philippine Natoi nal Museum. Thus, this book symbolizes Rizal’s search for spiritual peace. An important touchstone for any Rizalist, our national hero’s affection for the book adds another dimension to his otherwise highly intellectual persona. Despite Fr. Pastell’s — he was the Superior-General of the Jesuits at the time — inability to win back Rizal to the Catholic faith and Mother Spain, it nevertheless underlines the Ateneo and the Jesuit order’s importance in Jose Rizal’s life and in the Philippines’s political history. — Lisa Guerrero Nakpil