“Against Muhammad’s Perfidy”: the Jesuit Francisco Combés and his Relación de las islas Filipinas (c.1654)

This article analyzes the centrality of the Jesuit missionaries as indispensable agents in re-establishing negotiations with the Muslims of Mindanao and Sulu. In doing so, I discuss an unpublished Jesuit report: the Relación de las islas Filipinas (Manila, 1654) by the Jesuit Juan Francisco Combés (1620–65), which willfully conflated religious conversion with military intervention and conquest in the interests of securing a permanent base of operations in the southern Philippines. Spanish hegemony in the region was always contested. Therefore, Jesuit superiors strove to convince the civil authorities of Manila, and particularly the governor of the Philippines, don Sabiniano Manrique de Lara (in office 1653–63), to leave definitively the military strongholds in the Moluccas and instead to reinforce the military presidios located in the southern islands of Mindanao as the best way to stop the Muslim raids. Finally, the postscript analyzes the martyrdom of the Jesuits Alejandro López (1604–55) and Juan de Montiel (1632–55) as a propagandistic tool to cement the Jesuit contribution to the Spanish conquest and identify it with Catholic evangelization.