Sta. Quiteria

I remember years ago when a grade school teacher narrated in class the legend of a headless saint whose image can be found in Caloocan City. I retold the story to my parents. Curious as I am, we drove all the way to the barangay named after the decapitated image of a martyred saint –Sta. Quiteria.

Although little is known about Sta. Quiteria whose feast day is celebrated every 22^nd of May, the story of her martyrdom has inspired the Catholic church to include her in the list of saints.

Quiteria was a daughter of a Galician prince. Her father forced her to marry a Roman military officer and worship Roman gods. Refusing to denounce her Christian faith, she fled. However, her father’s men captured her in Gascony, France where she was beheaded on the spot.

Miraculously, her body rose up and grabbed her head. With her head on her hand, she climbed up a mountain and stopped where she wanted to be buried. This explains the image we now see in St. Francis de Assisi and Sta. Quiteria Parish Caloocan City.

One popular miracle attributed to Sta. Quiteria is when held two rabid dogs at bay with the power of her saintly voice. Thus, she became patroness against rabies and is depicted in religious iconography with a dog next to her decapitated image.

Books are Fragile

It has been two months after the horrific storm Ondoy inundated our San Mateo home. Like in every disaster, damages to properties are immediately realized. As a bibliophile, I grieve the loss of books, prints and photographs. They have been the very reason why I found a new interest in Philippine history and culture.

“Books are fragile” says Carina Guevarra of Art19b Gallery. She is one of the people who grieved with us after learning how Ondoy damaged our collection and art collections of people she knew. These books could have been our heirloom to our son I told her.

Fellow blogger and Filipino history and cultural advocate Arnold A. of With One’s Past visited us in San Mateo only to feel sorry for the out-of-print Filipiniana that we tried to salvage. A few can be restored by patiently turning them page by page and drying them out. Unfortunately, the hardened mud that covered majority of the books made it hopeless.

We had already moved on and made efforts to forget that unfortunate day. Today, we celebrate to whatever is left but we lament for what can never be replaced.

Intramuros

Intramuros, the Old Walled City of Manila, which my favorite National Artist, Nick Joaquin immortalized its former glory in the many essays, plays and books he wrote about life inside the ancient walls. 

Joaquin described the time when the day dawns sa loob ng Maynila and the cobblestones echo with the clip-clop of horses’ hooves. The guardia civil opens the Parian gate and Chinese merchants throng its puerta to set up their stalls for the day. Students make their pensive way to the many universities within a walking distance from Fort Santiago, where the morning-shift guardia civil man the defenses. 

Not very long, the Governor-General will be passing in his carruaje through the Puerta Real on his way to the Palacio del Gobernador to attend his office while a friar paces meditatively a top a bridge way above Calle Real to San Agustin Church. 

The rising sun lights up the elaborate façade of wealthy Spanish casas, with their capiz shell windows, heavily carved doors and solid piedra china flagstones. 

Close to four hundred years, Intramuros was the Spanish medieval nucleus. It was the core of Philippine church and state until its cruel decimation when Americans and Japanese forces reduced the walls to shambles and the city to rubble during Liberation of Manila in 1945. 

Today, I cannot count the number of visits I had in historic Intramuros. The pleasure of reminiscing those educational grade school field trips at Fort Santiago or the several memorable weddings we attended at San Agustin and annual visita iglesias we had which according to family tradition should always begin at the Manila Cathedral make me go back sa loob ng Maynila over and over. 

It was a few years ago when I had my first walking tour of Intramuros. Just like the Amazing Race, our history professor listed down the “pit stops” within the Walled City. The instruction for this mandatory project was to take photos of these places, write a reflection about the tour and present the project in a fancy folder. After that whole day tour, Intramuros has become a curiosity.  

Probably it’s the nostalgia of my youth or perhaps the history heard deep within  the ancient stones which I never gotten tired of listening again and again where I found inspiration to walk around Intramuros’ moss-covered adobe walls and travel back in time to its romantic glory over and over until this day.

Part 1 –Intramuros ׀ Part 2 –Plaza Roma ׀ Part 3 –The Art of Manila Cathedral ׀ Part 4 –A Short Walk from Postigo Gate ׀ Part 5 –Bitter-Sweet Love Story (Scandal) of 1621  ׀ Part 6 –Casa Manila ׀ Part 7 –San Agustin Church ׀  Part 8 –San Agustin Museum ׀ Part 9 –Father Sepulveda Murder Case ׀ Part 10 –The Augustinians, Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans and Recollects | Part 11 – The Assassination of General Bustamante | Part 12 -The Power and Might of the Cross ׀ Part 13 – Lady in Blue Sash and the Cradle of Basketball in the Philippines ׀ Part 14 –Calle Muralla ׀ Part 15 –Trail, Travels and Travails of the Statue of Isabel  | Part 16 – Nung Bata Pa si Sabel | Part 17 – Around Intendencia  ׀ Part 18 –The Legend of the Twisted Sword ׀ Part 19 – Fortress of Empire: Fort Santiago | Part 20 –Tales of Death from the Dungeons and Jail Cells of Fort Santiago ׀ Part 21 –The Lost Villages of Extramuros | Part 22 –The Grand Marian Procession | Part 23 –Maynila, Ever Noble and Loyal City

San Mateo Flashfloods

Living in San Mateo Rizal for the last five years we’ve never imagined that we’ll ever experience in real life what most people see in movies and on the news – water and mud entering homes, furniture turned over by flashfloods rising more than 10 feet,  and people being swept off balance by gasping water that turned San Mateo’s main road into a raging river!  In less than an hour, our single-level home is submerged in water and mud.

Traveler on Foot will blog again soon.

Traveler on Foot is in StarCentral Daily Top 10 of the Month