Name of Father : Francisco Engracio Rizal Mercado Occupation : Farmer Name of Mother : Teodora Alonzo Realonda de Quintos Occupation : Farmer Number of Siblings : 10 Name of Siblings : Saturina (Neneng) (1850–1913), Paciano (1851–1930), Narcisa (Sisa) (1852–1939), Lucia (1857–1919), María (Biang) (1859–1945), José Protasio (1861–1896), Concepción (Concha) (1862–1865), Josefa (Panggoy) (1865–1945), Trinidad (1868–1951) and Soledad (Choleng) (1870–1929).
Writings: Rizal was a very prolific author from a young age. Among his earliest writings are El Consejo de los Dioses, A la juventud filipina, Canto del viajero, Canto de María Clara, Me piden versos, Por la educación, Junto al Pasig, A Las Flores de Heidelberg, El Cautiverio y el Triunfo: Batalla de Lucena y Prision de Boadbil, Alianza Intima Entre la Religion y la Buena Educacion, La Entrada Triunfal de los reyes Catolice en Granada, Sobre la Nueva Ortografia de la Lengua de Tagala, etc.
Schools enrolled in : Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna, Colegio de San Juan de Letran, Ateneo Municipal de Manila , University of Santo Tomas, niversity of Santo Tomas Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. Universidad Central de Madrid , University of Paris, University of Heidelberg , Rizal Goes to Madrid: In May of 1882, Jose Rizal got on a ship to Spain without informing his parents of his intentions. He enrolled at the Universidad Central de Madrid.
In June of 1884, he received his medical degree at the age of 23; the following year, he also graduated from the Philosophy and Letters department. Inspired by his mother’s advancing blindness, Rizal next went to the University of Paris and then the University of Heidelberg to complete further study in the field of ophthalmology. At Heidelberg, he studied under the famed professor Otto Becker. Rizal finished his second doctorate at Heidelberg in 1887. Rizal’s Life in Europe:
Jose Rizal lived in Europe for 10 years. During that time, he picked up a number of languages; in fact, he could converse in more than 10 different tongues. While in Europe, the young Filipino impressed everyone who met him with his charm, his intelligence, and his mastery of an incredible range of different fields of study. Rizal excelled at martial arts, fencing, sculpture, painting, teaching, anthropology, and journalism, among other things. During his European sojourn, he also began to write novels.
On his early writings he frequently depicted renowned Spanish explorers, kings and generals, and pictured Education (the Philippines enjoyed a free public system of education established by the Spaniards) as “the breath of life instilling charming virtue”. He had even written of one of his Spanish teachers as having brought “the light of the eternal splendor”.
While in Berlin, Rizal published an essay in French, Dimanche des Rameaux, mentioning the “entry [of Jesus into Jerusalem] decided the fate of the jealous priests, the Pharisees, of all those who believed themselves the only ones who had the right to speak in the name of God, of those who would not admit the truths said by others because they have not been said by them” and alluded to those in authorities in colonial countries. This made the German police suspect that he was a French spy.
The content of Rizal’s writings changed considerably in his two most famous novels, Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. These writings angered both the Spanish colonial elite and many educated Filipinos due to their insulting symbolism. They are critical of Spanish friars and the power of the Church. Rizal’s friend Ferdinand Blumentritt, an Austria-Hungary born professor and historian wrote that the novel’s characters were drawn from real life and that every episode can be repeated on any day in the Philippines.
Blumentritt was the grandson of the Imperial Treasurer at Vienna in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and a staunch defender of the Catholic faith. This did not dissuade him however from writing the preface of El filibusterismo after he had translated Noli me Tangere into German. Noli was published in Berlin (1887) and Fili in Ghent (1891) with funds borrowed largely from Rizal’s friends. As Blumentritt had warned, these led to Rizal’s prosecution as the inciter of revolution and eventually, to a military trial and execution.
The intended consequence of teaching the natives where they stood brought about an adverse reaction, as the Philippine Revolution of 1896 took off virulently thereafter Leaders of the reform movement in Spain: Left to Right: Rizal, del Pilar, and Ponce (c. 1890) As leader of the reform movement of Filipino students in Spain, he contributed essays, allegories, poems, and editorials to the Spanish newspaper La Solidaridad in Barcelona (in this case Rizal used a pen name, Dimasalang). The core of his writings centers on liberal and progressive ideas of individual rights and freedom; specifically, rights for the Filipino people.
He shared the same sentiments with members of the movement: that the Philippines is battling, in Rizal’s own words, “a double-faced Goliath”–corrupt friars and bad government. His commentaries reiterate the following agenda: Organizations : upon his return to Manila in 1892, he formed a civic movement called La Liga Filipina. The league advocated these moderate social reforms through legal means, but was disbanded by the governor. At that time, he had already been declared an enemy of the state by the Spanish authorities because of the publication of his novel.
Wenceslao Retana, a political commentator in Spain, had slighted Rizal by writing an insulting article in “La Epoca”, a newspaper in Madrid, in which he insinuated that the family and friends of Rizal were ejected from their lands in Calamba for not having paid their due rents. Upon reading the article, Rizal sent immediately a representative to challenge Retana to a duel. Retana published a public apology and later became one of Rizal’s biggest admirers, writing Rizal’s most important biography.
The painful memories of his mother’s treatment (when he was ten) at the hands of the civil authorities explain his reaction to Retana. The incident stemmed from an accusation that Rizal’s mother, Teodora, tried to poison the wife of a cousin when she claimed she only intervened to help. With the approval of the Church prelates, and without a hearing, she was ordered to prison in Santa Cruz in 1871. She was made to walk the ten miles (16 km) from Calamba. She was released after two-and-a-half years of appeals to the highest court.
In 1887 Rizal wrote a petition on behalf of the tenants of Calamba, and later that year led them to speak out against the friars’ attempts to raise rent. They initiated a litigation which resulted in the Dominicans evicting them from their homes, including the Rizal family. General Valeriano Weyler had the buildings on the farm torn down. Achivements : Rizal also tried his hand at painting and sculpture. His most famous sculptural work was “The Triumph of Science over Death”, a clay sculpture of a naked young woman with overflowing hair, standing on a skull while bearing a torch held high.
The woman symbolized the ignorance of humankind during the Dark Ages, while the torch she bore symbolized the enlightenment science brings over the whole world. He sent the sculpture as a gift to his dear friend Ferdinand Blumentritt, together with another one named “The Triumph of Death over Life”. The woman is shown trampling the skull, a symbol of death, to signify the victory the humankind achieved by conquering the bane of death through their scientific advancements. The original sculpture is now displayed at the Rizal Shrine Museum at Fort Santiago in Intramuros, Manila.
A large replica, made of concrete, stands in front of Fernando Calderón Hall, the building which houses the College of Medicine of the University of the Philippines Manila along Pedro Gil Street in Ermita, Manila. Rizal also appeared in the 1999 video game Medal of Honor as a secret character in multiplayer, alongside other historical figures such as William Shakespeare and Winston Churchill. He can be unlocked by completing the single-player mode, or through cheat codes. RA 1425 Republic Act No. 1425, known as the Rizal Law, mandates all educational institutions in the Philippines to offer courses about José Rizal.
The full name of the law is An Act to Include in the Curricula of All Public and Private Schools, Colleges and Universities Courses On the Life, Works and Writings of Jose Rizal, Particularly His Novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, Authorizing the Printing and Distribution Thereof, and for Other Purposes. The measure was strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines due to the anti-clerical themes in Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Senator Claro M. Recto was the main proponent of the then Rizal Bill. He sought to sponsor the bill at Congress.
However, this was met with stiff opposition from the Catholic Church. During the 1955 Senate election, the church charged Recto with being a communist and an anti-Catholic. After Recto’s election, the Church continued to oppose the bill mandating the reading of Rizal’s novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, claiming it would violate freedom of conscience and religion. In the campaign to oppose the Rizal bill, the Catholic Church urged its adherents to write to their congressmen and senators showing their opposition to the bill; later, it organized symposiums.
In one of these symposiums, Fr. Jesus Cavanna argued that the novels belonged to the past and that teaching them would misrepresent current conditions. Radio commentator Jesus Paredes also said that Catholics had the right to refuse to read them as it would “endanger their salvation”. Groups such as Catholic Action of the Philippines, the Congregation of the Mission, the Knights of Columbus, and the Catholic Teachers Guild organized opposition to the bill; they were countered by Veteranos de la Revolucion (Spirit of 1896), Alagad in Rizal, the Freemasons, and the Knights of Rizal.
The Senate Committee on Education sponsored a bill co-written by both Jose P. Laurel and Recto, with the only opposition coming from Francisco Soc Rodrigo, Mariano Jesús Cuenco, and Decoroso Rosales. The Archbishop of Manila, Rufino Santos, protested in a pastoral letter that Catholic students would be affected if compulsory reading of the unexpurgated version were pushed through. Arsenio Lacson, Manila’s mayor, who supported the bill, walked out of Mass when the priest read a circular from the archbishop denouncing the bill.
Rizal, according to Cuenco, “attack[ed] dogmas, beliefs and practices of the Church. The assertion that Rizal limited himself to castigating undeserving priests and refrained from criticizing, ridiculing or putting in doubt dogmas of the Catholic Church, is absolutely gratuitous and misleading. ” Cuenco touched on Rizal’s denial of the existence of purgatory, as it was not found in the Bible, and that Moses and Jesus Christ did not mention its existence; Cuenco concluded that a “majority of the Members of this Chamber, if not all [including] our good friend, the gentleman from Sulu” believed in purgatory.
The senator from Sulu, Domocao Alonto, attacked Filipinos who proclaimed Rizal as “their national hero but seemed to despise what he had written”, saying that the Indonesians used Rizal’s books as their Bible on their independence movement; Pedro López, who hails from Cebu, Cuenco’s province, in his support for the bill, reasoned out that it was in their province the independence movement started, when Lapu-Lapu fought Ferdinand Magellan. Outside the Senate, the Catholic schools threatened to close down if the bill was passed; Recto countered that if that happened, the schools would be nationalized.
Recto did not believe the threat, stating that the schools were too profitable to be closed. The schools gave up the threat, but threatened to “punish” legislators in favor of the law in future elections. A compromise was suggested, to use the expurgated version; Recto, who had supported the required reading of the unexpurgated version, declared: “The people who would eliminate the books of Rizal from the schools would blot out from our minds the memory of the national hero.
This is not a fight against Recto but a fight against Rizal,” adding that since Rizal is dead, they are attempting to suppress his memory. On May 12, 1956, a compromise inserted by Committee on Education chairman Laurel that accommodated the objections of the Catholic Church was approved unanimously. The bill specified that only college (university) students would have the option of reading unexpurgated versions of clerically-contested reading material, such as Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. The bill was enacted on June 12, 1956,Flag Day.
