José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda[7] (Spanish: [xoˈse riˈsal, -ˈθal], Tagalog: [hoˈse ɾiˈsal]; June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896) was a Filipino nationalist, writer and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is considered a national hero (pambansang bayani) of the Philippines.[8][9] An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain.
He was executed by the Spanish colonial government for the crime of rebellion after the Philippine Revolution broke out; it was inspired by his writings. Though he was not actively involved in its planning or conduct, he ultimately approved of its goals which eventually resulted in Philippine independence.
Rizal is widely considered one of the greatest heroes of the Philippines and has been recommended to be so honored by an officially empaneled National Heroes Committee. However, no law, executive order or proclamation has been enacted or issued officially proclaiming any Filipino historical figure as a national hero.[9] He wrote the novels Noli Me Tángere (1887) and El filibusterismo (1891), which together are taken as a national epic, in addition to numerous poems and essays.[10][11]
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José Rizal was born on June 19, 1861 to Francisco Rizal Mercado and Teodora Alonso Realonda y Quintos in the town of Calamba in Laguna province. He had nine sisters and one brother. His parents were leaseholders of a hacienda and an accompanying rice farm held by the Dominicans. Both their families had adopted the additional surnames of Rizal and Realonda in 1849 after Governor General Narciso Clavería y Zaldúa decreed the adoption of Spanish surnames among the Filipinos for census purposes (though they already had Spanish names).
Like many families in the Philippines, the Rizals were of mestizo origin. José's patrilineal lineage could be traced to Fujian in China through his father's ancestor Lam-co, a Hokkien Chinese merchant who immigrated to the Philippines in the late 17th century.[12][13][note 1][14] Lam-co traveled to Manila from Xiamen, China, possibly to avoid the famine or plague in his home district, and more probably to escape the Manchu invasion during the transition from Ming to Qing. He decided to stay in the islands as a farmer. In 1697, to escape the bitter anti-Chinese prejudice that existed in the Philippines, he converted to Catholicism, changed his name to Domingo Mercado and married the daughter of Chinese friend Augustin Chin-co.
On his mother's side, Rizal's ancestry included Chinese and Tagalog. His mother's lineage can be traced to the affluent Florentina family of Chinese mestizo families originating in Baliuag, Bulacan.[15] He also had Spanish ancestry. Regina Ochoa, a grandmother of his mother, Teodora, had mixed Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog blood.[16] His maternal grandfather was a half-Spanish engineer named Lorenzo Alberto Alonzo.[17] José Rizal's maternal great-great-grandfather, Eugenio Ursua, was of Japanese ancestry.[18][19]
From an early age, José showed a precocious intellect. He learned the alphabet from his mother at 3, and could read and write at age 5.[13] Upon enrolling at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, he dropped the last three names that made up his full name, on the advice of his brother, Paciano and the Mercado family, thus rendering his name as "José Protasio Rizal". Of this, he later wrote: "My family never paid much attention [to our second surname Rizal], but now I had to use it, thus giving me the appearance of an illegitimate child!"[20] This was to enable him to travel freely and disassociate him from his brother, who had gained notoriety with earlier links to Filipino priests Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora (popularly known as Gomburza), who had been accused and executed for treason.
José, as "Rizal", soon distinguished himself in poetry writing contests, impressing his professors with his facility with Castilian and other foreign languages, and later, in writing essays that were critical of the Spanish historical accounts of the pre-colonial Philippine societies. By 1891, the year he finished his second novel El filibusterismo, his second surname had become so well known that, as he writes to another friend, "All my family now carry the name Rizal instead of Mercado because the name Rizal means persecution! Good! I too want to join them and be worthy of this family name..."[20]
Rizal first studied under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna, before he was sent to Manila.[21] He took the entrance examination to Colegio de San Juan de Letran, as his father requested, but he enrolled at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila. He graduated as one of the nine students in his class declared sobresaliente or outstanding. He continued his education at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila to obtain a land surveyor and assessor's degree and simultaneously at the University of Santo Tomas, where he studied a preparatory course in law and finished with a mark of excelente, or excellent. He finished the course of Philosophy as a pre-law.[22]
Upon learning that his mother was going blind, he decided to switch to medicine at the medical school of Santo Tomas, specializing later in ophthalmology. He received his four-year practical training in medicine at Ospital de San Juan de Dios in Intramuros. In his last year at medical school, he received a mark of sobresaliente in courses of Patologia Medica (Medical Pathology), Patología Quirúrgica (Surgical Pathology) and Obstretics.
Although known as a bright student, Rizal had some difficulty in some science subjects in medical school such as Física (Physics) and Patología General (General Pathology).[23]
Without his parents' knowledge and consent, but secretly supported by his brother Paciano, he traveled alone to Madrid in May 1882 and studied medicine at the Universidad Central de Madrid. There he earned the degree, Licentiate in Medicine. He also attended medical lectures at the University of Paris and the University of Heidelberg. In Berlin, he was inducted as a member of the Berlin Ethnological Society and the Berlin Anthropological Society under the patronage of pathologist Rudolf Virchow. Following custom, he delivered an address in German in April 1887 before the Anthropological Society on the orthography and structure of the Tagalog language. He wrote a poem to the city, "A las flores del Heidelberg", which was both an evocation and a prayer for the welfare of his native land and the unification of common values between East and West.
At Heidelberg, the 25-year-old Rizal completed his eye specialization in 1887 under the renowned professor, Otto Becker. There he used the newly invented ophthalmoscope (invented by Hermann von Helmholtz) to later operate on his mother's eye. From Heidelberg, Rizal wrote his parents: "I spend half of the day in the study of German and the other half, in the diseases of the eye. Twice a week, I go to the bierbraueriei, or beerhall, to speak German with my student friends." He lived in a Karlstraße boarding house then moved to Ludwigsplatz. There, he met Reverend Karl Ullmer and stayed with them in Wilhelmsfeld. There he wrote the last few chapters of Noli Me Tángere, his first novel, published in Spanish later that year.
Rizal was a polymath, skilled in both science and the arts. He painted, sketched, and made sculptures and woodcarving. He was a prolific poet, essayist, and novelist whose most famous works were his two novels, Noli Me Tángere (1887) and its sequel, El filibusterismo (1891).[note 2] These social commentaries during the Spanish colonial period of the country formed the nucleus of literature that inspired peaceful reformists and armed revolutionaries alike.
Rizal was also a polyglot, conversant in twenty-two languages.[note 3][note 4][24][25]
Rizal's numerous skills and abilities was described by his German friend, Adolf Bernhard Meyer, as "stupendous."[note 5] Documented studies show Rizal to be a polymath with the ability to master various skills and subjects.[24][26][27] He was an ophthalmologist, sculptor, painter, educator, farmer, historian, playwright and journalist. Besides poetry and creative writing, he dabbled, with varying degrees of expertise, in architecture, cartography, economics, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, dramatics, martial arts, fencing and pistol shooting. Skilled in social settings, he became a Freemason, joining Acacia Lodge No. 9 during his time in Spain; he became a Master Mason in 1884.[28]
José Rizal's life is one of the most documented of 19th-century Filipinos due to the vast and extensive records written by and about him.[29] Almost everything in his short life is recorded somewhere. He was a regular diarist and prolific letter writer, and much of this material has survived. His biographers have faced challenges in translating his writings because of Rizal's habit of switching from one language to another.
Biographers drew largely from his travel diaries with his comments by a young Asian encountering the West for the first time (other than in Spanish manifestations in the Philippines). These diaries included Rizal's later trips, home and back again to Europe through Japan and the United States,[30] and, finally, through his self-imposed exile in Hong Kong.
Shortly after he graduated from the Ateneo Municipal de Manila (now Ateneo de Manila University), Rizal (who was then 16 years old) and a friend, Mariano Katigbak, visited Rizal's maternal grandmother in Tondo, Manila. Mariano brought along his sister, Segunda Katigbak, a 14-year-old Batangueña from Lipa, Batangas.
It was the first time Rizal had met her, whom he described as
"rather short, with eyes that were eloquent and ardent at times and languid at others, rosy-cheeked, with an enchanting and provocative smile that revealed very beautiful teeth, and the air of a sylph; her entire self diffused a mysterious charm."
His grandmother's guests were mostly college students and they knew that Rizal had skills in painting. They suggested that Rizal should make a portrait of Segunda. He complied reluctantly and made a pencil sketch of her. Rizal referred to her as his first love in his memoir Memorias de un Estudiante de Manila, but Katigbak was already engaged to Manuel Luz.[31]
From December 1891 to June 1892, Rizal lived with his family in Number 2 of Rednaxela Terrace, Mid-levels, Hong Kong Island. Rizal used 5 D'Aguilar Street, Central district, Hong Kong Island, as his ophthalmology clinic from 2 pm to 6 pm. In this period of his life, he wrote about nine women who have been identified: Gertrude Beckett of Chalcot Crescent, Primrose Hill, Camden, London; wealthy and high-minded Nelly Boustead of an English-Iberian merchant family; Seiko Usui (affectionately called O-Sei-san), last descendant of a noble Japanese family; his earlier friendship with Segunda Katigbak; Leonor Valenzuela, and an eight-year romantic relationship with Leonor Rivera, a distant cousin (she is thought to have inspired his character of María Clara in Noli Me Tángere).
In one account detailing Rizal's 1887 visit to Prague, Maximo Viola wrote that Rizal had succumbed to a 'lady of the camellias'. Viola, a friend of Rizal's and an early financier of Noli Me Tángere, was alluding to Dumas's 1848 novel, La dame aux camelias, about a man who fell in love with a courtesan. While noting Rizal's affair, Viola provided no details about its duration or nature.[32][33][note 6]
Leonor Rivera is thought to have inspired the character of María Clara in Noli Me Tángere and El Filibusterismo.[34] Rivera and Rizal first met in Manila when Rivera was 14 years old and Rizal was 16. When Rizal left for Europe on May 3, 1882, Rivera was 16 years old. Their correspondence began after Rizal left a poem for her.[35]
Their correspondence helped Rizal stay focused on his studies in Europe. They employed codes in their letters because Rivera's mother did not favor Rizal. In a letter from Mariano Katigbak dated June 27, 1884, she referred to Rivera as Rizal's "betrothed". Katigbak described Rivera as having been greatly affected by Rizal's departure, and frequently sick because of insomnia.
Before Rizal returned to the Philippines on August 5, 1887, Rivera and her family had moved back to Dagupan, Pangasinan. Rizal's father forbade the young man to see Rivera in order to avoid putting her family in danger. Rizal was already labeled by the criollo elite as a filibustero or subversive[35] because of his novel Noli Me Tángere. Rizal wanted to marry Rivera while he was still in the Philippines because she had been so faithful to him. Rizal asked permission from his father one more time before his second departure from the Philippines, but he never met her again.
In 1888, Rizal stopped receiving letters from Rivera for a year, although he continued to write to her. Rivera's mother favored an Englishman named Henry Kipping, a railway engineer who fell in love with Rivera.[35][36] The news of Leonor Rivera's marriage to Kipping devastated Rizal.
His European friends kept almost everything he gave them, including doodlings on pieces of paper. He had visited Spanish liberal, Pedro Ortiga y Pérez, and impressed the man's daughter, Consuelo, who wrote about Rizal. In her diary, she said Rizal had regaled them with his wit, social graces, and sleight-of-hand tricks. In London, during his research on Antonio de Morga's writings, he became a regular guest in the home of Reinhold Rost of the British Museum, who referred to him as "a gem of a man."[29][note 7] The family of Karl Ullmer, pastor of Wilhelmsfeld, and the Blumentritts in Germany saved even napkins that Rizal had made sketches and notes on. They were ultimately bequeathed to the Rizal family to form a treasure trove of memorabilia.
In February 1895, Rizal, 33, met Josephine