A Renaissance man is a well educated person and one who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields. There are only 28 men in the history of mankind who are recognized as such and Jose Rizal is the most recent and the last on the line.
If India has Mahatma Gandhi, the Philippines has its own Dr. Jose Rizal, the Philippine National Hero. He is a man of exceptional intelligence and gifted with extraordinary talents. Lets learn more about this amazing person of Malay roots.
Image Source
Heres a long list of interesting facts about Jose Rizal.
1.) Rizal was a Filipino nationalist and one of the few recognized Renaissance men in the world.
2.) Documented studies show him to be a polymath with the ability to master various skills and subjects.
3.) This Renaissance man was an ophthalmologist, novelist, sculptor, painter, educator, farmer, historian, playwright and journalist.
4.) 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.
5.) This polymaths complete name is Jose Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda. He was born on June 19, 1861 in Calamba, Laguna, Philippines.
6.) Jose Rizal was executed by firing squad on December 30, 1896 in Bagumbayan, Manila. Bagumbayan is now known as Luneta or Rizal Park.
7.) The anniversary of his death is commemorated as a Philippine holiday known as Rizals Day.
8.) This Renaissance man was the most prominent advocate for reforms in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era.
9.) Rizals 1896 military trial and execution made him a martyr of the Philippine Revolution.
10.) At age two (2), this polymath can already read and write. Jose Rizal was the seventh of eleven children born to a wealthy family in Calamba, Laguna.
11.) He finished is Bachelor of Arts at Ateneo Municipal de Manila.
12.) Rizal enrolled in Medicine and Philosophy and Letters at the University of Santo Tomas or UST - the oldest university in the Philippines and one of the oldest in the world.
13.) He completed his degree of Licentiate in Medicine at the Universidad Central de Madrid in Spain.
14.) Rizal also studied at the University of Paris in France and earned his second doctorate at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
15.) This great Asian Renaissance man was a polyglot conversant in at least twenty languages.
16.) This Filipino polymath was a prolific poet, essayist, diarist, correspondent, and novelist.
17.) This Renaissance mans most famous novels are Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo - social commentaries that inspired Filipinos to achieved freedom.
18.) Jose Rizal founded the La Liga Filipina, a civic organization that subsequently gave birth to the Katipunan led by Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto.
19.) Like Gandhi, Rizal was a proponent of institutional reforms by peaceful means rather than by violent revolution.
20.) Rizals father is Francisco Engracio Rizal Mercado y Alejandro (18181898) and his mother is Teodora Morales Alonzo Realonda y Quintos (18261911).
Image Source
Rizal's Monument at Rizla Park
21.) Rizals siblings were Saturnina (Neneng) (18501913), Paciano (18511930), Narcisa (Sisa) (18521939), Olympia (Ypia) (18551887), Lucia (18571919), Mara (Biang) (18591945), Concepcion (18621865), Josefa (Panggoy) (18651945), Trinidad (18681951) and Soledad (Concha) (18701929).
22.) Rizal was a 5th-generation patrilineal descendant of Domingo Lam-co, a Chinese immigrant entrepreneur who sailed to the Philippines from Jinjiang, Guangzhou in the mid-17th century.
23.) Lam-co married Inez de la Rosa, a Sangley native of Luzon. To free his descendants from the Sino phobic animosity of the Spanish authorities, Lam-co changed the surname to the Spanish Mercado (market) to indicate their Chinese merchant roots.
24.) In 1849, Governor-General Narciso Claveria ordered all native families in the Philippines to choose new surnames from a list of Spanish family names.
25.) Joses father Francisco adopted the surname Rizal (originally Ricial, the green of young growth or green fields), which was suggested to him by a provincial governor.
26.) Upon enrolling at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, Jos dropped the last three names that make up his full name, at the advice of his brother, Paciano Rizal Mercado, and the Rizal Mercado family, thus rendering his name as "Jos Protasio Rizal".
27.) Aside from Chinese ancestry, recent genealogical research has found that Jos had traces of Spanish and Japanese ancestry.
28.) His maternal great-great-grandfather was Eugenio Ursua, a descendant of Japanese settlers, who married a Filipina named Benigna.
29.) Rajah Lakandula of Tondo is also regarded as ancestor of Rizal.
30.) This Renaissance man first studied under the tutelage of Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Bian, Laguna. He graduated as one of the nine students in his class declared sobresaliente or outstanding in Ateneo.
31.) He continued studying at Ateneo Municipal de Manila and obtained a land surveyor and assessors degree, and at the same time at the UST Faculty of Arts and Letters where he studied Philosophy and Letters.
32.) Rizal studied medicine specializing in ophthalmology at the UST Faculty of Medicine and Surgery but did not complete the program claiming discrimination made by the Spanish Dominican friars against the native students.
33.) In Berlin he was inducted as a member of the Berlin Ethnological Society and the Berlin Anthropological Society under the patronage of the famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow.
34.) He left Heidelberg a poem. A las flores del Heidelberg is a poem wrote for Heidelberg, Germany.
35.) At age 25, Rizal completed in 1887 his eye specialization under the renowned professor, Otto Becker in Heidelberg.
36.) A small version of Rizal Park with Rizals Bronze statue was built in Wilhelmsfeld, Germany. The street where Rizal lived was also renamed after him.
37.) A sandstone fountain also stands in Pastor Ullmers house garden where Rizal lived in Wilhelmsfeld.
38.) This Renaissance man from the Philippines was also a Freemason, joining Acacia Lodge No. 9 during his time in Spain and becoming a Master Mason in 1884.
39.) This Filipino polymaths life is one of the most documented of the 19th century due to the vast and extensive records written by and about him.
40.) During December, 1891 to June, 1892, Dr. Jos Rizal lived with his family in Number 2 of Rednaxela Terrace, 5 D'Aguilar Street, Central district, Hong Kong Island. This house was also used as his ophthalmologist clinic from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Image Source
Tomb of Rizal
41.) Nine women with romantic involvement to Rizal were identified, they were:
42.) This Filipino Renaissance mans most famous works were his two novels, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Noli was published in Berlin (1887) and Fili in Ghent (1891).
43.) He sculpted the Triumph of Science over Death and gave the sculpture to Ferdinand Blumentritt, his bestfriend. He made this sculpture for the sake of Filipino women to show how Filipino women were abused by the Spaniards.
44.) Rizal's first critic was Ferdinand Blumentritt, a Czech professor and historian whose first reaction was of misgiving. Blumentritt was the grandson of the Imperial Treasurer at Vienna in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and a staunch defender of the Catholic faith.
45.) This Asian polymath formed La Liga Filipina in 1892, a civic movement advocated for social reforms through legal means. It was disbanded by the governor-general.
46.) Rizals mother, with the approval of the Church prelates, and without a hearing, was ordered to prison in Santa Cruz, Laguna in 1871.
47.) Her mother was made to walk the 16km from Calamba. She was released after two-and-a-half years of appeals to the highest court.
48.) Rizal was implicated in the activities of the nascent rebellion and in July 1892, was deported to Dapitan in Zamboanga, a peninsula of Mindanao.
49.) In Dapitan, Rizal built a school, a hospital and a water supply system, and taught and engaged in farming and horticulture.
50.) One Muslim student of Rizal in Dapitan became a Datu, and another, Jos Aseniero became Governor of Zamboanga.
51.) Mi Retiro was a poem wrote by Rizal as a gift to his mother on her birth anniversary.
52.) Near the end of his exile he met and courted the stepdaughter of a patient, an Irishwoman named Josephine Bracken. He was unable to obtain an ecclesiastical marriage because he would not return to Catholicism and was not known to be clearly against revolution.
53.) Though Rizal and Josephine were not married, he considered her to be his wife and the only person mentioned in the poem, Farewell.
54.) Rizal volunteered to serve in Cuba to minister to victims of yellow fever. Rizal was arrested en route to Cuba, imprisoned in Barcelona, and sent back to Manila to stand trial.
55.) Rizal was tried before a court-martial for rebellion, sedition, and conspiracy. He was convicted on all three charges and sentenced to death.
56.) Blanco (Governor-General of the Philippines during those times), who was sympathetic to Rizal, had been forced out of office, and the friars had intercalated Camilo de Polavieja in his stead, sealing Rizal's fate.
57.) His poem Mi Ultimo Adios or Farewell (Huling Paalam) was hidden in an alcohol stove and later handed to his family.
58.) Exhumation of Rizals remains in August, 1898 revealed he had been un-coffined. His burial was not on sanctified ground.
59.) In his letter to his family he wrote: "Treat our aged parents as you would wish to be treated...Love them greatly in memory of me...December 30, 1896."
60.) In his final letter, to Blumentritt - Tomorrow at 7, I shall be shot; but I am innocent of the crime of rebellion. I am going to die with a tranquil conscience.
Image Source
Josephine Bracken
61.) Rizal had reassured Blumentrit that he had not turned revolutionary as he once considered being, and that he shared his ideals to the very end.
62.) He also bequeathed a book personally bound by him in Dapitan to his 'best and dearest friend.' When Blumentritt received it in his hometown Litomerice he broke down and wept.
63.) Moments before his execution by a firing squad of native infantry of the Spanish Army, backed by an insurance force of Spanish troops, the Spanish surgeon general requested to take his pulse; it was normal.
64.) This Asian Renaissance mans last words were those of Jesus Christ: "consummatum est",--it is finished.
65.) Rizal was secretly buried in Paco Cemetery in Manila with no identification on his grave.
66.) His sister Narcisa toured all possible gravesites and found freshly turned earth at the cemetery with guards posted at the gate. Assuming this could be the most likely spot, there never having any ground burials, and she made a gift to the caretaker to mark the site "RPJ", Rizal's initials in reverse.
67.) The monument of Rizal in Rizal Park, Manila was designed by the Swiss Richard Kissling, the creator of the famed William Tell sculpture.
68.) The statue carries the inscription "I want to show to those who deprive people the right to love of country, that when we know how to sacrifice ourselves for our duties and convictions, death does not matter if one dies for those one loves for his country and for others dear to him."
69.) After Rizals execution, Josephine Bracken joined the revolutionary forces in Cavite and helped operate a reloading jig for Mauser cartridges at the arsenal at Imus.
70.) Josephine married another Filipino, Vicente Abad, a mestizo acting as agent for the Philippine firm of Tabacalera. She died in Hong Kong in 1902 of tuberculosis, buried in an unknown grave, and never knew how a line of verse had rendered her immortal.
71.) In the Noli he stated that if European civilization had nothing better to offer, colonialism in Asia was doomed.
72.) Such was recognized by Gandhi who regarded him as a forerunner in the cause of freedom.
73.) Jawaharlal Nehru, in his prison letters to his daughter Indira, acknowledged Rizal's significant contributions in the Asian freedom movement.
74.) Monuments in his honor were erected in Madrid, Spain; Wilhelmsfeld, Germany; Jinjiang, Fujian, China; Chicago, Cherry Hill Township, San Diego, Seattle, U.S.A.; Mexico City, Mexico; Lima, Peru; Litomerice, Czech Republic; and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
75.) Several titles were bestowed on him: "the First Filipino", "Greatest Man of the Brown Race," among others.
76.) The Order of the Knights of Rizal, a civic and patriotic organization, boasts of dozens of chapters all over the globe.
77.) There are some remote-area religious sects who claim this great polymath as a sublimation of Christ.
78.) A two-sided marker bearing a painting of Rizal by Fabian dela Rosa on one side and a bronze bust relief of him by Philippine artist Guillermo Tolentino stands at the Asian Civilizations Museum Green. This marks his visits to Singapore (1882, 1887, 1891 and1896).
79.) A Rizal bronze bust was erected at La Molina district, Lima, Peru, designed by Czech sculptor Hanstroff, mounted atop a pedestal base with 4 inaugural plaque markers with the following inscription on one: Dr. Jos P. Rizal, Hroe Nacional de Filipinas, Nacionalista, Reformador Political, Escritor, Lingistica y Poeta, 1861-1896
80.) The cinematic depiction of Rizal's literary works won two film industry awards more than a century after his birth. In the 10th FAMAS Awards, he was honored in the Best Story category for Gerardo de Len's adaptation of his book Noli me Tangere.
Image Source
Rizal's Execution
81.) The recognition was repeated the following year with his movie version of El Filibusterismo, making him the only person to win back-to-back FAMAS Awards posthumously.
82.) Noli and Fili novels were translated into opera by the composer-librettist Felipe Padilla de Len: Noli me Tangere in 1957 and El Filibusterismo in 1970; and his 1939 overture, Mariang Makiling, was inspired by Rizal's tale of the same name.
83.) Several films were produced narrating Rizal's life. The most successful was Jose Rizal, produced by GMA Films and released in 1998. Cesar Montano played the title role.
84.) The film "Rizal sa Dapitan" produced by Viva Films starred by Albert Martnez as Rizal and Amanda Page as Josephine Bracken was the top grosser of the 1997 Manila Film Festival and won the best actor and actress trophies.
85.) A documentary called "Bayaning Third World" directed by Mike de Leon and starring Joel Torre was released in 2000.
86.) This Renaissance man 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.
87.) Rizal and Josephine Bracken lived together in Dapitan. Josephine bore a stillborn child with Rizal, Francisco Rizal y Bracken, who was buried in Dapitan, Mindanao.
88.) USS Rizal (DD174) was a Wickes class destroyer in the United States Navy following World War I. She was named for the Filipino polymath - Jose Rizal, the Philippine national hero.
89.) A province, numerous municipalities, barangays, streets, schools and other institutions were named Rizal in honor of this great Filipino Renaissance man and polymath.
90.) Articles and statements stating that Mao Zedong of China and Adolf Hitler of Germany were illegitimate sons of Rizal were pointless and baseless.
See also
No comments:
Post a Comment