Allegory of the Four Continents in Loboc, Bohol

Loboc Allegory

VISITORS TO Loboc in Bohol come mostly to take a ride on the restaurant barges that ply the river. Few will bother to explore the town’s ancient church with its huge convento (or priests’ quarters) that houses many treasures.

The Jesuits worked in Loboc from the 16th-18th century. During their stay they established a school for boys. Among the subjects that were probably taught was music. One can imagine that this may have laid the foundation for the rich tradition of choirs and bands the town is famous for.

What was this place like in the past? How would it have felt to wake in the morning and hear angelic voices rising through the cold air, floating past blue mountains in the distance?

In the 1986 movie “The Mission,” a trial is held where the Jesuit fathers defend their parishioners, the Guarani people of the Amazon jungle. A little boy is called to sing the “Ave Maria” as proof that he and his ilk were not animals, subject to slavery. Could similar arguments have raged in Bohol?

Like their counterparts in the movie, the Jesuits were expelled from their Boholano parishes and from the rest of the Philippines in 1768. Despite their sudden departure, the good fathers made their mark on the land. In the case of Loboc, they had created an intricately carved Baroque church front in keeping with the tastes of their epoch.

When the Agustinians took over, they, in turn, would cover up the Jesuit façade, while applying the aesthetics of a later period: the Neo-Classical.

Encounter of styles

This encounter of styles is most evident at the left side of Loboc Church. Here one will glimpse an exuberant Baroque scroll struggling to escape from the heavy Greco-Roman inspired wall that is pinning it down. Truly, this is a splendid illustration of how the passing of history can be etched on the face of a building!

Inside the church, the encounter continues in the stylistic dialogue between the florid side retablo (or altar backdrop) and the monumental main retablo in the center. Over a door of the sacristy is another memento of the Society of Jesus: a faint relief sculpture of saints surrounding the Blessed Virgin enthroned. This configuration follows a standard format known as a Sacra Conversazione.

Located on the exterior side of this Conversazione, crowning the doorway, is one of Loboc church’s most glorious works of art: a carved medallion depicting St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, flanked by two magnificent women.

Such an elaborate relief sculpture was clearly meant to be seen by all, indicating that this was an important entrance. The present doorway now leads to a small tiled vestibule squeezed between the church and the convento.

In the past, the convento was obviously not as large, so that the entire wall where the carvings are located was exposed.

An Internet search reveals that “the four continents, personified as female figures, are found in the art of the Counter-Reformation, where their most common function, especially in Jesuit churches, is to serve as a reminder of the world-wide spread of Catholic Christendom.”

It is quite possible then that the tableau of the two women and the Jesuit saint that adorns the Loboc church doorway is what has been referred to in Western Art as an Allegory of the Four Continents.

Four great lands

To the European mind, when Australia and Antarctica were not yet on the map, the entire world was divided into four great land masses: Europe, Africa, Asia and America. As can be seen in examples by artists from the 16th century onwards, these continents were often depicted as women with specific attributes.

Europe was an old monarch, stately and dignified. The other three were much more outlandish. Asia appears inscrutable beneath her veil and silks, while Africa and America are naked. Their mounts are freakish specimens from a legendary bestiary: camel, crocodile and armadillo.

Occasionally, America carried severed limbs, ghoulish reminders of cannibalism. The message is clear. It is Europe that sets the standard. All else were the realms of the unknown, the bizarre. Consequently, the divinely ordained task of Europeans was to bring civilization to the rest of the planet.

In the Four Continents illustrations, America characteristically sports a crown of feathers. Given that the two Loboc figures both wear feathered headgear, it is fairly certain that at least one of them stands for the American continent.

The same symbolic use of a feathered diadem may be observed in the spectacular Apotheosis of St. Ignatius as painted by Andrea Pozzo on the ceiling of an important church of the Society in Rome.

What then of the other woman? Perhaps she is meant to evoke Asia. Or perhaps the two female images are references to the Old World (of Europe, Africa and Asia) on one side and the New World (of the Americas) on the other. This is, after all, the interpretation of the famous “Dos Mundos” coins which were the currency of the period.

Here one sees twin pillars flanking two hemispheres topped by a crown. Spain was proclaiming that it was truly a global power. Then again, since the two figures in Loboc are practically identical, they may well stand for all heathen realms in general or Asia and the Americas in particular.

Shell meaning

Pozzo’s painting in Rome, also known as the Allegory of the Jesuits’ Missionary Work, helps clarify the meaning of the shell at the bottom part of the tableau in Bohol.

Professor Marianito Luspo of Holy Name University has suggested this aquatic metaphor may refer to the cockles that are carried by pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. In the Pozzo ceiling, however, it may be seen that all the different Continental Muses, except for Europa, are seated on a similar shell form.

What is being portrayed then, seems to be the conviction that the Missionary Work of the Jesuits consists of bringing the Word across oceans to overseas communities in Asia, Africa and the Americas.

An image which may help to support the idea that traversing vast bodies of water was central to the whole concept of evangelization may be found in one of the earliest maps of the Philippines produced by Fr. Murillo Velarde in 1744.

Here another Jesuit saint, Francis Xavier, is depicted riding a chariot pulled by horses with fish tails. Above this curious conveyance is a banner which proclaims him “Principe del Mar.”

An alternative reading may be discerned in no less than Botticelli’s resplendent The Birth of Venus, where a large clam is the vessel for the goddess’ arrival. Since the Blessed Virgin Mary is also seen as the New Venus, the shell could well be a reference to her. It can be noted that in Piero della Francesca’s Brera Madonna, the Virgin is shown beneath an awning shaped like a clam as well as an egg suspended by a string.

Weaving the different symbolic threads together, a possible message of the carvings in Loboc seems to be: St. Ignatius had been entrusted with a special mission to defend the Catholic Church. He, in turn, has challenged the members of his Society of Jesus to go forth, fearlessly negotiating perilous oceans, while protected by the Blessed Virgin, to bring the Church’s message to the befeathered natives of distant lands.


Different reading

Aside from what the Jesuits may have wanted to project, however, others may read the tableau differently. The women and, consequently, the peoples they represent may be seen as hapless subjects, to be converted, dominated and colonized for their own good.

Their quaint feathered headpieces are, in fact, emblems of their primitive status. This is the implication of the fact that, with the rise of the US, when the personification of America the Exotic becomes Columbia the Regal, she will exchange her avian accessory for a more classical circlet festooned with laurel leaves or even rays of light as in the Statue of Liberty.

This rich harvest of competing meanings is all the more reason the Loboc tableau must be preserved for future generations. Unfortunately, it was recently subjected to an overly vigorous cleaning, courtesy of a powerful water jet blaster which caused some abrasion.

Hopefully, more gentle techniques will be employed next time to ensure the survival of such a remarkable work of art. With care from the good people of Bohol and the Diocese of Tagbilaran, the Allegory of the Continents should continue to share its meanings long after other voices have been stilled.