Lumban: A Stage That Grew to a Tree

Christianity spread in the region, warts, and all. Without hesitation, natives submitted to the pale faced padres armed with the cross. Franciscan missionaries followed the Augustinians who served with Legazpi in 1577.

They could not miss the region’s earliest settlement− a village called Entablado. Entablado is a Spanish word. It means “stage.” Perhaps the Franciscans gave it its name. Padre Juan de Placencia made it their principal mission− a “stage” to rally forth to other settlements. Entablado rested besides Laguna de Bay at foot of scenic Sierra Madre Mountain.

Here, a sand dredger would discover in a place where the river and lake meet an ancient document dated 600 A.D. It is a copper plate the size of an ordinary bond paper. Etched on its surface were words that resemble an early legal document, clearing a certain Namwaran and his family of an incurred debt. The language used in the document was Kavi.

Entablado became part of the ministry of Franciscan priest Padre Juan de Plancia in 1578 after he had gone around the region following Salcedo’s possession of the province with minimal resistance. With the help of the villagers, missionaries built a church made of bamboo and thatch. The Franciscans dedicated it to their founder San Francisco de Assisi.

Entablado ultimately became a town. It was an established civil entity by September 22, 1590. A folktale says that when the Franciscans arrived, Lumbang trees profusely flourish in the village. Natives extract oil from its fruits. They use it for their lamps, to make soap, and as cure for diseases.

Like some town legends in Laguna, where names of towns buds from miscommunications between stiff-tongued Spaniards and ignorant natives, the folktale says that a Spanish Padre asked a native for the name of the town. The inhabitant replied “Lumbang,” but Spanish padres cannot enunciate the digraph “ng,” thus they pronounced it “Lumban,” without the “g.”

The building of the first stone church started in 1598. The construction immediately started after flood washed away the first church made of bamboo and thatch, and fire ruined the second church made of wood.

On October 9, 1600, Franciscans solemnly enthroned the Blessed Sacrament at the altar of the finished stone church. Now Lumban, which was a center of trade and commerce in the region, became also the center of missionary activities.

In 1606, Franciscan priest Padre Juan Santa Maria organized here a regional school called Escuela Musical teaching boys to sing liturgical hymns and play musical instruments. In 1608 to 1618, a rest house for old and sick Franciscan missionaries was established and maintained here.

After long years of hard labor and countless adversities Franciscan missionaries completed the stone church in 1675. An earthquake damaged the church five years later in 1680.