An afternoon at the Cebu cathedral museum

Saturday, December 3, 2011

IT PROVED to be an uplifting afternoon for a visit at the Cathedral Museum of Cebu on the occasion of its fifth anniversary celebration. Aside from a lecture by Regalado Trota Jose, there were an exciting exhibit of artifacts (titled “The Stone Age in San Remigio”) and
a blessing of heritage bells.

The exhibit, presented by the University of San Carlos (USC) Museum and the school’s Department of Anthropology, Sociology and History, as well as by the National Museum, showed artifacts belonging to a distant past in Cebu’s history, never before documented. It is the result of two excavation seasons this year in San Remigio town, one at the Parish Church of San Juan Nepomuceno and the other at Lapyahan Beach, both carried out by a team from USC, the University of Guam and the National Museum.

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USC archeologist Jojo Bersales said that 12 burials were recovered from the two diggings, and a tooth sample sent to the United States for carbon dating showed that the specimen is circa AD 410 to 550. Bersales concludes that this is the “oldest undisturbed archeological site in Cebu today.” Discovered in the site were 22 earthen potteries and metal tools, among them a strange clay object—perhaps a tool?—that the excavating team has not been able to identify.

Bersales notes that there have been several findings of Iron Age artifacts in Bohol, but this is the first discovery in Cebu. The Iron or Metal Age in the Philippines, he adds, is circa 500 BC-900 AD, “long before Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and Arab traders started coming to the islands to barter.”

The exhibit, Bersales says, will be in the Cathedral Museum for two weeks, and will then be moved to the Museo Sugbo and from there to other museums in the province, unlike the heritage bells which will be permanently in the Centennial Garden of the Cathedral Museum. There are five bells the museum has acquired from three parish churches: from San Remigio, Daan Bantayan and Santa Fe. Casting date of these five bells are 1850, 1866, 1878, 1895 and 1959.

The bells were lying unused, perhaps because of a crack, after they had served the parishioners, perhaps telling them of an impending danger, of a happy or sad occasion, of inviting them to come for Mass, of reminding them that it was time for the Angelus. The uses of these church bells were beautifully demonstrated by the students and teachers of Mary Rose Villacastin’s Our Lady of Joy School.

Both the exhibit and the heritage bells, not to mention the museum itself, reminded one gently of a past that should be treasured but is often forgotten in the rush of moving forward, of being “with it”…and yet and yet, where would we be today without the growth and development, the struggles and the joys of ages past?