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Early life

Jos Rizal's baptismal register

Francisco Mercado Rizal (18181897)

Jos Rizal was born in 1861 to Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonso 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 by the Dominicans. Both their families had adopted the
additional surnames of Rizal and Realonda in 1849, after Governor General Narciso Clavera y
Zalda decreed the adoption ofSpanish surnames among the Filipinos for census purposes (though
they already had Spanish names).

Like many families in the Philippines, the Rizals were of mixed origin. Jos's patrilineal lineage could
be traced back to Fujian in China through his father's ancestor Lam-Co, a Chinese merchant who
immigrated to the Philippines in the late 17th century.[13][14][note 1][15]Lam-Co traveled to Manila from Amoy,
China, possibly to avoid the famine or plague in his home district, and more probably to escape
the Manchu invasion. He finally 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 an indigenous Philippines resident. On his
mother's side, Rizal's ancestry included Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Tagalog blood. His
mother's lineage can be traced to the affluent Florentina family of Chinese mestizo families
originating in Baliuag, Bulacan.[16]

From an early age, Jos showed a precocious intellect. He learned the alphabet from his mother at
3, and could read and write at age 5.[14] 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 "Jos 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!"[17] This was to enable him to travel freely and
disassociate him from his brother, who had gained notoriety with his earlier links to Filipino
priests Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora(popularly known as Gomburza) who had
been accused and executed for treason.

Rizal's house in Calamba, Laguna.

Despite the name change, Jos, 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. Indeed, by 1891, the year he finished his El Filibusterismo, this 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..."[17]

Education

Rizal, 11 years old, a student at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila

Rizal first studied under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Bian, Laguna, before he was sent to Manila.
[18]
As to his father's request, he took the entrance examination inColegio de San Juan de Letran but
he then enrolled at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila and graduated as one of the nine students in his
class declaredsobresaliente or outstanding. He continued his education at the Ateneo Municipal de
Manila to obtain a land surveyor and assessor's degree, and at the same time at theUniversity of
Santo Tomas where he did take up a preparatory course in law.[19]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.

Rizal as a student at theUniversity of Santo Tomas

Without his parents' knowledge and consent, but secretly supported by his brother Paciano, he
traveled alone to Madrid, Spain in May 1882 and studied medicine at the Universidad Central de
Madrid where 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 the
famous 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 left Heidelberg a poem, "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 in 1887 his eye specialization under the renowned
professor, Otto Becker. There he used the newly invented ophthalmoscope (invented by Hermann
von Helmholtz) to later operate on his own 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 bierbrauerie, or beerhall, to speak German with my student friends." He lived in a
Karlstrae boarding house then moved to Ludwigsplatz. There, he met Reverend Karl Ullmer and
stayed with them in Wilhelmsfeld, where he wrote the last few chapters of Noli Me Tngere.
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 Tngere and its sequel, El filibusterismo.[note 2][9] These social
commentaries during the Spanish colonization 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][20][21]

Rizal's multifacetedness was described by his German friend, Dr. Adolf Bernhard Meyer, as
"stupendous."[note 5]Documented studies show him to be a polymath with the ability to master various
skills and subjects.[20][22][22][23] He was anophthalmologist, 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. He was also a Freemason, joining Acacia Lodge No. 9
during his time in Spain and becoming a Master Mason in 1884.

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