1848, June 28
Rizal’s parents married in Kalamba, La Laguna: Francisco Rizal-Mercado y Alejandra (born in Biñan, April 18, 1818) and Teodora Morales Alonso-Realonda y Quintos (born in Sta. Cruz, Manila, Nov. 14, 1827).
1861, June 19
Rizal born, their seventh child.
1861, June 22
Christened as José Protasio Rizal-Mercado y Alonso-Realonda
1870, age 9
In school at Biñan under Master Justiniano Aquin Cruz.
1871, age 10
In Kalamba public school under Master Lucas Padua.
1872, June 10, age 11
Examined in San Juan de Letran college, Manila, which, during the Spanish time, as part of Sto. Tomás University, controlled entrance to all higher institutions.
1872, June 26
Entered the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, then a public school, as a day scholar.
1875, June 14, age 14
Became a boarder in the Ateneo.
1876, March 23, age 15
Received the Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree, with highest honors, from Ateneo de Manila.
1876, June
Entered Sto. Tomás University in the Philosophy course.
1877, June, age 16.
Matriculated in the medical course. Won Liceo Artistico-Literario prize, in poetical competition for “Indians and Mestizos”, with the poem “To the Philippine Youth”.
1877, Nov. 29
Awarded diploma of honorable mention and merit by the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country, Amigos del País, for the prize poem.
1880, April 23, age 19
Received Licco Artístico-Literario diploma of honorable mention for the allegory, “The Council of the Gods”, in competition open to “Spaniards, mestizos and Indians”. Unjustly deprived of the first prize.
1880, Dec. 8.
Operetta “On the Banks of the Pasig” produced.
1881, age 20.
Submitted winning wax model design for commemorative medal for the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country centennial.
Wounded in the back for not saluting a Guardia Civil lieutenant whom he had not seen. The authorities ignored his complaint.
1882, May 3, age 21
Secretly left Manila with the passport of a cousin, taking at Singapore a French mail steamer for Marseilles and entering Spain at Port Bou by railroad. His brother, Paciano Mercado, furnished the money.
1882, June.
Absence noted at Sto. Tomás University, which owned the Kalamba estate. Rizal’s father was compelled to prove that he had no knowledge of his son’s plan in order to hold the land on which he was the University’s tenant.
1882, June 15
Arrived in Barcelona.
1882, Nov. 3
Began studies in Madrid.
1885, June 19, age 24
Received degree of Licentiate in Medicine with honors from Central University of Madrid.
Clinical assistant to Dr. L. de Weckert, a Paris oculist.
Visited Universities of Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Berlin.
1887, Feb. 21, age 26.
Finished the novel Noli Me Tangere in Berlin.
Traveled in Austria, Switzerland and Italy.
1887, July 3
Sailed from Marseilles.
1887, Aug. 5
Arrived in Manila. Traveled in nearby provinces with a Spanish lieutenant, detailed by the Governor-General, as escort.
1888, Feb
Sailed for Japan via Hong Kong.
1888, Feb. 28 to April 13, age 27
A guest at the Spanish Legation, Tokyo, and traveling in Japan.
1888, April-May
Traveling in the United States.
1888, May 24
In London, studying in the British Museum to edit Morga’s 1609 Philippine History.
1889, March, age 28
In Paris, publishing Morga’s History. Published “The Philippines A Century Hence” in La Solidaridad, a Filipino fortnightly review, first of Barcelona and later of Madrid.
1890, February to July, age 29
In Belgium and Holland, finishing El Filibusterismo (The Reign of Greed), which is the sequel to Noli Me Tangere.
Published “The Indolence of the Filipino” in La Solidaridad.
1890, August 4
Returned to Madrid to confer with his countrymen on the Philippine situation, then constantly growing worse.
1891, January 27
Left Madrid for France.
1891, November, age 30
Arranging for a Filipino agricultural colony in British North Borneo.
Practiced medicine in Hong Kong.
1892, June 26, age 31
Returned to Manila under Governor-General Despujol’s safe conduct pass.
Organized a mutual aid economic society: La Liga Filipina.
1892, July 6
Ordered deported to Dapitan, but the decree and charges were kept secret from him.
Taught school and conducted a hospital during his exile, patients coming from China coast ports for treatment. Fees thus earned were used to beautify the town. Arranged a water system and had the plaza lighted.
1896, August 1, age 35
Left Dapitan en route to Spain as a volunteer surgeon for the Cuban yellow fever hospitals. Carried letters of recommendation from Governor-General Blanco.
1896, August 7 to September 3
On Spanish cruiser Castilla in Manila Bay.
Sailed for Spain on Spanish mail steamer and just after leaving Port Said was confined to his cabin as a prisoner on cabled order from Manila. (Rizal’s enemies to secure the appointment of a governor-general subservient to them, the servile Polavieja had purchased Governor-General Blanco’s promotion.)
1896, October 5
Placed in Montjuich Castle dungeon on his arrival in Barcelona and the same day re-embarked for Manila. Friends and countrymen in London by cable made an unsuccessful effort for a Habeas Corpus writ at Singapore. On arrival in Manila was placed in Fort Santiago dungeon.
1890, December 3
Charged with treason, sedition and forming illegal societies, the prosecution arguing that he was responsible for the deeds of those who read his writings.
1896, December 12
Wrote the poem “My Last Farewell” (later concealed in an alcohol cooking lamp) after appearing in a courtroom where the judges made no effort to check those who cried out for his death.
1896, December 15
Wrote an address to insurgent Filipinos to lay down their arms because their insurrection was at that time hopeless. Address not made public but added to the charges against him.
1896, December 26
Formally condemned to death by a Spanish court martial.
Pi y Margall, who had been president of the Spanish Republic, pleaded with the Prime Minister for Rizal’s life, but the Queen Regent could not forgive his having referred in one of his writings to the murder by, and suicide of, her relative, Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria.
1896, December 30, age 35 years, 6 months, 11 days
Married in Fort Santiago death cell to Josephine Bracken, Irish, the adopted daughter of a blind American who came to Dapitan from Hong Kong for treatment.
Shot on the Luneta, Manila, at 7:03 a.m., and buried in a secret grave in Paco Cemetery. (Entry of his death was made in the Paco Church Register among suicides.)
1887, January
Commemorated by Spanish Free-masons who dedicated a tablet to his memory, in their Grand Lodge hall in Madrid, as a martyr to Liberty.
1898, August
Filipinos who placed over it in Paco cemetery, a cross inscribed simply “December 30, 1896”, sought his grave, immediately after the American capture of Manila. Since his death his countrymen had never spoken his name, but all references had been to “The Dead”.
1898, December 20
President Aguinaldo, of the Philippine Revolutionary Government, proclaimed December 30th as a day of national mourning.
1898, December 30
Filipinos held Memorial services at which time American soldiers on duty carried their arms reversed.
1911, June 19
Birth semi-centennial observed in all public schools by an act of the Philippine Legislature.
1912, December 30
Rizal’s ashes transferred to the Rizal Mausoleum
on the Luneta with impressive public ceremonies.
Rizal was a 6th-generation patrilineal descendant of Domingo Lam-co (Chinese:
柯仪南; pinyin: Ke Yinan), a Chinese immigrant entrepreneur who sailed to the Philippines from Jinjiang, Quanzhou in the mid-17th
century. Lam-co married Inez de la Rosa, a Sangley native of Luzon. To free his descendants from the anti-Chinese animosity of the Spanish authorities, Lam-co changed the family surname to the Spanish surname "Mercado" (market) to indicate their Chinese merchant roots. In 1849, Governor-General Narciso Claveria ordered all Filipino families to choose new surnames from a list of Spanish family names. José's 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, or as José had described him, "a friend of the family". However, the name change caused confusion in the business affairs of Francisco, most of which were begun under the old name. After a few years, he settled on the name "Rizal Mercado" as a compromise, but usually just used the original surname "Mercado". Upon enrolling at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, José 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 "José Protasio Rizal". Of this, Rizal writes: "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!" This was to enable him to travel freely and disassociate him from his brother, who had gained notoriety with his earlier links with Filipino priests who were sentenced to death as subversives. From early childhood, José and Paciano were already advancing unheard-of political ideas of freedom and individual rights which infuriated the
authorities. Despite the name change, Jose, as "Rizal" soon distinguishes himself in poetry writing contests, impressing his professors with his facility with Castilian and other foreign languages, and later, in writing essays that are 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..." José became the focal point by which the family became known, at least from the point of view of colonial authorities.
Aside from indigenous Filipino and Chinese ancestry, recent genealogical research has found that José had traces of Spanish, and Japanese ancestry. His maternal great-great-grandfather (Teodora's great-grandfather) was Eugenio Ursua, a descendant of Japanese settlers, who married a Filipina named Benigna (surname unknown). These two gave birth to Regina Ursua who married a Sangley mestizo from Pangasinán named Atty. Manuel de Quintos, Teodora's grandfather. Their daughter Brígida de Quintos married a Spanish mestizo named Lorenzo Alberto Alonso, the father of Teodora. Austin Craig mentions Lakandula, Rajah of Tondo at the time of the Spanish incursion, also as an ancestor
Rizal first studied under the tutelage of Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna. He was sent to Manila and enrolled at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila. He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1877 and graduated as one of the nine students in his class declared sobresaliente 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 the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Philosophy and Letters where he studied Philosophy and Letters. Upon learning that his mother was going blind, he decided to study medicine specializing in ophthalmology at the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Medicine and Surgery but did not complete the program claiming discrimination made by the Spanish Dominican friars against the Filipino
students.
Without his parents' knowledge and consent, but secretly supported by his brother Paciano, he traveled alone to Europe: Madrid in May 1882 and studied medicine at the Universidad Central de Madrid where he earned the degree, Licentiate in Medicine. His education continued at the University of Paris and the University of Heidelberg where he earned a second doctorate. 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 Prof. Otto Becker. There he used the newly invented opthalmoscope (invented by the famous Professor 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, of the disease of the eye. Twice a week, I go to the bierbrauerie, or beerhall, to speak German with my student friends.” He lived in a Karlstraße boarding house then moved to Ludwigsplatz. There, he met Reverend Karl Ullmer and stayed with them in Wilhemsfeld, where he wrote the last few chapters of “Noli Me Tangere”
A plaque marks the Heidelberg building where he trained with Professor Becker, while in Wilhemsfeld, a smaller version of the Rizal Park with his bronze statue stands and the street where he lived was also renamed after him. A sandstone fountain in Pastor Ullmer’s house garden where Rizal lived in
Wilhemsfeld, stands.
Rizal's multifacetedness was described by his German friend, Dr. Adolf Meyer, as
"stupendous." Documented studies show him to be a polymath with the ability to master various skills and
subjects. He was an ophthalmologist, 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 a Freemason
