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Dr. Jose Rizal Facts & Worksheets

Dr. Jose Rizal was a Filipino nationalist and polymath during the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines.

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Among the greatest heroes of the Philippines, Jose Rizal was a Filipino nationalist and polymath during the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines, famous for his novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal was one of the proponents of the Filipino Propaganda Movement that advocated political reforms against the Spanish government.

See the fact file below for more information on Dr. Jose Rizal or alternatively, you can download our 29-page Dr. Jose Rizal worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

Early Life

  • Born in Calamba, Laguna on June 19, 1861, Jose Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda was the son of Francisco Rizal Mercado y Alejandro and Teodora Alonso Realonda y Quintos, leaseholders of a hacienda and an accompanying rice farm owned by Dominicans. 
  • He had nine sisters and a brother, namely Saturnina, Paciano, Narcisa, Olympia, Lucia, Maria, Concepcion, Josefa, Trinidad, and Soledad.
  • Just like most Filipino families, the Rizals had traces of Japanese, Spanish, Malay, and even Negrito blood, on top of their Chinese roots.
  • As soon as he attended Ateneo Municipal de Manila, his brother Paciano and the Mercado family advised he drop his last three names from his full name to avoid suspicion (his brother, Paciano was related to the GomBurZa), thus endearing his name as “Jose Protasio Rizal.”
  • He joined a lot of poetry writing contests, impressing his professors with his familiarity with Castilian and other foreign languages. Rizal later wrote essays that criticized Spanish historical accounts of the pre-colonial Philippine societies.

Education

  • Before attending school in Manila, Rizal initially studied under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan, Laguna. He took the entrance examination in Colegio de San Juan de Letran, as per his father’s request, but he enrolled at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, where he graduated as one of the nine outstanding students in his class. 
  • He earned a land surveyor and assessor’s degree at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, and a Philosophy degree as his preparatory course in law at the University of Santo Tomas.
  • Upon learning that his mother was going blind, Rizal took up medicine at the medical school of Santo Tomas, having ophthalmology as his specialization. He attended his four-year practical training in medicine at Ospital de San Juan de Dios in Intramuros. 
  • In Berlin, he was elected as a member of the Berlin Ethnological Society and the Berlin Anthropological Society, which was supported by well-known German pathologist Rudolf Virchow. As a tradition, Rizal delivered a speech about the orthography and structure of the Tagalog language in German in April 1887 before the Anthropological Society. Before leaving Heidelberg, he left the town with a poem “A las Flores del Heidelberg”, which was both summoning and a prayer for the wellbeing of his native land and the unification of common values between the East and West.
  • In 1887, Rizal finished his eye specialization at Heidelberg under Professor Otto Becker. He used Hermann von Helmholtz’s newly invented ophthalmoscope to later treat his mother’s blindness. During his stay in Heidelberg, he wrote to his parents: “I spend half of the day studying 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 was a polymath and a polyglot; he showed great skills in science and the arts and spoke twenty-two different languages. Rizal painted, sketched, and did sculptures and wood carvings. He also wrote poems, essays, and novels. Noli Me Tangere and its sequel, El Filibusterismo, were his two well-known novels that criticized the Spanish government and inspired peaceful reformists and armed activists. 
  • In general, Rizal was an ophthalmologist, sculptor, painter, educator, farmer, historian, playwright, and journalist. He also showed his expertise in architecture, cartography, economics, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, dramatics, martial arts, fencing, and pistol shooting, on top of poetry and creative writing.

Personal Life and Relationships

  • Segunda Katigbak. Rizal met her when he was only 16 years old, dubbing her as his first love. They crossed paths when he visited his grandmother with his friend, Segunda’s brother Mariano. Segunda’s family was close to Rizal’s grandmother, and at the time of his visit, she was at his grandma’s house. Basically, it was an attraction at first sight and they became very close; however, Segunda got engaged to another man and Rizal had to stop pursuing her. He wrote about the incident “Ended, at an early house, my first love! My virgin heart will always mourn the reckless step it took on the flower-decked abyss. My illusions will return, yes, but indifferent, uncertain, ready for the first betrayal on the path of love.”
  • Leonor Valenzuela. Orang, as they call her, was literally the girl-next-door. At 14, she met Rizal when he was taking his second year in medical school at the University of Santo Tomas. During the courtship, he sent her private and secret love letters, which he wrote using invisible ink. Orang had to heat those letters to decode the hidden message. There were also some accounts saying he was courting Orang and Leonor Rivera at the same time, thus the need for the invisible ink.
  • Leonor Rivera. She and Rizal lived the tragedies of Shakespeare’s poems; she was his second cousin. Her parents highly disapproved of their relationship because of Rizal’s image as a “filibuster” or someone who engages in an unauthorized military expedition into a foreign country to support or provoke a revolution. In their letters, he called her “Taimis” to hide her identity; however, Leonor’s mother intercepted and kept most of the letters. In 1890, she wrote a letter to Rizal saying she was already engaged to British engineer Henry Kipping. Three years later, she died during second childbirth and it is believed that Rizal immortalized her through the character Maria Clara in Noli Me Tangere.
  • Consuelo Ortega Y Rey. Daughter of Manila Mayor Don Pablo Ortiga Y Rey, she met Rizal when he constantly hung out at his father’s house, which became a place where Filipino students would often get together. He showed hints towards her but was not that serious since he still had a relationship with Leonor Rivera at that time. Rizal was just lonely and wanted to fill the physical void left by Leonor. Although their case was modern parlance of a rebound fling, Rizal wrote a poem for her, entitled, “A La Señorita C.O.y.P.” 
  • Seiko Usui. In most of his diary entries, Rizal wrote how he was enchanted by the charisma of Japanese women. It was in 1888 when Rizal got captivated by O-Sei-San’s beauty, as she walked past the Spanish Legation gate in Japan. They were introduced to each other by a Japanese gardener, whom Rizal asked for help. As days went by, she taught him most of the Japanese traditions. They visited museums, galleries, and universities and talked a lot about the culture and the arts, code-switching from French to English. Unfortunately, their love affair lasted for two months since country-saving duties would call and Rizal had to depart for San Francisco and he never saw O-Sei-San again.
  • Gertrude Beckett. After O-Sei-San, Rizal went to London and met Gertrude, who was instantly head-over-heels with him. She helped him as he finished some of his famous sculptures, “Prometheus Bound”, “The Triumph of Death over Life”, and “The Triumph of Science over Death.” They had endearments – he called her Gettie, and she called him Pettie. In 1889, he left London and left her with carvings of the heads of the Beckett sisters.
  • Suzanne Jacoby. When he arrived in Belgium in 1890, Rizal happened to live at a boarding house owned by the Jacoby sisters, and there he met their niece named Suzanne. She was probably one of his flings. It was a one-sided love affair since it was said that Suzanne wrote him letters, although he may have replied once.
  • Nellie Boustead. She was the reason why Antonio Luna and Rizal got into a duel. As he learned of Leonor Rivera’s engagement, he thought of pursuing a romantic relationship with Nellie and even had intentions of marrying her. 
  • Although most of Rizal’s friends supported it, Nellie’s mother disapproved of Rizal and Nellie wanted him to convert to Protestantism, which he refused. Despite all the drama, they still ended up being friends. Before he left Paris in 1891, she wrote him a letter, “Now that you are leaving I wish you a happy trip and may you triumph in your undertakings, and above all, may the Lord look down on you with favor and guide your way giving you much blessings, and may you learn to enjoy! My remembrance will accompany you as also my prayers.”
  • Josephine Bracken. The woman whom Rizal married, Josephine stayed with him until his execution in 1896. She and her stepfather, George Taufer, sought the help of Rizal, who was already exiled back then, due to the latter’s blindness. Rizal and Josephine fell in love and made the announcement that they wanted to get married. Just like most of his great loves, their relationship was again complicated. No priest agreed to marry them for unknown reasons, but perhaps it was because of his stand in politics. Without a legal paper, they lived together and had a son named Francisco, who died hours after birth.

Exile in Dapitan

  • Upon going back to Manila in 1892, Rizal started a civic movement called La Liga Filipina, which advocated social reforms against the Spanish government through legal means, but was disbanded by the governor.
  • In July 1892, he was thrown to Dapitan. In his exile, he built a school, a hospital, and a water supply system, and taught and engaged in farming and horticulture. 
  • Rizal’s correspondence, professor Ferdinand Blumentritt, kept him in touch with some of his European friends and co-scientists who sent a lot of letters written in Dutch, French, German, and English.

Famous Works

  • Rizal’s works were mainly written in Spanish, while a few, such as Sa Mga Kababaihang Taga Malolos, were written in Tagalog and translated into several languages. 
  • In 1884, Rizal was known for giving a speech at Restaurante Ingles in Madrid following the victories of Filipino painters Juan Luna and Felix Hidalgo.
  • In 1887, his novel Noli Me Tangere (Latin for “Touch me not”) was published in Spanish. The inequities of Spanish Catholic friars inspired the novel during the colonization of the Philippines. Rizal’s work focused on probing the cancers of Filipino society under the Spanish. 
  • Published in Ghent in 1891, El filibusterismo or The Subversive was the sequel of Noli Me Tangere. Both novels centered on the character of Crisostomo Ibarra, who returned to the Philippines as “Simoun” to reform the country from corrupt Spaniards. 
  • Due to their nature, both novels were banned in some parts of the Philippines. These novels were used by the Spanish authority to link Rizal with Filipino revolutionaries, which later caused his exile to Dapitan. 
  • Both novels are part of the mandatory readings for high school students in the Philippines. Aside from English and Filipino, they are also translated into different regional dialects. 
  • The last work of Rizal was Mi Ultimo Adios or My Last Farewell, which many believed he wrote on the eve before his execution. 
  • Other famous works included A la Juventud Filipina (To the Filipino Youth), Kundiman, Filipinas Dentro de Cien años (The Philippines a Century Hence), and Junto Al Pasig (Beside Pasig River). 
  • The unfinished novel Makamisa was left with a 245-page collection of papers written in Lagueño Tagalog. Due to the writing style, Filipino historians such as Ambeth Ocampo believed that it was a sequel of El filibusterismo. 

Arrest and Trial

  • By 1896, the Katipunan started an uprising. Rizal volunteered as a doctor in Cuba and was allowed to leave by Governor-General Ramon Blanco to minister to the victims of yellow fever. Rizal and Josephine left Dapitan on August 1, 1896, with a letter of recommendation from Blanco.
  • He was arrested on his way to Cuba via Spain and was jailed in Barcelona on October 6, 1896. He was deported to Manila the same day to stand trial as he was implicated in the Philippine revolution through his involvement with the members of the Katipunan. During the whole passage, he was unchained, and no Spaniard laid a hand on him and had many chances to escape but refused.
  • While imprisoned in Fort Santiago, he submitted a manifesto disavowing the current revolution and declaring that the education of Filipinos and their attainment of a national identity were needed to achieve freedom.
  • He was tried before a court-martial for rebellion, sedition, and conspiracy, and was convicted on all three charges and sentenced to death. Governor-General Blanco, who was sympathetic to Rizal, had been kicked out of office.

Execution and Death

  • Rizal’s last words were those of Jesus Christ, “consummatum est” meaning “it is finished” before his execution on December 30, 1896.
  • His poem “Mi Ultimo Adios” was assumed to have been written days before his execution and was found hidden in an alcohol stove. 
  • His body was secretly buried in Paco Cemetery in Manila, having no identification on his grave. 
  • Exhumation of his remains in August 1898, under American rule, showed that he had been uncoffined, and his burial was not on sanctified grounds.
  • His sister Narcisa searched all possible gravesites and spotted a freshly turned earth at the grounds of the cemetery with guards posted at the gate. Thinking this could be her brother, she gave a gift to the caretaker to mark the site “RPJ”, Rizal’s initials in reverse.

Hero Status

  • First instituted on December 20, 1898, by President Emilio Aguinaldo, Rizal Day was first commemorated on December 30, 1898. It was national mourning for Jose Rizal and other victims of the Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines. 
  • Following the Spanish-American War in April 1898, the Americans colonized the Philippines. In 1901, Governor-General William Howard Taft named Rizal a national hero. On February 1, 1902, the Philippine Commission made December 30 a national holiday through Act No. 345. 
  • Aside from Rizal, the National Heroes Committee also recommended Andres Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Juan Luna, Melchora Aquino, Gabriela Silang, and Sultan Kudarat as national heroes. 
  • On June 9, 1948, President Elpidio Quirino signed Republic Act No. 229 into law which prohibited gambling activities every December 30. It banned cockfighting, jai-alai, and horse racing. The day’s solemnity was manifested by having the flag at half-staff all day. 
  • Today, Rizal Day, a national holiday, is commemorated every December 30.
  • Rizal Park is also known as Luneta Park. This park is one of the largest urban parks in Asia, covering an area of 58 hectares. Rizal Park is adjacent to the walled Spanish city of Intramuros. 
  • It is believed that a part of Rizal’s relic is enshrined in the monument.
  • Traditionally, the President and Vice President of the Philippine Republic honor the monument during Rizal Day.

Dr. Jose Rizal Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle that includes everything you need to know about Dr. Jose Rizal across 29 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use worksheets that are perfect for teaching about Dr. Jose Rizal who was a Filipino nationalist and polymath during the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Dr. Jose Rizal Facts
  • Who is Rizal?
  • Fact Check
  • Lovers
  • Most Important Literary Works
  • Ask Rizal
  • In Spanish and English
  • His View of Women
  • Notable Contributors
  • Novel to Comics
  • Quote From Rizal

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