The 1813 document presented here comes from the archival collection of the Roman Catholic parish of Patrocinio de Maria in Boljoon, a town in the Philippine province of Cebu. The parish archive contains church records from the late eighteenth century to the present among which are baptism, marriage, and death registers. Mostly written in the local language—Cebuano Visayan—the document is probably an order from the Bishop of Cebu that was disseminated among the different parishes where it would be copied for future reference. In the case of Boljoon, the order was transcribed in a bound ledger that also contained other records including a 1795 inventory. Though it is assumed that the order was for all the parishes of the diocese, it is also possible that it was directed solely at Boljoon.

The initial lines in Spanish introduce the author as the Joaquín Encabo de la Virgen de Sopetrán, Bishop of Cebu. Encabo was born in Jarandilla de la Vera in Caceres, Spain on 15 August 1740. He was ordained a priest with the Augustinian Recollects in 1768. He was selected bishop of Cebu in 1803 but was only confirmed as such in 1808, holding his post until his death in 1818.

In his order, Bishop Encabo is reprimanding certain members of his flock who have resorted to the practice of digging up the bones of their ancestors presumably to hold rituals for a secondary burial. These rituals have long been practiced in the Philippines as suggested by archaeological data and by ethnographic surveys.