José Rizal

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (Spanish: [xoˈse riˈsal, -ˈθal], Tagalog: [hoˈse ɾiˈsal]; June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896) was a Filipino nationalist, writer, and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is popularly considered to be a national hero of the Philippines. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement in the 1880s, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain.

By the early 1890s, amidst the Calamba land dispute, Rizal grew more separatist in his stance, conflicting with several colleagues in the Propaganda Movement. On July 6, 1892, a few days after establishing the secret society La Liga Filipina within Manila, Rizal was arrested by Spanish authorities for alleged possession of a seditious document, being banished to Dapitan in the island of Mindanao. During his exile, Rizal met Josephine Bracken, an Irish woman who later became his common-law wife.

After four years in exile, Rizal left Dapitan for Cuba in August 1896 with the permission of Governor General Ramón Blanco, intending to serve as a doctor in the Spanish territory. At a stopover in Barcelona, he was arrested on October 6, 1896 after the Philippine Revolution broke out; the revolution was inspired by his writings. In December 1896, he was executed by the Spanish colonial government for the crime of rebellion. Though he was not actively involved in its planning or conduct, he ultimately approved of its goals, which eventually resulted in Philippine independence.

Rizal is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential figures in the Philippines, and has been recommended to be so honored by an officially empaneled National Heroes Committee. However, no law, executive order or proclamation has been enacted or issued officially proclaiming any Filipino historical figure as a national hero. He wrote the novels Noli Me Tángere (1887) and El filibusterismo (1891), which together are taken as a national epic, in addition to numerous poems and essays.

The Mercado family adopted Rizal as a secondary surname following a decree by Governor-General Narciso Clavería y Zaldúa that mandated that Filipinos adopt Spanish surnames from a list known as the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos in 1849. The family continued to use their surname Mercado. The family's patrilineal lineage traced back to Lam-co, a Chinese merchant from Fujian who immigrated to the Philippines in 1697 and settled in Calamba.

On his mother's side, Rizal's lineage included the Florentina family, Chinese mestizos who originated in Baliuag, Bulacan, and the Ochoa family, a Spanish line from Cavite. This maternal heritage also included Japanese ancestry through his great-great-grandfather, Eugenio Ursua, as well as Rizal's native Tagalog roots. The family resided in a bahay na bato, an architectural style then associated with the Filipino elite that was situated near the town plaza, a proximity that historian John Ray Ramos states indicated the family's social and political influence.

José Mercado was born on June 19, 1861, in Calamba, Laguna. The seventh child of Francisco Rizal Mercado and Teodora Alonso Realonda y Quintos, he was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church on June 22 at the town's parish by Father Rufino Collantes. His parents were leaseholders of a hacienda and a rice farm owned by the Dominican Order. Teodora taught him the alphabet at age three, and by five he could read and write. She instructed him in prayer and poetry, and required him to help with household chores.

His favorite sister was Concepcion, who died in 1865 at the age of three. Historian Austin Craig identified this event as Rizal's first experience of sorrow and his first realization that life was "a constant struggle." Rizal owned a black dog named Usman and a pony named Alipato, which was a gift from his father for his seventh birthday. He alternated between walking and riding, a habit he continued in his later travels. Despite this loss, Rizal's childhood was by most accounts a happy one, marked by the equal treatment his parents extended to all their children.

According to historian Austin Craig, the Mercado household was exposed to a world beyond Calamba that few provincial families encountered. The Mercado residence served as a frequent stopping point for civil, military, and church authorities traveling to nearby health resorts, where Rizal's mother, Teodora, attended to the guests. At age seven, Rizal went on his first pilgrimage to Antipolo, marking his first "real journey" according to Craig. His family visited the mountain shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage, where Rizal obtained a print of the Virgin Mary that he kept in his wooden chest as a souvenir. Rizal developed an early curiosity, reading from the family's extensive library and learning folk stories from his nanny Aquilina.

Rizal first studied under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in Biñan due to the death of his private tutor. He did not want to go away from Calamba, with Raul Fernandez stating that a day staying back at his hometown "seemed to him as a day spent in heaven." His school was at the house of his teacher, a nipa house close to his aunt's house. His teacher was knowledgeable, yet strict. Rizal attempted to improve his knowledge in Latin and Spanish. Rizal was not fond of living in Biñan, stating that it was "large and rich, but ugly and dismal." Memorization was much used in teaching and lessons were interspersed with punishments. According to Rafael Palma, he felt humiliated and humbled. Due to one of his classmates mocking him for speaking little Spanish, Rizal was challenged to a fight, which he later won. This gave him the reputation of being a small yet strong boy.

Rizal would wake up early and attend the 4:00 a.m. mass. If there was no mass, he would study instead. After, he would eat breakfast and go to class. He left school at 10:00 a.m. for lunch. He would once again, study. He would return to school at 2:00 p.m. and leave three hours later, then play for a short moment with his friends. He would return home to eat dinner and play again. In 1870, upon receiving a letter from his family, Rizal left Biñan using a steamboat named Talim. After spending Christmas with his family, it was decided that he would not return to Biñan, but enroll in secondary school in Manila.

Rizal's family was prominent, being connected with the local friars, the Alcalde of Laguna. Nobody in Calamba owned land; the owners were the Dominican friars. When the residents were having financial problems, the friars raised the rent—a decision Francisco Mercado opposed. On February 17, 1872, the Gomburza priests were executed. Due to the family opposing the government, Rizal's brother, Paciano, was connected to the execution. As Rizal was waiting for July, the month he would study in Manila, Jose Alberto, the cousin of Teodora, alleged that Teodora attempted to poison him. Due to Alberto being one of the richest in Biñan, the alcalde placed Teodora in prison. She had to walk 30 kilometres (19 miles) to the nearest prison barefoot. This caused Rizal to lose trust in men. After the case continued for two and a half years, Teodora was finally released.

Rizal enrolled at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila after his brother sought help from one of his friends. The school originally rejected him since the academic term already started. Upon enrolling at the school, he dropped the last three names that made up his full name, on the advice of his brother and the Mercado family, rendering his name as "José 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!"

Before he joined Ateneo, his knowledge of Spanish was little. His understanding of the language improved tremendously during the academic term, giving him the title of class "emperor". His love for books also grew. During the first year in Ateneo, specifically the first semester, he won first prize in a religious picture contest. He spent his lunch break taking private lessons in Spanish at the Santa Isabel College. In the second semester, he did not try hard to retain his scholarship—often resenting some remarks of his professor—yet gained an "excellent" grade.

In his second year in Ateneo, he was again the class "emperor" and excelled in all of his subjects, causing him to be rewarded with a gold medal. In March 1874, he went back to Calamba for his summer vacation. In his third year in Ateneo, he became an "interne" while topping all of his classes and gaining five gold medals. He returned to Calamba for his summer vacation. Rizal returned to Manila in June 1876 for his last year in Ateneo and was considered as the most brilliant in his school. Rizal graduated on March 23, 1877, and gained a high school certificate as a Bachelor in Arts. He gained numerous prizes and awards.

Rizal went to the University of Santo Tomas for tertiary studies. In April 1877, he was officially enrolled in the school, taking a course in Philosophy and Letters. He was originally uncertain on which course he would take, but picked the course due to his father wanting him to. In the university, he joined numerous literary contests. Simultaneously, he took a vocational course in land surveying in Ateneo, excelling in all subjects.

He had numerous extracurricular activities in Ateneo, being an officer of the Marian Congregation, and part of the Society of Natural Sciences. When Rizal was 17, he passed the final examination, but the title was issued to him on November 25, 1881, due to him being underage. Upon learning that his mother was going blind, he decided to switch to medicine at the medical school of Santo Tomas during his second year in the university. He stayed in Santo Tomas for an additional four years.

Rizal wrote numerous literary works during his stay in the University of Santo Tomas and Ateneo. A La Juventud Filipina (transl. To the Filipino Youth), Rizal's submission and the winning poem of a contest held by the Artistic-Literary Lyceum of Manila in 1879, encouraged the youth to work hard and to create a bright future. El Consejo de Dioses (transl. The Council of the Gods), the winning entry of a contest held by the Lyceum of Manila in 1880, is a play located in Mount Olympus where Greek gods contend on the best moral writer. Junto Al Pasig (transl. By the Pasig River), a zarzuela performed in Ateneo, discusses a boy being tempted by Satan to leave the Catholic faith. The boy refused to give up his faith.

In May 1882, without his parents' knowledge and consent, but secretly supported by his brother Paciano and his uncle Antonio, he traveled alone to Spain to study. Rizal left on May 1: Paciano woke him up in dawn to travel to Biñan, then to Manila. He bid goodbye to his parents, who assumed he was traveling to Manila and not abroad, then left using a carromata—a two-wheeled passenger vehicle drawn by a single pony. After switching carromatas twice, Rizal arrived in Manila. On May 2, he visited his friends, then was escorted to the Pasig River the next day.

Rizal boarded the steamship Salvadora which was directed to Singapore. Upon arriving in Singapore, he embarked on the French ship Djemnah, headed to Europe. The ship made stopovers at Colombo, Sri Lanka and traversed the Suez Canal. On June 12, the ship docked in Marseille. Rizal then boarded a train to Spain, where he arrived on June 16.

In November 1882, he enrolled at the Universidad Central de Madrid and joined two courses: Medicine and Philosophy and Letters. He took private lessons in French, German, and English while practicing painting, sculpting, fencing, and shooting. While in Spain, Rizal joined the Circulo Hispano-Filipino—a reform organization composed of Filipinos and Spaniards—and created the poem Me Piden Versos upon their request. Rizal lived on a tight budget, purchasing books whenever he saved some money. As Rizal was instructed not to work to focus on his studies, he often relied on the allowance bestowed upon him by Paciano. The allowance was not enough, causing Rizal to sometimes become hungry. During this time, Rizal could not take a bath as bathing had a fee.

In summer vacation, Rizal went to Paris, France and stayed from June 17 to August 20, 1883. He visited numerous landmarks, including the Place de la Concorde and the Bois de Boulogne, and spent hours in museums and botanical gardens. On June 24, 1884, Rizal attended a celebratory party for Juan Luna and Félix Resurrección Hidalgo after they won medals in the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes (transl. National Exposition of Fine Arts) in Madrid. At the party, he offered a toast to the two artists, stating that greatness was not bounded by one's skin color or place of birth. He further stated that "anybody can be a genius". Rizal's speech was publicized by the Los Dos Mundos magazine, a popular one. Through this, Rizal became famous as Spaniards supporting the independence of Filipinos validated his speech.

At Heidelberg, the 25-year-old Rizal completed his eye specialization in 1887 under the professor Otto Becker. There he used the newly invented ophthalmoscope, invented by Hermann von Helmholtz, to later operate on his 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 bierbraueriei, 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 Wilhelmsfeld. There he wrote the last few chapters of Noli Me Tángere, his first novel, published in Spanish later that year.

José Rizal's life is one of the most documented of 19th-century Filipinos due to the vast and extensive records written by and about him. Almost everything in his short life is recorded somewhere. He was a regular diarist and prolific letter writer, and much of this material has survived. His biographers have faced challenges in translating his writings because of Rizal's habit of switching from one language to another.

Biographers drew largely from his travel diaries with his comments by a young Asian encountering the West for the first time (other than in Spanish manifestations in the Philippines). These diaries included Rizal's later trips, home and back again to Europe through Japan and the United States, and, finally, through his self-imposed exile in Hong Kong.

In one account detailing Rizal's 1887 visit to Vienna, Maximo Viola wrote that Rizal had succumbed to a 'lady of the camellias'. Viola, a friend of Rizal's and an early financier of Noli Me Tángere, was alluding to Alexandre Dumas's 1848 novel, The Lady of the Camellias, about a man who fell in love with a courtesan. While noting Rizal's affair, Viola provided no details about its duration or nature.

Leonor Rivera is thought to have inspired the character of María Clara in Noli Me Tángere and El Filibusterismo. Rivera and Rizal first met in Manila when Rivera was 14 years old and Rizal was 16. When Rizal left for Europe on May 3, 1882, Rivera was 16 years old. Their correspondence began after Rizal left a poem for her.

Their correspondence helped Rizal stay focused on his studies in Europe. They employed codes in their letters because Rivera's mother did not favor Rizal. In a letter from Mariano Katigbak dated June 27, 1884, she referred to Rivera as Rizal's "betrothed". Katigbak described Rivera as having been greatly affected by Rizal's departure, and frequently sick because of insomnia.

Before Rizal returned to the Philippines on August 5, 1887, Rivera and her family had moved back to Dagupan, Pangasinan. Rizal's father forbade the young man to see Rivera in order to avoid putting her family in danger. Rizal was already labeled by the criollo elite as a filibustero or subversive because of his novel Noli Me Tángere. Rizal wanted to marry Rivera while he was still in the Philippines because she had been so faithful to him. Rizal asked permission from his father one more time before his second departure from the Philippines, but he never met her again.

In 1888, Rizal stopped receiving letters from Rivera for a year, although he continued to write to her. Rivera's mother favored an Englishman named Henry Kipping, a railway engineer who fell in love with Rivera. The news of Leonor Rivera's marriage to Kipping devastated Rizal.

His European friends kept almost everything he gave them, including doodlings on pieces of paper. He had visited Spanish liberal, Pedro Ortiga y Pérez, and impressed the man's daughter, Consuelo, who wrote about Rizal. In her diary, she said Rizal had regaled them with his wit, social graces, and sleight-of-hand tricks. In London, during his research on Antonio de Morga's writings, he became a regular guest in the home of Reinhold Rost of the British Museum, who referred to him as "a gem of a man." The family of Karl Ullmer, pastor of Wilhelmsfeld, and the Blumentritts in Germany saved even napkins that Rizal had made sketches and notes on. They were ultimately bequeathed to the Rizal family to form a treasure trove of memorabilia.

In February 1895, Rizal, 33, met Josephine Bracken, an Irish woman from Hong Kong. She had accompanied her blind adoptive father, George Taufer, to have his eyes checked by Rizal. After frequent visits, Rizal and Bracken fell in love. They applied to marry but, because of Rizal's reputation from his writings and political stance, the local priest Father Obach would hold the ceremony only if Rizal could get permission from the Bishop of Cebu. As Rizal refused to return to practicing Catholicism, the bishop refused permission for an ecclesiastical marriage.

After accompanying her father to Manila on her return to Hong Kong, and before heading back to Dapitan to live with Rizal, Josephine introduced herself to members of Rizal's family in Manila. His mother suggested a civil marriage, which she believed to be a lesser sacrament but less sinful to Rizal's conscience than making any sort of political retraction in order to gain permission from the bishop. Rizal and Josephine lived as husband and wife in a common-law marriage in Talisay in Dapitan. The couple had a son, but he lived only a few hours. Rizal named him after his father Francisco.

In 1890, Rizal, 29, left Paris for Brussels as he was preparing for the publication of his annotations of Antonio de Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (1609). He lived in the boarding house of the sisters, Catherina and Suzanna Jacoby, who had a niece Suzanna ("Thil"), age 16. Historian Gregorio F. Zaide says that Rizal had "his romance with Suzanne Jacoby, 45, the petite niece of his landladies." Belgian Jean Paul Verstraeten, however, believed that Rizal had a romance with the 17-year-old niece, Suzanna Thil, as his other liaisons were all with young women. He found records clarifying their names and ages.

Rizal's Brussels stay was short-lived; he moved to Madrid, giving the young Suzanna a box of chocolates. She wrote to him in French: "After your departure, I did not take the chocolate. The box is still intact as on the day of your parting. Don't delay too long writing us because I wear out the soles of my shoes for running to the mailbox to see if there is a letter from you. There will never be any home in which you are so loved as in that in Brussels, so, you little bad boy, hurry up and come back…" In 2007, Jean Paul Verstraeten, after convincing the home owner in Brussels arranged for an historical marker honoring Rizal to be placed at the house (see I-Witness Little Bad Boy: Binatang Rizal sa Europe).

He published Dimanche des Rameaux (Palm Sunday), a socio-political essay, in Berlin on November 30, 1886. He discussed the significance of Palm Sunday in socio-political terms:

"This entry [of Jesus into Jerusalem] decided the fate of the jealous priests, the Pharisees, of all those who believed themselves the only ones who had the right to speak in the name of God, of those who would not admit the truths said by others because they have not been said by them. That triumph, those hosannas, all those flowers, those olive branches, were not for Jesus alone; they were the songs of the victory of the new law, they were the canticles celebrating the dignification of man, the liberty of man, the first mortal blow directed against despotism and slavery". Shortly after its publication, Rizal was summoned by the German police, who suspected him of being a French spy.

The content of Rizal's writings changed considerably in his two most famous novels, Noli Me Tángere, published in Berlin in 1887, and El Filibusterismo, published in Ghent in 1891. For the latter, he used funds borrowed from his friends. These writings angered both the Spanish colonial elite and many educated Filipinos due to their symbolism. They are critical of Spanish friars and the power of the Church. Rizal's friend Ferdinand Blumentritt, a professor and historian born in Austria-Hungary, wrote that the novel's characters were drawn from life and that every episode could be repeated on any day in the Philippines. By 1891, his 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..."

Upon his return to Manila in 1892, he formed a civic movement called La Liga Filipina. The league advocated these moderate social reforms through legal means, but was disbanded by the governor. At that time, he had already been declared an enemy of the state by the Spanish authorities because of the publication of his novel.

Rizal was implicated in the activities of the nascent rebellion and in July 1892, was deported to Dapitan in the province of Zamboanga, a peninsula of Mindanao. There he built a school, a hospital and a water supply system, and taught and engaged in farming and horticulture.

The boys' school, which taught in Spanish, and included English as a foreign language (considered a prescient if unusual option then) was conceived by Rizal and antedated Gordonstoun with its aims of inculcating resourcefulness and self-sufficiency in young men. They would later enjoy successful lives as farmers and honest government officials. One, a Muslim, became a datu, and another, José Aseniero, who was with Rizal throughout the life of the school, became Governor of Zamboanga.

In Dapitan, the Jesuits mounted a great effort to secure his return to the fold led by Fray Francisco de Paula Sánchez, his former professor, who failed in his mission. The task was resumed by Fray Pastells, a prominent member of the Order. In a letter to Pastells, Rizal sails close to the deism familiar to us today.

We are entirely in accord in admitting the existence of God. How can I doubt His when I am convinced of mine. Who so recognizes the effect recognizes the cause. To doubt God is to doubt one's own conscience, and in consequence, it would be to doubt everything; and then what is life for? Now then, my faith in God, if the result of a ratiocination may be called faith, is blind, blind in the sense of knowing nothing. I neither believe nor disbelieve the qualities which many attribute to Him; before theologians' and philosophers' definitions and lucubrations of this ineffable and inscrutable being I find myself smiling. Faced with the conviction of seeing myself confronting the supreme Problem, which confused voices seek to explain to me, I cannot but reply: 'It could be'; but the God that I foreknow is far more grand, far more good: Plus Supra!...I believe in (revelation); but not in revelation or revelations which each religion or religions claim to possess. Examining them impartially, comparing them and scrutinizing them, one cannot avoid discerning the human 'fingernail' and the stamp of the time in which they were written... No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However, brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light. I believe in revelation, but in that living revelation which surrounds us on every side, in that voice, mighty, eternal, unceasing, incorruptible, clear, distinct, universal as is the being from whom it proceeds, in that revelation which speaks to us and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die. What books can better reveal to us the goodness of God, His love, His providence, His eternity, His glory, His wisdom? 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

Moments before his execution on December 30, 1896, by a squad of Filipino soldiers of the Spanish Army, a backup force of regular Spanish Army troops stood ready to shoot the executioners should they fail to obey orders. The Spanish Army Surgeon General requested to take his pulse: it was normal. Aware of this, the sergeant commanding the backup force hushed his men to silence when they began raising "vivas" with the highly partisan crowd of Peninsular and Mestizo Spaniards. His last words were those of Jesus Christ: "consummatum est" – "it is finished."

A day before, Rizal's mother pleaded with the authorities to have Rizal's body placed under her family's custody as per Rizal's wish; this was unheeded but was later granted by Manuel Luengo, the civil governor of Manila. Immediately following the execution, Rizal was secretly buried in Pacò Cemetery (now Paco Park) in Manila with no identification on his grave, intentionally mismarked to mislead and discourage martyrdom.

His undated poem Mi último adiós, believed to have been written a few days before his execution, was hidden in an alcohol stove, which was later handed to his family with his few remaining possessions, including the final letters and his last bequests. During their visit, Rizal reminded his sisters in English, "There is something inside it", referring to the alcohol stove given by the Pardo de Taveras which was to be returned after his execution, thereby emphasizing the importance of the poem. This instruction was followed by another, "Look in my shoes", in which another item was secreted.

Rizal's execution, as well as those of other political dissidents (mostly anarchist) in Barcelona was ultimately invoked by Michele Angiolillo, an Italian anarchist, when he assassinated Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Canovas del Castillo.

Rizal's sister Narcisa toured all possible gravesites only for her efforts to end in vain. On one day, she visited Paco Cemetery and discovered guards posted at its gate, later finding Luengo, accompanied by two army officers, standing around a freshly-covered grave, which she assumed to be that of her brother's, on the reason that there had never been any ground burials at the site. After realizing that Rizal was buried in the spot, she made a gift to the caretaker and requested him to place a marble slab inscribed with "RPJ", Rizal's initials in reverse.

In August 1898, a few days after the Americans took Manila, Narcisa secured the consent of the American authorities to retrieve Rizal's remains. During the exhumation, it was then revealed that Rizal was not buried in a coffin but was wrapped in cloth before being dumped in the grave; his burial was not on sanctified ground granted to the 'confessed' faithful. The identity of the remains further confirmed by both the black suit and the shoes, both worn by Rizal on his execution, but whatever was in his shoes had disintegrated.

Following the exhumation, the remains were brought to the Rizal household in Binondo, where they were washed and cleaned before being placed in an ivory urn made by Romualdo Teodoro de los Reyes de Jesus. The urn remained in the household until December 28, 1912.

On December 29, 1912, the urn was transferred from Binondo to the Marble Hall of the Ayuntamiento de Manila, the municipal building, in Intramuros where it remained on public display from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., guarded by the Caballeros de Rizal. The public was given the chance to see the urn. The next day, in a solemn procession, the urn began its last journey from the Ayuntamiento to its last resting place in a spot in Bagumbayan (now renamed as Luneta), where the Rizal Monument would be built. Witnessed by his family, Rizal was finally buried in fitting rites. In a simultaneous ceremony, the corner stone for the Rizal monument was placed and the Rizal Monument Commission was created, headed by Tomas G. Del Rosario.

A year later, on December 30, 1913, the monument, designed and made by Swiss sculptor Richard Kissling, was inaugurated.

Rizal wrote mostly in Spanish, the lingua franca of the Spanish East Indies, though some of his letters (for example Sa Mga Kababaihang Taga Malolos) were written in Tagalog. His works have since been translated into a number of languages including Tagalog and English.

"Toast to Juan Luna and Felix Hidalgo", 1884 speech given at Restaurante Ingles, Madrid

Noli Me Tángere, 1887 novel (literally Latin for 'touch me not', from John 20:17)

Alin Mang Lahi ("Whate'er the Race"), a Kundiman attributed to Dr. José Rizal

"Sa Mga Kababaihang Taga-Malolos" (To the Young Women of Malolos), 1889 letter

Annotations to Antonio de Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 1889

"Por la educación recibe lustre la patria" (1876)

"A la juventud filipina" (To the Philippine Youth, 1879)

"Canto de María Clara" (from Noli Me Tángere, 1887)

"Himno al trabajo" (Dalit sa Paggawa, 1888)

"Kundiman" (disputed, 1889) - also attributed to Pedro Paterno

El Consejo de los Dioses (The Council of Gods)

San Euistaquio, Mártyr (Saint Eustache, the Martyr)

Rizal also tried his hand at painting and sculpture. His most famous sculptural work was The Triumph of Science over Death, a clay sculpture of a naked young woman with overflowing hair, standing on a skull while bearing a torch held high. The woman symbolized the ignorance of humankind during the Dark Ages, while the torch she bore symbolized the enlightenment science brings over the whole world. He sent the sculpture as a gift to his dear friend Ferdinand Blumentritt, together with another one named The Triumph of Death over Life.

The woman is shown trampling the skull, a symbol of death, to signify the victory the humankind achieved by conquering the bane of death through their scientific advancements. The original sculpture is now displayed at the Rizal Shrine at Fort Santiago in Intramuros, Manila. It has replicas inside the University of the Philippines Manila campus and in Alabang, Muntinlupa.

Rizal is also noted to be a carver and sculptor who made works from clay, plaster-of-Paris, and baticuling wood, the last being his preferred medium. While in exile in Dapitan, he served as a mentor to three Paete natives including José Caancan, who in turn taught three generations of carvers back in his hometown.

Rizal is known to have made 56 sculptural works, but only 18 of these are known to be still existing as of 2021.

The poem is more aptly titled "Adiós, Patria Adorada" (literally "Farewell, Beloved Fatherland"), by virtue of logic and literary tradition, the words coming from the first line of the poem itself. It first appeared in print not in Manila but in Hong Kong in 1897, when a copy of the poem and an accompanying photograph came to J. P. Braga who decided to publish it in a monthly journal he edited. There was a delay when Braga, who greatly admired Rizal, wanted a good facsimile of the photograph and sent it to be engraved in London, a process taking well over two months. It finally appeared under "Mi último pensamiento," a title he supplied and by which it was known for a few years. Thus, the Jesuit Balaguer's anonymous account of the retraction and the marriage to Josephine was published in Barcelona before word of the poem's existence had reached him and he could revise what he had written. His account was too elaborate for Rizal to have had time to write "Adiós."

Six years after his death, when the Philippine Organic Act of 1902 was being debated in the United States Congress, Representative Henry Cooper of Wisconsin rendered an English translation of Rizal's valedictory poem capped by the peroration, "Under what clime or what skies has tyranny claimed a nobler victim?" Subsequently, the US Congress passed the bill into law, which is now known as the Philippine Organic Act of 1902.

This was a major breakthrough for a US Congress that had yet to grant the equal rights to African Americans guaranteed to them in the US Constitution and at a time the Chinese Exclusion Act was still in effect. It created the Philippine legislature, appointed two Filipino delegates to the US Congress, extended the US Bill of Rights to Filipinos and laid the foundation for an autonomous government. The colony was on its way to independence. The United States passed the Jones Law that made the legislature fully autonomous until 1916 but did not recognize Philippine independence until the Treaty of Manila in 1946—fifty years after Rizal's death. This same poem, which has inspired independence activists across the region and beyond, was recited (in its Indonesian translation by Rosihan Anwar) by Indonesian soldiers of independence before going into battle.

Josephine Bracken, whom Rizal addressed as his wife on his last day, promptly joined the revolutionary forces in Cavite province, making her way through thicket and mud across enemy lines, and helped reloading spent cartridges at the arsenal in Imus under the revolutionary General Pantaleón García. Imus came under threat of recapture that the operation was moved, with Bracken, to Maragondon, the mountain redoubt in Cavite.

She witnessed the Tejeros Convention prior to returning to Manila and was summoned by the Governor-General, but owing to her stepfather's American citizenship she could not be forcibly deported. She left voluntarily returning to Hong Kong. She later married another Filipino, Vicente Abad, a mestizo acting as agent for the Tabacalera firm in the Philippines. She died of tuberculosis in Hong Kong on March 15, 1902, and was buried at the Happy Valley Cemetery. She was immortalized by Rizal in the last stanza of Mi Ultimo Adios: "Farewell, sweet stranger, my friend, my joy...".

Polavieja faced condemnation by his countrymen after his return to Spain. While visiting Girona, in Catalonia, circulars were distributed among the crowd bearing Rizal's last verses, his portrait, and the charge that Polavieja was responsible for the loss of the Philippines to Spain. Ramon Blanco later presented his sash and sword to the Rizal family as an apology.

Rizal was a contemporary of Gandhi, Tagore and Sun Yat Sen who also advocated liberty through peaceful means rather than by violent revolution. Coinciding with the appearance of those other leaders, Rizal from an early age had been enunciating in poems, tracts and plays, ideas all his own of modern nationhood as a practical possibility in Asia. In Noli Me Tángere, he stated that if European civilization had nothing better to offer, colonialism in Asia was doomed.

Though popularly mentioned, especially on blogs, there is no evidence to suggest that Gandhi or Nehru may have corresponded with Rizal, nor have they mentioned him in any of their memoirs or letters. But it was documented by Rizal's biographer, Austin Coates who interviewed Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi that Rizal was mentioned, specifically in Nehru's prison letters to his daughter Indira.

As a political figure, José Rizal was the founder of La Liga Filipina, a civic organization that subsequently gave birth to the Katipunan led by Andrés Bonifacio,, a secret society which would start the Philippine Revolution against Spain that eventually laid the foundation of the First Philippine Republic under Emilio Aguinaldo. He was a proponent of achieving Philippine self-government peacefully through institutional reform rather than through violent revolution, and would only support "violent means" as a last resort. Rizal believed that the only justification for national liberation and self-government was the restoration of the dignity of the people, saying "Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?" However, through careful examination of his works and statements, including Mi Ultimo Adios, Rizal reveals himself as a revolutionary. His image as the Tagalog Christ also intensified early reverence to him.

Rizal, through his reading of Morga and other western historians, knew of the genial image of Spain's early relations with his people. In his writings, he showed the disparity between the early colonialists and those of his day, with the latter's injustices giving rise to Gomburza and the Philippine Revolution of 1896.

The English biographer, Austin Coates, and writer, Benedict Anderson, believe that Rizal gave the Philippine revolution a genuinely national character; and that Rizal's patriotism and his standing as one of Asia's first intellectuals have inspired others of the importance of a national identity to nation-building. Rizal envisioned a Philippines where all Filipinos, regardless of their ethnic or social background, could live together in peace and harmony.

José Rizal was imprisoned at Fort Santiago and soon after he was banished at Dapitan where he plunged himself into studying nature. He was then able to collect a number of species of various classes: insects, butterflies, amphibians, reptiles, shells, snakes, and plants.

Rizal sent many specimens of animals, insects, and plants for identification to the (Anthropological and Ethnographical Museum of Dresden), Dresden Museum of Ethnology. It was not in his interest to receive any monetary payment; all he wanted were scientific books, magazines, and surgical instruments which he needed and used in Dapitan.

During his exile, Rizal also secretly sent several specimens of flying dragons to Europe. He believed that they were a new species. The German zoologist Benno Wandolleck named them Draco rizali after Rizal. However, it has since been discovered that the species had already been described by the Belgian-British zoologist George Albert Boulenger in 1885 as Draco guentheri.

There are three animal species that Rizal personally collected specimens of and that were posthumously named after him:

Draco rizali – a small lizard known as a flying dragon (now Draco guentheri)

Although his field of action lay in politics, Rizal's real interests lay in the arts and sciences, in literature and in his profession as an ophthalmologist. Shortly after his death, the Anthropological Society of Berlin met to honor him with a reading of a German translation of his farewell poem and Rudolf Virchow delivering the eulogy.

The Rizal Monument now stands near the place where he fell at the Luneta in Bagumbayan, which is now called Rizal Park, a national park in Manila. The monument, which also contains his remains, was designed by the Swiss Richard Kissling, who also sculpted the William Tell statue in Altdorf, Uri. The monument carries the inscription: "I want to show to those who deprive people the right to love of country, that when we know how to sacrifice ourselves for our duties and convictions, death does not matter if one dies for those one loves – for his country and for others dear to him."

The Taft Commission in June 1901 approved Act No. 137 creating the province of Rizal out of the old District of Morong and Province of Manila. Today, the wide acceptance of Rizal is evidenced by the countless towns, streets, and numerous parks in the Philippines named in his honor.

Republic Act No. 1425, known as the Rizal Law, was passed in 1956 by the Philippine legislature requiring all high schools and colleges to offer courses about his life, works and writings.

Yearly on June 19, a special non-working holiday in commemoration of his birth is observed at his home province of Laguna.

The cinematic depiction of Rizal's literary works won two film industry awards more than a century after his birth. In the 10th Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences Awards ceremony, Rizal was honored in the Best Story category for Gerardo de León's adaptation of his book Noli Me Tángere. The recognition was repeated the following year with his movie version of El Filibusterismo, making him the first person to win back-to-back FAMAS Awards for writing.

Both novels were translated into opera by the composer-librettist Felipe Padilla de León: Noli Me Tángere in 1957 and El filibusterismo in 1970; and his 1939 overture, Mariang Makiling, was inspired by Rizal's tale of the same name.

Ang Luha at Lualhati ni Jeronima is a film inspired by the third chapter of Rizal's El filibusterismo.

Portrayed by Honorio Lopez in the 1912 silent film La vida de José Rizal

Portrayed by Eddie del Mar in the 1956 film Ang Buhay at Pag-ibig ni Dr. Jose Rizal.

Portrayed by Pen Medina in two documentaries produced for the Philippine Centennial: Jose Rizal: The Pride of the Malay Rice (1995) and Rizal: Buhay ng Isang Bayani (1996)

Portrayed by Albert Martinez in the 1997 film Rizal sa Dapitan.

Portrayed by Dominic Guinto and Cesar Montano in the 1998 biographical film José Rizal.

Rizal appeared in the 1999 video game Medal of Honor as a secret character in multiplayer, alongside other historical figures such as William Shakespeare and Winston Churchill. He can be unlocked by completing the single-player mode, or through cheat codes.

The Tekken series introduced a character by the name of Josie Rizal in acknowledgment of José Rizal.

The turn-based strategy game Civilization VII features Rizal as a leader.