In tracing our clues down through the years, we find at the very
beginning the most valuable evidence which has been uncovered, short
of the book itself. From Manila on June 20, 1593, the Governor of the
Philippines, Gomez Perez Dasmariñas, wrote a letter to Philip II of
Spain in which he said:
"Sire, in the name of Your Majesty, I have for this once,
because of the existing great need, granted a license for the
printing of the Doctrinas Christianas, herewith enclosed--one
in the Tagalog language, which is the native and best of these
islands, and the other in Chinese--from which I hope great
benefits will result in the conversion and instruction of the
peoples of both nations; and because the lands of the Indies
are on a larger scale in everything and things more expensive,
I have set the price of them at four reales a piece, until Your
Majesty is pleased to decree in full what is to be done." [7]
This states unequivocally that two books were printed at Manila some
time before June 20, 1593, one of which was the Doctrina in Tagalog,
and the other the same work in Chinese. Although we are chiefly
concerned here with the former, the fact that they were produced at
about the same time and probably at the same place makes it necessary
to trace the history of both in order to reconstruct the circumstances
surrounding the production of the one. Of the Chinese Doctrina no
copy has yet come to light, and except for two 1593 references,
there are no records of its existence.
Another document [8] of 1593 verifies the information given in the
letter of Dasmariñas, differing from it only in one detail. In the
Archives of the Indies was found a manuscript account of 1593 listing
books written in the Philippines, which says:
"There have been printed primers and catechisms of the faith,
one in Spanish and Tagalog, which is the native language, and
the other in Chinese, which are being sent to Your Majesty,
the Tagalog priced at two reales and the Chinese at four,
which is hoped will be of great benefit."
The accounts of the printing of two Doctrinas contained in these
documents confirm some of the information of the title and add a bit
more. First, the letter says that the book was printed by permission
given by the Governor, which agrees with the "with license" of the
title, "for this once because of the existing great need." By a royal
cedula [9] of September 21, 1556, which was promulgated again on August
14, 1560, it had been ordered that Justices "not consent to or permit
to be printed or sold any book containing material concerning the
Indies without having special license sent by our Royal Council of the
Indies," and on May 8, 1584 this was implemented by the further order
"that when any grammar or dictionary of the language of the Indies be
made it shall not be published, or printed or used unless it has first
been examined by the Bishop and seen by the Royal Audiencia." This
latter portion was applied specifically to the Philippines in a letter
[10] from Philip II to the Audiencia of Manila, also dated May 8,
1584, to which further reference will be made. It can be gathered
from Dasmariñas' implied apology that he had never before given such
a license, and, since he had arrived in the Philippines in 1590, that
no books had been printed between that time and the licensing of the
Doctrinas. It is, moreover, likely that if any similar books had been
printed during the administrations of his predecessors he would have
mentioned the fact as a precedent for acting contrary to the cedulas.
According to Dasmariñas he had priced the books at four reales a
piece, which followed the regular Spanish procedure, under which
books were subject to price control. The Governor, it will be noted,
also apologized for the high price he was forced to set, giving
general high prices [11] as his excuse. Yet, while the appraisal of
four reales for this book was high compared to the prevailing scale
in Spain, it was not high compared to prices allowed in Mexico. On
June 6, 1542 the Emperor had given the Casa de Cromberger, the first
printing-house in Mexico, permission [12] to sell books printed there
at seventeen maravedís a sheet, or exactly one half a real. If we
assume that, although the Doctrina had been printed page by page,
it was quarto in size and so appraised on the basis of eight pages
to a sheet, we find that the price per sheet comes to about fourteen
maravedís, or less than half a real. However, a contradiction occurs
between the letter of Dasmariñas and this copy of the Doctrina,
supported by the other 1593 document. On the verso of the title, Juan
de Cuellar, [13] the Governor's secretary and the logical person to
sign the official valuation, gives the price as two reales, and the
1593 account, while agreeing with the letter as far as the Chinese
Doctrina is concerned, also lists the price of the Tagalog Doctrina
as two reales. It is impossible to say what caused the discrepancy;
perhaps it was a decision on Dasmariñas' part to lower the cost,
notwithstanding inflationary values, in order to make the book more
readily available for the natives who were not economically as well
off as the Chinese, or it could be that after the letter had been
written it was noticed that the Chinese volume was larger than the
Tagalog one, and some adjustment made. In any event, the price of this
Doctrina was finally set at two reales, making it less than half the
price allowed in Mexico fifty years before.
The evidence of the two 1593 documents would seem conclusive with
regard to printing in 1593, but witnesses were not long in appearing
who stated something quite different. The earliest of these was
Pedro Chirino, [14] a Jesuit priest, who came to the Philippines with
Dasmariñas in 1590. He went back to Europe in 1602, and while there
had a history of the Philippines printed at Rome in 1604. In 1606 he
returned to the islands, where he died in 1635. He left unpublished
the manuscript of another and more detailed history, dated 1610,
which contains a most significant passage, where, after speaking of
various early writers in native languages, he continues:
"Those who printed first were; P. Fr. Juan de Villanueva of
the Order of St. Augustine [who printed] certain little tracts,
and P. Fr. Francisco de San Joseph of the Order of St. Dominic
[who printed] larger things of more bulk." [15]
Concerning this Juan de Villanueva [16] very little indeed is
known. From what has been recorded it would seem that there were two
Augustinians of the same name who were in the Philippines before
1600. The first of these was a secular priest who came to Cebú
about 1566, may have taken the Augustinian habit some time after his
arrival, and died not long after 1569. The other Juan de Villanueva,
the date of whose arrival is unknown, was in Lubao in 1590, in Hagonoy
in 1593, and prior of Batangas from 1596 until his death in 1599. Of
the two there can be no doubt but that Chirino referred to the second
one. But, apart from Chirino's note, there is no record anywhere that
works by him existed, nor do the Augustinian chroniclers themselves,
except for the modern Santiago Vela who knew of Chirino's citation,
mention him as a linguist or a writer. The only possibility is that
between 1593 and 1599 Villanueva had printed some small xylographic
books no copies and no further record of which have appeared.
As for Francisco de San Joseph, or Blancas de San José as he is more
frequently called, there are other references to his part in the
establishment of printing in the islands. From information doubtless
obtained from Diego Aduarte, then in Spain, Alonso Fernandez wrote
in his ecclesiastical history, printed at Toledo in 1611:
"Father Fr. Francisco Blancas printed in the Tagalog language
and characters a book of Our Lady of the Rosary in the year
1602, which was the first book that was printed there of
that or any other material. After this he printed another of
the sacraments in the language of the Philippines, in both
characters, theirs and ours, from which the greatest results
have been achieved." [17]
Two years later the same author published at Madrid an account [18]
of the miracles performed by the Rosary of the Virgin, in which he
included a list of "Of some writers of the Order of St. Dominic who
were living in this year 1612," and gave the same information as above,
adding only that the printing took place in Bataan.
Diego Aduarte, [19] whose history of the Dominican province of the
Philippines is one of the best contemporary ones written, bears out
these statements of which he was most probably the source. Aduarte came
to the islands in company with his close friend Blancas de San José
in 1595, went back to Spain as procurator of his order in 1607, and
returned to Manila in 1628, staying in the Orient until his death in
1636. His history was continued and edited after his death by a fellow
Dominican, Domingo Gonçalez, who had it printed in 1640. Summarizing
the life and accomplishments of Blancas de San José, Aduarte wrote:
"So he was sent to Bataan, which is near there [Manila],
where he learned the language of the Indians, called Tagalog,
which is the most common in this country and is used among the
Indians for many leagues around the city. So rapid was his
study of the language that he began to preach in it within
three months, and could teach it to others in six.... And
believing that he was the instrument needed to bring the holy
gospel to the Indians, he spared no pains to investigate the
fitness of their words, the way to use them, and all the rest
so that he could succeed in mastering it.... He wrote many
books of devotion for them, and since there was no printing
in these islands, and no one who understood it or who was
a journeyman printer, he planned to have it done through a
Chinaman, a good Christian, who, seeing that the books of
P. Fr. Francisco were sure to be of great use, bestowed so
much care upon this undertaking that he finally succeeded,
aided by those who told him whatever they knew about it,
in learning everything necessary to do printing; and he
printed these books. . . . He [Blancas de San José] printed
a grammar to learn the Tagalog language, a memorial of the
Christian life, a book on the four last things, another on the
preparation for the communion, a confessionary, another on the
mysteries of the Rosary of Our Lady, and another to teach the
Tagalog Indians the Spanish language, and he left many very
pious and curious works in the language of these Indians." [20]
Blancas de San José, [21] as we have noted, came to the Philippines in
1595. He was at Abucay in Bataan from 1598 until 1602, and then spent
several years in and about Manila, preaching to the Indians and the
Chinese, whose language he also mastered. In 1614 he set out for Spain,
but died on the voyage before reaching Mexico. Of the books which he is
said to have had printed, only two are known to be extant, the _Arte
y Reglas de la Lengva Tagala_ [22] and the _Librong Pagaaralan nang
manga Tagalog nang uicang Castilla_ [23] (or _Libro en qve aprendan
los Tagalos, la lengua Castellana_), both printed at Bataan in 1610,
and until the discovery of the present Doctrina and the _Ordinationes_
of 1604 the earliest surviving Philippine imprints known.
We have not cited here in detail the account of Juan Lopez [24] in
the fifth part of his history of the Dominicans, because, although it
was printed nineteen years before the appearance of Aduarte's work,
the information therein contained regarding the Philippines was
acknowledgedly obtained from the unfinished manuscript which Aduarte
had with him in Spain. The pertinent passages add nothing to Aduarte's
information, and even the wording is reminiscent of his.
The first suggestion that early Philippine books may have been printed
from wood-blocks occurred in Quétif and Echard's bibliography of
Dominican writers printed at Paris in 1719. There, after listing
eight works by Blancas de San José, they add:
"He published all these in the Philippines with the help
of a Chinese Christian using Chinese blocks, for in his day
European typographers had not yet arrived in those islands,
nor did they have types for their language." [25]
This was an amazing suggestion, for as far as we know the
bibliographers who made it had not actually seen the books; nor is it
entirely true. The first two works listed are two books we know were
printed typographically in 1610. The sixth is _De los mysterios del
Rosario de nuestra Señora Tagalice_, the book referred to by Fernández
as having been printed in 1602, and generally accepted as being from
movable type, although no copy has been discovered to prove it. And
yet, it is not at all impossible that some time before 1602 Blancas de
San José had some of his writings printed from blocks. In any event,
the idea, later developed by Medina and Retana, that xylography was
used before a real printing-press was established, may have come from
this not wholly accurate note.
For almost a hundred and fifty years no historian or bibliographer
wrote anything to challenge the basic affirmations of Chirino,
Fernández and Aduarte. In the middle of the 18th century, Lorenzo
Hervas y Panduro, [26] a Jesuit, was forced by the expulsion of the
Jesuits from Spain to seek refuge in the Papal States, and took up
residence at Cesena. There he began work on a tremendous universal
history of the spiritual development of man, into which he wove the
results of his philosophical, social and linguistic studies. These
last were of particular importance, and Hervas is regarded as the true
founder of the science of linguistics and comparative philology. In
1785 he published the eighteenth volume of his massive work, the
_Origine, formazione, meccanismo, ed armonia degl' idiomi_, in which
he printed a Tagalog Ave Maria as written in 1593, with the note:
"The Ave Maria in the Tagalog of 1593 is to be read in the
Tagalog-Spanish Doctrina Christiana which was printed in
Tagalog and roman characters by the Dominican fathers in
their printing-house at Manila in the year 1593." [27]
In 1787 he finished his twenty-first volume, _Saggio pratico_, [28]
which was another philological study, including the Pater Noster
in over three hundred languages and dialects, among them Tagalog,
again from the 1593 Doctrina. Here, then, is ample proof that a copy
of this book was known to Hervas in 1785, and the only information
which his loose transcription of the title failed to give was that
the volume was "corrected by members of the orders," that it was
printed with license, and that it was printed at San Gabriel.
At the beginning of the following century two German scholars, familiar
with Hervas' writings, noted the 1593 Doctrina. Franz Carl Alter, [29]
in his monograph on the Tagalog language, printed the Ave Maria from
the text which had appeared in 1785, and Johann Christoph Adelung,
[30] in his _Mithridates_, a comprehensive study of languages,
included the Tagalog Pater Noster from the _Saggio pratico_ of
1787. The latter also listed in a short bibliography of the Tagalog
language the Doctrina of 1593, giving exactly the same information
about it that Hervas had. Neither of these men apparently saw a copy
of the book, limiting themselves to extracts from Hervas, but they
perpetuated an earlier reference of the utmost importance.
Shortly after the two Germans published their notices of the 1593
Doctrina an entry appeared of a book printed at Manila in 1581. José
Mariano Beristain y Sousa, a learned Mexican writer, issued in
1819-21 a bibliography of Spanish-American books, in which he listed
alphabetically the authors, giving a short biography of each and
adding a list of his works. Under Juan de Quiñones we find:
"'Arte y Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala,' Imp. en Manila,
1581." [31]
No specific authority is given for this entry, but in his sketch of
the life of Quiñones Beristain cited as sources, Juan de Grijalva,
Nicolás Antonio, Gaspar de San Agustin, and José Sicardo. It would
seem logical that one of these must have mentioned such a work as
printed in Manila in 1581, but in tracing down the sources no such
precise notice is found.
Grijalva simply said that Quiñones "concerned himself with Tagalog and
made a vocabulary and grammar of it." [32] Antonio [33] referred to
Grijalva, and carried the matter no further. San Agustin, describing
the Franciscan chapter of 1578, wrote:
"It was determined moreover in this chapter that P. Fr. Juan
de Quiñones, prior of the Convent of Taal in Tagalos, and
Fr. Diego de Ochoa, prior of Bacolor in Pampanga, should
compose and fashion grammars, dictionaries, and confessionaries
in the two languages [respectively Tagalog and Pampanga] in
which they had ventured; which they executed very promptly
and well, and these were of great use to those who came to
these islands, for they had these by which they could study
the languages." [34]
Later, San Agustin, again mentioning Quiñones, referred to Grijalva,
and added as an additional source for his information Tómas de
Herrera. Sicardo [35] added nothing new. Herrera, not cited directly
by Beristain, may however have been the source from which the "Imp." of
his entry came. Herrera wrote:
"He [Quiñones] was the first to have learned the Tagalog
language of which he published a grammar and dictionary as
an aid to the ministers of the gospel."
If Beristain read this, he may have been misled by the Latin of
"published," [36] _in lucem edidit_, which may indeed mean printed
and published, but also means quite properly published in the sense
of written in manuscript and copied and circulated. We agree with
Schilling [37] that this latter meaning was the one intended. One
other statement that Quiñones' works were printed may derive from
the same misunderstanding. About the year 1801 Pedro Bello wrote an
account, still in manuscript and unpublished, of the writings of the
Augustinians. His remarks on Quiñones, first printed by Santiago Vela
[38], we believe are only an extension of Herrera's _in lucem edidit_.
This same confusion in terminology has been used [39] to support
Beristain's claim by introducing as evidence the letter of Philip II of
May 8, 1584. Salazar, the Bishop of Manila, probably shortly after the
Synod of 1582, had written the King a letter, now unfortunately lost,
in which he spoke of a decision to standardize linguistic works. In
answer to the Bishop, the following letter in the form of a royal
cedula was sent:
"To the President and Judges of my Royal Audiencia situated
in the city of Manila in the Philippine Islands.--It has been
told me on behalf of Don Fray Domingo de Salazar, Bishop of
that place, that it was agreed that no priest might make a
grammar or vocabulary, and that if it were made it might not
be published before being examined and approved by the said
Bishop, because otherwise there would result great differences
and disagreements in the doctrine; and this having been seen
by my Council of the Indies, it was agreed that I should
order this my cedula which decrees that when any grammar or
vocabulary be made it shall not be published or used unless
it has first been examined by the said Bishop and seen by
this Audencia." [40]
Here again the word _publicado_ is brought forth to prove that the
letter referred to printed works, but here again the term is equally
applicable to manuscript works in common use and generally available.
Further evidence that there was no printing as early as 1581 is to be
found in a letter [41] from Juan de Plasencia, a Tagalist of great
renown, to the King, dated from Manila, June 18, 1585, in which he
reported on the state of missionary work in China and Japan, and added
that he had written a grammar and a declaration of the whole Doctrina
in the most common language of the Philippines, and that he was then
making a dictionary, concluding by asking the King to send decrees
ordering those works to be printed in Mexico at the expense of the
Exchequer. Is it likely that Plasencia would have so written if an
_Arte y Vocabulario_ had been printed four years earlier? Furthermore,
San Antonio, recording the book on the customs and rites of the Indians
written by Plasencia at the request of the Governor Santiago de Vera,
and dated October 24, 1589, said that it was not printed "because
printing houses had not yet come to this country." [42]
We then conclude with regard to Beristain's entry, that although
there existed in manuscript an _Arte y Vocabuldrio Tagalo_ by Juan de
Quiñones, there is no evidence of the existence of any book printed
for him from wood-blocks or in type. Santiago de Vela [43] suggests
the possibility that there might have been a xylographic _Arte_ of
1581, but Schilling [44] questions this in the face of the complete
lack of reference to such a printed work by any 17th or 18th century
writer, and the tenuous notices of Bello and Beristain; yet to say
categorically that no such work was printed would be foolhardy in the
face of the scanty early records and the appearance of this Doctrina,
a single copy of which has just been discovered.
The first important work devoted solely to the early history of the
Philippine press was by T.H. Pardo de Tavera, who in 1893 published
his study of printing and engraving in the Philippines. He there
recorded a 1593 Doctrina, but adamantly refused to accept it on the
hearsay evidence of others. His account is valuable because it shows
that there may have been a copy of the Doctrina in Java in 1885,
and so we quote from it at some length:
"A learned Dutch orientalist, Dr. J. Brandes, wrote me in 1885
from Bali-Boeleleng (Java) telling me that in 1593 at Manila
there was printed a Doctrina Christiana in Spanish-Tagalog,
with the proper characters for the latter language. Other
orientalists, at the last Congress in London in 1891, gave
me the same information. Nonetheless, no one told me where
he had read such a thing, nor much less that he had managed
to see such a book, although inspecting a rare book which
I acquired in Paris (Alter, _Ueber die tagalische sprache_,
Vienna, 1803), I saw that the author cited such a Doctrina
Christiana and said that he knew of its existence through Abbé
Hervas. This is an error, and without doubt such a Doctrina was
in manuscript, because in 1591 [he should have said 1593] there
was no press in Manila nor in any part of the archipelago,
and today we know for certain and positively that the first
book issued there appeared in 1610." [45]
Pardo de Tavera was the first to call attention to Alter, and through
him to Hervas, and in all probability the orientalists at the London
Congress had seen the Doctrina cited by one of these or Adelung. But he
rejects that evidence in no uncertain terms. Mitigating somewhat his
assurance, he speaks following the above-quoted passage of printing
in China, and differentiates between xylographic and typographic
printing, and since he was obviously thinking in terms of printing
on a press with movable type his conclusions are not too extreme.
In 1896 appeared José Toribio Medina's _La Imprenta en Manila_, which
was up to then the best, most complete and most scholarly work on early
Philippine printing, and is today with its subsequent additions and
corrections the standard bibliography of the subject. There Medina
cited most of the authorities we have already quoted, the letter of
Dasmariñas, Fernández' _Historia eclesiastica_, Aduarte, Adelung,
Beristain and Pardo de Tavera. Then, basing his conclusions strongly
on the Dasmariñas letter and the note of Adelung, he listed [46]
as number one in his bibliography the Doctrina of 1593 in Spanish
and Tagalog, and as number two the Doctrina in Spanish and Chinese
of the same year. This is a verdict which has stood the test of
time, and one that is just now confirmed by the discovery of the
book itself. Two points, however, in his survey should be noted. In
his discussion of the printing and the authorship Medina does not
emphasize the Dominican origin of the book, although he does say that
"it does not appear bold to us to suppose that the imprint of these
Doctrinas ought to be the Hospital of San Gabriel in this village
[Binondo]," [47] and faithfully copies Adelung's imprint notice, "in
the Dominican printing-house," in his listing of the book. The other
point is that he says in his introduction and repeats in his entry
that the Doctrina had a Latin as well as Spanish and Tagalog texts,
an erroneous translation of Adelung's "mit lateinische und tagalische
Schrift." He was hesitant as are all bibliographers, who must perforce
record the probable existence of a book a copy of which they have
never seen, in committing himself as to whether it was printed from
blocks or from type or by a combination of the two methods.
More positive and more succinct than Medina was T.E. Retana whose
earlier researches [48] into the history of the Philippines Medina
acknowledgedly made use of, and who in 1897 published his _La Imprenta
en Filipinas, Adiciones y Observaciones a La Imprenta en Manila_. He
took the material of Medina, added the evidence of Chirino and
Plasencia, and resummarized the problem. The letter of Dasmariñas
showed conclusively that a Doctrina was printed in 1593. Chirino said
that the first two whose works were printed were Juan de Villanueva and
Blancas de San José. Fernández stated positively that the first book
printed in the Philippines was the book of Our Lady of the Rosary by
Blancas de San José printed at Bataan in 1602. Aduarte supported this
without mentioning a title, place or date of printing. If we are to
accept all these statements as incontrovertible, how can the apparent
contradictions be reconciled? The answer had already been hinted at,
but Retana solved the problem with amazing acumen, and arrived at
four conclusions, which are here printed in his own words:
"A--That the Doctrinas of 1593, though printed at Manila, were
not executed in type, but by the so-called xylographic method;
B--That the initiative for the establishment of _typography_
is owed to P. Fr. Francisco Blancas de San José;
C--That the first _typographer_ was the Chinese Christian
Juan de Vera at the instigation of the said Father San José;
D--That the first _typographical_ printing of this Dominican
author is of the year 1602." [49]
It is not difficult to say with the book itself in front of us,
that it is an example of xylographic printing, but it was a great
feat on the part of Retana, who had never seen a copy, to resolve
apparently irreconcilable differences of opinion on the part of
several unquestioned authorities by deducing that it was all a
matter of semantics--what did _printing_ mean? As for the sprite of
1581 introduced by Beristain, Retana dismissed it on the grounds of
insufficient evidence. In a word, he concluded that the first book
issued in the Philippines was a Doctrina printed from wood-blocks
in 1593.
All subsequent writers on the subject have derived their information
from the sources we have already mentioned, and to a great degree
have been influenced by the findings of Medina and Retana. The
Rev. Thomas Cooke Middleton [50] in 1900 confessed that he did not
know what the first book printed was. Pardo de Tavera maintained his
old intransigence, when in the introduction to his bibliography for
the Library of Congress in 1903 he wrote that Medina's affirmation
that printing took place in 1593 "loses all validity in the face of
the categorical statement of F. Alonso Fernández." [51] Medina did
not comment further in his _Adiciones y Ampliaciones_ [52] of 1904,
yet when the same year Pérez and Güemes [53] published their additions
to and continuation of Medina, bringing his bibliography down to
1850, they resurrected the 1581 _Arte_, but added no new evidence
to prove their case. Blair and Robertson, in their tremendous,
collective history of the Philippines, did not include a list of
Philippine imprints in their bibliography, [54] but referred readers
to Medina and Retana with whom they agreed. To celebrate the three
hundredth anniversary of typographical printing in the Philippines
Artigas y Cuerva [55] wrote a study which emphasized the part played
by Blancas de San José, but did not deny the existence of the 1593
Doctrina. Retana [56] in 1911 brought his work on the subject up to
date, but retained all his major conclusions. In Palau's standard
bibliography of Spanish books we find the Doctrinas called "the two
earliest books known to have been printed in Manila." [57] Finally, the
most thorough recent work on the subject is to be found in Schilling's
[58] survey of the early history of the Philippine press published in
1937. There is little that can be added to the evidence uncovered by
these modern writers, but the appearance of the book itself enables
us to say with certainty some things which they were able only to
surmise. However, as regards the authorship and the circumstances and
place of printing we are able, from the information given on the title,
to carry the investigation somewhat further.