Doctrina Christiana | Page 6

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 Se?ora 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