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 Dasmarinas' partto 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 [9] 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 Dasmarinas 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 He left unpublished the manuscript of another and more detailed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 Villanueva16 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 Cebu 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 Jose 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 [10] 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 account18 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 Jose 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 Goncalez, who had it printed in 1640. Summarizing the life and accomplishments of Blancas de San Jose, 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 instru-
4
ment 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 [11] these books. . . . He [Blancas de San Jose] 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 Jose,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 Tagala22 and the Librong Pagaaralan nang manga Tagalog nang uicang Castilla23 (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 Lopez24 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 Quetif and Echard's bibliogra-
phy of Dominican writers printed at Paris in 1719. There, after listing eight works by Blancas de San Jose, 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
[12]
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 Senora Tagalice, the book referred to by Fernandez 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 Jose 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, Fernandez and Aduarte. In the middle
