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