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