For the study of Chamorro, idiom of the Marianas Islands, one will find serviceable the little book of devotions (Manila, 1887), with counsels for the worthy reception of the Sacraments of God, (p. 248)—the only work, in fact, we have in this dialect, by the Recoleto linguist and traveler, Aniceto Ibáñez del Carmen.
Finally, with three other samples of the Philippine press as proofs of the variety of its polyglot fonts, and I shall have done with this digression on the many languages used in this part of Polynesia,—one a grammar in the dialect of Yap or Guap (p. 248), in the western Caroline archipelago (Manila, 1888), composed apparently by the Capuchin missionary, Ambrosio de Valencia; the second (p. 332) a Hispano-Kanaka dictionary (Tambóbong, 1892), by another Capuchin wanderer, according to Retana, Agustín María de Ariñez. While the last, a work, as will readily be acknowledged, of interest as well as importance to ethnologists, linguists, Americanists especially, is the list of Nahuatlisms of Costa Rica (San José de Costa Rica, 1892), by Juan Fernández Ferraz, a goodly-sized volume of over two hundred pages, wherein, on purely linguistic grounds, the author has maintained the kinship of our own Central Americans and the Philippinians, from the fact especially that in the respective countries of these two antipodal peoples, abound very many terms of every-day use, with identical spelling and meaning. In his Biblioteca (p. 340), Retana has gathered a few of these homonyms and synonyms.
Such, then, are the chief authorities on language among our Philippina that, while entertaining, nay instructing the philologist, will delight also the general student, the writers whereof, as the reader will not be slow to observe, were in far larger number all churchmen and missionaries.
In fact, of the 1142 authors, whose works he has enumerated (Biblioteca, xxxv–xxxvi), Retana states that four hundred and sixty-six are ecclesiastics, that is, ninety-eight secular clergymen and three hundred and sixty-eight members of religious brotherhoods, whereof the Augustinians—the writer’s own order—numbering one hundred and forty-one authors, inclusive of thirty-seven Recoletos—the bare-footed branch of that fraternity—figure highest. Next in rank, we have one hundred Dominicans, then fifty-seven Jesuits, fifty-six Franciscans, and fourteen authors of orders not specified.
Of these brotherhoods, who thus in Malaysia, as in other quarters of the globe, brought forth so brilliant an array of scholars and philanthropists, the first-named, the Augustinians, with Legazpi, crossing two oceans and one continent therefore, found a home in the Philippines at the conquest of that archipelago in 1565; in 1577 the first Franciscans reached the isles; in 1581, the Dominicans, with the first bishop of Manila (by actual possession), Domingo Salazar, member of the same brotherhood, accompanied too by some Jesuits, while the Recoletos first crossed the Pacific in 1611.
These churchmen, with very few exceptions Spanish, with later on a sprinkling of Portuguese, Dutchmen, Germans, Italians and Irishmen, scholars, as a rule, of fair repute, some even of European eminence, from their advent into Polynesia, besides their care in implanting Christian altruism, wherewith only (as history attests) thrive science and art, have toiled ever since to imbue these islanders, whom they found heathen—without letters, laws, or settled abode—with learning, the arts of husbandry, building, carving, painting, weaving, and the like graces of intellectual grandeur—in brief, with whatever of civilization now marks Malaysian genius.
From Manila, as centre of intellectual enlightenment for all eastern Asiatic and Polynesian lands in the sixteenth century, were transplanted the germs of philanthropy—of wisdom and charity—to Borneo, the Carolines, Moluccas, as well as the mainland of Asia, to China and Japan, while in India the Portuguese, with headquarters at Goa, fulfilled the same destiny as their Iberian brothers.
Speaking of the heroism of these self-exiled churchmen and worshipers of the Christian Minerva in Asiatic tropics, I quote the words of the famed French savant, Elisée Reclus, a witness, by the way, in no measure partial to cloister life. In his Universal Geography[4] he declares that “Los Filipinos son de los pueblos mas civilizados del Extremo Oriente. Los han civilizado los frailes”—that is, “The Philippines are one of the most civilized people of the Far East. The friars have civilized them.”
[1] Biblioteca, xxix–xxxi.