IV.
Philippine Presses.
Now for a description of the different printing-presses—or, rather, places—in the Philippines, from the earliest named by Retana in his Biblioteca, in all fourteen distinct localities, where printing was carried on in the three islands of Luzon, Panay and Cebú.
1.—From an analysis of the titles I find that Manila ranks earliest, where (with limitations to be set later) a printing-press was established in 1630, in which year, at the Dominican College of St. Thomas, a Spanish-Japanese dictionary, the work of Portuguese Jesuit missionaries and scholars, now translated into Spanish, was printed by Tomás Pinpin, a native Tagal, and Jacinto Magaurlua. This dictionary (now extremely rare), even though not the first book printed in the islands, as stated by Retana, must yet be ranked among the earliest specimens of Philippine literature.
In his Bibliography three different titles (we may observe) bear the imprint of Manila, with the name of this city spelled according to the ancient aboriginal form, albeit but slightly varied from the present—“Maynila”—otherwise, as I have read it, “Mainilla,” a variant in orthography one encounters in old chronicles—a Tagal word (it seems) signifying a species of shrub or bush, in the Spanish rendered arbusto, that in 1571 was found to cover the site of the new city projected by the conquistadores, under the leadership of Miguel López de Legazpi.
In this same year, it may be added, the site of the future metropolis of Malaysia was taken possession of by Spanish arms, with due observance of ceremonial, sealed with the three local chieftains,[1] Lacandola, Matandá and Soliman, by blood-bargain—pacto de sangre.[2] Here, too, at Manila, the second church in Malaysia devoted to the Supreme Being, the first having been founded at Cebú, was dedicated the same year (1571) to God, under the most fitting title of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle, first great missionary to heathendom. At Cebú, by agreement with Chief Tupas, the standard of Christian comity—the Cross—had been reared in 1565, and its church dedicated in honor of St. Michael Archangel, name-saint of Legazpi, though shortly after rechristened El Santo Niño—the Holy Child—its title to-day.
The three works then printed at “Maynila,” or Bush Town, in Luzon, are a Manual of Devotions to St. Roch, translated into Tagal by the Augustinian missionary, Esteban Diez, a skilled Tagalist, in 1820; a periodical—the Revista Católica—whereof the first and only number (p. 309) was issued in 1890; and lastly, a weekly paper (the same as the former) in Tagal, published in 1896.
2.—The second place to witness the establishment of a press was Sampaloc, in Zambales province, in Luzon, where, in 1736, at the Franciscan convent of Our Lady of Loreto, was printed the Augustinian Diego Bergaño’s Arte, in Pampanga—first fruit, it seems, of typographical genius in that pueblo. While the last imprint with the name of Sampaloc is an almanac, or church calendar, for the year 1838 (more probably, however, printed the year ahead), when the old press, founded by Franciscan friars a hundred years before, disappears.
3.—At Tayabas, in the province of the same name, in Luzon (p. 31), was printed a Tagal dictionary, by the Franciscan, Totanes, now supplanted, however, by Noceda’s far superior work on philological score, especially with the additions made thereto by the Augustinians in the Manila edition of 1860. This Tayabas imprint is the only work I have encountered with the name of that pueblo.
4.—The first Cavite imprint (p. 38) dates (it seems) from 1815—a church calendar for the following year; while the last, with the name of this Manila suburb written, however, with a K—“Kavite”—is an appeal of the revolutionary party in 1898 (p. 451), under the official seal of the Gobierno Dictatorial de Filipinas.