Finally, as a more definite proof that Cobo could have been the author of the Chinese Doctrina of 1593, we have the record[113] of a Catecismo de la Doctrina Cristiana en Lengua China written by him, as well as many other works in Chinese.
In May 1590, then, the most accomplished Sinologist yet to work in the Philippines was in charge of the Dominican province. “His first act,” wrote Aduarte, “was to strengthen the ministry to the Chinese by appointing to it Father Domingo de Nieva, a priest of great virtue and very able—which was tremendously important there—and one who best mastered that language, as well as that of the Indians in which he had had experience; and he worked in both of them, and wrote much to the great advantage of those who came after him.”[114] It is surprising that no previous writer has emphasized the presence of Domingo de Nieva, whose proficiency in Tagalog we have already noted, at San Gabriel during the years when the printing of the Doctrinas must have been planned and executed. His works are cited by Fernández,[115] and after giving a summary of his career, Aduarte added:
“He wrote much in the language of the Indians and other things in the language of the Chinese for whom he had printed in their language and characters a memorial upon the Christian life, with other brief tracts of prayer and meditation, in preparation for the holy sacraments, of confession and the sacred communion. He was an enemy of sloth, and so worked much in Chinese, in which he wrote a practically new grammar of the Chinese language, a vocabulary, a manual of confession and many sermons, in order that those who had to learn this language might find it less difficult.”[116]
Medina[117] records these various works as Manila imprints of unknown date, and to this indefinite information about them we can add nothing positive. However, it is apparent that some time before 1606, when Nieva died on his way to Mexico, he had had books printed, and since they were in Chinese they must have been printed from wood-blocks, for at that early date it would have been impossible to have cast the number of characters necessary to print in Chinese with movable type.
With Nieva was Maldonado, or San Pedro Martyr. He had been one of the first associates of Benavides in the first Chinese mission at Baybay, but after the arrival of Cobo he had been sent by order of the first chapter to Pangasinan. When Cobo was appointed acting provincial San Pedro Martyr was again assigned to the Chinese ministry. He had learned Tagalog, and after his return to the Parián “he learned more words of the Chinese language than any other member of the order, though he was not successful with the pronunciation.”[118]
On May 31, 1592, the Governor received a letter from the Emperor of Japan demanding that an ambassador be sent to offer him the fealty of the Philippines. Juan Cobo, as the best speaker of Chinese, was chosen to represent the Spaniards, and he left Manila on July 29, 1592. After successfully convincing the Japanese Emperor of the amity of the Spaniards, he left to come back to Manila, but his ship was wrecked in November on the coast of Formosa, and there Cobo was killed by hostile natives. Meanwhile Benavides had gone back to Spain with Bishop Salazar in 1591, and did not return to the Philippines until after his appointment as Bishop of Nueva Segovia in 1595.
That left as the only two remaining experts in the Chinese language, Domingo de Nieva and Juan de San Pedro Martyr, both of whom were at San Gabriel in 1592. Moreover, both of them knew Chinese and Tagalog. A text in Tagalog was available, based on the Talavera-Plasencia-Oliver model, which had circulated freely, and this, we believe, was further edited—hence the “corrected by the religious of the orders”—by these two Dominicans. In their editorial work they may have been helped by Juan de la Cruz, who, we have noted, was sent to Bataan in 1588, there learned Tagalog, and “succeeded so perfectly with it that Father Fr. Francisco San Joseph, who was afterwards the best linguist there, profited by the papers and labors of P. Fr. Juan de la Cruz.”[119] Juan de Oliver, the pioneer Franciscan Tagalist was still living and available for consultation, and the polylingual Jesuit, Francisco Almerique, also was in Manila at the time. A Chinese text had been written by Juan Cobo, and both Nieva and San Pedro Martyr were capable of preparing this for publication, again possibly aided by Almerique, and also Diego Muñoz, if as an Augustinian he had been willing to cooperate with the Dominicans. Nothing remained to be done but have the blocks cut and the impressions pulled.
The Printing of the Books
The stage was set for the production of the Doctrinas. That there were Chinese xylographic models upon which the books could be based is evidenced by the account of Mendoza of the considerable number of Chinese books brought to Manila by Martin de Rada as early as 1575. A more likely model was a bilingual text in Spanish and Chinese which Cobo describes in his letter of July 13, 1589, where speaking of the Jesuits in China he says: