[77] Santa Inés (written originally in 1676), p. 211. Virtually the same information is given by San Antonio, I, pp. 532–3 & 563.
[78] Juan de la Concepcion, Historia general de Philipinas, Manila, 1788–92, II, pp. 45–6. Schilling, p. 203n, maintains that the early writers were mistaken in believing that the Synod was held in 1581. On October 16, 1581 the Bishop called a meeting of ten priests at the Convent of Tondo to discuss the execution of the decree about slaves, Torres, II, pp. cxliv–v. No laymen were present and no other topic was discussed. The decisions of this meeting were sent in a letter from Salazar to the King, dated from Tondo, October 17, 1581, translated in B. & R., XXXIV, pp. 325–31, from the original MS. in the A. of I. (68–1–42), Torres, II, no. 2686, p. 95. The following year a real Synod was held, this time including lay government officials as well as priests, at which was discussed a variety of subjects. Robert Streit, Bibliotheca Missionum, Aachen, 1928, IV, pp. 327–31, cites a MS. account of it by the Jesuit father Sanchez who was present; and Valentín Marín, Ensayo de una Síntesis de los trabajos realizados por las Corporaciones Religiosas Españoles de Filipinas, Manila, 1901, I, pp. 192 et seqq., cites another MS., then in the Archives of the Archiepiscopal Palace of Manila, Memoria de una junta que se hizo a manera de concilio el año de 1582, para dar asiento a las cosas tocantes al aumento de la fe, y justificacíon de las conquistas hechas y que adelante se hicieron por los espanoles, from which he quotes extensively. With reference to the Synod see further Lorenzo Pérez, Origen de las Misiones Franciscanas en el extremo oriente, in Archivo Ibero-Americano, 1915, III, pp. 386–400.
[79] Santa Inés, p. 212. Again similar accounts are to be found in San Antonio, I, pp. 563–6, in far more detail and phrased in even more laudatory terms, and the fullest early biography of Plasencia is given by San Antonio, II, pp. 512–79. Modern surveys appear in Marín, op. cit., II, pp. 573–82, and Lorenzo Pérez, op. cit., pp. 378 et seqq.
[80] Chirino, Primera parte, quoted by Retana, col. 24, implied that Quiñones and Plasencia wrote at about the same time: “The first who wrote in these languages were, in Visayan, P. Fr. Martin de Rada, and in Tagalog, Fr. Juan de Quiñones, both of the Order of St. Augustine, and at the same time Fr. Juan de Oliver and Fr. Juan de Plasencia of the Order of St. Francis, of whom the latter began first, but the former [wrote] many more things and very useful ones.” However, San Antonio, I, p. 532, wrote perhaps with bias in favor of his own order, “Although the Augustinian fathers had come earlier and did not lack priests fluent in the idiom, the language had not yet been reduced to a grammar, so that it could be learned by common grammatical rules, nor was there a general vocabulary of speech; except that each one had his own notes, to make himself understood, and everything was unsystematized.”
[81] Entrada de la seraphica Religion de nuestro P. S. Francisco en las Islas Philipinas, MS. of 1649, first published in Retana, Archivo, I, no. III, translated in B. & R., XXXV, p. 311.
[82] Medina, p. 15, quoting from Martínez whom we are unable to trace.
[83] Huerta, pp. 492–3. Oliver died in 1599. San Antonio, II, p. 531, says that Plasencia was the first to write a catechism (called in Tagalog “Tocsohan”), and Oliver was the first to translate the explanation of the Doctrina. Oliver’s works are noted by León Pinelo, op. cit., 1737–38, II, col. 730, and Barrantes, op. cit., p. 187.
[84] Sebastian de Totanes, Arte de la Lengua Tagala, Manila, 1850, p. v, (first edition printed in 1745) says of Oliver that “up to the present day our province reveres him as the first master of this idiom.”
[85] See note 42.
[86] Huerta, p. 517. Nothing is known of Diego de la Asuncion except that he wrote five works in Tagalog including an Arte and Diccionario. Huerta was unable to find any record of him in the mission lists, the capitularies or the death records, but that he was in the Philippines before 1649 we can be sure of from the notice of him in the manuscript of that date.