The Bibliographical History
In tracing our clues down through the years, we find at the very beginning the most valuable evidence which has been uncovered, short of the book itself. From Manila on June 20, 1593, the Governor of the Philippines, Gomez Perez Dasmariñas, wrote a letter to Philip II of Spain in which he said:
“Sire, in the name of Your Majesty, I have for this once, because of the existing great need, granted a license for the printing of the Doctrinas Christianas, herewith enclosed—one in the Tagalog language, which is the native and best of these islands, and the other in Chinese—from which I hope great benefits will result in the conversion and instruction of the peoples of both nations; and because the lands of the Indies are on a larger scale in everything and things more expensive, I have set the price of them at four reales a piece, until Your Majesty is pleased to decree in full what is to be done.”[7]
This states unequivocally that two books were printed at Manila some time before June 20, 1593, one of which was the Doctrina in Tagalog, and the other the same work in Chinese. Although we are chiefly concerned here with the former, the fact that they were produced at about the same time and probably at the same place makes it necessary to trace the history of both in order to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding the production of the one. Of the Chinese Doctrina no copy has yet come to light, and except for two 1593 references, there are no records of its existence.
Another document[8] of 1593 verifies the information given in the letter of Dasmariñas, differing from it only in one detail. In the Archives of the Indies was found a manuscript account of 1593 listing books written in the Philippines, which says:
“There have been printed primers and catechisms of the faith, one in Spanish and Tagalog, which is the native language, and the other in Chinese, which are being sent to Your Majesty, the Tagalog priced at two reales and the Chinese at four, which is hoped will be of great benefit.”
The accounts of the printing of two Doctrinas contained in these documents confirm some of the information of the title and add a bit more. First, the letter says that the book was printed by permission given by the Governor, which agrees with the “with license” of the title, “for this once because of the existing great need.” By a royal cedula[9] of September 21, 1556, which was promulgated again on August 14, 1560, it had been ordered that Justices “not consent to or permit to be printed or sold any book containing material concerning the Indies without having special license sent by our Royal Council of the Indies,” and on May 8, 1584 this was implemented by the further order “that when any grammar or dictionary of the language of the Indies be made it shall not be published, or printed or used unless it has first been examined by the Bishop and seen by the Royal Audiencia.” This latter portion was applied specifically to the Philippines in a letter[10] from Philip II to the Audiencia of Manila, also dated May 8, 1584, to which further reference will be made. It can be gathered from Dasmariñas’ implied apology that he had never before given such a license, and, since he had arrived in the Philippines in 1590, that no books had been printed between that time and the licensing of the Doctrinas. It is, moreover, likely that if any similar books had been printed during the administrations of his predecessors he would have mentioned the fact as a precedent for acting contrary to the cedulas.
According to Dasmariñas he had priced the books at four reales a piece, which followed the regular Spanish procedure, under which books were subject to price control. The Governor, it will be noted, also apologized for the high price he was forced to set, giving general high prices[11] as his excuse. Yet, while the appraisal of four reales for this book was high compared to the prevailing scale in Spain, it was not high compared to prices allowed in Mexico. On June 6, 1542 the Emperor had given the Casa de Cromberger, the first printing-house in Mexico, permission[12] to sell books printed there at seventeen maravedís a sheet, or exactly one half a real. If we assume that, although the Doctrina had been printed page by page, it was quarto in size and so appraised on the basis of eight pages to a sheet, we find that the price per sheet comes to about fourteen maravedís, or less than half a real. However, a contradiction occurs between the letter of Dasmariñas and this copy of the Doctrina, supported by the other 1593 document. On the verso of the title, Juan de Cuellar,[13] the Governor’s secretary and the logical person to sign the official valuation, gives the price as two reales, and the 1593 account, while agreeing with the letter as far as the Chinese Doctrina is concerned, also lists the price of the Tagalog Doctrina as two reales. It is impossible to say what caused the discrepancy; perhaps it was a decision on Dasmariñas’ part to lower the cost, notwithstanding inflationary values, in order to make the book more readily available for the natives who were not economically as well off as the Chinese, or it could be that after the letter had been written it was noticed that the Chinese volume was larger than the Tagalog one, and some adjustment made. In any event, the price of this Doctrina was finally set at two reales, making it less than half the price allowed in Mexico fifty years before.
The evidence of the two 1593 documents would seem conclusive with regard to printing in 1593, but witnesses were not long in appearing who stated something quite different. The earliest of these was Pedro Chirino,[14] a Jesuit priest, who came to the Philippines with Dasmariñas in 1590. He went back to Europe in 1602, and while there had a history of the Philippines printed at Rome in 1604. In 1606 he returned to the islands, where he died in 1635. He left unpublished the manuscript of another and more detailed history, dated 1610, which contains a most significant passage, where, after speaking of various early writers in native languages, he continues: