Retana's supplement[1] reveals nearly five hundred titles of works printed in the islands before 1800. This of course takes no account of the works sent or brought to Spain for publication, which would necessarily comprise a large proportion of those of general rather than local interest, including of course the most important histories. To these should be added no small number of grammars and dictionaries of the native languages, and missionary histories, that have never been printed.[2] The monastic presses in the islands naturally were chiefly used for the production of works of religious edification, such as catechisms, narratives of missions, martyrdoms, lives of saints, religious histories, and hand-books to the native languages. Simpler manuals of devotion, rosaries, catechisms, outlines of Christian doctrine, stories of martyrdoms, etc., were translated for the Indians. Of these there were about sixty in the Tagal, and from three to ten or twelve each in the Visayan, Vicol, Pampanga, Ilocan, Panayan, and Pangasinán languages.[3]
- ↑ Adiciones y Observaciones à La Imprenta en Manila, Maddrid, 1899.
- ↑ For representative lists of these, see Blumentritt's privately printed Bibliotheca Philippina, Theile i and ii.
- ↑ It is, all things considered, a singular fact that in all that list there is no translation of parts of the Bible, except of course the fragmentary paraphrases in the catechism and doctrinals. The only item indicating first-hand Biblical study in the Philippines under the old régime that has come to my notice in the bibliographies of Medina and Retana is this, that Juan de la Concepcion the historian left in manuscript a translation of the Holy Bible into Spanish. La Imprenta en Manila, p. 221. This failure to translate the Bible into the native languages was not peculiar to Spanish rule in the Philippines. Protestant Holland, far behind Spain in providing for native education, was equally opposed to the circulation of the Bible. "Even as late as the second or third decade of this century the New Testament was considered
