Diorama 15: The First Book, 1593

The First Books1593While the first proper printing press with movable type was operated at the Dominican mission house in Binondo for the printing of Fray Francisco Blancas de San Jose’s books in 1602, the first books in the Philippines were printed in 1593 with a crude press utilizing wood blocks. These books were on catechism used by the friars to convert the early Filipino. The very first book printed in 1593 was the Doctrina Christiana en lengua Espanola por los relegioso de las ordenes Imprenta con licencia en San Gabriel de la orden de S. Domingo en Manila, which had eductions in Chinese (Hokkien) and Tagalog. One one extant copy of this book exists, and it is not in the National Library of the Philippines, but in the US Library of Congress in Washington, DC.What makes the Doctrina unique is that the Tagalog texts are printed both in the Roman alphabet and the pre-colonial script more popularly known as the baybayin. Contrary to popular belief, some aspects of pre-colonial Philippine culture, like writing, were not destroyed by the Spanish colonizers but actually preserved and documented in the works like Doctrina. This book is proof that the pre-colonial Filipinos had their own language and system of writing. Early friar accounts state that the pre-colonial writing was on perishable materials like leaves or wood that did not survive to our time. The Doctrina acts like the Rosetta stone, giving us a means to read and understand the pre-colonial baybayin.While the printing press was established in Manila as early 1602, and run by Filipino authors and printers, the foremost being Tomas Pinpin, much of the productions was on religious works. Stricts censorship of secular material was imposed during the Spanish colonial period. Thus, while Filipino wer literate, the printing press in the Philippine offered little to expand their intellectual or literary horizons.