and the _Librong Pagaaralan nang
manga Tagalog nang uicang Castilla_ [23] (or _Libro en qve aprendan
los Tagalos, la lengua Castellana_), both printed at Bataan in 1610,
and until the discovery of the present Doctrina and the _Ordinationes_
of 1604 the earliest surviving Philippine imprints known.

We have not cited here in detail the account of Juan Lopez [24] in
the fifth part of his history of the Dominicans, because, although it
was printed nineteen years before the appearance of Aduarte's work,
the information therein contained regarding the Philippines was
acknowledgedly obtained from the unfinished manuscript which Aduarte
had with him in Spain. The pertinent passages add nothing to Aduarte's
information, and even the wording is reminiscent of his.

The first suggestion that early Philippine books may have been printed
from wood-blocks occurred in Quetif and Echard's bibliography of
Dominican writers printed at Paris in 1719. There, after listing
eight works by Blancas de San Jose, they add:

"He published all these in the Philippines with the help
of a Chinese Christian using Chinese blocks, for in his day
European typographers had not yet arrived in those islands,
nor did they have types for their language." [25]

This was an amazing suggestion, for as far as we know the
bibliographers who made it had not actually seen the books; nor is it
entirely true. The first two works listed are two books we know were
printed typographically in 1610. The sixth is _De los mysterios del
Rosario de nuestra Senora Tagalice_, the book referred to by Fernandez
as having been printed in 1602, and generally accepted as being from
movable type, although no copy has been discovered to prove it. And
yet, it is not at all impossible that some time before 1602 Blancas de
San Jose had some of his writings printed from blocks. In any event,
the idea, later developed by Medina and Retana, that xylography was
used before a real printing-press was established, may have come from
this not wholly accurate note.

For almost a hundred and fifty years no historian or bibliographer
wrote anything to challenge the basic affirmations of Chirino,
Fernandez and Aduarte. In the middle of the 18th century, Lorenzo
Hervas y Panduro, [26] a Jesuit, was forced by the expulsion of the
Jesuits from Spain to seek refuge in the Papal States, and took up
residence at Cesena. There he began work on a tremendous universal
history of th