Note 82 — The Franciscans

Miguel de Talavera we have spoken of before. That he helped Plasencia in the compilation of his earliest works in Tagalog is clear, and to him in part must be attributed the miracle of the production by Plasencia of the texts “in so short a time and with so few years in the country.” Martínez says specifically that Talavera “was the first interpreter among our priests, and greatly helped Fr. Juan de Plasencia in the composition of the Arte y Vocabulario.”82 Juan de Oliver was in somewhat the same relationship to Plasencia, but instead of helping with the initial attempts, he carried on from where Plasencia left off. Oliver came to the Philippines on the same expedition which brought Bishop Salazar in 1581. According to Huerta83 he worked in various Tagalog villages, and mastered the Tagalog and Bicol languages, in which he wrote twenty-two works, which Huerta lists. Of these three are of particular interest to us. The first entry says that he “corrected the Tagalog grammar written by Fr. Juan de Plasencia, and added the adverbs and particles;”84 the second that “he [26] perfected and augmented the Spanish-Tagalog dictionary, written by the said Fr. Juan de Plasencia;” and the sixteenth lists a Catecismo de doctrina Cristiana esplicado.