Note 86 — The Franciscans

The other two Franciscans listed by the anonymous historian of 1649 are elsewhere recorded as having written various works in Tagalog. To both Diego de la Asuncion86 and Gerónimo Montes y Escamillo87 were attributed grammars and dictionaries, and the latter also wrote a Devotional tagalog, said to have been printed at Manila in 1610. In speaking of these early linguistic texts, it is not necessary to believe that each was a completely original work, but rather that they were based upon a recognized model, which was at first the Talavera-Plasencia-Oliver text, and that the individual missionaries used their experience in the field to produce, as it were, new editions. That this was the case is borne out by the notes of Pablo Rojo to his bibliography of Plasencia where speaking of the grammar and dictionary he says that “perfected by other missionaries, they have been the base for such grammars and dictionaries of Tagalog as have been written, but in the form in which they came from the hands of their author, they have not come down to us.”88 More important still is Rojo’s statement89 that he found a portion of Plasencia’s Doctrina which had been believed lost, and from which he quotes the Pater Noster. Since he does not say where the manuscript was or how it was known to be [27] Plasencia’s text, we cannot put too much reliance on the statement, but the text as there printed, while similar to that of the present Doctrina, is not identical.