Note 3 — THE FRIAR VIEWPOINT

A precious testimony of this is that mentioned by the erudite father Augustín María, O.S.A. in his Historia del Insigne convento de San Pablo de Manila [i.e., History of the glorious convent of San Pablo in Manila], which is preserved unedited in the archives of said convent, when he says: “In the same year (1571) was founded this convent and church of San Pablo, which is the chief one of this province, the capitular house for novitiates, and of studies in grammar, arts, theology, and canons for Indians and creoles, until the Jesuits came and opened public schools.” Passing by those teaching centers created in Manila by the religious orders scarcely yet born in those islands, omitting the introduction of printing, a powerful means for progress, by those orders, some decades after their establishment in the islands, and limiting ourselves only to the creation of schools and the progress of primary instruction, we do not fear to affirm that before our legislators occupied themselves in giving laws for teaching in Filipinas, laws had been proclaimed in the assemblies of the religious orders. Before the famous ordinances of Obando and of Raón had been published, the printing houses of the said orders had already printed works entitled: Práctica del Ministerio que siguen los religiosos del orden de N. P. S. Agustín en Philippinas [i.e., Practice of the ministry followed by the religious of the order of our father St. Augustine in Philippinas]; and the Práctica de párrocos dominicana [i.e., Practice of the Dominican parish priest]. Before treating of one or the other it is a duty of historical justice to discard the two above-cited laws given for the New World, the first in 1550, fifteen years before the conquest of Filipinas, and the second in 1634, and both recorded in the royal decree of 1686,3 given likewise for América and all extended to the archipelago of Legazpi. Now then, much before those last dates, the Augustinian order in its tenth provincial chapter, held May 9, 1596, in which the reverend father, Fray Lorenzo de León, was elected provincial, among the acts and resolutions which it established, which are capitular laws, compulsory on all the religious of the province, was the following: “It is enjoined upon all the ministers of Indians, that just as the schoolboys are taught to read and write, they be taught also to speak our Spanish language, because of the great culture and profit which follow therefrom.” That document was providentially conserved in the secretary’s office of the convent of San Pablo in Manila, notwithstanding the devastation which that convent suffered and the loss of precious documents during the English invasion.