The Reformation Era · 1565-1650 · Philippines
Philippine Catholicism
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About This Movement
Spanish rule in the Philippines began in 1565, and with it came friars — Augustinians first, then Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans and Recollects. Who baptised, gathered scattered settlements into parishes and built stone churches at their centres. What grew there was not simply transplanted Spanish religion. The first book printed in the islands, the Doctrina Christiana of 1593, appeared in Spanish and in Tagalog written both in Latin letters and in the local baybayin script, and lay confraternities took on much of the work of devotion. Out of that vernacular habit came the tradition the islands are still known for — the pasyon, the Passion of Christ told as a long verse epic and chanted in ordinary houses through Holy Week — though the surviving pasyon texts date from the century after this one.
Sources
- The Doctrina Christiana (1593) - the first Philippine imprint, Tagalog and Spanish, in Latin script and baybayin (primary) — Catechesis in the converts' own script from the very first year. A facsimile of the Library of Congress copy has been digitized.
- The mission record: Chirino's Relacion de las Islas Filipinas (1604), the orders' chronicles (Plasencia's customs accounts); translations in Blair & Robertson, The Philippine Islands (primary) — The fullest early descriptions of Filipino Christian life — but written by the missionaries themselves, not the converts.
- The pasyon and confraternity layer: cofradia records and parish devotional documentation; the pasyon/pabasa tradition of home chanting (primary) — The earliest surviving pasyon text is Aquino de Belen's, from 1704 — later than this period. The account here rests on the broader devotional practice of the Spanish era, not on that specific text.
- Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philippines (1959), with Rafael, Contracting Colonialism (1988) (secondary) — A classic framing work, plus the current standard on translation and conversion.
- Cambridge History of Christianity vol. 6 (reference) — This volume has no chapter dedicated to the Philippines; the closest is the mission cluster in Part V, chapters 27-30.