But when we keep in mind the small number of ecclesiastics in the islands we must clear them of the charge of intellectual idleness.  Their activity, on the other hand, considering the climate was remarkable. [129] An examination of J.T.  Medina’s monumental work [130] on printing in Manila and of Retana’s supplement [131] reveals nearly five hundred titles of works printed in the islands before 1800.  This of course takes no account of the works sent or brought to Spain for publication, which would necessarily comprise a large proportion of those of general rather than local interest, including of course the most important histories.  To these should be added no small number of grammars and dictionaries of the native languages, and missionary histories, that have never been printed. [132] The monastic presses in the islands naturally were chiefly used for the production of works of religious edification, such as catechisms, narratives of missions, martyrdoms, lives of saints, religious histories, and hand-books to the native languages.  Simpler manuals of devotion, rosaries, catechisms, outlines of Christian doctrine, stories of martyrdoms, etc., were translated for the Indians.  Of these there were about sixty in the Tagal, and from three to ten or twelve each in the Visayan, Vicol, Pampanga, Ilocan, Panayan, and Pangasinan languages. [133]

If, as is credibly asserted, the knowledge of reading and writing was more generally diffused in the Philippines than among the common people of Europe, [134] we have the singular result that the islands contained relatively more people who could read, and less reading matter of any but purely religious interest, than any other community in the world.  Yet it would not be altogether safe to assume that in the eighteenth century the list of printed translations into the native languages comprised everything of European literature available for reading; for the Spanish government, in order to promote the learning of Spanish, had prohibited at times the printing of books in Tagal. [135] Furthermore, Zuniga says explicitly that “after the coming of the Spaniards they (i.e. the people in Luzon) have had comedies, interludes, tragedies, poems, and every kind of literary work translated from the Spanish, without producing a native poet who has composed even an interlude.” [136] Again, Zuniga describes a eulogistic poem of welcome addressed by a Filipino villager to Commodore Alava.  This loa, as this species of composition was called, was replete with references to the voyages of Ulysses, the travels of Aristotle, the unfortunate death of Pliny, and other incidents in ancient history.  The allusions indicate some knowledge at any rate outside the field of Christian doctrine, even if it was so slight as not to make it seem beyond the limits of poetic license to have Aristotle drown himself in chagrin at not being able to measure the depths of the sea, or to have Pliny throw himself into Vesuvius in his zeal to investigate