A brief survey of Iloko literature from the beginnings to its present development, with a bibliography of works pertaining to the Iloko people and their language, by Leopoldo Y. Yabes.

18

ILOKO LITERATURE

Vigan.4 A few friars of the Franciscan Order also went there,
and a Franciscan, Fr. Juan de Ayora, is considered by chroniclers of the Order to have been the first Apostle of the Ilokos,
that is, the first to preach Christianity to the people.5 Towns
were founded and churches were established with such rapidity
that, according to Isabelo de los Reyes, "en 1626 Ilocos era una
de las mejoras provincias del Archipielago, y sus naturales bastante civilizados, muy buenos y serviciales."6
However, it was not until 1621, about half a century after
the Conquest, that the first Iloko work was printed. It was
a translation into Iloko by an Agustinian missionary and philologist, of a work on the Christian doctrine by an Italian Jesuit
Cardinal, Roberto Francesco Romolo Bellarmino. It was entitled: Libro a naisuratan amin a bagas ti doctrina cristiana
nga naisurat iti libro ti Cardenal a agnagan Belarmino, ket
inaon ti P. Fr. Fracisco Lopez, padre, a S. Agustin, iti sinasantoy (Book in which is Written All the Contents of the Christian Doctrine as Written in the Book of a Cardinal Named Bellarmino, and Translated by P. Fr. Fracisco Lopez, an Agustinian Father, into Samtoy). This book was certainly the most
important work in Iloko published in the seventeenth century.
From 1621 to 1895, it went through not less than seven editions.
Fr. Lopez also wrote another religious work, Catecismo de la
lengua ylocana, con esplicacion de los misterios principales de
nuestra Santa Fe..., but it was not printed until 1765.7 It has
gone through more than ten editions, and to this day it is
used in the Ilokos. He also wrote a grammar and vocabulary
of the Iloko language, which shall be considered in the section
on linguistic works.
Besides Fr. Lopez, there were other friars who contributed
much to the religious literature of the century. Fr. Antonio
Mejia, who died in Laoag in 1659, wrote a Pasion de N. S. Jesucristo in Iloko which, according to Wenceslao E. Retana, was
undoubtedly the first pasion written in any Philippine language.
Isabelo de los Reyes believes this pasion was written in 1621,9
but it was not published until 1845 in Madrid.10 Fr. Mejia
4-Fr. Gaspar San Agustin cited by Isabelo de los Reyes in his Historia,
de Ilocos. v. 2, p. 43.
5-Ibid., p. 43.
6-Ibid., p. 81.
7-See Retana, W. E., La imprenta en Filipinas. Madrid, Imp. de la
Viuda M. Minuesa de los Rios, 1899, col. 205.
8-Retana says: "Lo que si puede asegurarse, es que ninfaun otro, uce
recordemos, compuso la Pasion en la lengua indigena de Filipinas antes
oue el P. Mejia, que murio en 1659". See his Aparato bibliografico de la
historia rieneral de Filipinas, v. 2, p. 589.
9-Historia de Ilocos, v. 2. p. 171.
10-Retana thinks this edition may not have been the first, because