For almost a hundred and fifty years no historian or bibliographer
wrote anything to challenge the basic affirmations of Chirino,
Fernández and Aduarte. In the middle of the 18th century, Lorenzo
Hervas y Panduro, [26] a Jesuit, was forced by the expulsion of the
Jesuits from Spain to seek refuge in the Papal States, and took up
residence at Cesena. There he began work on a tremendous universal
history of the spiritual development of man, into which he wove the
results of his philosophical, social and linguistic studies. These
last were of particular importance, and Hervas is regarded as the true
founder of the science of linguistics and comparative philology. In
1785 he published the eighteenth volume of his massive work, the
_Origine, formazione, meccanismo, ed armonia degl' idiomi_, in which
he printed a Tagalog Ave Maria as written in 1593, with the note:


"The Ave Maria in the Tagalog of 1593 is to be read in the
Tagalog-Spanish Doctrina Christiana which was printed in
Tagalog and roman characters by the Dominican fathers in
their printing-house at Manila in the year 1593." [27]


In 1787 he finished his twenty-first volume, _Saggio pratico_, [28]
which was another philological study, including the Pater Noster
in over three hundred languages and dialects, among them Tagalog,
again from the 1593 Doctrina. Here, then, is ample proof that a copy
of this book was known to Hervas in 1785, and the only information
which his loose transcription of the title failed to give was that
the volume was "corrected by members of the orders," that it was
printed with license, and that it was printed at San Gabriel.