fundamental character of the work. After a syllabary comes the Pater
Noster, the primary and most popular prayer of Christianity. Then
follow the Ave Maria, Credo, Salve Regina, Articles of Faith, Ten
Commandments, Commandments of the Holy Church, Sacraments of the Holy
Church, Seven Mortal Sins, Fourteen Works of Charity, Confession
and Catechism. Here in a small compass is presented the simplest,
most easily learned and most essential tenets of the Catholic Church.

So useful was the Doctrina considered as a guide for those who had
just been, or were about to be, converted that the missionary fathers
placed it in most cases foremost among the books necessary to have
in print in a strange land. It is generally accepted today, although
no extant copy is known, that the first book printed in Mexico [4]
in 1539 was a Doctrina in Mexican and Spanish. Recent research has
shown that the second book printed by the pioneer Jesuit press at Goa,
in India, in 1557 was St. Francis Xavier's _Doutrina Christão_ [5]
in the Malay language, of which also no copy has yet been located. But
there are copies of the first book to come from a South American press,
another Doctrina [6] printed in the native and Spanish languages at
Lima in 1584. So the choice of this book as the first to be printed
at Manila follows a widespread precedent.

We have then a book, the Doctrina Christiana, in Spanish and Tagalog,
corrected by priests of more than one order--and this is important
in tracing the authorship of the work--and printed by the xylographic
method with license at Manila at the Dominican Church of San Gabriel
in 1593. So much we get from the title, and in itself it is a fairly
complete story, but from the date of its issue until the present time
that very fundamental information has not been completely recorded.