I found this article written by Alan Levy. He describes the Rizal monument in Litomerice better than I did.
"Three busts in one block."
"What Litomerice celebrates in a ceremony every June is not the late Jose Rizal's early martryrdom -- which incited a full-scale rebellion against Spanish rule -- but four of the best days of his life. Three busts of him stand within a square-block's radius of the town's spiffed-up, arcaded central square. (See box.)"
"Born in the Philippine town of Calamba (since 1974, officially "twinned" with Litomerice as "sister towns"), Rizal had been in Europe since May 1882, studying medicine and philosophy in Madrid and ophthalmology in Paris and Heidelberg. (He was a licensed eye doctor.) In Germany, he had finished writing and just published -- in Spanish -- his first novel, Noli Me Tangere (Don't Touch Me). Now he and Maximo Viola -- a Filipino physician who'd funded publication of Rizal's novel -- embarked on a farewell trip across central Europe together before Rizal would sail east from Marseilles that summer."
"Blumentritt, a Prague-born and -educated German-speaker not quite eight years Rizal's senior, had settled in Leitmeritz upon graduation from Charles University, where he'd studied Spanish colonialism, to take up an appointment to teach history and geography in the town's Technical Secondary School (of which he later became director). He married a local girl, Rosa Muller, and they had two sons and a daughter to whom they gave a Spanish name, Dolores; at home, she was called Loleng, the Tagalog, or Philippine language, version."
"Math in Tagalog
Rizal, who'd been campaigning to introduce Philippine studies into European universities, had heard that Blumentritt was learning Tagalog. While still in Heidelberg, Rizal sent Blumentritt an arithmetic book written in Tagalog and Spanish by a Filipino scholar. Blumentritt responded enthusiastically, and thus began what Rizal's biographer, Austin Coates, has called "the most remarkable -- and the most voluminous -- correspondence in Philippine letters, which went on almost uninterruptedly until terminated by death."
"In an 1886 exchange of letters, Rizal rebuked the staunchly Catholic Blumentritt for his research reliance on Spanish authors and monks. (The latter are the villains of Noli Me Tangere.)"
"Blumentritt sent Rizal some etchings of his family. Rizal, who also was an artist, sent back a self-portrait. Blumentritt wrote to Rizal: "I look forward with even greater impatience than before to the moment when I should come to know you personally."
"RIZAL IN LITOMERICE
The town's stunning main square, now called Mirove namesti (Peace Square) is dominated by a tower shaped like a chalice. The Gothic building beneath it houses Mayor Jiri Landa's office, in the vestibule of which stands a bust of Rizal. In the tourist office on the ground floor, you can obtain an excellent 60-page paperback in English, Jose Rizal, Ferdinand Blumentritt and the Philippines in the New Age (1998) by Jindrich Tomas, the town archivist. At Mirove nam. 12, another bust is built into the facade of the elegant Hotel Salva Guarda, which was the mayor's office at the time of Rizal's visit. From a park behind the Salva Guarda, a third bust of Rizal looks out across the town to its majestic St. Stephen's Cathedral."
"Across Mirove namesti from the Salva Guarda is the Hotel Rak, where Rizal and Viola stayed. A short walk past the Rak along Novobranska brings you to Na Valech 2, where Blumentritt died in 1913. Across busy Na Valech is the school where Blumentritt spent his career."
"The Blumentritt home Rizal visited in 1887 was at Lange Gasse (now Dlouha) 29. That building was destroyed May 9, 1945 -- a day after World War II ended in Europe -- by Soviet bombers clearing a route for the belated entry into Prague of Red Army tanks."
"GETTING THERE
A bus leaves Prague's Florenc terminal at 9 a.m. daily and takes 65 minutes. There is a fast return bus at 6:35 p.m. from Litomerice that takes one hour to Prague's Nadrazi Holesovice. Fare each way: 56 Kc ($1.40)"
"That occasion came May 13, 1887, when Rizal and Viola stepped off a train in Leitmeritz. The whole Blumentritt family was there to welcome them and escort them to their billets at the Hotel Rak on the main square. "
"Beer and a butterfly
It wasn't a historic weekend -- or even a newsworthy one: just one friend sharing his life with another. After a visit to the Blumentritt home, they strolled the slopes of the hilly town, inhaling the scent of its May flowers and blossoming fruit trees, while conversing mostly in German. They visited the bishop's residence, where Rizal particularly admired a Czech Bible from the 15th century, and the mayor's office, where Rizal and Viola signed the city chronicle's guest book. They drank in a town pub, where Viola pronounced its beer the best in Bohemia, and ate Austro-Czech food, for Rizal had mentioned in a letter that he didn't like north German cuisine. Blumentritt also took his guests to a meeting of the Tourists' Club. Their farewell dinner was in an inn beneath tall trees that Rizal admired on the Shooter's Isle (now Strelecky ostrov) in the Elbe."
"As the train to Prague pulled out on May 16, Blumentritt stood silent, his eyes blurred with tears, while his daughter Dolores ran along the platform "like a butterfly," Rizal recalled. On May 19 from Brno, Rizal wrote a prescient thank-you to Blumentritt:
"Shall this magnificent farewell to Europe be perhaps the omen of a terrible reception in the Philippines?" But, Rizal concluded, he would always remember that "you are not alone, Rizal. There is a little corner of Bohemia [where] there are good, noble souls and friends who appreciate you. Think of them."
"And he told Blumentritt: "I am in my heart a Leitmeritzan just as you consider yourself a Filipino in sentiment."
"When Rizal reached Manila in August 1887, his novel had preceded him and he was indeed notorious. After he published a fiery sequel, El filibusterismo (The Subversive, 1891), he was arrested as a revolutionary agitator and banished to Dapitan on Mindanao island. In November 1896, he was put on trial and condemned to death for instigating an insurrection and founding revolutionary societies."
"On Dec. 29, 1896, from his cell in Fort Santiago, Rizal penned his last letter to Blumentritt: "My dear brother: When you receive this letter, I am already dead. Tomorrow at 7 o'clock I shall be shot. I am, however, innocent of the crime of rebellion. Farewell, my best, my dearest friend, and never think ill of me."
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
16th Century Visuals of the Philippine Archipelago
Old Time Mapmakers Coming Across As Novices:
16th Century Visuals of the Philippine Archipelago
Penelope V. Flores and Manuel G. Flores
San Francisco State University and
Educational Multimedia Resources
pflores@sfsu.edu
Abstract
Sorting out the 16th and 17th century chaos of visual maps of the Philippines has been like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle where there is no picture board as a guide. In our research study, old time cartographers come across as novices. The conceptual framework used in this study is based on the world-system’s origins of the knowledge of Southeast Asian portolans (pilot books) and maps through the geographic thought of sixteenth to eighteenth century chroniclers, explorers, and cartographers. We analyze the pre-Pedro Murillo 1734 Philippine visual map. There is a general confusion of the life and subsequent deaths of phantom peninsulas and dragon-tail-like promontories that metamorphose into America. To this navigation of Philippine seas, we get entangled with Terra Orientales and ensnared by that infamous shifting linea—Treaty of Tordesilla’s demarcation line. The discrepancies and the various published rendering of Pigafetta’s text and account of Maximillian are full of ambiguities. We find the Zooloo string of islands called Samal scattered all over the Marianas. We document several transliterations and corrupted various ways of copyists. Knowledge of how medieval Europe depicted the Philippines is crucial to our understanding of Philippine culture and history.
1. Introduction
No understanding of the Philippines within Southeast Asia could be complete without reference to cartography—particularly at the time when a veritable revolution took place in map designs and projection during the sixteenth century.
Maps of Southeast Asia and the Philippines in the early 16th century was a mad confusion of peninsulas that was like dragon tails, and islands that dotted the Insulis or inland seas. First there was an archaic geography of Southeast Asia perpetrated by Ptolemy showing the Golden Chersonesus which corresponds to modern Malaysia. Medieval maps show the mythical Southeast Asia where the Indian Ocean was a closed ocean with no outlet and was a place of the gold and silver islands called Chryse and Argyre. According to the bible, Paradise was located in the East. Even now, Sri Lanka is believed to be the fabled garden of Eden.
It is in this setting that we locate the Philippine archipelago using Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, German, and English mapmakers. Each generation of maps incurred serious location errors mirrored by other mapmakers. Even with the voyage of discovery, many chroniclers were often mistaken. Copyists conflated some islands and corrupted name places. The effect was a complicated jumble of interpretations.
But are we not anachronistically viewing maps from contemporary eyes? In the 16th century, these maps were the ultimate in new world information.
2. Southeast Asia in the 16th century
2.1. Mythological Southeast Asia
Medieval thought commonly envisioned the area of the Philippines and Southeast Asia as “three Indias”, India Gangem, India Extra Gangem, and India Orientalis. This probably arose from the Biblical account of the three eastern kings who visited the infant Jesus. This notion of three Indias took literal form on world maps in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Renaissance mapmakers felt they had made better sense out of “three Indias.” Soon the belief that Asia possessed three peninsular sub continents took on a life of its own, culminating with the belief that America was the easternmost “India”. Hence, Columbus sailing westward believed that he had reached the southeastern outskirts of Asia represented as Indus Externalis and so named the indigenous people of his new discovery “Indians.” A most symbolically rendered map of Asia as the mythical horse Pegasus is presented by a theologian Heinrich Bunting as a rich allegorical figure. The horse’s two hind legs form the supposedly double peninsulas based on Asia and America as mapped by Giacomo Gastaldi in 1546. The Pacific is roughly interpreted as the same size of the Atlantic Ocean.
Fig 1. 1581 H. Bünting Pegasus map of Asia
The Chinese, Arabs and later the Portuguese knew about Southeast Asia, but very few maps existed. In addition the Portuguese were so secretive about their new discoveries in the Spice Islands that under penalty of death no mapmakers dared subvert the order. So, in the 16th century a devise was made to represent Southeast Asia: the hand map.
2.1 Barros’s Hand Map
The Portuguese João de Barros in 1522 offered a hand map of Southeast Asia. It was to form the human hand into a map. He instructed his readers to point their left hand toward their body, palm down, index finger straightened and separated from the thumb, with the remaining three fingers also separated from the index finger, these three are curled so that they extend out only to the knuckle. The thumb represented India.The index finger is the Malay peninsula, and the flesh between them Myanmar. The space represents the Indian Ocean. The three curled fingers are Cambodia and Vietnam with their natural shape approximating the land’s true southwest-northeast contour. The space between the index finger and the third finger bent at the knuckles represent the Gulf of Siam. The natural indentation of the hand visually represented Chao Phraya river; that between the third finger and the fourth fingers is the Mekong River. The contour of the hand goes up the wrist and shows the curve of Indochina. Chiang Mai is represented in the wrist. This Barros hand map is more accurate than any other maps of the period. (Suarez, 1999: 123.) And then we have the numerous islands of the Inland sea.
3. The Philippine’s 7,488 islands.
It is interesting to note that in a map below Java Minor there is an inscription which refers to an archipelago of precisely 7,448 islands. Marco Polo got this number from the testimony of seamen that sailed the China seas that “according to the testimony of experienced pilots and seamen that sail upon the China sea, they are well acquainted with the truth that it contained 7,448 islands, most of them inhabited.”
Fig.2. Ruysch’s 7,448 8 Islands Archipelagus 7448 Insularus, by Sebastian Münster,1540 in Suarez: 128.
This figure is approximately an allusion to the 7,100 islands of the Philippines. It could have been low tide when Marco Polo’s pilots chanced upon these islands. Several mapmakers make the same claim: Father Odoric, in reference to islands of the eastern seas estimated it as “at least 5000” While Mandeville repeats the same, speaking of “Inde and the isles beyond the Inde, where be more than 5,000 isles” (Suarez, 1999: 107).
Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia (1540) called a treatyse of the Newe India, (Lach, 1965: 209) gave the literate public of Europe its first clear cartographic glimpse of the “marvelous fruitful island of Puloan, (Palawan, Philippines) located due north of Porne (Borneo).” Poloan in Münster’s (1540) map is oriented east west horizontally.
Fig. 3. Münster
The Caroline Islands is found off Samar’s Guirayan point. And this is the reason why in many old time maps, the Caroline island group is called New Philippines. The Philippine island of Samal is dutifully reported in Guam. The Jesuits’s letters contributed to this confusion.
Fig.4. Nueva Filipinas:The Caroline Islands
The Italian mapmaker Giacomo Gastaldi’s 1548 reconstruction of the Philippines is frustrating. Luzon does not appear. It is on Gastaldi’s map of 1550 that the word “Giapam”(Japan) appears in place of Marco Polo’s “Zipangu” for the first time.
The German cartographer, Martin Waldseemüller was the one who prepared a new set of world maps of an edition of Ptolemy”s Geographica. In Waldseemüller’s 1507 map of the New World, he indicated the new continent between Europe and India as “America” after the Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci, who retraced Columbus voyages and realized that there was a vast continent between India and Europe. In Waldseemüller’s 1510 map of the Malay Peninsula, we find the Zooloo string of islands scattered all over (now) Singapore and Indonesian seas.
.
We document several transliterations and corrupted various ways of copyists.
Diogo Ribeiro, a Portuguese in the employ of Spain was the chief instrument maker in Seville. He was the master map charter of all known seas: the Eastern hemisphere and the Pacific region (Lach, 1965 : 221.) His Padron Real had for the first time the Philippines’ longitudinal axis correctly oriented after the Magellan voyage.
Oronce Fine’s (1531),
The Venetian humanist and civil servant Giovanni Batista Ramusio’s 1554 three-volume Della Navigationi et Viaggi first appeared in 1550, to aid in correcting Ptolemy’s maps of Asia and Africa based on voyages and crews who sailed around the world. (Lach, 1965: 207). His 1550 volume included Pigafetta’s Primo Viaggio intorno al Mondo published in 1524 and was translated to French and then to Italian which according to William Scott (1994: 283) “has given rise to the modern Philippine controversy over a supposed Magellan visit to Butuan.”
The Dutchman, Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s maps are contained in his Itinerario which gives the best descriptions derived from Portuguese maps. What caught our attention is one of his digressions about the “relationships between the Portuguese in Goa and their native wives, the Christian Luso-Indians (mestiços) [Luzon natives who of course were Christianized by the Spanish, underscore ours] indulging in a few snide comments on miscegenation (Lach, 1965: 482).
Gerard Mercatur’s 1569 maps of early Philippines was very limited.
The Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Spanish maps from the Spanish voyages of 1525 to 1700 are enlarged in full detail and in color, much like the vellum specimen of the originals.
A woodcut from Pigafetta’s Primo Viaggio shows Mattau (Mactan) island off Zyubu presented as more than a third the size of present Cebu.
Fig. xx Cebu and Mactan, Pigafetta 1525, Primo Viaggio Intorno al Globo Terraqueo, Milan 1800. P125.
I note several errors. Tandaya is the name of the chief of Samar. The map names the island Samar as Tendaya.
We find the island of Camiguing in the northern coast of Mindanao where they were told are the towns of Butuan, Surigao, Calagan, and Caraga were located. Masagua, Sarangani, Mactan, Cabu were mistranslated words and are subsequently mutilated in many maps of the archipelago.
5. Conclusion
Knowledge of how medieval Europe depicted the Philippines is crucial to our understanding of Philippine culture and history. Many Filipino scholars at present have done scant studies of the several islands depicted in modern maps. There has been little analysis of the mistranslations, misnaming, misspelled, misidentified and mislocated islands. Early errors perpetuated are persistently used today. This is a travestry of the highest nature. Somehow, things must change.
16th Century Visuals of the Philippine Archipelago
Penelope V. Flores and Manuel G. Flores
San Francisco State University and
Educational Multimedia Resources
pflores@sfsu.edu
Abstract
Sorting out the 16th and 17th century chaos of visual maps of the Philippines has been like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle where there is no picture board as a guide. In our research study, old time cartographers come across as novices. The conceptual framework used in this study is based on the world-system’s origins of the knowledge of Southeast Asian portolans (pilot books) and maps through the geographic thought of sixteenth to eighteenth century chroniclers, explorers, and cartographers. We analyze the pre-Pedro Murillo 1734 Philippine visual map. There is a general confusion of the life and subsequent deaths of phantom peninsulas and dragon-tail-like promontories that metamorphose into America. To this navigation of Philippine seas, we get entangled with Terra Orientales and ensnared by that infamous shifting linea—Treaty of Tordesilla’s demarcation line. The discrepancies and the various published rendering of Pigafetta’s text and account of Maximillian are full of ambiguities. We find the Zooloo string of islands called Samal scattered all over the Marianas. We document several transliterations and corrupted various ways of copyists. Knowledge of how medieval Europe depicted the Philippines is crucial to our understanding of Philippine culture and history.
1. Introduction
No understanding of the Philippines within Southeast Asia could be complete without reference to cartography—particularly at the time when a veritable revolution took place in map designs and projection during the sixteenth century.
Maps of Southeast Asia and the Philippines in the early 16th century was a mad confusion of peninsulas that was like dragon tails, and islands that dotted the Insulis or inland seas. First there was an archaic geography of Southeast Asia perpetrated by Ptolemy showing the Golden Chersonesus which corresponds to modern Malaysia. Medieval maps show the mythical Southeast Asia where the Indian Ocean was a closed ocean with no outlet and was a place of the gold and silver islands called Chryse and Argyre. According to the bible, Paradise was located in the East. Even now, Sri Lanka is believed to be the fabled garden of Eden.
It is in this setting that we locate the Philippine archipelago using Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, German, and English mapmakers. Each generation of maps incurred serious location errors mirrored by other mapmakers. Even with the voyage of discovery, many chroniclers were often mistaken. Copyists conflated some islands and corrupted name places. The effect was a complicated jumble of interpretations.
But are we not anachronistically viewing maps from contemporary eyes? In the 16th century, these maps were the ultimate in new world information.
2. Southeast Asia in the 16th century
2.1. Mythological Southeast Asia
Medieval thought commonly envisioned the area of the Philippines and Southeast Asia as “three Indias”, India Gangem, India Extra Gangem, and India Orientalis. This probably arose from the Biblical account of the three eastern kings who visited the infant Jesus. This notion of three Indias took literal form on world maps in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Renaissance mapmakers felt they had made better sense out of “three Indias.” Soon the belief that Asia possessed three peninsular sub continents took on a life of its own, culminating with the belief that America was the easternmost “India”. Hence, Columbus sailing westward believed that he had reached the southeastern outskirts of Asia represented as Indus Externalis and so named the indigenous people of his new discovery “Indians.” A most symbolically rendered map of Asia as the mythical horse Pegasus is presented by a theologian Heinrich Bunting as a rich allegorical figure. The horse’s two hind legs form the supposedly double peninsulas based on Asia and America as mapped by Giacomo Gastaldi in 1546. The Pacific is roughly interpreted as the same size of the Atlantic Ocean.
Fig 1. 1581 H. Bünting Pegasus map of Asia
The Chinese, Arabs and later the Portuguese knew about Southeast Asia, but very few maps existed. In addition the Portuguese were so secretive about their new discoveries in the Spice Islands that under penalty of death no mapmakers dared subvert the order. So, in the 16th century a devise was made to represent Southeast Asia: the hand map.
2.1 Barros’s Hand Map
The Portuguese João de Barros in 1522 offered a hand map of Southeast Asia. It was to form the human hand into a map. He instructed his readers to point their left hand toward their body, palm down, index finger straightened and separated from the thumb, with the remaining three fingers also separated from the index finger, these three are curled so that they extend out only to the knuckle. The thumb represented India.The index finger is the Malay peninsula, and the flesh between them Myanmar. The space represents the Indian Ocean. The three curled fingers are Cambodia and Vietnam with their natural shape approximating the land’s true southwest-northeast contour. The space between the index finger and the third finger bent at the knuckles represent the Gulf of Siam. The natural indentation of the hand visually represented Chao Phraya river; that between the third finger and the fourth fingers is the Mekong River. The contour of the hand goes up the wrist and shows the curve of Indochina. Chiang Mai is represented in the wrist. This Barros hand map is more accurate than any other maps of the period. (Suarez, 1999: 123.) And then we have the numerous islands of the Inland sea.
3. The Philippine’s 7,488 islands.
It is interesting to note that in a map below Java Minor there is an inscription which refers to an archipelago of precisely 7,448 islands. Marco Polo got this number from the testimony of seamen that sailed the China seas that “according to the testimony of experienced pilots and seamen that sail upon the China sea, they are well acquainted with the truth that it contained 7,448 islands, most of them inhabited.”
Fig.2. Ruysch’s 7,448 8 Islands Archipelagus 7448 Insularus, by Sebastian Münster,1540 in Suarez: 128.
This figure is approximately an allusion to the 7,100 islands of the Philippines. It could have been low tide when Marco Polo’s pilots chanced upon these islands. Several mapmakers make the same claim: Father Odoric, in reference to islands of the eastern seas estimated it as “at least 5000” While Mandeville repeats the same, speaking of “Inde and the isles beyond the Inde, where be more than 5,000 isles” (Suarez, 1999: 107).
Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia (1540) called a treatyse of the Newe India, (Lach, 1965: 209) gave the literate public of Europe its first clear cartographic glimpse of the “marvelous fruitful island of Puloan, (Palawan, Philippines) located due north of Porne (Borneo).” Poloan in Münster’s (1540) map is oriented east west horizontally.
Fig. 3. Münster
The Caroline Islands is found off Samar’s Guirayan point. And this is the reason why in many old time maps, the Caroline island group is called New Philippines. The Philippine island of Samal is dutifully reported in Guam. The Jesuits’s letters contributed to this confusion.
Fig.4. Nueva Filipinas:The Caroline Islands
The Italian mapmaker Giacomo Gastaldi’s 1548 reconstruction of the Philippines is frustrating. Luzon does not appear. It is on Gastaldi’s map of 1550 that the word “Giapam”(Japan) appears in place of Marco Polo’s “Zipangu” for the first time.
The German cartographer, Martin Waldseemüller was the one who prepared a new set of world maps of an edition of Ptolemy”s Geographica. In Waldseemüller’s 1507 map of the New World, he indicated the new continent between Europe and India as “America” after the Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci, who retraced Columbus voyages and realized that there was a vast continent between India and Europe. In Waldseemüller’s 1510 map of the Malay Peninsula, we find the Zooloo string of islands scattered all over (now) Singapore and Indonesian seas.
.
We document several transliterations and corrupted various ways of copyists.
Diogo Ribeiro, a Portuguese in the employ of Spain was the chief instrument maker in Seville. He was the master map charter of all known seas: the Eastern hemisphere and the Pacific region (Lach, 1965 : 221.) His Padron Real had for the first time the Philippines’ longitudinal axis correctly oriented after the Magellan voyage.
Oronce Fine’s (1531),
The Venetian humanist and civil servant Giovanni Batista Ramusio’s 1554 three-volume Della Navigationi et Viaggi first appeared in 1550, to aid in correcting Ptolemy’s maps of Asia and Africa based on voyages and crews who sailed around the world. (Lach, 1965: 207). His 1550 volume included Pigafetta’s Primo Viaggio intorno al Mondo published in 1524 and was translated to French and then to Italian which according to William Scott (1994: 283) “has given rise to the modern Philippine controversy over a supposed Magellan visit to Butuan.”
The Dutchman, Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s maps are contained in his Itinerario which gives the best descriptions derived from Portuguese maps. What caught our attention is one of his digressions about the “relationships between the Portuguese in Goa and their native wives, the Christian Luso-Indians (mestiços) [Luzon natives who of course were Christianized by the Spanish, underscore ours] indulging in a few snide comments on miscegenation (Lach, 1965: 482).
Gerard Mercatur’s 1569 maps of early Philippines was very limited.
The Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Spanish maps from the Spanish voyages of 1525 to 1700 are enlarged in full detail and in color, much like the vellum specimen of the originals.
A woodcut from Pigafetta’s Primo Viaggio shows Mattau (Mactan) island off Zyubu presented as more than a third the size of present Cebu.
Fig. xx Cebu and Mactan, Pigafetta 1525, Primo Viaggio Intorno al Globo Terraqueo, Milan 1800. P125.
I note several errors. Tandaya is the name of the chief of Samar. The map names the island Samar as Tendaya.
We find the island of Camiguing in the northern coast of Mindanao where they were told are the towns of Butuan, Surigao, Calagan, and Caraga were located. Masagua, Sarangani, Mactan, Cabu were mistranslated words and are subsequently mutilated in many maps of the archipelago.
5. Conclusion
Knowledge of how medieval Europe depicted the Philippines is crucial to our understanding of Philippine culture and history. Many Filipino scholars at present have done scant studies of the several islands depicted in modern maps. There has been little analysis of the mistranslations, misnaming, misspelled, misidentified and mislocated islands. Early errors perpetuated are persistently used today. This is a travestry of the highest nature. Somehow, things must change.
From the Ancient Baybayin Script to the Romanized Alphabet
Abstract
People commit historic struggles to construct lessons about their changing society. This was how the indigenous Filipinos’ relationships with the foreign colonizers enriched and hampered their local, educational, and cultural experience. When the Spanish conquistadors came to settle in the Philippines in the mid-sixteenth century they were surprised to find a literate population—the people already knew how to read and write. This paper traces the social changes in baybayin literacy from the initial contact with Spanish missionaries in the Philippines to the introduction of the Romanized alphabet. Differences between modes of literacy and points of learning in another language are generally subject to social evaluation and social stigma. The integration of Philippine socio-cultural, socio-linguistic, and gender equity is the conceptual framework used in this paper.
1. Introduction
When the Spanish conquistadors came to settle in the Philippines in the mid-sixteenth century they were surprised to find a literate population—the people already knew how to read and write. Miguel de Legazpi in 1567 indicated, “They have their letters and characters like those of the Malays, from whom they learned them; they write on bamboo bark and palm leaves with a pointed tool.” (Merino, 175: 292).The Malays referred to meant the Muslim merchants from Borneo and Luzon. The Jesuit, Father Chirino, who was in the Philippines from 1590 to 1604, noted that Manila by 1600 was almost 100 percent literate. He observed, “The people were so accustomed to writing and reading that there is hardly a man, much less a woman, who does not read and write in letters proper to the island of Manila” (Chirino, 1602). Another Spanish observer, the historian Antonio de Morga wrote that almost all the natives, both men and women write in this language. He commented: “There are very few who do not write it excellently and correctly.” (Morga,1609).
2. Origin of the Baybayin Script
Contemporary research is not united in the origin of this pre-hispanic syllabary. Alzina, in 1668, said the Visayans had learned it from the Tagalogs, who in turn had learned it from the Borneans (Scott, 1984: 55, Bernad, 1972: 150). Professor Juan Francisco of Indo-Philippine studies (Francisco, 1994) believes that it is derived from an extant form of Sanskrit. The Buginese, Makassarese and Mandar alphabets of Celebes (Sulawesi) to the south of Philippines are considered the origins since they share a particular characteristic with the Philippine script—the inability to express a final consonant (Scott, 1984: 61). To anthropologist F. Landa Jocano it is enough that a system of writing among the ancient Filipinos existed and was universal in many parts of the archipelago. He comments, “They had a system of writing and had achieved almost a hundred per cent literacy rate,” (Jocano,1975: 235). Corpuz however, disputes that writing was universal in prehispanic Philippines (pp. 20-36).
2.1. Surviving Artifacts of the Ancient Script
There are three surviving artifacts exhibited in the Philippine National Museum bearing this ancient script. The first is a 15th century earthenware jar excavated in Calatagan, Batangas. The native script was inscribed around the shoulder rim. The rounded earthenware is slightly flattened at the bottom with a splayed wide rim, suggesting it was used as a container jar, not a cooking clay pot as some scholars say. The writing is in an ancient extant language and has not yet been fully deciphered. It is 12 centimeters high and 20.2 centimeters wide. The Batangas earthenware shape is very similar to a regular banga still in use in many traditional kitchens.
The second artifact is a silver bar with inscriptions found among the 1970 excavation pits in Butuan. This script did not resemble any of the syllabaries chronicled by the Spanish during the contact period. This silver strip is dated from the 12th to the 15th century and looters had gained access first rendering the archeological context of its site lost to scholars. An Indonesian paleographer, Boechari, recognized it as of Javanese origin—suggesting an early Hindu-Buddhist influence in Mindanao (Casals, 1991). The strip measures 17.8 centimeters long and 1.3 centimeters wide. On one side are 22 symbols etched by a metal point.
The third artifact of this ancient script is found in a copper plate. In 1990 an antique dealer obtained through pot hunters in Laguna Bay a thin copper plate measuring 20 by 30 centimeters wherein an old Malay script closely related to old Tagalog script is inscribed, and therefore Tagalog speakers can readily understand. The text is a certification of debts paid in substantial amounts of gold (Salcedo, 1998). There may be other artifacts, but these may have been written in perishable materials such as leaves, bark of trees, and bamboo nodes.
2.2. A Comparative Perspective: 1603 to 1645 in Europe and England
The archives of the University of Santo Tomas preserve more than a hundred specimens of Filipino signatures between 1603 to 1645 as well as two complete documents showing a variety of styles ranging from elegant cursive to awkward scrawls (Scott, 1984: 53).To put this in comparative perspective, from 1570 to 1590 in rural France, 3 to 10 percent among the men and none of the women knew their ABCs. Spain and Portugal at the dawn of the seventeenth century did not fare any better. Of Englishmen born in 1600, only 33–40 per cent were literate as measured by their ability to sign their names (Lockridge, 1981). David Cressy (1981) reports that in Norfolk and Suffolk, 95 per cent of the females sampled between 1580 and 1640 could not sign their names ( Mitch, 1982).
3. The Phonetic Baybayin: Baybayin’s Vowels
Chirino called this phonetic syllabary Las letras de Manila as shown in Figure 1. It was the native baybayin of three vowels and fourteen consonants.
Fig.
Fig. 1. Las Letras de Manila, Chirino.
3.1. Vowels
There are three vowels: A, U or O, I or E, which actually represent five sounds. According to Jose Rizal, there are orthographical rules for when E is pronounced I , and U to O and vice versa (Rizal,1890: 251-263). To him the Spaniards all got it wrong when they said that the Tagalogs used these vowels indifferently. A sociolinguistic explanation is that it is a regional variation. This is not only found among Filipinos. All languages in the world share this regional variation. In the US, for example, in some Southern dialects, pin is pronounced pen and ten for tin.
Nevertheless, Fox (1954) argues that these Philippine three-syllable interchangeable vowels “conform to a common phonemic pattern of Philippine contemporary language.” This pronunciation is the bane of all teachers of English in regional schools at present. The pervasiveness of the ancient pronunciation for supposedly interchanging vowel sounds is found not only among present-day students but among the educated and government officials as well. A recent newspaper in Manila commented on some Filipinos’ inability to pronounce vowels and certain consonants correctly. Journalist Leandro V. Coronel (1999: 7) of the Philippine Inquirer noted that cabinet members could not pronounce vowels and consonants properly. He writes:
“Isn’t it a shame that even Filipinos in high places can’t properly pronounce letters like “f,” “v,” and “ph”? Politicians cannot be consistent with their “fs” and “v’s” as when many pronounce “VFA” as “BFA.” We even mispronounce words we use regularly. Take the name of our country. Many Filipinos pronounce it “pilipins,” without the “f” pronunciation of “ph.” Of course, we also interchange “e” with “i,” and “o” and “u.”
3.2. The Obvious Question
On this unusual pronunciation predisposition, a reasonable person should be asking two obvious questions. Isn’t it anachronistic that the Spanish conquistador Ruy Lopez de Villalobos in 1542 named the archipelago “Las Islas Felipinas” in honor of Felipe who later became king of Spain (Schurz, 1985), ignorant that the natives cannot pronounce “F” since they do not have it in their native syllabary? Besides, the natives also tend to interchange their E’s to I’s .
Isn’t it doubly ironic that the Americans in 1898 anglicized the country’s name to “The Philippines” without much thought, thus reproducing this inexcusable mistake? Had the colonial governments exercised some sociolinguistic sense, Maynila, the sea port in Luzon bay, meaning the place where local indigo dye (nilad) is traded, or Lusong the native name for the main island, or for that matter, Mindanao, the place where floodwaters flow, would have been the most logical and natural choices which would have posed no vowel and consonant interference.
Twice, in its colonial history, Filipinos (Felipeños, if we want to adhere strictly to having been named after Felipe) had been humiliated in the sociolinguistic arena and made to appear stupid; a people considered so severely speech-deficient that they couldn’t even pronounce their own country’s name correctly.
3.3. Baybayin’s Consonants
There are fourteen consonants in the Baybayin: They are
ka, ga, nga, ta, da, na, pa, ba, ma, ya, la, wa, sa , ha ( Rizal, 1890)
written as
K , G, NG, T, D, N, P, B, M, Y, L, W, S, H .
Each of the consonants changes in the vowel ending pronunciation according to the placement of a mark or korlet (kudlit) above or below the character. A dot above Ba made it either be or bi; a dot below made it either bo or bu.
3.5. Baybayin’s Writing Functions
The writing materials used were sections of bamboo and the letters were carved with a knife or sharp-pointed instrument. According to historian Bernad, (1972: 150) writing was more for sending messages than for recording transactions
However, the geographical orientation of the extent of usage by the Tagalogs, Ilocanos, Pangasinans, Pampangos, Visayans (Samar-Leyte, Negros), and in the islands of Mindoro and Palawan, all coastal or near coastal areas suggest writing was not only for sending messages but most certainly for inter trade transactions among themselves and with foreign traders (Jocano, 1975: 198-199).
3.6. The Codification and Standardization Process
Fig. 2. Standardization of the native script
Father Méntrida commented in his 1637 Arte de la Lengua bisaya-hiliguayna that different forms of individual scripts were currently in use. In 1663, Esguerra’s Arte de la Lengua bisaya gave alternate letterforms for the vowel e-i symbol by studying signatures in Spanish and Tagalog document.(Jocano, 1975: 48-49, Scott, 1994: 95). The Spanish priest-scholars began to standardize the variant baybayin script that proliferated among the vernacular groups (Scott, 1994: 60).
The seventeenth century variations standardized by López from several documents can be seen in Figure 2. It became easier to read the inscriptions. The vowel killer applied to the end of words ending in consonants improved reading rapidly because any reader can depend on orthography alone, unlike the old method where the orthography plus the contextual knowledge about what and when the inscription was written, were needed to give meaning to the text. In addition, a literate society found the transference to a new system of alphabet easy and most enlightening
There were some positive consequences of the romanization of the ancient syllabary. Through the codification of the vernaculars, the languages were preserved and accounts of the first contact with Spain survived. The negative consequences showed that instead of being able to transfer their literature and writings in the new form, their learning were proscribed to Christian doctrines and their writings of traditional topics were censured as succumbing to the work of the devil.
3.7. Current Users of the Script: Mindoro Bamboo Literacy
This ancient syllabary did not completely die out. Modern day Hanunoo Mangyans of Mindoro and Tagbanuas of Palawan have retained their traditional script writing. Nevertheless, there is no great literature coming out of these groups who write in the native syllabary. They remain marginal and peripheral to mainstream Filipino society. According to anthropologist Antoon Postma, this script is written from bottom to top so that when the bamboo reeds are laid down, it reads left to right (Postma, 1988: 224-225). The Mangyans write their ambahan poetry in this script.
4. The Doctrina Christiana
Within a relatively short period of time after the initial encounter, the Christian doctrine was diffused throughout the archipelago. The friars’ study of languages provided an interpretation of the Filipino way of life. In addition, it provided new mechanism for controlling the people (Phelan,1955 154-159). First came the new schema of the Latin alphabet. Concurrent with it came the Spanish religion; the native culture was the main casualty. The Augustianians, Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Recollects struggled valiantly to understand, speak and write the native language. However, the most vexing problems the Spanish met in the Philippines were the extent of linguistic diversity within the archipelago (Carroll, 1968: 62).
The first step in ending this “confusion of tongues” was to formulate a grammatology or a comparison of alphabets, words, and syntax. The Franciscans in 1580 seriously engaged in the systematic study of the native Tagalog vernacular and compiled a Tagalog dictionary For evangelization purposes, Juan de Placensia in 1593 printed the Doctrina Christiana, an instruction manual of prayers and catechism in Spanish and Philippine script with Tagalog wood blocks (Lach, 1977: 500). It provided an interlinear translation, Spanish on one side, Tagalog baybayin script on the other.
Fig. 4. Doctrina Christiana
As an unintended sociolinguistic consequence, this dictionary and the printed catechism in Spanish and Tagalog effectively established Tagalog (spoken only by a small minority of eleven and not more than fifteen per cent of the total population) as the power language in the island vis-à-vis the other languages.
The Doctrina was a proselytizing success and enjoyed several printings. It was distributed to several parishes. However, the natives were still reading the old baybayin script while studying the new alphabet. In 1663, Father Colin, the Jesuit missionary admitted that although “there is scarcely a man, and still less a woman who does not know and practice this old writing method,” he complained the people “cling fondly to their own method of writing and reading” and was rueful that indeed “even those who are already Christian in matters of devotion” are guilty of this practice. (Blair and Robertson, 1903: 37-97).
5. The Transliteration Effect
5.1. Reordering of Baybayin Sequence
As the Spanish in the Philippines became adept at the language, their European prejudices and Spanish cultural framework shaped their work according to the principles of Latin and Iberian orthography, grammar, and culture. This effort effectively subverted the ancient script to conform to the linguistic scholars of the age. One example is the rearrangement of the sequence of the Philippine syllabary from the original ordering beginning with K, G, Ng, Ta—this order or sequence of letters is derived from the study of Dr. Pardo de Tavera (1890) entitled “Contribution to the Study of the Old Filipino Alphabet”— to the Latin alphabetical order of A B C D hence the Abakada..
In a personal correspondence with baybayin expert Dr. Jean Paul Potet he called our attention to the Rizal’s ordering of the baybayin. It was not the original sequence but a Sanskrit syllabary order. He said: “////////////////////////” (email correspondence,July 2,2001.)
5.2. .Substitution of consonants to Spanish Alphabet
The Spanish alphabet had no W or NG so Father Chirino omitted these letters from his transliterated Philippine alphabet, thus timawa (freeman) became timagua. Even today, a place spelled Wawa in Pampanga in the new orthography is Hispanized and spelled Guagua, in the same manner that the Central American country called Watemala by natives has a Hispanized spelling of Guatemala. “R” was introduced.
6. Socio-cultural Effects of the Roman Alphabet Change
The Roman alphabet was introduced and by it the entire social structure of Philippine society was affected. Reading and writing the Romanized alphabet was easily learned. The transfer of knowledge came next.
In order to teach this transliteral alphabet, schools had to be established—of course church sponsored. Before admission, one has to be a Catholic. To be a Catholic, one has to be baptized. This sacrament effectively obliterated the Filipino indigenous names.
6.1. Onomastic or Naming Patterns
In baptism, a child has to be given a name. Before the arrival of the Spanish, indigenous Filipino girls’ names were sunshine (Luningning), stars (Bituin), virtues (Mayumi), and other special characteristics. Boys were named for heroic deeds (Bayani), birds (Kalaw) valor, (Magtanggol), among others.
In the changed social structure, the parish priests had a formula for naming Filipino children. A calendar or almanac of feast days was consulted (Joaquin, 1979). If a boy was born on March 19, a perusal of the calendar of saints says it is the feast day of San José. Ergo, the boy is automatically named José. If it is a girl, her name becomes Josefa.. A girl born on December 8 is named Maria Concepcion, or Maria Inmaculada, the feast day of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. It is supposed to be simple and straightforward. An almanac had to be written; its use must be taught in church sermons in the pulpit. It was a required household reference book.
With this Christianization effort, they who held their practice of naming their children according to their own family tradition were divested of this patronymic right (Flores, 1997). Suddenly a new generation of Filipinos was carrying Hispanic given names. Unlike other countries where grandchildren naturally receive their grandparent’s names and there is a mechanism to trace one’s ancestry back in time, in the case of the Filipinos, this onomastic pattern was aborted. Thus an intergenerational line could never be traced.
6.2. New Literacy had a social function.
The old script became completely obsolete with very few exceptions. Most importantly this change effectively rendered the literate Filipinos illiterate. Ironically, this inadequacy was used by the colonizers to argue that the Filipinos were not yet civilized.
What else did the early Filipinos own that was taken away? A denigration effect was especially directed towards the women.
6.3. Gender Inequality Effects
Before the Spaniards came, Filipino women enjoyed the same privileges, rights, and opportunity as men (Manansan, 1998: 194). Daughters grew up active as sons in work, training, and trade. They had economic power. Inheritance was divided equally among male and female children. Kinship ties were (still are) traced bilaterally from the woman’s and man’s line. Divorce was initiated not by husbands alone but by wives as well. Women retained their maiden names in marriage (Tapales, 1992). The Filipina also enjoyed political and educational power. The woman’s personal signature by and of itself is a lawful symbol of the authentication of any document because of their proven reliability in fulfilling contracts (de la Costa, 1965: 9). Women’s signatures were required to make any transactions valid. When the Spaniards set up their settlements in Luzon, they were shocked by the freedom manifested by the Filipina. Most of all they were shocked at the high position of the local babaylan women.
7. The Babaylan or Native Priesthood Class
Essentially, the local priesthood was a priestess-hood: the babaylan, the traditional repository of cultural and esoteric knowledge. Linguistically, the term babaylan (the priestess class), baybayin (native script), babae (woman, variant: Babaye), and Binibini (woman leader) are interrelated in etymology and in orthography (Flores, 2001). McCoy (1982) writes that the most common term for spirit medium in insular South East Asia is derived from the classical Malay word belian-belian, or waylan in Java, Bali, Borneo and Halmahera; bailan or baylan among the interior population of Mindanao; and baylan or babaylan in he Visayan and Central Philippines.
7.1.An Etymology of Baybayin
In current usage the word baybayin means “to spell, to write a word in order.” A second meaning is “beach” or coastline (English, 1986). Does it mean this native script was used in trade routes normally the seacoasts or beach? Or was the Filipino woman perhaps the real “speller” suggesting that she was the principal “user” of the old traditional script? Were they the recognized culture bearers of society? Were they the more literate group?
7.1.1 “Literate” versus “Illiterate”
According to Michael Clancy (1981) in medieval England, the clergy (the clericus) was associated with literacy in Latin, (literatus). In a sense this differentiated the clergy as a select group in the service of God. This distinction is a social construction of the Middle Ages. Europe had created an elite of priests who monopolized writing. The opposite of clericus is laicus, or the ordinary people, the (laicus) or laymen. In time, the proposition that was advanced became crystallized as an axiom where clericus is the antithesis of laicus, and literatus is the opposite of illiteratus. It is no accident that the Spanish chroniclers who reported the literacy of the indigenous Filipino women were members of the clerici.
As a product of their medieval time, the Spanish in the Philippines, during the contact, tended to question the literacy of the laity. As a case in point, repeatedly, the Spanish chroniclers kept adding the incredulous parenthetical phrase, “there is scarcely a man, and still less a woman who did not write, “both men and women write in this language. ” Corpuz (1989: 20-36) cites Morga saying “virtually all people, the women more than men, not only knew how to write but also loved doing so.” Alcina writes about the difficulty of reading which is more guessing than pronouncing: “It is easy to learn, and most women read with dexterity and without stumbling.” (Scott: 96). We underscored the reference to women here.
In many traditional ancient cultures, the first to possess the art of writing was the priestly caste. As we have seen, in prehispanic Philippines, this priestly office was primarily a woman’s domain, which leads us to believe that women, more than men could have done much of the baybayin writing. Could certain groups have been the members of an indigenous Secretariat, the medieval English counterpart of the scrivener class perhaps, who recorded the laws and orders promulgated by the council of community elders?
7.2. Women Kept in Place
When the Spanish Inquisition’s office in Manila persecuted the babaylans, branded them as witches, burned them at the stakes, threw the babaylan’s writings into the fire, the ancient script was efficiently removed. These burned documents were not only religious and ritualistic incantations but also contained metaphorical statements for arranging marriages, ritual ceremonies, dowry contracts (given to the bride’s parents), eulogy dirges, genealogical records, onomastic naming practices, birth records, wills, blessings, recipes for healing herbs, organic cosmetics and the like (Flores, 2000). All these documents were lost, and with it was the accompanying loss of a peoples’ cultural capital.
The idea of the Filipina did not fit into the Hispanic concept of how woman should be and behave in society. The friars most especially set out to remold her according to the image of the perfect woman of Iberian society, imposing the European restrictive norms of behavior of the times. Through the colonial experience, the Filipino woman was domesticated (taught only domestic skills).
8. Honorific Titles Based on Achievement
The loss of a native script also precipitated a change in the structure of Filipino’s way of acknowledging individual achievement. Socially the early Filipinos were quite deferential to people of attainment. Filipinos do not call people by their given names alone. There is always a polite title attached when referring to somebody by name. For example, when Magellan came in 1521, his Chronicler Pigafetta identified the leaders he met as Siawi, Simiut, Sibuaia, Sisacai. Contrary to what contemporary Balarila textbooks say that SI in front of names is an indefinite pronoun, the Si in front of the names is an honorific title, show of respect, much like the Shri in India (Scott,1994).
8. 1. Traditional Achievement and Performance Oriented Filipino Titles
This was a new paradigm to the Europeans who were differential only to people of superordinate rank and saw events through European lenses and capable of interpreting different cultures in misleading and sometimes pejorative ways. For example, it is not expected that conquistadors would call their subordinate subjects by their titles and traditional respectful addresses. This must look incongruous and inappropriate. The honorifics such as Gat (leader), Lakan (chief), Sri (respected) Dayang (lady of high integrity), Binibini (well bred lady) (Scott, 1994: 196) were translated to Don and Doña which in the first place carried connotations of having been hispanicized, implying subjugation. Furthermore, these Spanish titles were also seen as race-based (Spanish or mestizos) and wealth-driven.
The title Dayang was cast away, obliterated, and assigned to the dust-heap of colonial history. Only the Muslim royalty carry this title today. Binibini was stripped of its rank and exists only as the equivalent of the Spanish Señorita or the modern Miss. Si became a grammar casualty; now used as an indefinite personal pronoun. The original Filipino titles of respect for leadership and greatness were sometimes hereditary but more often than not, were acquired, not ascribed titles (Lynch, 1963:.163-191). Even today, Filipinos insist on addressing a person of attainment Attorney Flores, or Engineer Cruz; vestiges of achievement and performance titles.
8.2. Residues of archaic and suppressed Tagalog modes of honorific titles
Occasionally Filipino extant titles resurface in contemporary Filipino surnames like Gatmaitan, Gatdula, Gatchalian, Gatpuno, Gatbonton, Magat, Lakandula, Lacanlale, and Lakambini.
Lakambini, was reserved for women leaders. However, the Spanish were highly skeptical of the idea of a woman chief no matter how meritorious, valorous or nobly born. After all, their own Queen Juana, who was a legitimate ruler, was officially called, Juana, la loca. Thus they reduced Philippine women titles to a generic form. To add insult to injury, beauty contest promoters of today have bowdlerized it as the title for beauty queen winners of Miss Philippines competitions from prestigious national pageants down to lowly barrio fiestas.
9. Conclusion
Philippine society a few decades after the initial contact with the Spanish brought social changes and social mobility. From a community characterized as simplistic where mobility is permeable and egalitarian to some extent, it turned into a highly stratified one with unequal access and social and educational opportunity. In the course of three centuries of Spanish colonial rule, out of a society overlaid with Catholicism, Hispanic culture, and western thought, there emerged according to James Fallows (1989) a “damaged” society continually robbed of its ingenuity, initiative, self-esteem, and most importantly its literacy. In this paper, we suggest that among other things, the core of this social malaise may be traced far back to the replacement of the era when nearly the total population was literate in the ancient baybayin system.
People commit historic struggles to construct lessons about their changing society. This was how the indigenous Filipinos’ relationships with the foreign colonizers enriched and hampered their local, educational, and cultural experience. When the Spanish conquistadors came to settle in the Philippines in the mid-sixteenth century they were surprised to find a literate population—the people already knew how to read and write. This paper traces the social changes in baybayin literacy from the initial contact with Spanish missionaries in the Philippines to the introduction of the Romanized alphabet. Differences between modes of literacy and points of learning in another language are generally subject to social evaluation and social stigma. The integration of Philippine socio-cultural, socio-linguistic, and gender equity is the conceptual framework used in this paper.
1. Introduction
When the Spanish conquistadors came to settle in the Philippines in the mid-sixteenth century they were surprised to find a literate population—the people already knew how to read and write. Miguel de Legazpi in 1567 indicated, “They have their letters and characters like those of the Malays, from whom they learned them; they write on bamboo bark and palm leaves with a pointed tool.” (Merino, 175: 292).The Malays referred to meant the Muslim merchants from Borneo and Luzon. The Jesuit, Father Chirino, who was in the Philippines from 1590 to 1604, noted that Manila by 1600 was almost 100 percent literate. He observed, “The people were so accustomed to writing and reading that there is hardly a man, much less a woman, who does not read and write in letters proper to the island of Manila” (Chirino, 1602). Another Spanish observer, the historian Antonio de Morga wrote that almost all the natives, both men and women write in this language. He commented: “There are very few who do not write it excellently and correctly.” (Morga,1609).
2. Origin of the Baybayin Script
Contemporary research is not united in the origin of this pre-hispanic syllabary. Alzina, in 1668, said the Visayans had learned it from the Tagalogs, who in turn had learned it from the Borneans (Scott, 1984: 55, Bernad, 1972: 150). Professor Juan Francisco of Indo-Philippine studies (Francisco, 1994) believes that it is derived from an extant form of Sanskrit. The Buginese, Makassarese and Mandar alphabets of Celebes (Sulawesi) to the south of Philippines are considered the origins since they share a particular characteristic with the Philippine script—the inability to express a final consonant (Scott, 1984: 61). To anthropologist F. Landa Jocano it is enough that a system of writing among the ancient Filipinos existed and was universal in many parts of the archipelago. He comments, “They had a system of writing and had achieved almost a hundred per cent literacy rate,” (Jocano,1975: 235). Corpuz however, disputes that writing was universal in prehispanic Philippines (pp. 20-36).
2.1. Surviving Artifacts of the Ancient Script
There are three surviving artifacts exhibited in the Philippine National Museum bearing this ancient script. The first is a 15th century earthenware jar excavated in Calatagan, Batangas. The native script was inscribed around the shoulder rim. The rounded earthenware is slightly flattened at the bottom with a splayed wide rim, suggesting it was used as a container jar, not a cooking clay pot as some scholars say. The writing is in an ancient extant language and has not yet been fully deciphered. It is 12 centimeters high and 20.2 centimeters wide. The Batangas earthenware shape is very similar to a regular banga still in use in many traditional kitchens.
The second artifact is a silver bar with inscriptions found among the 1970 excavation pits in Butuan. This script did not resemble any of the syllabaries chronicled by the Spanish during the contact period. This silver strip is dated from the 12th to the 15th century and looters had gained access first rendering the archeological context of its site lost to scholars. An Indonesian paleographer, Boechari, recognized it as of Javanese origin—suggesting an early Hindu-Buddhist influence in Mindanao (Casals, 1991). The strip measures 17.8 centimeters long and 1.3 centimeters wide. On one side are 22 symbols etched by a metal point.
The third artifact of this ancient script is found in a copper plate. In 1990 an antique dealer obtained through pot hunters in Laguna Bay a thin copper plate measuring 20 by 30 centimeters wherein an old Malay script closely related to old Tagalog script is inscribed, and therefore Tagalog speakers can readily understand. The text is a certification of debts paid in substantial amounts of gold (Salcedo, 1998). There may be other artifacts, but these may have been written in perishable materials such as leaves, bark of trees, and bamboo nodes.
2.2. A Comparative Perspective: 1603 to 1645 in Europe and England
The archives of the University of Santo Tomas preserve more than a hundred specimens of Filipino signatures between 1603 to 1645 as well as two complete documents showing a variety of styles ranging from elegant cursive to awkward scrawls (Scott, 1984: 53).To put this in comparative perspective, from 1570 to 1590 in rural France, 3 to 10 percent among the men and none of the women knew their ABCs. Spain and Portugal at the dawn of the seventeenth century did not fare any better. Of Englishmen born in 1600, only 33–40 per cent were literate as measured by their ability to sign their names (Lockridge, 1981). David Cressy (1981) reports that in Norfolk and Suffolk, 95 per cent of the females sampled between 1580 and 1640 could not sign their names ( Mitch, 1982).
3. The Phonetic Baybayin: Baybayin’s Vowels
Chirino called this phonetic syllabary Las letras de Manila as shown in Figure 1. It was the native baybayin of three vowels and fourteen consonants.
Fig.
Fig. 1. Las Letras de Manila, Chirino.
3.1. Vowels
There are three vowels: A, U or O, I or E, which actually represent five sounds. According to Jose Rizal, there are orthographical rules for when E is pronounced I , and U to O and vice versa (Rizal,1890: 251-263). To him the Spaniards all got it wrong when they said that the Tagalogs used these vowels indifferently. A sociolinguistic explanation is that it is a regional variation. This is not only found among Filipinos. All languages in the world share this regional variation. In the US, for example, in some Southern dialects, pin is pronounced pen and ten for tin.
Nevertheless, Fox (1954) argues that these Philippine three-syllable interchangeable vowels “conform to a common phonemic pattern of Philippine contemporary language.” This pronunciation is the bane of all teachers of English in regional schools at present. The pervasiveness of the ancient pronunciation for supposedly interchanging vowel sounds is found not only among present-day students but among the educated and government officials as well. A recent newspaper in Manila commented on some Filipinos’ inability to pronounce vowels and certain consonants correctly. Journalist Leandro V. Coronel (1999: 7) of the Philippine Inquirer noted that cabinet members could not pronounce vowels and consonants properly. He writes:
“Isn’t it a shame that even Filipinos in high places can’t properly pronounce letters like “f,” “v,” and “ph”? Politicians cannot be consistent with their “fs” and “v’s” as when many pronounce “VFA” as “BFA.” We even mispronounce words we use regularly. Take the name of our country. Many Filipinos pronounce it “pilipins,” without the “f” pronunciation of “ph.” Of course, we also interchange “e” with “i,” and “o” and “u.”
3.2. The Obvious Question
On this unusual pronunciation predisposition, a reasonable person should be asking two obvious questions. Isn’t it anachronistic that the Spanish conquistador Ruy Lopez de Villalobos in 1542 named the archipelago “Las Islas Felipinas” in honor of Felipe who later became king of Spain (Schurz, 1985), ignorant that the natives cannot pronounce “F” since they do not have it in their native syllabary? Besides, the natives also tend to interchange their E’s to I’s .
Isn’t it doubly ironic that the Americans in 1898 anglicized the country’s name to “The Philippines” without much thought, thus reproducing this inexcusable mistake? Had the colonial governments exercised some sociolinguistic sense, Maynila, the sea port in Luzon bay, meaning the place where local indigo dye (nilad) is traded, or Lusong the native name for the main island, or for that matter, Mindanao, the place where floodwaters flow, would have been the most logical and natural choices which would have posed no vowel and consonant interference.
Twice, in its colonial history, Filipinos (Felipeños, if we want to adhere strictly to having been named after Felipe) had been humiliated in the sociolinguistic arena and made to appear stupid; a people considered so severely speech-deficient that they couldn’t even pronounce their own country’s name correctly.
3.3. Baybayin’s Consonants
There are fourteen consonants in the Baybayin: They are
ka, ga, nga, ta, da, na, pa, ba, ma, ya, la, wa, sa , ha ( Rizal, 1890)
written as
K , G, NG, T, D, N, P, B, M, Y, L, W, S, H .
Each of the consonants changes in the vowel ending pronunciation according to the placement of a mark or korlet (kudlit) above or below the character. A dot above Ba made it either be or bi; a dot below made it either bo or bu.
3.5. Baybayin’s Writing Functions
The writing materials used were sections of bamboo and the letters were carved with a knife or sharp-pointed instrument. According to historian Bernad, (1972: 150) writing was more for sending messages than for recording transactions
However, the geographical orientation of the extent of usage by the Tagalogs, Ilocanos, Pangasinans, Pampangos, Visayans (Samar-Leyte, Negros), and in the islands of Mindoro and Palawan, all coastal or near coastal areas suggest writing was not only for sending messages but most certainly for inter trade transactions among themselves and with foreign traders (Jocano, 1975: 198-199).
3.6. The Codification and Standardization Process
Fig. 2. Standardization of the native script
Father Méntrida commented in his 1637 Arte de la Lengua bisaya-hiliguayna that different forms of individual scripts were currently in use. In 1663, Esguerra’s Arte de la Lengua bisaya gave alternate letterforms for the vowel e-i symbol by studying signatures in Spanish and Tagalog document.(Jocano, 1975: 48-49, Scott, 1994: 95). The Spanish priest-scholars began to standardize the variant baybayin script that proliferated among the vernacular groups (Scott, 1994: 60).
The seventeenth century variations standardized by López from several documents can be seen in Figure 2. It became easier to read the inscriptions. The vowel killer applied to the end of words ending in consonants improved reading rapidly because any reader can depend on orthography alone, unlike the old method where the orthography plus the contextual knowledge about what and when the inscription was written, were needed to give meaning to the text. In addition, a literate society found the transference to a new system of alphabet easy and most enlightening
There were some positive consequences of the romanization of the ancient syllabary. Through the codification of the vernaculars, the languages were preserved and accounts of the first contact with Spain survived. The negative consequences showed that instead of being able to transfer their literature and writings in the new form, their learning were proscribed to Christian doctrines and their writings of traditional topics were censured as succumbing to the work of the devil.
3.7. Current Users of the Script: Mindoro Bamboo Literacy
This ancient syllabary did not completely die out. Modern day Hanunoo Mangyans of Mindoro and Tagbanuas of Palawan have retained their traditional script writing. Nevertheless, there is no great literature coming out of these groups who write in the native syllabary. They remain marginal and peripheral to mainstream Filipino society. According to anthropologist Antoon Postma, this script is written from bottom to top so that when the bamboo reeds are laid down, it reads left to right (Postma, 1988: 224-225). The Mangyans write their ambahan poetry in this script.
4. The Doctrina Christiana
Within a relatively short period of time after the initial encounter, the Christian doctrine was diffused throughout the archipelago. The friars’ study of languages provided an interpretation of the Filipino way of life. In addition, it provided new mechanism for controlling the people (Phelan,1955 154-159). First came the new schema of the Latin alphabet. Concurrent with it came the Spanish religion; the native culture was the main casualty. The Augustianians, Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Recollects struggled valiantly to understand, speak and write the native language. However, the most vexing problems the Spanish met in the Philippines were the extent of linguistic diversity within the archipelago (Carroll, 1968: 62).
The first step in ending this “confusion of tongues” was to formulate a grammatology or a comparison of alphabets, words, and syntax. The Franciscans in 1580 seriously engaged in the systematic study of the native Tagalog vernacular and compiled a Tagalog dictionary For evangelization purposes, Juan de Placensia in 1593 printed the Doctrina Christiana, an instruction manual of prayers and catechism in Spanish and Philippine script with Tagalog wood blocks (Lach, 1977: 500). It provided an interlinear translation, Spanish on one side, Tagalog baybayin script on the other.
Fig. 4. Doctrina Christiana
As an unintended sociolinguistic consequence, this dictionary and the printed catechism in Spanish and Tagalog effectively established Tagalog (spoken only by a small minority of eleven and not more than fifteen per cent of the total population) as the power language in the island vis-à-vis the other languages.
The Doctrina was a proselytizing success and enjoyed several printings. It was distributed to several parishes. However, the natives were still reading the old baybayin script while studying the new alphabet. In 1663, Father Colin, the Jesuit missionary admitted that although “there is scarcely a man, and still less a woman who does not know and practice this old writing method,” he complained the people “cling fondly to their own method of writing and reading” and was rueful that indeed “even those who are already Christian in matters of devotion” are guilty of this practice. (Blair and Robertson, 1903: 37-97).
5. The Transliteration Effect
5.1. Reordering of Baybayin Sequence
As the Spanish in the Philippines became adept at the language, their European prejudices and Spanish cultural framework shaped their work according to the principles of Latin and Iberian orthography, grammar, and culture. This effort effectively subverted the ancient script to conform to the linguistic scholars of the age. One example is the rearrangement of the sequence of the Philippine syllabary from the original ordering beginning with K, G, Ng, Ta—this order or sequence of letters is derived from the study of Dr. Pardo de Tavera (1890) entitled “Contribution to the Study of the Old Filipino Alphabet”— to the Latin alphabetical order of A B C D hence the Abakada..
In a personal correspondence with baybayin expert Dr. Jean Paul Potet he called our attention to the Rizal’s ordering of the baybayin. It was not the original sequence but a Sanskrit syllabary order. He said: “////////////////////////” (email correspondence,July 2,2001.)
5.2. .Substitution of consonants to Spanish Alphabet
The Spanish alphabet had no W or NG so Father Chirino omitted these letters from his transliterated Philippine alphabet, thus timawa (freeman) became timagua. Even today, a place spelled Wawa in Pampanga in the new orthography is Hispanized and spelled Guagua, in the same manner that the Central American country called Watemala by natives has a Hispanized spelling of Guatemala. “R” was introduced.
6. Socio-cultural Effects of the Roman Alphabet Change
The Roman alphabet was introduced and by it the entire social structure of Philippine society was affected. Reading and writing the Romanized alphabet was easily learned. The transfer of knowledge came next.
In order to teach this transliteral alphabet, schools had to be established—of course church sponsored. Before admission, one has to be a Catholic. To be a Catholic, one has to be baptized. This sacrament effectively obliterated the Filipino indigenous names.
6.1. Onomastic or Naming Patterns
In baptism, a child has to be given a name. Before the arrival of the Spanish, indigenous Filipino girls’ names were sunshine (Luningning), stars (Bituin), virtues (Mayumi), and other special characteristics. Boys were named for heroic deeds (Bayani), birds (Kalaw) valor, (Magtanggol), among others.
In the changed social structure, the parish priests had a formula for naming Filipino children. A calendar or almanac of feast days was consulted (Joaquin, 1979). If a boy was born on March 19, a perusal of the calendar of saints says it is the feast day of San José. Ergo, the boy is automatically named José. If it is a girl, her name becomes Josefa.. A girl born on December 8 is named Maria Concepcion, or Maria Inmaculada, the feast day of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. It is supposed to be simple and straightforward. An almanac had to be written; its use must be taught in church sermons in the pulpit. It was a required household reference book.
With this Christianization effort, they who held their practice of naming their children according to their own family tradition were divested of this patronymic right (Flores, 1997). Suddenly a new generation of Filipinos was carrying Hispanic given names. Unlike other countries where grandchildren naturally receive their grandparent’s names and there is a mechanism to trace one’s ancestry back in time, in the case of the Filipinos, this onomastic pattern was aborted. Thus an intergenerational line could never be traced.
6.2. New Literacy had a social function.
The old script became completely obsolete with very few exceptions. Most importantly this change effectively rendered the literate Filipinos illiterate. Ironically, this inadequacy was used by the colonizers to argue that the Filipinos were not yet civilized.
What else did the early Filipinos own that was taken away? A denigration effect was especially directed towards the women.
6.3. Gender Inequality Effects
Before the Spaniards came, Filipino women enjoyed the same privileges, rights, and opportunity as men (Manansan, 1998: 194). Daughters grew up active as sons in work, training, and trade. They had economic power. Inheritance was divided equally among male and female children. Kinship ties were (still are) traced bilaterally from the woman’s and man’s line. Divorce was initiated not by husbands alone but by wives as well. Women retained their maiden names in marriage (Tapales, 1992). The Filipina also enjoyed political and educational power. The woman’s personal signature by and of itself is a lawful symbol of the authentication of any document because of their proven reliability in fulfilling contracts (de la Costa, 1965: 9). Women’s signatures were required to make any transactions valid. When the Spaniards set up their settlements in Luzon, they were shocked by the freedom manifested by the Filipina. Most of all they were shocked at the high position of the local babaylan women.
7. The Babaylan or Native Priesthood Class
Essentially, the local priesthood was a priestess-hood: the babaylan, the traditional repository of cultural and esoteric knowledge. Linguistically, the term babaylan (the priestess class), baybayin (native script), babae (woman, variant: Babaye), and Binibini (woman leader) are interrelated in etymology and in orthography (Flores, 2001). McCoy (1982) writes that the most common term for spirit medium in insular South East Asia is derived from the classical Malay word belian-belian, or waylan in Java, Bali, Borneo and Halmahera; bailan or baylan among the interior population of Mindanao; and baylan or babaylan in he Visayan and Central Philippines.
7.1.An Etymology of Baybayin
In current usage the word baybayin means “to spell, to write a word in order.” A second meaning is “beach” or coastline (English, 1986). Does it mean this native script was used in trade routes normally the seacoasts or beach? Or was the Filipino woman perhaps the real “speller” suggesting that she was the principal “user” of the old traditional script? Were they the recognized culture bearers of society? Were they the more literate group?
7.1.1 “Literate” versus “Illiterate”
According to Michael Clancy (1981) in medieval England, the clergy (the clericus) was associated with literacy in Latin, (literatus). In a sense this differentiated the clergy as a select group in the service of God. This distinction is a social construction of the Middle Ages. Europe had created an elite of priests who monopolized writing. The opposite of clericus is laicus, or the ordinary people, the (laicus) or laymen. In time, the proposition that was advanced became crystallized as an axiom where clericus is the antithesis of laicus, and literatus is the opposite of illiteratus. It is no accident that the Spanish chroniclers who reported the literacy of the indigenous Filipino women were members of the clerici.
As a product of their medieval time, the Spanish in the Philippines, during the contact, tended to question the literacy of the laity. As a case in point, repeatedly, the Spanish chroniclers kept adding the incredulous parenthetical phrase, “there is scarcely a man, and still less a woman who did not write, “both men and women write in this language. ” Corpuz (1989: 20-36) cites Morga saying “virtually all people, the women more than men, not only knew how to write but also loved doing so.” Alcina writes about the difficulty of reading which is more guessing than pronouncing: “It is easy to learn, and most women read with dexterity and without stumbling.” (Scott: 96). We underscored the reference to women here.
In many traditional ancient cultures, the first to possess the art of writing was the priestly caste. As we have seen, in prehispanic Philippines, this priestly office was primarily a woman’s domain, which leads us to believe that women, more than men could have done much of the baybayin writing. Could certain groups have been the members of an indigenous Secretariat, the medieval English counterpart of the scrivener class perhaps, who recorded the laws and orders promulgated by the council of community elders?
7.2. Women Kept in Place
When the Spanish Inquisition’s office in Manila persecuted the babaylans, branded them as witches, burned them at the stakes, threw the babaylan’s writings into the fire, the ancient script was efficiently removed. These burned documents were not only religious and ritualistic incantations but also contained metaphorical statements for arranging marriages, ritual ceremonies, dowry contracts (given to the bride’s parents), eulogy dirges, genealogical records, onomastic naming practices, birth records, wills, blessings, recipes for healing herbs, organic cosmetics and the like (Flores, 2000). All these documents were lost, and with it was the accompanying loss of a peoples’ cultural capital.
The idea of the Filipina did not fit into the Hispanic concept of how woman should be and behave in society. The friars most especially set out to remold her according to the image of the perfect woman of Iberian society, imposing the European restrictive norms of behavior of the times. Through the colonial experience, the Filipino woman was domesticated (taught only domestic skills).
8. Honorific Titles Based on Achievement
The loss of a native script also precipitated a change in the structure of Filipino’s way of acknowledging individual achievement. Socially the early Filipinos were quite deferential to people of attainment. Filipinos do not call people by their given names alone. There is always a polite title attached when referring to somebody by name. For example, when Magellan came in 1521, his Chronicler Pigafetta identified the leaders he met as Siawi, Simiut, Sibuaia, Sisacai. Contrary to what contemporary Balarila textbooks say that SI in front of names is an indefinite pronoun, the Si in front of the names is an honorific title, show of respect, much like the Shri in India (Scott,1994).
8. 1. Traditional Achievement and Performance Oriented Filipino Titles
This was a new paradigm to the Europeans who were differential only to people of superordinate rank and saw events through European lenses and capable of interpreting different cultures in misleading and sometimes pejorative ways. For example, it is not expected that conquistadors would call their subordinate subjects by their titles and traditional respectful addresses. This must look incongruous and inappropriate. The honorifics such as Gat (leader), Lakan (chief), Sri (respected) Dayang (lady of high integrity), Binibini (well bred lady) (Scott, 1994: 196) were translated to Don and Doña which in the first place carried connotations of having been hispanicized, implying subjugation. Furthermore, these Spanish titles were also seen as race-based (Spanish or mestizos) and wealth-driven.
The title Dayang was cast away, obliterated, and assigned to the dust-heap of colonial history. Only the Muslim royalty carry this title today. Binibini was stripped of its rank and exists only as the equivalent of the Spanish Señorita or the modern Miss. Si became a grammar casualty; now used as an indefinite personal pronoun. The original Filipino titles of respect for leadership and greatness were sometimes hereditary but more often than not, were acquired, not ascribed titles (Lynch, 1963:.163-191). Even today, Filipinos insist on addressing a person of attainment Attorney Flores, or Engineer Cruz; vestiges of achievement and performance titles.
8.2. Residues of archaic and suppressed Tagalog modes of honorific titles
Occasionally Filipino extant titles resurface in contemporary Filipino surnames like Gatmaitan, Gatdula, Gatchalian, Gatpuno, Gatbonton, Magat, Lakandula, Lacanlale, and Lakambini.
Lakambini, was reserved for women leaders. However, the Spanish were highly skeptical of the idea of a woman chief no matter how meritorious, valorous or nobly born. After all, their own Queen Juana, who was a legitimate ruler, was officially called, Juana, la loca. Thus they reduced Philippine women titles to a generic form. To add insult to injury, beauty contest promoters of today have bowdlerized it as the title for beauty queen winners of Miss Philippines competitions from prestigious national pageants down to lowly barrio fiestas.
9. Conclusion
Philippine society a few decades after the initial contact with the Spanish brought social changes and social mobility. From a community characterized as simplistic where mobility is permeable and egalitarian to some extent, it turned into a highly stratified one with unequal access and social and educational opportunity. In the course of three centuries of Spanish colonial rule, out of a society overlaid with Catholicism, Hispanic culture, and western thought, there emerged according to James Fallows (1989) a “damaged” society continually robbed of its ingenuity, initiative, self-esteem, and most importantly its literacy. In this paper, we suggest that among other things, the core of this social malaise may be traced far back to the replacement of the era when nearly the total population was literate in the ancient baybayin system.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
What the Philippine Taipans Could Do: The Florentine Renaissance Model
Florence, Italy
5 August 2010
It's amazing how the Florence Renaissance was driven by trade. The trade was driven by guilds. The guilds were driven by competition. The competition was driven by patronizing public buildings. The restoration of public buildings was driven by creative individuals who decorated them. The creative individuals started a blossoming of innovation. And the whole city opened up to a whole new way of thinking.
The primary guilds were the lawyers and judges, wool merchants, silk merchants, bankers, doctors & apothecaries, leather makers, tint makers including artists. Soon lesser guilds were recognised: tanners, butchers, tailors, weavers, chandlers (candlestick makers). These were very important occupations. They were a sort of lobby for monies, grants, tax exemptions and other benefices. In return, these organizations poured their gold money into beauty and culture.
The guilds formed tightly as organizations and collected fees. Each selected a specific church, a public square, a state building, a bridge, an old palace, an antique forum, a unique edifice designed by a celebrated architect, etc. They went overboard to commmission artists, sculptore, woodcarvers, architects, carpenters, tapestry weavers, masons and the like.
One can see the effect of the competition. Statues, fountains, grottoes, pedestals, roof pediments, entry doors, any space...all are given a decorative touch.
Imagine how the drab Philippine Post Office building designed by Juan Arellano, overlooking Pasig River would look like if it was adopted by, let's say, the Divisoria Organization of silk importers and retailers? How about the Barosaoin Church being patronized and restored by the Piña embroidery Organization of Bulacan? Each national organization of professionals and alumni groups could decorate a university. A local Brunelleschi could go bananas with his domes and baptistry doors of San Agustin Church in Intramuros commissioned by the candlemakers organization of Santa Cruz. The merchants under the tulay, (Under the Tulles) could clean up and decorate the facade and side doors of the historic Quiapo church. Over at the corner of
San Sebastian church, an old Spanish-Filipino residence is slowly deteriorating before our very eyes. It needs a patron to get it restored.
The ultra rich in the Philippines stash their money in unnumbered Swiss accounts. The ultra rich in the Florence of old stashed their money where their paintings, buildings and statues could be admired.
Old historical churches abound in the Philippines, many in disrepair and neglect. Gemma Cruz Araneta gave me a copy of her book on churches "Stones of Faith." The churches in the Philippines are ready for a renaissance moment.
This is a plea to the organizations of merchants, professionals, the unions, labor, corporate institutions. What if you followed the Florentine model of pouring your money back to restore and decorate our old cultural patrimony?
5 August 2010
It's amazing how the Florence Renaissance was driven by trade. The trade was driven by guilds. The guilds were driven by competition. The competition was driven by patronizing public buildings. The restoration of public buildings was driven by creative individuals who decorated them. The creative individuals started a blossoming of innovation. And the whole city opened up to a whole new way of thinking.
The primary guilds were the lawyers and judges, wool merchants, silk merchants, bankers, doctors & apothecaries, leather makers, tint makers including artists. Soon lesser guilds were recognised: tanners, butchers, tailors, weavers, chandlers (candlestick makers). These were very important occupations. They were a sort of lobby for monies, grants, tax exemptions and other benefices. In return, these organizations poured their gold money into beauty and culture.
The guilds formed tightly as organizations and collected fees. Each selected a specific church, a public square, a state building, a bridge, an old palace, an antique forum, a unique edifice designed by a celebrated architect, etc. They went overboard to commmission artists, sculptore, woodcarvers, architects, carpenters, tapestry weavers, masons and the like.
One can see the effect of the competition. Statues, fountains, grottoes, pedestals, roof pediments, entry doors, any space...all are given a decorative touch.
Imagine how the drab Philippine Post Office building designed by Juan Arellano, overlooking Pasig River would look like if it was adopted by, let's say, the Divisoria Organization of silk importers and retailers? How about the Barosaoin Church being patronized and restored by the Piña embroidery Organization of Bulacan? Each national organization of professionals and alumni groups could decorate a university. A local Brunelleschi could go bananas with his domes and baptistry doors of San Agustin Church in Intramuros commissioned by the candlemakers organization of Santa Cruz. The merchants under the tulay, (Under the Tulles) could clean up and decorate the facade and side doors of the historic Quiapo church. Over at the corner of
San Sebastian church, an old Spanish-Filipino residence is slowly deteriorating before our very eyes. It needs a patron to get it restored.
The ultra rich in the Philippines stash their money in unnumbered Swiss accounts. The ultra rich in the Florence of old stashed their money where their paintings, buildings and statues could be admired.
Old historical churches abound in the Philippines, many in disrepair and neglect. Gemma Cruz Araneta gave me a copy of her book on churches "Stones of Faith." The churches in the Philippines are ready for a renaissance moment.
This is a plea to the organizations of merchants, professionals, the unions, labor, corporate institutions. What if you followed the Florentine model of pouring your money back to restore and decorate our old cultural patrimony?
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Osteria dei Cento Poveri, The 100 Poor, Florence, Italy
Florence, Italy
4 August, 2010
The Vespucci, a merchant family in Florence is known for it's charitable work for the poor. They founded a hospital on Borgo Ognissanti, near their palace residence. The hospital is still operating today. They also fed the poor.
We remember Vespucci because one of the celebrated sons was Amerigo, the navigator. In the decade of Columbus discovery of the New World, Amerigo retraced this historic voyage twice and realized that Columbus did not really discover the eastern part of India. Instead Vespucci came to the conclusion that there was a huge body of land mass between Europe and India. He wrote home to his boss, Lorenzo de Medici. From his detailed letters, Florentine cartographers printed a new map of the world that named this land mass America after Amerigo.
The Vespuccis continued their charitable contribution to their community (borgo) and today we find their kitchen that served the poor in the parish had been resurrected as a restaurant. The restaurant was named after that ancient ritual and ceremony called "Cento Poveri" The 100 Poor.
This Osteria dei Cento Poveri was first opened and inaugurated on December 5, 1992.
It's told that the "Venchetoni" monks chose the poor of the parish and literally fed 100 of them after delousing, fumigating, cleansing, bathing, and giving then fresh new clothes. For those over age 60 a black cap and a white scarf was issued.
The Archbishop and his retinue of monks led the procession to the church. The Ognissanti church altar would be illuminated by thousands of lighted candles. The guests were led to a huge handicrafted table with scroll and decorative woodwork by Gianbattista Paolesi. In there, the Cento Poveri invited guests were seated. They were served on precious silver trays and the food portions were very generous.
Every 5 o'clock pm on the last Sunday of the Carnival Season in Florence, a crowd of curious onlookers are seen gathered at the door of this church just to get a glimpse of the ceremony. Apart from the 'Vanchetoni" monks, reknown noblemen, aristocrats, professionals; some foreigners (at that time the so called foreigners were from Venice, Emiglia Romana, Bologna, Sicily, Naples, Sienna, Pisa, Genoa, Milan (small kingdoms and duchies) with their seasonal tickets in hand, were waiting for their turn to be invited.
A couple of evenings ago, I went to this Osteria on via Pallazzuto 23, Angolo Via Porcellana. It was crowded with customers. The fare was inexpensive, simple, and used only fresh ingredients. I saw a pizza as staggeringly big as a basin (palangana) or better still, the diameter of a Bila-o.
A medium size pizza near the Arno river costs 11 Euros. At the Cento Poveri, a much bigger version costs 5 to 7 Euros.
A meal for the poveri like me.
4 August, 2010
The Vespucci, a merchant family in Florence is known for it's charitable work for the poor. They founded a hospital on Borgo Ognissanti, near their palace residence. The hospital is still operating today. They also fed the poor.
We remember Vespucci because one of the celebrated sons was Amerigo, the navigator. In the decade of Columbus discovery of the New World, Amerigo retraced this historic voyage twice and realized that Columbus did not really discover the eastern part of India. Instead Vespucci came to the conclusion that there was a huge body of land mass between Europe and India. He wrote home to his boss, Lorenzo de Medici. From his detailed letters, Florentine cartographers printed a new map of the world that named this land mass America after Amerigo.
The Vespuccis continued their charitable contribution to their community (borgo) and today we find their kitchen that served the poor in the parish had been resurrected as a restaurant. The restaurant was named after that ancient ritual and ceremony called "Cento Poveri" The 100 Poor.
This Osteria dei Cento Poveri was first opened and inaugurated on December 5, 1992.
It's told that the "Venchetoni" monks chose the poor of the parish and literally fed 100 of them after delousing, fumigating, cleansing, bathing, and giving then fresh new clothes. For those over age 60 a black cap and a white scarf was issued.
The Archbishop and his retinue of monks led the procession to the church. The Ognissanti church altar would be illuminated by thousands of lighted candles. The guests were led to a huge handicrafted table with scroll and decorative woodwork by Gianbattista Paolesi. In there, the Cento Poveri invited guests were seated. They were served on precious silver trays and the food portions were very generous.
Every 5 o'clock pm on the last Sunday of the Carnival Season in Florence, a crowd of curious onlookers are seen gathered at the door of this church just to get a glimpse of the ceremony. Apart from the 'Vanchetoni" monks, reknown noblemen, aristocrats, professionals; some foreigners (at that time the so called foreigners were from Venice, Emiglia Romana, Bologna, Sicily, Naples, Sienna, Pisa, Genoa, Milan (small kingdoms and duchies) with their seasonal tickets in hand, were waiting for their turn to be invited.
A couple of evenings ago, I went to this Osteria on via Pallazzuto 23, Angolo Via Porcellana. It was crowded with customers. The fare was inexpensive, simple, and used only fresh ingredients. I saw a pizza as staggeringly big as a basin (palangana) or better still, the diameter of a Bila-o.
A medium size pizza near the Arno river costs 11 Euros. At the Cento Poveri, a much bigger version costs 5 to 7 Euros.
A meal for the poveri like me.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Dr. José Rizal's Penmanship: The Lost Art of Handwriting
The Lost Art of Handwriting: Rizal's Noli me Tangere
I obtained the facsimile of Rizal's Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo in handwritten form. It's very inspiring. To write a complete novel in hand written form was the rigeur of the day in 1885 when he first started to write his manuscript.
Let's see how Rizal did it. He purchased writing paper. Oh, maybe 15 to 20 percent fiber stock. It must withstand the india ink and the quill bush stroke. Now we have the 8 by 12 inch size, or the A-4 of the European size. In Rizal's time, what do you think the regular book size manuscript was? It must be bigger. It must contain at least 21 lines in handwritten form. That could mean about 36 inches wide and 48 inches in length.
Imagine the backbreaking belabored hand, writing all 15 chapters in script. I'd be living in eternal hand cramps. We used to have our type writers in the early decade of the 19th century, and now with the 21st century contemporary computers we could delete and paste with entire abandon.
Not so in Rizal's time. He had to think clearly and must possess the linguistic proficiency to know exactly what he was doing and how he was doing it. The eraser for the india ink pen had not yet been been invented. We could actually see Dr. José Rizal's thought processes as he crosses out a word to convey a better nuanced word choice.
It was this manuscript that my ancestor, Dr. Maximo Viola hand carried to Berlin in 1887 to find a suitable and inexpensive printer. In fact, my granduncle provided the 300 pesetas as a loan to have it printed (see my earlier blog).
Rizal's manuscript in written form was beautifully spaced, It was told that his mother first taught him reading and writing. His personal teacher in grade school and those Jesuits at Ateneo shaped his o's and his u's and made him cross his t's and loop his p's elegantly.
I had the rare chance of tracing Rizal's own signature as he signed his name at the Leitmertiz Registry Book when he arrived for a visit with Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt at Leitmeritz, Austria, now Litomérice, Czech Republic, May 1887 (see my July 19, 2010 blog).
Handwriting is so personal and is the only legitimate source of our legal identity. Our name signature or hand writing is our special personal possession and so important that it is protected by the state (albeit the credit card companies) that no other is allowed to use it or imitate it.
In fact of all the ways to understand the real authentic Rizal is to study his signature and penmanship. It is a statement non verbally of who he is. Take a look at his hand written facsimile of the Noli as a manuscript. Note the evenly slanted letters. The ascenders (t, d, b, l, h ) or tall letters, and descenders (g, p. y, q,, z) are drawn in pure contour. Rizal could write straight even without a lined paper!
His m's and n's have mounded shapes, while his u's and w's were negative mounded shapes. It is well to remember that Jose Rizal was a sculptor. In this art form, one is constantly thriving for the clearance of the positive spaces and the negative spaces. Rizal's penmanship is an artist's delight.
His hand writing had a slant. A slightly forward slant conveys energy, a subconscious message of forward action, with cautious conservative pace. In his signature, he used heavy dark lines, not thin and wispy, suggesting muscular power, and intellectual strength. But in the Noli manuscript, we note him using medium lines indicating a "fine line of sensibility and a particular elegance. It conveys an aesthetic almost poetic personality." I'm not using these descriptions to give Rizal's attributes as we know it. I'm actually quoting Betty Edwards's chapter on handwriting as an art form (The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, 1999. pp 162-163).
We are not trying Graphology on Rizal's penmanship. Graphologists go into fanciful derivations of how, for example, one large loop of a letter can indicate some personal acquisitive nature. We are talking without question, about the idea of making a line or hand writing related to the principles of art--the basic precepts of composition, balance, movement, rhythm and placement.
Just as art expresses the artist, so does handwriting expresses Rizal's inner personality.
Rizal's signature page is shown below.
/Users/pflores/Desktop/_DSC1882.JPG
/Users/pflores/Desktop/_DSC1889.JPG
I obtained the facsimile of Rizal's Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo in handwritten form. It's very inspiring. To write a complete novel in hand written form was the rigeur of the day in 1885 when he first started to write his manuscript.
Let's see how Rizal did it. He purchased writing paper. Oh, maybe 15 to 20 percent fiber stock. It must withstand the india ink and the quill bush stroke. Now we have the 8 by 12 inch size, or the A-4 of the European size. In Rizal's time, what do you think the regular book size manuscript was? It must be bigger. It must contain at least 21 lines in handwritten form. That could mean about 36 inches wide and 48 inches in length.
Imagine the backbreaking belabored hand, writing all 15 chapters in script. I'd be living in eternal hand cramps. We used to have our type writers in the early decade of the 19th century, and now with the 21st century contemporary computers we could delete and paste with entire abandon.
Not so in Rizal's time. He had to think clearly and must possess the linguistic proficiency to know exactly what he was doing and how he was doing it. The eraser for the india ink pen had not yet been been invented. We could actually see Dr. José Rizal's thought processes as he crosses out a word to convey a better nuanced word choice.
It was this manuscript that my ancestor, Dr. Maximo Viola hand carried to Berlin in 1887 to find a suitable and inexpensive printer. In fact, my granduncle provided the 300 pesetas as a loan to have it printed (see my earlier blog).
Rizal's manuscript in written form was beautifully spaced, It was told that his mother first taught him reading and writing. His personal teacher in grade school and those Jesuits at Ateneo shaped his o's and his u's and made him cross his t's and loop his p's elegantly.
I had the rare chance of tracing Rizal's own signature as he signed his name at the Leitmertiz Registry Book when he arrived for a visit with Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt at Leitmeritz, Austria, now Litomérice, Czech Republic, May 1887 (see my July 19, 2010 blog).
Handwriting is so personal and is the only legitimate source of our legal identity. Our name signature or hand writing is our special personal possession and so important that it is protected by the state (albeit the credit card companies) that no other is allowed to use it or imitate it.
In fact of all the ways to understand the real authentic Rizal is to study his signature and penmanship. It is a statement non verbally of who he is. Take a look at his hand written facsimile of the Noli as a manuscript. Note the evenly slanted letters. The ascenders (t, d, b, l, h ) or tall letters, and descenders (g, p. y, q,, z) are drawn in pure contour. Rizal could write straight even without a lined paper!
His m's and n's have mounded shapes, while his u's and w's were negative mounded shapes. It is well to remember that Jose Rizal was a sculptor. In this art form, one is constantly thriving for the clearance of the positive spaces and the negative spaces. Rizal's penmanship is an artist's delight.
His hand writing had a slant. A slightly forward slant conveys energy, a subconscious message of forward action, with cautious conservative pace. In his signature, he used heavy dark lines, not thin and wispy, suggesting muscular power, and intellectual strength. But in the Noli manuscript, we note him using medium lines indicating a "fine line of sensibility and a particular elegance. It conveys an aesthetic almost poetic personality." I'm not using these descriptions to give Rizal's attributes as we know it. I'm actually quoting Betty Edwards's chapter on handwriting as an art form (The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, 1999. pp 162-163).
We are not trying Graphology on Rizal's penmanship. Graphologists go into fanciful derivations of how, for example, one large loop of a letter can indicate some personal acquisitive nature. We are talking without question, about the idea of making a line or hand writing related to the principles of art--the basic precepts of composition, balance, movement, rhythm and placement.
Just as art expresses the artist, so does handwriting expresses Rizal's inner personality.
Rizal's signature page is shown below.
/Users/pflores/Desktop/_DSC1882.JPG
/Users/pflores/Desktop/_DSC1889.JPG
Dr. José Rizal's 4th floor apartments, Madrid, 1882.
31, July 2010, Saturday
Firenze, Italia
My instructor, Erin Murphy, an American, is a Florence resident for the past 20 years.
Beginning Monday, my classes will be held in her studio. It's on the 4th floor of an old Firenze building. Knowing that the first floor is ground zero and does not count, that means I will have to go to 5 flights of stairs to the fourth floor.
What has this got to do with my Blog on Rizal? Why? Because José Rizal's apartments in Madrid were always on the 4th piso, (that's our 5th floor) or 3rd piso (that's our equivalent 4th floor). (See my next series of blogs on Rizal's residence in Madrid).
To Erin's Art Studio: I go through the huge wooden creaking facade door. Then a short vestibule with granite and marble stone floor introduces me to the first flight of stairs. I counted 10 steps to the first landing as it turns to another 10 steps into the first floor. Whew! That was 20 hard narbled steps just to reach the first floor.
Finally, 20--80-- and leading to almost nowhere in sight, we finally reach Erin's studio. It is beautiful out there. From the windows I could see the variegated tile roofs of the neighboring buildings, and the shadow of Brunellschi's Duomo. It's so near it seems I could reach out to it, while from afar, and in the distance, cypress trees outline the sky.
From the attic, there's a dangling Manila hemp rope attached to hooks on the side wall. This very narrow wooden steps lead to the rooftop, and then an open portico with potted plans reveal a fantastic view of the whole city of Firenze and the distant hills .
There overlooking this wonderful scene, for the next week of my art lessons, I will learn how to draw and paint the landscape. Expect me to paint the mildewed clay tile roofs below if I run out of subjects.
Back to Rizal.
Rizal's apartment in Madrid had always been on the 4th or 3rd floors. You and I are thinking the Filipino/American idea of naming floors with ground floor as first. The reality is, in all of Europe, our first floor is called the Ground floor. Their First floor is our Second floor.
Rizal who lived on the 4th floor had to negotiate at least 80 or more steps daily to go up, another 80 to go down. He would go up another 80 + steps for the breakfast morning's end back to his quarters, go down to eat lunch, then go up 80 steps to study, and go down to eat dinner, and finally up 80 steps to retire for the day. But he is rewarded every day of access to the rooftop and an awesome view of the whole city of Madrid spread out before him, with several cathedral spires punctuating the sky.
That was his daily grind. There were no cooking facilities in his apartment. Now we know what Filipino students in Madrid had to go through on their daily existence living in a foreign country away from home where in the home country, the highest floor of apartments and residences are only the ground floor and the first floor.
Rizal moved every so often, and always his quarters were up on the 3rd floor (our 4th). I took pictures of the facade of where he lived, but we can just imagine the stairs he had to negotiate with no elevators. However, having climbed Erin's studio up on the 4th floor, I now know exactly how he felt and where he got his feeling of soreness of the joints.
Rizal was a student at the Faculty of Philophy and Letters at the University of Madrid and later at the San Carlos Medical School in Madrid.
Firenze, Italia
My instructor, Erin Murphy, an American, is a Florence resident for the past 20 years.
Beginning Monday, my classes will be held in her studio. It's on the 4th floor of an old Firenze building. Knowing that the first floor is ground zero and does not count, that means I will have to go to 5 flights of stairs to the fourth floor.
What has this got to do with my Blog on Rizal? Why? Because José Rizal's apartments in Madrid were always on the 4th piso, (that's our 5th floor) or 3rd piso (that's our equivalent 4th floor). (See my next series of blogs on Rizal's residence in Madrid).
To Erin's Art Studio: I go through the huge wooden creaking facade door. Then a short vestibule with granite and marble stone floor introduces me to the first flight of stairs. I counted 10 steps to the first landing as it turns to another 10 steps into the first floor. Whew! That was 20 hard narbled steps just to reach the first floor.
Finally, 20--80-- and leading to almost nowhere in sight, we finally reach Erin's studio. It is beautiful out there. From the windows I could see the variegated tile roofs of the neighboring buildings, and the shadow of Brunellschi's Duomo. It's so near it seems I could reach out to it, while from afar, and in the distance, cypress trees outline the sky.
From the attic, there's a dangling Manila hemp rope attached to hooks on the side wall. This very narrow wooden steps lead to the rooftop, and then an open portico with potted plans reveal a fantastic view of the whole city of Firenze and the distant hills .
There overlooking this wonderful scene, for the next week of my art lessons, I will learn how to draw and paint the landscape. Expect me to paint the mildewed clay tile roofs below if I run out of subjects.
Back to Rizal.
Rizal's apartment in Madrid had always been on the 4th or 3rd floors. You and I are thinking the Filipino/American idea of naming floors with ground floor as first. The reality is, in all of Europe, our first floor is called the Ground floor. Their First floor is our Second floor.
Rizal who lived on the 4th floor had to negotiate at least 80 or more steps daily to go up, another 80 to go down. He would go up another 80 + steps for the breakfast morning's end back to his quarters, go down to eat lunch, then go up 80 steps to study, and go down to eat dinner, and finally up 80 steps to retire for the day. But he is rewarded every day of access to the rooftop and an awesome view of the whole city of Madrid spread out before him, with several cathedral spires punctuating the sky.
That was his daily grind. There were no cooking facilities in his apartment. Now we know what Filipino students in Madrid had to go through on their daily existence living in a foreign country away from home where in the home country, the highest floor of apartments and residences are only the ground floor and the first floor.
Rizal moved every so often, and always his quarters were up on the 3rd floor (our 4th). I took pictures of the facade of where he lived, but we can just imagine the stairs he had to negotiate with no elevators. However, having climbed Erin's studio up on the 4th floor, I now know exactly how he felt and where he got his feeling of soreness of the joints.
Rizal was a student at the Faculty of Philophy and Letters at the University of Madrid and later at the San Carlos Medical School in Madrid.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Accademia Italiana di Bellas Artis, Florence
Florence, Italy
July 31, 2010
I'm here in Firenze attending art school. My first drawing class is about studying and copying Juarez Machado's picture of a nude, another girl and the artist.
July 31, 2010
I'm here in Firenze attending art school. My first drawing class is about studying and copying Juarez Machado's picture of a nude, another girl and the artist.
Ferdinand Blumentritt of Lietmeritz, Austria, friend of Dr. José Rizal.
On May 13, 1877, Dr. Jose Rizal and his friend Dr. Maximo Viola (my ancestor) arrived by train. The friends were met by Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt and his family. Earlier, Dr, Blumentritt and Dr. José Rizal had started a very scholarly correspondence (on Philippine ethnography) which with every return of the maIl (around 10 days) the correspondence became more and more communicative. In other words, it was no longer just a correspondence between scholars, but a meeting of the minds of two disparate individuals in terms of geography but so similar in sentiment. In time, they found their metier and exchanged their own philosophies: of life, of teaching, of religion, of the colonizers and of the oppressed.
It will be good for the Filipino American reader to get the two volumes (1992, National Historical Institute, Manila) on José Rizal and his complete correspondence with Dr. Ferdinaand Blumentritt.
Last week, (19 July 2010) I traveled with my good friend from Prague, Miloslav (Mila for short) Smida to visit posthumously with the famed director of the Litomerérice Gynmasium or Realeschule (equivalent to our Secondary, College-bound). With the disintegration of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire, Lietmeritz became part of Czechoslovakia and was given a Czech name.
Litomérice is one hour's drive north from Prague. It has maintained a slower pace of life. The old tower's imagined arms still is about to engulf every newcomer in a warm embrace. The square's fountain in the middle still spouts clear water from its source: the pristine lake nearby. Thanks for the smaller car versions, the parked vehicles seem not so intrusive around the fountain. The arcades around the square still sport the ancient balustrades above and walking architaves below for pedestrian.
The very friendly town officials told us to go to the other side to the square, (East) and turn left. There is a small garden and inside another small garden wall, we found a shady lane with a bust of Blumentritt. I recognized his bespectacled face extruding from the high wall. It was the likeness of the sketch Dr. Rizal made of him during his visit in 1887. Viewing the green grounds, a plaque described this beloved citizen who developed a deep and great friendship with the National Hero of the Philippines. It said: "Here established the connection between Czech Republic and the Republic of the Philippines through the friendship of Dr. Ferdinand Blumentriit and Dr.José Rizal." A quote from one of Rizal's letters followed in Czech inscription.
Back in the center of town, on the other side of the square, we passed through a little street that led to the statue of an important Czech hero, Macha. On the left of the statue, we took three steps down and there we were: right on Rizal Park. It's a a slim tongue of green, a miniature park, very serene, peaceful, and tranquil.
A bust of Rizal lorded it over the scene. It is a beautiful handsome piece, sculpted no doubt by a renowned Filipino sculptor, a Caedo prehaps, but I have to check my sources to verify this.
/Users/pflores/Desktop/450px-rizal_litomerice_2021-225x300.jpg
I turned to Mila: "They (the Litomerice Commission), knew what they were doing. This place recalls Rizal's Dapitan domicle duirng his exile--- verdant green, tranquil, peaceful and reflective, which he called Mi Retiro" .
Mila replied pointedly: "Well then, let's create a tour prospectus for Filipinos who are traveling to Prague to make sure that they visit this historic piece of important Philippine History."
"I agree. There's more to just going to see the Holy Infant Jesus of Prague, which is the regular itinerary of the many Filipinos I know who travel to Prague." (For all of you out there planning to travel to Prague at any time in the future, please allow me and Mila to get your itinerary planned for this historic event.)
Last week, upon reading my blog on Rizal, the writer and literary critic Allen Gaborro exclaimed, "Who would expect a Rizal Park in the middle of a small ancient town square in an obscure town of the Czech Republic?"
Back at the town square tourist booth, we returned to buy some postcards. I found one that showed the square in 1840. Close enough for me.
Among the goods, postcards, and maps was a monograph of the "Last Farewell" by Dr. Jose Rizal translated in Czech. The glossy cover had a lovely bust image of Dr.l Jose Rizal. This is the bust found inside the Mayor's office. Truth be told, this cover monograph is better a thousand -fold than the images of any Rizal bust found in the Philippines. I'm sure of that.
I bought a copy for 48 Krowns. I wish I had purchased more.
It will be good for the Filipino American reader to get the two volumes (1992, National Historical Institute, Manila) on José Rizal and his complete correspondence with Dr. Ferdinaand Blumentritt.
Last week, (19 July 2010) I traveled with my good friend from Prague, Miloslav (Mila for short) Smida to visit posthumously with the famed director of the Litomerérice Gynmasium or Realeschule (equivalent to our Secondary, College-bound). With the disintegration of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire, Lietmeritz became part of Czechoslovakia and was given a Czech name.
Litomérice is one hour's drive north from Prague. It has maintained a slower pace of life. The old tower's imagined arms still is about to engulf every newcomer in a warm embrace. The square's fountain in the middle still spouts clear water from its source: the pristine lake nearby. Thanks for the smaller car versions, the parked vehicles seem not so intrusive around the fountain. The arcades around the square still sport the ancient balustrades above and walking architaves below for pedestrian.
The very friendly town officials told us to go to the other side to the square, (East) and turn left. There is a small garden and inside another small garden wall, we found a shady lane with a bust of Blumentritt. I recognized his bespectacled face extruding from the high wall. It was the likeness of the sketch Dr. Rizal made of him during his visit in 1887. Viewing the green grounds, a plaque described this beloved citizen who developed a deep and great friendship with the National Hero of the Philippines. It said: "Here established the connection between Czech Republic and the Republic of the Philippines through the friendship of Dr. Ferdinand Blumentriit and Dr.José Rizal." A quote from one of Rizal's letters followed in Czech inscription.
Back in the center of town, on the other side of the square, we passed through a little street that led to the statue of an important Czech hero, Macha. On the left of the statue, we took three steps down and there we were: right on Rizal Park. It's a a slim tongue of green, a miniature park, very serene, peaceful, and tranquil.
A bust of Rizal lorded it over the scene. It is a beautiful handsome piece, sculpted no doubt by a renowned Filipino sculptor, a Caedo prehaps, but I have to check my sources to verify this.
/Users/pflores/Desktop/450px-rizal_litomerice_2021-225x300.jpg
I turned to Mila: "They (the Litomerice Commission), knew what they were doing. This place recalls Rizal's Dapitan domicle duirng his exile--- verdant green, tranquil, peaceful and reflective, which he called Mi Retiro" .
Mila replied pointedly: "Well then, let's create a tour prospectus for Filipinos who are traveling to Prague to make sure that they visit this historic piece of important Philippine History."
"I agree. There's more to just going to see the Holy Infant Jesus of Prague, which is the regular itinerary of the many Filipinos I know who travel to Prague." (For all of you out there planning to travel to Prague at any time in the future, please allow me and Mila to get your itinerary planned for this historic event.)
Last week, upon reading my blog on Rizal, the writer and literary critic Allen Gaborro exclaimed, "Who would expect a Rizal Park in the middle of a small ancient town square in an obscure town of the Czech Republic?"
Back at the town square tourist booth, we returned to buy some postcards. I found one that showed the square in 1840. Close enough for me.
Among the goods, postcards, and maps was a monograph of the "Last Farewell" by Dr. Jose Rizal translated in Czech. The glossy cover had a lovely bust image of Dr.l Jose Rizal. This is the bust found inside the Mayor's office. Truth be told, this cover monograph is better a thousand -fold than the images of any Rizal bust found in the Philippines. I'm sure of that.
I bought a copy for 48 Krowns. I wish I had purchased more.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Visit to Litomérice: In The Shadow of Dr. José Rizal Slideshow
Visit to Litomérice: In The Shadow of Dr. José Rizal Slideshow: "TripAdvisor™ TripWow ★ Visit to Litomérice: In The Shadow of Dr. José Rizal Slideshow ★ to Prague by Penélope V. Flores. Stunning free travel slideshows on TripAdvisor"
Budapest, Esztergom, Szentendre, Visegrad Slideshow
Budapest, Esztergom, Szentendre, Visegrad Slideshow: "TripAdvisor™ TripWow ★ Budapest, Esztergom, Szentendre, Visegrad Slideshow ★ to Rome and Budapest by Penélope V Flores. Stunning free travel slideshows on TripAdvisor"
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Leitmeritz, Austria is now Litomérice, Czech Republic
My Luvosîce Moment
Penélope V. Flores*
Luvosîce: July 19, 2010
Stunned from too little sleep, I blinked at the giant folio before me. My imagination is most vivid at times like this when I feel a strong connection to my roots. Memories and historical facts feel organically raw. It is hard not to be sentimental in a place like Luvosicé, three kilometers away from Litomérice. Standing there, the polished stone floor of the archive building was likened to a Sahara. My knees began to buckle. Here I am, halfway across the world facing a dark Morocco leather- bound book register. It is Folio XVII. On it’s open pages, I noted the fine delicate flourish of a signature. It showed half-way down the page on leaf IV B 8:
Máximo Viola of the Philippines (Bulacan).
I relive the visit of my ancestor for a moment. At age 26, Maximo Viola just completed his medical degree from Barcelona, Spain and was traveling with his good friend to Leitmeritz, an Austrian town of Bohemia. (At present, it is known as Litomérice, the Gateway to Bohemia, Czech Republic).
The two friends were visiting the Filipinist scholar, Dr. Ferdinand Blumentriit., who was the director of the Litomérice school.
Why this interest in Viola? Dr. Viola is my grandmother’s (Juliana Viola) older brother. I had waited years to undertake this personal journey in order to savor this moment as I traced the peripatetic footsteps of a young Ilustrado.
Ah, but wait!
Just above my granduncle’s signature, clearly another entry on the book is recognizable by the current 81 million Filipinos in the home country. The penmanship showed a very firm hand. The name was written at a slight incline ending with a strong downward and very magnetic stroke. It read:
José Rizal of the Philippines (Calamba).
Leitmeritz 16 May 1887.
My hair,which is normally limp and straight, curled like tendrils that darted off in four squiggly directions. Filled with strong emotions, I turned the other way, smearing my eye-mascara with a hurried tear.
At this point, the manager of the State Regional Archive, Ms. Jana Shejbalová, came over to my side and wrote down the name of the folio:
Gedenbuch der Königlichen Kreisstadt Leitmeritz (1840-1900).
The title page was written in High German script. Jana explained that the town of Litomérice had transferred the 19th century folio to her a couple of years ago.
“It’s a lucky coincidence,” she declared, “that you came today (Monday) because on the other days of the week, this archive is closed.”
The imposing registry is wider than my torso (shoulder to shoulder). When I held my arm forward as a unit of measure, the length went from my shoulder socket to the tip of my hand. As it spread open to the page the heavy registry book took the whole space of a 45 by 45 inch table desk. The Gedenbuch has a 5-inch back spine.
My thoughts began to unfasten as I fingered the page. Our national hero, Dr. José Rizal’s hand brushed this very page as he registered his signature 123 years ago (2010-1887). An ancient doorbell rang inside my liver. Yes, indeed. In the ancient pre-hispanic Filipino belief, the liver (kasing-kasing: not the heart) is the center of emotions. (The etymology of the word Kasintahan literally means the joining of livers.)
I heard the bell’s hushed vibration announcing in very dramatic resonance:
“You have just traced the exact page where our national hero, José Rizal, leaned on his arm and moved his writing hand across this very paper surface.”
That was my Luvosîce moment. I looked incredibly at my trembling hands.
“I won’t wash off the golden and historical aura emanating from this arm,” I swore.
“(Mag pu punas-punas na lang).”
For years this Leitmeritz (Litomérice) registry book might have lain under the eaves of the cavernous Town Hall library, occasionally to be taken down for reference by somebody, mostly historians from some universities in the Philippines; usually shepherded by recently appointed Philippine ambassadors, consuls and diplomats from Prague. But here I am, an ordinary citizen, with no embassy connections, no previous official scheduled appointment, unheralded except accompanied by my good friend Miloslav of Trebotov, a suburb of Prague, perusing the huge same book where our national hero registered his presence as a Filipino.
Back in Litomérice, I asked where Hotel Krebs was. According to Viola’s memoirs (1927), he and Rizal were billeted there in Room 12, during their May 1887 visit. The gentleman at the tourist information booth automatically corrected me.
“There’s no Hotel Krebs in Litomérice.”
“But there was one here in front of the town plaza a century and a quarter ago, “ I insisted with professorial authority.
He pointed across from the town square.
“There’s the former Hotel Rak if that’s what you mean”
According to historian Ambeth Ocampo who visited this building a couple of years ago (2008), the ground floor of the old hotel had become a bank. However, now (2010) it has morphed into a shabby commercial storefront. The outside neon sign read:
Obchodní Centrum
ROSSMANN
Miloslav (I call him Mila) Smida and I sauntered in. The shopping center at best displayed mostly made-in -China clothing.
The old “Hotel Rak” squats like a green box turtle, topped with a red tile roof with shell-shaped dormers on the top 4th floor. The confusion may have been due to the fact that “Rak” is not a “crab” but a “crayfish”. My Lolo Imo (Maximo) and most possibly Rizal were lacking in the German language nuance and could not have sufficiently distinguished the difference between a crab and a crayfish. As a consequence he wrote what came to them : “kreb” or “crab”.
Mila, who is a talented cartoonist, quickly and deftly sketched a pen-and-ink illustration of the crayfish and the 1887 visit of two young Filipino doctors and the Professor from Leitmeritz (See attachment, in future blog).
In addition, to make an impression he suggested:
“I may be wrong, but please inquire from your Ministry of Culture and Education for the correct information. Here this hotel has always been known as Hotel Rak. It's understandable that your historians depend solely on original written sources. However, if initial errors are inadvertently made, it is replicated over and over again. “
“No one bothered to ask us, locals,” he added with a wink.
It was already 3 pm. We started the trip at 10:00 am, July 19th 2010. Before repairing back to Prague, we lunched on cream of asparagus soup and fresh grilled river trout with potatoes and salad greens at a pleine-aire restaurant on Litomérice’s ancient and historic town square.
As we drove back to Prague, Mila made a brief stop at a pristine lake. On the distance I saw the shadow of an island. My granduncle’s diary said, there was an island here where Blumentritt’s family and friend hosted a picnic for the two Filipinos before they left for Dresden.
In my next chapter, I write about Ferdinand Blumentritt’s plaque and the bust of Jose Rizal that overlooks a green square on Litomérice's Rizal Park.
*NOTE: Luvosîce, (pronounced Lu-VOH-zyeet-she) is 3 km east of Litomérici, (pronounced Lee TOH myer-zheet-seh) which is an hour’s drive or 57 km from Prague, Czech Republic. A century ago, this town was known as Leitmeritz and was part of Austria. In this ancient Bohemian town, Dr. Jose Rizal and his friend Dr. Maximo Viola traveled to meet with Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt.
Penélope V. Flores*
Luvosîce: July 19, 2010
Stunned from too little sleep, I blinked at the giant folio before me. My imagination is most vivid at times like this when I feel a strong connection to my roots. Memories and historical facts feel organically raw. It is hard not to be sentimental in a place like Luvosicé, three kilometers away from Litomérice. Standing there, the polished stone floor of the archive building was likened to a Sahara. My knees began to buckle. Here I am, halfway across the world facing a dark Morocco leather- bound book register. It is Folio XVII. On it’s open pages, I noted the fine delicate flourish of a signature. It showed half-way down the page on leaf IV B 8:
Máximo Viola of the Philippines (Bulacan).
I relive the visit of my ancestor for a moment. At age 26, Maximo Viola just completed his medical degree from Barcelona, Spain and was traveling with his good friend to Leitmeritz, an Austrian town of Bohemia. (At present, it is known as Litomérice, the Gateway to Bohemia, Czech Republic).
The two friends were visiting the Filipinist scholar, Dr. Ferdinand Blumentriit., who was the director of the Litomérice school.
Why this interest in Viola? Dr. Viola is my grandmother’s (Juliana Viola) older brother. I had waited years to undertake this personal journey in order to savor this moment as I traced the peripatetic footsteps of a young Ilustrado.
Ah, but wait!
Just above my granduncle’s signature, clearly another entry on the book is recognizable by the current 81 million Filipinos in the home country. The penmanship showed a very firm hand. The name was written at a slight incline ending with a strong downward and very magnetic stroke. It read:
José Rizal of the Philippines (Calamba).
Leitmeritz 16 May 1887.
My hair,which is normally limp and straight, curled like tendrils that darted off in four squiggly directions. Filled with strong emotions, I turned the other way, smearing my eye-mascara with a hurried tear.
At this point, the manager of the State Regional Archive, Ms. Jana Shejbalová, came over to my side and wrote down the name of the folio:
Gedenbuch der Königlichen Kreisstadt Leitmeritz (1840-1900).
The title page was written in High German script. Jana explained that the town of Litomérice had transferred the 19th century folio to her a couple of years ago.
“It’s a lucky coincidence,” she declared, “that you came today (Monday) because on the other days of the week, this archive is closed.”
The imposing registry is wider than my torso (shoulder to shoulder). When I held my arm forward as a unit of measure, the length went from my shoulder socket to the tip of my hand. As it spread open to the page the heavy registry book took the whole space of a 45 by 45 inch table desk. The Gedenbuch has a 5-inch back spine.
My thoughts began to unfasten as I fingered the page. Our national hero, Dr. José Rizal’s hand brushed this very page as he registered his signature 123 years ago (2010-1887). An ancient doorbell rang inside my liver. Yes, indeed. In the ancient pre-hispanic Filipino belief, the liver (kasing-kasing: not the heart) is the center of emotions. (The etymology of the word Kasintahan literally means the joining of livers.)
I heard the bell’s hushed vibration announcing in very dramatic resonance:
“You have just traced the exact page where our national hero, José Rizal, leaned on his arm and moved his writing hand across this very paper surface.”
That was my Luvosîce moment. I looked incredibly at my trembling hands.
“I won’t wash off the golden and historical aura emanating from this arm,” I swore.
“(Mag pu punas-punas na lang).”
For years this Leitmeritz (Litomérice) registry book might have lain under the eaves of the cavernous Town Hall library, occasionally to be taken down for reference by somebody, mostly historians from some universities in the Philippines; usually shepherded by recently appointed Philippine ambassadors, consuls and diplomats from Prague. But here I am, an ordinary citizen, with no embassy connections, no previous official scheduled appointment, unheralded except accompanied by my good friend Miloslav of Trebotov, a suburb of Prague, perusing the huge same book where our national hero registered his presence as a Filipino.
Back in Litomérice, I asked where Hotel Krebs was. According to Viola’s memoirs (1927), he and Rizal were billeted there in Room 12, during their May 1887 visit. The gentleman at the tourist information booth automatically corrected me.
“There’s no Hotel Krebs in Litomérice.”
“But there was one here in front of the town plaza a century and a quarter ago, “ I insisted with professorial authority.
He pointed across from the town square.
“There’s the former Hotel Rak if that’s what you mean”
According to historian Ambeth Ocampo who visited this building a couple of years ago (2008), the ground floor of the old hotel had become a bank. However, now (2010) it has morphed into a shabby commercial storefront. The outside neon sign read:
Obchodní Centrum
ROSSMANN
Miloslav (I call him Mila) Smida and I sauntered in. The shopping center at best displayed mostly made-in -China clothing.
The old “Hotel Rak” squats like a green box turtle, topped with a red tile roof with shell-shaped dormers on the top 4th floor. The confusion may have been due to the fact that “Rak” is not a “crab” but a “crayfish”. My Lolo Imo (Maximo) and most possibly Rizal were lacking in the German language nuance and could not have sufficiently distinguished the difference between a crab and a crayfish. As a consequence he wrote what came to them : “kreb” or “crab”.
Mila, who is a talented cartoonist, quickly and deftly sketched a pen-and-ink illustration of the crayfish and the 1887 visit of two young Filipino doctors and the Professor from Leitmeritz (See attachment, in future blog).
In addition, to make an impression he suggested:
“I may be wrong, but please inquire from your Ministry of Culture and Education for the correct information. Here this hotel has always been known as Hotel Rak. It's understandable that your historians depend solely on original written sources. However, if initial errors are inadvertently made, it is replicated over and over again. “
“No one bothered to ask us, locals,” he added with a wink.
It was already 3 pm. We started the trip at 10:00 am, July 19th 2010. Before repairing back to Prague, we lunched on cream of asparagus soup and fresh grilled river trout with potatoes and salad greens at a pleine-aire restaurant on Litomérice’s ancient and historic town square.
As we drove back to Prague, Mila made a brief stop at a pristine lake. On the distance I saw the shadow of an island. My granduncle’s diary said, there was an island here where Blumentritt’s family and friend hosted a picnic for the two Filipinos before they left for Dresden.
In my next chapter, I write about Ferdinand Blumentritt’s plaque and the bust of Jose Rizal that overlooks a green square on Litomérice's Rizal Park.
*NOTE: Luvosîce, (pronounced Lu-VOH-zyeet-she) is 3 km east of Litomérici, (pronounced Lee TOH myer-zheet-seh) which is an hour’s drive or 57 km from Prague, Czech Republic. A century ago, this town was known as Leitmeritz and was part of Austria. In this ancient Bohemian town, Dr. Jose Rizal and his friend Dr. Maximo Viola traveled to meet with Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Tracing Jose Rizal's Footsteps, Madrid 1882-1887.
For the great many of you who had visited Madrid, Spain, I have a question for you.
Did you know that the Philippine Embassy in Madrid has an organized tour of the apartments, residences, restaurants, clubs, and other places where our National Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal had spent during his student days from 1882 to 1887?
Did you know that the Philippine Embassy in Madrid has an organized tour of the apartments, residences, restaurants, clubs, and other places where our National Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal had spent during his student days from 1882 to 1887?
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Christmas. Sonart Group, 2009 Album Slideshow
Christmas. Sonart Group, 2009 Album Slideshow: "TripAdvisor™ TripWow ★ Christmas. Sonart Group, 2009 Album Slideshow ★ to San Francisco by Pfloressfsuedu. Stunning free travel slideshows on TripAdvisor"
Rizal's Noli me Tangere's printing cost
Mr Vicente Marquez, CPA, of 1200 Bayhill Drive, San Bruno, California must have been bitten hard by my blogspot on Dr. Jose Rizal's Noli me Tangere story.
Not only did he calculate the annual compounded interest (at 3% and 5% respectively) of Dr. Rizal's debt to Dr. Maximo Viola regarding the printing cost of his novel. Vic went one step further and computed the monetary value at that period in time. He did this ingeniously by pegging it to the Gold Standard.
See below:
"The Spanish currency was used in the Philippines during the 300 years of
Spanish dominion. In 1869, Spain joined the Latin Monetary Union, where in
1873 only the gold standard applied. According to this standard, one peseta
is equal to 0.290322 grams of gold.
In today's dollar, one gram of gold is equal to US$39.90. If Maximo Viola's
peseta is equivalent to .290322 grams of gold, then I think we can express
your 12,072 pesetas x .290322 x 39.90 =US$139,84033.
Or your 133,593
pesetas x .290322 x 39.90=$US$1,547,521.11."
WOW! That's a million and a half whooping dollar debt.
Pete Fuentecilla of Queens, New York, former Editor of Mekong Circle International Newsletter, posed some questions and offered some suggestions:
"I suggest you contact a trade or investment officer at any Spanish U.S. consulate or their embassy.
Did the Spaniards issue "Philippine" pesetas for colonial use (in the Philippines) or used the regular spanish peseta of that time for their other colonial properties -- Cuba and Puerto Rico ?"
To anyone out there with answers, please send in your comments. Thanks.
Happy RIzal Day celebration.
Not only did he calculate the annual compounded interest (at 3% and 5% respectively) of Dr. Rizal's debt to Dr. Maximo Viola regarding the printing cost of his novel. Vic went one step further and computed the monetary value at that period in time. He did this ingeniously by pegging it to the Gold Standard.
See below:
"The Spanish currency was used in the Philippines during the 300 years of
Spanish dominion. In 1869, Spain joined the Latin Monetary Union, where in
1873 only the gold standard applied. According to this standard, one peseta
is equal to 0.290322 grams of gold.
In today's dollar, one gram of gold is equal to US$39.90. If Maximo Viola's
peseta is equivalent to .290322 grams of gold, then I think we can express
your 12,072 pesetas x .290322 x 39.90 =US$139,84033.
Or your 133,593
pesetas x .290322 x 39.90=$US$1,547,521.11."
WOW! That's a million and a half whooping dollar debt.
Pete Fuentecilla of Queens, New York, former Editor of Mekong Circle International Newsletter, posed some questions and offered some suggestions:
"I suggest you contact a trade or investment officer at any Spanish U.S. consulate or their embassy.
Did the Spaniards issue "Philippine" pesetas for colonial use (in the Philippines) or used the regular spanish peseta of that time for their other colonial properties -- Cuba and Puerto Rico ?"
To anyone out there with answers, please send in your comments. Thanks.
Happy RIzal Day celebration.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Jose Rizal's Noli me Tangere
Dr. Jose Rizal received a loan of 300 pesetas from his friend Dr. Maximo Viola to publish Noli me Tangere. The novel "Noli me Tangere" (1887) from the Latin "touch me not" described the earth-shaking socially and politically sorry conditions of the colonized Filipinos. This novel fired the imagination of the leaders of the Philippine Revolution.
When the descendants of Jose Rizal realized i was a descendant of Maximo Viola, they asked tongue-in-check if I was trying to collect on this long extended debt (see blog june 26).
I posed a question to my accountant, Mr Vic Marquez, to compute the amount of this debt if paid today. He replied:
"Since I do not know yet how to convert Philippine pesetas during the Spanish time into modern Philippine peso, I can only give you the future value of that 300 pesetas:
300 pesetas at 3 per cent compounded annually for 125 years will be equivalent to 12,072 pesetas.
300 pesetas at 5 per cent compounded annually for 125 years will be equivalent to 133,593 pesetas.
Bik Marquez".
This is only the monetary value in absolute numbers. We still have to do the foreign exchange currency conversions. However, the psychic benefit, which can never be accounted for in terms of monetary value, must be too red-hot to handle.
When the descendants of Jose Rizal realized i was a descendant of Maximo Viola, they asked tongue-in-check if I was trying to collect on this long extended debt (see blog june 26).
I posed a question to my accountant, Mr Vic Marquez, to compute the amount of this debt if paid today. He replied:
"Since I do not know yet how to convert Philippine pesetas during the Spanish time into modern Philippine peso, I can only give you the future value of that 300 pesetas:
300 pesetas at 3 per cent compounded annually for 125 years will be equivalent to 12,072 pesetas.
300 pesetas at 5 per cent compounded annually for 125 years will be equivalent to 133,593 pesetas.
Bik Marquez".
This is only the monetary value in absolute numbers. We still have to do the foreign exchange currency conversions. However, the psychic benefit, which can never be accounted for in terms of monetary value, must be too red-hot to handle.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
On Rizal
The Dr. Maximo Viola (Penelope V. Flores) / Dr. Jose Rizal (Patricia Laurel) connection.
History repeats itself.
Photo below. Seated: Penelope V. Flores, Gemma Cruz-Araneta
Standing: John David Jara, Patricia Laurel, Jane Inocencio, Chiara Inocencio
June is Dr. Jose Rizal's birth anniversary. I take this opportunity to relive my own family connection with the Philippine National Hero. I do this by reproducing an editorial written by Patricia Laurel, editor of Art In Site Magazine, Manila, Philippines. It is an incredible narrative of our respective ancestors' connection with Dr. Jose Rizal and an uncanny meeting last May 21st, 2009, Manila Hotel, Philippines.
"Message from Patricia Laurel. Editor, Art In Site Magazine" with Penélope’s Annotation
What are the odds of two complete strangers meeting in the year 2009 for the first time, finding themselves in similar circumstances, as did their male ancestors more than 100 years ago?
PENELOPE'S ANNOTATION: Exactly 123 years ago. (May 1886 to May 2009).
The only difference in the similarity of this incredible tale is that the ancestors were friends and colleagues, and the women descendants had never met until recently. Instead of the usual welcoming message and what to expect in this first online edition, AIS would like to share our experience this past May (2009), and give thanks to those who value and care for our culture and the arts.
Read on . . .
“It revived me,” said Rizal. “It gave me new hope. I went to the station to receive him and spoke to him about my work. He said he might be able to help me. I reflected and then decided to shorten the book, and eliminated whole chapters . . . but these will have a place in the continuation . . . I plan to publish seven volumes about Philippine conditions.” (Translated from Jose Rizal’s notes)
“To my dear friend, Maximo Viola, the first to read and appreciate my work - Jose Rizal, March 29, 1887, Berlin” (Rizal’s dedication to Maximo Viola written on the galley proofs of Noli Me Tangere.)
Message below was posted on AIS ezine:
Penelope V. Flores
Date: 2009-05-10 17:44:46
I want to congratulate the persons behind the idea of the art in site magazine, including the creation of the Manila Center for the Arts. I will be visiting Manila this month (May/June) and would love to get in touch with the organizers. I’m a professor at San Francisco State University where I work with graduate teachers. I’m interested in meeting the young brilliant visual artists, creative writers and musical talents of our country. I look forward to meeting you all.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: I was attracted by the idea of a Manila Center for the Arts. Could it be similar to the School Of The Arts (SOTA) here in San Francisco?
The dwindling staff of Art in Site Magazine, waited at the lobby of the Manila Hotel on the day of the appointed meeting with Penelope Flores. They put aside the reality that things were not going well with the magazine to meet with the professor from San Francisco State University.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: The Center was but a bold idea, however the publication was a tangible product. I was impressed with the Art In Site magazine. The articles were well written; the quality images attractive, and the overall presentation commanded respect.
Indeed, prospects were not bright and cheery for the continuation of Art in Site. The publication was in danger of being known as the one-time, one-hit run culture and the arts magazine - awaiting the inevitable throes of the death rattle. (For more details, please refer to previous online message from the editor.)
Enter Penelope, radiating with a lively exuberance that will stay with us nay sayers for a long time. Infected with the professor’s happy attitude at meeting the staff and being back home, the stooped-shoulders demeanor of the staff straightened, replaced by equal enthusiasm, but not quite up to par with that of the smiling lady, wearing a barong decked with pearls.
Penelope had arranged a tour of the Douglas MacArthur suite, but first invited the staff up to her room to get more acquainted, and to learn more about the magazine. She asked and received an earful of doom and gloom scenario from the business manager.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Filipinas Magazine editor, Gemma Nemenzo gave me an assignment to visit Manila Hotel's penthouse and submit an article about MacArthur’s Suite for the October 2009 issue.
The flow of conversation moved on to another topic.
Snippets of the conversation between the editor and Penelope went something like this:
Penelope: My husband and I had planned a trip to Germany, in particular Berlin, to research and trace the footsteps of Jose Rizal where Noli Me Tangere was published.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Manuel Flores and I recently completed a pictorial article of the apartments and places visited by Jose Rizal in Madrid: circa 1884-1886.
Editor: That’s interesting. Maybe I can be of help there. I lived and worked in Germany, and went to school in Heidelberg. (Editor looked hesitantly at her business manager, unsure of whether to continue.) My great grandmother, Maria, was the sister of Jose Rizal. I can also ask other family members for more information to help you in your research, if you like.
Penelope stared at the editor incredulously.
PENELOPE'S ANNOTATION: Cool. I'm now having a conversation with Rizal's great-grand niece.
Penelope: My great grandmother was the sister of Maximo Viola.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Maximo Viola's sister Juliana Viola (who married a Villarica) was my grandmother, not great grandma. I’m much older, in fact, a generation above that of my newly minted friend, Patti. Loaded with my huge ego and super vanity, I don't correct her.
Editor: The name is familiar. Wasn’t he a friend of Rizal’s? Oh, wow! This is too incredible! (Editor’s eyes go wide and smacked her forehead as realization sank in.) It’s a good thing I have an idea of the family’s history. That would be embarrassing if I didn’t!
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Amazing! Patti Laurel, the editor, remembered the connection between Viola and Rizal! Precious few people barely learned this small historical footnote.
Penelope: My great-great uncle financed the publication of your great-great uncle’s book, Noli Me Tangere. Rizal considered it a loan, but Viola refused payment. It was agreed the money should be used for a worthy cause.
Editor: Naninigil po ba kayo? (Are you collecting on the debt?)
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Viola lent Rizal 300 pesetas. Viola canvassed Berlin for a reasonably prized printer. Noli me Tangere being considered a subversive novel, it would have been impossible to find a printer in Spain.
Laughter, the cure-for-all heartaches, took over and an atmosphere of unity and a bond was formed between Penelope and the staff of AIS.
Former Part-time AIS business manager and voice of the Filipino underdog, Jane Inocencio, took it as a cue and stepped up to the plate, not showing any qualms about speaking up. She reiterated the severe lack of funds of Art in Site, the official publication of the future Manila Center for the Arts.
Penelope nodded in understanding and invited the staff to a buffet dinner at the hotel’s restaurant. Well, that was that. Jane tried her best, like she always did. Resigned once again to the eventuality of the magazine’s demise, the staff sat down to dinner and enjoyed the company of their hostess.
Penelope: I will help you.
The editor excused herself. When she returned, she smacked her forehead again in habit.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Patti must have broadcasted this incredible happenstance to her cousin Gemma Cruz Araneta, ( a Philippine icon in her own right), who was another of Maria Rizal’s descendants. She soon joined us at Manila Hotel (see picture above).
Editor: It’s a sign! Our meeting today happened for a reason. Penelope, our ancestors must have had a meeting up in the cosmos. Your great-great uncle reached out to you in your dreams and told you that his friend’s descendant was in need of help.
Penelope, an author and artist, who seldom reads her email, and only opened the one forwarded AIS email invitation blast from PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists) to view the site, overwhelmingly agreed. Is it divine intervention or the musings of an insane, worrywart, overworked imagination of an editor? Call it what you will, but something was at work out there and it was a sign that the work must continue, come hell or high water.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Gemma Cruz-Araneta gave me a copy of her book: Stones of Faith: Roman Catholic Churches in the Philippines. Les Pierres De La Foi. She autographed a moving message on the frontispage:
To Penelope V. Flores –
History repeats itself if I may say so. All good wishes. Our ancestors must be smiling. Gemma
21, May 2009
Manila
Today, we are still in the red, and the printer continues to bang loudly on the door, demanding payment for the remaining balance of the first publication of the magazine. But one thing remains certain - we have our Penelope cheering us on until we get to the light at the end of the tunnel. She is the catalyst that gave us the courage and the drive to push through. She arrived in the nick time to the rescue of this editor desperately grasping at straws and on the verge of ending this worthwhile project.
The editorial staff of Art in Site Magazine wishes to dedicate the first online edition to our champion in difficult economic times, Penelope Flores, without whose generous support would have sunk us deeper into the depths of oblivion. Our hats off to you, Penelope!
PENELOPE'S Blog Message:
Let's celebrate Dr Jose Rizal Holiday. Greetings to you all.
History repeats itself.
Photo below. Seated: Penelope V. Flores, Gemma Cruz-Araneta
Standing: John David Jara, Patricia Laurel, Jane Inocencio, Chiara Inocencio
June is Dr. Jose Rizal's birth anniversary. I take this opportunity to relive my own family connection with the Philippine National Hero. I do this by reproducing an editorial written by Patricia Laurel, editor of Art In Site Magazine, Manila, Philippines. It is an incredible narrative of our respective ancestors' connection with Dr. Jose Rizal and an uncanny meeting last May 21st, 2009, Manila Hotel, Philippines.
"Message from Patricia Laurel. Editor, Art In Site Magazine" with Penélope’s Annotation
What are the odds of two complete strangers meeting in the year 2009 for the first time, finding themselves in similar circumstances, as did their male ancestors more than 100 years ago?
PENELOPE'S ANNOTATION: Exactly 123 years ago. (May 1886 to May 2009).
The only difference in the similarity of this incredible tale is that the ancestors were friends and colleagues, and the women descendants had never met until recently. Instead of the usual welcoming message and what to expect in this first online edition, AIS would like to share our experience this past May (2009), and give thanks to those who value and care for our culture and the arts.
Read on . . .
“It revived me,” said Rizal. “It gave me new hope. I went to the station to receive him and spoke to him about my work. He said he might be able to help me. I reflected and then decided to shorten the book, and eliminated whole chapters . . . but these will have a place in the continuation . . . I plan to publish seven volumes about Philippine conditions.” (Translated from Jose Rizal’s notes)
“To my dear friend, Maximo Viola, the first to read and appreciate my work - Jose Rizal, March 29, 1887, Berlin” (Rizal’s dedication to Maximo Viola written on the galley proofs of Noli Me Tangere.)
Message below was posted on AIS ezine:
Penelope V. Flores
Date: 2009-05-10 17:44:46
I want to congratulate the persons behind the idea of the art in site magazine, including the creation of the Manila Center for the Arts. I will be visiting Manila this month (May/June) and would love to get in touch with the organizers. I’m a professor at San Francisco State University where I work with graduate teachers. I’m interested in meeting the young brilliant visual artists, creative writers and musical talents of our country. I look forward to meeting you all.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: I was attracted by the idea of a Manila Center for the Arts. Could it be similar to the School Of The Arts (SOTA) here in San Francisco?
The dwindling staff of Art in Site Magazine, waited at the lobby of the Manila Hotel on the day of the appointed meeting with Penelope Flores. They put aside the reality that things were not going well with the magazine to meet with the professor from San Francisco State University.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: The Center was but a bold idea, however the publication was a tangible product. I was impressed with the Art In Site magazine. The articles were well written; the quality images attractive, and the overall presentation commanded respect.
Indeed, prospects were not bright and cheery for the continuation of Art in Site. The publication was in danger of being known as the one-time, one-hit run culture and the arts magazine - awaiting the inevitable throes of the death rattle. (For more details, please refer to previous online message from the editor.)
Enter Penelope, radiating with a lively exuberance that will stay with us nay sayers for a long time. Infected with the professor’s happy attitude at meeting the staff and being back home, the stooped-shoulders demeanor of the staff straightened, replaced by equal enthusiasm, but not quite up to par with that of the smiling lady, wearing a barong decked with pearls.
Penelope had arranged a tour of the Douglas MacArthur suite, but first invited the staff up to her room to get more acquainted, and to learn more about the magazine. She asked and received an earful of doom and gloom scenario from the business manager.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Filipinas Magazine editor, Gemma Nemenzo gave me an assignment to visit Manila Hotel's penthouse and submit an article about MacArthur’s Suite for the October 2009 issue.
The flow of conversation moved on to another topic.
Snippets of the conversation between the editor and Penelope went something like this:
Penelope: My husband and I had planned a trip to Germany, in particular Berlin, to research and trace the footsteps of Jose Rizal where Noli Me Tangere was published.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Manuel Flores and I recently completed a pictorial article of the apartments and places visited by Jose Rizal in Madrid: circa 1884-1886.
Editor: That’s interesting. Maybe I can be of help there. I lived and worked in Germany, and went to school in Heidelberg. (Editor looked hesitantly at her business manager, unsure of whether to continue.) My great grandmother, Maria, was the sister of Jose Rizal. I can also ask other family members for more information to help you in your research, if you like.
Penelope stared at the editor incredulously.
PENELOPE'S ANNOTATION: Cool. I'm now having a conversation with Rizal's great-grand niece.
Penelope: My great grandmother was the sister of Maximo Viola.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Maximo Viola's sister Juliana Viola (who married a Villarica) was my grandmother, not great grandma. I’m much older, in fact, a generation above that of my newly minted friend, Patti. Loaded with my huge ego and super vanity, I don't correct her.
Editor: The name is familiar. Wasn’t he a friend of Rizal’s? Oh, wow! This is too incredible! (Editor’s eyes go wide and smacked her forehead as realization sank in.) It’s a good thing I have an idea of the family’s history. That would be embarrassing if I didn’t!
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Amazing! Patti Laurel, the editor, remembered the connection between Viola and Rizal! Precious few people barely learned this small historical footnote.
Penelope: My great-great uncle financed the publication of your great-great uncle’s book, Noli Me Tangere. Rizal considered it a loan, but Viola refused payment. It was agreed the money should be used for a worthy cause.
Editor: Naninigil po ba kayo? (Are you collecting on the debt?)
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Viola lent Rizal 300 pesetas. Viola canvassed Berlin for a reasonably prized printer. Noli me Tangere being considered a subversive novel, it would have been impossible to find a printer in Spain.
Laughter, the cure-for-all heartaches, took over and an atmosphere of unity and a bond was formed between Penelope and the staff of AIS.
Former Part-time AIS business manager and voice of the Filipino underdog, Jane Inocencio, took it as a cue and stepped up to the plate, not showing any qualms about speaking up. She reiterated the severe lack of funds of Art in Site, the official publication of the future Manila Center for the Arts.
Penelope nodded in understanding and invited the staff to a buffet dinner at the hotel’s restaurant. Well, that was that. Jane tried her best, like she always did. Resigned once again to the eventuality of the magazine’s demise, the staff sat down to dinner and enjoyed the company of their hostess.
Penelope: I will help you.
The editor excused herself. When she returned, she smacked her forehead again in habit.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Patti must have broadcasted this incredible happenstance to her cousin Gemma Cruz Araneta, ( a Philippine icon in her own right), who was another of Maria Rizal’s descendants. She soon joined us at Manila Hotel (see picture above).
Editor: It’s a sign! Our meeting today happened for a reason. Penelope, our ancestors must have had a meeting up in the cosmos. Your great-great uncle reached out to you in your dreams and told you that his friend’s descendant was in need of help.
Penelope, an author and artist, who seldom reads her email, and only opened the one forwarded AIS email invitation blast from PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists) to view the site, overwhelmingly agreed. Is it divine intervention or the musings of an insane, worrywart, overworked imagination of an editor? Call it what you will, but something was at work out there and it was a sign that the work must continue, come hell or high water.
PENELOPE’S ANNOTATION: Gemma Cruz-Araneta gave me a copy of her book: Stones of Faith: Roman Catholic Churches in the Philippines. Les Pierres De La Foi. She autographed a moving message on the frontispage:
To Penelope V. Flores –
History repeats itself if I may say so. All good wishes. Our ancestors must be smiling. Gemma
21, May 2009
Manila
Today, we are still in the red, and the printer continues to bang loudly on the door, demanding payment for the remaining balance of the first publication of the magazine. But one thing remains certain - we have our Penelope cheering us on until we get to the light at the end of the tunnel. She is the catalyst that gave us the courage and the drive to push through. She arrived in the nick time to the rescue of this editor desperately grasping at straws and on the verge of ending this worthwhile project.
The editorial staff of Art in Site Magazine wishes to dedicate the first online edition to our champion in difficult economic times, Penelope Flores, without whose generous support would have sunk us deeper into the depths of oblivion. Our hats off to you, Penelope!
PENELOPE'S Blog Message:
Let's celebrate Dr Jose Rizal Holiday. Greetings to you all.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Yesterday, at the Daly City Toyota Smog Test dealership, waiting for my Previa van certification, and twiddling my thumbs, I took out my pad notes and began to write down all the comfort food that my mother used to make. The hungrier I felt, the longer the list became. Then, something startling happened. I discovered a unique pattern of naming our native traditional dishes. I said to myself:
"Look at this. Filipino food names are verbs or a description of the process of cooking."
Dinuguan: stewing meat in vinegar blood (dugo).
Ginataan: cooking in coconut milk (gata).
Kinilaw. or kilawin, marinating fresh raw fish (hilaw).
Nilaga: boiling meat (laga).
Halo-halo: mixing (halo) a variety of several sweets in shaved ice.
Sapin-sapin: layering (sapin) rice pudding.
Sawsawan: dipping sauce (saw-saw)
Inihaw: (broiling).
One can discern foreign influence when the food process verbs became nominalized nouns.
Tortilla (Spanish)
Arrozcaldo: chicken rice soup. (Spanish)
Ensalada: salad (Spanish)
Lumpia: spring roll (Chinese)
Pancit: rice sticks/noodles (Chinese)
Kare-kare: beef tail curry (Indian)
Bistek: beef steak (American)
"Look at this. Filipino food names are verbs or a description of the process of cooking."
Dinuguan: stewing meat in vinegar blood (dugo).
Ginataan: cooking in coconut milk (gata).
Kinilaw. or kilawin, marinating fresh raw fish (hilaw).
Nilaga: boiling meat (laga).
Halo-halo: mixing (halo) a variety of several sweets in shaved ice.
Sapin-sapin: layering (sapin) rice pudding.
Sawsawan: dipping sauce (saw-saw)
Inihaw: (broiling).
One can discern foreign influence when the food process verbs became nominalized nouns.
Tortilla (Spanish)
Arrozcaldo: chicken rice soup. (Spanish)
Ensalada: salad (Spanish)
Lumpia: spring roll (Chinese)
Pancit: rice sticks/noodles (Chinese)
Kare-kare: beef tail curry (Indian)
Bistek: beef steak (American)
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Countdown 20 days before Hungary Trip
I'm excited about going to Eastern Europe. It is very timely. The current Euro exchange rate is 1.22 to a dollar. Time was when (during my Barcelona trip, 2007) the rate was Euro 1.68 to a dollar. I have to rewire the way I note down the dates: day/month/year; learn how to tell time by the 24 hour schedule, and when accounting for money, to convert all decimal points into commas.
I read about the history of Hungary, how they were part of the Austria-Hungary Empire, how their geographical areas were redistributed after World War I, and how the country's borders shrunk in World War II when it joined the Axis powers and Hitler lost the war.
I read about the history of Hungary, how they were part of the Austria-Hungary Empire, how their geographical areas were redistributed after World War I, and how the country's borders shrunk in World War II when it joined the Axis powers and Hitler lost the war.
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