Hostname: page-component-6766d58669-bp2c4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-23T08:18:00.033Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Early History of the Boxer Codex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2013

JOHN N. CROSSLEY
JOHN N. CROSSLEY*
Affiliation:
Monash University john.crossley@monash.edu
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1950 this journal published Charles Boxer's description of the Codex that bears his name and is now in the Lilly Library in Bloomington, Indiana. In this article I shed light on a number of questions about the volume that he left unanswered. The plan of the essay is as follows. First, I recapitulate the nature, composition and contents of the Codex, and its associations with Chinese artists. Next, I turn to evidence that the explorer Quíros saw the manuscript in the court in Madrid no later than 1610; in particular I compare the text of his Summary relation with part of the Boxer Codex. Finally, an examination of the binding shows the Codex was only bound in Madrid, strongly suggesting how and when it got to Spain.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , January 2014 , pp. 115 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2013 

Charles Boxer acquired the Boxer Codex at an auction in 1947 and described it in an article in this Journal in 1950.Footnote 1 The volume comprises a little over 300 leaves of rice paper to which Boxer added four folios of other manuscript: an account signed by Luis Pérez Dasmariñas principally comprising extracts from letters. The greater part of the work, which I shall refer to as the ‘Culture items’ and on which most interest has focused hitherto (but which I shall not concentrate on here) comprises descriptions of the culture and inhabitants of the South East and East regions of Asia, together with drawings and descriptions of Chinese deities and fabulous animals.Footnote 2 The remainder, which I shall refer to as the ‘Exploration items’, comprises works from three sources. Leaves 101r–139r contain two texts, both apparently coming via Bishop João Ribeiro de Gaio of Malacca, concerning Aceh and Malay states.Footnote 3 Leaves 139r–149v contain an account of a voyage made by Roxo de Brito, a Portuguese, in 1581–1582 south and west of New Guinea, which will be a major focus.Footnote 4 Leaves 213r–239v have a narrative due to Fr Martín de Rada, OSA, on his visit to China in 1575.Footnote 5

The latest date that can be inferred internally from the Codex is 1590–1591.Footnote 6 Boxer believed that either Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas or his son, Luis Peréz Dasmariñas, who were successive governors of the Philippines at the end of the sixteenth century, was the original commissioner of the Codex.Footnote 7 The new governor of the Philippines and his son arrived in Manila in 1590, only 19 years after the Spanish settlement of Manila. From the advent of the Spanish until 1617, Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas was praised as the best, perhaps the only good, governor of the Philippines.Footnote 8 He was very trusting of the Chinese:

When he left Manila . . . he engaged a galley manned by Chinese, good rowers, which they had given him, and he paid those from the Parian (the Parian is like the alcaycería where the Chinese had all kinds of shops and offices), and those he had unshackled, and retaining their weapons, more as soldiers than oarsmen, very much trusting them.Footnote 9

This was his undoing, for he was murdered by the Chinese crew on 25 October 1593.Footnote 10 It is tempting to suggest that Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas's acquaintance with and trust in the Chinese corresponded with his commissioning of the Chinese artist to provide the illustrations in the Culture items of the Codex. There is, however, additional supporting though circumstantial evidence. Regalado Trota Jose wrote:Footnote 11 [The] achievements [of the Chinese] in ivory carving were so developed by 1590 that the first bishop of Manila, Domingo de Salazar – a Dominican who arrived together with Sedeño and the first Jesuits – enthusiastically wrote the King:

In the Parian are found all the workers with all the skills and mechanical arts needed for a Republic, and in such great quantity. . . They have so perfected themselves in this art, that they have wrought marvelous works both with the chisel and with the brush. Having seen some ivory images of the Child Jesus it seems to me that nothing more exquisite than these could be produced; and such is the opinion of those who have seen them. The churches are now being provided with these images, which they sorely lacked before; with the Sangleys’ ability to replicate those images from Spain, it should not be long when even those made in Flanders will not be missed.Footnote 12

It would therefore appear that both father and son were familiar with the work of the Chinese artists during the lifetime of the former.Footnote 13

After he succeeded his father as governor in 1593, or at the latest in 1594, Luis Peréz Dasmariñas commissioned a Chinese artist to make a very large sculpture of the Virgin Mary as Nuestra Señora del Rosario, with ivory face, hands and child. The statue stands 139 cm high and is now known as La Naval. The person who oversaw the carving was Hernando de los Ríos Coronel.Footnote 14 On the fatal 1593 expedition the latter was sailing with Luis Pérez Dasmariñas and asked permission to go ahead of Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas since an opposing wind was slowing down the galley in which the governor was travelling. The son may well have felt guilt over the death of his father, and that may have been a major factor in the commissioning of the statue. It seems unlikely that the younger Dasmariñas, who was only 25 when he became governor,Footnote 15 would undertake such a large enterprise as that of the statue, and so soon after the death of his father, if he had not seen previous work by Chinese artists. I therefore am inclined to the view that the elder Dasmariñas commissioned the Codex, the pages subsequently coming to his son.Footnote 16

Now I turn to the Exploration items. On leaves 139r–149v of the Codex there is an account of a voyage by Miguel Roxo de Brito in Maluku. Boxer and Pierre-Yves Manguin noted that the journey was mentioned in the Summary relation written by Pedro Fernández de Quirós (probably in 1610, see below) and printed by Zaragoza in 1880.Footnote 17 (Quirós is well known as a pilot and for his attempt to discover the great south land he called Austrialia [sic].)Footnote 18 Quirós wrote that this Summary relation was made from “information supplied to Quirós at the Court of Spain by Hernando de los Ríos”.Footnote 19 I suggest that Quirós saw either the Codex itself or an accurate copy of the account of Roxo de Brito's voyage in the hands of Hernando de los Ríos Coronel who met Quirós in Spain sometime between 1607 and 1610.

Hernando de los Ríos Coronel had arrived in the Philippines from Spain in 1588.Footnote 20 He is much less well known than father and son Dasmariñas, but, like Quíros, he had trained as a pilot and, besides serving under Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas and accompanying him on his last expedition, he accompanied Luis Peréz Dasmariñas on two later expeditions in 1596 and 1598, being second-in-command (almirante) on the latter.Footnote 21 His role as a pilot would have made him privy to secret matters about navigation and maps. Throughout his life he maintained these interests and wrote a number of rutters or sea-logs, in particular of his voyages to Spain and back in 1605–1606 and 1610–1611.Footnote 22 As Boxer says: “It is probable that only a senior government official or a high ranking ecclesiastic would have had access to such confidential documents as Loarca's report of 1580, and [Bishop] Ribeiro Gaio's of 1589, to say nothing of de Brito's account of his New Guinea voyage.”Footnote 23 De los Ríos also knew of the work of another author of a text in the Codex, Fr Martín de Rada. Footnote 24 These various factors suggest that it is not surprising that de los Ríos should have been in the small circle of people who knew about the voyage of Roxo de Brito.

Fr Celsus Kelly, OFM, dates the Summary relation of Quirós as “c. Oct.” of 1610, but this cannot be the date when he met de los Ríos, because the latter left Cadiz on 29 June 1610 to return to the Philippines, although it could be the date when Quirós wrote the summary. As I shall show, however, Quirós seems to have seen the Spanish text of de Brito's voyage that is in the Codex.Footnote 25 Certainly de los Ríos and Quirós were both in Spain between 1607 and 1610 because de los Ríos had been sent to Spain as Procurator General – the sole advocate at the Spanish court for the inhabitants of the Philippines – and he was there from 1606 to 1610.Footnote 26

In his role as Procurator General de los Ríos put to the king many requests on behalf of the Philippines, while Quirós “dedicated himself from [1607] onwards to sending multiple petitions [indeed more than 50] to the king, Philip III, seeking sponsorship for a further voyage to the South Pacific”.Footnote 27 It was not until 1608 that Quirós printed his Eighth Memorial,Footnote 28 which may have been the first time that de los Ríos became aware of the voyage of Quirós – though that seems unlikely – but which may explain why it may have been as late as 1610 that they discussed the voyage of Roxo de Brito.Footnote 29 Given that Quirós wrote so many memorials, Kelly's date of 1610, which is based on the dating of many writings of Quirós and others, seems quite plausible.Footnote 30

There is remarkable similarity between the texts of Roxo de Brito and Quirós. Below is the full text of the report by Quirós as recorded by Zaragoza in the left column with corresponding excerpts from the Boxer Codex version on the right.Footnote 31

Relacion sumaria que saqué de la que me dió en esta corte el licenciado hernando de los rios, procurador de filipinas.

The similarity of the content is obvious; more than 80 per cent of the Quirós text has the same semantics, though the syntax is often somewhat different.Footnote 47 More dramatic is the sequencing of the items and their location in the Codex version. With the exception of the mention of weapons and a very short one of pearls, the order of topics is exactly the same as in the text of Roxo de Brito in the Boxer Codex. Further, the Summary relation only treats of material on folios 142r–147v: the central 12 of the 22 pages of the original and, in Chapter XXXIX of his famous account of his search for Australia, Quirós said that he would include “a chapter of [Roxo de Brito's] relation at the end of this discourse”, though he did not in fact include the ‘chapter’ there but put it separately as the Summary relation.Footnote 48 It would be hard to keep in mind all that is in Roxo de Brito's account, and since de los Ríos had many other matters of concern in Madrid, in particular presenting his list of many items requiring attention in the Philippines, it is unlikely that de los Ríos simply told Quirós the details.Footnote 49 These factors strongly suggest that de los Ríos had, at the very least, a version of Roxo de Brito's text with him in Madrid, and also that he had (or had had) access to the original Codex.Footnote 50

Now I would like to turn to another aspect of the Codex, concerning its binding. Boxer felt that the Codex could have been taken by the British when they invaded the Philippines in 1762, but he also says “it might have been sent to Spain at any date after 1590”.Footnote 51 The physical condition of the Codex is remarkably good, in contrast with that of the more than 400 books of the same vintage in the library of the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines, many of which arrived in the Philippines before 1620.Footnote 52 Boxer also said that he could not tell whether the book had been rebound.Footnote 53 The leather used to bind books is highly subject to deterioration in the tropical climate and I have seen nothing in the Philippines from that period to match the elaborately tooled quality of the Boxer Codex binding. Further, the Codex has a sheep binding. Since there were no sheep in the Philippines, it is most unlikely to have been made there.

As Boxer noted, on most pages three sides of a rectangle have a blue ruling surrounding the text. Curiously the rectangle is often not aligned between recto and verso. However, one can determine that the margins have remained unchanged, showing that the pages have not been recut. The binding is therefore the original. Boxer also noted that the binding “is of a familiar late sixteenth/early seventeenth century Iberian type”.Footnote 54 The filler under the pastedown inside the front cover could not have come from the Philippines because it is set in movable type, and the books printed in Manila at that time were all xylographed. In fact, the cover is from a sheet of paper that contains parts of pages 226 and 231 of a book by Pablo de Mera published in 1614.Footnote 55 Similarly, the filler inside the back cover is of an even-numbered page from the same book.Footnote 56 Since the pages under the front pastedown are not separated, this indicates it was from a sheet that was not bound, and therefore surely came from the printer. This also means that the Codex was bound in the printing house, la Compañía de Impresores y Libreros del Reino [the Royal Company of Printers and Booksellers], that produced Pablo de Mera's book. All of the above seem to provide conclusive evidence that the book was bound in Spain, in 1614 at the earliest.

The pages too are in remarkably good condition and much better than those of virtually all the books from that period that I have seen in the Philippines. The latter tend to have many wormholes, but there are only a few holes in the Boxer Codex, and these are in the leaves at the end of the book. Moreover, they do not penetrate the binding. This again suggests that the Codex left the Philippines early; I therefore next turn to the question of when it arrived in Spain.

As I noted above, the elder Dasmariñas was murdered by his Chinese crew in 1593, and his son died in the Sangley uprising in 1603,Footnote 57 both deaths taking place while de los Ríos was still in the Philippines. De los Ríos was a pilot, indeed the only pilot I know by name in the Philippines at that time,Footnote 58 and he had been close to both father and son. Consequently, he was in the perfect position to have access to the Codex. In 1605 he was sent to Spain by the citizens of Manila as Procurator General. The timing suggests that the Codex was taken by de los Ríos to Spain, two years after the death of the son. Moreover, since it seems clear that the book was bound by the Royal Company of Printers and Booksellers, it appears that the book remained in the court. This also suggests that de los Ríos did not own the book but seemingly was the person who took it to Spain with the express aim of showing, or giving, it to the king. The book's presence in the court would certainly explain why Quirós, who was in the court, was able to make such an accurate and order-preserving précis of part of the voyage of Roxo de Brito. I therefore conclude that de los Ríos took the unbound pages to Spain when he went there in 1605 and that they were subsequently bound in Spain no earlier than 1614, four years after de los Ríos returned to the Philippines.Footnote 59 There remains the question of the subsequent history of the Codex, in particular why the manuscript left the court, but this appears to be unknown until it appears in the library of Lord Ilchester in Holland House.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Ian Cox of the Collection Preservation and Access Division and Des Cowley from Rare Books, both of the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne; the Celsus Kelly Collection of St Paschal Library, Melbourne and its librarians Thea Roche and Miranda Welch; at Monash University Library: María-Teresa Keightley, for help with Spanish translation, and Denis Kishere for identifying Boxer's Japanese seal; at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila: Archivist Regalado Trota Jose, and at the Lilly Library, Bloomington, Indiana: Becky Cape, and especially Jim Canary for technical assistance and, finally, in Oxford, Tom Earle and, as ever, Clive Griffin.

References

1 Charles R. Boxer, A late sixteenth century Manila MS, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 1/2 (1950), pp. 37–49; Bloomington, Indiana: Library, Boxer MSS. II, PDF available at http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/general/VAB8326

2 See in particular Quirino, Carlos and Garcia, Mauro, The Manners, Customs and Beliefs of the Philippine Inhabitants of Long Ago, The Philippine Journal of Science, 87, no. 4, (1958). pp. 325–453 Google Scholar.

3 João Ribeiro de Gaio was appointed Bishop of Malacca in 1579 or 1578, and died there in 1601. See p. 111 of dos Santos Alves, Jorge M. and Manguin, Pierre-Yves, O roteiro das cousas do Achem de D. João Ribeiro Gaio: um olhar português sobre o norte de Samatra em finais do século XVI, (Lisbon, 1997)Google Scholar. (Alves and Manguin, op. cit., p. 111 say he was appointed in 1578.)

4 There is a map on p. 124 of Gelpke, J. H. F. Sollewijn, The report of Miguel Roxo de Brito of his voyage in 1581–1582 to the Raja Ampat, the MacCluer Gulf and Seram, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 150 (1) 1994, pp. 123–145 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but see also the maps in Ellen, Roy, On the Edge of the Banda Zone: Past and Present in the Social Organization of a Moluccan Trading Network (Honolulu, 2003)Google Scholar, Figures 3.6 and 3.8 on pp. 66 and 69, respectively.

5 See South China in the Sixteenth Century: Being the Narratives of Galeote Pereira, Fr. Gaspar da Cruz, O.P., Fr. Martin de Rada, O.E.S.A. (1550–1575), (ed). C.R. Boxer (London, 1953).

6 Boxer, A Late Sixteenth Century, p. 48.

7 Boxer, op.cit., p. 47.

8 Coronel, Hernando de los Ríos, Memorial y relacion para su Magestad, del Procurador General delas Filipinas, de lo que conviene remediar, y de la riqueza que ay en ellas, y en las islas del Maluco (Madrid, 1621)Google Scholar Por la viuda de Fernando Correa, 1621, translation available at http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jnc/Rios/1621Memorial.pdf, and partly translated in Blair, Emma Helen and Robertson, James Alexander, The Philippine Islands 1493–1898, translated from the originals, edited and annotated, 55 vols, Cleveland, 1903–1909, (reprinted in 19 volumes, Mandaluyong, Rizal, Philippines, 1973)Google Scholar, vols XVIII and XIX.

9 Ríos, op. cit., Part I, Chapter II.

10 See Ríos, op. cit., Part I, Chapter II.

11 From an earlier draft of Jose, Regalado Trota, ‘La veneranda imagen de Nuestra Señora del Rosario de la Naval’ in, The Saga of la Naval, Triumph of a people's faith, (ed). Zulueta, Lito B., (Quezon City, Philippines, 2007), pp. 51–52 Google Scholar.

12 Reference to Jesús Gayo Aragon, OP and Dominguez, Antonio, Doctrina Christiana: Primer Libro Impreso en Filipinas. Facsímile del Ejemplar Existente en la Biblioteca Vaticana, Con un Ensayo Histórico-Bibliográfico por Fr. J. Gayo Aragón, O.P., y Observaciones Filológicas y Traducción Española de Fr. Antonio Dominguez, O.P. (Manila, 1951), pp. 77–78 Google Scholar.

13 While Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas was still in Spain, he had a house “with lots of paintings and statues”; see Iribarnégaray, Juan Donapétry, História de Vivero y su Concejo (Vivero, 1953), p. 206 Google Scholar.

14 Jose, op. cit., p. 48: “Aduarte's account of the carving of the La Naval image in his Historia, therefore, could very well have been obtained from Luis Perez Dasmariñas and Hernando de los Rios Coronel themselves, at least as early as 1596.” (See chapter XII of Juan Diego Aduarte, OP, Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario de la Orden de Predicatores en Filipinas, Japón y China (Manila, including additions by Domingo Gonçalez, OP, 1640, republished Zaragoza, 1690); and also by the Consejo superior de investigaciones cientificas, Departamento de Misionología Española, Madrid, 1962, (ed.) Manuel Ferrero, OP. See also de Ayala, Fernando Zobel, Philippine Religious Imagery (Quezon City, 1963), p. 70 Google Scholar, which says the statue was commissioned in 1593 (Jose, op. cit., p. 49, n. 7). However, Jose also says that clothes and a crown were available for the statue in 1594 (ibid. p. 58), so the statue must have been carved in 1593–1594. He cites Libro de los Cabildos y Ordenanças de la Cofradia del Sancto Rosario de la Virgen Maria Nuestra Señora de la Illustre Ciudad de Manila, Sección Cofradías, Tomo I, fols. 1–554 [1592–1646], UST Microfilm Reel 192, at f. 29v.

15 Ríos, op. cit., Part I, Chapter V.

16 There is no mention of the Codex, nor indeed of any book, in the will of Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas and the only papers specifically mentioned are those concerning the embassy from Japan in 1592 (cf. Seville, Archivo General de Indias, ES.41091.AGI/16403.14.13//FILIPINAS,18B,R.2,N.12), but he does mention he has other papers. See http://www.cronistadebetanzos.com/trabajos/gomezper.pdf, p. 7, transcribed from Archivo del Reino de Galicia. Real Audiencia. Legajo 26.657–15.

17 Kelly, Celsus, OFM, Austrialia del Espíritu Santo: the Journal of Fray Martin de Munilla, O.F.M., and Other Documents Relating to the Voyage of Pedro Fernández de Quirós to the South Sea (1605–1606) and the Franciscan Missionary Plan (1617–1627); translated [from the Spanish], Volumes 126 and 127 of the second series (Cambridge, 1966) p. xxxii Google Scholar. The text of Quirós is printed on pp. 294–296 of volume II of Zaragoza, Justo, Historia del Descubrimiento de las Regiones Austriales Hecho por el General Pedro Fernandez de Quirós Publicada por Don Justo Zaragoza. Three volumes (Madrid, 1880)Google Scholar. See also p. 175 of Charles R. Boxer and Pierre-Yves Manguin, ‘Miguel Roxo de Brito's narrative of his voyage to the Raja Empat, May 1581–November 1582’, Archipel; Études interdisciplinaires sur le monde insulindien; Numéro Spécial: Commerces et Navires dans les Mers du Sud, (1979) pp. 175–194. Boxer notes that the account had another brief mention in 1909 (Boxer, A Late Sixteenth Century, p. 41, n. 2). See also Markham, Sir Clements, tr. and ed., The Voyage of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, 1595 to 1606, volumes 14 and 15 of second series (London, 1904) p. xxii Google Scholar.

18 See Markham, op. cit., and Kelly, Austrialia del Espíritu Santo.

19 Celsus Kelly, OFM, Austrialia del Espíritu Santo: the Journal of Fray Martin de Munilla, O.F.M., and Other Documents Relating to the Voyage of Pedro Fernández de Quirós to the South Sea (1605–1606) and the Franciscan Missionary Plan (1617–1627); translated [from the Spanish], Volumes 126 and 127 of the second series (Cambridge, 1966) p. xxxii. The text of Quirós is printed on pp. 294–6 of volume II of Zaragoza, Justo, Historia del Descubrimiento de las Regiones Austriales Hecho por el General Pedro Fernandez de Quirós Publicada por Don Justo Zaragoza. Three volumes (Madrid, 1880)Google Scholar. See also p. 175 of Charles R. Boxer and Pierre-Yves Manguin, ‘Miguel Roxo de Brito's narrative of his voyage to the Raja Empat, May 1581–November 1582’, Archipel; Études interdisciplinaires sur le monde insulindien; Numéro Spécial: Commerces et Navires dans les Mers du Sud, (1979) pp. 175–194. Boxer notes that the account had another brief mention in 1909 (Boxer, A Late Sixteenth Century, p. 41, n. 2). See also Markham, Sir Clements, tr. and ed., The Voyage of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, 1595 to 1606, volumes 14 and 15 of second series (London, 1904) p. xxii Google Scholar.

20 For a biography see Crossley, op. cit., and for his arrival in the Philippines, ibid., p. 58.

21 Crossley, op. cit., p. 52.

22 See Crossley, op. cit., Chapters 5 and 6 and for translations of them, see http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jnc/Rios.

23 Boxer, A Late Sixteenth Century, p. 48.

24 Boxer, ibid., p. 43, says that leaves 213–239 comprise an early copy of a narrative composed by Martín de Rada of his visit to Fukien province from 5 July to 1 September 1575 and adds, “Rada's original manuscript cannot now be traced”. Re Rada, see also Crossley, op. cit., p. 32.

25 Kelly, Austrialia del Espíritu Santo, p. 278.

26 For his return to Spain in 1605 Governor Pedro Bravo de Acuña commended de los Ríos and the Franciscan provincial Fr Pedro de Matías to the king. I do not know of any other senior people accompanying them. See Crossley, op. cit., p. 75. De los Ríos arrived soon after 29 October 1606 (see BN Madrid, MS 3212, f. 83r, or Crossley, op. cit., p. 71) and Quirós on 9 October 1607 (see p. xxx of vol. 14 of Markham, op. cit.).

27 See Crossley, op. cit., Chapter 5 and Camino, Mercedes Maroto, Exploring the Explorers: Spaniards in Oceania, 1519–1794 (Manchester, 2008), p. 100 Google Scholar and Camino, Mercedes Maroto, Producing the Pacific: Maps and Narratives of Spanish Exploration (1567—1606) (Amsterdam, 2005), p. 38 Google Scholar.

28 See House, Hordern, The Great South Land: Searching for the Antipodes from Classical Scholars to Quiros & Dampier (sale catalogue), Potts Point, NSW, Australia: Hordern House, 2011 Google Scholar, item 103.

29 Printed in Zaragoza, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 294–296.

30 In her recent book, Secret science: Spanish Cosmography and the New World (Chicago, 2009), pp. 265–266, María M. Portuondo suggests that in 1610 the Council of the Indies was concerned about Quirós disseminating too much knowledge about his 1605–1606 voyage and Philip III wrote “on the margin of the memorandum that Quirós should be asked to collect these papers [relevant to the voyage] himself and give them ‘with secrecy’ to the Council of the Indies, so that ‘these things do not cross many hands’”. See also, Hordern House, The Great South Land: “Circulation of all . . . was restricted and when, in 1610, it was learned that he was printing various memorials and distributing them beyond the court, Quíros was ordered by the king to retrieve them and forbidden to print others without royal permission.” (See also Kelly, Calendar, items 682, 689, pp. 280, 284 respectively.)

31 In this transcription the spelling has not been modernised.

32 Variously transcribed as Bayseo, Baisco but believed to be Waigeo Island; see Boxer and Manguin, op. cit., p. 178, n. 10. It is spelt Baygeo on f. 139v of the Codex.

33 See Sollewijn Gelpke, op. cit., p. 134, n. 38.

34 I read this as ‘Garan’. Boxer and Manguin, op. cit., suggest this might mean Gam, an island south of Waigeo.

35 Mispelt hallmoas in Boxer and Manguin, op. cit., p. 185.

36 ‘Botan’ means mainland; see Sollewijn Gelpke, op. cit., p. 130.

37 Boxer and Manguin, op. cit., p. 186, n. 42, say: “Presumably some place near Ogar [see below] on the south coast of the Maccluer [sic] Gulf.”

38 ‘U’ is the standard old Spanish notation for 1,000.

39 Sollewijn Gelpke, op. cit., p. 136, n. 49, notes that there are many albinos in the MacCluer Gulf area.

40 Boxer and Manguin, op. cit., p. 188, n. 49, do not identify this but suggest it may be the south coast of New Guinea to the north of the MacCluer Gulf. This view is also taken up by Ellen, Figure 3.8, p. 69.

41 A kind of bread “made from powdered buri palm starch”; see Wolff, J. V., A Dictionary of Cebuano-Visayan (Ithaca, 1972)Google Scholar, quoted in Sollewijn Gelpke, op. cit., p. 130, n. 21.

42 Probably New Guinea native pigs, which look like European boar; see Sollewijn Gelpke, op. cit., p. 133, n. 35. The original Spanish has puercos de monte; see Boxer and Manguin, op. cit., p. 184.

43 In Zaragoza, op. cit., vol. II, p. 295, dardos y flechas sin yerva, but yerba is literally ‘grass’.

44 Roxo de Brito identifies them as mutineers from the San Gerónimo. This was the ship that was sent to aid Legazpi; see, for example, Spate, Oskar Hermann Khristian, The Spanish Lake, volume I of The Pacific since Magellan (Canberra, 1979), p. 105 Google Scholar (Electronic edition: ANU EPress, 2000 and Sharp, Andrew, Adventurous Armada: the Story of Legazpi's Expedition (Christchurch, 1961), pp. 113–145 Google Scholar. (Spate, op. cit., p. 315, n. 55, describes this as a “juvenile book, but thoroughly based on the original documents”.) Boxer and Manguin, op. cit., cite pp. 277–279 of Schurz, William Lytle Jr, The Manila Galleon (New York, 1939)Google Scholar.

45 Identified in Sollewijn Gelpke, op. cit., p. 139, n. 64, as “kuskus, a common marsupial” i.e. cuscus, probably the Gebe Cuscus (Phalanger alexandrae), which, like all such, has very large eyes.

46 Sollewijn Gelpke, op. cit., p. 141, identifies these as “black bangles made of a marine plant, in Malay called akar bahar, which are still widely used today, even in Europe, to ward off illness, in particular rheumatism”.

47 It is somewhat surprising that the names are spelt differently in Quirós and in the Codex – for example, Hugar as opposed to Ugar.

48 Zaragoza, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 187–188, “porque Miguel Rojo de Brito, natural de Lisboa, fué del Maluco á la Nueva Guinea, y dice estar muy cerca, como se verá en un capítulo de una relacion suya que irá al pié deste discurso”. Emphasis added.

49 See Crossley, op. cit., Chapter 5.

50 In the succeeding document in Zaragoza, op. cit., Vol. II, p.296, Quirós says: “El original tengo en mi poder”, but he does not say this about the Summary relation.

51 Boxer, A Late Sixteenth Century, p. 49.

52 Cf. Aparicio, Angel, OP, ed., Catalogue of Rare Books, University of Santo Tomas Library (Manila, 2001)Google Scholar. The Heritage Library in the University of Santo Tomas has the only known large collection of sixteenth-century books in the Philippines.

53 Boxer, A Late Sixteenth Century, p. 37.

54 Ibid .

55 The text starts at line 4 of page 226 and continues to the catchword, with the corresponding part of page 231 and its catchword. Tratado del computo general de los tiempos conforme a la nueua reformacion, necessario para los eclesiasticos, y seglares: con cien tablas centesimas, y la restauracion del aureo numero, con otras tablas, y cuentas curiosas á ello tocantes Dirigido á D. Francisco de Sandoval y Rojas, duque de Lerma y Cea, marqués de Denia y Villavizar, comendador mayor de Castilla, conde de Ampudia, y del Cõsejo de Estado, Cauallerizo mayor, y Sumiller de Corpus del Rey don Felipe III. y Mayordomo mayor del Principe don Felipe IIII. deste nombre. Impreso en Madrid por los de la Compañía [de Impresores y Libreros del Reino] 1614. Although de Mera says on folio 1r that the text is “nuevamente enmendado”, I have found no record of an earlier edition, even though it was work of de Mera that led Pope Gregory XII to introduce what we now call the Gregorian calendar.

56 It has not been possible to read more than the running heading [COM]PUTO DE – although there are parts of other words visible – because two sheets of rice paper pasted down obscure the text, rather than just one as at the front.

57 Crossley, op. cit., p.62. The Sangleys are the descendants of Chinese who had settled in Manila.

58 On pilots in the Philippines at that time, see Crossley, op. cit., pp. 32 ff.

59 Crossley, op. cit., p. 67.

Figure 0