Baybayin is a Philippine script. The script is an abugida belonging to the family of the Brahmic scripts. Geographically, it was widely used in Luzon and other parts of the Philippines prior to and during the 16th and 17th centuries before being replaced by the Latin alphabet during the period of Spanish colonization. It was used in the Tagalog language and, to a lesser extent, Kapampangan-speaking areas; its use spread to the Ilocanos in the early 17th century. In the 19th and 20th centuries, baybayin survived and evolved into multiple forms—the Tagbanwa script of Palawan, and the Hanuno'o and Buhid scripts of Mindoro—and was used to create the constructed modern Kulitan script of the Kapampangan and the Ibalnan script of the Palawan people. Under the Unicode Standard and ISO 15924, the script is encoded as the Tagalog block.
The University of Santo Tomas (UST), officially the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, Manila, is a private, Catholic research university in Manila, Philippines. Founded on April 28, 1611, by Spanish friar Miguel de Benavides, third Archbishop of Manila, it has the oldest extant university charter in Asia and is one of the world's largest Catholic universities in terms of enrollment found on one campus. It is the main campus of the University of Santo Tomas System that is run by the Order of Preachers.
Epifanio San Juan Jr., also known as E. San Juan Jr., is a known Filipino American literary academic, Tagalog writer, Filipino poet, civic intellectual, activist, writer, essayist, video/film maker, editor, and poet whose works related to the Filipino Diaspora in English and Filipino writings have been translated into German, Russian, French, Italian, and Chinese. As an author of books on race and cultural studies, he was a "major influence on the academic world". He was the director of the Philippines Cultural Studies Center in Storrs, Connecticut in the United States. In 1999, San Juan received the Centennial Award for Achievement in Literature from the Cultural Center of the Philippines because of his contributions to Filipino and Filipino American Studies.
Philippine literature in Spanish is a body of literature made by Filipino writers in the Spanish language. Today, this corpus is the third largest in the whole corpus of Philippine literature. It is slightly larger than the Philippine literature in the vernacular languages. However, because of the very few additions to it in the past 30 years, it is expected that the former will soon overtake its rank.
The 17 Thomasian Martyrs were the 12 Dominican priests, 1 Franciscan priest and 3 Dominican bishops who became administrators, professors, or students in the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, they are venerated in the Catholic Church regarded them as a martyrs and declared as a saints and blesseds by several popes throughout the 20th and 21st century, All of them gave up their lives for their Christian faith, some in Japan, others in Vietnam, and in the 20th century, in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila was among the lay companions of the Thomasian Martyrs of Japan, their feast day is celebrated every year on November 6.
The Royal University Militias were eighteenth-century Spanish colonial military units in the Philippines.
The University of Santo Tomas is one of the oldest existing universities and holds the oldest extant university charter in the Philippines and in Asia. It was founded on April 28, 1611, by the third Archbishop of Manila, Miguel de Benavides, together with Frs. Domingo de Nieva and Bernardo de Santa Catalina. It was originally conceived as a school to prepare young men for the priesthood. Located Intramuros, it was first called Colegio de Nuestra Señora del Santísimo Rosario and later renamed Colegio de Santo Tomás in memory of Dominican theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas. In 1624, the Colegio was authorized to confer academic degrees in theology, philosophy and arts. On November 20, 1645 Pope Innocent X elevated the college to the rank of a university and in 1680 it was placed under royal patronage.
The Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas (UST) celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2011. The agenda before the quadricentennial in 2011 included the introduction of new academic programs, improvements in the university's infrastructure, and other projects to raise UST's national and international prominence and promote its role as a social catalyst.
Miguel de Benavides y Añoza, O.P. was a Spanish clergyman and sinologist who was the third Archbishop of Manila. He previously served as the first Bishop of the Diocese of Nueva Segovia, and was the founder of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila.
Juan Cobo OP was Spanish Dominican missionary, diplomat, astronomer and sinologist.
During the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines (1521–1898), the different cultures of the archipelago experienced a gradual unification from a variety of native Asian and Islamic customs and traditions, including animist religious practices, to what is known today as Filipino culture, a unique hybrid of Southeast Asian and Western culture, namely Spanish, including the Spanish language and the Catholic faith.
Tomás Pinpin was a printer, writer and publisher from Abucay, a municipality in the province of Bataan, Philippines, who was the first Philippine printer and is sometimes referred as the "Prince of the Filipino Printers."
The Doctrina Christiana were two early books on the catechism of the Catholic Church, both published 1593 in Manila, Philippines. These are two of the earliest printed books in the Philippines.
The Miguel de Benavides Library, also known as the University of Santo Tomas Library, is the main academic library of the University of Santo Tomas. The library has been in continuous service and its collection antedates the existence of the university itself.
Fidel Villarroel was a Spanish historian, writer, filipinologist, biographer, political commentator, Master Theologian of the Dominican Order, and member of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. A recipient of the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, he is the former Archivist, Spanish Department Director, Prefect of Libraries, and professor at the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas. He had also served as secretary to the Apostolic Nunciature for 32 years(1959–1991), and is currently an academic director of the prestigious Academia Filipina de la Lengua Española, the local branch of the renowned Real Academia Española based in Madrid, Spain, and part of the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española.
This is a timeline of the history of the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, the oldest university in Asia, comprising important events of the history of the university and of the development of Philippine higher education in general. To read about the background to these events, see History of the University of Santo Tomas. See also the history of the Rector Magnificus of the University of Santo Tomas, and the Santo Tomas Internment Camp
The Archives of the University of Santo Tomas (AUST), also known in Spanish as the Archivo de la Universidad de Santo Tomas, is located at the Miguel de Benavides Library in Manila. The AUST is the central repository of historical and rare documents pertaining to, but not exclusively, to the history of the University of Santo Tomas, one of the oldest existing universities in Asia, and the oldest institution of higher learning in the Philippines. The collections consist of historical documents such as Papal bulls, royal decrees, rare Filipiniana prints, historical treatises, addresses, sermons, novenas, catechisms in many Philippine languages, national periodicals, and academic records of all educational institutions in the Philippines during the Spanish period. The archives is also home to the only incunabula, or books printed before 1500, in the country.
Vocabulario de la lengua tagala was the first dictionary of the Tagalog language in the Philippines, It was written by the Franciscan friar Pedro de San Buena Ventura and published in Pila, Laguna in 1613. Juan de Plasencia had written a vocabulario earlier but it was not printed. More than a century later, a dictionary of the same name was prepared by Jesuit priests Juan de Noceda and Pedro de Sanlucar; their first edition was published in Manila in 1754 and then the second in 1860 which was reissued by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino in 2013.
The Saint Dominic Parish Church, also known as Abucay Church, is a 17th-century Baroque church located at Brgy. Laon, Abucay, Bataan, Philippines. The parish church, established in 1587 and administered by the Dominican Missionary Friars in 1588, is dedicated to Saint Dominic of Guzman. The parish is under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Balanga. Since June 5, 2023, its parish priest is Fr. Milver R. Cruz.
Luisa Gonzaga de León was a Filipina author and translator. She is best known for writing and publishing the Ejercicio Cotidiano, a book of Catholic prayers translated from Spanish and Tagalog sources into the Kapampangan language, the native tongue of the people of the Pampanga province of central Luzon. These pioneering efforts to bring Catholic prayers and mass closer to the people by presenting them in their native language preceded the Second Vatican Council's move in this direction by over 100 years.
