?Incunabula? was one of the first complicated words I learned as a boy. It was imprinted in my mind because it was always confused with ?incubus,? a demon or spirit that enjoyed sexual intercourse with humans. Incunabula, like interregnum, was a word the late Blas Ople would use to confound readers or a sleepy audience, but it is a rather simple word used to describe books published in the Philippines during the first half century, or 50 years since the beginning of printing in the Philippines. If we put this in terms of a historical period, that would be 1593, the date on what is believed to be the first book printed in Manila known as ?Doctrina Cristiana,? a book of prayers and catechism that was printed in Spanish and Tagalog, and in two scripts, the Western alphabet and our own baybayin (often misidentified as ?alibata?).

There is only one extant copy of the Manila Doctrina in the universe, and it happens to be in the US Library of Congress. Unless an earlier imprint surfaces somewhere, somehow, the Doctrina shall remain, historically, our first book.

I remembered the Doctrina recently while attending the long drawn-out Christmas vigil the other day. I remembered that this book made it possible for us to decipher pre-Spanish Philippine scripts. I remembered the obsessive desire of one man, the late Eugenio Lopez Sr., to find another copy at any cost. The chase was fruitless, the Doctrina eluded Lopez his whole life but he picked up bits and pieces along the way that form one of the most valuable holdings in the library of the Lopez Memorial Museum in Ortigas. These imprints, the incunabula (printed in the first half century of printing in the Philippines) and the post-incunabula (those printed in the next 50 years from 1643 to the end of the 17th century), are housed in a separate room in the museum, and are usually displayed in special glass cases.

I never paid these books a second glance. I only asked to consult one that had something to do with an early documented eruption of Mayon volcano. I was interested in the other holdings of the library: the Rizal manuscripts, pre-war magazines and the pre-martial law morgue of the Manila Chronicle. One of the items on my list for 2009 will be to see the Lopez collection once more, to handle and admire early printing in the Philippines, then to see what column material might come from them.

I am very glad that the great portrait of Lopez has now been restored to the central wall in the library so he can perpetually gaze at his books and the researchers who use them. He is someone I would have loved to meet because his book collecting was quite admirable and his pursuit of the Doctrina obsessive. I would presume that if he had been a child he would have told Santa Claus that what he wanted for Christmas was this 1593 book or something earlier. He acquired the next best thing, a rather crude book with an interesting cover page that reads: ?LIBRO A Naifuratan amin ti bagas ti DOCTRINA CRISTIANA nga naisurat iti libro TI CARDENAL A AGNAgan Belarmino, Ket inaon to P. Fr. Fracifico Lopez padre a S. aguftin, iti Siasamtoy. Imprefo en el Conveto de S. Pablo de Manila. Por Antonio Damba, I Miguel Saixo. Ano de 1620.? This was a Doctrina in Ilocano, acquired from Libreria El Callejon in Madrid for the then magnificent sum of $3,500.

Years ago when I was still aggressively searching for Filipiniana in antiquarian bookstores around Europe, some old dealers would often ask me if I knew Eugenio Lopez and why he had stopped acquiring rare Filipiniana. I would explain that he was living in exile in San Francisco and that his businesses were taken over by Marcos? martial law government. Two dealers even told me how Lopez entered their bookshops, asked for all the Filipiniana they had on hand and, without going through these, asked that everything be delivered to his hotel. The thing that was strange and memorable to these dealers was that he always asked for a discount. He would haggle and this was not within the book dealers? experience, but they caught on quickly and quoted prices that were a bit higher to give Lopez the consolation of haggling.

The result of this wholesale buying was that he sometimes ended up with a duplicate or even multiple copies of the same title. Fortunately, to provide more shelf space and funds, the museum a few years ago de-accessioned many of the duplicates and offered these to the public for sale, thus giving other collectors and researchers an opportunity to augment their own collections.

The incunabula was then studied by the late great bibliographer Mauro Garcia in a book called ?Philippine Rariora: A descriptive catalogue of 17th century imprints in the Lopez Memorial Museum? of which only 300 copies of a deluxe hardcover book were printed. One man?s trash is another man?s treasure. Whether you collect stamps, phone cards, rare books or Philippine art, everything turns into a specialist hobby. This collection, unrivalled in the Philippines today, and more accessible than the materials in the vault of the Philippine National Library, is something I will revisit in 2009. I wish it will also be consulted by others, if only to justify its existence.

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Comments are welcome at mailto:aocampo@ateneo.edu