Filipiniana in Czechia

Students often think that all religious in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period were Spanish. While most of the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans and Jesuits at the time were Spanish or were shipped to the islands from Spanish dominions, there were missionaries of other nationalities like the Czech lay brother Georg Joseph Kamel, SJ (1661-1706), famous for the pharmacy he ran in the Jesuit college in Manila that provided treatment and medicine for various ailments to everyone, whether Spanish officials or natives. He is also remembered for documenting flowers, animals including reptiles, and even monsters in the Philippines; his reports were published or cited in Europe as early as 1699.

Kamel was not alone. Another Czech priest was Lorenzo John, born in 1691 in Deštná village north of Prague, who wrote a letter from Maribojoc, Bohol, in 1743 describing his way of life there. His letter gains relevance today as Maribojoc plans to reconstruct the ancient church that was completely reduced to rubble in the 2013 earthquake.

Letters and reports from these obscure Czech missionaries in the Philippines are not well known to Filipino historians despite a recent publication on their lives and work simply because the material is inaccessible in Czech. I was informed that when they wrote official reports to their superiors they wrote in Latin, but other manuscripts were in Czech. This should make us imagine what other Filipiniana lie hidden in Czechia.
Preserved in the archives of the Olomouc Research Library is a rare 1744 map of the Philippines separated from the history book written by the Jesuit Murillo Velarde. It is one of the finest I have seen, having been mounted on cloth and rolled rather than folded. This map is significant, being one of the works of the early Filipino engraver Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay, but aside from its aesthetic and antiquarian value it was highlighted in the study by Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio on China’s flawed historical claims in its ongoing territorial dispute with the Philippines. What is known to us as Panatag or Scarborough Shoal today is clearly seen on the map under the name Panacot (Threat). There are two other shoals nearby listed as Galit (Anger) and Lumbay (Sorrow), obvious warnings to ships that could get beached on them.

How did this map and a handful of Philippine-related material end up in Czechia? Were they brought or sent there by Czech Jesuits who were in the Philippines from around 1680 to their expulsion from the islands in 1768? After all, the second oldest university in Czechia is that founded by the Jesuits in Olomouc in 1573. Were these Filipiniana materials remnants of the Jesuit library in Manila that were dispersed after the expulsion? A significant part of the Jesuit books ended up in the Royal Library in Vienna; did some stray into Czechia? All these questions are worth a doctoral dissertation on bibliography or book history.

Since historians practically live in libraries and archives, a visit to Strahov monastery in Prague was arranged for me because it is reputedly one of the most beautiful libraries in the world. Leather-bound books and ancient globes set in gilt rooms ornamented with paintings and fancy baroque architecture are best described as a scholar’s idea of heaven on earth. Tourists catch a fleeting glimpse of the library and its sumptuous interior from an open door, so it was a rare opportunity to be allowed inside with all the lights switched on by the library director. An additional treat was being shown two Philippine-related items: half (the Mindanao part) of a later edition of the Murillo Velarde map and an 18th-century imprint from the Franciscan press in Manila in 1783—“Dificultad imaginada,” a manual prepared for notaries taking down the last will and testament of the dying. There was little time to study the vellum-bound book, but what caught my eye in its kilometric title was something about “diabolic temptations.”

Two weeks traveling in the Czech Republic, which was more than a sightseeing tour, made me realize that if you look hard enough, you will see that there is more to the historical relations between Czechia and the Philippines than the friendship between Rizal and Blumentritt.
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