The Saint Dominic Parish Church ( Tagalog: ''Simbahan ng Parokya ni Santo Domingo de Guzman''), also known as Abucay Church, is a 17th-century

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

church located at Brgy. Laon,

Abucay, Bataan Abucay, officially the Municipality of Abucay, ( tl, Bayan ng Abucay), is a 3rd class municipality of the Philippines, municipality in the Philippine Province, province of , Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 42,9 ...

, Philippines. The parish church, established in 1587 and administered by the Dominican Missionary Friars in 1588, is dedicated to

Saint Dominic of Guzman Saint Dominic ( es, Santo Domingo; 8 August 1170 – 6 August 1221), also known as Dominic de Guzmán (), was a Castilian Catholic priest, mystic, the founder of the Dominican Order and is the patron saint of astronomers and natural scientis ...

. The parish is under the jurisdiction of the

Roman Catholic Diocese of Balanga The Diocese of Balanga is one of the 72 dioceses of the Catholic Church in the Philippines. It was established on March 17, 1975, by Pope Paul VI. The diocese comprises the whole civil province of Bataan, with 37 parishes, one minor basilica, ch ...

. Since June 5, 2017, its parish priest is Fr. Josue V. Enero. The church housed one of the earliest printing presses in the Philippines, established in 1608 by Father Francisco Blancas de San Jose, O.P. and

Tomas Pinpin Tomas may refer to: People * Tomás (given name), a Spanish, Portuguese, and Gaelic given name * Tomas (given name), a Swedish, Dutch, and Lithuanian given name * Tomáš, a Czech and Slovak given name * Tomas (surname), a French and Croatian surna ...

who used the facility to print books in

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

and Tagalog. The church was also a witness to the massacre of hundreds of Filipinos and Spaniards by the Dutch Invaders on June 23, 1647. These pieces of the church's history were inscribed on a historical marker installed by the National Historical Committee (now the

National Historical Commission of the Philippines The National Historical Commission of the Philippines ( fil, Pambansang Komisyong Pangkasaysayan ng Pilipinas, abbreviated NHCP) is a government agency of the Philippines. Its mission is "the promotion of Philippine history and cultural herita ...

) in 1939.

History

Parish church history

The church structure was erected by Father Geronimo de Belen in the early 1600s after the establishment of the Dominican mission in

Abucay Abucay, officially the Municipality of Abucay, ( tl, Bayan ng Abucay), is a 3rd class municipality in the province of , Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 42,984 people. The mainly agricultural and fishing town i ...

on June 10, 1588. On June 23, 1647, the Dutch Naval Forces who invaded Manila and its neighboring provinces massacred hundreds of

Kapampangans The Kapampangan people ( pam, Taung Kapampangan), Pampangueños or Pampangos, are the sixth largest ethnolinguistic group in the Philippines, numbering about 2,784,526 in 2010. They live mainly in the provinces of Pampanga, Bataan and Tarlac, as ...

and Spanish officials and priests in the church complex, while others were taken to

Batavia Batavia may refer to: Historical places * Batavia (region), a land inhabited by the Batavian people during the Roman Empire, today part of the Netherlands * Batavia, Dutch East Indies, present-day Jakarta, the former capital of the Dutch East In ...

, a former Dutch colony. The current church was significantly damaged by an earthquake on September 16, 1852. Major changes were made into the structure before the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, as stated in a medallion placed on top of the church's main portal with the inscription "''Mayo de 1925 ''".

Abucay Printing Press

The Spanish religious missionaries to the Philippines did not bring with them equipment for mass production of books and manuscripts. Instead, they employed the knowledge of the Chinese in the country to construct the first printing press. This first printing press used xylography, a type of

relief printing Relief printing is a family of printing methods where a printing block, plate or matrix, which has had ink applied to its non-recessed surface, is brought into contact with paper. The non-recessed surface will leave ink on the paper, whereas t ...

technique with letters or characters etched on blocks of wood. One of the first books printed in the country using the technique is the

Doctrina Christiana The ''Doctrina Christiana'' ( eng, Christian Doctrine) was an early book on the catechism of the Catholic Church, written in 1593 by Fray Juan de Plasencia, and is believed to be one of the earliest printed books in the Philippines. Title Sp ...

, a catechetical book meant to educate the local population on the

Roman catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

religion, with hymns and prayers written in the local language ( Tagalog) and script (

Baybayin (, ''pre-kudlít'': , ''virama-krus-kudlít'': , ''virama-pamudpod'': ; also formerly commonly incorrectly known as alibata) is a Philippine script. The script is an abugida belonging to the family of the Brahmic scripts. Geographically, it ...

). Texts produced with the press from 1593 to 1610 used the local language and writing system but by 1604, the Spanish started printing using

movable type Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuatio ...

with

Roman letters The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greece, Greek city of Cumae, in southe ...

. Father Francisco Blancas de San Jose, a

Dominican Friar The Order of Preachers ( la, Ordo Praedicatorum) abbreviated OP, also known as the Dominicans, is a Catholic mendicant order of Pontifical Right for men founded in Toulouse, France, by the Spanish priest, saint and mystic Dominic of Cal ...

was a key figure in this shift from local to Romanized text. By 1608, the printing press which used to be in

Manila Manila ( , ; fil, Maynila, ), officially the City of Manila ( fil, Lungsod ng Maynila, ), is the capital of the Philippines, and its second-most populous city. It is highly urbanized and, as of 2019, was the world's most densely populate ...

, was transferred to

in Bataan province. Filipinos replaced the Chinese men as workers in the printing press.

, a local of Abucay, is recognized as the first Filipino printer. Among Pinpin's publications was a manual teaching Tagalog speakers the

Spanish language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 millio ...

. This manual was printed by Diego Talaghay (believed to be his assistant) when Pinpin was appointed as shop manager.

Architecture

The two-level facade of the church is described as of

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

style. Its expanse is divided vertically by single or coupled

Doric columns The Doric order was one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of col ...

. The two saints' niches flanking the main portal, three

fenestration Fenestration may refer to: * Fenestration (architecture), the design, construction, or presence of openings in a building * Used in relation to fenestra in anatomy, medicine and biology * Fenestration, holes in the rudder of a ship to reduce the w ...

s on the second level, and the saint's niche on the center of the

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedimen ...

are all topped by triangular pediments, each with a pair of decorative brackets to support it. Four urn-like

finial A finial (from '' la, finis'', end) or hip-knob is an element marking the top or end of some object, often formed to be a decorative feature. In architecture, it is a small decorative device, employed to emphasize the Apex (geometry), apex of a d ...

s top the second-level

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

. The triangular pediment, with its top lined with

baluster A baluster is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its cons ...

s, undulates down to its base. To the right of the church rises the five-tiered

bell tower A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tower ...

, with each of its storey defined by decorative balusters and ornamented with semicircular arched windows.

References

External links