«ji ijá • Ji üü Éá^m Sim jí §j| ^i§¡gg|Mjg¡||g|M|g|§j|^¡g¡^^ Pedro Chirino entered the in February 1580, and arrived in the in June 1590. He was the first Jesuit missionary whose travel expenses were paid with funds from the royal treasury. He was the first Jesuit "missionary" in the strict sense of the word, for he was assigned, not to the classroom—although \ later, he was named Rector of the Jesuit college in —but to the mission parishes of Balayan (), and Taytay, and Tigbauan (lloilo). In 1602, he was elected Procurator for the Philippine Jesuit Mission. The report he submitted on the first twenty years of the Philippine Jesuit Mission (1581-1600) so pleased the Jesuit Superiors in Rome that they published it in book form in 1603, with the title Relación de las Islas Filipinas. Passing through on his way back to the Philippines, the Jesuits urged him to write a longer and more detailed account of the Jesuit work in the Philippines. On arrival in Manila, Father Chirino did just that. For one reason or another, this history was never published and remained in manuscript form, until the historian Jaume Gorriz i Abella edited it with copious notes. This is the history now presented, albeit without the notes, in an English translation. Father Chirino was one of the pioneers of the Philippine Jesuit Mission who started and consolidated the Jesuit apostolate in the Philippines. His work is the first history, not just of the Jesuit missions, but also of the Catholic missions in the Philippines, and served as the source for later histories. The history, in five books, covers the years from 1581 to 1606, the years between the arrival of the Jesuits in the Philippines and their establishment as a Jesuit Province. The author records not just the work of the Jesuits, but other important events of Philippine history, e.g., Legazpi's conquest of the country. The present English edition has two parts: Books I and II form Volume One; Books III, IV, and V form Volume Two. Dr. Gorriz gladly gave permission when the idea of translating the work into English was mentioned to him.