CHIRINO, PEDRO

CHIRINO, PEDRO. — Spanish Jesuit, missionary in the Philippines, born at Osuna (Seville) in 1557, received into the Society in 1580, and arrived in Manila on 20 June 1590. After spending several years evangelizing the indigenous peoples, he was appointed (1600) rector of the college of Manila; but two years later he was sent to Madrid and Rome as procurator of the Philippine Province. Returning to Manila in 1606, he remained in that city as a preacher, professor of canon law and Sacred Scripture, and writer; he died there on 16 September 1635.

Following the common practice of procurators of distant missions, he published in Rome a Relación de las Islas Filipinas y de lo que en ellas an trabajado los Padres de la Compañía de Jesús (Rome 1604, reprinted in Barcelona 1890; English translation in the collection of E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson, The Philippine Islands, XII, Cleveland 1904, pp. 169–221 and XIII, pp. 29–217). A more extensive reworking of the 1604 account remained in manuscript (in the library of the Lazarists in Beijing), perhaps in order not to duplicate his

(Alinari photograph)
CHIOSTRO - Cloister of the convent of S. Carlino alle Quattro Fontane, by F. Borromini (17th century) - Rome.

[His] major work: Primera parte de la Historia de la Provincia de Filipinas (1581-1606). But this too remained unpublished; it nevertheless served as the basis for the book by Fr. Francesco Colin: Labor evangelica de los Padres de la Compañía de Jesús en las Islas Filipinas (Madrid 1663). In the annotated reprint of Labor evangelica (3 vols., Barcelona 1900-1902), which he prepared, Fr. Pablo Pastells inserted extensive extracts from C.’s original text in the notes. He also composed a Dictionarium Sina-hispanicum for the use of missionaries devoted to the care of Chinese immigrants in the Philippines (manuscript in the Biblioteca Angelica, Rome).