Although the baybayin had spread so swiftly throughout the Philippines in the 1500s, it began to decline in the 1600s despite the Spanish clergy’s attempts to use it for evangelization. Filipinos continued to sign their names with baybayin letters throughout the 17th, and even into the 18th century, though most of the documents were written in Spanish. Gaspar de San Agustín still found the baybayin useful in 1703. In his Compendio de la lengua Tagala he wrote, “It helps to know the Tagalog characters in distinguishing accents.” And he mentioned that the baybayin was still being used to write poetry in Batangas at that time. But in 1745 Sebastián Totanes claimed in his Arte de la lengua Tagala that, Rare is the indio who still knows how to read [the baybayin letters], much less write them. All of them read and write our Castilian letters now.

However, Totanes held a rather low opinion of Philippine culture and other writers of the period gave a more balanced view. Thomas Ortiz felt it was still necessary to describe the Tagalog characters in his Arte y Reglas de la lengua Tagala of 1729 and as late as 1792 a pact between Christians and Mangyans on the island of Mindoro was signed with baybayin letters, which is not surprising because the Mangyans never stopped using their script.

Many people today, both ordinary Filipinos and some historians not acquainted with the Philippines, are surprised when they learn that the ancient Filipinos actually had a writing system of their own. The complete absence of truly pre-Hispanic specimens of the baybayin script is puzzling and it has lead to a common misconception that fanatical Spanish priests must have burned or otherwise destroyed massive amounts of native documents as they did so ruthlessly in Central America. Even the prominent Dr. H. Otley Beyer wrote in The Philippines before Magellan (1921) that, “one Spanish