Philippine E-Journals

The 1984 Scott-Kobak Correspondence: A Sharing that Reconstructed the Sixteenth-Century Bisayan Society and Culture

Rolando O. Borrinaga

Discipline: History, Philippine History

 

Abstract:

Using two extant letters of the late Dr. William Henry Scott to the late Fr. Cantius J. Kobak, OFM, as key documents, this paper reviews the 1984 correspondence of the two historian-scholars that later produced the most detailed reconstruction of the sixteenth-century Bisayan society and culture using the Alcina Manuscripts and old Bisayan dictionary entries as basic building blocks. The narrative is complemented with data from the exchange of e-mails and letters between Father Kobak and this writer from 2002 to 2004 and from documents bequeathed by the former to the latter.