The Significance of 1593!

Our Page Likes are at 1593!

It has been there for more than a week. So I just thought of looking up for what might be significant about the number 1593 and as usual, coordinated with Google.com :-)

My search took me to the year 1593 and the Wikipedia. There I saw important events and not-so important ones. Some of the events that have been listed by this Free Online Encyclopedia are the following:

[1] The Siege of Pyongyang where the Japanese invaders lost to the combined Korean and Ming [Chinese] Troops.

[2] The Battle of Sisak [June 22] in Croatia where the Ottoman Empire was defeated by the Habsburgs, also spelled Hapsburgs.

[3] The Long War broke out [July 29] in Hungary between, guess what? The Habsburgs and the Ottomans again.

Of course there were other more important things than wars that took place in 1593. You can just click Wikipedia and see more but one important thing that is listed there is this: St Robert Bellarmine published on that year the third volume, which is about the Sacraments, of his work, Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei, also known as De controversiis or Controversies, and called to be the definitive defence of papal power. The work was an attempt to systematize the various controversies of the time and provided arguments against them, particularly Protestantism. The success of the work was felt especially in Germany and England that many scholars on the Protestant side provided counter-arguments against it.

Why did I focus on the significance of the publication or printing of this work?

It is because locally, here in the Philippines, 1593 is the year when the first printing took place in the country. And what was the very first book ever printed in these islands which the Spanish named after then Prince Philip, the future King Philip II? No other than the Doctrina Christiana which is of course about Christian Doctrine, an important book indeed when the proclamation of the Gospel on this part of the world was just beginning!

So here we have two important things for the Church and the Faith related to 1593! 

Never mind the wars. We might not even give importance to the fact that in 1593, a common year, that is, not a leap year, the Gregorian calendar started on a Friday, while the Julian calendar started on a Monday.