This chapter equips the reader to see the Philippines at the time of Dominican Juan de Paz and describes his prolific work on moral questions. This introduction provides a brief survey of Philippine history during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It starts by covering the peoples of the Philippines and the transformation that began at the time of European contact. This digest of Philippine history ends with a survey of the effects of the gradual spread of Catholicism and economic change. It was in this context that Fray Juan de Paz, an eminent scholar with a practical mind, was consulted about moral cases. The last segments of this introduction illustrate why and how he resolved those questions and situate him as a moral theologian in the European Catholic tradition. Bound up with the theological-legal value of Paz’s work, contained in the archival manuscript used, are the fresh perspectives it offers on different aspects of the seventeenth-century Philippines, the occurrence of localization and hybridity, and the existence of global connections, as the various essays and excerpts comprising this volume evince.