The “Vida de un mancebo indio llamado Miguel Ayatumo, natural de Boholio, en Filipinas [Life of an Indigenous boy, named Miguel Ayatumo, a native of Bohol in the Philippines]” first appeared in Spanish in 1673 as an appendix to a manual on religious life titled El christiano virtuoso (The virtuous Christian). It was authored by the Jesuit Pedro de Mercado (1620–1701), a native of Riobamba, Ecuador. Father Mercado, who spent most of his life exercising ecclesiastical responsibilities in the New Kingdom of Granada, was a prolific and popular author of spiritual and devotional literature, almost all of which was printed in Spain. The inclusion of the life of this Filipino adolescent as an appendix to his work was undoubtedly due to its exemplary value. Ayatumo's life of renunciation and holiness perfectly illustrates the argument of Mercado's moralizing text.

Mercado notes in the opening lines that the original Latin text of Ayatumo's biography had appeared fifty-eight years earlier as part of a collection of Jesuit missionary letters. Its author was the Jesuit Pedro de Aunón, who had sent the story to his provincial in Manila, Gregorio López, who in turn decided to send it to Europe to be published, as the story demonstrated the success of missionary activity in Bohol. The narrative of the life of Ayatumo (1593–1609) must have dazzled European ecclesiastics and became a publishing success. It was included in a popular collection of Christian young lives attributed to the German Jesuit Johann Niess (1584–1634).