Primera[-tercera] parte de los veinte i un libros rituales i monarchia indiana, con el origen y guerras, de los indios ocidentales, de sus poblaccones, descubrimiento, conquista, conuersion, y otras cosas marauillosas de la mesma tierra

Author: Juan de Torquemada (c1562-1624)

Year: 1723 (1725)

Publisher: Nicolás Rodríguez Franco

Place: Madrid

Description:

3 volumes. Volume I: engraved title page, 1t leaves+768+[36 index] pages with folding map. Volume II: Engraved title page+623+[28 index] pages. Volume III: engraved title page+5 leaves+4+63+[21 index] pages. Small folio (12" x 8 1/4") bound in modern quarter white morocco five raised spine bands over white buckram. (European Americana 725/195; Hill 1707; Medina, BHA 2491; Palau 335033; Sabin 96212; Wagner, Spanish Southwest 18a) Second edition.

The first edition was printed by Mathias Clavijo in Seville in 1615. As Nicolás Rodríguez Franco, the printer of the second edition, informed his readers in his Proemio, few exemplars of the first edition survive because the greater part of the print-run was lost in a shipwreck, and only three copies were known to him. Eight copies of the first edition exist in various libraries in North America and Europe, two of which lack the original frontispiece, and the other six of which lack also the first 32 pages. A ninth copy exists in Mexico divided between one owner who possesses the first volume, and another who possesses the other two. The errors and omissions were made good in the second edition by reference to the original manuscript which, so Franco discloses, was in the library of Don Andrés González de Barcia. The second edition has the date 1723 on the title page, but the Proemio itself is dated 20 January 1725, so the effective publication date must have been later than that.

By way of providing impetus to and official sanction for Torquemada's history, fray Bernardo Salva, the Comisario general de Indias (acting by specific direction from his immediate superior, Arcángelo de Messina, the minister general of the Order) wrote a letter dated 6 April 1609 from Madrid, in which he gave written authority and instructions to Torquemada to compile a chronicle of the life and work of the members of the Franciscan Order active in New Spain, as well as a wide-ranging account of the history and culture of the peoples they had evangelised. For that purpose, as Salva wrote, Torquemada was to utilise the voluminous historical and ethnographic writings of his fellow Franciscans (now, all of them dead) to which he had access, almost nothing of which had by then been published: works by Andrés de Olmos, Gerónimo de Mendieta, Motolinía, and Bernardino de Sahagún. Of these, only de Mendieta was mentioned by name by Salva. He also heavily excerpted the works of Carmelite friar Antonio de la Ascensión.

Condition: Verso volume 1 title discreetly strengthened to lower margin towards gutter, verso of vol. 3 title strengthened to upper outer corner and with early crossed through manuscript note, occasional light damp stains else very good. Due to the size and weight of this item additin postage may be required.