This is the first edition of the first extensive historical work printed in the Philippines and one of the important source works for that country’s early history.

A Spanish expedition from Mexico under Miguel López de Legazpi established the first permanent settlement on the Islands in 1565. From then on the colonization of the Philippines, like that of most Spanish colonial settlements, was inextricably linked with the missionary work of the Catholic Church. Their base of operations in the Far East was China, extending to the adjacent islands of Japan, the Philippines, Macao, Cochin-China, and elsewhere.

This account of the activities of the Dominicans in the Philippines, as well as in China and Japan, covers the period from 1582 to 1640. Begun by Diego Aduarte, an outstanding missionary for more than fifty years, it was continued after his death in 1638 by his collaborator, Domingo González.

Like most early works published on the Islands, this book was printed on fragile rice paper. Only a few copies survived the ravages of time and climate. It was reprinted in Zaragoza in 1693, with a continuation written by Baltasar de Santa Cruz. A copy of this edition is also present in the Mendel Collection.

Antonio Ricardo, an Italian printer, was probably brought to Mexico by the Jesuits, who had established schools there in 1572 and discovered they needed textbooks. Ricardo was authorized by formal license to go to Mexico as early as 1569, but there is no evidence that he went in that year. He printed three books in 1577, two in Latin and the title listed above. The Latin titles, probably used as textbooks, were printed in the Colegio de San Pedro, San Pablo y San Ildefonso, the Jesuit College. The Sermonario contains no statement as to where it was printed, but it may be assumed that it also was printed in the Jesuit College.

The first two items represented here are printed almost entirely in the native language, while the third is in Spanish and Mexican.

A detailed and vehement attack on Bishop Juan Ferro Machado’s recommendations for improvement in Spanish-Indian relations in the Province of Florida. Ayeta, one of the great figures in Spanish-American colonial history and a prolific and sympathetic apologist for the Franciscan missionaries, wrote in great detail to refute Ferro Machado’s charges that the Indians were ill-used.

Bound with the work of Juan Ferro Machado, number 36 in the exhibit.

The biographer and biographee of this pamphlet were two of the most eminent Jesuit missionary figures in the Spanish Southwest—present-day Arizona, New Mexico, and California. Father Balthasar, in addition to being the author of several “lives” of outstanding missionaries or figures in the Church, was himself a visitador through the troubled regions of Nueva España. He made an extended survey of these missions on the farthest fringe of Spain’s empire in America for King Philip V and recommended sweeping changes in administration and replacement of priestly personnel.

Father Picolo was an Italian priest who spent many years Christianizing the Indians of California. In 1707 he was appointed visitador of Sonora, when charges were being made that the missionaries there were negligent in their duties—a matter in which even the Inquisition intervened. Father Picolo reported that on the whole the missionaries were carrying out their duties properly and returned to California. He died in 1719.

Appended to this work are brief accounts of the lives and martyrdom of two other Jesuit missionaries in California—Father Lorenzo Carranco and Father Nicolàs de Tamaràl. Both were killed by the Indians in 1734.

Large paper copy of the first edition of the six-volume set of Blaeu’s “New Atlas” in Latin—one of the edition-de-luxe copies for royal libraries. This is one of the greatest geographical works ever published, a fine example of seventeenth-century Dutch cartographical art at the height of its brilliance. The present copy is one of the few that were specially bound, colored, and illuminated for the use of important statesmen and European royal families.

Map publishing reached its apogee in Amsterdam with Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), who was succeeded by his sons Johannes and Cornelius. Together the father and two sons made a notable contribution to the establishment of standard sailing charts for Dutch navigators. After their appointment as cartographers to the Dutch East India Company, no Dutch house engaged in foreign commerce was permitted to send marine charts to the Indies, or have them carried there by ships’ captains, unless they were made by the Blaeu family. Each succeeding edition of their great atlas was larger than the one preceding, constantly being corrected and amended with information brought back from abroad. With the destruction by fire of their printing house, with all the engraved plates, in 1673, the great work of the family virtually came to an end.

This is a biography of Father Pedro Juan Castini, an Italian priest of the Jesuit Order who came to Mexico in 1616 and was assigned to Sinaloa as a missionary. For twenty-four years, from 1617 to 1641, he devoted his energies to converting the Sinaloas (Cahita), the Zoes, the Huites, and the Chinipas Indians of the Southwest to Christianity. He died in 1663 in Mexico.

The engravings in this unusual collection, all richly colored, provide important information about the appearance and architecture of most of the cities of the world in the late sixteenth century. Figures and scenes in the foreground of the views provide interesting details of contemporary life and show the costumes of Holland, England, France, and most of the countries of Europe. In a number of cases the plates are embellished with coats of arms. All of the views are preceded by a brief historical description of the city depicted.

Among the exceptionally fine plans are those of Jerusalem, Antwerp, Cracow, London, Paris, Rome, and the series of Low Country towns in Volume III. Plates of particular American interest are the views of Seville, showing the house of Columbus, of Mexico, and of Cuzco (Peru) in Volume I.

This copy formerly belonged to Ferdinand Columbus, natural son of the great navigator, and has the following inscription in his hand on the last leaf:

costo este libro en sevilla 204 m Fs es de don H^do h^zo del almirante colon. Esta Registrado 2077. [The price of this book in Seville was 204 moidores and is the property of Don Hernando (i.e. Ferdinand), son of Admiral Columbus.]

The life of Ferdinand Columbus and the history of the great library he collected are described in Henry Harrisse’s Excerpta Colombiniana, Paris, 1887 (pages 1-41). Briefly, “Ferdinand Columbus was the first person, in the 16th century, to dedicate his entire time and fortune to assembling a library of all the outstanding works of science and literature that he could find for the sole purpose of aiding those who were interested in instructing themselves. ... Willed to his nephew under conditions that were not met, the library passed into the custody of the Cathedral [at Seville], where it was sealed up in a room and suffered centuries of neglect.” For the details of the partial dissolution of this great library, read further in Harrisse.

It is not known exactly when the present volume was removed from the library at Seville—probably some time in the eighteenth century—however, it was not before the book had endured the ravages of time and official indifference. The major damage fortunately is confined to the first four and last three leaves of the book. Though portions of the text are missing and the title page is partially repaired, most of the famous woodcut folding views have been preserved; only the view of Venice is entirely lacking.

The book itself is one of the most important publications of the fifteenth century. It is a narrative of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem made by Breydenbach, a canon of Mainz, with John of Solms and the knight Philip of Bicken. First published in Latin in 1486, it was translated into German, French, Flemish, and finally Spanish before the end of the century. The famous folding views are the first of their kind to be published and the first eye-witness pictorial representations by a known artist (Erhard Reuwich) to appear in a printed book.

Of all the fifteenth-century editions, this Spanish one is the rarest. The only other recorded copy in this country is in the Library of Congress. The immediate provenance of the one exhibited here is C. Fairfax Murray-Sir R. Leicester Harmsworth-Bernardo Mendel-Indiana University.

For the most complete description of this copy, see H. W. Davies, Bibliography of Bernhard von Breydenbach (London, 1911), 38-40.

This is the most important and most famous collection of voyages ever published. The volumes contain early narratives of Virginia, Florida, the East Indies, and America in general. The parts are illustrated with maps, views, and scenes of native customs. The best known of the engravings are those depicting the American Indians after the drawings of John White of the Virginia colony, and those of the Florida Indians after the drawings of Jacques Le Moyne.

Theodore de Bry left his native Lüttich for religious reasons and, together with his sons, founded a publishing house in Frankfurt. The story is related that the idea for publishing this collection was conceived on a visit to London in 1587.

The bibliographical complexities of the de Bry Voyages preclude any detailed description of the set in this exhibit catalog. In the following tabulation only the edition has been noted, without consideration of issue or state. The Baron Horace de Landau-J. K. Lilly, Jr. copy is indicated in parentheses.

Grands Voyages: First Latin edition, 13 parts: complete (Lilly: pts. X-XIII); Second Latin edition, 9 parts: pts. I, IV-VI (Lilly: pts. V-IX); Third Latin edition, 4 parts (Lilly: complete); First German edition, 14 parts: pts. III-XIV; Second German edition, 9 parts: complete; Third German edition, 2 parts: pt. VII; genuine Elenchus edition (Lilly).

Petits Voyages: First Latin edition, 12 parts: complete. The collection also includes the abridgment of the first nine parts in German by Philip Ziegler, America, Das ist, Erfindung vnd Offenbahrung der Newen Welt ... (Frankfurt, 1617); and the abridgment by Johann Philippe Abelin (pseud. for Johann Ludwig Gottfriedt), Historia Antipodum oder Newe Welt ... (Frankfurt, 1655).

This Bull confirms the privileges of the Mendicant Orders to administer the sacraments in the villages of the Indians.

This is a rare example of early Mexican printing. Printing was introduced into the New World in Mexico City about 1539 by Juan Pablos, a representative of Juan Cromberger, the leading printer of Seville. Antonio de Espinosa, the printer of this title and the second person known to have printed in the New World, first came to Mexico as a punch cutter in the employment of Pablos. The first book that he printed was the Grammatica Maturini of Gilberti, in 1559.

According to Wagner six other copies are known, four in the United States: Bancroft, Huntington, John Carter Brown (lacking the last leaf), and University of Texas.

For books printed by Juan Pablos see numbers 18, 27, 61, and 95 through 98.

The author of this first edition of the history of New Granada (now Colombia) and its Jesuit missions was a professor of mathematics and astronomy and one of the first members of the Royal Academy, founded in Madrid in 1713. Cassani relied heavily on the manuscript of Juan Rivero’s Historia de las missiones, which was not published until 1883.

First edition. Castellanos’ metrical chronicle is one of our most intimate and contemporary sources for the early history of the discovery and conquest of the New World. Although this point has been confirmed by various authorities, the book is comparatively less well known than most of the other sixteenth-century works dealing with this subject. It is a poem of fifty-five cantos, the first six dealing with Columbus’ discoveries and the remainder covering the years to 1560, including the exploits of Diego Columbus, Rodrigo de Arana, Nicolás de Ovando, Juan Ponce de León, Francisco de Garay, and the first account of the expedition of Pedro de Ursúa and crimes of Lope de Aguirre (which Humboldt has called the most dramatic episode in the history of the Spanish conquest).

In the preface, written by the celebrated historiographer of Peru, Agustín de Zárate, the remark is made that “among all the works written on the discovery and conquest of Peru and New Spain—including my own history of the subject—nobody had taken it upon himself to declare how, when, and by whom such a space of ocean had been discovered, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the provinces of Tierra Firme; where it ends, and how much the present and future centuries owe principally to Christopher Columbus, whose industry, endeavor and diligence, coupled with the infinite risks and perils which he and his companions suffered ... confounded those who contradicted him.”

Castellanos had a first-hand knowledge of a number of the events that he described and, having lived in America for several years, was personally acquainted with many of the famous men of whom he wrote.

As it indicates, the title exhibited here is only the first part of the complete work. The second and third parts remained in manuscript and were not published until 1847 in Madrid.

See Plate I, page 62.

First edition of this exceedingly rare chronicle. According to Markham, "This is one of the most remarkable literary productions of the age of the Spanish Conquest in America. It is, in fact, the only book which exhibits the physical aspects of the country as it existed under the elaborate culture of the Incas.”

This, the only Spanish printing of the first part of the chronicle, was reprinted in Antwerp the following year. The second part dealing with the history of the Incas was not printed until 1873; books three and four, the discovery and conquest and the civil wars, are still unpublished.

Cieza de León was one of the most critical of early Spanish writers on Peru. His chronicle deals with the geography, history, and ethnology of the Andean area. It is based on a journal kept by the author during seventeen years’ residence in the New World. Apart from the famous woodcut and description of the silver mines of Potosí, it also contains the first extended description of the Peruvian guanaco, or llama, and of the pepper-tree, or mollé, and the commercial and medicinal uses of its fruit.

The autograph of the author appears on the verso of the last leaf. The contemporary ownership signature of Antonio Álvarez de Toledo, 1554, appears on the title page.

See Plate II, page 63.

One of the most important works on the Philippines of the seventeenth century. Father Colín lived there from 1625 to 1660, ministering to the natives of Mindanao. The book, containing valuable information on the flora, fauna, geography, and languages of the archipelago, is based partly on unpublished material of Father Pedro Chirino. This work was reprinted in Manila in 1890.

The history was continued by Pedro Murillo Velarde, number 65 in this exhibit.

Known under the title “The Fierie Sea Columne,” a play upon the name of the Dutch author, navigator, and publisher, this kind of sea atlas—also known as Waggoner after Waghenaer’s famous navigational charts—formed the basis for scientific oceanic navigation.

Published in Dutch, French, and English, all editions of this atlas are extremely rare since they were usually mutilated and otherwise destroyed by weather, constant use, and myriad other hazards of seventeenth-century navigation.

The famous Basel edition of Columbus’ Letter, with pictorial representations of America. On the return from his first voyage Columbus sent three letters to Barcelona giving an account of his discoveries: one to Ferdinand and Isabella, one to Luis de Santangel, and a third to Gabriel Sánchez. No printed edition of the letter to Ferdinand and Isabella has ever been discovered. Two editions of the letter to Luis de Santangel have survived—one in folio (in the Lenox Collection of the New York Public Library) and one in quarto (in the Ambrosian Library, Milan).

The present copy is the Latin translation by Leandro de Cosco of the letter to Gabriel Sánchez. In this edition it is preceded by a drama by Carolus Verardus celebrating the capture of Granada from the Moors, the other great historical event during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. The letter of Columbus begins on the verso of leaf 29.

There are seventeen known editions of the Columbus Letter printed before 1501. They are the prime items in any collection of Americana. In addition to the title represented here, the Lilly Library possesses the 1497 German edition ( next item in this exhibition), the Rome, Stephan Plannck, 1493, “Ferdinand” edition (the first Latin printing), and the Rome, Stephan Plannck, 1493, “Ferdinand and Isabella” edition. The latter two are from the collection of J. K. Lilly, Jr.

This is the Frank B. Bemis copy.

The first and only known fifteenth-century edition of the German translation of Columbus’ letter to Gabriel Sánchez giving an account of the First Voyage. Since books in the vernacular were more prone to destruction than Latin books, which were primarily read by scholars, only nine copies of this German translation are known to exist. According to the colophon the translation was made from a Catalonian text, which, however, has been lost.

See Plate III, page 64.

First edition of this compilation of rules and regulations for the Archbishopric and Province of Mexico, reprinted in 1769 in Concilios Provinciales ... de Mexico.

This interesting imprint from the press of Juan Pablos, Mexico’s first printer, contains a number of unusual features. In the colophon, for the first time, he refers to himself as the first printer of Mexico: “ ... Las q̃les fueron acabadas y ymprimidas par Juā Pablos lōbardo, pmer impressor en esta grãde, insigne y muy leal ciudad d’ mexico ... .” There is also a highly uncommon reference to the price of the book being “vn peso y medio de tepuzque y no mas.”

The remarkable woodcut coat of arms of the Archbishopric of Mexico on the title page is reproduced in Wroth’s The Book Arts in Early Mexico with the caption: “There are many reasons for believing that this ... may have been made by Antonio de Espinosa,” who had been brought from Spain by Pablos as a type founder.

Printing was first introduced in the Western Hemisphere at Mexico City. While controversial issues have been raised as to the identity of the printer and the beginning date of printing in Mexico, the first printer whom we can identify by the products of his press was Juan Pablos, or Giovanni Paoli, a native of Brescia. He was brought to Mexico probably through the influence of Bishop Juan de Zumárraga and had been an employee of the Seville printer, Juan Cromberger. The contract between Cromberger and Pablos was strict and was to last for ten years. Cromberger would pay transportation to Mexico for Pablos, his wife, a pressman, a Negro slave, and the press and printing supplies. At the end of ten years there was to be a settlement of accounts and Pablos was to receive one fifth of the net profits. All publications were to bear the imprint “en casa de Juan Cromberger.”

The imprints from this first press and others prior to 1601 are known as “Mexican incunabula” after their European prototypes and are equally as rare. Most of the early printed books from Mexico are of a religious nature.

See numbers 27, 61, and 95 through 98 for other Pablos imprints.

See Plate IV, page 65.

This is the report of a Portuguese voyage to Brazil written by a merchant and sent from Antwerp to the commercial house of the Fugger family. The author had been informed by his agent in the Madeiras about his (the agent’s) interview with the pilot of the ship that arrived there on October 12, 1514.

The newsletter describes the voyage, the encounter with the natives, the condition of the country, and the cargo brought back. One passage in the report may have referred to the Strait of Magellan (not then so named), and some authorities believe it may have influenced Magellan to start his voyage.

This copy is the first issue. Only two other copies are recorded: one in the State Library of Munich and another in the Germanic Museum of Nuremberg.

See Plate V, page 66.

Hernando Cortés was the greatest builder of the Spanish Empire in America. By use of flattery, intrigue, diplomacy, and force he was able, with a small number of troops, to conquer the Aztec Empire and make the Spanish masters of the central provinces of Mexico. Much of our present-day knowledge of these historic events is based on letters, or more accurately, field reports, which Cortés wrote to Emperor Charles V. In this series of letters Cortés recounted all that happened from the time he sailed from Cuba in 1519 until he returned from the expedition into Yucatan in 1526. The First Letter has never been found; the Fifth Letter, or a copy, was discovered in the Imperial Library in Vienna and first published in the nineteenth century.

The above title is the first French edition of the Second Letter of Cortés. It is of major importance because it contains extracts from the First Letter believed to have been lost. The First Letter was written at Vera Cruz, July 10, 1519. It has been conjectured that it was suppressed by the Council of the Indies at the request of Pánfilo de Narvaez, a Spanish rival of Cortés. We can only speculate that this Antwerp French edition was printed from a Spanish original now lost. It should prove conclusively that the text of the First Letter, at least in part, was available for printing.

The text of this Antwerp edition is dated Valladolid, October 1, 1522 (the Second Letter is dated October 30, 1520, from Segura). It contains descriptions of the newly discovered country and the magnificent Aztec capital, Temistitan (Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City), and narrates the memorable events of the conquest. The report describes the death of Montezuma and the retreat of the Spanish from Temistitan—June 20, 1520, known henceforth as la noche triste—and concludes with descriptions of the preparations being made from the refuge in Tlaxcala for the advance on Temistitan, which was soon to be besieged, destroyed, and captured.

This is the only known copy of this edition containing the complete text. It was acquired by the Comte de Lignerolles in 1892, when offered for sale by Damascène Morgand. Previous to the discovery of this copy the Comte de Lignerolles owned another incomplete copy. This is the Church copy now in the Huntington Library.

It is not known whether this edition was published with a printed title. The manuscript title is in a bold contemporary hand in French, written on paper similar, but not identical, to that of the printed text. It is mere supposition that it was the last leaf of another work preceding the Cortés title in a miscellaneous volume bound for its first owner.

In addition to the four Cortés letters exhibited here, the Mendel Collection contained the first Latin edition of the Second Letter (Nuremberg, 1524), the first Latin edition of the Third Letter (Nuremberg, 1524), the second Latin edition of both the Second and Third Letters (Cologne, 1532), and the first German edition of the Second and Third Letters (Augsburg, 1550). These copies were duplicates of items already in the Lilly Collection and were sold at auction in November, 1962.

See Plate VI, page 67.

First edition of Cortés’ Third Letter, which gives an account of events in Mexico from October 30, 1520, to May 15, 1522.

Dated at Coyoacan, May 15, 1522, most of this report is given over to the seventy-five-day siege and capture of the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan.

First Italian edition of the Second Letter of Cortés, taken from the Latin version of Petrus Savorgnanus. With the rare woodcut map of Mexico City and the Gulf region, so seldom present that many bibliographers doubted a map belonged with it. On that part of the map depicting the Gulf of Mexico, the name “La Florida” appears for the first time on a printed map. The plan of Mexico City is the first for any American city.

First edition of Cortés’ Fourth Letter, which covers the period from May 15, 1522, to October 15, 1524. The final eight leaves contain three reports of Pedro de Alvarado and Diego Godoy to Cortés. The letter is dated at Tenochtitlan, October 15, 1524.

The manuscript contains twenty-six autograph marginal notes by Philip III, over sixty autograph notes by the Duke of Lerma, sixty letters to the King signed by his confessor and political adviser, Fray Luis de Aliaga, and many other important documents.

The Consejo de las Indias, or “Council of the Indies,” was established by royal decree in 1524. Although the affairs of the newly discovered Spanish possessions had been administered previously by an ad hoc group of councilors, it was not until this date that political and judicial control over the Indies was formally charged to a royal council.

Except for certain commercial matters, which had been delegated to the Casa de Contratación in 1503, the Council of the Indies was the supreme authority (in the name of the King) for American and Philippine affairs. Its jurisdiction extended to every facet of colonial administration: all laws were promulgated by its authority, and a large number originated in its deliberations; the appointment of royal officials, both lay and ecclesiastical, fell within its province; it sat as the supreme legal body for most judicial cases regarding the Indies; it conducted the residencias following the departure of an official from office and appointed the visitadores who investigated colonial affairs for the crown. In addition, the Council of the Indies exercised strict powers of censorship over all printed materials originating either in Spain or the colonies. Rarely has so much power and authority been delegated to a single body, which, in itself, would indicate the exceptional importance of this manuscript.

See Plate VII, page 68.

Guiliano Dati (1445-1524), the Italian poet and bishop of San-Leone, is best remembered for his rendering into Italian verse the celebrated letter of Columbus announcing the discovery of the New World. The present poem, which he calls Second poem on India, refers in verse 9 ff. to a first poem on India, the title of which is known but no perfect copy has been preserved: “La gran magnificenza del prete Gianni,” or “I. Cantare dell India.”

Dati described in this secondo cantare the wonders of India, the fabulous land which everybody at this time believed to have been reached by Columbus in his voyage across the Atlantic.

This is the second recorded copy of this title, the other being in the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome.

See Plate VIII, page 69.

This rare and interesting book printed at Lima contains sermons in the Quechua language with accompanying text in Spanish prepared for the use of the clergy among the Peruvian natives. The author, an Indian himself, had preached for fifty years among the rural population. He died in 1647 as a canon of the cathedral of La Plata.

The Quechua Indians were the dominant people of the Inca Empire. They are still the largest homogeneous body of Indians in existence, constituting the bulk of the Andean population of Peru and Ecuador. Their language is highly developed and capable of expressing fine shades of meaning.

This is a handbook of the Christian theology prepared for missionaries in Mexico by the Dominican Order under the direction of Bishop Zumárraga, printed in Spanish and Mexican in opposite columns.

The copy exhibited here is the second edition of the Doctrina Christiana. The first edition was printed by Juan Pablos in Mexico in 1548. Two variants of this second edition are known: one dated February 12 and the other April 17. Only three perfect copies of the February 12 variant are recorded: one copy in the British Museum, another at the University of Texas (the former García Icazbalceta copy), and this copy (the former Conway-Andrade copy).