BASQUE
BASQUE
Mariology for the New World 
Luzuriaga, Juan de. Paranympho celeste[.] Historia de la mystica zarza, milagrosa imagen, y prodigioso santuario de Aranzazu de religiosos observantes de n. seraphico padre San Francisco en la provincia de Guypuzcoa. Mexico: Por los herederos de la viuda de Bernardo Calderon, 1686. Folio (27 cm; 10.75"). 3 pts. in 1 vol. [17 of 18] ff., 114, 96, 112 pp., [8] ff., lacking the plate (as usual), and a leaf in the preliminaries.
Click the images for enlargements. 
It is extremely noteworthy that this thick and significant history of this Cantabrian apparition was written and published in Mexico and not in Spain. After years of service in Cantabria, his native region, in 1680 the author was transferred to New Spain to serve as the Comisario General of the Franciscan Order in New Spain and the Philippines, and it was in Mexico City that he composed his massive and important work. He then also had it printed there, in spite of the fact that he retained contacts in Spain where it presumably would have had a greater natural audience, and in spite of the fact that it was, for its day, a very large project for a Mexican press to be offered. Or for one to take on! Additionally, it is 
printed on exceptionally thick paper.
Provenance: Bookplates of Luis and Clotilde Montt (Chilean collectors) and of the John Carter Brown Library (deaccessioned).
• Medina, Mexico, 1376; Palau 144367; Beristain, II, 198; Leclerc 1190. On Luzuriaga, see: Archivo biográfico de España, Portugal, e Iberoamérica, fiche 534, frames 77–81. 19th-century quarter brown sheep with black leather spine labels lettered in gilt; black and white marbled paper sides. Without the plate and one leaf in the preliminaries; last three leaves of the index damaged with loss in the foremargins, costing a few words and letters; title-page soiled and with several old tears very well-repaired of old; stains occasionally, never bad ones. Withal a rather good copy of a 
very uncommon work of New World Mariology. (26392)
Stunning Illuminated & Calligraphed Manuscript Gilt Slipcase Unda Aurtenechea Lauayen Gamboa y Arragoeta, Juan Antonio de. Manuscript, “Despacho confirmatorio de los blasones de armas, nobleza y genealogia, enlaces, entroques, meritos y servicios de Don Juan Antonio de Unda Aurtenechea Lauayen Gamboa y Arragoeta &ca., Administrador de Alcabalas y Rentas Reales de la villa de San Juan Bautista de Llerena, y minas de Sombrerete.” In Spanish, on vellum. Madrid: 1796. Small folio. [46] ff.
Click the images for enlargements. The manuscript is exquisitely calligraphedentirely on fine quality vellum in black ink with some words and phrases in red, gold, blue, and sometimes combinations of the same all in one word. Each page of text is indited within a red triple-ruled frame which is itself enclosed in another red triple-ruled frame; large, swirled blue corner devices “connect” the ruled elements. Elegantly ornamented and illuminated
“subtitles,” all different, introduce sections of the argument, and there are
14 large historiated and illuminated initials (1.5" x 1.5"), each offering as background a landscape–architectural image accomplished in brown, red, blue, green and cream colors.
There are additionally four other family coats of arms skillfully rendered in color and illuminated here, these being the coats of arms of ancestors whose purity of blood is used to prove Don Juan Antonio's. The manuscript ends with the granting of the arms and a full explanation of each of their elements and the significance of their colors.
Strikingly, and on vellum as fine as that of the other pages, this offers a fold-out genealogical tree that goes back no less than 35 “branches” on the paternal side and 31 on the maternal.
Binding: Contemporary full crimson goat, round spine with “spine compartments” defined by triple gilt fillets; each compartment with the central device of an urn. Covers with a gilt double-fillet outer border and a gilt floral-roll border within; turn-ins with a gilt roll of a rope design. Each full-page illumination and all coats of arms with salmon-colored silk guards, beautifully intact. All edges gilt.
• Excellent condition on all points. Interestingly, this Spanish document in a Spanish morocco binding, recording the social apotheosis of a Basque whose fortunes grew via Mexican connections, is housed in a somewhat tattered and slightly broken contemporary pull-off-the-topgilt calf slipcase of Mexican workmanship. (24671)
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