NEW & OLD WORLD 
HISPANICA — Una miscelánea

He Survived “La Noche Triste” & Much, Much More
   THE CONQUEROR'S REWARD  

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•  Pedro de Villanueva was one of the conquistadores of Mexico.  He was among Cortés's original party, part of the Francisco de Saucedo (also spelled “Salcedo”) contingent, whose ship was delayed in leaving Cuba.  With Saucedo, a friend of Cortés, he arrived at Villarica de Veracruz in July of 1519, shortly after Cortés and his men had destroyed the “idols” at Cempoala.

Villanueva was among the small but grand “army” that marched into Tenochtitlán in the Spring of 1520 and in July of the same year were to flee the western world's largest city fighting for their lives, on the “Noche Triste.”  He survived the hell and slaughter of the causeways and later returned with the greatly augmented force that destroyed the Aztec capital and its empire. Still later he was with Cortés in the exploration and conquest of Pánuco and following that with Nuño de Guzmán in the exploration and conquest of Zacatecas and Jalisco. He and his brother Fernando (also a member of the Saucedo contingent) jointly received an encomienda (Quechula) and settled in Puebla de los Angeles where Pedro served as a regidor on the town council in the 1540s and 1550s.

In the last years of the 1550s Villanueva petitioned the crown for the grant of a coat of arms in recognition of his service to the crown in the conquest of Mexico.  Felipe II honored that request in this impressive document.  He enumerates the Conqueror's deeds, specifically mentioning Don Hernando Cortés and Nuño de Guzmán and the various conquests in which Villanueva participated.  He describes the coat of arms being granted and the significance of the colors and symbols.  The granted arms are beautifully accomplished in many colors within the text of the document, with that text yielding space to the large miniature: Measuring 17.5 x 15 cm (7" x 6"), the arms are painted with a formal frame delimiting their presentation on a red field with corner brackets of gold over blue.  Surmounting the arms is a knight's helm with plumage, trailing from which are decorative “swooshes.”  The new Villanueva arms are quartered, showing a cyphered “M” surmounted by a fleur de lis in the upper left, a crowned lion en passant in the upper right, an arm holding a sword rising out of a flowing river in the lower left, and a castle on a hill in the lower right.

The text of the grant of arms is elegantly indited in a standard court semi-round gothic in sepia ink and is enclosed on the left, right, and top sides by an illuminated and historiated sash-like border.  In the upper left and right corners are miniatures of Justice and Knowledge in sylvan settings.  Running between those two along the top of the document is a decorative panel incorporating flowers, fruits, mythic animals, and cherubs.  Below this, the king's name is accomplished in large letters of gold on a field of red accented with gold, and the “D” of his honorific “Don” is given special treatment.  This is elaborated in an ornate, almost baroque style that comes close to obfuscating the fact of its being a majuscule “d”:  Wrought in gold, the letter at first appears to be merely a “frame” for the royal coat of arms that fills its center.  The king's arms are accomplished in gold, white, black, red, and blue; the whole being laid on a blue field with white accents.

The panels running down the left and right sides of the document are accomplished in red, gold, green, pink, white, red, blue, and brown, many in several shades.  The decoration includes birds of several varieties including a fine owl, animals including a watchful rabbit, strawberries and other fruits, and flowers, ribbons, grotesques, and butterflies.




The document is signed in the king's name by Juana (Joanna Habsburg) de Austria, “princesa de Portugal.”  Married to Prince Juan of Portugal, young Juana (b. 1537) was the regent of the Spanish crown from 1554 until her brother Philip's return to Spain in September of 1559. She had just lost her husband to death and borne his posthumous son, both in January, 1554, when she left Portugal and her child in the Spring of that year to assume the regency throne in Valladolid.



In format and content this document differs dramatically from the cartas executorias de hidalguía that most collectors are familiar with.  Here we have a single large sheet of vellum handsomely engrossed, artfully illuminated, and exquisitely decorated with a composite border containing miniatures.  This is not a bound volume of copies of documents created for storage in the family archive. This was created for display in a prominent place of honor; and it is a magnificent display item.  This is not a grant of nobility nor a confirmation of it based on something that some vague ancestor did; rather it is a grant of a coat of arms to a man who himself performed significant military and other service for the Crown and whom the Crown wishes to honor both publicly and privately.  Only a few hundred of Cortés's men survived the Noche Triste, the reentry into and destruction of Mexico City, and the subsequent conquests in Panuco and elsewhere.  The number of grants such as this to actual members of Cortés's original “army” were few.

And surviving grants to those actual participants in the Conquest are extremely rare, even more so in commerce. This is the only royal grant of a coat of arms to an actual member of Cortés's “army” that we have seen that has ever appeared in the marketplace.  Via published auction records and our extensive archive of dealer catalogues, we trace no instance before this one of the offering for sale of a grant of arms to a Conqueror of Mexico.  Yes, there are examples in various libraries and museums in Mexico and Spain, and probably in the U.S., but such examples seem to have entered their institutional resting places via donation from descendants of Conquerors, not via purchase.

Provenance:  It is awesome to realize that this is no mere retained secretarial copy of Felipe's grant of arms to Pedro de Villanueva.  This gorgeous document not only records the king's rewards to one of Cortés's men, but was that Conqueror's personal property.  It is the copy of the decree sent to him expressly, by the Crown!



•  On Villanueva, see: Icaza, Diccionario autobiográfico de conquistadores y pobladores de la Nueva España, I, 88–89; Thomas, Who's Who of the Conquistadors, 146; Himmerich y Valencia, The Encomenderos of New Spain, 1521–1555, 262; Díaz del Castillo, Verdadera historia de la conquista de la Nueva España, chap. LIII. On Juana de Austria, see: the work of Dr. Kelli Ringhofer.  Overall in very good condition.  Some fold tears, some minor rubbing of small areas of images, stains as visible in our illustrations.  The wax seal and its silk cords no longer present. Text clear, not faded, and colors strong.

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The Bear Bible — The FIRST Complete Bible in Spanish

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•  The earliest edition of the complete Bible in Spanish. Following the success of producing the world's first polyglot Bible, Spain retreated from printing Bibles in an almost absolute way after the onset of the Reformation. Given the emphasis that Reformation leaders placed on accessible Bibles in the vernacular tongues, Spain, as a staunchly non-Reformation country heeding the Church's stricture against translation into the vernacular, produced no Bible in Spanish actually in Spain until the late 18th century.

Rather, the production of a Bible in Spanish fell to a peripatetic exiled Spaniard named Casiodoro de Reina (ca. 1520–94), a man who began his adult life as a monk, came under suspicion of being a “Reformist,” and fled Spain for Geneva — later fleeing that city for a series of others and declaring it “a new Rome” for its intolerance of new ideas. Whether the translation is solely from his pen or is the work of a committee in which he was primus inter pares is not known.

This Bible is known as the “Bible of the Bear” or the “Bear Bible” because of the printer's device on the title-page, a bear at a honey comb, which was the device of Samuel Apiarius. The relationship between Apiarius and the actual printer, Thomas Guarinus, is unresolved. The Old Testament in this translation is based on the Hebrew and derived heavily from the Latin of St. Pagninus and from the Ferrara version. The New Testament is based on the Greek of Erasmus with comparisons to the Vetus Latina and Syriac manuscripts.

There are two states of the title-page, this being state A with the line of type ornaments described in Darlow and Moule.

Provenance:  Ownership signature of Herbert Watney and note “bought in Spain March 1892" on the front fly-leaf. Mr. Watney (1843–1932), the youngest son of the brewer James Watney, was educated at Rugby and Cambridge, and became Senior Assistant Physician at St. George's Hospital, London. In 1915 he served as Master of the Mercers' Company as his father had in 1846. He was a dedicated book collector of Bibles and English history: The first edition of the first complete Bible in Welsh in the library of St. John's College library, Cambridge, was his gift to the school.

•  VD16 B2869; Rumball-Petre262; Darlow & Moule 8472; Graesse, I, 386; Palau 2894; Adams B12061.   17th-century English calf, rebacked with new spine gilt extra very suitable in style; leather of covers a bit crackled and variously darkened; small areas of the covers at board edges replaced with new leather sympathetically gilt-tooled. Lacks the blank preliminary leaf and the four leaves at the end of “Annotationes breves sobre los lugares . . . “, both of which are very often lacking, the latter leaves having perhaps (even probably) been printed separately and later. Small piece of front fly-leaf cut away (probably removing an ownership inscription). The occasional instance of light soil or light waterstaining to fore- or bottom margins, sometimes reaching text; a generally clean and good copy. All edges mottled red and blue-green.  (25772)

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Full Set of Her Works, IncludingVillancicos in Nahuatl & an African Language

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•  “The Tenth Muse” to the Anglo-American audience is Anne Bradstreet, but throughout Spanish America and Spain, and in goodly parts of Europe, that sobriquet is associated only with Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Born in a small town in Mexico in 1651, she learned to read Latin before she was six. Denied admission to the Royal University in Mexico, she was to enter conventual life instead, develop a close friendship with the great colonial Mexican polymath Sigüenza y Góngora (the Cosmographer of New Spain), and write and publish the finest known poetry of the Spanish colonial empire in the period to 1821, as well as some plays and “Christmas carols.”

Uncontestedly she was the major New World lyric poet of the colonial era and she excelled in both spiritual and profane subjects. For a sense of her range of subjects, click to enlarge our images.  She invented a decasyllabic meter and cultivated dramatic poetry: Among her works are sonnets, redondillas, décimas, villancicos, and plays, as well as prose works, including the famous Carta athenagorica in which she criticizes the great Luso-Brazilian preacher and defender of the Brazilian Indians, Antônio Vieira. The contents here are mostly Spanish-language, but some portions are in Latin — and a few, as is seldom recognized, are in the black language of “Guinea” (e.g., Villancico VIII of the “Villancicos que se cantaron en la Sta. Iglesia Metropolitana de Mexico en honor de Maria Santissima Madre de Dios . . . y se imprimieron año de 1679") or in Nahuatl (e.g., Villancico V of the “Villancicos que se cantaron en la Santa Iglesia Metropolitana de Mexico, en honor de Maria Santissima Madre de Dios . . . año de 1687, en que se imprimieron”).

Sor Juana's individual works began to be printed in Mexico as early as 1677. Her “works” were soon gathered together, and in 1689 in Madrid there appeared Inundacion castalida de la unica poetica, musa decima (the title was changed the next year to Poemas de la unica poetisa americana, musa dezima, which it has remained ever since): This is now considered vol. I of her works. Vol. II (Tomo segundo de la obras de Soror Juana Ines de la Cruz) appeared in 1692 and the final volume (Fama y obras posthumas) in 1700. The issuance by one printer of all three volumes as a definite “set” seems not to have occurred until 1725; prior to that, printers issued individual volumes, or sometimes, vols. I and II alone.

In the offering here, vol. I was printed during the great poet's lifetime, and is one of the last to hold that distinction.

•  I: Palau 65222; Medina, BHA, 1870; Alden & Landis, European Americana, 691/74; Sabin 17735; this edition not in León-Portilla, Tepuztlahcuilolli. II: Palau 65237; Medina, BHA, 2540; Alden & Landis, European Americana, 725/111. III: Palau 65233; Medina, BHA, 2541; Alden & Landis, European Americana, 725/110.   Vols. I and II in original limp vellum; III in modern red morocco, gilt extra. Some age-toning and foxing in vol. II; same volume with light worming, at times in text, at rear, costing letters but not words. With slight faults only, this is a handsome set of this major writer's works.  (26753)

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Christian Chronicle

•  Later edition of thistranslation into Spanish of Adrichem’s history of Biblical events to the year 109 a.d. An additional “Chronicon Breve” at the end of the volume gives a chronology from Adam and Eve to the year 1585.
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The title is within a typographic border; text is printed in double-column format, in roman type.

•  Palau 2864. 19th-century half sheep with marbled paper sides; binding shows wear. Lower margin of title-leaf and leaves of the preliminaries with minor worming; repaired with pasted-over paper. Some side- and shouldernotes shaved with loss. Sporadic soiling, not severe.

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13th-Century Law Suit — 16th-Century Copy

•  Late-16th-century copy of a mid-13th-century legal decision in a law suit that pitched the town of Almudevar against Pedro Cornelio, Miguel de Gurrea, and others of the town of Gurrea over rights to wood cutting, pasturing, and other rural concerns. Click the image for an enlargement.

•  Written in a very clear legal notarial hand, in sepia ink. Very good.  (27071)

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Extended MANUSCRIPT in anUNCOMMON PHILIPPINE LANGUAGE

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•  Precious few manuscript sources in the Ibanag language survive from the Spanish colonial era of the Philippines. Only a handful of missionaries worked in the region of the northeastern Philippine provinces of Isabela and Cagayan, most notably in Tuguegarao City, Solana, Cabagan, and Ilagan, where the language was/is spoken; and not all mastered the tongue. Fray Antonio Lobato was one of those who did and it was he who took Fr. José Bugarin's Ibanag–Spanish dictionary, created in the previous century, and edited it to a usable work — though the result was not published until the 19th century, and, apparently, no other work was published in the language during the 16th, 17th, or 18th centuries.

The importance, then, of a large body of work set down in the Ibanag language, from the 18th century and as written/spoken by one of the seminal scholars of the language, should be obvious for anyone researching the language as understood by missionaries, as used by missionaries, as influenced by Spanish, and as held out by Spaniards of authority as the model of Ibanag speech to be emulated. Beyond this, of course, is the interest of the sermons themselves, letting us see what the Ibanaq speakers were hearing from their missionaries — or, at least, this missionary — in this place, in this period.

Fray Antonio's sermons are here written in a clear, easy to read hand and the dates of composition or of delivery are often noted.

Provenance:  A signature “Fr. Antonio Lobato de Sto. Thomas” appears at the bottom of the last page and is almost certainly that of the the friar himself, which would mean that this is his autograph manuscript of the sermons.

•  Contemporary very stiff vellum. Binding gnawed by a rodent with loss. Written on a good quality European paper, with some soiling and an occasional stain. No faults are serious and overall this is a remarkably good survival for an 18th-century Philippines manuscript. Now housed in a blue cloth clamshell box.  (23668)

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Printed by Hogal — Illustrated with Four Woodcuts

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•  First Mexican edition of Aranda's work of devotion to the Virgin Mary, handsomely printed by the best printer working in Mexico in the 18th century: Hogal is often compared favorably with Baskerville. His type is a good roman with italic and he adds four good size, unsigned, woodcuts of four different apparitions of the Virgin.

An uncommon work of mariology; in the U.S. only the New York Public Library reports owning a copy.

•  Medina, Mexico, 2844.   Contemporary vellum over light boards, with the ties. Top and bottom edges of the closed volume with inked ownership of an unidentified conventual library. Clean copy.  (26872)

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