The portrait of the author was engraved by Pierre Lombard, while the added engraved title-page is unsigned. Each of the four books here (in two volumes) has a separate title-page; the main title-pages are printed in black and ruled in red. The text is in English, Greek, and Latin. A printed addenda slip is affixed to the final text page of vol. II, above the catalogue of books sold by Richard Royston. Leaf L6 in vol. II is a cancel (and separated).

Provenance:  Vol. I added title-page recto with inked ownership inscription dated 1781 (“T. Moore”); vol. II front fly-leaf with inked ownership inscription dated 1696 (“Guilel. Rayner”) and another (of “T. Moore's”) dated 1781.

•  ESTC R20123; Wing (rev.) T324; Allibone 2348. On Taylor, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Recent quarter calf and marbled paper–covered sides, leather edges tooled in blind, spine with gilt-stamped title and volume labels and gilt-stamped decorations between raised bands. Ownership inscriptions as above. First few leaves of vol. I (including regular and added title-pages) with tiny spots of worming; slightly larger sections of same to inner margins of some subsequent leaves; a number of pages in both volumes with scattered spots of worming, touching letters but not affecting sense. Light waterstaining to outer margins of some leaves. One leaf in vol. II separated. Significant and attractive.  (24889)

Present are the following works: De disciplina claustralium, Soliloquium, Sermonum prima pars, Sermonum secunda pars, Sermonum tertia pars, Sermones IX, Dialogus novitiorum, Eiusdem epistolae, De paupertate humilitate & patientia, De vera compunctione cordis, Hortulus rosarum, Vallis liliorum, Manuale parvulorum, Doctrinale iuvenum, and Hospitale pauperum. The volume ends with a brieflife of the author.

The colophon reads: “Venetijs per Dominum Bernardinum Stagninum de Tridino Montifferrati. Anno Domini. M.D.XXXVI.”

Scarce: OCLC locates only the copy at the Folger Library.

•  BM, STC Italian, 323.; Adams K17.   18th-century vellum over paste boards, charcoal-colored leather gilt spine label. Title-page damaged with loss of foremargin and area below title-page woodcut, taking imprint (which is here supplied from the colophon); loss very neatly and almost imperceptibly replaced with “matching” paper. Volume very clean, very solid, and very rare.  (23329)

Guatemala was the fourth Latin American city to have a printing press (after Mexico, Lima, and Puebla de los Angeles); the press was brought at the instigation of the bishop of Guatemala, Payo Enríquez de Ribera, who wished to have a work of his own published. In reply to the bishop's appeal for a printer, José Pineda Ibarra arrived at Antigua in 1660. He had worked as an assistant to several printers in Mexico, but according to Medina did not have his own press; when Payo de Ribera's representative found him, he had moved to Puebla, but was apparently not doing well there. (Medina does not list him as a printer in Puebla—presumably he was again working for others.) The bishop apparently paid for the press that was taken to Guatemala, and Pineda Ibarra later purchased it from him. Torre Revello (quoted in Furlong) remarks that despite the dearth of materials, Pineda Ibarra managed to print exceedingly well: "Ningún tipógrafo de los que le sucedieron, durante el periodo colonial, logró superar la pulchritud y elegancia de sus trabajos." This example shows not only several sizes of type, but a woodcut of a papal tiara, at the top of the edict, flanked by typographical ornaments; a line of typographical ornament also appears on either side of the date of the edict, near the bottom of the page.

The various religious orders in Guatemala had promised to make it worth the while of a printer to come, by giving him commissions. Judging from the list of over 30 works Pineda Ibarra printed before 1673—eulogies, sermons, constitutions, regulations, descriptions of religious festivities—the orders fulfilled their promise; his major productions, however, were Bishop de Ribera's Explicatio apologetica nonnullarum propositionum . . . , 1663, and Diego Saenz Ovecuri's La Thomasiada, 1667. Also a bookseller and binder, Pineda Ibarra died in 1679. He was succeeded in 1681 by his son, Antonio de Pineda Ibarra, under whom the press operated until 1721.

The text in hand, a papal edict of 23 July 1672, changes the office for St. Peter Nolasco used by Mercedarians from semiduplex to duplex, at the request of the Queen of France. The Orden Real de Nuestra Señora de la Merced, Redemción de Cautivos, was already established in Guatemala (cf. Medina, Guatemala, 38), and probably paid Pineda Ibarra to print this work.

•  Not in Medina, Guatemala; on the printer, see: Medina's introduction, pp. xviii–xx. Not in Valenzuela, Imprenta en Guatemala; O'Ryan, Bib. Guatemalteca; NUC; BMC. See, however, Oswald, p. 539; Furlong, Orígenes, p. 91; and Woodbridge and Thompson, Printing in Colonial Spanish America, pp. 81–84.

Provenance:  Released as a duplicate from the greatest collection of American Catholica in the world, the Georgetown University Library, with a few of the requisite and expected stamps; Walsh, a leading literary critic and editor of the American Quarterly, was an early and distinguished Catholic-American literateur.

•  Parsons 631; Shaw & Shoemaker 50024; Sabin 101158; Howes W67. On Walsh, see: The Dictionary of American Biography, XIX, 391–92.   Recent quarter natural linen shelfback with blue-green paper sides in the style of the era. Library markings noted above. A very good copy.  (24005)

•  Contemporary half morocco, abraded. All edges gilt. Cloth sides worn at tips, exposing boards. Some foxing. Prize inscription.

The Castildelgado document is the settling of a dispute with the town of Ybrillos over pasturing rights.

•  Bound in limp vellum with remnants of ties. Written in clear notarial hands. A very little tattering; in very good condition.

The engraved frontispiece was done by Philipp Jacob Leidenhoffer after a design by Johann Asem; one of the engraved in-text emblems attributes its design to “I.C. Banaivir,” about whom no information could be found, while the others are unsigned.

The title-page bears an inked inscription reading “SanCto MarCo / In aVgIa DIVIte,” dated 1714; a few small scraps of paper with notes in an early inked hand are laid in.

•  Landwehr, German, 660; Praz 543. Contemporary mottled sheep, covers framed in blind triple fillets, spine thickly blind-stamped with arabesque motifs; binding rubbed and abraded with leather cracked over joints and spine, spine stamping dimmed, and shelving number inked on spine. A few spots of pinhole worming to front cover, front free endpaper, and first few leaves; front pastedown with old bookseller’s ticket. Some pages with light foxing; one leaf with an old repair to the upper corner and one with a short tear from the lower margin. An interesting rarity, and one worthy of study.