Provenance:  Front pastedown with 1825 bookplate of the Royal Society of Literature.

•  Brunet, IV, 859.   Contemporary mottled calf, covers framed in gilt roll, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-stamped compartment decorations; rubbing overall with small abrasions to sides, back joint starting from foot with hinges (inside) tender and front hinge starting. Front pastedown with bookplate as above; title-page with old, faint inked check mark in upper margin. Original silk bookmark present and attached. Very light waterstaining in margins of several sections and extending across text from pp. 346 to end. A very interesting production.  (29080)

The text is complete but it is clear that the final blank and the next to the last leaf are missing; the latter would contain the “Tabula” and the colophon.

Nicolaus's text is printed in double-column format in gothic, black-letter type, with guide letters but the initials unaccomplished.

Evidence of readership:  Marginalia throughout; a small area at the beginning of four lines on A6v with early reader's inking over of the lightly printed letters (in a near perfect approximation of the gothic type).

Provenance:  Ownership signature of “G. Lunndro, Woodmansey, 1852”; bookplate of Madison University; later bookplate of Colgate University (i.e., Madison changed names in 1890); later transferred to Colgate Rochester Divinity School. Deaccessioned.

•  Not in VD16; not in Adams.   19th-century plain boards. Ex-library with bookplates of two different institutions; pressure-stamp on title- and other leaves; five-digit acquisition number stamped in lower margin of first leaf of the prologue; residue of a charge pocket on rear pastedown and ink transfer to rear free endpaper.  Final blank and the next to last leaf missing as above and marginalia as above. (26026)

Single-click any image where the hand appears on
mouse-over, for an enlargement.

•  Palau 197255; Medina, Biblioteca Hispano-Americana, 6093. Contemporary treed sheep, spines with gilt-stamped leather title-labels and gilt-stamped decorations and volume numbers; corners and extremities slightly rubbed, boards with some scuffs and scrapes. Title-pages with decorative “BR” monogram stamp. Moderate offsetting to a number of pages in vol. I and a few in vol. II; occasional light spotting throughout. All edges speckled.

The volume opens with an oversized, color-printed map of Ireland on green paper; it is further illustrated with a frontispiece and 31 other plates mostly representing churches and abbeys but also Irish landscapes (“The Shannon above Limerick”), historical moments (“Massacre at Drogheda”), and prominent figures. One split image contrasts a tormented Irish family with the same family happy and prosperous in America; interestingly, that same split plate is reproduced at the back of the volume as two facing plates with new captions — “Ireland As She Is” and “Ireland As She Ought to Be.”

Binding:  Publisher's pebbled blue cloth, front cover with gilt-stamped title and gilt-stamped vignette of a radiant monolith surrounded by shamrocks; back cover with same vignette in blind, and spine with decorative gilt-stamped author, title, and publisher. All edges gilt.

Provenance:  Back free endpaper with pencilled ownership inscription of Maggie Brennan of Philadelphia; we note, but dare not speculate on the import of, her surname's matching that of one of the authors here.

•  NSTC 0558744 (for 1878 ed.).   Bound as above, front cover and spine aged to dark brownish blue and volume moderately rubbed overall. Folding map with tear from inner margin, extending inside frame (close to but not touching actual image). Pages browned in from edges due to nature of paper, but not brittle; dried plant matter laid in at three spots and an old tassel at another. A very solid copy, with hinges holding (unusual for copies of this hefty volume).  (29569)

Both this and the first edition are scarce. Searches of OCLC, RLIN, and NUC Pre-1956 find only seven U.S. institutional holdings of the 1677 printing.

•  Barbier, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes, IV, 213; BM STC French, 1601–1700, R1083. Contemporary speckled calf, spine gilt extra; leather slightly acid-pitted, with edges and joints rubbed and unobtrusive number inked on back cover, spine with gilt a bit rubbed and paper shelving label in uppermost compartment. Front pastedown with inked ownership inscription dated 1737.

Efforts to canonize Maria de Jesus began almost immediately following her death and received the support of numerous well-respected clerics, including Bishop Palafox. Copies of letters to Pope Clement X in support of her sainthood fill the final 16 numbered (in roman) leaves. The efforts continued into the 19th century but failed.

The period 1670 to 1800 saw a dramatic growth among books printed in Mexico in the hagiographical genre and this work was one of the first published in that sub-set of biographical writings.

Binding:  Early 18th-century Mexican sheep, dark brown and mottled; spine gilt extra. Very, very handsome in a most “antiquarian” way!

WorldCat locates only four copies in U.S. libraries, one in Spain, one in Mexico, and one in Chile. The Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico locates two additional copies in Spain.

•  Palau 212277; Medina, Mexico, 1144; Andrade 672; Sabin 58567.   Bound as above; gilt flaked off here and there; spine a little crumpled. Worming in some margins, occasionally in text and occasionally touching some letters. Expert repairs: leather spine readhered to back of text block; tears in leather at joint, hinges, and panel areas reinforced subtly with toned repair tissue; worming repaired with long-fiber tissue and wheat starch paste. Foxing and old stains, neither dark nor distressing.  (29692)

Click the images for enlargements.

•  NSTC 2P5824; Shoemaker 34652.   Publisher's plain paper-covered boards with rose-colored cloth shelfback and printed paper label; binding rubbed with spots of discoloration, spine sunned. Ex–social club library: paper shelving label on spine, 19th-century bookplate, call number on endpaper, no other markings. Light waterstaining, variously; one leaf with short tear from outer margin, just barely touching text.  (28346)

•  Sutro 756 ("19p." being a typographical error for collation given here); not in Steele, Independent Mexico: A Collection of Mexican Pamphlets in the Bodleian Library. Folded and never sewn or bound; as issued.

Despite this strongly worded treatise against persecution (which argues that all men should be able to make a free and open choice of faith and worship), the statutes remained in place for many years to come.

•  Wing (rev.) P1298A; ESTC R12742. Recent marbled paper–covered boards. Title-page with tiny, unobtrusive numeral inked in upper outer corner, first text page with numeral stamped in lower margin (no other markings). Title-page and first text page with moderate foxing, others clean.

This is a handsome production from the Hogal press, which is considered one of the finest operating in Mexico in the 18th century. It sports a full-page woodcut of the coat of arms of José de Castorena y Urzúa, the bishop of the Yucatan, and a notably strong, lovely one of St. Joseph and the Infant Christ; neither is signed.

Provenance: Marca de fuego of the main Mercedarian convent in Mexico City, in upper and lower edges of the book.

WorldCat and NUC Pre-1956 combine to locate only five copies of this in the U.S., one of which is incomplete.

•  Medina, Mexico, 3086; Palau 218002; DeBacker-Sommervogel, VI, 480.   Contemporary limp vellum with ties. An occasional spot or stain; two short, slim, delicate wormtracks to (in each case) perhaps six leaves, across text but not affecting reading, and a third even shorter, slimmer, entirely marginal.foray in a number of other leaves. A very nice copy.  (29581)

Extremely uncommon. Searches of OCLC, RLIN, and NUC Pre-1956 locate just three institutional holdings, only one in the U.S.

•  18th-century quarter sheep with speckled paper–covered sides, rubbed and abraded; front joint open and back joint starting, leather cracking and gilt lettering to spine all but lost. Front pastedown with pencilled notations and institutional bookplate, front fly-leaf and title-page rubber-stamped, front fly-leaf with inked ownership inscription dated [18]45. Pages untrimmed. Moderate foxing; some leaves with red staining along inner margin, not approaching text. Two leaves with small portion of lower margin excised; separate title-page for second work with small portion of outer margin excised and replaced some time ago with a scrap of paper bearing an early inked annotation.

The text is written in one column of 50 lines on the recto and 51 lines on the verso. The leaf is faintly ruled in lead on the verso only, the impression of the ruling showing on the recto, the top line of text being above the top line of ruling; on the right edge of the page are double rules enclosing the first letter of each line. On the outer edge are prickings for the ruling. The left edge of the recto has directions to the rubricator, the explicits of each section being done in darker ink in a different hand. One line on the verso has been crossed out with a single thin line of ink. At the bottom of the verso is the quire number VIII and remnants of a catchword can just be seen at right on the bottom edge. English manuscripts from this period are rare.

Provenance: Ex–Zion Research Foundation (later known as the Endowment for Biblical Research); very likely to Zion from Ege.

•  Judith, Manuscripts Sacred and Secular, 18, f. 9. A small hole in the lower margin. Parchment a little soiled, especially on the hair side, as is not unusual with English vellum. Traces of adhesive from mounting on the corners of the verso.

In addition to a finely engraved frontispiece portrait of Savonarola, there areeight plates, numbering four engraved coats of arms, for the Atestina, Medici, Borgia and Sforza families, and four large foldout letterpress family trees, for the author's family, the Atestina, Medici, and Borgia, who are all related in some way or another to Savonarola's story.

•  BM STC French, P1013. On Pico della Mirandola, see: NCE, XI, 347–48, and C.B. Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola ... and his Critique of Aristotle (1967). On Billaine, see: B. Montagnes OP, “Éditions et éditeurs de Savonarole dans la France d'Ancien Régime,” in Archivium fratrum praedicatorum, LXXV, pp. 159–78.   Vellum over boards with yapp edges, ink title to spine and blue speckled edges; vol. II, “Additiones,” not present. Unnoticeable pin-type wormhole to frontispiece, title-page rubbed with loss to part of two words and with small hole to its blank area; small spottings to Medici fold-out plate and a few other leaves; Borgia fold-out plate repaired and with a diamond-shaped waterstain; a few tears in lower margins, two resulting in a bit of loss and one of these given an old repair.  (30276)

Available AT THIS WRITING, subject to prior sale: D (man kneeling in prayer, before a radiance), I (Sts. Peter and Paul), M (woman giving alms), and S (the Savior[?] with an orb).

The text is in Latin printed in roman and italic, divided into sections for each pope and the additional treatises: De falso & vero bono, dialogi; Contra amores; De vera nobilitate; De optimo cive; Panegyricus in bessarionem doctissimum patriarcham Constantinopolitanum; and Oratio ad Paulum II . . . de bello Turcis inferendo. Woodcut initials in criblé, historiated, and floriated styles decorate the text, which is enhanced by side- and shouldernotes. Two large sections list the popes in chronological order, charting relevant dates with notes. The printer's device, incorporating Psalm 64:12 (Vulgate numbering), adorns the title- and final page.

•  VD16 P 3263; Adams P-1420; Graesse, V, 313. On Platina, see: New Catholic Encyclopedia, XI, 430.   20th-century glossy black paper over boards, gilt title to red leather spine label, all edges green. Ex-library: neat 19th-century bookplate and early ink marking, front pastedown, and label to lower spine but no stamps. Light waterstaining on first 20 or so leaves and in top margin of later ones, crossing text over corner in index; hole from re-sewing in lower gutter of about 11 leaves and final quire reinforced at gutter; pin-type wormholes in upper right corner of final two leaves; negligible tear in lower corner of one leaf. Foxing, generally light, and a few stains. Minute manuscript note in ink on title-page; three instances of marginalia (two a bit cropped) on three pages including the last (dated 1677).  (30348)

The text is ornamented with woodcut initials and occasional head- and tailpieces. Panvinio's De ritu sepeliendi mortuos, De stationibus urbis Romae, and Chronicon ecclesiasticum are appended at the back (as issued), and have separate title-pages and pagination.

•  On Platina, see: New Catholic Encyclopedia, XI, 430. Platina: Adams P1422; VD16 P 3264. Panvinio (Chronicon ecclesiasticum): VD16 P 250; not in Adams.   Period-style calf, covers framed in blind, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label, gilt-stamped compartment decorations, and raised bands ruled in blind with ornaments extending onto covers. A few small early inked marks of emphasis, one pencilled annotation; back fly-leaf with early inked numeral in upper margin now smeared and offset onto opposing page. Pages gently age-toned with occasional light spots or offsetting; waterstaining to margins of first and last few leaves; appearance overall clean and pleasing.  (27568)

No copy traced via WorldCat or COPAC.

•  Removed from a volume and laid into modern wrappers. Light stain in outer margin of last leaf with a trace of same showing on a few more inward; old foliation neatly inked in upper outer corners; generally clean, with good margins. One inked, contemporary marginal note.  (28234)

The work was printed in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where Priestley settled in 1782, when his liberal political opinions and defense of the French Revolution (in addition to his status as a nonconforming minister of questionable orthodoxy) obliged him to emigrate from England to the United States.

Provenance: Both title-pages inscribed by N. Irwin.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 4912 & 7121. Recent quarter calf over marbled paper–covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels. Title-pages with faint impression of a once-pencilled shelf number; some leaves lightly foxed.

Click the image to the left for an enlargement.

This work was printed in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where Priestley settled in 1782, his liberal political opinions and defense of the French Revolution (in addition to his status as a nonconforming minister of questionable orthodoxy) having obliged him to emigrate from England to the United States.

Provenance: Each title-page inscribed by N. Irwin.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 2933 & 4913. Recent quarter calf over marbled paper–covered sides, paper darkened at edges and/or turn-ins on some volumes, most notably vol. IV; spines with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels. Title-pages with faint impression of a once-pencilled shelf number; a few page edges slightly ragged; some instances of small spots of foxing, mostly in margins, and varying degrees of offsetting. Please note these are octavo values — they're substantial, but we think the photo may make them look a bit taller than they actually are.

Périon has added scholia and the publisher an index.

•  Index Aurel. 153.994; Baudrier, IX, 394; not in Adams.   Early vellum over boards, evidence of cloth ties and all edges red; author and title in an 18th-century calligraphy hand on spine and spine label of a library removed. A used copy, with front hinge open between front free endpaper and title-page; title-page soiled, old (cancelled) German library stamps on verso of same; lacks final two blank leaves (only). Some light cockling of pages, the odd spot, a very occasional note.  (28870)

This is the second edition of this commentary on the rubrics of the Mass by Paulo Maria Quarti (fl. ca. 1663), a clerk regular; it was first published in 1674, but here carries added commentaries on processions, including the Litany of the Saints, and on blessings. The title-page is handsomely printed in red and black with a woodcut vignette, and the text is simply ornamented with a few remarkable woodcut initials and headpieces. Scarce.

•  Quarter treed paper over vellum; quaint paper title label in red and black. Some abrasion to spine and edges; endpapers wormed; hinges (inside) open, with sewing holding to visible flat “cords.” Foxing, variously. Vellum page tab at the beginning of De Processionibus.

This is numbered copy 1051 of 1500 printed; it wassigned at the colophon by the artist.

•  Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 32.   Publisher's brown and orange cloth as above, spines with gilt-stamped titles; slipcase and wrappers lacking, bindings showing moderate shelf wear most pronounced at spine extremities. Clean.  (30404)

This copy has had a later, very engaging portrait of the saint as a young man (“joven”) added: The copper-engraved plate, done after an original “se conserva en grande estimacion en Milan,” is dated 1784 and signed byMexican artist and engraver Manuel Villavicencio (1730 – ca. 1788), clearly demonstrating this book travelled to Mexico for use there and for minor “grangerizing.” (It also neatly demonstrates that Mexican artists of this era were not benighted backwoodsmen, but worked confidently as citizens of a larger, international artistic world.)

Searches of WorldCat and NUC Pre-1956 locate only one U.S. institutional holding (at Villanova, this country's oldest Augustinian foundation).

•  Palau 266890.   Contemporary vellum, spine with early inked title; vellum wrinkled and moderately dustsoiled, back outer corners damaged with loss, one tie partially intact. Early inked inscription on title-page verso, lined through and illegible and showing through; title-page tipped back in and, like several others, with edge chips or tears from margins; two leaves torn at inner margins with loss of several words, one leaf torn largely across without loss, last leaf with loss of a few words of text at lower outer corner. Small area of worming to upper outer corners of most leaves, touching a very few shouldernotes but not otherwise affecting text; last few leaves with worming in lower inner margins, affecting a few letters on some pages; captions mostly shaved (but not shaved away) by the binder's knife. One signature separated. Portrait torn halfway across, well repaired some time ago, with chips from outer and lower margins just reaching edge of plate (not image). Pages age-toned with mostly-light spotting. A somewhat battered but still respectable survivor, with the plate addition being particularly intriguing.  (29118)

Rare: WorldCat locates only two copies in the U.S.

An important source on the social and artistic life of Lima in the decade following the Tupac Amaru rebellion.

•  John Carter Brown Library, Catalogue, 1493-1800, III,324; Medina, Lima, 1697; Sabin 73902; Vargas Ugarte, Impresos peruanos, 2546.   Contemporary limp vellum with late, neatly inked title on spine. Some foxing. Plate lacking lower half and small portion of upper one; a handsome skeleton (memento mori) archer is the focus of what remains. Bookplate sometime removed; rubber-stamps on several pages, including title, reading (yes, in English), “Bought of F. Perez Velasco October 1912.”  (25771)

The book is illustrated with 100 engraved plates and numerous in-text engravings, as well as a frontispiece map of the Holy Land in each volume. The plates are mostly figural illustrations taken from paintings in catacombs and on sarcophagi, illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, ivory figurines, murals, etc. The title-pages are printed in black and red ink, and decorated with an engraved vignette.

•  Publisher's red cloth, stamped in gilt on the spines and front covers. Spines sunned and front cover of vol. II slightly sunned along fore-edge also; cloth of spines frayed at extremities and chipped in other places. Hinges (inside) of vol. I a little weak, stitching exposed; corners bumped with cloth damage; pages very shallowly bumped. Ex-library, with shelf labels on spines, institutional bookplates on front pastedowns, pressure-stamp to title-pages and one other page in each volume. Paper very good; pages clean and bright.  (24688)

Click the image for enlargement.

•  Medina, Mexico, 12092; Garritz, Impresos novohispanos, 5236.   Sewn, in plain wrappers, lacking the front one. A clean copy. (24850)

Single-click the image,
for an enlargement.

Seventeenth-century manuscripts from Oaxaca are rare in the marketplace.

•  Written in a clear clerical hand. Leaves separated from each other, but in very good condition.

For more MANUSCRIPTS,  click here.
For our MSS in SPANISH,
                  specifically:  Click here.

Click the image to the left
for an enlargement.

•  ESTC R36940; Wing (rev.) R2356A. On Russell, see: The Dictionary of National Biography. Unbound, spine delicately reinforced. Pages age-toned and creased, with a few tiny pinpoint holes. Tissue repair to tear from inner margin extending across both leaves, touching but not obscuring a few letters. P. 2 with numerals in an early inked hand in the outer margin.

Click the images for enlargements.

This work discusses his humility, obedience to the Agustinian rule and vows, and in part his work among the native population.

This second edition additionally contains Lucas Centeno's compilation of the documents relating to the reinterment of Fr. Basalenque's remains in the Convento de Santa María de Gracia in Valladolid (now Morelia), Mexico.

•  Sabin 75779; Palau 287455; Medina, BHA, 3996.   Contemporary limp vellum with remnants of ties. Rodent damage to binding (bits devoured especially at back cover fore-edge) and some nibbling to lower edge of closed book (not anywhere near the text). Clean, solid, unwormed copy.  (28616)

Neither Medina, nor Palau, nor Garritz, nor the cataloguer for the NUC Pre-1956 entry notes a plate as present. The engraved plate in our copy, which is signed “Araoz M.o,” shows St. Teresa kneeling in prayer in her garden. In the background are a lake or a river and a mountain. Christ is seen off to the right, emerging from a stand of trees near the water. In front of the saint are some flowers and other cultivated plants which are being watered by an irrigation system fed by a well; two symbolic doves and a yearning (or dedicated) heart also appear. Below the engraving is a quotation from Ecclesiastes that the saint used in her writings.

The engraver was Manuel de Aráoz, one of the first students of the Mexican Academy of Painting, a noted engraver, and later subdirector of the Academy's department of engraving.

•  Medina, Mexico, 10812; Palau 293431; Garritz 1569. On the engraver, see: Diccionario Porrúa de historia, biografía y geografía de México (5a ed.), I, 165.   Without the plain wrappers one expects. Three pin-type wormholes affecting some pages, including the plate, not offensively. Discoloration along inner margin of title-page; soiling affecting edges/margins variably; upper outer portions of title-leaf, last two text leaves, and final blank most affected. Ample-margined copy.  (27616)