Click the image at right for an enlargement.

The text is mostly in Latin, with portions in Spanish; the printer has made use of nicely cut head- and tailpieces as well as a striking woodcut printer’s vignette (“De forti dulcedo”) on the red and black title-page. RLIN and OCLC show only two U.S. holdings of this edition.

Provenance: Front free endpaper with bookplate of Michael J. O’Farrell, the first Bishop of the Diocese of Trenton; also with bookplate noting O’Farrell’s gift of the book to an institution.

•  Palau 103253. Contemporary limp vellum, cockled and lightly soiled, with ties now lacking; spine with faded inked title. Title-page dusty, thin, and holed, with lower outside corner torn away, touching one letter and a red rule; date altered to 1601 by erasure of the first “C” in the roman-numeralled date! Leaves browned, foxed; instances of early inked marginalia and blots. Uncommon, as well as interesting for its contemporary use and its later provenance.

Click the images for enlargements.

Offered here is a circular letter that the Holy Office sent all over New Spain saying that it had been a long time since there had been a General Inquisitorial “Visit,” and that consequently many law breakers are going unpunished. The Inquisitors call on everyone, no matter status or social condition, to denounce the following categories of criminals: Jews, Muhammadans, Lutherans (i.e., Protestants), “alumbrados,” abusers of the confessional, bigamists, astrologers and necromancers, witches and warlocks, devil worshippers, collectors of astrology and witchcraft books, peyote and marijuana users, and a number of other specified offenders and heretics. Tips on how to “spot” the various malefactors are given in detail and there are extended explanations of why the offenses are serious.

The explanations were undoubtedly given as a balm to ease the consciences of those worried about “turning in” a friend, neighbor, or relative. In the 1770s and 1780s the power and influence of the Inquisition in Mexico was at a very low ebb, and, indeed, it was on the verge of being suppressed. This publication shows just how desperate the institution was to justify itself.

Very rare.  Medina did not know of this and we only trace copies to the John Carter Brown and Cushing (TAMU) libraries. Our dating of the piece is based on the typography, the paper, the historiated initial on p. 1, the very large woodcut device of the Holy Office that appears above the beginning of the text, and most importantly, the in-text manuscript date of 1713 in the copy at the Cushing Library.

This copy bears a manuscript completion date of 14 November 1807, showing clearly that a large remainder of this early-18th-century printing was available a century later for reissue at a time when the earlier concerns had resurfaced.

•  Not in Medina, Mexico; nor González de Cossío, Cien; nor González de Cossío, 510.   Light to noticeable waterstaining in margins, darkest in upper margins of last two leaves. Tattering in blank margins. Silverfish damage to verso of last leaf causing weakness of paper, repaired with archival tissue (not obscuring or touching any text).  A good+ copy.  (24696)

This is the first time that the “provincias internas” would have representation in Mexico City!

Rare. We find no copy in OCLC.

•  Not in Streeter, Texas; not in Sutro.   Very nice copy with two short fold tears.  (24528)

Published at a critical period in America's commercial history, this work presents the then prevailing international law on such matters as shipwreck, salvage, abandonment, blockages, embargoes, delivery, demurrage, and neutrality, to mention just a few topics.

Bound with Lancellotti's work is a summary of titles of chapters of canon law compiled by Thomas Naogeorg (1508–63). Naogeorg's wanderings took him from being a Dominican to being a Lutheran to being a Calvinist. Along the way, during his Lutheran phase, he studied canon law for a year (1551) at Basel, during which time he compiled and published this work, likely as a student's guide. He is better known for his plays, in which he sharply attacks the Papacy.

The two works here were first published by the firm of Guillaume Rouillé, in 1587 and 1588 respectively, and may have been intended to be bound together, as witnessed by the Library of Congress copy. The title-page transcriptions of the earlier editions (except for the date and "hæredes"), and their signatures, pagination, and arrangement, match those of these present 1614 editions. There are italic shouldernotes, and woodcut headpieces and initials.

•  On Lancellotti, see: New Catholic Encyclopedia, VIII, 356. 17th-century calf; covers gilt-ruled; gilt spine. Abraded, corners bumped with leather lost, joints opening—yet this is a perfectly sound volume. All edges speckled brown. Bouquiniste's paper label on front pastedown and front free endpaper lacking. Two words inked long ago in two margins, and one page with old pencilled underlining.

Las Casas, the first great historian of the New World, arrived in Cuba in 1502 and spent most of the ensuing years in the Caribbean and Mexico until his return to Spain in 1547, so his arguments are based on personal observation and not on Aristotelian theory, as were Sepúlveda’s. He had witnessed first hand the destruction of the American Indian population via the diseases the Spaniards brought with them and through mistreatment and war, things he continually fought against as a priest. After his return to Spain and throughout his old age, he launched a series of attacks on Spanish policy. He engineered the publication of his arguments against Sepúlveda in a series of nine tracts printed in Seville in 1552 and 1553. The first, and most famous, of these tracts was the Brevissima relacion de la destruycion de las Indias, which describes the numerous wrongs inflicted upon the Indians, mainly in the Antilles.

This is first edition of Bartolomé de las Casas's third tract advocating the better treatment of Amerindians by the Spanish. In it he offers 20 detailed suggestions for the better treatment of the natives, including such basics as that they should be secure in their homes. He also flat out calls for the end of the encomienda system and for the placing of all Indians under the direct protection of the crown. All of the tracts are of great significance, both for their immediate effect in reforming the Spanish colonial system to some degree, and as an extremely early example of European concern with the human rights of native people.

The text is printed in gothic (i.e., “black letter”) as was the custom for “legal” and religious texts. The title-page is printed in red and black, with the text surrounded by a four-panel woodcut border.

Evidence of readership: A half dozen contemporary annotations and textual corrections.

•  Alden & Landis, European Americana, 552/9; Sabin 11229; Medina, BHA, 146. Church 89; JCB (3), I, 169; Index Aurel. 132.872; Palau 46942. Full modern deep claret-colored morocco. Round spine with raised bands, each of which is accented above and below by gilt beading. Gilt center devices in blank spine compartments, others with author and title information in gilt lettering. Covers tooled in gilt with rules and rolls forming concentric panels. Gilt corner devices. Marbled endpapers. Minor instances of soiling on title-page, two areas of verso of title-page reinforced. Minor age-toning and soiling, top portion of a few leaves brown-stained. Lower corners of leaves c8 & f4 lacking, restored; nine letters supplied in manuscript facsimile on c8 and four on f4. Lacks final blank leaf. A good copy, untattered.

The present work is his famous “lamentation” on the desecration of pagan temples. Addressed to the Emperor Theodosius, the oration concerns the legality of the Emperor's order for the desecration; the text is in Greek and Latin in parallel columns. The Greek font is notably light and elegant.

At the rear of this volume is Godefroy's opuscule on funeral rites and ceremonies. Several libraries report both works being bound together, as here, but not all.

•  19th-century quarter brown leather, spine sunned much lighter. Library-bound with call number inked on cover, bookplates on front pastedown, rubber-stamps on pastedowns. Title-page with old pressure-stamp; text itself without other markings save a six-digit number neatly stamped at base of next leaf. Actually, a clean, good copy.  (22733)

According to the online cataloguing of this book at Brigham Young University, “Early editions [were] burnt by [the] hangman in Denmark (1676); in Sweden (1679) . . . the possession of a copy meant a 1000 ducat fine. This edition was added to the Index of forbidden books in 1687.” It is often held today in medical libraries.

•  Graesse, I, 68.   17th-century speckled calf, spine gilt extra with gilt-stamped leather title-label; leather acid-pitted, front joint (outside) cracked, edges rubbed. Front pastedown with Parisian bookseller's ticket; front free endpaper with pencilled annotation; back pastedown with rubber-stamped date in 1908. Slip of old printed cataloguing laid in.  (23549)

•  Evans 29025; ESTC W29507; Sabin 44848. On Cobbett, see: The Dictionary of National Biography, XI, 142–45. Contemporary sheep, framed in blind tooling, spine with gilt-stamped title label; leather worn over edges and front joint fully open, spine showing some cracking and chipping. Front pastedown with inked ownership inscription dated 1839, also later pencilled inscription; front fly-leaf with a different inked ownership inscription. Scattered instances of minor spotting and offsetting.

•  Publisher's blue wrappers — front and back shown in our images. A few short tears. An excellent copy.  (24449)

•  Goldsmith’s Kress 8390. On Muratori, see: New Catholic Encyclopedia, X, 81. Contemporary vellum over paste boards with remnants of gilt label on spine; soiled, stained, and chipped with loss of top layer of vellum on rear cover and part of spine. Interior with light foxing, water- and other staining. Far from splendid, far from dead.

Click the interior image for enlargement.

•  Not in Adams.   Contemporary vellum with yapp edges and remnants of ties, spine with inked title: spots of staining, light soiling, and (on spine) traces of a paper label. Lightly age-toned with occasional light soiling. Early inked notations on front pastedown and title-page. Inked call number on title-page.  (11869)

Uncommon. Searches of OCLC, RLIN, and NUC Pre-1956 locate only three holdings, all in the U.S.

•  Recent marbled paper–covered boards, spine with printed paper label. Title information inked in an early hand on lower page edges; title-page with early inked ownership inscriptions. A few leaves browned; one leaf with short tear from outer margin, repaired some time ago and not touching text.

Rare: No copies traced via NUC Pre-1956, OCLC, and RLIN.

•  Recent wrappers. Some light waterstaining in upper margins and on inner edge of title-leaf. Shallow tears and chipping, not affecting impression.

This is the fifth edition with some additions to the observations and annotations. Each title-page has the printer’s device (a crownedsalamander  surrounded by flames). The text is printed in double-column format in roman and italic type with occasional woodcut initials and head- and tailpieces. The work also includes bibliographical references and indexes.

•  19th-century half-leather with textured paper sides; old library shelf-mark in white ink, to spine. Binding a little abraded. Some underscoring in text; some waterstaining in lower area of pages at end of vol. II. A good copy.

•  Highly uncommon pamphlet: The author, who identifies himself only as Publicola, responds indignantly to Giovanni Angelo Belloni’s defense of John Thomson’s actions relating to the failed Charitable Corporation. Thomson, who had fled to Rome to escape prosecution for fraud, apparently was attempting through Belloni to set conditions for the possible return of books and papers relevant to the Corporation; the British were outraged enough to have Belloni’s letter publicly burnt by the “Common Hangman.”

•  ESTC T225828. Recent marbled paper over light boards. Some pages very lightly spotted; edges untrimmed.

•  19th-century half sheep over marbled paper sides, with gilt-lettered black leather title label on spine. Binding rubbed, costing several gilt letters on spine label and leather of top compartment missing; pulled and chipped at base, joints open. Waterstains on initial pages, including title-page, and staining on endpapers. Text mostly clean. Ex-library with rubber-stamp on front pastedown and bottom edge; call number in pencil on verso of title-page. (20996)