In the year before her pen is silenced and less than three before she falls victim to the plague while caring for her sick Sisters, Sor Juana attests to a legal document concerning her convent’s economic investments. She was the nunnery’s contadora (bookkeeper). By way of horribly evocative contrast, opposite her signature on the facing page is that of Francisco Aguiar y Seijas, Archbishop of Mexico, the misogynist who caused her to give up her writing and quasi-secular ways.

Able to bully the most gifted member of his religious community only following the return to Spain of her last viceregal patron and protector, the Marquis de la Laguna, Aguiar y Seijas applied increasing pressure to Sor Juana and the prioress of her Hieronymite convent. It took him from 1688 until 1693 to put “la decima Musa” “in her place.”

Documents signed by the polymath Sor Juana are very rare and highly sought after; this one desirably shows the trust her Sisters placed in her. The pairing of her signature with her arch enemy's is chilling and visually impactful.

•  In very good condition.

Bearing signatures, among others, of Pedro Buitrago, Narciso Dulón, Eusebio Gutiérrez, M. de la Cruz Méndez, José M. Dalence, and Manuel Sagarnaga.

•  Very good condition. Two small tears at folds, not affecting text.

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•  Stitched.

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Writer Carrera:  From one of the leading families of Chile, José Miguel Carrera led the successful coup de etat of 15 November 1811 that overthrew the Junta de Gobierno that was established in the political void after the capture of the king of Spain. As sole leader of the nation he created the first Chilean constitution, designed the first Chilean flag and coat of arms, and was responsible for bringing the first printing press to Chile. Disagreement with the Lautaro Lodge of the Masons led to his overthrow by Bernardo O’Higgins and the rift never healed, eventually leading to Carrera’s exile in Argentina, the U.S., and later Uruguay. His brothers fell into the hands of O’Higgins who had them executed.

Recipient Didier:  Henry Didier was the godfather of Edgar Allan Poe’s older brother, William Henry; he was to take the boy into his home for some years, though accounts differ as to whether this happened immediately after the death of the Poe children's parents (1811) or after the death of their guardian grandfather (1816). He ran a counting house in Baltimore and William Henry worked there as a young man. Though the Poe brothers' intimacy varied due to circumstances over the years, clearly Edgar knew Didier; he would surely have visited his brother at the Didier house.

On Uruguay:  “Las cosas continuan en el mismo estado. Los Portugueses no han recivido refuerzo despues de los 500 Pernambucanos. Artigas se mantiene firme, esta guarnicion no se mueve. El Rey ha escrito para que el Gobierno de Buenos Ayres se desida.”

On Argentina: “Buenos Ayres continua tranquilo, está entretenido en la eleccion del nuevo cavildo que se verificará a fines del presente.”

On Peru:  “En el Perú no hay novedad considerable. [L]os españoles tienenel aquella costa 11 buques de guerra, inclusas dos de 44, pero esto no estorbó al Berg.n chileno el Aguila. . . . No pasa de 9000 veteranos el Ex[erci]to en aquel pais, aseguran que llegando los buques de guerra de Estados Unidos piensan atacar a Arequipa y seguir a Lima; no lo creo por ahora.”

On O’Higgins: “O’Higgins sigue mandando el Ex[erci]to y Brayer es sus m[ay]or gene]ral. — Pueyrredon ha mandado a esta un comisionado para que alcance de Leon que se me eche de aqui; Leon constante en su amistad y systema se negó despresiando al comisionado.”

On Prisoners: “Mi viejo Padre, 85 años de edad, ha estado incomunicado 17 dias, y ultimamente sigue su arresto en casa. . . . Mis hermanos presos aun, y lo mismo muchos de nuestros compatriotas. . . . Mr. Handle continua en su prision con todos sus oficiales y tripulacion.”

•  Very good condition. Written in a very clear hand.  (24646)

Clavijo did not know how to write so Pedro Arias signed for him.

•  Very good conditon. Written in a clear, easy-to-read hand.  (27601)

The original publication was so rare that Medina never knew of it.

•  Sewn in contemporary plain wrappers; one marginal pin-type wormhole touching (but not compromising) three notes only. Written in a very clear hand.  (30378)

The document we here offer is a cabildo (i.e., town council) act. Bernal Díaz served as a member of the cabildo of Santiago de Guatemala for a number of years, an honor bestowed on him as a conqueror and early settler of the region. In this document the cabildo acknowledges receipt of a royal decree, reads it verbatim into its minutes, and formally agrees to comply. The king writes that he is informed that the post of notary public and "del número" in Santiago is vacant because Juan Núñez de Soria, who held the royal appointment to that position, "is gone to Our kingdoms of Peru." On the advice of the Royal Audiencia (i.e., High Court) the king appoints Juan de Rojas to be notary public and "del número."

•  The document is housed in a red half morocco slipcase with an internal corset. Six small wormholes in each leaf affect one or two letters each, but not the signature of Bernal Díaz.

MEXICO is one of our great specialties.
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•  Very good condition. Sewn.

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This also appears in the HISPANIC
                      MISCELLANY — click here.

The Comunero Revolt in Argentina (ca. 1723–35) was a prolonged episode of uprising against the colonial government by residents in northeastern Argentina (Corrientes) and an adjacent part of Paraguay who felt marginalized by the Jesuit domination of the Guarani Indian labor pool and the Society of Jesus’s near monopoly of the yerba mate and tobacco trade with Buenos Aires.

•  Very good condition. Margins a little irregular; paper a little rumpled. Written in a clear, easy to read hand.  (24647)

This is the file relating to that chaplaincy and its various holders during the first 100 years of its existence. It also contains a detailed listing of the lands and messuages of the hacienda and their value as of March 1748, and a certain amount of information about the development of the hacienda in the years prior to 1748.

•  Sewn, dusty, tattered, incomplete at end. Written in a variety of easy-to-read hands. Some tears. Now housed in a simple phase box.

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Click the image to the left
for an enlargement.

•  Written in a small notarial hand and slightly difficult to read. All edges tattered with some loss of paper and of an occasional word or end of word, not impairing sense.

•  Written in a very clear hand, with the paper and wax seal below the king’s signature (wax desicated and paper loose, but present). Two blank leaves at end. Very good condition.

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The first audiencia was established in Santo Domingo in 1508 with others springing up as the Spaniards discovered and settled North and South America. The Audiencia of Guatemala came into existence on 20 November 1542 through the New Laws and had a troubled and peripatetic beginning: The documents that compose this collection do not deal with things quite as dramatic as either the judicial insanity or the big-time smuggling of those earliest years, but they do, nonetheless, document various unstudied aspects of the presidencies of Dr. Alonso Criado de Castilla (1598-1611), Don Antonio Pérez Ayala Castilla y Rojas (1611-26), and Dr. Diego de Acuña (1626-33). The royal cedulas fall into three broad categories: requests for information, demands for action, and orders ending existing practices.

An example of the Crown's requests for information is a decree of 4 December 1601. The king would sometimes receive complaints that were best handled extrajudicially, often involving political activities of clerics, over whom the civil and criminal courts did not have jurisdiction and with whom, the authorities felt, the ecclesiastical courts would deal ineffectively. In one case, the governor of Honduras had complained to the king that the dean of the church in Comayagua was disrupting attempts to recruit men for the defense of the port of Trujillo: The king, investigating, expects that the audiencia's information will be unbiased because of its physical and emotional distance from Honduras and its local politics and squabbling.

Another, much more ominous, request was handed down on 28 June 1621. The king has "discovered" that "foreigners" are living in the New World. Since they are there illegally, he wants a list of them and correlated inventories of their possessions and land holdings. This was the beginning of the oppression of Portuguese settlers who had moved to the New World during the "Babylonian captivity" of Portugal by Spain.

The royal demands for action were usually grants of royal patronage or largesse. On 10 July 1600 the king orders the audiencia to administer the terms of his decree granting a one-time-only gift of money to the cathedral in Santiago, and on 4 July 1601 he orders the court to give the mission church in Trinidad de Sonsonate a chalice and a bell.

The Crown was fully aware that the physical distance between it and its New World provinces would result in the development of local customs and practices, and to a l arge extent it tolerated these deviations from "the norm." For example, on 31 May 1600, Felipe III officially accepts the local custom of the audiencia's appointing the majordomo of the Royal Hospital. But at other times the Crown felt put upon and ordered the end of "local practices." On 12 December 1619 the king orders the audiencia to stop subdividing encomiendas and parcelling the subsections out as parts of government pensions.

The documents in this remarkable collection are unpublished.  They are an important unused source for the history of the high court during the first quarter of the 17th century. Through them we find out what the "local customs" of patronage and of usurpation of royal prerogative were. Through the reiteration of previously issued decrees we discover which decrees the court was ignoring, using the famous doctrine of "obedezco pero no cumplo." Through these decrees we glimpse royal patronage and royal displeasure.

•  Clarence H. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America, pp. 126, 75-76, and 113-14; Murdo J. MacLeod, Spanish Central America, pp. 390-91, on the audiencia's earliest years. The decrees have been very carefully removed from a bound volume and, now stored in Mylar sleeves, are housed in a blue cloth slipcase with blue morocco spine labels. This major source for the study of the Royal Audiencia of Guatemala is in very good condition.