3 2IO W77 m I N to BANCROFT LIBRARY THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA i ::: ••i EARLY MEXICAN PRINTERS a Hetter FROM GEORGE PARKER WINSHIP Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/earlymexicanprinOOwinsrich A EARLY MEXICAN PRINTERS. X FIFTY COPIES PRINTED ON THIS PAPER, FOR THE MEMBERS OF €^t €lub Of (B^ri ^olumeg* February, 1899. EARLY MEXICAN PRINTERS ^ iCetter FROM GEOEGE PARKER WLNSHIP Reprintkd fkom the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical, Society, January 12, 1899 CAMBRIDGE 1899 X a. / o BANCROFT LIBRARY EARLY MEXICAN PRINTERS. Providence, December 24, 1898. My dear Dr. Green, — The accompany ing descriptions of eighteen books, printed in British America in the seventeenth century, which are not mentioned in your Lists nor in that of Mr. Paine, are taken from copies in the John Carter Brown Library or in the Harris ^^^ Collection of American Poetry in the Brown University Library. ^:^ The earliest American imprint, — using the word in its more general sense, — in Mr. Brown's library is the Dotrina Breue of 1543-44, a religious manual prepared by Bishop Zumarraga, the first official head of the church in Mexico, "in plain language for the common people." / The imprint of this volume reads: Impssa e la misma ciudad d* Mexico por su madado y a su costa. Alio d' M. dxliij ; " printed in y^^ Mexico by direction and at the expense of Bishop Zumarraga in 1543." This statement on the title is supplemented by the colophon, which -^ says that the work was completed June 14, 1544 : Acabo se de imprimir a . xiiij. dias del mes de Junio : del ano de. M. d. quare ta y qtro alios. The volume consists of eighty-four small quarto leaves, printed in gothic type. S! Garcia Icazbalceta, in his admirable Bibliografia Mexicana del Siglo XVI, printed in Mexico in 1886, mentions three earlier American imprints, of which there is reason to suppose that copies are still in existence. The earliest of these was printed in Mexico in 1539, according to a very circumstantial description of the book in the well- known volume of Cartas de Indias, issued by the Spanish Government, from the office of the Ministerio de Fomento, in 1877, page 787. Un- fortunately, the whereabouts of an original copy from which this de- scription could have been taken, has been as yet successfully concealed or forgotten. Of the next earliest surviving product of the Mexican press, two leaves are all that are known. These clearly formed the end, the last three pages, of a Manual de Adultos printed in 1540. They have been reproduced in facsimile from the originals in the library of the late D. Pascual de Gayangos, in the privately printed Introduccion de la Imprenta en America^ translated by S'. M. R. Zarco del Valle from Harrisse's Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima. They are also given in S' Icazbalceta's Bihliografia, from a photolithograph made by his son, S''. D. Luis Garcia Pimentel, the present possessor of his magnificent library. The third is an account of the terrible Guatemala earthquake of 1541, which was printed in Mexico very shortly after its occurrence. A copy of this is supposed to exist in Madrid. The Dotrina printed in the spring of 1544 was the first of a series of tractates edited by Bishop Zumdrraga, which were issued during that year. These works, each of which is in Mr. Brown's library, com- prised the Tripartito of Dr. Juan Gerson, which contains the first woodcut known to have been printed, although not necessarily made, in America ; the Compendio Breve of Dionisio Richel, in two editions, one of which is undated ; and the Dotrina Cristiana of Fr. Pedro de Cordoba. During the succeeding years, additions were made to this series, and of these this library has the Doctrina Cristiana of 1546, and the Regla Christiana Breve of 1547. Two other books printed in America before 1550 are also represented here. One is a fragment of a work in the Mexican language, lacking both beginning and end, so that there is nothing except the internal evidence of type and press work to establish its date. Sr Icazbalceta assigned it, after careful examination and comparison, to the year 1548 or thereabouts. The other, of which no copy was known when the BihUografia was pub- lished, is a Copilacion breue de vn tratado de sant Buenauentura que se llama : Mistica theologia . . . impresso . . . Mexico : en casa de Juan pablos. Acabo se de imprimir a xxiij. dias del mes de Hebrero. Afio de nra saluacio de. M. d. y quarenta y nueue aiios. (23 February 1549.) A dictionary of the Spanish and Mexican languages which was com- piled by Fr. Alonso de Molina, and printed in 1555, is perhaps the best known of American incunabula. This work has long enjoyed a reputation for extreme rarity, and although a number of copies have appeared in auction and bookseller's catalogues, there is hardly one of these which is not described as showing all the signs of continued hard usage, resulting in the destruction of considerable portions of the original volumes. Only one complete copy has been reported, and this was made up from two imperfect copies. Mr. Brown's perfect copy is preserved in what appears to be a contemporary American binding of wood covered with decorated leather. The Molina Dictionary pos- sesses much more than a mere bibliographic interest, in that it is the foundation for all study of the native speech of the Mexican aborigines. Of equal linguistic value, and of greater actual rarity, is the Dictionary in the Tarascan language of Michuacan, prepared by Fr. Maturino Gilberti and published in 1559. This Franciscan friar was one of the most productive and oue of the most trustworthy of the early mission- aries who devoted themselves to the study of the speech of the natives among whom they labored. The great rarity of his works is easily accounted for by the usage to which they must have been put by the pupils in the missionary colleges and schools for whom they were printed. Mr. Brown has, besides the Dictionary of 1559, the Arte de la legxia de Michuaca and the Thesoro Spiritval, both printed in 1558, together with the enlarged edition of the latter published in 1575. He has also the Dialogo de Doctrina, a folio volume of some six hun- dred pages, the largest product from the shop of Mexico's first printer, who was engaged upon it during the first five mouths of 1559. This set of Gilberti's works is supplemented by three manuscript volumes, written by him, or by a scribe at his dictation, containing a portion of a dictionary in Tarascan and a number of sermons in that language. The earliest American printed code of laws, the Ordenagas y copi- lacion de leyes published by " the good viceroy '' D. Antonio de Men- doza in 1548, is represented by an edition which formed one of an interesting series of reprints of early works on Mexican history which were issued in the form of feuilletons with the Mexican newspaper La Sistema Postal during the spring of 1880. This code was followed in 1556 by the important Constituciones del Argohispado y prouincia de la muy ynsigne y muy leal ciudad de Tenuxtitla Mexico, which concerned the populace almost as much as any purely civil ordinances. Puga's Cedulario or collection of royal orders directed to the government of New Spain, was printed in 1563. This volume is a most valuable source of materials for the study of the Spanish domination in America. Its aggravating omissions and blundering misprints in names and dates render it an unsafe reliance in studying the period preceding its appear- ance. During the succeeding decades, however, it was the standard handbook for the administrators and the legislators of Spanish Mexico, and their actions, except for such supplementary legislation as came to their attention, were based upon its pages. As so often happens, the fame of this volume and its reputed rarity have led to the discovery of a considerable number of copies of the original edition. The most splendid product of the Mexican press, a volume whose pre-eminence has been challenged only two or three times during the three and a half centuries which have passed since its publication, is the Missale Romanum Ordinarium, printed in the city of Mexico in 1561. It is a magnificent folio volume of 330 leaves, printed in red and black, with historiated initials and occasional woodcut borders, and the necessary musical notations. The establishment of a printing press in America was determined upon, in all probability, at one of the frequent conferences held in Spain during the winter of 1533-34, between the viceroy-elect and the iDishop-elect of New Spain, Don Antonio de Mendoza and Fray Juan de Zumarraga. Negociations were entered into with a leading Sevillian printer, Juan Cromberger, who agreed to organize a branch of his establishment in the city of Mexico. Type and press were selected and shipped to Vera Cruz, most probably on the spring voyage of 1536. It is supposed that Juan Pablos, a native of Brescia in Lombardy, accompanied the outfit as Cromberger's representative, and that he took charge of the American branch of the business. He may have had with him as an assistant, Esteban Martin, whose name appears on the town records of Mexico as an applicant for citizenship in 1539, with the de- scriptive appellation " iniprimidor." This is several years earlier than the first recorded mention of Pablos. As soon as the press was in running order in the New World, it was found that the supply of paper brought from Spain was barely sufficient for the official circulars, announcements, and similar work of transient but instant importance. This is presumably the reason why one or possibly two religious manuals in the native language were the only productions, of sufficient size to be called books, which were printed prior to the surviving publications already mentioned. A similar difficulty, due to the distance from the source of supply, appar- ently arose during the printing of the Missale of 1561. An examination of different parts of that volume shows that the stock of red ink gave out while the volume was on the press, and rather than submit to the long delay before a fresh importation from Europe could arrive, the printer probably attempted to manufacture something which would supply the deficiency. This, at least, is the most plausible explanation of the noticeable deterioration and the varying quality of the red with which the later pages of the work were printed. Juan Cromberger died in 1540, but his American establishment con- tinued for four years to issue its works " from the house of Cromberger." In 1542, his heirs secured a renewal or an enrollment of their privileges, by which they were entitled to charge a quarter of a real for each printed sheet, and to receive an allowance of one hundred per cent upon all books imported from Europe, in consideration for the main- tenance of their press in the New World. But the Mexican office, de- prived of the oversight and direction of the Sevillian master printer, appears to have deteriorated to some extent in the years following his death. The prompt supply of paper from Europe was neglected, resulting in the temporary stoppage of the press in Mexico, and other signs show that the business suffered from the absence of active inter- ested management. As a result of these circumstances, the heirs of Cromberger were induced to exchange their printing plant for other forms of American investment, and the type and press became the property of Juan Pablos. The negociations must have lasted over three years, from the end of 1544, when Cromberger's name appeared for the last time in an American imprint, until 1548, when that of Pablos was used for the first time. In the interim, such books as the latter printed were published without the name of the printer. For ten years Pabhos, whose Italian name may have been Paoli, con- ducted the business without a rival. During this period he published twenty-five volumes which have survived to the present day. These included, besides the linguistic works used by the missionaries and their pupils, a number of treatises, among which were four very learned works from the pen of Fr. Alonso de la Vera Cruz, for use in the newly organized University of Mexico. One of these volumes, the Latin *' Dialogues" written by Cervantes Salazar in 1554, which have been reprinted with a Spanish translation by S^ Icazbalceta, contains an ex- tremely interesting description of the new University, as well as of other portions of the city of Mexico. In the colophon to another of his volumes, the Constituciones del Argohispado^ Pablos stated that this was " printed by Juan Pablos of Lombardy, the first printer in this large, magnificent and very loyal city of Mexico, 10 February 1556." This statement is the principal authority for supposing that Pablos came from Spain in 1536 in charge of Cromberger's establishment. The publishing business seems to have been a profitable one, for in 1558 Antonio de Espinosa, a citizen of Mexico, presented himself before the Spanish court with a petition in which he begged that the exclusive privileges granted to Pablos by the Viceroys might be annulled, on the ground that this monopoly stifled competition and so prevented the Mexicans from securing as good work as might and should be done in the New World, and that the prices for printing were maintained at an excessive figure. Espinosa appears to have had friends at court, for an order was promptly issued in which the viceroy was directed to abolish the monopoly, declaring that the trade of printing should thenceforth remain free and open to anyone who desired to follow it, as was the case in Spain. Further instructions accompanied this order, directing the viceroy to provide a suitable estate for Espinosa, to include a town lot on which he could erect his printing house, and to assist him in any other ways which might advance the interests of the new establishment. Espinosa's name and printer's mark appeared for the first time on a Latin grammar by Pi Gilberti printed in 1559, the work being a dis- tinct improvement upon any of the productions of Pablos. This initial success was followed by a more serious undertaking, most admirably 10 accomplished, the splendid Missale Romanum^ which was completed in September, 1561. Espinosa continued for fifteen years to print many of the most interesting and most important works published in the New World. The name of Pablos appeared for the last time on a book printed in 1560. Three years later, the type which he had used reappears on the pages of Puga's Gedulario, which was printed by Pedro Ocharte. Ocharte conducted this business for thirty years with considerable success. After Espinosa retired, in 1575, Ocharte probably bought at least the most important portion of his stock, including the type and wood blocks used in the Missale of 1561, for these reappear in the Psalterio and the Antiphonarium printed by Ocharte in 1584 and 1589. During the last two years of the century, the business was transferred to his son, Melchior Ocharte, who moved the establishment to the Franciscan college at Tlaltelolco Mexico, where he continued to issue school books, religious tracts, and other approved publications, well into the seventeenth century. Pedro Balli's name first appears as the printer of a book printed in 1574, the year preceding the retirement of Espinosa. His shop con- tinued in active operation until 1600, the most important issues being linguistic works, none of which possess any especial typographic interest. Italy furnished the first printer for South, as for North America. Antonio Ricardo of Turin, whose name at home may have been Ricci- ardi, set up a press in Mexico, next the Jesuit college of Saints Peter and Paul, during the year 1577. He printed one or two noteworthy volumes, but his time was chiefly occupied in providing text books for the pupils in the college under the supervision of their Jesuit instructors. Needless to say, almost none of these has survived. The two or three copies which are known have been brought to light since the publication of S' Icazbalceta's Bibliografia, through the researches of Dr. Nicolas Leon, the Mexican student of this generation who most nearly succeeds to S' Icazbalceta's position in the fields of bibliography and of history. In 1579, Ricardo removed his stock-in-trade to Peru, where he estab- lished at Lima the first American press outside of Mexico. I have been unable as yet to secure any good account of the works issued from his press or from those of his successors in the Southern Continent. Trusting that I have answered your queries satisfactorily, I am Very faithfully yours George Parker Winship. Hon. Samuel A. Green, LL.D., Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.