[Mexican Incunabula]:

$40,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

ESTATVTOS GENERALES DE BARCELONA, PARA LA FAMILIA CISMONTANA, DE LA ORDEN DE NUESTRO SERAPHICO PADRE S. FRANCISCO.... An important, early, and very scarce Mexican imprint, publishing the rules and regulations of the Franciscan order, first established in 1541 at Barcelona, here printed as they were revised at Toledo in 1583. Among other things, the new statutes formalized a prohibition on those of Jewish ancestry serving in the order. The final section of the book contains provisions particular to Franciscan activities in colonial possessions, as well as an index of new rules. The Franciscans arrived in New Spain almost simultaneously with Cortés, and were actively proselytizing from the very outset of the Spanish conquests. The work was produced by Pedro Ocharte, third printer of the New World, who took over the press of the first printer, Juan Pablos, in 1563.Sabin calls this work "excessively rare." Wagner's 1940 census of early Mexican imprints located nine institutional copies; seventy-five years later, OCLC locates six. It appears only twice in auction records.A significant and elusive imprint from the Mexican incunabular period.

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