Molina, Alonso de:

$65,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

VOCABULARIO EN LENGUA CASTELLANA Y MEXICANA. Fray Alonso de Molina, a noteworthy Franciscan scholar, compiled the first dictionary in the New World and saw the first edition printed in Mexico in 1555. That is a legendary rarity. The present work is the second edition, and the first complete one, containing the second part, a Nahuatl-to-Spanish section that the first edition of this dictionary, consisting only of a Spanish-to-Nahuatl word list, did not have. This is the first edition that the Spaniards could have used, not only to speak with the Nahua peoples, but also to understand them. It is one of the most noteworthy and important works produced in the first generation of printing in the New World.Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, was the chief imperial tongue of pre-conquest Mexico. The Aztecs spread its use as they expanded out of central Mexico, conquering neighboring people after neighboring people. The Spanish religious scholars who arrived almost coevally with the Spanish military conquest of Mexico began studying Nahuatl as a medium of religious conquest, and spread its use even further than had the Aztecs. Various works, including catechisms, collections of sermons, and other doctrinal publications, were written and printed in Nahuatl. All are now rare and much sought after, but none are so rare and coveted as the works of the 16th century.Books printed in Mexico before 1601 are often labeled "Mexican incunables," and they represent some of the finest printing f

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