REVERENDI PATRIS FRATRIS BARTHOLOMAEI À LEDESMA ORDINIS PRÆDICATORUM ET SACRÆ THEOLOGIÆ PROFESSORIS DE SEPTEM NOVÆ LEGIS SACRAMENTIS SUMMARIUM. CUM INDICE LOCUPLETISSIMO

Mexico: Antonio de Espinosa, 1566.. [4],404,[16] leaves, with several woodcut illustrations and woodcut initials throughout. Small, thick quarto. Contemporary vellum, with yapp edges, remnants of vellum ties at fore-edge. Light wear and soiling to vellum, endpapers renewed. Small marca de fuego on top edge. Moderate wear to initial leaves, moderate worming in lower corner and occasionally along lower margin, all expertly repaired, slightly affecting only a few printed marginalia and catchwords. Light tanning and occasional foxing. A very good copy, overall. A very rare, complete, and substantial example of early Mexican printing. This work was produced and published by Antonio de Espinosa, the second printer in the New World after Juan Pablos, and is one of the most considerable efforts of his career in Mexico. Espinosa was brought to Mexico by Juan Pablos as an assistant and type cutter in 1550, and he eventually broke Pablos' monopoly and began printing for himself in 1559. The present work, printed in 1566, is one of only a handful produced in Mexico during that decade, and is one of the initial books of the Mexican incunable period.

The text itself is the first edition of a religious work by Bartholomé de Ledesma explicating church sacraments in great detail, later reprinted in Salamanca in 1585. The work is split into six parts. The first discusses the sacraments generally, and the ensuing five treat individual sacraments in depth. Ledesma was a key figure in the early Mexican church, as a close advisor of the second Archbishop in the New World, Alonso de Montúfar, and the chair of theology at the nascent University of Mexico (founded in 1551). He was also one of the foremost proponents of book censorship and prohibition in New Spain, and vigorously investigated private libraries and booksellers for forbidden materials, and was responsible for the destruction of many volumes. He later became the Bishop of Oaxaca, a position in which he served until his death in 1604.

Overall, the work is a fine example of the sophistication which Espinosa brought to early Mexican printing. The titlepage contains a fine coat of arms (that of Archbishop Montúfar), and the section on marriage sacraments includes several finely executed woodcut diagrams of consanguinity. The text is printed elegantly in a Roman type, which Espinosa had introduced to New World printing, with printed marginal notes in italic and woodcut initials throughout. Below the colophon is an excellent example of Espinosa's printer's device, the first used on any book produced in the Americas. In his 1940 census of Mexican imprints, Wagner located twelve copies of this work, and over seventy-five years later OCLC adds only three more. It appears just four times in auction records, of which one copy was incomplete.

A rare, desirable Americanum, printed by the second printer in the New World, and one of the earliest Mexican incunabula still obtainable. ICAZBALCETA 47. MEDINA, MEXICO 50. PALAU 134124. SABIN 39677. WAGNER, NUEVA BIBLIOGRAFIA MEXICANA 47.