Title: Early printed books on religion from colonial Spanish America, 1543/44-c. 1800
Description: In colonial Spanish America, the publishing output was dominated by doctrinal and devotional works, confessionals, hymnals, and saints’ lives. The British Library collection comprises 413 works from this period, the majority of which are from Mexico and Peru.

"Mexican Press. The Emperor Charles V readily agreed to the request of the first Bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga, to set up a printing press, and printers were installed there probably by the mid-1530s. Zumárraga argued that a press would be vital in the important task of converting the indigenous population to Christianity. The earliest surviving Mexican imprint is indeed a doctrinal work: Zumárraga’s own Dotrina breve … de las cosas que pertenecen a la fe catholica (1543/44). It was printed by Giovanni Paoli (in Spanish, Juan Pablos), an Italian from Brescia, who had signed a contract with the Seville printer Juan Cromberger to print on his behalf in Mexico. Press in Peru. The same evangelizing motive prompted the establishment of a press in Peru. The second Peruvian imprint, and the first full-length book, was a trilingual (Spanish, Quechua, Aymara) catechism printed in Lima in 1584. The book – Doctrina christiana, y catecismo para instruccion de los Indios – was printed by another Italian, Antonio Ricardo, who had worked in Mexico from 1577 until 1580. The earliest presses in the Viceroyalty of La Plata were set up in the early 1700s in the Jesuit missions to assist in the evangelization of the indigenous people. During the colonial period, the publishing output in Spanish America was dominated by doctrinal and devotional works, confessionals, hymnals, saints’ lives - indeed the whole range of religious material.

"The British Library collection. The British Library collection comprises more than 400 works from this period, the overwhelming majority of which are from Mexico and Peru. The collection includes a copy of the earliest surviving book published in Mexico, and copies of three of the first four Peruvian imprints. It also includes a liturgy printed in 1721 at the Jesuit mission of Loreto in present-day Argentina, and an explanation of the catechism in Guarani, printed at the mission of Santa María la Mayor. The output of the prolific late eighteenth-century press of the Niños Expósitos in Buenos Aires is well represented. There are also examples of the few books known to have been printed in Guatemala, Chile, Ecuador, and Cuba. A recent acquisition – A short abridgement of Christian doctrine (Mexico, 1787) – is one of just three known copies of the first book in English printed in Spanish America. The collection is thus hard to parallel in any other library in the world. Provenance. A great many of the British Library’s copies of Mexican and Peruvian imprints were purchased at major auction sales in Europe during the nineteenth century, notably those of José María Andrade (1869), Father Agustín Fischer (1869) and in 1880 José Fernando Ramírez, who had been appointed first minister of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico"--Booklet, p. 4.
Subjects: Church history, Religion, Spanish American literature, Early printed books, Imprints, Early works to 1800, History, Catalogs, Catholic Church, British Library
Places: South America, Latin America, Mexico, Peru
Time periods: 18th century, 17th century, 16th century, To 1800