Apr 16, 2019 - Sale 2505

Sale 2505 - Lot 262

Price Realized: $ 4,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(MEXICAN IMPRINT--1619.) Edict by the Mexican Inquisition in opposition to Saint Teresa of Ávila. Letterpress broadside, 15 1/2 x 12 1/4 inches, signed by inquisitors Juan Gutiérrez Flores, Francisco Bazán de Albornoz, and Juan de la Paraya, with embossed paper seal, long manuscript note on verso; minor worming, two small holes from ink burn in a signature, slight loss at two corners. Mexico, 10 April 1619
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This edict relates to Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582), a popular but controversial Spanish mystic. She was the granddaughter of a marrano (a Jewish man forcibly converted to Christianity). The reforms she introduced to the Carmelite order and her ecstatic visions were seen as a threat to the established Catholic order. In 1617, decades after her death, she was named as a patron saint of Spain by the Spanish legislature. This edict by the Inquisition not only disavows her status as patroness--it orders that any written reference to her appointment must be handed in to the Inquisition, under penalty of excommunication. The text begins "Nos los inquisidores contra la heretica pravedad y apostasia en la Ciudad de Mexico . . . a todos los vezinos, y moradores." It reads in part "Hazemos saber, que al servicio de Dios nuestro Señor convieve recoger los escritos, tratados, y papeles, que hasta aora se an escrito concernientes al nombramieto que hizo el Reyno de Castilla de Patrona a la Beata Madre Theresa de Jesus. . . . Prohibimos, que de aqui a delante ninguna persona de qualquier grado, o condicion que sea, escriva, ni publique papeles en esta materia; ni los Impressores se atrevan a imprimirlos." The note on verso confirms that this edict was received and read at the Convent of San Geronimo of Mexico. One copy in OCLC and not in Medina, Mexico; no other examples traced at auction.