Apr 27, 2017 - Sale 2444

Sale 2444 - Lot 334

Price Realized: $ 2,860
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
(MEXICO.) Advertencias para confesores nuevos. 28 manuscript pages. 4to, stitched; intermittent dampstaining, minor wear. [Mexico?], circa late 18th century

Additional Details

A manuscript guide for new priests on hearing confessions. It is well organized into 96 precepts under 20 chapters. Frequent reference to work among the Indians and a passing reference on the final page make this clearly a Mexican production. A papal bull of Pope Benedict XIV is cited on page 18, placing the date after 1740. The author may have been the Carmelite friar Juan de San Anastasio (1749-1800) of Pueblo--Valverde's 1907 "Bibliografía filosófica mexicana" mentions that he wrote an unpublished manuscript with this same title (page 23).
The work emphasizes the many types of penitents who may come to take confession, "ya abogado, ya un indio rudo, un muchacho, un mercador, una ramera, un lascivo, un ladron." Chapters are devoted to taking confessions from boys, and from women ("the friar must attract the woman to god, but not to themselves"). It distinguishes between "gente ruda e ignorante" (rude and ignorant people such as boys and Indians), and "gente ruin" (bad people), a class which could include bartenders, mulattos, negros, vagrants and lepers.