?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
(MEXICO--1556.) Veracruz, Alonso de la. Speculum conjugiorem. Chart of consanguity on page 307, woodcut initials. 686 pages plus final blank. 4to, later vellum; title page in facsimile only, worming and water damage throughout with some loss of text, particularly to first few leaves, tastefully stabilized, small portion of leaves I-2 and 3 restored in facsimile, endpapers recycled from an 18th-century book; marcos de fuego on top and bottom edges. [México: Juan Pablos, 1556]
first edition of the first book on marriage written and published in the New World. It was printed by Juan Pablos, México's first printer, using type which had only recently been cut and cast by his assistant Antonio de Espinosa--the first italic type in America. Veracruz (1507-1584) was a leading Augustinian missionary and educator. "His best single contribution to the missions of Mexico . . . is the Speculum Coniugiorum, a book on moral theology, and especially the canon laws of matrimony, with the particular and very valuable purpose of providing a guide for solving the complicated cases concerning the newly converted Indians . . . The second part . . . discusses the nature and validity of marriage among the infidels of the New World and the nature of polygamy . . . The third part is composed of twenty articles on divorce"--Ennis, Fray Alonso de la Vera Cruz (1957), pages 67-72. García Icazbalceta 27; Medina, México 31; Palau 359149; Sabin 98919; Woodbridge, Printing in Colonial Spanish America, pages 12-13 (re Espinosa).
