This content was created by Anonymous. The last update was by Hannah Alpert-Abrams.
Melchior Ocharte's Confessionario (1599)
1 2015-04-01T10:23:01-07:00 Anonymous 4358 4 Title page of the Confessionario en lengua mexicana y castellana. In Roman and Italic fonts, with a shield in the center identical to that of the Advertencias. / Text reads: *Confessionario* en lengua mexicana y castellana. ¶Con muchas advertencias muy necessarias para los Confessores. ¶Compuesto por el Padre Fray Ioan Baptista de la orden del Seraphico Padre Sanct Francisco, lector de Theologia en esta provincia del sancto Evangelio, y guardian del convento de Sanctiago Tlatilulco. [This is followed by a Franciscan shield in a circular, decorative frame. Image is divided in three parts; upper right shows two arms crossed with stigmata.] *Con privilegio* ¶En Sanctiago Tlatilulco, Por Melchior Ocharte. Año de. 1599. / Image from an exemplar held by the Benson Latin American Collection plain 2015-06-26T11:06:11-07:00 Hannah Alpert-Abrams 9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255This page has annotations:
- 1 2015-04-02T14:19:35-07:00 Hannah Alpert-Abrams 9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255 Melchior Ocharte Hannah Alpert-Abrams 3 plain 2015-04-02T14:21:10-07:00 Hannah Alpert-Abrams 9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255
This page has paths:
- 1 2015-12-12T15:59:28-08:00 Hannah Alpert-Abrams 9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255 Media Gallery Hannah Alpert-Abrams 4 Media from the "Archaeology of the Book" project structured_gallery 122976 2015-12-12T16:03:09-08:00 Hannah Alpert-Abrams 9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255
This page has tags:
- 1 2015-02-20T18:16:51-08:00 Hannah Alpert-Abrams 9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255 Title Page Hannah Alpert-Abrams 1 plain 2015-02-20T18:16:51-08:00 Hannah Alpert-Abrams 9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255
- 1 2015-02-23T13:52:01-08:00 Hannah Alpert-Abrams 9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255 Printing Hannah Alpert-Abrams 1 plain 2015-02-23T13:52:01-08:00 Hannah Alpert-Abrams 9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255
This page is referenced by:
-
1
2015-02-20T19:27:23-08:00
Path: Production
30
This path explores the narratives of production embedded in the material qualities of the Advertencias.
splash
137882
2015-10-01T20:55:32-07:00
In 1538, the Italian printer Juan Pablos arrived in Mexico with orders to establish a printing press. Pablos arrived with support from the Bishop Zumarraga and Viceroy Mendoza, in Mexico, and from the Cromberger publishing house, in Seville. The Manual de Adultos, which he printed in 1540, remains the oldest surviving text printed in the Americas.The following decades saw the rapid growth of the printing industry in Mexico and Peru. In 1558, Pablos' assistant Antonio de Espinosa went to Spain to obtain permission to break Pablos's monopoly; in his wake, printing houses were established by Pablos' son in law, Pedro Ocharte; Pedro Balli; Antonio Ricardo; Enrique Martinez, and Melchor Ocharte. In ~1580, observing the saturation of the market in Mexico City, Antonio Ricardo acquired patronage from the Jesuits to travel to Peru, where he established the first printing press in Lima.Printing operations in sixteenth-century Mexico were complex. Materials from metal type and wood-cuts to paper were originally acquired from Europe at great expense, though printers later developed the tools to produce materials in-house. Presses were ostensibly run by printers, but operations involved multiple workers, from female spouses to African slaves and European immigrants. Though recent scholarship has shown that the role of the inquisition in censoring early Mexican print production was relatively minimal, printers nonetheless had to deal with multiple regulatory offices and systems of hierarchy.This video (in Spanish) tells the story of a modern-day printing press based on the early colonial model.In this path we explore the production of the Advertencias through a close examination of its material record: title page and colophon, duplicate pages, excised phrases, and inconsistent catchwords. We hope that this exploration demonstrates the multiphonic quality of the printed book as a historical artifact. Though it may appear to be a single, coherent object in the shelf (or on the web), close examination reveals traces of the culturally complex scene of its production.
-
1
2015-05-05T13:21:51-07:00
Reading the Advertencias
9
Discussion of how the Advertencias has been read.
plain
2015-09-18T21:07:30-07:00
Though this project is primarily concerned with the social history of a work, the history of a book is always intertwined with the words that it contains. The purpose of this introduction to the Advertencias is to give a brief overview of the text of the Advertencias, explaining what it is about, who its intended audience may have been, and the role the book has played in modern scholarship.
The Advertencias para los confessores de los Naturales is a confessional manual: a book that aids in the administration of the sacrament of confession. First established among Christian practitioners between the third and seventh century, confession as a regular practice accompanied by penance was formally established between the twelfth and thirteenth century. After annual confession became obligatory in 1215, various summae were written to help guide this practice; the confessional manuals of subsequent centuries were vernacular variations on this model. They frequently guide the priest on an exploration of a penitent's soul, and call for instruction on the requirements for salvation (Christensen 162-3).
In his Nahuatl and Maya Catholicisms (2013), Mark Christensen explains that American confessional manuals were an important part of the process of indigenous indoctrination. Christensen identifies seventeen Nahuatl confessionals composed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, beginning with Alonso de Molina's 1565 manual (pictured above) and ending with an anonymous 1803 text. These manuals were distinguished, as Christensen describes, by both their style and their content. Written at least partially in indigenous languages, they employ a unique indigenous rhetoric. Their content, furthermore, frequently refers to unique local practices. In the Advertencias, for example, there is an extensive discussion about the theft of fruits from an orchard: if a native steals "unas Peras de un arbol, las quales su señor tenia guardadas para de ellas hazer un presente, como comunmente estos Naturales guardan sus frutillas," Bautista writes, he sins mortally (f14). The New World poses new problems for confessors; at the same time, we might observe that embedded in this religious discourse is the relation of cultural practices during a period of contact and conflict.Within this context, the Advertencias para los confessores de los naturales (Warnings for the Confessors of Natives) stands out in several ways. Bautista's manual is the fourth text to appear in Christensen's list, following those of Molina and Juan de la Anunciación. In this case, Christensen, like many others, lumps the Advertencias together with Bautista's earlier Confesionario en lengua mexicana y castellana (1599, printed by Melchior Ocharte). The 102-folio Confesionario, which also features an index and errata, was written in Spanish and Nahuatl; it shares with Advertencias certain frontmatter and is often bound together with the first volume of the Advertencias. Yet it is distinct in both content and context from the later Advertencias, a significantly longer two-volume text written in Nahuatl, Spanish, and Latin.Christensen describes Bautista's goal as the simplification of confessional practices among indigenous converts, explaining: "Bautista produced his Advertencias to reduce the burden of all confessors, both within and without the order, and instruct them on what was necessary and unnecessary in a confession. His two-volume work exempted natives "of little capacity" from having to remember their sins, know the sacraments of the Christian doctrine by memory, and show real contrition because their invincible ignorance excuses [them]" (172-173). However, he remarks, subsequent manuals show that this advice was largely ignored.The Advertencias were influential in other ways, however. One remarkable instance is illustrated by the online exhibition "California's Legal Heritage," produced by the Robbins Collection at the University of California, Berkeley. They feature the Advertencias in their section on Spanish Law in the Americas, writing:Though largely concerned with Catholic teaching and practice, the works of men like Bautista and fellow missionary scholars had a profound impact on the evolving legal and political development of Spanish America. Their treatises established principles and arguments for colonial administrative practices and native rights and privileges that informed the secular legal works of future generations of jurists such as Juan de Solórzano and helped to shape the decisions of the crown.
-
1
2015-09-23T20:59:56-07:00
Producing the Advertencias
3
gallery
2015-09-23T21:02:12-07:00
In 1538, the Italian printer Juan Pablos arrived in Mexico with orders to establish a printing press. Pablos arrived with support from the Bishop Zumarraga and Viceroy Mendoza, in Mexico, and from the Cromberger publishing house, in Seville. The Manual de Adultos, which he printed in 1540, remains the oldest surviving text printed in the Americas.The following decades saw the rapid growth of the printing industry in Mexico and Peru. In 1558, Pablos' assistant Antonio de Espinosa went to Spain to obtain permission to break Pablos's monopoly; in his wake, printing houses were established by Pablos' son in law, Pedro Ocharte; Pedro Balli; Antonio Ricardo; Enrique Martinez, and Melchor Ocharte. In ~1580, observing the saturation of the market in Mexico City, Antonio Ricardo acquired patronage from the Jesuits to travel to Peru, where he established the first printing press in Lima.Printing operations in sixteenth-century Mexico were complex. Materials from metal type and wood-cuts to paper were originally acquired from Europe at great expense, though printers later developed the tools to produce materials in-house. Presses were ostensibly run by printers, but operations involved multiple workers, from female spouses to African slaves and European immigrants. Though recent scholarship has shown that the role of the inquisition in censoring early Mexican print production was relatively minimal, printers nonetheless had to deal with multiple regulatory offices and systems of hierarchy.This video (in Spanish) tells the story of a modern-day printing press based on the early colonial model.In this path we explore the production of the Advertencias through a close examination of its material record: title page and colophon, duplicate pages, excised phrases, and inconsistent catchwords. We hope that this exploration demonstrates the multiphonic quality of the printed book as a historical artifact. Though it may appear to be a single, coherent object in the shelf (or on the web), close examination reveals traces of the culturally complex scene of its production.