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Marca de Fuego on a copy of the Advertencias held at the Biblioteca Franciscana
1 2015-05-05T15:00:50-07:00 Anonymous 4358 3 Photograph of bottom edge of the Advertencias with a Marca de Fuego in the shape of an oval framed by text, with the image of a man inside. Exemplar held by the Biblioteca Franciscana, Universidad de las Américas Puebla. (personal photo) plain 2016-02-01T13:54:19-08:00 Hannah Alpert-Abrams 9dd7500ea284b1882c8042744db689b17f2c2255This 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
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2015-03-24T10:25:50-07:00
Marcas de Fuego
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Introduction to the Marcas de Fuego and their use on the Advertencias
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2016-02-01T13:53:29-08:00
Anyone who has handled early colonial Mexican books should be familiar with the Marcas de Fuego, or firebrands, used by religious orders to designate ownership. These brands, which were burned into the pages of books, can vary from simple monograms to elaborate designs based on shields, saints, or other symbols. Today, they provide vital information about the ownership history of rare books as historical artifacts.According to the Catálogo Colectivo de Marcas de Fuego, the history of the Marcas de Fuego has not been fully established. It is thought that they originated in Spain during the sixteenth century, but their use in Nueva España was significantly more widespread. In the Americas, their use extended from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century, and centered mostly on religious institutions, though private collectors occasionally used the marcas de fuego as well. They are often seen as ownership marks that can be used in the study of provenance.The Catálogo Colectivo de Marcas de Fuego is a website dedicated to the history of the marcas de fuego and a catalogue for use in identifying them. The images are organized by religious order, and feature a detailed description, including typology, observation, and affiliation.Almost all surviving copies of the Advertencias have at least one brand, usually on the edge of the book; many have multiple overlaid brands, perhaps indicating the circulation of the exemplar.The exemplar of the Advertencias at the Biblioteca Franciscana in Cholula, Mexico, for example, features a marca de fuego identified by the Catálogo as associated with the Convento de las Llagas de San Francisco de Puebla, or possibly the Convento Grande de San Francisco de Mexico (BJML-12075). The brand is identified as figurativa (figurative), and shows, according to the catalogue description, an oval "en cuyo campo aparece la figura de un monje sosteniendo una cruz con la mano izquierda. Alrededor ... hay una leyenda que dice: CONVENTVSS FRANCICI [crismón] SICILLVM."In contrast, the first copy of the Advertencias at the Biblioteca Burgoa in Oaxaca, Mexico, features two overlapping brands; it's unclear from the image whether they are both burned, or whether one may have been marked in ink. The larger mark is identified in the catalogue as a figurative mark from the Convento de San Ildefonso (or of San Francisco) de Oaxaca, though it has previously been associated with the Convento de San Cosme in Mexico City (BF-12040). The mark, the catalogue explains, shows the "conformidades" emblem - two hands with stigmata meeting over a cross - which symbolizes the spiritual and physical union of Saint Francis of Assisi with Jesus Christ. The image is also shown on the title page of the Advertencias.The second brand is a particularly interesting modification of the book. The brand, an epigraphic image that shows the Y,N,S, and T, pertains to the [Y]nstituto del estado de Oaxaca (the "y" here is an antiquated spelling; see marca BFB-17001). These brands were made by the Institute at Oaxaca in the mid-nineteenth century to mark every book which came into their possession after the Mexican nationalization of church property. They signify a unique moment in the internal circulation of Mexican patrimony.
A third example comes from the copy of the Advertencias held at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. This image is clearly epigraphic, made up of the intertwining letters "A", "C", "F", "R", "U", "I", "J", "S", with an "O" crowning the top (BFXC-16039). It is currently unidentified, though the interior of the book has marginal notes that suggest several possible owners, including an early note attributing the book to ""B[achille]r. Juan Antonio Moreno de Abalos" and dated August, 1797.This brief sampling of marcas de fuego associated with various copies of the Advertencias shows that the book was distributed across Mexico during the seventeenth century and incorporated into primarily Franciscan libraries. Further work could be done to catalogue these images and their affiliations and to work towards mapping the early distribution of this work. -
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Looking Forward: Library Collections
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Collecting the Advertencias in the future, from new libraries to digital collections
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The Biblioteca Franciscana
This project has shown how we can understand the cultural and intellectual lives of the people who wrote, printed, purchased, and displayed historical books by studying the history of their provenance. In this final section we turn our attention to the future, looking at modern collections of books from New Spain that offer new ways of thinking about and accessing these historical documents.
The Biblioteca Franciscana, located in Cholula, Mexico, was established in 1990 to reunite the historical libraries of the Franciscans in New Spain. Funded in part by the Universidad de las Americas (Puebla), its mission is to preserve the bibliographic legacy of the order of San Francisco. Today, it holds more than 24,000 volumes from the colonial period, including sermons, theological treatises, canonical law, catechisms, hagiographies, and liturgies, as well as works of history, science, mathematics, philosophy, literature, grammar, and rhetoric. Collectively, these works demonstrate the breadth of Franciscan intellectual life and textual productivity.
The books at the Franciscana are catalogued according to their provenance, focusing on six collections pertaining to convents in Puebla, Mexico City, and Veracruz. This organizational structure turns the historical library into an organizing principal, drawing attention to the value of the library as an object of study (something that has been highlighted in this project as well). At the Franciscana we can explore not just the books, but also the history of their use.
The Franciscana is located in a restored Franciscan convent built in the sixteenth century. To enter the library, in the words of Elvia Morales and Rocío Cázares Aguilar, "era situarse en en otra época, traspasar un velo y llegar a un lugar donde el tiempo se había detenido" (74). María Clara de Greiff and Francisco Mejía Sánchez use similar words to describe their experience of the library: "Decidí entonces aventurarme en el tiempo, en la historia. Atravesé la portería y transité en la historia del rescate y resguardo del patrimonio bibliográfico franciscano" (77). The affective experience of entering a historical moment through the books - and libraries - of the past is at the heart of the Franciscana's mission as a new kind of historical library.
The Biblioteca Franciscana has one copy of volume one of the Advertencias, from the Convento de San Juan Bautista, Coyoacán. As the library tells us, "Esta colección reúne una gran variedad de sermones impresos en México, así como algunos títulos relativos a la historia mexicana colonial e independiente." The history of this collection is fascinating. In the 1930s, the Friar Agustín Báez began to collect books for a newly established Franciscan novitiate in San Andrés Calpan, some 150 miles southeast of Mexico City. In 1940, however, for political reasons, the novitiate, including the students and the library, were moved to the Roger Bacon College in El Paso, Texas. Along with the Friar Fidel de Jesús Chauvet, Báez continued to develop this collection (or in the words of Aguilar and Mejía Sanchez, "van rescatando [los libros] de los diversos conventos de la Provincia" (9)). The authors continue:
In the page about the SATO brand, we saw a copy of the Advertencias that did come from the Convento de San Antonio y Santa Bárbara, currently held at the Biblioteca José María Lafragua in Puebla. The copy of the Advertencias at the Franciscana, in contrast, bears a Marca de Fuego in the form of an oval containing the figure of a monk - a common figure in Franciscan firebrands - with text around the outside. According to the library catalogue, this marca de fuego pertains to the Convento de San Francisco de México. Given the provenance of the book, we associate it with the marca identified in the Catálogo Colectivo de Marcas de Fuego as the Convento de las Llagas de San Francisco de Puebla, or possibly the Convento Grande de San Francisco de Mexico (BJML-12075). As in the book described in the catalogue entry, it's possible that this copy of the Advertencias was at the Convento Grande de San Francisco in Mexico City, then moved to the convent in Puebla before making its way into the hands of Báez and Chauvet. The Biblioteca Franciscana preserves just a small slice of this history of movement in its catalogue.El acervo que lleva este nombre [San Juan Bautista Coyoacán] no es propiamente el fondo de origen del convento de Coyoacán, sino que se fue conformando con libros procedentes de las diferentes casas de estudio de la Provincia, en particular de la Casa de Teología en El Paso, Texas y de las compras que realizaron Fr. Agustín Báez y Fr. Fidel de Jesús Chauvet en la década de los cuarenta del siglo XX en diferentes "librerías de viejo" (Morales, 2010). Debido a ello, se encuentran libros con marcas de fuego diversas. Existe un gran número de libros formato folio con procedencia del Convento de San Antonio y Sta. Bárbara de Puebla, del convento de San Martín Texmelucan, entre otros.
La biblioteca antigua de Coyoacán llegó a las instalaciones de la Biblioteca Franciscana en el 2006. (10)