The SATO marca
Of the eighteen facsimiles of the Advertencias available through the Primeros Libros website, only one includes photographs of the marcas [brands] on the book edges. As described in the "Marcas de Fuego" page, these marks were used by the religious libraries in Mexico to signify ownership. Identifying the marcas can help us to understand how intellectual culture in early colonial Mexico circulated through these centers for religious learning and missionary work. While in the "Marcas de Fuego" page we considered the broad distribution of the Advertencias in religious libraries across Mexico, in this page we will consider the provenance of a single marca.
The image above shows the one marca preserved in the Advertencias. It illustrates what looks like an "A" alongside a vertical bar with a circle through the middle, branded into the bottom edge (the canto inferior) of the book. The image comes from an exemplar of volume two (copy one) held by the Biblioteca José María Lafragua. Mercedes Isabel Salomón-Salazar, the coordinator of special projects at the Biblioteca Lafragua and co-director of the Marcas de Fuego project, wrote the following explanation of the history of the mark, which we translate below:
The image above shows the one marca preserved in the Advertencias. It illustrates what looks like an "A" alongside a vertical bar with a circle through the middle, branded into the bottom edge (the canto inferior) of the book. The image comes from an exemplar of volume two (copy one) held by the Biblioteca José María Lafragua. Mercedes Isabel Salomón-Salazar, the coordinator of special projects at the Biblioteca Lafragua and co-director of the Marcas de Fuego project, wrote the following explanation of the history of the mark, which we translate below:
The image of a "SATO" located on the bottom edge [of the exemplar] does not correspond to a marca de fuego, but rather to a marca en tinta [an ink brand]. I was able to corroborate this by consulting the book in person. It is not easy to see the difference in the photograph.
The above image shows the book together with an exemplar that has a marca de fuego so you can see what a SATO brand looks like. As you can observe, the ink brand was not even painted completely; it lacks the "S" and the "T" has not been 100 percent filled in.
Upon reviewing the exemplar and the catalogue entry, I see that there is a manuscript annotation on the twelfth leaf (recto side) of the first section, which says "Del conbento de S[anta] Barbar[a]."
This manuscript annotation permits me to confirm that, though they did not use a branding iron, the exemplar belonged to the Convento de Santa Bárbara, which was dedicated to Santa Bárbara but was popularly known as San Antonio after San Antonio de Padua. Officially it always maintained the name of Santa Bárbara, as her protection was sought from lightning and storms. (I still remember that my grandmother, when there was a lightning storm, always prayed: "Santa Bárbara doncella, líbranos de un rayo o una centella").
![Del conbento de S[anta] Barbar[a]](http://primeroslibros.org/primeros_media/pl_bjml_005/1000/pl_bjml_005_00005-1000.jpg){kind=link}
This manuscript annotation permits me to confirm that, though they did not use a branding iron, the exemplar belonged to the Convento de Santa Bárbara, which was dedicated to Santa Bárbara but was popularly known as San Antonio after San Antonio de Padua. Officially it always maintained the name of Santa Bárbara, as her protection was sought from lightning and storms. (I still remember that my grandmother, when there was a lightning storm, always prayed: "Santa Bárbara doncella, líbranos de un rayo o una centella").
Personally, I believe that although the marca is known as SATO, the monogram is an abbreviation of SAN (those three initials appear in the monogram) + ANTO from Antonio (these four initials can also be seen in the same monogram).
Thus the correct provenance would be:
Convento de Santa Bárbara de Puebla (San Antonio)Orden de Frailes Menores Descalzos. Provincia de San Diego de México.
In the above image, I made a transparency of the marca de fuego (a copy made on acetate) and placed it over the Advertencias exemplar; you will note that the dimensions are also different. The person who made the stamp did not try to make a perfect copy of the marca, but rather to reproduce in some way the monogram of the dieguinos (Franciscans).
I cannot explain to you the history of this marca. It was a very popular marca in this convent, and given the great quantity of exemplars that share it, we have the idea that it was a very large library, which can be explained by the fact that it was a house of studies for novices.
We have also detected that there were various instruments used to brand the same monogram. The following image shows the difference in size between two brands. I suppose that the smaller instrument was used to brand books that were not quite so fat.
The SATO monogram can also be found as a marca de fuego used on bindings.
The convent of Santa Bárbara was founded in 1591 and served as a novitiate together with the house of Santa María de los Ángeles de Churubusco. After this, it became a house of studies for novices; along with the one in Mexico City, these made up the three most important novitiates in the province.
As this story shows, by tracking the history of a marca de fuego (or a marca de tinta) on a single exemplar, we can begin to understand how the Advertencias fit into a larger context: an active library, functioning as a site of education for novices, large enough to produce multiple brands in ink and iron. Perhaps these novices would have consulted the book in the course of their studies, incorporating Bautista's ideas about confession, his reprinting of Sahagún, his citation of European sources, and his use of Nahuatl into their religious education.
As this story shows, by tracking the history of a marca de fuego (or a marca de tinta) on a single exemplar, we can begin to understand how the Advertencias fit into a larger context: an active library, functioning as a site of education for novices, large enough to produce multiple brands in ink and iron. Perhaps these novices would have consulted the book in the course of their studies, incorporating Bautista's ideas about confession, his reprinting of Sahagún, his citation of European sources, and his use of Nahuatl into their religious education.
