Bibliotheca Peruana. Douglas Stewart Fine Books

The Spanish conquest of Peru began in 1532, with the arrival of Pizarro’s second expedition. From this point, the decline of the Incan empire and the commencement by the Spanish of the exploitation of the immensely rich resources of its territories was rapid. Known initially as Nueva Castilla, the Viceroyalty of Peru was created in 1572, with Lima as its capital. In its early phase the Viceroyalty of Peru comprised a vast portion of the continent of South America, a region far greater in extent than the modern geopolitical entity of the same name. Lima, known originally as Ciudad de los Reyes (City of Kings), was founded in 1535. By 1538 the construction of its first church was completed, and the first university in the Americas was established there by royal decree in 1551. Although the birthplace of printing in the Americas was Mexico City, where the printing shop of Juan Pablos produced its first book in 1539, Lima became only the second centre of printing in the Americas when, in 1584, Antonio Ricardo was granted a license to print books under the auspices of the Jesuit authorities. Lima was to remain the principal centre for publishing on the South American continent for the next two centuries. Bibliotheca Peruana comprises 128 individual items. Its subject matter is diverse: ecclesiastical, theological, juridical, political, military, historical, linguistic, literary and scientific works are all represented, although religious texts predominate in the early period as the story of printing in Peru is inextricably linked with the Catholic Church, and in particular with the Jesuit Order. Nearly one hundred Limenian imprints, ranging in date from 1585 to 1817, form the core of the collection. The earliest of these is the rare Tercero Cathecismo (1585), containing parallel texts in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara. This book, from the press of Antonio Ricardo, was only the third or fourth book printed in South America. The collection includes more than forty Limenian imprints from before 1700; more than fifty from the eighteenth century; and a handful from the first decades of the nineteenth century, the period immediately prior to Peruvian independence in 1821. A number of the Limenian imprints are unrecorded. Among numerous highlights in the collection are copies of two of the four books printed between 1610 and 1613 by Father Bertonio on the small Jesuit printing press in the mission village of Juli, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Chronologically, the collection begins with several key sixteenth century works on the Spanish conquest and exploration of the New World, including the first Italian edition of Xeres’ account of Pizarro’s expedition (Venice, 1535); the second edition of Oviedo’s history of the Indies and second edition of Xeres (Salamanca, 1547); the first edition of Gómara’s account of the conquest of Mexico (Zaragoza, 1552); and the second edition (the first illustrated) of Gómara (Zaragoza, 1554). The printed collection is complemented by a number of ephemeral documents and