{
  "id": "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Juan José de Eguiara y Eguren, Bibliotheca Mexicana (1755)",
  "summary": "In 1735 the dean of Alicante told a young man not to sail for the Indies: where would he turn, among the Indians, in so vast a solitude of letters? Twenty years later a Mexican theologian answered him with a folio — a catalogue of everyone born in North America, or drawn into it, who had written anything in any language — printed at Mexico on a press set up in the author's own house. One volume appeared, letters A to C.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "books",
    "printing",
    "new-spain",
    "mexico",
    "historiography",
    "intellectual-history",
    "universities",
    "americas"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "carlos-de-siguenza-y-gongora"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "clavijero-disertaciones-1780"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "universities-of-lima-and-mexico"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "sor-juana-ines-de-la-cruz"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cordova-arte-y-vocabulario-zapoteca-1578"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "libros-que-se-imprimen-y-pasan-a-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "biblioteca-palafoxiana-de-puebla"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "colegio-de-san-nicolas-obispo"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "biblioteca-turriana-de-la-catedral-de-mexico"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "veracruz-recognitio-y-dialectica-1554"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "nicolas-antonio-censura-historias-fabulosas-1742"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "criollos-en-el-derecho-indiano"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "tardes-americanas-1778"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "guadalupe-de-tepeyac-en-las-fuentes-coloniales"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "landivar-rusticatio-mexicana-1782"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What was the Bibliotheca Mexicana of Eguiara y Eguren?",
    "Why did a Mexican scholar write a bibliography of American authors in 1755?",
    "What did Manuel Martí say about letters in the Indies?",
    "Was the Bibliotheca Mexicana ever finished?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The title page states the scope and the imprint together: a history of learned men \"qui in America Boreali nati, vel alibi geniti, in ipsam Domicilio aut Studijs asciti, quavis linguâ scripto aliquid tradiderunt\" — born in North America, or begotten elsewhere and drawn into it by domicile or by studies, who handed down anything in writing in any language — dedicated to Ferdinand VI, and printed \"MEXICI: Ex novâ Typographiâ in Ædibus Authoris editioni ejusdem Bibliothecæ destinatâ. Anno Domini MDCCLV\", that is, on a new press set up in the author's own house for this edition.",
      "sources": [
        "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755-anteloquia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The same page announces the volume as \"TOMUS PRIMUS Exhibens Litteras A B C\". What exists is the first instalment of an alphabet: the entries run to the letter C and stop. Whether the remaining tomes were ever set in type cannot be established from this volume.",
      "sources": [
        "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755-anteloquia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The Anteloquia name the provocation exactly. Eguiara had been reading the \"Epistolarum libri duodecim\" of Emmanuel Martí, dean of the church of Alicante, printed at Madrid by Juan de Zúñiga in 1735, with pleasure and with some irritation at what its author writes against professors and \"in Hispanorum dedecus\"; at epistle 16 of book 7 he was brought up short, and swallowed the page again and again \"non sine bili & stomacho\".",
      "sources": [
        "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755-anteloquia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "He then prints the letter. Martí is dissuading the youth Antonio Carrillo from crossing to the New World: \"Quò te vertes apud Indos in tam vasta litterarum solitudine? Quem adibis, non dicam Magistrum, cujus præceptis instituaris, sed auditorem?... Ecquosnam evolves Codices? Ecquas lustrabis Bibliothecas? Hæc enim omnia tam frustra quæres, quam qui tondet asinum vel mulget hircum.\" Where will you turn, among the Indians, in so vast a solitude of letters — what books will you open, what libraries will you search? You will look for all this as vainly as a man shearing an ass or milking a he-goat.",
      "sources": [
        "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755-anteloquia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "Eguiara's own gloss on the letter is that Martí, having named no island, town or village where his correspondent might settle, at length pointed to Mexico, \"postremam, si Superis placet, totius Orbis barbariem, cimmerijs inscitiæ tenebris involutam\" — the last barbarism of the whole world, wrapped in Cimmerian darkness of ignorance. This is the offended party's reading of a letter he is quoting to refute, and it is stated here as such.",
      "sources": [
        "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755-anteloquia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The motive is put on the page in one sentence: \"Hæc postquam animo versabamus, Epistolâ Martini perlectâ, statim cogitatio nos subijt Bibliothecæ Mexicanæ adoriendæ, quâ una Patriam gentemque nostram ab immani atrocique injuria vindicaremus\" — once Martí's letter had been read through, the thought at once came upon him of undertaking a Bibliotheca Mexicana, by which alone he might vindicate his fatherland and his people from a monstrous and cruel injury. The book is an answer before it is a catalogue.",
      "sources": [
        "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755-anteloquia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The counter-argument in the Anteloquia is not that Martí was rude but that he was uninformed: a man expert in disinterring the monuments and Roman inscriptions of the old world, he had disdained the new and was wholly ignorant of the antiquities in it most worth knowing.",
      "sources": [
        "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755-anteloquia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The cost is entered by the defence itself. Describing the Mexican painted books — the Tonalamatl among them — Eguiara records that volumes of the kind existed beyond number, and that the apostolic men who propagated the faith and first planted the Mexican church, ignorant of what lay hidden under those painted animals, herbs, men, circles and characters, judged them plainly superstitious and full of idols and images of the demon, sought them out diligently everywhere, and committed them to the flames, \"lacrymabili Antiquitatum Americanorum & Historiæ jacturâ\" — with a lamentable loss of American antiquities and history. The man arguing that America had letters says on the same pages who burned them.",
      "sources": [
        "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755-anteloquia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The witness is an interested one and the title page says so. Eguiara wrote as elected bishop of Yucatán, canon magistral of the metropolitan church, primary and emeritus professor of theology and sometime rector of the royal and pontifical university of Mexico, and censor of the Holy Office, and dedicated the work to the Catholic king. A vindication composed under those offices, in Latin, for a European readership, is evidence of what a learned Mexican could marshal in 1755; it is not a neutral survey.",
      "sources": [
        "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755-anteloquia"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The catalogue behind the polemic is a working bibliography, numbered and arranged by baptismal name — Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora stands at entry 665 under the letter C — and its articles carry titles, printers, places, dates and cross-references to earlier compilers such as León Pinelo's Epítome and the university chronicles of Plaza.",
      "sources": [
        "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755-catalogus"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "The Bibliotheca Mexicana is usually met as a sentence — \"a Mexican answered Manuel Martí's slur\" — with the slur itself unquoted and the answer unread, because the answer is a Latin folio and Martí's letter is in another Latin folio. Both are opened here: the letter is quoted in the words Eguiara printed, and his statement of motive is given in the sentence where he makes it. The same reading supplies what a defence normally omits. The title page concedes the work's incompleteness in its own words, \"Tomus primus exhibens litteras A B C\"; the author's styles on that page, censor of the Inquisition among them, establish how partisan a witness he is; and his own pages record that the painted books he cites as proof of Mexican learning were sought out and burned by the first missionaries. Cost, motive and counterpoint all come from inside the volume being defended.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-10",
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    "name": "Juan José de Eguiara y Eguren, Bibliotheca Mexicana (1755)",
    "description": "In 1735 the dean of Alicante told a young man not to sail for the Indies: where would he turn, among the Indians, in so vast a solitude of letters? Twenty years later a Mexican theologian answered him with a folio — a catalogue of everyone born in North America, or drawn into it, who had written anything in any language — printed at Mexico on a press set up in the author's own house. One volume appeared, letters A to C.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755",
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}