{
  "id": "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Antonio de León Pinelo, Epítome de la Biblioteca Oriental i Occidental (1629)",
  "summary": "The first systematic bibliography of the Americas, printed at Madrid in 1629 by a jurist raised in Lima and employed as relator of the Council of the Indies. Its catalogue is indexed by the language a book was written in, so Quichua stands as a column beside Greek, English and Catalan; and its section on the languages of the Indies lists, title by title, the grammars and dictionaries made for a dozen American tongues.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "books",
    "printing",
    "language",
    "translation",
    "peru",
    "new-spain",
    "firsts",
    "law"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "santo-tomas-grammatica-quichua-1560"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "molina-vocabulario-1571"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "olmos-arte-lengua-mexicana-1547"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "catedras-de-lenguas-indigenas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "acosta-historia-natural-y-moral-1590"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "first-printing-press-americas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "alonso-de-zorita"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "relaciones-geograficas-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "bertonio-vocabulario-aymara-1612"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "munoz-historia-del-nuevo-mundo-1793"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "alcedo-diccionario-geografico-1786"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "puga-cedulario-1563"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "garcia-origen-de-los-indios-1607"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "gonzalez-davila-teatro-eclesiastico-1649"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "eguiara-bibliotheca-mexicana-1755"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ordenanzas-del-archivo-general-de-indias-1790"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "libros-que-se-imprimen-y-pasan-a-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "biblioteca-palafoxiana-de-puebla"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "herrera-historia-general-decada-octava"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "coronista-mayor-de-las-indias"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What was the first bibliography of the Americas?",
    "Who was Antonio de León Pinelo?",
    "How many indigenous American languages had printed grammars by 1629?",
    "What is the Epítome de la Biblioteca Oriental i Occidental?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The book was printed at Madrid by Juan González in 1629. Its engraved title page names the compiler as \"el Licenciado Antonio de Leon, Relator del Supremo i Real Consejo de las Indias\" and frames the work between two allegorical figures, India and Iberica, with Geographia and Navigatio below them and a shelf of book spines above. The privilege is dated at Madrid on 26 September 1629, the errata were signed by the licenciado Murcia de la Llana on 4 November, and the price was set at four maravedís the sheet on 5 November.",
      "sources": [
        "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The compiler states the limits of his own work in the prologue. He affirms that he has put into it all the study possible, but knows that many authors may be missing, and asks anyone who has them or knows of them to tell him, \"aunque sea desde lo mas remoto de las Indias\", since as a minister of the royal council it will not be difficult for him to act. A bibliography of the Indies was announced as an open and incomplete undertaking rather than a finished monument.",
      "sources": [
        "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "He promises a return for the favour, and the terms show what the project was for. If the author of a missing work will tell him it is unprinted and wishes to put it to press, he undertakes to pursue the business with effect and fidelity; if the work is sent to him copied, there is retribution; and if only the name, title and a summary of the subject reach him, he will place it in his Biblioteca with express mention of everything, so that where the work is not printed there shall at least remain the memory that it was written.",
      "sources": [
        "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Because the languages the authors wrote in were many, the compiler judged a table of them necessary, and the catalogue is arranged accordingly. On the pages of that table the language column runs Castellana, Italiana, Francesa, Latina, Griega, Alemana, Inglesa, Catalana - and Quichua, which carries a \"Vocabulario de la lengua Quichua\" marked as printed. An American language appears in a European bibliographical apparatus of 1629 on the same footing as the languages of European print.",
      "sources": [
        "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The section of the Occidental catalogue given to the languages of the Indies is an inventory of the linguistic effort as it stood in 1629. Its entries name artes, vocabularios, doctrinas, confesionarios and books of sermons in Mexicana, Misteca, Zapoteca, Mije, Chochona, Tarasca, Otomí, Mame, Chiapa, Zoque, Celdales, Cinacanteca, Quichua and Aymara, each with its author, his order, and where known the year and format of the printing.",
      "sources": [
        "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "Among those entries stands \"F. Domingo de S. Tomas, Dominico. Gramatica o Arte de la lengua general del Perù. imp. 1560. 8.\" - the first Quechua grammar recorded, with its date and octavo format, by a royal officer sixty-nine years after it was printed. The catalogue also carries the later Quechua work of Diego González Holguín, dated 1608, and an entry for the 1586 Quechua vocabulary, so the sequence of Andean lexicography is legible from the bibliography alone.",
      "sources": [
        "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "Whose interest the inventory served is visible in the same pages. Every language work catalogued in this section is a missionary or pastoral instrument - grammar, dictionary, catechism, confessors' manual, sermon book - and the compiler was an officer of the council that governed the Indies, cataloguing the written production of the empire he served. The scale of the effort is the evidence; its purpose was evangelisation and administration, and the document does not pretend otherwise.",
      "sources": [
        "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The bibliography is not a neutral census of what existed. It records what reached a Madrid desk through the channels of the Council of the Indies, and the compiler's own appeal for missing titles says as much; entries for unprinted works rest on notices sent to him rather than on copies he examined, and several carry attributions on the authority of another writer rather than of the book. Counts drawn from it are lower bounds.",
      "sources": [
        "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "The Epítome is normally mentioned, if at all, as a curiosity of bibliographic history - \"the first bibliography of the New World\" - and its contents are never quoted. Opened, it is the best single piece of contemporary evidence for the scale of the Spanish American language project: a table that sets Quichua among the languages of print, and a section listing grammars, dictionaries and catechisms for fourteen named American tongues with dates and formats, compiled by a royal officer in 1629 rather than reconstructed by a modern scholar. The same pages supply the limits: every work catalogued is a missionary instrument, the compiler served the council that governed the Indies, and he states himself that his list is incomplete and partly built from notices rather than from books seen.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-09",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/leon-pinelo-epitome-1629",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/leon-pinelo-epitome-1629.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Antonio de León Pinelo, Epítome de la Biblioteca Oriental i Occidental (1629)",
    "description": "The first systematic bibliography of the Americas, printed at Madrid in 1629 by a jurist raised in Lima and employed as relator of the Council of the Indies. Its catalogue is indexed by the language a book was written in, so Quichua stands as a column beside Greek, English and Catalan; and its section on the languages of the Indies lists, title by title, the grammars and dictionaries made for a dozen American tongues.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/leon-pinelo-epitome-1629",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-09",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Epitome de la Biblioteca Oriental i Occidental, Nautica i Geografica",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=rYdTAAAAcAAJ&pg=PP5"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Antonio de León Pinelo, Epítome de la Biblioteca Oriental i Occidental (1629)"
  }
}