Antonio Ricardo and the first printing press in South America (Lima, 1584)
A Piedmontese printer who had worked three years in Mexico moved his shop to Lima and in 1584 produced the first book printed in South America: the trilingual Doctrina christiana of the Third Council of Lima, in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara. The licence that admitted the press says why it was wanted - the correctors of Quechua and Aymara could not sail to Castile. The same document names him alone as printer and lets nobody hold the books until the audiencia had examined them.
Why this wins its question: Ask when printing reached South America and the answer that wins today is a date and a title - Lima, 1584, the Doctrina christiana - with nothing behind it. This object goes to the two standard descriptive bibliographies of the field and prints what they actually transcribe: the printer's Mexican years and the sentence that says the same shop simply moved south, the title page and colophon that disagree about the year, and above all the audiencia's own auto, which states the reason for the press in the words of the men who asked for it - the correctors of Quechua and Aymara could not sail to Castile, and a manuscript text would reach the converts corrupted. It then keeps on the page the three things a celebratory account drops: that the licence named one man and one book and forbade everything else, that a secretary was posted to count the copies and nobody might own one until the court had examined it, and that two ghost catechisms of 1583, resting on a single column of León Pinelo, would displace the whole "first" if they were ever proved.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The printer was an Italian who had already worked in Mexico. Icazbalceta's notice on the introduction of the press into New Spain makes him the fifth printer of Mexico: "Antonio Ricardo, quinto impresor, era piamontés, natural de Turín, y residió poco tiempo en México: de 1577 á 79", perhaps called by the Jesuits, since he worked for them and had his office in the colegio de San Pedro y San Pablo, and his real surname was "probablemente Ricciardi". The Turin birth is not the bibliographer's guess: he notes it is stated in two books Ricardo himself printed at Lima, Pedro de Oña's Primera parte de Arauco domado of 1596 and fray Miguel de Agia's Parecer sobre la libertad de los Indios of 1604.
The move is stated in one sentence and it carries the whole finding: "De aquí trasladó su oficina á Lima, donde fué la primera; y es cosa notable que dos italianos introdujeran la imprenta en los dos grandes continentes del Nuevo Mundo." The press of South America was the press of Mexico, carried south by the man who had been running it.
Before he left he had already set an indigenous language in type. Viñaza's entry 63 gives the Sermonario en lengua mexicana of fray Juan de la Anunciación, subprior of the Augustinian house of Mexico, with two sermons for every Sunday and principal feast of the year and a catechism in Nahuatl and Spanish with the calendar, "En Mexico, por Antonio Ricardo. M. D. LXXVII", the colophon dating the end of the impression to the last day of September. The Lima commission of 1584 went to a printer with seven years of American practice in exactly the kind of book being ordered.
The first Lima book is entry 78 of the same bibliography: "Doctrina christiana, y catecismo para instrvccion de los Indios y de las demas personas, que han de ser enseñadas en nuestra sancta Fe. Con vn conffessionario, y otras cosas necessarias para los que doctrinan", composed by authority of the provincial council held in the Ciudad de los Reyes in 1583 and "por la misma traduzido en las dos lenguas generales de este Reyno, Quichua y Aymara. Impreso con licencia de la Real Audiencia, en la Ciudad de los Reyes, por Antonio Ricardo primero impressor en estos Reynos del Piru. Año de M. D. LXXXIIII." A quarto of thirty-two leaves, signatures SAA-AG, whose preliminaries print the royal provision and the council's dispositions about the printing, dated Los Reyes, 12 August 1584, the synod's address to the faithful, decrees on the catechism and on the translation, and the errata. The title page also carries the book's price, fixed rather than asked: "Esta tassada vn Real por cada pliego, en papel."
The book carries its own dating problem, and the bibliography prints both halves of it rather than choosing. The title page gives the year as M. D. LXXXIIII, that is 1584, and the colophon transcribed immediately below reads "Impresso en la ciudad de los Reyes, por Antonio Ricardo. Año de M. D. LXXXIII", that is 1583. Nothing read here resolves which is the year of the sheets; the provision bound into the same preliminaries is dated 12 August 1584, which is consistent with the title page and not with the colophon.
Why a press was wanted in Peru at all is set out in the auto of the audiencia of 13 February 1584, quoted in the preliminaries of Ricardo's 1586 Arte y Vocabulario. The prelates, ecclesiastical chapters, clergy, city chapters and the crown's own fiscal and Protector of the natives represented the "muchos danos, & inconuenientes, gastos y costas" that would follow if the catechism, cartilla and confesionario were not printed in Peru: they could not be sent to Castile to be printed "por no poder yr alla los correctores de las dichas lenguas Quichua y Aymara", and a faulty impression, or the texts continuing to circulate "andando escriptos de mano", would do irreparable harm "en gente tan nueua". The press arrived as a translation-quality argument, made by the men who had done the translating.
The same act that admitted the press fenced it in on every side, and the restrictions are the other half of the record. Printing was licensed only in that city, "en la casa y lugar que esta Audiencia señalare, o en la que nombraren las personas á quien se cometa, y no en otra parte alguna"; "Antonio Ricardo Piamontes, impressor, que de presente esta en esta ciudad, y no otro alguno" might print the approved catechism, confesionario and preparación para morir; the Jesuit rector Juan de Atienza and padre José de Acosta, with two of the translators, were to attend the impression; a secretary of the audiencia was to give testimony "de los cuerpos que se imprimieren, y de como ninguna otra cosa se imprimio mas"; and no person "de ninguna calidad, ni condicion" might hold or use the books until they had been seen, signed and examined by the audiencia. It is signed by the licenciados Monzón and Ramírez de Cartagena and the doctors Arteaga and Alonso Criado de Castilla, before Juan Ramos de Gauna.
The press did not stop with the one commission. Entry 81 gives the Tercero Cathecismo y exposicion de la Doctrina Christiana por Sermones, "Impresso con licencia de la Real Audiencia, en la Ciudad de los Reyes, por Antonio Ricardo Primero Impressor en estos Reynos del Piru. Año de M. D. LXXXV", an octavo of seven preliminary leaves and 215 double pages; entry 82 gives the Arte y Vocabvlario en la lengva general del Perv llamada Quichua, y en la lengua española, Los Reyes, Antonio Ricardo, 1586, collated at seven preliminary leaves, 81 pages of Quechua-Spanish vocabulary in two columns, three of annotations, 92 of Spanish-Quechua and 40 for the Arte. Three of the four books were the council's; the fourth was a working dictionary and grammar.
In the preliminaries of that 1586 vocabulary someone writes in the first person about the cost of making it: "he hecho este Vocabulario, el mas copioso que ser pudo en lengua Quichua y Española, con animo de hazer otro en la lengua Aymara que falta... Todo esto se ha hecho con mucho cansancio y expensas mias, y por esse desseo que muchos se aprobechen de lo que tanto me cuesta." The bibliography lists the preliminaries in order - portada, proemio to the viceroy conde del Villar, "Antonio Ricardo, impresor de libros", provisión real - which places the printer as the speaker of the proemio; whether the Al Lector is his or the compilers' is an inference from that ordering and is not stated on the page as read, so the attribution is held below the rest of this object.
Within six years the shop was printing in five indigenous languages at once. Entry 83 records "Lexica et praecepta grammatica, item liber confessionis et precum, in quinque Indorum linguis, quarum usus per Americam australem, nempe puquinica, tenocotica, catamareana, guanarica, natixaca, sive mogaznana. Ab Alphonsus Barzena. Peruviae, 1590", in folio, and reports Sobrón's statement that the book was printed at Lima by Antonio Ricardo. The imprint is an attribution reported at second hand rather than a line read off a title page, which is why this claim sits lower than the others.
The claim that 1584 is the first Lima printing is contested inside the same bibliography, and this object does not settle it. Entries 76 and 77 record a "Catecismo en Lengua Española y Quichua. Impreso en 1583. (Lima.)" in duodecimo and a "Catecismo en Lengua Española y Aymara. Impreso en 1583. (Lima.)" in octavo. Each rests on one authority and one line of it, León Pinelo's Epítome de la Biblioteca Oriental i Occidental, tomo II, column 736; neither entry carries a copy, a collation, a printer or a holding library. If either book existed as described, the 1584 Doctrina is not the first thing printed in South America.
What the evidence used here cannot do should be stated plainly. Both witnesses are nineteenth-century descriptive bibliographies, not archives: the audiencia's auto is read as an excerpt that Viñaza quotes, with ellipses, from the preliminaries of a book, and the Mexican dates for Ricardo are given by Icazbalceta with "acaso" and "probablemente" in his own words. Nothing read here gives the size of any edition, the cost or route of the press itself, the wages or names of anyone who worked it, or any indigenous account of the translation work the whole enterprise rested on - the Quechua and Aymara correctors whose inability to travel is the stated reason for the press are never named.