The Timucua catechism reprinted at Mexico in 1627, and the licences bound in front of it
A Timucua–Castilian catechism printed at Mexico by Juan Ruyz in 1627, whose preliminary leaves are the paper trail of a mission publishing programme: a provincial licence signed at San Agustín de la Florida in January 1625, an archbishopric licence of May 1626, and a viceregal privilege reciting that the first ten-year licence had expired and granting eight years more. Those licences name the works together — three catechisms, a confessionario, an Arte and a Vocabulario in Timucua.
Why this wins its question: Accounts of the Timucua books in English list titles from bibliographies. This object reads the preliminary leaves of a surviving 1627 copy and gets something the bibliographies do not carry: a viceregal privilege that records the first ten-year licence expiring and eight more years being granted because the books were worth reprinting; a provincial licence issued at San Agustín de la Florida in January 1625 that names a Timucua Vocabulario alongside the Arte and the catechisms; the Franciscan comisario general's title listing Florida beside Japan and the Philippines; and two dedicatory poems that praise the elegance of the language and call its speakers barbarians in the same gathering. It also states what the leaves cannot show — no press run, no readership, no Timucua voice anywhere in the front matter.
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 book is printed in alternating Timucua and Castilian paragraphs under the running head "Castellana, y Timuquana", so that a friar could read down one column of the page and a Timucua speaker follow the other. The Castilian body opens in the imperative of pastoral method rather than doctrine — "ATENDIENDO A LA MANSEdumbre del Señor, imitando su amor, y charidad entrañable. Preguntarà amorosamente el Ministro Euangelico, con desseo de aprouechar, y sacar vberrimos frutos de su trabajo, sembrãdo la palabra de Dios" — and is illustrated with woodcuts.
The viceroy's licence lists the whole Timucua library in one sentence. Don Rodrigo Pacheco Osorio, Marqués de Cerralvo, recites that Fr. Francisco Pareja "compuso, y tradujo la Dotrina Christiana, tres Catecismos, Confessionario, Arte, Vocabulario, y otro tratado de las penas del Purgatorio, y de las del Infierno, y Gozos de la Gloria, y el Rosario de la Virgen nuestra Señora; y otras cosas de deuocion en lengua Castellana, y Floridana". A Timucua Vocabulario is therefore recorded by the crown's own licensing authority as an existing, printed book.
The same licence is evidence that the books were being used up. It states that the works were printed in Mexico City, that "el termino de los diez años que se le dieron de la licencia es cumplido", that Pareja "pretende de nueuo a imprimir los dichos tratados", and — on the opinion of Father Guillermo de los Ríos, rector of the Jesuit college of Mexico, to whom the viceroy referred them — grants him eight further years, because reprinting would be "de gran importancia … por la vtilidad, y edificacion de los dichos naturales". A reprint eight years after the privilege ran out is a commercial and pastoral fact about demand, not a statement of intention.
The clearance runs through three separate authorities and the leaves record each. The ordinary's licence is short — "El Gouernador deste Arçobispado &c. Doy licencia en conformidad de lo de atras de su Excelencia, para que el tratado q̃ en ella se refiere se imprima. Mexico 22. de Mayo de 1626. Años. Doctor Pedro Garcés de Portillo" — and it is preceded by the licence of the Franciscan comisario general Fr. Alonso de Monte Mayor, whose title enumerates the provinces and custodies under him as "esta nueua España, Florida, Philipinas, Iapon, Nueuo Mexico, y Monjas de Sancta Clara".
The order to print was given in Florida, not in Mexico. Fr. Alonso Ortiz, minister provincial, licenses Pareja "para que guardando lo establecido en el santo Concilio de Trento, y lo ordenado en las prematicas Reales, pueda imprimir, y imprima los tres Catecismos, Confessionario, Arte, y Vocabulario" and the other treatises "Compuestos en lengua Timuquana, y Castellana", on the ground that the books "seran de mucha vtilidad y prouecho, assi para los indios, como para los nueuos Ministros"; and he does not merely permit but commands — "mando por santa obediencia al dicho Padre Fr. Francisco Pareja lo ponga por obra". It is dated at the convent of la Limpia Concepción de San Agustín de la Florida, 12 January 1625.
The approbations bound with it are dated within a fortnight of each other in the same Florida convent — Fr. Martín de Bustamante on 31 December 1624, Fr. Melchor Ferraz on 13 January 1625 — and they argue from observed use rather than from doctrine. Ferraz certifies the books worth printing "por que tengo experimentado el grande fruto que hazen en los recien conuertidos, y lo mucho que aprouechan con ellos los nueuos Ministros desta conuersion". The books are being defended as teaching aids for incoming friars as much as for the Timucua.
Two poems in the front matter state the purpose in the plainest terms the volume contains, and they are not modest about it. A sonnet by Fr. Basilio de la Cruz credits the provincial with having gained "tanta Barbara gente conuertida, policia la lengua Timuquana, y puerta el Euangelio en la Florida"; a second poem tells Pareja that "la noche de la ignorancia, carcel del entendimiento, hurtò del conocimiento desta lengua la elegancia", and that his coming was "qual Sol en la Florida", so "que el indio pueda ver à la muerte y à la vida". The language is being praised for its elegance and its speakers called barbarians on facing leaves of the same book.
What the volume cannot show is how the books were used, or by whom. The preliminaries record permissions, an expired privilege and the judgement of five clerics that the books bore fruit; they contain no press run, no distribution list, no count of Timucua who could read, and no Timucua voice. Everything above is the licensing apparatus of a mission publishing programme, read from one copy of the 1627 impression, and it is evidence of intent and of demand for reprinting rather than of reception.