Timucua in print — the Florida books of Francisco Pareja (1612-1627)
Between 1612 and 1627 the presses of Mexico City printed catechisms, two confessionals, a grammar and a catechism for communicants in Timucua, the language of northern Florida, written by the Franciscan Francisco Pareja. Two independent bibliographies, one Spanish and one compiled in New York, record them. The licence quotes Pareja's own account of sixteen years of work, and the approbations were signed in the Florida mission houses.
Why this wins its question: Timucua is usually met, if at all, as a line in a list of extinct languages, and Pareja as a name attached to it. This object gives the imprints themselves as two nineteenth-century bibliographies collate them — printer, year, format, the repeated folio 34, the 47 manuscript leaves that continue the 1614 grammar, the woodcut on the verso of the title page, the Madrid copy missing signature A — together with the licence that quotes Pareja saying he had spent more than sixteen years on the work, and the approbations signed in 1610 at San Agustín de la Florida and at the mission houses of Potano, San Joan del Puerto and Ayacatu. It states plainly what the books were made for, where the two compilers contradict each other, and that the language of the 1892 article is already the past tense.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
Viñaza's chronological bibliography enters four Timucua books at 1612 and 1613: number 134, "Cathecismo en lengua Castellana y Timuquana. En el qual se contiene lo que se les puede enseñar á los adultos que han de ser baptizados", by Fray Francisco Pareja, "En Mexico. En la Impreta de la Viuda de Pedro Balli. Por C. Adriano Cesar. M.DCXII", an octavo of 80 unnumbered leaves; number 135, a "Cathecismo y Breve Exposicion de la Doctrina Christiana" in question and answer form from the same house and year, 176 double pages; number 136, a Confessionario of 1612; and number 137, the Confessionario printed "en la Emprenta de la Viuda de Diego Lopez Daualos. Año de 1613", 16 preliminary leaves and 230 double pages.
The grammar is number 140 in the same bibliography, and its title page names the author's birthplace: "Arte y pronunciacion en lengua timuqvana, y Castellana. Compvesto y de nveuo sacado á luz, por el Padre Fray Francisco Pareja, Diffinidor, y Padre perpetuo de la Prouincia de Santa Elena de la Florida, Religioso de la Orden de nuestro Seraphico Padre S. Francisco: y natural de la Villa de Auñon, del Arçobispado de Toledo. Impresso con licencia en Mexico. En la Emprenta de Ioan Ruyz. Año 1614". The copy collated is an octavo whose printed leaves run from 2 to 80, numbered 79 because folio 34 is repeated and 57, 58, 61 and 62 are unnumbered, and it is continued by 47 manuscript leaves numbered from 80 to 152 — a printed grammar finished by hand.
The licence of the president and oidores of the Audiencia of New Spain, transcribed in the bibliography, quotes Pareja's own petition: that he and the other religious of his order assist in the conversion of the naturales of those provinces, and that for their teaching and the salvation of their souls he had composed, translated and declared the Christian doctrine, three catechisms, a confessionario, an arte and a vocabulario, and another treatise on the pains of purgatory and hell and the joys of glory and the rosary of the Virgin, with other matters of devotion, "en lengua Castellana y Floridana, y gastado en esto mas de diez y seis años". The licence is dated Mexico, 4 April 1612.
The books were approved in Florida before they were printed in Mexico. Among the approbations listed are one by Fray Pedro Ruyz, comissario of the Custodia de Santa Elena de la Florida, Habana and Isla de Cuba, given at Havana on 8 September 1610; one by Fray Joan Baptista de Capilla at the convent of the Concepción in the city of San Agustín de la Florida on 13 August 1610; one by Fray Pedro Bermejo, definidor of Santa Elena, of 1 June 1610; and those of Fray Martín Prieto, guardian of San Buenauentura de Potano, Fray Pedro Viñegra, guardian of San Joan del Puerto, and Fray Ioan Gomez de Palma of San Martin de Ayacatu. The mission houses of the Timucua country are the addresses on the paperwork.
The 1613 Confessionario is described as a working book rather than a showpiece: part of the text in two columns, coarse woodcuts of religious subjects set into it, and on the verso of the title page a cut of an Indian in a tunic kneeling before a seated friar, an angel sheltering him and a demon trying to carry him off. At page 218, beneath a Crucifixion, it prints a summary of the propositions Fray Diego de Victoria preached against the habit of swearing by the name of God, and on the verso of page 226 redondillas by Fray Damián de Vegas against oaths and blasphemies. The copy Viñaza locates, in the Biblioteca de Ultramar at Madrid, lacks the eight leaves of signature A.
An entirely independent bibliography, compiled in New York and completed in London in 1858, records the same corpus and extends it by fourteen years. Ludewig lists "Gramatica de la Lengua Timuiquana de Florida, por Fr. Francisco Pareja. Mexico, 1614", a Confesonario of 1612 and a Catecismo of 1617, gives the full title of the 1613 Confessionario of the widow of Diego López Dávalos, and adds "Cathecismo y Examen para los que comulgan en Lengua Castellana y Timuquana. Por el Fr. Francisco Pareja. Mexico, en la imprenta de Juan Ruyz, 1627". Two compilers working from different collections agree that these books existed and were printed.
Where the two disagree, the disagreement is recorded rather than resolved. Ludewig makes the 1613 Confessionario a duodecimo of 238 leaves; Viñaza collates it as an octavo with 16 preliminary leaves and 230 double pages. Ludewig says Pareja was a native of Toledo in Spain; the title page Viñaza transcribes says he was a native of the villa of Auñón in the archdiocese of Toledo, which is a town in the province and not the city. On the second point the transcript of the book's own title page is the better witness; on the first, neither compiler is shown to have handled the copy he describes.
Pareja's standing in the mission is given consistently by both. Ludewig has him one of the founders of the Franciscan order in Santa Elena, in Florida, and guardian of the first convent established there; the 1612 title page styles him guardian of the convent of the Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora de San Agustín and padre of the Custodia de Santa Elena de la Florida, and the 1614 grammar calls him definidor and perpetual father of that province.
Timucua printing did not stop with Pareja. Viñaza's number 163 is "Explicacion de la doctrina cristiana por el Cardenal Belarmino, puesta en Lengua Tinqua de la Florida, por Fray Gregorio Movilla, franciscano. Impresa en Madrid, por Francisco Martinez, año de 1631"; Ludewig heads a separate article "TINQUA", a language of Florida, recording a Doctrina Cristiana and a book on the administration of the sacraments by the same friar, the first printed at Madrid in 1631 and afterwards reprinted at Mexico in 1635. Both bibliographies carry "Tinqua" as though it were a language distinct from Timuquana; the corpus notes the doubling and does not settle it.
What the books were for is on their own title pages, and it is not philology. The 1612 catechism contains "lo que se les puede enseñar á los adultos que han de ser baptizados"; the confessional is offered as "Todo muy util y prouechoso, assi para que los padres confessores sepan instruyr al penitente como para que ellos aprendan a saberse confessar", with counsels to encourage the penitent and a declaration of the effects and prerogatives of the sacrament of confession. The language was written down, analysed and printed in order to baptise and to confess in it.
Neither registered bibliography records any earlier printed book in a language of the Florida peninsula: Viñaza's entries for Timuquana begin at number 134, in 1612, in a series arranged by year, and Ludewig's article on the language opens with Pareja. That is a statement about what these two compilations contain, not a proof that nothing earlier was ever printed.
By the time the Spanish bibliography was published in 1892 the language was spoken of in the past tense. Its catalogue of languages enters "Apalachina, Tumuquana ó Timuquana. Lengua de la Florida, la más universal y matriz de los muchos dialectos que se hablaron en aquella comarca", and lists seven of them: Amana, Acuera, Bemarino, Matique ó Theomi, Meraco, Schama and Tucururu. The printed books outlasted the speech community they were made for, and are a large part of what is left of it.
The bibliographical record also preserves what did not survive, or was never made. Ludewig's Timucua article opens with a notice of a grammar, dictionary and catechism "en Lengua de Mariland en la Florida" of 1642 by P. Andres Vito, mentioned in Barcia's edition of León Pinelo "but not known to be printed"; and Pareja's own petition of 1612 claims an arte and a vocabulario among the works he had composed, while the vocabulario appears in neither bibliography as a printed book.