PAUL V, Pope.
MEXICAN INDULGENCE
Bulla de plenissima indulgencia.
[S.l.], [s.n.], 10 March 1672£3,950.00
Folio half-sheet (no watermark). 27 lines of text, crudely printed on thick rough paper. Roman letter. Four woodcuts, St. Anthony of Padua with lilies and Christ child, arms of Pope Clement IX at top, and to bottom, arms of the Consejo y Comisaría de Cruzada and its director Antonio de Benavides y Bazán (1610-91) (wormtrack at foot), his woodcut signature. Age-toning, light waterstaining to blank outer and lower edges, a few small wormholes affecting blank areas and woodcut of St. Anthony. In good condition. Two blank areas of text filled in contemporary ms., ‘Don Joseph de Goitia’ and ‘D[oñ]a Cathalina Perez Molero’.
Unrecorded indulgence purchased by a Spanish colonial resident in Mexico on behalf of a woman Spanish settler. It was issued in Madrid by the Consejo y Comisaría de Cruzada, an institution with papal authority but controlled by the Spanish crown, which administered the Bulas de Santa Cruzada, or Bulls of the Holy Crusade, papal indulgences granted to the Spanish Crown and sold in Spain and, from 1578, its colonial territories. The income was originally intended exclusively for the fighting of heathens and heretics, but over time went straight to the Spanish monarchy, and as late as the early nineteenth century was used to prop up expenditure in the colonies. This indulgence refers specifically to Spanish territories in the Americas and Philippines, where it was evidently offered for sale and most likely printed, given the quality of the typesetting and paper.
The main text states the necessity of the intercession of all the saints for those in purgatory, as well as the torments and horrors of eternal incarceration in the fires of Hell. Cathalina Perez Molero is recorded as having established a sugar hacienda with her husband Pedro de Ylara in Xalapa, near Mexico City, which eventually failed. In the mid-C17th, however, Ylara was a wealthy and important residents of Xalapa, and is recorded as having owned slaves. The connection with Joseph de Goitia appears to have been business related; a Don Joseph de Goitia was killed in the Pueblo Indian Revolt in New Mexico in 1680. Examples of plenary indulgences purchased by de Goitia for Cathalina date to 1662 and as far back as 1639, implying a regular programme of plenary indulgence buying on behalf of Cathalina, who apparently therefore died as early as the 1630s, since indulgences were not meant to be purchased for other living people. Officially, the sale of indulgences had been banned since 1567 after the Council of Trent, but Pope Paul V (1550-1621) had authorised them for sale in the Spanish colonies. De Goitia paid four reales for this example.
Not in OCLC, USTC or HPB. Not in Palau.In stock
