The first systematic denunciation of the Spanish Inquisition, by Spanish heretics
 
Sanctae inquisitionis Hispanicae artes aliquot detectae, ac palam traductae.[The Arts of the Spanish Inquisition]
 
Reginaldo Gonsalvio Montano[pseudonym for Casiodoro de Reina and
Antonio del Corro]
Heidelberg, 1567
 
Scarce editio princeps – fairly well-represented in European libraries, but only one other copy found in sales records.
 
Octavo, 15x9 cm, pp. [36] 297 [2]. Woodcut printer's device at end and numerous finely ornamented initials. Contemporary overlapping vellum - some browning and staining. Upper spine with a small chip. Pages quite fresh with very minor browning at the margins. Two speckled edges. A beautiful, Fine copy with an impressive engraved heraldic bookplate of apparent Iberian vintage on the verso of the title page.
 
The book was published in the summer of 1567 and the printing process was rough - replete with errors and ongoing minor textual corrections throughout. There are three known states of the title page - this copy contains the third state. It also contains the final blank lacking in many copies.
 
"The Inquisitionis Hispanicae Artes, written by exiled Spanish Protestants, is the first systematic denunciation of the Spanish Inquisition. Its first part is a description of the Inquisition's methods, making use of the Inquisition's own instruction manual, which was not publicly known. Its second section presents a gallery of individuals who suffered persecution in Seville during the anti-Protestant repression(1557-1565). The book had a great impact, being almost immediately translated into English, French, Dutch, German, and Hungarian. The portraits very soon passed into Protestant martyrologies, and the most shocking descriptions(torture, auto de fe) became ammunition for anti-Spanish literature.”
 
Reina and Corro were both Catholic monks who fled Spain in the beginning of 1557 and converted to Protestantism. They were two of only twelve monks who were able to escape the monastery of San Isidoro del Campo outside of Seville. The discovery of clandestine Protestant communities that year, comprising a wide range of classes from clerics, laypeople, aristocrats, merchants, and more, brought shock to Seville’s ruling powers - who had assumed Spain to be uncorrupted by the Reformation. They reacted swiftly and harshly - jails overflowed and four massive autos de fe(“acts of faith” entailing public sentencing and execution of convicted heretics, including burning at the stake) were occasioned from 1559-1563.
 
Reina and Corro were part of burgeoning protestant Spanish communities abroad, large enough to periodically organize themselves as a Spanish church in Geneva and later London. The exiles were motivated to share the suffering of the remaining Protestants in Seville. Both theologians were condemned in absentia, burned in effigy, and were constantly the objects of intrigue to spies intent on capturing them. Reina would go on to publish a Spanish translation of The Bible in 1569, revised by Valera in 1602, and henceforth known as The Reina-Valera Bible - which is to this day the most popular Protestant version in the Spanish-speaking world. Corro would go on to teach at Oxford University(where John Donne was his pupil) and write the first Spanish grammar book in English.
 
A historically weighty and very rare book.
 
Ref: A Critical Edition of the Sanctae Inquisitionis Hispanicae Artes Aliquot(1567) with a Modern English Translation
 
The Spanish Inquisition. A Historical Revision
 
The Spanish Reformation and Christian Teaching: Timeless Educational Principles from Antonio Del Corro and Constantino Ponce De La Fuente
 
[philosophy, theology, history]