Sales catalogue 496: Maggs Bros

Date:
1927
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/13/53
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue 496: Maggs Bros. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    142/344 page 126
    LAS CASAS (BARTHOLOME DE)—continued. nine parts as issued. All First Editions. With title-pages nearly all printed in red and black with woodcut borders. Dibdin remarks:—‘ This History is a pro- digiously great gun in the bibliographical battery of collectors; espectally if the parts be complete.” The Church Catalogue only knows of sets in the following nine libraries: British Museum, Huth, Rothschild, John Carter Brown, Pequet, Lenox, Halsey, Hoe, and Ayer Libraries. Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Apostle to the Indians of the Sixteenth Century, was born in Seville in 1474 of aristocratic lineage, and died at Madrid in 1566. In 1502 he went with Nicolas de Ovando to Hispaniola, where he settled, and in 1510 was ordained a priest. In 1511 he went as curate to a village in Cuba. He soon began to preach against the atrocious wrongs committed by the Spaniards against the natives, under a system of slavery the most cruel and destructive the world has ever known. ‘This drew upon him the animosity of his countrymen. Unable, by any means in his power, to check this cruelty, in 1515 he returned to Spain to make a personal appeal to his sovereign. Ferdinand’s death, which happened soon after his arrival in Seville, put an end to his hopes in this direction, but he found sym- pathetic friends in Cardinal Ximenes and Adrian, the Regents, though he encoun- tered general hostility to his views. nA es He returned to Hispaniola Nov. 11, 1516, fortified with the title of the “ Protector of the Indians.’ He made numerous voyages between the Indians and Spain, in his endeavours to alleviate their condition. At last wearied with his efforts and lack of success, he retired to a Dominican convent in San Domingo, in 1522. He there spent eight years in retirement, occupied in study and writing. His work was not at first allowed to be printed, but was submitted to the Emperor and his ministers. Twelve years later the work was published with a dedication to Philip, the heir to the throne. Though the number of victims was contested, it should be remarked that the acts of cruelty which he described were never called in question. NOTES. I. One of the most gruesome books ever written. II. These four leaves which are appended to the Brevissima Relacion are usually mentioned -as a separate tract, though it is really a part of that work. It contains the narrative of a Spanish traveller who witnessed some of the cruelties practised upon the natives by the Spaniards. III. This tract gives the eighth of the proposed remedies, and assigns twenty reasons to prove that the Indians should not be given to the Spaniards in any form of slavery.
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