Sales catalogue: Quaritch

Date:
July 1885
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/17/39
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue: Quaritch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/160 page 2904
    this volume, illustrating some historical points, and has made an ample Index in his own ape Gs in two leaves. Vol. I. Copied under the care of the Lic. Don Mater OROZCO vy BERRA, containing the acts from June,’ 1529, to September, 1532, in 649 pp., and two leaves of Index by Ramirez. Vol. HI. Copy also made by Orozco, containing the Acts from January, 1533, to December, 1535, and extracts for the years 1536-1543, in 637 pp., and two leaves for the Index by Ramirez. Vol. IY. Containing the Acts from Dec. 1550, to June, 1559, in 489 unnumbered leaves. Vol. V. Containing the Acts from June, 1559, to Dec. 1561, in 481 unnumbered leaves. Vol. VI. Containing the Acts from Jan. 1562 to April, 1564, in 317 unnumbered leaves. This was one of the most important articles of the Ramirez collection, and ought to be secured by a Public Library in America. At the end of the first volume we learn that in the original books exists a note in the handwriting of the eminent scholar. Dn. Carlos Siguenza y Gongora, in which he states that during the tumult which took place in Mexico on the 8th of June, 1692, when the mob burnt both the national and the municipal palace, he saved the original Actas. The value of these six volumes as historical documents cannot be exaggerated, and any one who has dedicated himself to the study of the years immediately following the conquest, and who knows the important part which the Municipal Councils of those times took in all: public affairs of consequence, will at once recognize their utility, because they form, not only the founda- tion of Colonial history, but to a certain extent the foundation also of the history of a society and a civilization that were dis- appearing. These volumes contain also copies of a great number of “CrpuLas Reauzs,” letters from important personages, such as Cortés, Alvarado, and others. ‘A small part of these Acts have been printed in the Boletin ‘Municipal de Mexico, but they consist merely of extracts, and have been edited in such a careless manner, and issued in such a small number of copies, that these volumes lose in consequence nothing either in value or importance. The printed title which was used for the first and second volumes must have been taken from an edition in facsimile of
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