Officium proprium in festo S. Ioannis Nepomuceni martyris duplex II. classis cum octava
Mexico (City): Alejandro Valdés, 1828.
Small octavo in 4s (5 ¾” x 4 1/8”, 147mm x 105mm): 14 2-64 [$1 signed]. 24 leaves, pp. 1-2 (title, blank) 3-48. With an engraved frontispiece by Navarro.
Bound in contemporary purple paste-paper wrappers.
Entirely unsophisticated. Chipping and sunning to the wrappers, with the lower front fore-corner curling up. Some creases to the fore-corners of the text-block.
The Liturgy of the Hours or Divine Office is a mode of offering prayers at specified times of day and days of the year. Writ large, these books are called breviaries, but it was often the case that excerpts for particular purposes were made and thus could be more widely circulated. The present volume printed in Mexico City, specifies psalms, hymns and other readings for the veneration of St. John of Nepomuk (or Nepomucene),[1] who replaced St. Wenceslaus (Václav) as the patron saint of Czechia/Bohemia in the Hapsburg era (canonized in 1729). Czech involvement with Mexico began in the XVIIc with Jesuit missionaries (when Spain was ruled by the Hapsburgs), and flourished in the XIXc with emigration by Czechs and Germans — vital to the Mexican beer industry.
José Mariano Navarro (1742–ca. 1809) was active in several locations in Mexico City (here Calle de la Palma), and is famed for engraving the first map with the name “California.”
The book is rare, with 8 examples on OCLC in institutional collections (all in the United States, save for one in Chile).
[1] Classified as a “double feast of the second class, with an octave.” In the modern Catholic Church this is equivalent to a “feast” — the “first class” being called now a “solemnity,” such as Easter or Christmas — and the octave is the eighth day inclusive, i.e., a week after the initial feast.
Item #JLR0693
Price: $670