Rhetorica en lengua Castellana / en la qual se pone muy en breue lo necessario / para saber bien hablar y escreuir: y conoscer quien habla y escriue bien. Una manera para poner por exercicio las reglas de la Rhetorica. Un tratado de los auisos en que consiste la breuedad y abundancia. Otro tratado de la forma q[ue] se deue tener en leer los autores: y sacar dellos lo mejor p[ar]a poder se dello aprouechar qua[n]do fuere menester / todo en lengua Castellana: compuesto por un frayle de la orden de Sant Hieronymo. M.D.XLI.

THE FIRST RHETORIC BOOK IN SPANISH - WITH AN APPENDIX ON THE ARS EXCERPENDI

4to (196x138 mm). [4], CXVII, [1 blank] leaves. Collation: +⁴ a-o⁸ p⁶. The last leaf is a blank. Colophon at l. o8v. Title printed in red and black within an ornamental woodcut border, woodcut coat-of-arms of the dedicatee Don Felipe de Austria (the future king Philipp II) on title-page verso surrounded by an architectural border. Woodcut decorative initials. Early 20^th-century blind-tooled blue calf, spine in compartments with gilt fillets and double lettering piece (one for the title, one for the printing date). On the front pastedown bookplate “Ex-libris L. Cervera Vera” engraved by “C. Delhom - Madrid”; on the second flyleaf verso stamp “Biblioteca de D. Félix García y García - Jaén”; at the bottom of the title page ownership entry “Es del collegio de la Comp° de Íesus de Çaragoça”, at the top shelf mark partly trimmed. Several contemporary and later marginal notes (partly trimmed) throughout the volume: “Differentia entre suadir y exhorter” (l. e3v), “Vergilio 4° Aen. Amore de Dido” (l. g7v), “prosa tiene num° / pies, Erasmo. V / [Qu?]imtiliano  autores” (l. i1v), “Erasmo” (l. i6r and i6v), “Demosthenes tamudo” (l. i8r), “[…]cios dla voz […]ta” (l. i8v), “A Antonio Codina” (l. k4r), “Luiz de Cuia Sentencia” (l. o4v), “Rodriguez Gabriel” (l. p2v). Inner margin of two leaves in the first quire anciently reinforced, slightly uniformly browned, scattered damp stains, some penwork exercises in the margin of a few leaves, two small holes on l. m6 affecting a few letters, all in all a good copy.

VERY RARE FIRST EDITION of the first book on rhetoric in the Spanish language, whose authorship has long been disputed. Today the vast majority of scholarship attributes the work to the Hieronymite friar Miguel de Salinas. The main reference we have in support of this attribution, is the mention of his authorship by the bookseller (“librero”) Luys Gutierrez in a letter to the Christian reader (“al christiano lector”) contained in the 1563 edition of Salinas' Libro apologético que defiende la buena y docta pronunciación. Besides that, Fray José de Sigüenza in his Historia de la orden de San Jerónimo (Madrid, 1605, reprinted in 1907- 1909, II, pp. 346-347), which is the major source on Salians' works and life, even though he did not explicitly mention the Rhetorica among his works, reveals some information that seems to confirm this attribution, such as his work as a teacher of novices for thirty-five years, the emphasis on his rhetorical skills and, above all, the fact that Salinas belonged to the Monastery of Santa Engracia in Zaragoza, a monastery that played a very important role for the political activity of Emperor Charles V, who stayed at Santa Engracia whenever he passed through Zaragoza and within whose walls he met influential people like the General of the Order Pedro de la Vega, translator of Titus Livy, or Juan Regla, confessor to the Emperor and Philip II. Salinas also published a Tractado para saber bien leer y escrevir, pronunciar, cantar letras assí en latín como en romance (Zaragoza, 1551), which, like the aforementioned Libro apologetico, seems consistent with his pedagogical activity.

The Rhetórica has also been recently attributed to Juan Luis Vives (cf. F. Calero Calero, Juan Luis Vives o Fray Miguel de Salinas. A propósito de la Rhetórica en lengua castellana, Madrid, 2008) and, more convincingly, to another Hieronymite friar, Juan de Valladolid, on the basis of the inventories of the Escorial library, where a note assigns the work to him (cf. J.L. Gonzalo Sánchez-Molero, La ‘librería rica' de Felipe II. Estudio histórico y catalogación, San Lorenzo del Escorial, 1998, p. 690).

The volume opens with a dedication (Epistola, ll. +2-3) by the printer Juan de Brocar, a disciple of Antonio de Nebrija, to the future king Philipp II, (1527-1598), who at the time of the publication was only 14 years old. The dedication is followed by an Epistola Ioannes Petreius Toletanus autori huius operis (ll. +4r-v), addressed by Juan Pere?z from Toledo (1512-1545), professor of rhetoric at the Complutense University in Alcalá de Henares, to the anonymous author.

The pedagogic intent of the work, already highlighted in the dedication, is made even more clear in the author's preface. “Por otra parte, en el ‘Prólogo del autor del libro a los lectores' se da cuenta de la dificultad para tomar la decisión de publicar la obra: ‘A mí me pidió, y con mucha instancia, cierta persona que me lo podía mandar que le hiziesse en lengua castellana un arte de Rhetórica para que con ella, no sabiendo latín, pudiesse entender algo de lo que los rhetóricos latinos y griegos ponen cerca de la sciencia del bien hablar y escrevir y aprovecharse dello'. Peter Russell [op. cit.] formuló la hipótesis de que esa persona que podía mandar no fuera otro que el propio príncipe – directa o indirectamente -, a quien Brocar dirige su epístola, dadas las dificultades ciertas que tenía en el conocimiento del latín. Desde luego, de ser así y no tratarse de ‘un topos de la humildad' que Russell tampoco descarta, la obra estaría inscrita en la preocupación así sentida por la educación del príncipe, que en ese momento tenía catorce años con una especial inquietud por su desconocimiento del latín. Como bien ha mostrado Gonzalo Sánchez-Molero en su imprescindible Felipe II. La educación de un ‘felicísimo príncipe' (1527-1545) [Madrid, 2013] su educación formaba parte de un interés común” (A. Fernández Rodríguez, La ‘Rhetórica en lengua castellana' (1541) de Miguel de Salinas y el ‘Opus de conscribendis epistolis' (1522) de Erasmo. La aplicación de la Retórica a las circunstancias comunicativas, in: “Libros de la corte”, 22, 2021, pp. 259-260).

The Rhetórica en lengua Castellana was influenced by Antonio de Nebrija's Artis Rhetoricae compendiosa coaptatio ex Aristotele Cicerone et Quintiliano (Alcalá de Henares, Guillén de Brocar, 1515), Juan Luis Vives' De conscribendis epistolis (1536), and, above all, by Erasmus' rhetorical treatises De copia and De conscribendis epistolis (cf. E. Sánchez García, Nebrija y Erasmo en la ‘Rhetórica en lengua castellana' de Miguel de Salinas, in: “Edad de Oro”, XIX, 2000, pp. 287-298). Nevertheless, “el intento de Salinas por escribir una Rhetórica en la propia lengua es ya de por sí una invitación a aplicarla a su momento histórico sin pensar siquiera que pueda ser instrumento para el acceso al estudio de los clásicos. Para ello moviliza todos los recursos desde una comprensión profunda de su sentido último y con la perspicacia absoluta de elegir para cada parte lo que le conviene para su proyecto. Si bien para sus coetáneos era más que conocido el De conscribendis epistolis de Erasmo y, por extensión, las artes epistolares, el acierto de Salinas consistió en integrarlo en el lugar preciso. Para ello contempló la posibilidad de incorporar lo debido al arte epistolar desde las circunstancias comunicativas y desde la tradición última de esta ‘retórica aplicada' ” (A. Fernández Rodríguez, op. cit., p. 279).

“Así pues, al paso trascendental que se había dado con la publicación de la Gramática de Nebrija en 1492 y con el famoso discurso de Carlos V ante el papa Pablo III en Roma en 1536, que prestigió al castellano como lengua de la diplomacia, se sumó este tratado sobre retórica en español, que supuso una nueva conquista de nuestra lengua, también apta para alojar y transmitir una disciplina con tanta raigambre clásica como ésta” (L. Alburquerque García, Miguel de Salinas, in: “Diccionario Biográfico Español”, Real Academia de la Historia, s.v.).

“Rhetórica en lengua castellana (1541) by Miguel de Salinas hides an interesting ars excerpendi within its last pages. The reader who approaches the work will find, almost without expecting it, a complete series of recommendations about how to read the texts and obtain a generous set of examples and sayings. This task usually required the preparation of an organized notebook or codex excerptorius. On this point, Salinas did not settle for summarizing some theories about the subject, but instead meticulously described his experience in the preparation of his personal codex, called the libro blanco (‘white book'). Thus, he provided very valuable information about the structure of these types of handwritten catalogues, the ‘material space' where humanism constructed some of its rhetorical and literary keys. The immediate purpose of Salinas' ‘white book' was to provide its author with appropriate material to expand his sermons. However, his codex is also a means of connecting between the culture of the classics and the new erudition of Renaissance man. Salinas also conceived the book as a long project that would take his lifetime to complete and was based on a meticulous and patient examination of the texts. Reading, therefore, becomes a type of study, and the ‘white book' overcomes its condition as a warehouse of quotes thereby becoming a true store of knowledge [… Besides its clear educational purposes,] the publication of Rhetórica en lengua castellana must also be understood within the context of the interests of the printing office where it was produced. The office belonging to Arnau Guillén de Brocar and his son, the aforementioned Juan de Brocar, had been specializing in the publication of texts drafted at Complutense University or as requested by it. These were texts aimed at the dissemination of studia humanitatis, including ones devoted to the art of oratory that, logically, played an important role. Encarnación Sánchez García has stated that there are striking similarities between the list of rhetoric works published at said printing office and the authors cited by Juan de Brocar as sources of Rhetórica en lengua castellana: Trebizond, Hermogenes, Cicero, Quintilian “and other modern Latin authors” (an expression that appears to preferably allude to Nebrija and Erasmus) […] The construction of the codex excerptorius was the ‘material' support […] of some of the literary keys to humanism, from the rhetoric of quotations to the poetry of abundance. The ‘white book' proposed by Salinas therefore had to become a bridge between the past and the present, filling out old quotations with the most contemporary romance prose. However, its destiny was somewhat more ambitious […] The acquisition of knowledge is, in effect, inseparable from the writing of the ‘white book' and, in this sense, can even be contrasted with the ‘ordinary route' of study […] Salinas' program was therefore presented as something truly new. From this point of view, the contribution of his ‘white book' was not an attempt to provide a model for the construction of the notebook, but more to simply encourage its use. It is difficult to assess the implementation of these reading and annotation techniques in the Spain of 1541, and it is even more difficult to gauge the influence that Salinas' text might have had on that process. In this sense, Salinas' words testify to a desire for sound learning, founded on the direct reading of the auctores. It was perhaps an unrealistic desire at the time, given the recent flourishing of a whole universe of printed learning treasurers: anthologies, encyclopedia, commonplace books” (J. Aragüés Aldaz, The ‘White Book' of Miguel de Salinas: Design, Matter, and Destiny of a “codex excerptorius”, in: “Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe”, A. Cevolini, ed., Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2016, pp. 209-223).

Miguel de Salinas was born in Zaragoza around 1490. He studied Arts, Humanities and Theology in the Royal Chapel of Fernando el Católico in Zaragoza. He entered the Order of the Hieronymites at the age of 21 in the convent of Santa Engracia in Zaragoza. Ten years later he was named master of novices, a position he held for thirty-five years, and vicar in 1557. He died in his hometown in 1567 or 1577 (cf. L. Alburquerque García, op. cit.).

On the Rhetórica en lengua castellana see also P.E. Russell, Un libro indebidamente olvidado. ‘La Rhetórica en lengua castellana' (1541) de Fray Miguel de Salinas, in: “Libro-homenaje a Antonio Pérez Gómez”, J. Pérez Gómez, ed., Cieza, 1978, II, pp. 133-142; E. Sánchez García, Introducción, in: M. de Salinas, “Rhetórica en lengua castellana”, Naples, 1999, pp. v-xliii; and P. Martín Baños, El arte epistolar en el Renacimiento europeo. 1400-1600, Bilbao, 2005, pp. 529 and 598.

Palau y Dulcet, XVIII, 287547; Vindel, 2508; Salvà y Perez, II, 2401; Martin Abad, I, 317.

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