Caption title.

Attributed to Matias de Tapía by Rivière.

Place of publication of Seville and date of publication supplied by Rivière.

Place of publication of Madrid supplied by José del Rey Fajardo in his Nomenclátor biográfico de los Jesuitas neogranadinos 1604-1831, Bogotá, 2020.

"Breve descripcion, o demarcacion de la Provincia de la Compania de Jesus del Nuevo Reyno de Granada, y terrenos de las missiones circulares entre Christianos, y de las de los gentiles": leaves 14-20.

Only known printed memorial of Tapía's letter from the Jesuit missions in the Orinoco River Valley area, which comprises modern day Colombia and Venezuela. Backer, in his Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, remarks that Tapia wrote a letter in 1716 from this mission, where he met the martyred Father Ignatius Toebast and his companions, but does not know if it was printed. Rivière, in Corrections et additions à la Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, does provide a title, remarking that the Spanish memoir was translated in Dutch by Father Nicolas Valckenborg. Sabin (number 94349) and Backer (VIII: column 374, numbers 1 and 2) cite the Dutch translations, printed in Roermond and Ghent, 1716, entitled "Treurich verhael van het menighvuldigh Heydendom wyt breet verspreyt aen den oever van de Riviere Orinoco in Tierra Firma een gedeelte van America gestiert tot de Godturuchtighe, ende genaedighe ooren van syne catholycke Majestaet Phillipus V", remarking that it was probably never printed in Spanish. The work is cited, however, in "El Orinoco ilustrado, y defendido, historia natural, civil, y geographica de este gran rio, y de sus caudalosas vertientes: govierno, usos, y costumbres de los Indios sus habitadores, con nuevas, y utiles noticias de animales, arboles, frutos, aceytes, resinas, yervas, y raices medicinales; y sobre todo, se hallaràn conversiones muy singulares à N. Sante Fé, y casos de mucha edificacion" / by Joseph Gumilla, first printed in Madrid, 1741. The latest bibliography by José del Rey Fajardo, his Nomenclátor biográfico de los Jesuitas neogranadinos 1604-1831, printed in Bogotá, 2020, also states that this work was "unpublished" in the sense that it has no imprint. However, in Rey Fajardo's Los hombres de los ríos: Jesuitas en Guayana, printed in Caracas, 2019, he states that he saw a copy in the Real Academia de Madrid (shelfmark Jesuitas J. XXVII, Documentos, 2).

Signatures: A-M².

See: Sabin, J. Dictionary of books relating to America from its discovery to the present time, 94349.

Streit, R. Bibliotheca missionum, III:98-99

Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, VII: column 1867, number 1

Palau y Dulcet, A. Manual del librero hispano-americano (2. ed.), 327387

Rivière, E.-M. Corrections et additions à la Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, column 833

European Americana, 715/169

Purchase; 2019; 20-042.

Text primarily in Spanish with some passages in Latin.