MS. GUATEMALA UNIVERSITY SPEECH WITH LEGAL DISPUTATION BROADSIDE

[Americana] Talavera, Miguel de: Examen literario que consagra a la memoria de su jefe, El Sor. Coronel de Exercito D.n Roque Abarca, Subinspectora General del Reino de Guatemala. Su Secretario D. Miguel Talavera. En la Real Universidad de Guatem.a el dia 23. de Marzo 1801.

Neatly presented manuscript of a speech given at the University of Guatemala, 23 March 1801, by Miguel Talavera, in praise of his boss, the military officer Roque Abarca. A printed university broadside (otherwise unlocated) tipped to a stub in the volume shows that the two visitors also officiated that day at an academic legal disputation.

Roque Abarca came to fame later for being Presidente of Guadalajara and Comandante General of Nueva Galicia (an area of the Spanish kingdom of New Spain which included modern California, Texas and New Mexico) at the time of the Mexican uprising of 1810. In 1801, he was a colonel and government official in Guatemala. Born in Spain, we learn from Talavera's speech (24) that his earlier military career had seen him fight the British and Ottomans at the Strait of Gibraltar (“arch of Hercules”).

Details

Manuscript. One volume, 21.5 cms. x 15.1 cms., pp. [4] 46. Title, text in two columns (Spanish and Latin) with ruled vertical divider. Light or medium browning, bound in brown calf, spine gilt, old titling to front cover, Striking red block-printed pastedowns and endpapers. (Binding rubbed and worn, the top joint very fragile). Pasted to front free endpaper verso: clipped-out description of item 6010, Maggs Bros. Bibliotheca Americana Part VII. Catalogue No. 502 (1928) (the present manuscript).

Pasted on a stub after p. [4], a printed broadside, 40 cms. x c.27.5 cms.,: D.D. Rocho de Abarca, regalium exercitium chiliarco […] Michael de Talavera […] dicat, ac consecrat prolusionem academicam; in qua qui dem sub discipline D.D.D. Emmanuelis Angel de Toledo, Primariae Legum Cathedrae Moderatoris, explicare & defendere promittit juxta mentem Sacrorum Canonum, Hispaniarum, Indiarumque Legum, titulos sequentes. DE IUDICIIS De officio Iudicis De Actore De Reo De Adsessoribus De Relatoribus De Advocatis De Procuratoribus De Tabellionibus. In Reg. ac Pontificia Guatamalensi Academia. Die [added in ink: 23] mens Martin Ann. MDCCCI. Imprimatur Dr Sicilia Rector. Apud Beteta. The text placed within an ornamental border with an intaglio armorial at head. The broadside since conserved in Japanese paper. 

Bibliography:

Neither the text nor broadside in OCLC or Medina, La imprenta en Guatemala, which has no works by Talavera.

See Abarca’s entry in Antonio García Cubas, Diccionario geográfico, histórico y biográfico de los E.E.U.U. Mexicanos (2 vols., México, 1888-1891), I. Accessed via the microfiche collection ABEPI.