Items
Details
Title
Parangon de los dos Cromueles de Inglaterra.
Created/published
Ff. 56. Gabriel de Leon : Madrid, 1657.
Description
8⁰
Associated name
MENDES SILVA, Rodrigo, author.
Note
This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.
Item Details
Call number
270289
Folger-specific note
From dealer's description: "Second of two editions (both from same year) of this anti-English polemical work by Rodrigo Mendez (Mendes) Silva (1606-1670), a Portuguese-origin court historian who was later tortured by the Inquisition and moved to live in the Jewish community in Venice. The edition contains a dedication of American interest. Writing in the time of Oliver Cromwell, Mendes provides a life of the Protector’s namesake, the key figure of the Reformation Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540). From fol. 36 verso he continues with a homily to contemporary England, enjoining it to recognize its terrible present situation. The book ends with prophesies, of the Portuguese poet Gonçalo Annes Bandarra (1500-1566), and the wizard Merlin. Mendes belonged to an educated and well-connected group at the Spanish court, and was a ‘marrano’ (Iberian of Jewish descent). An important genealogist, one of his works was celebrated in a sonnet by Lope de Vega, and prefaced in an edition by poets including Pedro Calderón de la Barca. He was a cousin of Miguel da Silveira (b.1580), a sometime court scholar and author of ‘El Macabeo’ (1638), who is introduced in the present work (fols. 52 verso-53 recto), along with a cataclysmic prediction he made about England’s future. Mendes was arrested in 1659 and tortured, along with his wife, on suspicion of being crypto-Jewish. His property (including a choice library) was confiscated and he fled the country. His cousin Silveira had earlier avoided the Inquisition by fleeing to Naples where an ex-disciple was viceroy. The edition’s dedication, to don Juan de Carvajal y Sande (c.1590-1667), president of the Real Consejo de Hacienda, includes (fols. [3] recto to [4] recto), an account of his official services. These include being a counsellor to the Supreme Council of the Indies, and, in the Viceroyalty of Peru, president of the Audiencia of Charcas, its Visitor, Visitor to the Audiencia of Lima, and a holder of offices in Potosí and its mining areas. Carvajal was also (we learn) caught in a naval battle in view of Havana, visited Veracruz and Mexico City (whose marvellous lake is referred to), and travelled widely in New Spain (Mexico). The other edition is dedicated to the Duke of Medinaceli." Ordered from Leo Cadogan, D 9134, 2017-10-16, Autumn list of new acquisitions, item 5.
Folger accession
270289