La imprenta en Sevilla en el siglo XVI (1521–1600) by Arcadio Castillejo Benavente (review)

Although not presented as part of the series, this bibliography of Seville follows the format of the indispensable Tipobibliografía española volumes, which offer a comprehensive descriptive catalogue of a city’s output. The collection as it stands consists of: Alcalá de Henares 1502–1600 by Martín Abad (1991); Alcalá 1601–1700 by Martín Abad (1999); Burgos 1501–1600 by Fernández Valladares (2005); Cuenca 1528–1679 by Alfaro Torres (2002); La Rioja in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Marsá (2002); Madrid 1626–1650 by Moreno Garbayo (1999); Salamanca 1501–1600 by Ruiz Fidalgo (1994); and Segovia 1472–1900 by Reyes Gómez (1997). Aragon was represented by a facsimile reprint of Sanchez, Bibliografia aragonesa del s. XVI with an introduction by Remedios Moralejo (1991). Hors série was Madrid 1566–1600 by Clemente San Román (1998).

Arcadio Castillejo Benavente (1935–2015), director of various university libraries in Barcelona and Seville, included among his publications a catalogue of the incunabula in the University of Seville (1982) and of law manuscripts in the same institution (1986). He took on this project on his retirement in 2000; after his death the bibliography was brought to the press by Cipriano López Lorenzo.

This book follows the model of the Tipobibliografía española: detailed chronological bibliographical descriptions of 1347 editions with locations, followed by alphabetical indexes of authors or other headings, and names (of authors, publishers, printers, censors, dedicatees, and personal subjects). It is preceded by a historical survey of printing in Seville and accounts of the forty-five printers, with reproductions of their devices. An appendix lists seven books printed in Osuna between 1549 and 1555.

Seville was the largest city in Spain, and the commercial (and slaving) centre of Castile. Printing came to the city in 1477 and Castillejo declares it the centre of book production in Castile. The present volume begins in 1521 to avoid overlap with Martín Abad’s Post-incunables ibéricos. The house of Cromberger (founded in 1502) accounted for 50% of Seville editions up to 1545; 25% between 1545 and 1550; and 17% in the 1550s. For all information on the Crombergers the reader is referred to the work of Clive Griffin (1988 with various updates).

The author charts the growth of Seville printing from twelve editions in 1521 to forty-seven in 1599. He cites Maillard to the effect that the city was home to thirty-four printers in the 1550s, declining to twenty-five in the 1560s and nineteen in the 1570s. López Lorenzo points to thirteen editions of the entertaining bestseller La Celestina, balanced by more than ten of the sober Imitatio Christi in Spanish. Seville bore witness to the rise and fall of the romances of chivalry: a hundred editions between 1521 and 1550, twenty or so from 1551 to 1600.

Seville and Valladolid were the principal centres of Erasmian and Lutheran thought. The Index of Fernando Valdés (Archbishop of Seville) of 1559 condemned twenty-one works in fifty-nine editions printed in the city in 1515–56.

The author also assesses the history of the bibliography of his city, the principal figures being Escudero (awarded a prize in 1863 but not published until 1894), Hazañas (1892 with an unfortunate appendix in 1945–49), Gestoso (1924), and Domínguez Guzmán (1975).