A book from Pérez de Soto's collection

by Philip Gambone

This column, which I call "The Writer in Mexico," is about Mexican and foreign writers whose works—novels, stories, poems, plays, essays, and travel books—were inspired by the country that so many of us from El Norte call our second home. But what are books without their readers? And many readers are also passionate book collectors. (I am one of them, to the detriment of my wallet.) So how about a piece this week about a Mexican book collector?

One of the greatest bibliophiles in seventeenth-century Mexico was a man named Melchor Pérez de Soto. "Almost no field of knowledge evaded his curiosity," writes Irving A. Leonard in his beautifully researched and entertaining book Baroque Times in Old Mexico. During his life, Pérez de Soto assembled one of the finest private libraries in the country. His collection, which amounted to some 1,663 volumes, was, Leonard writes, "an astonishing miscellany of books assembled by a man of little formal education and modest means, and its existence testifies both to the ready availability of printed volumes in Old Mexico and to the high level of culture achieved in this outpost of western civilization in the seventeenth century."

Melchor Pérez de Soto was born 1606 in Cholula, just outside Puebla. Shortly afterwards, the family moved to Mexico City, where Melchor's father, a creole mason, found better opportunities to ply his trade. The boy attended private schools, though he never mastered Latin, essential in the seventeenth century for attaining the status of a scholar and gentleman. As a consequence, he followed his father's profession, eventually becoming a master architect-builder, but his true passion was always books. At some point—certainly by the 1640s—he began to assemble his library.

Pérez de Soto's collection fell into three categories. Religious literature—"chiefly homiletic writings," Leonard says—comprised about one third of his library of books. As one might expect, they were written by some of the great Spanish Catholic writers of the time, including Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross.

Secular non-fiction constituted an even larger portion. These volumes included works on a vast array of subjects including history, philosophy, architecture, sculpture, music, medicine, mathematics, military science, navigation, astronomy, and practical arts, such as agriculture, mining, carpentry and cooking. Among the books on astronomy were works by Copernicus and Kepler, forward-looking thinkers but still under suspicion by the Church. Even more dangerous were Pérez de Soto's books on astrology, palmistry, and other occult sciences, subjects that eventually proved his undoing.

Page from one of Pérez de Soto's books
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The third category, about a fifth of the collection, consisted of literature: fiction, poetry, fables, essays, and proverbs. These books, many of which were "old-fashioned entertainments," represented, Leonard says, "the writings that enjoyed most popularity and were most widely read throughout the Hispanic world. They were the books that more frequently passed from hand to hand, particularly in the New World realms of Spain." Among them were two of Pérez de Soto's treasures: The Golden Age in the Groves of Eriphyle (El Siglo de Oro en las Selvas de Erífile), a pastoral romance by the Mexican writer and poet Bernardo de Balbuena, and Cervantes' first book, La Galatea.

Most likely Melchor assembled his library from purchases made at local bookshops in Mexico City. He may have also bought books from Spanish travelers, whose luggage would have included volumes they had deliberately brought with them to sell.

Metropolitan Cathedral - Mexico City
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When he wasn't buying books, Pérez de Soto acted as chief mason on the project to complete the enormous cathedral in Mexico City. "His extensive knowledge and studious habits doubtless impressed those about him," Leonard says, "perhaps arousing suspicions among his uncultivated fellow craftsmen, jealous of the reputation which had won him the coveted appointment."

In Pérez de Soto's time, New Spain, like the mother country, was still a neomedieval culture. Through its secular censoring arm, the Inquisition, the Church energetically brought to trial any Catholics who were suspected of straying from "the purity of the Holy Faith and Good Morals." A tribunal of the Inquisition was established in Mexico in 1571. Punishments ranged from being made to march in public processions carrying a candle and with a rope around one's neck, to fines, confiscation of property, public whipping, or forced service on galleys and ships. The most unrepentant heretics were sentenced to death. "Occasionally," Leonard writes, "the dead received posthumous sentences for offenses subsequently discovered, and punishment was visited upon their effigies or disinterred bones."

Plaque in Mexico City denoting the Inquisition execution grounds
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About 1650, our enthusiastic book collector began to fall under the Inquisition's suspicion, and by early 1655 the dossier that the Holy Office kept on him contained sufficient damning testimony to warrant his arrest. He was charged not only with practicing "horoscopy and of owning forbidden books, but also of using sorcery to discover stolen property."

Allowed to bring his own bed and money to pay for his food, Pérez de Soto was taken to jail and held in solitary confinement. His books were confiscated and a hasty inventory of them was drawn up. (It is because of that inventory that we know so much about the contents of his remarkable library.) Though he was not informed of the charges against him, the unfortunate bibliophile nevertheless guessed what he was accused of and adamantly denied that he had behaved in any way to offend the Church.

Prohibited volumes in Pérez de Soto's collection
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The inquiry dragged on. After months of confinement, witness testimony, and hostile examination, the book-loving prisoner begged his jailer to bring him even one volume to keep his mind alert and sane. For slipping him just one book—on the duties of a good monarch and his subjects—the ever-zealous Inquisition sentenced the compassionate jailer to four years of labor in the Hospital de Nuestra Señora de la Concepción.

Still in solitary confinement, Pérez de Soto's mental condition worsened. "His utterances became almost incoherent," writes Leonard, so much so that the Inquisition relented, allowing him a cellmate, one Diego Cedillo. It was too little, too late. The next morning, Pérez de Soto was found dead in his cell. Cedillo, cowering in a corner, his face and hands bloody, said that the demented de Soto had attacked him in the night, forcing him to defend himself by battering the book-collector with a stone. Pérez de Soto's body was wrapped in the habit of the Carmelites and buried in the Convento de Santo Domingo, which served as the headquarters of the Inquisition in New Spain. A few days later, Cedillo, too, was dead, having hanged himself with a twisted bedsheet from a beam in his cell.

Index of Prohibited Books (1564)
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Within three months of his death, the Inquisition had returned almost 1296 of Pérez de Soto's books to his widow. They held on to 385 volumes for closer examination by the "correctors." Most of these volumes were eventually returned as well. Finally, on February 20, 1656, the last batch—sixty-three volumes, now expurgated—were also returned. The widow found a buyer for a few volumes in her husband's collection. The rest she sold for scrap paper. "I am in needy circumstances," she told the Inquisition.

Detail of John Carter Brown Library poster
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Three hundred and fifty-five years after his death, in 2010, the John Carter Brown Library of the Early Americas at Brown University mounted an exhibition in which they reconstructed a portion of Melchor Pérez de Soto's library. "From the entries on the manuscript inventory, it is rarely possible to identify the precise edition that Pérez de Soto owned," wrote the curators, Kenneth Ward and Patricia Figueroa. Many of the books listed in the inventory appeared in multiple editions and/or translations. Consequently, the exhibit included representative titles and editions, as well as, in some cases, the exact edition that Melchor owned. The exhibit also indicated which books had appeared on the Inquisition's inventory.

If there is anything positive to extract from the tragic tale of Melchor Pérez de Soto it is the remarkably free circulation of books that readers in Mexico enjoyed during the seventeenth century. The number of books "far exceeded," Leonard points out, "what was then available to contemporary New Englanders who had to largely content themselves with the Bible and the locally printed Bay Psalm Book (1640)."

Nazis burning books
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The current publishing industry in both the United States and in Mexico is a robust one, but censorship is again on the rise. Across the United States, a new Inquisition—comprised of self-righteous, right-wing guardians of "morality"—has called for and succeeded in banning books from public libraries and school curriculums. As poet and editor David Groff recently said, "The virus of fascism threatens our democracy." The tragic story of Melchor Pérez de Soto is not some antique, never-to-be-repeated incident in history, but a chilling reminder of what can happen when books, information, and controversial ideas are suppressed.

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Philip Gambone, a retired high school English teacher, also taught creative and expository writing at Harvard for twenty-eight years. He is the author of six books, including As Far As I Can Tell: Finding My Father in World War II, which was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by the Boston Globe. His new collection of short stories, Zigzag, has just been published by Rattling Good Yarns Press and is available on Amazon, at the Aurora Bookstore, and at the Biblioteca bookshop.

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