1584. Carta de Benito Boyer, impresor de libros, para Diego Navarro Maldonado, mercader de libros.

Letter from Benito Boyer, a book printer, to Diego Navarro Maldonado, a book trader.

The author writes to Diego Navarro Maldonado about the shipping of some bibles for the latter to sell them in Mexico.

The process was opened against Diego Navarro Maldonado, a book trader, and Juan de Treviño, a bookseller, for having received forbidden books in Spain. Specifically, the process focuses on the transaction of two hundred copies of the “Vatable Bible” sent from the book printer Benito Boyer to Diego Navarro Maldonado. Vatable Bibles have took the name after François Vatable, a French philologist and exegete who is credited for translating the bible directly from Hebrew in 1545. This translation’s dissemination aroused great controversy at the time. The copies of this bible were very expensive and Benito Boyer wanted to do business sending two hundred of them to Nueva Espana. Nevertheless, the Inquisition included Vatable Bible in the list of banned books, shattering Benito Boyer’s trading plans.

Reference:

Rocío Sánchez Rubio, Isabel Testón Núñez

El hilo que une. Las relaciones epistolares en el Viejo y en el Nuevo Mundo, siglos XVI-XVIII

Mérida

Universidad de Extremadura

1999