Carta Pastoral Exortatoria a Penitencia..

Guatemala: Imprenta de Joachin de Arevalo, Impressor de, 1756. Very good plus.. [23]pp. Small quarto. Later marbled wrappers. Very light dampstaining at fore-edge, otherwise minor toning and dust soiling. A quite rare, mid-18th-century Guatemalan imprint, comprising a pastoral letter by Francisco José de Figueredo y Victoria, the Archbishop of Guatemala, that advises immediate and intense penitence by worshippers in the wake of the Great Lisbon Earthquake, which struck the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa on November 1, 1755, and destroyed the Portuguese capital. Figueredo was a native of New Granada and became the Bishop of Popayán before being installed as Archbishop of Guatemala in 1753. In the present letter to the public, he ruminates on the numerous biblical exemplars of natural disasters and calls upon the faithful to exercise themselves strenuously in prayer and penitence as a response to such obvious and devastating Divine Justice. "Los Terremotos son voces, son avisos de Dios," he argues, and advises the avid and earnest repetition of the sacraments as the most important response. We locate only two copies in U.S. institutions, at Berkeley and the JCB.

Beristain I, p.442. Medina, Guatemala 257.