La Nueva Espiritual Fortaleza, Erigida en el Mas Eminente Sitio de la Ciudad de Zacatecas, para Su Resguardo, y Custodia. Sermon..

Mexico City: Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1729. Good.. 20,[25]pp. Disbound. Lacking final two pages, with three further pages supplied in contemporary manuscript. Some staining and toning, a bit heavier to initial leaves. An extremely scarce Hogal imprint that publishes a sermon given to celebrate a new church building in Zacatecas in the late 1720s. The Chapel of the Virgin del Patrocinio was completed atop the Cerro del Bufo in 1728, and dedicated by the festivities commemorated here on November 21st of that year. The mountain also contained the lucrative Eden gold and silver mine, which was the reason for the city's foundation in the 16th century. The sermon, given by a Franciscan friar named Cosme Borruel, reflects on passages from Luke and Matthew. Both it and the preliminary dedication, written by Don Joseph Bernardez, Conde de Santiago de la Laguna (who also wrote and published a description of Zacatecas in 1732), celebrate the completion of the chapel and the installation of the image of the Virgin that has remained in situ ever since. The present copy is somewhat wounded, with the final two pages lacking and the penultimate three pages supplied in contemporary manuscript, but the work is extremely scarce. We locate one institutional example, Bernardo Mendel's copy at the Lilly Library, and none in available auction records.