Ximenes de Prexano, Petrus (d. 1495)
The first book printed at Toledo, the first full account of a heretical examination. The Confutatorium errorum is Juan Vázquez's first known book and the earliest publication to identify him by name as a printer. It is also a foundational production of the Toledo press, one of only three printing presses active in the city during the 15th century. Printing arrived in Toledo only in the early 1480s, when Vázquez established his workshop, initially producing indulgence forms authorized by Pope Sixtus IV to finance the final campaigns against the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. As with virtually all early incunables printed in Toledo, surviving copies are rare.
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The work documents a significant episode of pre-Reformation religious censorship in late medieval Spain. Pedro Martínez de Osma, professor of theology at the University of Salamanca, had advanced controversial questioning of indulgences, confession and aspects of sacerdotal authority in the remission of sins. These positions were judged contrary to Catholic doctrine. This prompted the Archbishop of Toledo to convene an ecclesiastical commission under the direction of Diego de Deza's predecessor. The commission condemned Martínez de Osma's propositions in 1479, ordered his writings to be destroyed, and compelled the theologian to make a formal public recantation.
Rather than simply presenting Jiménez de Prejano's theological rebuttal, the work assembles the principal documentary record of the controversy. It contains the Confutatorium itself, together with a narrative of the proceedings, the papal confirmation of the sentence issued by Sixtus IV, and Martínez de Osma's formal abjuration. As such, it provides an unusually complete printed dossier of a landmark heresy trial, illustrating the mechanisms by which ecclesiastical and papal authority sought to suppress doctrinal dissent in Spain on the eve of the age of print.
The case attracted scholarly attention because many of Martínez de Osma's criticisms of indulgences anticipated arguments that would emerge with far greater force during the Protestant Reformation a generation later. Although developed independently, his challenge to prevailing sacramental practice foreshadowed debates that would come to dominate sixteenth-century Europe. The Confutatorium errorum therefore occupies an important place not only in the history of Spanish printing, but also in the history of censorship, theological controversy, and the intellectual currents that preceded the Reformation.
Provenance: a few early annotations (washed); Christie’s, 6 June 2007, lot 135.
Rare, ISTC records 21 copies, only two in the United States.
Goff X-21; HR 16243; Haeb(BI) 712; Vindel(A) VI 58: 8; Bod-inc X-007; BMC X 68; GW M51948; ISTC ix00021000.
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