Plaza universal de todas ciencias y artes, parte traduzida de toscano, y parte compuesta por el doctor Christoval Suarez de Figueroa

by Tomaso Garzoni | translated and with original contributions by Christóval Suárez de Figueroa

Perpignan: Louis Roure, 1629

[8], 379 leaves | 4to | A-K^4 L-3F^8 3G^4(-3G4 blank) | 202 x 148 mm

Second edition of Suárez de Figueroa's popular guide to and history of everything, organized primarily by profession, which appeared first in 1615 and again in 1630. The work is largely a translation of Tomaso Garzoni’s Piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo (1585), though Suárez de Figueroa certainly contributed his share of original content.  ¶  One of his more remarkable additions appears in the chapter on servants, pages, and slaves. Compared to the ethnicities that traditionally served as Europe’s slaves, like Muslim Turks and Berbers, “Blacks are of a better nature, easier to manage and teach, very useful,” he writes. “They show themselves more loyal to and loving of their owners; while stubborn, they have been seen to commit great excessos [feats?]. They want to be treated with tenderness, but without excusing them from punishment when they deserve it” (fol. 321v).  ¶  This particular opinion, absent from Garzoni’s original, represents a significant change in prejudicial European views of both race and religion. To be sure, Garzoni did have a chapter on slaves and servants. Slavery had been present in Europe since time immemorial after all. There is a section on this matter in the 1585 edition of Garzoni’s Piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo titled De Servitori, Paggi, et Schiavi [On Servants, Pages, and Slaves], that places little to no emphasis on the racialization of enslaved people. Garzoni’s emphasis lies on the mechanisms of disciplining the enslaved, informed by philosophers of classical antiquity. This lack of distinct racialization can be attributed to the multiracial, multiethnic demographic that constituted the enslaved people of early modern Italy. In the context of Venice, “slavery had a particular inter-imperial dimension, as the vast majority of domestic slaves were subjects of the Ottoman sultan. The “[emphasis on the] specific provenance of slaves (e.g. North Africa, the Black Sea region, the Dalmatian hinterlands and the Aegean islands) may not have fundamentally changed by the sixteenth century” (Rothman). ¶ As Suárez de Figueroa’s translation presents, Garzoni’s work metamorphised to fit the geopolitical changes of the contemporary moment in which each edition was published. A new dynamic was introduced when the Portuguese began bringing African slaves to the continent in the 1440s, many of whom were subsequently Christianized and thus viewed more favorably than their Muslim peers. “Suárez de Figueroa’s impression of blacks as obedient and passive participates in a larger early modern Spanish metanarrative that constructs a binary opposition between black Africans, on the one hand, and Moors and moriscos (as well as gypsies and Jews) on the other, thus positioning blacks as ‘non-threatening ally’ and Muslims as ‘threatening enemy’” (Jones). True to form, the chapter otherwise cites the usual classical and biblical sources in defense of slavery.  ¶  As a guide to all sciences and arts, of course, the authors discuss far more than slavery. Its dozens of chapters address astrologers, singers, courtesans, poets and writers, carpenters, students, teachers and professors, printers and booksellers (Gutenberg correctly identified as Europe’s first printer), mathematicians, painters, the poor. We find chapters on the known world, America and Africa included. The index is extensive.

PROVENANCE: The name of a previous owner (Hilario de Cisneros y Saco) at the bottom of the second leaf, faint from an attempt at obliteration through washing. This is potentially the father of Francisco Cisneros, prominent civil engineer and revolutionary of Cuban independence. Active in the 1830s and 1840s, his father and previous owner of this book, "Hilario Cisneros y Saco, was a lawyer with an island-wide reputation founded on his staunch honesty and humanitarian principles. He was also a man of wide reading interests and possessed one of the best private libraries of his time in Cuba" (Horna). Very sparse underlining, which appears on folio 256.

CONDITION: Bound in 19th-century quarter blue leather and pebbled boards; edges stained blue. ¶ The title page is an absolute mess, torn and mounted, slightly trimmed down, repaired in spots (with a couple of printed bits apparently from another source), soiled and with the look and feel of having been thoroughly saturated by the glue used in mounting; small dampstain through the first half dozen leaves or so, the result of the attempt to wash Cisneros y Saco's name; 2V8 badly torn, affecting text, but repaired, and with a small stain near the bottom; trimmed close, in rare cases just barely grazing the headline. Binding worn at the extremities, spine a trifle cocked, but a solid book.

REFERENCES: USTC 5013273 ¶ Nick Jones, “Cosmetic Ontologies, Cosmetic Subversions,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 15.1 (Winter 2015), p. 48-49; Hernán Horna, “Francisco Javier Cisneros: A Pioneer in Transportation and Economic Development in Latin America, 1857-1898,” The Americas 30.1 (1973), p. 54–82 (p. 56 especially); E. Natalie Rothman, “Contested Subjecthood: Runaway Slaves in Early Modern Venice," Quaderni Storici 47.140(2) (2012), p. 425–41

Item #612