La inocencia acrisolada de los pacientes jesuanos, 1816
BY SUSANNA SHARPE
In my search for rarely seen treasures from the Benson Latin American Collection, I consulted former colleague José Montelongo, co-editor of A Library for the Americas, a beautifully illustrated volume of collected essays and images that can be considered a love letter to the library. Montelongo pointed me toward an astounding illustrated book of lyrical and dramatic poetry written by Manuel de Quiroz y Campo Sagrado (c. 1751–1820), the abbreviated title of which is La inocencia acrisolada de los pacientes jesuanos (1816).1
The illustrations in the book leap off the page, and we are fortunate to have high-quality photographs of them thanks to the work of María Isabel Terán Elizondo of the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, and photographer/graphic designer Julián Hugo Guajardo Esparza, who collaborated on an edited volume that contextualizes this unique book. (I highly recommend a click on the link in the previous sentence.)
For the back page of the print edition of Portal, art director and designer Jennifer Mailloux was only able to choose five pages from this amazing volume to give a sense of its fascinating contents. We encourage readers to visit the link to La inocencia acrisolada to appreciate what author Mauricio Molina calls a “joya única” (a unique jewel) and to understand why editor Terán Elizondo wrote “the text fascinated me for the beauty of its calligraphy, decoration, images, and colors.”2
Susanna Sharpe is communications coordinator at LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, and editor of Portal magazine.
Notes
1. Manuel Quiroz y Campo Sagrado, La inocencia acrisolada de los pacientes jesuanos: colección de varias poesías alusivas a la restauración de la sagrada Compañía de Jesus por la piedad del católico y benigno rey de las Españas, el señor don Fernando VII (que Dios nuestro señor guarde), 1816. Genaro García Collection, G367, Benson Latin American Collection. Photographs by Julián Hugo Guajardo Esparza.
2. “[E]l texto me fascinó por la belleza de su caligrafía, decorados, imágenes y colores,” Prologue to La inocencia acrisolada de los pacientes jesuanos, María Isabel Terán Elizondo, editor, xi. Author’s translation.
