A Dominican, a Mathematician and Illegal Editions in Late-Seventeenth-Century Zaragoza

Abstract

In this article, I challenge the conventional dating of the third edition of Baltasar Mateo Velázquez’s El Filósofo del aldea, a vernacular miscellany originally published in Madrid in 1625. This undated third edition, printed by Diego Dormer in Zaragoza, has traditionally been ascribed a publication date of c. 1650, on the flimsiest of evidence, but, using first the circumstantial proofs present in the portadas of the various issues of this edition, I move that estimate back by another two decades. I then reinforce this re-dating by analysing the falsified legal approval of the Zaragoza edition and situating it in a sequence of near-identical doctored aprobaciones in works published by Dormer in the final half-decade of his professional activity (1671–1676). I conclude my study by examining the differences between the four issues of this edition of El Filósofo del aldea, and seeking to extract from these peculiarities information which may be germane to the issue of re-dating.