The Abecedario and A Check-List of Mexican Inquisition Documents at the Henry E. Huntington Library
I N 1907 Walter Douglas purchased forty-six volumes of Mexican Inquisition documents for $1,500 from Michael Blake, a dealer in old books and manuscripts in Mexico City. Mr. Douglas bequeathed these to the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery of San Marino, California. Previously, they had been offered for sale to Henry C. Lea.' Thirtyone volumes of the forty-seven had been offered by E. Nott Anable to Elken N. Adler of England. Mr. Adler published a partial description of them as an Appendix to his Auto de Fe and Jew.2 No check-list has heretofore been published of the contents of the forty-six volumes. This article will discuss some of the findings to be adduced from volume 2, "Abecedario" and its relationship to volume 1, "List of Inquisition Trials from 1525 to 1811." There is considerable inaccuracy and lack of concern for detail and consistency, resulting in many omissions in both volumes and variances between them. The secretariat and other officialdom of the Inquisition paid little heed to spelling, dates, and chronological order. The "Abecedario" is not a running account kept by each secretary of the Inquisition, but was compiled sometime after 1715. The "List" was supposedly prepared at divers times over the course of the three centuries it covers. The "Abecedario " has only ten entries after 1700 and none after 1709. For some unexplained reason the secretariat was directed to prepare the "alphabetical" summary. One conjecture was that about 1720 a visitador came to New Spain to investigate the affairs of the Inquisition. The list may have been prepared for him. The "Abecedario" is not an alphabetical list in our sense of the word. Under each letter the names appear in (more or less) chrono-