Luz de la fe y de la ley: entretenimiento christiano entre Desiderio y Electo, maestro y discipulo, en dialogo y estilo parabolico : adornado con varias historias y moralidades para enseñanza de ignorantes en la doctrina christiana...

Madrid: Joseph Mathias Escrivano, 1747. Hardcover. Very Good. Folio (310 x 215mm). [24], 660pp. Signatures: [p]-[2p]6; A-Z6; 2A-2Z6; 3A-3I6. Engraved woodcut of Our Lady of Antocha on dedication page. Title printed in red and black. Text in Spanish in double columns. 18th-century limp vellum, all but one of the ties replaced, a good, fresh copy where this edition is rarely found. Some early equations scrawled on front free endpaper, otherwise internally clean.

Dogmatic theology and doctrines on Christianity with a rare woodcut image of Our Lady of Atocha. Numerous earlier and later editions located in Barcelona and Madrid, this edition rarely found though. Father Jaime Barón y Arin was a prolific writer and Christian theologian with expertise on Catholic doctrine. The title to this work has been variously translated to “Light of Faith and the Law” and is arranged as a dialogue between teacher and pupil, with addition of several moralistic stories. The three-quarter page woodcut of Our Lady of Atocha is most interesting as the iconography is tied directly to a Madrid parish of the same name. Our Lady of Atocha is the “mother” of the very popular pilgrim Christ Child, Niño de Atocha, who according to some legends escaped from his mother and brought food and drink to Christians incarcerated by the Moors at a place called Atocha. The parish was entrusted to the Dominican Order in 1523 as it remains today. The image of Our Lady of Atocha is much older than the 16th century. Ildephonsus, Bishop of Toledo mentioned its existence in the seventh century, and pointed in his description to the apple in Mary’s hand. Given the mysterious history of the image, some aficionados have attributed its origin to Saint Luke the Evangelist. The image is in fact a statue, a wooden sculpture, whose iconographical make-up points to the twelfth or thirteenth century. This copy in very good form, retaining this rare image and maintaining an authentic vellum binding.