El Candelero del Templo, Sombra Con Luzes de la Vida Estatica; Obras y Virtudes Heroycas del Venerable Padre Presentado Fr. Iuan Falconi, del Orden de Nuestra Señora de la Merced

Madrid: por Andrés García de la Iglesia, a costa de Gabriel de León, 1674. First and only edition (Palau 275975). Quarto in vellum. Engraved title leaf. Collates complete: [40], 500, [36] pp. Binding tight; leaves largely clean, with a few minor stains. Binding ties lacking but showing remnants. Very good thus. Hardcover.

Uncommon. The principal contemporary biography of Juan Falconi de Bustamante (1596-1638) — the Mercedarian mystic whose radically simplified doctrine of prayer became the single most important source for Miguel de Molinos. Falconi taught that the soul should abandon discursive meditation entirely in favour of one sustained act of faith and self-surrender. Writing from inside Falconi's own order, Rojas y Ausa presents this as heroic virtue and a life of ecstatic union. Molinos, who esteemed Falconi highly, drew on him in the Guía espiritual more heavily than on either John of the Cross or Teresa of Ávila. El Candelero was printed in Madrid in 1674; the Guía espiritual appeared in 1675. This is among the last unguarded celebrations of the Spanish contemplative tradition published before that tradition acquired a name, a scandal, and a papal condemnation — Innocent XI's Coelestis Pastor, 1687 — after which such writing had to be defended rather than professed. It is a document of the moment immediately before quietism existed as a category. Its author was no minor figure. Rojas y Ausa's Representaciones de la verdad vestida (Madrid, 1679), an allegorical treatise on Teresa's Moradas, ran to two authorized editions and a clandestine third, and remains the subject of modern scholarly attention for its emblematics and its use of the art of memory. He was later appointed Bishop of León, in Nicaragua, where he died in 1685. Eight copies recorded in Spanish institutions (CCPB000041591-X: Huesca; the Mercedarian house at Poyo; Real Academia de la Historia; Arantzazu; Ávila; Burgo de Osma; Universidad de Barcelona; [8th]). *No copy located in North America (OCLC/WorldCat)*. References: Palau 275975. CCPB000041591-X.