Jesuit Printing in Bourbon Mexico City: The Press of the Colegio de San Ildefonso, 1748-1767

The Jesuit Colegio de San Ildefonso owned its own press, which operated from the middle of 1748 until the promulgation, on June 25, 1767, of the order expelling the Jesuits from Mexico. Its purpose was the generation of revenue for the college. The press was operated by paid staff, not Jesuits, and was equipped to the commercial standards of the other major Mexico City presses, with which it competed for customers for printing. It published little. It was not a house organ for the Jesuits. The provincial administration used it only intermittently and never required its exclusive use by Jesuits, who also patronized other presses. It did not serve as a supplier of textbooks for Jesuit schools. A monopoly on the printing of the main texts was held by a Jesuit-sponsored sodality, which leased its rights to a different press. The subject matter of all Mexico City implants in this period, as well as of San Ildefonso, is analyzed. San Ildefonso did not monopolize any subject category, and its subject matter did not differ markedly from that of the other presses. The ordering of its three largest categories, academic announcements, devotionals, and sermons, reflected their ordering from all Mexico City presses, rather than any specifically Jesuit printing program. Job work, especially the printing of invitations and academic announcements, constituted a substantial portion of its printing orders. Profits on invitations could be more than two hundred percent. A bookstore operated in connection with the press was stocked almost exclusively with Mexican, not European, imprints, most of them devotionals. The majority of the stock was more than eighteen months old. The age of the stock reflected the essentially seasonal nature of devotional sales, with almost all sales of a particular title occurring around the time of the feast day of its subject saint. The store was primarily a wholesale outlet, with few retail sales. Appendices include a descriptive bibliography of San Ildefonso imprints not noted in the standard bibliographies, a short-title catalog of all of its imprints, and a partial census of engravings and woodcuts used at the press.