Fala que fes o P. Fr. Manoel da Crus,

Mestre em S. Teologia, Deputado do S. Officio, & das Ordens Militares na segunda instancia, Vigairo Geral da Ordem dos Pregadores da India. Lisbon : Lourenço de Anveres, 1642. Second edition. Small quarto (200 x 150 mm), vellum boards gilt, front pastedown with ex libris of H. P. Kraus and cutting from the 1929 Maggs Bros. catalogue entry tipped-in, title-page with woodcut coat of arms, pp. [22]; early manuscript pagination and some marginalia, two leaves with minor tears at fore-edge, occasional light foxing; a very good copy.

Rare Lisbon printing of an address given in Goa in October, 1641 by the Dominican Vicar-General of India, Manuel da Cruz, to mark the acclamation of the new King of Portugal, João IV, and the end of sixty years of Spanish rule.

‘Manuel da Cruz was a native of Lisbon, but neither the date of his birth nor death is known. He became a Dominican in the year 1598, and Vicar-General of his Order in India, and was Deputy of the Inquisition at Goa. He was also chaplain to the Viceroy of India, the Conde da Silva Tello e Meneses, to whom this publication is dedicated. The discourse comprised in this work was addressed by Manuel da Cruz to the Throne of Portugal, on the occasion of the ceremony of acclamation, by the Viceroy, of Joao IV as King, and of the Prince Dom Theodosio as heir apparent to the Crown, on 20th October, 1641. After usurping the Portuguese throne for sixty years, the Spaniards were overthrown in Lisbon in 1640, and the Duke of Braganza was proclaimed King of Portugal as Joao IV, amid great rejoicings amongst the Portuguese in the capital, and in all the Portuguese dominions overseas.’ (Maggs Bros., London. Bibliotheca Asiatica et Africana Part IV, Catalogue No. 519, 401).

Although the first edition, printed in Goa in December 1641 and intended for dissemination in the colony, is an extreme rarity, with only two institutional copies known, examples of the Lisbon printing of the following year are also exceptionally scarce.

Rare Book Hub records only three sales of the 1642 Lisbon printing, all by Maggs Bros. (1924, 1929 and 1957), with the 1929 and 1957 copies likely the same book (‘full blue levant morocco gilt’).