N.p. [Madrid], 1750.

Price: $1,800.00

Folio: 31 x 21 cm. [1] f.

With five woodcuts: Saints Paul and Francis, the arms of the reigning pope (Benedict XIV), the arms and xylographic signature of Francisco Pérez de Prado y Cuesta (1678-1755), Commissar General of the Holy Crusade and Grand Inquisitor; and the cross of el Consejo y Comisaría de Cruzada (Council and Commissariat of the Crusade). In a 20th century cloth slipcase, front board gilt-stamped in gilt. A very fine clean copy, untrimmed, with a light central fold.

This crusade bull allows all clerics of the Viceroyalty of Peru and Tierra Firme (encompassing regions in present-day Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, Jamaica, etc.) who contribute funds to support the Holy Crusade against the Ottoman Turks and other “infidels” to eat eggs and dairy during Lent. This bull, originally issued by Pope Urban VIII in the 1620s and reconfirmed by Clement X in 1670, is here again confirmed by Pope Benedict XIV. The bull stipulates that the cleric must donate money equivalent to “8 silver Spanish reales.”

The "bull of the crusade" ("bula de la cruzada") had been granted to Iberian monarchs since the Middle Ages. While the original objective was to motivate the knights and nobility to take up arms, by the late fifteenth-century the crusade bull was modified to permit almsgiving as an alternative to soldiering. The money raised was then used to fund professional armies. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the sale of crusade indulgences funded Spanish campaigns in north Africa, against the Dutch Protestants, the Turks, the English, and in the New World.

This printed broadside (buleta) functioned both as a promise of indulgence and as a receipt. A blank space has been left for the name of the purchaser.

The bull is signed by Bishop Francisco Pérez de Prado y Cuesta (1678-1755), Commissar General of the Holy Crusade and Grand Inquisitor. The Council and Commissariat of the Crusade (Consejo y Comisaría de Cruzada) had advisory, judicial and government powers to manage the income from the bull of the crusade on behalf of the Spanish Crown.

“As the feast of Easter developed in Christian tradition, so did the festival's preparatory period, known as Lent. This involved fasting and later abstinence from certain foods, including eggs. The festal letter of Athanasius in 330 shows that the early church was practising a 40-day fast prior to Easter (also indicated in Canon V of the first Nicene Council). The fifth-century church historian Socrates Scholasticus noted, ‘Some abstain from eggs …’. Canon LVI of the Council in Trullo, 692, enjoined such abstinence: ‘It seems good therefore that the whole Church of God which is in all the world should follow one rule and keep the fast perfectly, and as they abstain from everything which is killed, so also should they from eggs and cheese, which are the fruit and produce of those animals from which we abstain.’

“By the time of the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-74), eggs, milk, and meat were all forbidden during Lent: ‘Eggs and milk foods are forbidden to those who fast, for as much as they originate from animals that provide us with flesh … Again the Lenten fast is the most solemn of all, both because it is kept in imitation of Christ, and because it disposes us to celebrate devoutly the mysteries of our redemption. For this reason the eating of flesh meat is forbidden in every fast, while the Lenten fast lays a general prohibition even on eggs and milk foods.’”(Smith, Vista Hills Church).