Compilation of histories and descriptions of ancient Scotland and Ireland, written by sixteenth-century English and Scottish antiquaries, published in miniature by Elzevier in his collection of petites républiques. The expurgatory note, which…

This History of the Scottish people by Hector Boece, which reconstructs the political and ecclesiastical history of Scotland up to 1438, was one of the first to be published. It was read all over Europe, including Spain, with great success. The note…

Undoubtedly, Argenis, novel and political treatise alike, was one of the books that proliferated in the Spanish libraries of the Golden Age. Its style influenced Baltasar Gracian's prose; Calderón de la Barca adapted its plot for his comedy Argenis y…

Blauer’s Atlas novus, which incorporates Mercator's cylindrical projection, condenses the astounding evolution that cartography had gone through since the earliest printed Ptolemee. Surely, the ornamentation in the representation of this region of…

The dissemination of the mathematical science in seventeenth-century Spain, as well as the introduction of the Neperian logarithms, is owed to the Scottish Jesuit priest Hugh Semple, seminarian at the Scottish College of Madrid, which his uncle…

This florilegium, composed around 1306, compiles over 5,000 citations attributed to classical, patristic and medieval authors, all organised thematically and alphabetically, from abstinentia to Christus. In Spain it also spread very quickly,…

The help that Philip II of Spain gave to Ireland (and the rebels against Queen Elizabeth) of protection and financing, never assured him the domination of the island that would smooth his way toward the invasion of England. As in this episode of…

This book, printed in the Gaelic language in 1608, came out some fifty years after the birth of the Irish printing press in 1551. It is a translation of King James's edition of the Book of Common Prayer of 1604, the official text whereby the liturgy…

This small and abridged version of Mercator’s Atlas, the Atlas minor, is by Joost de Hondt. It was published to supply those who had some purchasing power, but not enough to buy the Atlas in the large format, and .. . Despite its size, the engraving…

The tradition of attributing the victory in the battle of the Alporchones to the intercession of St. Patrick is owed to Philip O'Sullivan Beare, one of the hundreds of Irish exiles who took refuge in Spain during the 17th century after Kinsale. How…