[REYES, Juan de los.]

Extremely rare first and only edition of this curious work defending the virginity of three biblical prophets, Elijah, Elisha and Daniel, by Juan de los Reyes, a native of Navarra and a Carmelite friar in New Spain. It is of particular interest as not only published but composed in Mexico. The work was prompted by the rash preaching of a Jesuit priest, Juan de San Miguel, who had given a sermon in the church of the convent of Discalced Carmelite nuns in Mexico City, in which he declared that Elijah had married and had many children, a proposition immediately denounced by the Inquisition and which he was forced to retract from the same pulpit (Andrade).

Reyes aims to correct this pernicious doubt that the saints in question were not possessed of virginity and purity. He duly sets out the opinions of many learned Fathers and Doctors of the Church, arranged according to the dates of the authorities he is quoting: the first 400 years of the Church, from 400 to 800 years, 800 to 1450, and the moderns. Reyes specifically attacks two Catholic authorities, Saint Peter Damian and Rupert of Deutz, who have propagated the apocryphal rabbinical tradition of the saints' marriages, their most glaring error being the confusion of Elias with Phineas, grandson of Aaron.