TEPOTZOTLÁN.- Books carry more than the words printed on their pages. They also preserve the marks of the people who owned them, read them, censored them, repaired them and passed them from one institution to another.

That layered history is at the center of Between Folios: Handwritten Annotations. The MNV’s Historic Library, a new exhibition at Mexico’s National Museum of the Viceroyalty that presents, for the first time, 23 books from the former College and Novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Tepotzotlán.

Dating from the 16th through the 18th centuries, the volumes help reconstruct the history of the museum’s Pedro Reales Library and shed light on how knowledge was organized and circulated during the viceregal period.

The exhibition was organized by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) through the museum and curated by researcher Miguel Ángel Romero Cora, with conservation work by Xochipilli Rosell Pedraza.

For Mexico’s Secretary of Culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, the show is also an argument for making specialized research visible to a broader public.

“Preserving heritage also means making it understandable and accessible to everyone,” she said, noting that the books offer a critical view of how knowledge was produced and circulated in colonial society.

A library told through its books

The exhibition is divided into three sections, beginning with “Ex Libris: A Journey Through the Library.” Six volumes are used as a timeline to trace different stages in the history of the collection.





The handwritten notes inside them are particularly revealing. Jesuit librarians marked books to indicate whether they belonged to the college or the novitiate, leaving behind a paper trail that now helps researchers understand how the library was organized.

A second section, “Two of the Oldest Books,” focuses on two especially early volumes. One, published in 1534, contains writings by the 12th-century Scottish theologian, philosopher and mystic Richard of St. Victor. The other contains the first two parts of Friar Francisco de Osuna’s Spiritual Alphabet, published in 1545.

Osuna was one of the leading Spanish mystics of the 16th century and is often discussed alongside St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Ávila.

Censorship, repairs and warnings to thieves

Perhaps the most vivid section of the exhibition is “Annotations That Make History,” which looks at the day-to-day life of books inside a colonial-era library.

The volumes preserve evidence of cataloging, repairs, conservation and censorship. Some were subjected to expurgation procedures, while others contain notes explaining how they were to be handled or identified.

There are also unusually direct warnings aimed at would-be thieves. Some annotations informed readers that stealing a book from the library could result in excommunication and, ultimately, damnation.

The notes give the exhibition an almost personal dimension, revealing the practical anxieties of the librarians who were responsible for safeguarding valuable books centuries ago.

Romero Cora said the exhibition is intended to show not only what the books contain, but also how the library itself functioned.

“We want to show texts that belonged to different periods,” he explained, “as well as the internal work of a viceregal library, including censorship and expurgation procedures and the librarian’s role in repairing damaged books.”

From Jesuit college to museum library

The Pedro Reales Library today includes works that survived from the Jesuit College and Novitiate of Tepotzotlán, once one of the most important Jesuit institutions in New Spain.

At its height, the original library contained 8,527 volumes.

After the Jesuits were expelled, the collection entered a new phase. In 1777, ten years after the expulsion, Archbishop Alonso Núñez de Haro y Peralta established the Royal Seminary College for the Instruction and Voluntary Retreat of the Secular Clergy at the site and created a new library.

Over time, the collection grew to more than 4,000 surviving volumes dating from the 16th through the 20th centuries.

Its holdings span philosophy, theology, law, history, astronomy, mathematics and botany, among other subjects. Many of the books are written in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and French.

For Romero Cora, bringing these materials into the exhibition galleries is an opportunity to move research beyond academic circles.

“Many investigations sometimes remain in books or articles,” he said. “The museum has given us the opportunity to show them in exhibitions.”

A program devoted to the history of books

The museum has also organized a lecture series titled “Every Old Book Holds More Than Words,” bringing together specialists in rare books and viceregal culture.

On August 12, historian José Abel Ramos Soriano will present “A Story to Be Told: The Historic Library of the National Museum of the Viceroyalty.” On August 26, Marina Garone Gravier of the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Institute for Bibliographic Research will give a lecture on errors, anecdotes and gossip surrounding Mexico’s early printing houses.

Between Folios: Handwritten Annotations. The MNV’s Historic Library remains on view through October 25, 2026.