The Christian notion of universal history, based on the unity of the sacred and the profane, had enjoyed much favor throughout the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance, however, many factors contributed to its ultimate decline, namely the Humanist preference for Classical models, the growing nationalist tendencies of the time, and the great geographical discoveries that destroyed the old paradigms. It was inevitable, after some chronicles had dealt with specific themes concerning the New World, that historians would attempt to take a comprehensive view of the new reality to establish its proper place in the history of the world.
Such an enterprise was no easy task. In the case of natural history, the accumulation of data was not structured in the modern systematic way, which was not established until the eighteenth century. In the case of the history of the New World peoples, the diversity and isolation of the native inhabitants prevented consideration of them as a single group, so accounts were necessarily organized by convenient principles such as geographic location or the chronology of the native group’s conquest by Spain.
VI.1. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés. La historia general de las Indias. Seville, 1535.
After the success of his Sumario, Fernández de Oviedo was appointed official chronicler of the Indies in 1532. The result was the Historia general, which can be considered the first general history of the New World. It consisted ultimately of a total of fifty books, of which the 1535 edition included only the first nineteen, dedicated to the history of Columbus’s voyages and the Caribbean islands. The twentieth book was published in 1557, and the balance in the nineteenth century. Of special importance is the information he provided on the fauna and the flora in America, in which he dismissed many established myths and drew only from his careful observations.
Oviedo’s Historia became a huge success in Europe. The first English translation, by Richard Eden, appeared in London in 1555. Oviedo became one of the most often quoted and famous of all historians of the New World–Von Humboldt even considered him and Acosta the founders of physical geography.
VI.2. Bartolomé de las Casas. Brevíssima relacion de la destruyción de las Indias. Seville, 1552.
The son of a nobleman, Las Casas (1474-1556) went to the New World in 1502 in search of wealth. Ten years later his conviction that the Indians were being systematically mistreated led him to become a Dominican friar and to dedicate his long life to the single purpose of protecting the Indians. The Brevissima is a powerful diatribe that summarizes the injustices of the Spanish conquest throughout the New World. Its single-mindedness and exaggerations–the Indians are always portrayed as good natured, while the Spanish colonists introduce only evil–are explained by the fact that the work was written as a central part of Las Casas’s political campaign to reform the Laws of the Indies.
Las Casas’s polemical book effectively raised the issue of Indian rights in Spain. Much to his chagrin, though, the Brevissima was widely used by England and Holland as evidence of Spanish cruelty (the “black legend”). Some of the seventeenth century English editions had this remarkable title: Casas’ horrid massacres, butcheries, and Cruelties that hell and malice could invent committed by the Spaniards in the West Indies.
VI. 3. Nicolás Monardes. Primera, y segunda y tercera partes de la historia medicinal. Seville, 1580.
Monardes (ca. 1512- 1588) was a distinguished physician based in Seville. Although he never went to the New World, he devoted his life to the collection and the study of American plants with a purported medical value. The Historia, which instantly became a classic in the history of medicine, amounts to a true encyclopedia of the practical natural history of the area. Numerous plants and animals previously unknown to Europeans were described by Monardes for the first time. Some of the products discussed in detail are cocoa, sarsaparilla, and sassafras. Guaiac wood, for example, is presented as the Indian remedy for venereal disease.
The first complete edition of Monardes’ work was published in 1574. Translations soon appeared in Latin, Italian, and French. An English edition was first published in London in 1577 with a long title, but usually referred to as Joyfull newes out of the newe founde world.
VI.4. José de Acosta. Historia natural y moral de las Indias. Seville, 1590.
Acosta (1540-1600) entered the Jesuit order at the age of fourteen and received a solid education in the humanities. After spending time in Perú and Mexico City, he returned to Spain with a considerable quantity of notes, many of them taken during his numerous travels. As a natural historian, Acosta surpassed Oviedo. His attachment to scientific explanation devoid of reliance upon wonders and miracles merited Von Humboldt’s praise two centuries later. The subject of Acosta’s moral history is pre-Columbian civilizations, particularly the Aztecs and the Incas, whose religions, customs, and governments he admiringly compares. Acosta reminded his readers that most aspects of Indian life that were perceived in a negative light by Europeans, including human sacrifices, also existed in the celebrated civilizations of Greece and Rome. Acosta’s Historia won him instant admiration in European academic circles, and translations abroad surfaced quickly.
VI.5. Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas. Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i Tierra Firme del Mar Océano. Madrid, 1601-1615.
Herrera (d. 1625) was an accomplished historian who also wrote histories of France, Portugal, Scotland, and England. He never crossed the Atlantic Ocean, but he incorporated the greatest collection of sources up to that date, including many important writings that had not yet been published. Written in a rather dry style, the four volumes of the Historia may be faulted for giving little attention to Indian ethnography, but they constitute a true encyclopedia of all the facts pertaining to the Spanish involvement with the Indies between 1492 and 1555.
The Historia’s unique wealth of information made it an indispensable work of reference on the subject. A French translation was published in Paris between 1660 and 1671. The earliest English edition appeared in six volumes in London in 1725-1726.
VI.6. Juan de Solórzano Pereira. Disputationem de Indiarum jure. Madrid, 1629-1639.
Solórzano (1575-1655) studied Law at Salamanca and became professor in that University at the age of twenty-four. A learned man, familiar with the Classics, as well as Roman, Canon, and Castillian Law, Solórzano compiled and studied all the royal decrees and laws pertaining to the New World. The Disputationem, written in elegant Latin prose, is an extraordinarily erudite legal history of the Indies, divided into five books. Far from being a mere compiler, Solórzano fearlessly advances his own opinions and recommendations on most issues, particularly on things concerning proper relations between Spaniards and Indians.
Solórzano’s work was praised in all of Europe and the New World as the most important study ever of Spanish law in the Indies. Because of its thorough indexes, it became the indispensable reference book for both church and state officials. A compendium in Spanish, with the title Politica indiana (Madrid, 1648), added a sixth book dealing with the complex tax system, which was a ground-breaking study of the subject.
VII. Church history
The Spanish Catholic church played a pivotal role in Spain’s involvement with the New World. The Pope had justified the conquest as a missionary enterprise, so authorities made sure that priests and friars accompanied each expedition. Their immediate role, of course, was to spread the Christian faith. As their work progressed, the close contact with the Indian population in parishes, schools and colleges allowed them to learn about native languages and cultures.
As direct witnesses of the conquest and as students of Indian cultures, a significant group of sixteenth-century historians of the New World were men who belonged to religious orders. This prominence increased even more in the next century, when, once the era of discoveries and conquests had come to an end, churchmen’s accounts dominated historical writings about the New World.
In Catholic countries like Spain and Italy, the triumph of the Counter Reformation brought about artistic and literary splendor, but the genre of historiography was overwhelmed by religious propaganda. In the seventeenth century the quality of historiography by churchmen generally declined, yet the number of published historical works about the New World rose sharply. This remarkable editorial frenzy was caused by the intense competition among the various religious orders to promote and publicize their missionary work overseas. Their main value lies in the ethnographic information they provide on the Indian peoples before and after the conquest. In that respect they are a veritable mine of data for today’s historians, linguists, and anthropologists.
VII.1. Juan de Torquemada. Monarquía yndiana. Seville, 1615.
Torquemada (ca. 1557-1664), was a Franciscan and head of his order’s Mexico Province. The Monarquía is an ambitious work in three volumes covering the civilian and religious history of Mexico from pre-Columbian times to the end of the sixteenth century. It was largely based on the work of his fellow Franciscan Jerónimo de Mendieta’s Historia eclesiástica indiana, which was not published probably because of its stern criticism of the colonists’ abuses of the Indians.
While tempering Mendieta’s criticism, Torquemada basically reiterated his master’s apocalyptic view of Mexico, according to which the ancient regime is compared with the captivity of the Jewish people in Egypt, and Cortés is seen as a new David allowed by God to destroy the Mexican empire because of its idolatry and human sacrifices. The arrival of the Franciscans into New Spain is interpreted as the start of a new era, but political upheaval in the second half of the sixteenth century brings about a period similar to the fall of Babylon. A new golden age of Christianity is foreseen in the future of New Spain, under the spiritual guidance of the Franciscans.
VII.2. Antonio de Remesal. Historia general de las Indias Ocidentales, y particular de la governación de Chiapa y Guatemala. Madrid, 1620.
Remesal (b. ca. 1570) studied Classical languages in Salamanca, and in 1593 he entered the Dominican order. In 1613, after getting a doctorate in theology, he sailed for the New World. Remesal settled at the Convent of Santiago de los Caballeros in Guatemala, where he completed his research for the Historia, the first civil and religious history of Central America. Like Las Casas, Remesal is an ardent defender of the Indians’ virtues and denounces their frequent abuse by Spanish civilians. This attitude gained him much criticism from the local authorities and settlers in Mexico.
VII.3. Juan de Grijalva. Crónica de la orden de N.P.S. Augustín en las provincias de la Nueva España. Mexico, 1624.
Grijalva (1580-1638) was a mestizo from Colima, Mexico. After entering the Augustinian order he earned a doctorate in theology from the University of Mexico. The Crónica, apparently written in less than two years, is the first historical work on the Augustinian order in the New World. As was customary, it ends with a series of biographies of the most prominent members of the order written in a laudatory tone.
VII.4. Antonio Ruiz de Montoya. Conquista espiritual hecha por los religiosos de la Compañía de Jesus, en las provincias del Paraguay, Parana, Uruguay, y Tape. Madrid, 1639.
Ruiz de Montoya (1558-1652) was born in Lima and entered the Jesuit Order in 1606. He spent most of his active life doing missionary work in Paraguay, where he served as head of the Jesuit Province between 1623 and 1637. Ruiz was recognized for his expertise in the Guarani language, for which he wrote several dictionaries. The Conquista is arguably the best narrative of the establishment of the famous reducciones, communities of Indians organized by the Jesuits in Paraguay as an alternative to the usual forms of village life, and thought to be more beneficial and protective of the Indians’ welfare. Ruiz’s history provides unique descriptions of Indian customs and of the exchanges between Indians and Spaniards. Also recorded are numerous incidents with the Paulistas, the slave hunters who periodically raided Paraguay from their bases in Brazil.
VII.5. Antonio de la Calancha. Corónica moralizada del orden de San Augustín en el Perú. Barcelona, 1639.
Calancha (1584-1654) was a creole from Chuquisaca, Perú. At the age of fourteen he entered the Augustinian order and he earned a doctorate at the University of San Marcos in Lima. In his numerous travels throughout the country, which he never left, Calancha collected archaeological, ethnographic, historical, astrological, and natural information. He used all of this material, plus many written sources, for his Corónica, a work of considerable value for the study of seventeenth-century colonial life in spite of its abstruse Baroque style and loose structure. Particularly important are his writings on the history and the religion of the Perúvian coastal Indians, as well as his descriptions of all social strata of colonial life, both secular and religious. Calancha’s work is one of the few historical writings about religion that were reedited in Spain and translated abroad.
VII.6. Juan Meléndez. Tesoros verdaderos de las Yndias en la historia de la gran provincia de San Juan Bautista del Perú. Rome, 1681-1682.
Meléndez (fl. 1681) was born in Lima. He became a Dominican priest, and two years later was sent to Madrid and then to Rome, where he completed and published his voluminous book. A strongly partisan author, Meléndez’s clear objective was to give his order the honor of providing the first Christian preachers in Perú, against similar claims by other rival orders. He also gives a highly erudite account of the conquest of Perú, and he incorporates significant information about Inca religious practices and a famous description of colonial life in seventeenth-century Lima, both taken from Francisco Antonio Montalvo’s unpublished manuscript El sol del Nuevo Mundo. The third volume of his work is entirely dedicated to biographies of distinguished Dominicans in Perú, including one on Martín de Porres, who became the first Perúvian man designated as a saint. Meléndez’s concise style has been praised as a rarity among his contemporaries, who usually preferred the complicated syntax typical of the Baroque period.
VII.7. Francisco Jarque. Insignes missioneros de la Compañía de Jesus en la provincia del Paraguay. Pamplona, 1687.
Jarque (1609-1691) was a Jesuit missionary in Paraguay before an incurable illness incapacitated him for his task. Jarque prepared for his literary work by collecting extensive oral and written information on his order’s activities in the province of Paraguay. The first two books are long biographies of two prominent Jesuit missionaries, written in the customary laudatory tone. The third book is a full account of the state of the Paraguay missions at the time, providing excellent information on how an Indian reduction was formed, ruled, and sustained, and on all aspects of everyday life. Throughout his work, Jarque gave details not found elsewhere about the frequent incursions of the Portuguese, who claimed some of the Paraguay territory.
VII. Biography
Biography is a modern genre if by this we mean a critical and independent assessment of someone’s life, devoid of propagandistic purposes. In the sixteenth century, the notion of biography was still largely associated with hagiography, the exemplary narratives of the lives of saints, a genre that had a long tradition in Christian countries.
The spirit of personal or group vindication was also responsible for a small group of biographies whose main goal was to exalt the deeds of prominent discoverers and conquistadors. The spirit of the Renaissance, with its new awareness of the individual, undoubtedly provided a good general foundation for the exaltation of personal achievement. There were also other more concrete reasons for the emergence of this new genre. As the protagonists were frequently the subject of controversy and official reprimand, the obvious goal of some biographies was to restore or upgrade someone’s personal reputation as a contributor to the imperial enterprise. When the authors of such biographies were relatives of their subjects, it is no surprise to find legal and financial claims as the underlying reason behind these works.
VIII.1. Fernando Colón. Historie...della vita, & de’fatti dell’Ammiraglio D. Christoforo Coloinbo, suo padre. Venice, 1571.
Colón (1488-1539), an illegitimate son of Columbus and Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, accompanied his father on his fourth trip to the New World. He never returned there, but spent most of his life traveling throughout Europe as a courtier of Charles V. The reputation of Columbus had significantly faded after his death–some authors even denied he was the rightful discoverer of the Indies–but Colón kept up efforts to recover the royal grants and privileges claimed by his father. In this context, he set out to write a biography of the Admiral which would correct the record and establish him as a great historical figure. Colón’s extremely positive portrait of his father was the basis for Washington Irving’s celebrated biography of Columbus.
The original manuscript of Colon’s work, written in Spanish, was taken to Italy. There it was lost, but an Italian translation by Alfonso Ulloa was preserved and published in Venice. For many years critics disputed its authenticity, but modern scholars now believe the Historie was undoubtedly written by Columbus's son. An early English translation appeared in 1604.
VIII.2. Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa. Hechos de don García Hurtado de Mendoza, quarto marques de Cañete. Madrid, 1613.
Suárez (ca.1571-1645) was a learned man and a prolific author of several literary works. He was commissioned to write this biography of Don Garcia (1535-1609) by Juan Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza, Garcia’s son and heir, with the declared intent of praising the memory of his recently deceased father, who had been viceroy of Perú. Each chapter underlines the services to the crown rendered by Don Garcia in the New World, and he is portrayed as an exemplary military commander and civilian leader. In the final chapter of the book, the purpose for writing the biography becomes apparent. Suárez states that Don Garcia was about to receive important royal favors for his services when the untimely death of the monarch prevented this from happening. A firm request to grant those favors to Don Garcia’s son, Juan Andrés, is then made explicit.
VIII.3 Jacinto de Parra. Rosa laureada entre los santos. Madrid, 1670.
Santa Rosa de Lima (1586-1627), who took her name because at the age of three her face was seen transformed into a rose, was the first woman born in the New World to attain sainthood. Parra’s voluminous work of seven hundred-plus pages is a loosely organized compendium on Santa Rosa’s virtues and deeds. Parra then provides an extensive account of the processes of beatification and canonization, including picturesque descriptions of the numerous festivities that took place in Madrid on both occasions. Parra’s work is clearly inferior to the famous biography written by Leonard Hansen (published in 1664), which was a best-seller throughout Europe and has since become a truly rare book.
Exhibition Exhibition text written by Angel Delgado-Gomez;
installed by Susan Danforth.
in the reading room from MAY 2, 2010, to July 31, 2010.