Bernardino de Sahagun

A native of the kingdom of Leon . Born in a family of small- sized hidalgoes , nee Bernardino de Ribera (in the spelling of that time Ribera , Rivera or Ribeira ), he adopted the nickname de Sahagun in honor of his hometown after taking monastic vows. He graduated from the famous university in Salamanca at that time. At the university he studied classical philology , history , theology , in 1524 he chose a spiritual career for himself, but he was ordained only in 1527. Until 1529 he was a professor at the monastery and the university itself.

In 1529 he sailed to the New World with a mission of 19 Franciscans under the monk Antonio de Ciudad Rodrigo. ^[4] Originally served in the monastery of Tlamanalko, in 1535, probably founded a monastery in Shochimilko, where he became rector. Since 1536, by order of the Bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga (1468-1548), he taught Latin at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco , the first institution of higher education in America to educate Indian children of the Indian aristocracy. In 1539-1558 (with interruptions) he actively preached in Puebla , Tula , etc. In 1558 he was a vicar of Michoacan for a short time, but in the same 1558 he returned to teaching in Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, where he taught until 1585 . In 1585 he retired to the monastery of San Francisco (Mexico City), where he died.

Arriving in Mexico, Sahagun was struck by the ruins of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan , and realized that the task of Christianizing the Indians could not be solved without deep penetration into the pre-Columbian culture and religion. He perfectly mastered the Nahuatl language and Native American writing , participated in the development of the Latin alphabet. Through the efforts of the Indian informants and students of Sahagun, the Nahua literature has been preserved in almost full volume.

The Sahagun legacy has two main blocks:

• Doctrinal works . Includes many preaching books, in Spanish and Nahuatl, translation of the Gospel ( Evangelario en lengua Mexicana ), Psalms ( Psalmodia cristiana y Sermonario de los Santos del año, en lengua mexicana, ordenado en cantares o psalmos para que canten los indios areytos que hacen en las Iglesias , 1583) and the Catholic catechism . He wrote and extensive pedagogical work Tratado de la Retórica y Teología de la gente mexicana .
• Research papers intended for both Spanish missionaries and training needs of the Indians. Includes a trilingual dictionary (Nahua-Spanish-Latin, Vocabulario trilingüe ), and a number of smaller treatises. The main work of Sahagun’s whole life is the “General History of the Things of New Spain ” (Spanish Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España )

Creation History

The main work of de Sahaguna was created in 1547-1577. simultaneously in Spanish and Nahuatl ^[7] . The book was intended for the Spanish king Philip II (1527–1598), who in 1572 requested in his letter from the Viceroy Martin Enriques (1510? –1583) to provide a report on the history of Mexico. Only after the arrival in Mexico in 1575 of the Franciscan Rodrigo de Secer was this royal requirement fulfilled. For two years, the College Scriptorium in Santa Cruz de Tlatelot was in full swing for the compilation of the final version of the manuscript, begun by Sahagun another 1547. The result was a manuscript, which has become in all respects one of the best pearls of the Renaissance ^[7] .

However, the manuscript was not published, and on April 22, 1577, the king changed his mind and ordered that all the records of Sahagun be sent to the Council of India. The likely reason for the refusal of publication could be the version of Conquista presented by the author in book XII, which describes the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards in critical tones ^[7] .

The work of Bernardino de Sahaguna, phenomenal in character and design, awaited an unenviable fate. In 1580, Sahagun handed over to his patron, the Commissioner of the Franciscan Order, the monk Rodrigo de Séquer, a bilingual manuscript, only recently completed, to be taken to Spain. For unknown reasons, the manuscript was not published and passed into the ownership of the Florentine nobles, who had been there for many years. Only in 1793 did the collector and bibliophile Angelo Maria Bandini (1728-1803) publish in Florence his book “Bibliotheca Mediceae Palatinae in Laurentianam traslatae codices”, where he described the work of Sahagun and included fragments from his “Prologue” ^[8] .

The manuscript itself consists of 4 volumes, 12 books and 1854 pages. 5 or 6 clerks took part in its writing. Regarding the illustrations of the codex, we can say that they are a synthesis of European and local Native American art. So, in some drawings there are European clothes, buildings, image style. Closer to the local tradition were the “Primary Materials” (“Primeros memoriales”) and the manuscript of the Madrid Code or the Academic Manuscript (“Codices matritenses”, “Manuscrito de la Real Academia de la Historia”). They are now kept in Madrid at the Royal Library and at the Royal Academy of History12. In general, drawings can be of interest to culturologists, anthropologists, ethnologists, and the text, which is a rich dictionary of the Meshik language - Nahuatl, may also be of interest to linguists ^[9] .

The texts in Nahuatl and Spanish were different, a number of sections in Spanish were not written at all.

Universal History was divided into 12 books:

1. Gods and related religious ceremonies.
2. Permanent and traveling holidays.
3. Mythology. The origin of the gods.
4. Fortune telling, sacred 260-day year.
5. Signs and oracles.
6. Rhetoric, morality, philosophy, Native American theology.
7. Astronomy and sacred cycles. The end of the year.
8. Kings and lords.
9. Traders and artisans.
10. Ethnography: virtues, vices, diseases of the Indians.
11. Natural history: animals, birds, trees, grasses.
12. The conquest of Mexico, stated from an Indian point of view.

Writing Volume 10

As Bernardino de Sahagun himself said in the Prologue of his “History”: “The first sieve, where my works were sifted, was that of Tepepulco; the second is that of Tlatelolco; the third is from Mexico City. ” This recognition of the author suggests that there were several preliminary manuscripts, which later composed his work on the history of the Aztecs. These three stages had the following sequence: 1) drawings and captions were created first, 2) then the text was drawn up for Nahuatl, 3) after which the whole text was double-checked and the Spanish version was written.

Indeed, there are three handwritten texts on the Nahuatl of the first three chapters of Book X. The Academic Manuscript (“Manuscrito de la Real Academia de la Historia”) has a number of sheets (88th to 96th) written in three columns. The Nahuatl text is located in the central column, the Spanish translation on the left and the explanation of the words that are numbered in the Nahuatl text on the right. Drafts of this part are on pages 104–111 in the manuscript itself. The corresponding text also appears on sheets 1-9 of the Florence Code. We can say that the clerk wrote down the text already divided into columns in the Florentine Code, and Sahagun turned the sections into chapters. The numbering of the chapters in the Academic Manuscript and the Florence Code are consistent. In the latter, texts about chapuputli, ashin, and tsiktli were added at the end of chapter 24. In chapter 28 of the Academic Manuscript, comments were written in a different hand, but they are not in the Florence Code. Often the text on Nahuatl contains a list of diseases, but no cure is given for them. Some texts are crossed out, but they are in the Florence Code. Chapter 27 of the Code does not contain the Spanish text corresponding to the Nahuatl text, but the lengthy “Message of the author worthy of mention” is given ^[10] .

Writing Volume 11

Sahagun during the writing of his work in about 1564-1565. added “natural history” to his “Original Materials” (1558-1560), where there were only two conditional parts: “divine works” and “human works”. The same division into three thematic parts is present in the Florence Codex. A similar division was probably borrowed by the Sahagun from Pliny or Bartolomeus Anglicus ^[11] .

A comparison of the Nahuatl text in the Academic Manuscript and the Florence Codex shows that there are differences. The order and numbering of chapters and sections is different.

Section 5 of Chapter 14 of the Academic Manuscript discusses “healing herbs.” The text contains a two-page dictionary. The same clerk who wrote comments on book X also wrote the medical meaning of herbs in the dictionary. This clerk must have been knowledgeable about medicine, as his comments in Book X talk about disease. Section 5 of Chapter 7 of the Florence Code contains a long text on 150 numbered herbs. The first 32 herbs are missing from the Spanish version, and instead of them are 32 illustrations for the named herbs. True, there are disagreements and inconsistencies in the descriptions of the herbs of the manuscript and the codex. This fact suggests that the informants were other people and, possibly, from another place ^[12] .

There are numerous inserts in the Florence Codex. In chapter 1 of section 1 the text about tlakasholul and Tsontiak is added; in chapter 2, section 2, added yollotolli, popokales, techuchiltotontl, ishmatlatototl; section 3 added 27 birds; in section 4 - heckawautly, aitskuautli, mishkoakauautli, kuautlotli, costlotl, ekatlotl, ayautlotl, istaktlot; in section 8 - chikimoli, chachalakametl.

Sahagun made, according to European models (in particular, according to Pliny), the classification of plants in the Florence Code, but according to the Meshic system of grouping in accordance with the nature of the use of plants ^[13] .

Writing Volume 12

Books 6 and 12 were written first (respectively, in 1547 and 1558). Sahagun received the blessing of the head of the Franciscan Order in Mexico, Francisco de Toral , who considered the work of Sahagun useful for missionary work. After this, Sahagun had four Native American secretaries, from among the students of the college of Santa Cruz del Tlaltetolko, fluent in three languages. For two years, Sahagun interviewed Indian aristocrats and intellectuals in detail, after which the original (Spanish) version of General History was created. Today, the Spanish manuscript is kept in the Academia Real de Historia, and on the Nahuatl in the Palacio Real (both in Madrid).

In 1561, Sahagun moved to Taltelolco, where he gathered around him a large circle of Native American informants. The final version for Nahuatl was ready in 1569, it was accompanied by a grammar and the aforementioned trilingual dictionary. It was an unprecedented collection of authentic sources, thanks to which Aztec literature was better preserved than all other pre-Columbian literature. In 1577, the Spanish version was ready, after which the creation of the Florence Codex began. This codex was exported to Italy around 1578 and is stored in the Laurenzian library in Florence.

Sahagun was ahead of his time, and his manuscripts were forgotten. For the first time, Universal History was published in independent Mexico in 1829. The full scientific publication of the manuscripts of the Sahagun and the Florence Codex was carried out in 1950-1969. Charles Dibble and Arthur Anderson, who in 1982 also published the full English translation. Sahagun’s work was never completely translated into Russian (except for the collection “ Customs and Beliefs ” in 2005 , as an extract from the General History of the Affairs of New Spain ). In 2013, the translation of the medical part of Sahagun's work was first published in Kiev.

Ethnography

Sahaguna is called the "father of Mexican ethnography." The methods of his work resembled modern ethnographic field practices: interviewing eyewitnesses, comparing different points of view. Sahagun is particularly struck by the complete absence of xenophobia : he tried to cover all events from an Indian point of view. He was keenly interested in all aspects of the life of the Aztecs, brilliantly knew the language, thanks to which he retained to a large extent the historical ideas of the Indians. So, he gave a description of the Olmecs , long before the archaeological discovery of this culture.

The city of Ciudad Sahagún in the state of Hidalgo , founded in 1954, was named after Bernardino de Sahaguna.

In Russian

• Bernardino de Sahagun. General story of the affairs of New Spain. Books X — XI: The knowledge of asteks in medicine and botany / Ed. and per. S.A. Kuprienko .. - K .: Vidavets Kuprіnko S.A., 2013 .-- 218 p. - (Mesoamerica. Sources. History. Man). - ISBN 978-617-7085-07-1 .
• Primeros Memoriales (excerpts)
• Code of Florence (excerpts from books 8, 9, 10)
• "Customs and Beliefs"
• R.V. Kinzhalov. Eagle, Quetzal and the cross . - M., 1991. S. 30, 37-39, etc.
• The General History of New Spain . Book eighth

In English

• León-Portilla, Miguel (2002). Bernardino de Sahagun, First Anthropologist, Mauricio J. Mixco (trans.), Originally published as Bernardino de Sahagún: Pionero de la Antropología 1999, UNAM., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3364-3 .
• Sahagún, Bernardino de (1950-1982). Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, 13 vols. in 12, Charles E. Dibble and Arthur JO Anderson (eds., trans., notes and illus.), translation of Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España, vols. I — XII, Santa Fe, NM and Salt Lake City: School for American Research and the University of Utah Press. ISBN 0-87480-082-X .
• Sahagún, Bernardino de (1997). Primeros Memoriales, Thelma D. Sullivan (English trans. And paleography of Nahuatl text), with HB Nicholson, Arthur JO Anderson, Charles E. Dibble, Eloise Quiñones Keber, and Wayne Ruwet (completion, revisions, and ed.), Civilization of the American Indians series vol. 200, part 2, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-2909-9 . OCLC 35848992.