Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/124

104 edition was issued at Basle in 1555 and another at Rotterdam in 1616.

Nicholas Liburno (or Liburnio) translated the Latin text of Savorgnani into Italian, publishing his work in Venice in 1524. This Italian translation was again published by Ramusio in the third volume of his work, Delle Navigationi et Viaggi, in Venice (edition of 1606).

A German translation of two of the letters was made by Xysto Betuleio and Andrea Diethero and published in Augsburg in 1550. (Garcia Icazbalceta, Documentos, vol. i., P. xxxvi.)

Another German edition was published in Heidelberg in 1779.

The first Spanish edition of the Second, Third, and Fourth Letters was published by Andrés Gonzalez de Barcia in the first volume of his work entitled Historiadores Primitivos de las Indias Occidentales, Madrid, 1749.

In 1770, Archbishop Lorenzana of Mexico, afterwards Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, published the Second, Third, and Fourth Letters, together with other documents and his commentaries, under the title of Historia de Nueva España, and of this work an indifferent second edition was issued in New York by Manuel del Mar in 1828.

Mr. George Folsom, secretary of the New York Historical Society, translated Archbishop Lorenzana's text into English in 1843.

The Vicomte de Flavigni dedicated to the Marquise de Polignac a very free translation of the three letters then known, in a book published in Paris about 1778 (there is no date given), entitled Correspondance de Fernand Cortes avec l'Empereur Charles V. sur la conquêt du Mexique: reprinted in Switzerland, 1779.

Such liberties were taken with the Spanish text that Mr. Folsom, in his notice of this work, rightly calls it rather a paraphrase than a translation.

The Fifth Letter, which was discovered in Codex CXX. of the Imperial Library in Vienna, has no date, but a codex of the sixteenth century in the National Library in the City of Mexico bears the following: De la cibdad de Temixtitan desta Nueva España, à 3 del mes de Setiembre, año del nascimiento de nuestro Señor é Salvador Jesucristo de 1526.