Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/807

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 the success which so many predecessors failed to achieve, the publication of his great work, Los Veinte i un Libros Rituales i Monarchia Indiana, con el origen y guerras de los Indios Ocidentales, de sus Poblaciones, etc., first issued at Seville 1615, in 3 folio volumes. ''Antonio, Bib. Hist. Nova,'' iii. 788. Pinelo, followed by Ternaux-Compans, says 1613; but this is an error, as shown by the fact that the permission to print was issued only in May 1513. The issue of these bulky volumes, full of notations, must have taken some time. The greater part of the edition was lost in a shipwreck, and the remaining copies disappeared so rapidly that Solis could not obtain one. Indeed, a century after the imprint date only three copies could be traced. The importance of the work had meanwhile become so appreciated that a new edition was issued at Madrid in 1723, corrected from the original manuscript which had been discovered in Gonzalez de Barcia's library. Several parts had, however, been cut out by the censor, such as the first chapter to the second book, containing the 'key to the idea' of the migration, which is similar to that given in Garcia, Origen. As indicated by the title, the work consists of 21 books, in three volumes, of which the first book treats of cosmogony and origin of Indlans, the second and third of aboriginal history, the fourth of the conquest, and the fifth of the events in New Spain from the fall of Mexico to 1612. This last book is unevenly treated, the middle period being very brief as compared with later decades. The second volume, with nine books, is devoted to aboriginal mythology and customs; the third, with seven books, to the progress of conversion, the condition of the natives under the new rule, the history of the church, and particularly of the Franciscans in New Spain, with a number of chapters on affairs in the Antilles, Philippines, and elsewhere.

The instructions issued to Torquemada in 1609 directed him to collect and use all existing material for the work in question, and he certainly showed no hesitation in obeying the order to the letter. Indeed, Motolinia, Sahagun, Mendieta, Acosta, Herrera, and others, have been literally copied to a great extent. The conquest and subsequent events for several decades are almost wholly from the last named, while Mendieta is called upon to supply the religious history. According to Juan Bautista, Adviento, prologue, to whom Mendieta had intrusted his manuscript, it had been decided at one time that Torquemada should embellish it with his lore and arguments. As it was, he absorbed the contents, softening the condemnatory language so freely poured forth by the fearless Mendieta wherever he thought it necessary. Besides the sources mentioned, Torquemada used several narratives by writers of Indian extraction, a mass of material from public and private archives, together with his own diaries and observations. He had spent over fourteen years in gathering this material, and seven in preparing for his work, calle-1 to it by a literary taste, and a sympathy for the subject, stimulated by his predecessors, so that his volumes were already well advanced before the official order came for him to write them. His superiors evidently examined the work beforehand, and recognized his fitness to undertake it; a fitness already made manifest in a previous publication, the Vida del Santo Fr. Sebastian de Aparicio, 1605, Pinelo, Epitome, ii. 829, and in his vast store of biblical and classical lore, which he scatters throughout the pages in lavish profusion, and frequently with little regard for the appropriate. While more prudent