Monarquia Indiana by Torquemada, Juan de (c1557-1624) - 1943-44

3 volumes: xl+768+[lxvii] pages with folding map and index; xiii+623+lxvi pages; [x]+634+xliv pages; Quarto (12" x 8 1/4") bound in full leather with gilt decorative lettering to spine and board to boards. From the library of George M Foster. 3d edition.

Juan de Torquemada was born between 1557 and 1565 and arrived in New Spain as a child. He studied philosophy and Nahuatl at the convent Grande de San Francisco in Mexico City, where he was ordained in 1579. In 1582 he moved to the convent of Santiago Tlatelolco, and he was made guardian of that convent in 1600. He also took over the administration of the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco. Beginning in 1604 he traveled continually on the business of his order. He was guardian of the convents of Zacatlán (in the mountains of Puebla) and Tlaxcala. In 1607, during the terrible flood of Mexico City, he was asked by Viceroy Juan de Mendoza y Luna, marqués de Montesclaros to reconstruct the calzadas (carriageways) of Chapultepec, Misterios to Tepeyac and San Cristóbal and the dams of Zumpango and Citlaltépetl, although he was not an engineer. In 1609 he was named chronologist of the Franciscan Order. In 1610 Torquemada oversaw construction of the monastery and church of Santiago Tlatelolco. Its interior featured a grandiose altarpiece decorated with paintings by Baltasar de Echave Orio surrounding a hand-carved relief of Santiago, but this was destroyed soon afterwards. In 1614 Torquemada was elected provincial superior of the Order of St. Francis in Mexico.[2] He held this position until 1617. He died suddenly in the church of Santiago Tlatelolco in 1624, while singing matins. Juan de Torquemada was born between 1557 and 1565 and arrived in New Spain as a child. He studied philosophy and Nahuatl at the convent Grande de San Francisco in Mexico City, where he was ordained in 1579. In 1582 he moved to the convent of Santiago Tlatelolco, and he was made guardian of that convent in 1600. He also took over the administration of the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco. His main work is Los veintiún libros rituales i monarchia indiana con el origen y guerras de los Indios Occidentales, de sus poblaciones, descubrimientos, conquista, conversión y otras cosas maravillosas de la misma tierra (The Twenty-one Ritual Books and Indian Monarchy With the Origin and Wars of the West Indians, of Their Populations, Discoveries, Conquest, Conversion and Other Marvelous Things of the Same Land, usually known as Monarchia Indiana) (3 volumes, Seville, 1615). The first edition is rare, but the work was reprinted in Madrid in 1723 and again in a facsimile edition by Salvador Chávez Hayhoe in 1943-44. This was the only New Spain chronicle of its time known to contemporaries. Works of Toribio de Benavente Motolinia, Bernardino de Sahagún, Gerónimo de Mendieta, Diego Muñoz Camargo and others were not available for centuries. The book is tedious to read because of its theological digressions, contradictions and anachronisms. Nevertheless, it gathers together a large quantity of information taken from Indigenous pictographs and manuscripts and from Franciscan and other Catholic scholars. Torquemada interviewed old Indigenous people about their ancestors and recorded their oral traditions. The Monarchia Indiana is the best work on what was known of the Indigenous past at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is considered an especially important source on the Totonac, Pipil and Nicoya cultures.

George McClelland Foster, Jr born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on October 9, 1913, died on May 18, 2006, at his home in the hills above the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as a professor from 1953 to his retirement in 1979, when he became professor emeritus. His contributions to anthropological theory and practice still challenge us; in more than 300 publications, his writings encompass a wide diversity of topics, including acculturation, long-term fieldwork, peasant economies, pottery making, public health, social structure, symbolic systems, technological change, theories of illness and wellness, humoral medicine in Latin America, and worldview. The quantity, quality, and long-term value of his scholarly work led to his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1976. Virtually all of his major publications have been reprinted and/or translated. Provenance from the executor of Foster's library laid in.

Condition:

Foster's date of aquiry on front end paper of volume one (lacks Foster's stamp), light edge wear else a very good to fine copy.