Histoire generale des choses de la Nouvelle-Espagne

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Author: Sahagun, Bernardino de(1499-1590)

Year: 1880

Publisher: G. Masson

Place: Paris

Description:

lxxix-898 pages with two-page color map of the Valley of Mexico. Thick Quarto (11 1/4" x 7 3/4") bound three quarter blue green leather with raised spine bands and gilt lettering to spine . Translated into French by D Jourdanet and Remi Simeon.

Bernardino de Sahagun was a Franciscan friar, missionary priest and pioneering ethnographer who participated in the Catholic evangelization of colonial New Spain. Born in Sahagun, Spain, in 1499, he journeyed to New Spain in 1529, and spent more than 50 years conducting interviews regarding Aztec beliefs, culture and history. Though he primarily dedicated himself to the missionary task, his extraordinary work documenting indigenous worldview and culture has earned him the title "the first anthropologist." He also contributed to the description of the Aztec language Nahuatl, into which he translated the Psalms, the Gospels and a basic manual of religious education.Sahagun is perhaps best known as the author of Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva Espana The most famous extant manuscript of the Historia General is the Florentine Codex. It consists of 2400 pages organized into twelve books with approximately 2,000 illustrations drawn by native artists using European techniques. The text in Spanish and Nahuatl documents the culture, religious cosmology (worldview), ritual practices, society, economics, and history of the Aztec people. In the process of putting together the Historia general, Sahagun pioneered new methods for gathering ethnographic information and validating its accuracy. The Historia general has been called "one of the most remarkable accounts of a non-Western culture ever composed," and Sahagun has been called the father of American ethnography.

Condition:

Stain to title and preliminaries, extremities rubbed, some slight scuffing else a good to very good copy


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