From the ‘Memoriales con escolios’ to the Florentine Codex : Sahagún and his Nahua assistants' co-authorship of the Spanish translation
2014; Routledge; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13260219.2014.939128
ISSN2151-9668
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American history and culture
ResumoAbstractIt is generally assumed that Fray Bernardino de Sahagún translated the Nahuatl text of the Florentine Codex (ca. 1577–1579) into Spanish. The surviving 'Memoriales con escolios' (Tlatelolco, ca. 1565), a three-column page draft comprising the Nahuatl-language source text, its translation into Spanish and explanatory notes for the clarification of relevant Nahuatl terminology, serves as a point of reference to argue that Sahagún's group of Nahua assistants were co-authors of the column containing the Spanish translation that was eventually transferred to the Florentine Codex. In order to support this argument, this study portrays the learning experiences to which his Nahua assistants were exposed at the Imperial College of Tlatelolco, and which they applied to the creation of the 'Memoriales con escolios', and examines a passage from the manuscript that casts light on Sahagún and his assistants' working methods and on the translation techniques that they employed.Keywords:: College of TlatelolcoFlorentine Codex'Memoriales con escolios'Nahua assistantsSahagúnSpanish translation Notes 1. The Códices matritenses, divided and held in the Madrid libraries of the Palacio Real and the Real Academia de la Historia, consist of the Primeros memoriales (Tepeapulco, ca. 1559–1561) and the Manuscrito de Tlatelolco (1561–1565), including the 'Segundos memoriales' (ca. 1561–1562), the "Memoriales en tres columnas" (ca. 1563–1565), and the "Memoriales con escolios" (ca. 1565) (Howard F. Cline and Luis Nicolau d'Olwer, 'Sahagún and his Works', in Howard F. Cline (ed), Handbook of Middle American Indians, XIII: Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources (Part Two), Austin, University of Texas Press, 1973, pp. 186–207, pp. 190–91). Francisco del Paso y Troncoso edited a partial facsimile reproduction (Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia de las cosas deNuevaEspaña.Ediciónparcial en facsímile de losCódices Matritenses en lengua mexicanaque se custodian en lasBibliotecas del Palacio Real y de la Real Academia de la Historia, VI–VIII, Madrid, Hauser y Menet, 1905–07). Some of these documents can be accessed online at the Biblioteca Digital Mexicana. For the consultation of the Primeros memoriales two available editions are the Primeros memoriales. Facsimile Edition, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1993, and the Primeros memoriales. Paleography of the Nahuatl text andEnglishTranslation, Henry B. Nicholson and Thelma D. Sullivan (eds), Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. For the facsimile reproduction of the Florentine Codex, see Historiauniversal de las cosas de Nueva España: Códice Laurenziano Mediceo Palatino, 3 vols, Firenzi, Giunti Barbera, 1996. This two-column page manuscript in Nahuatl and Spanish arrived in Spain around 1578–1579 and, by 1588, entered the Laurentian Library of Florence, for which it receives the title of the Florentine Codex (Miguel León Portilla, Bernardino deSahagún: Pionero de la antropología, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1999, pp. 176–79). For a translation of the Nahuatl column into English, see Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble's edition, TheFlorentine Codex: General History of theThings of New Spain, 13 vols, Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1950–82. For the Spanish column, see Josefina García Quintana and Alfredo López Austin's edition, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, 2 vols, Madrid, Alianza, 1988. In this article Sahagún's work is titled Historia universalde las cosas de Nueva España, as annotated by one of his scribes (Sahagún, Historia delascosas, VII, p. 401), and referred to hereafter as Historiauniversal. 2. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 56. This article reproduces the Nahua amanuenses' spelling. Sahagún describes the whole process in FlorentineCodex, I, pp. 53–56. For a comprehensive history of the evolution of the work, see Cline and Nicolau d'Olwer, 'Sahagún and his Works' and Jesús Bustamante García, FrayBernardinode Sahagún: Una revisión crítica de los manuscritos y de su proceso decomposición, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1990. 3. Ángel María Garibay Kintana, 'Proemio a Historia general', in Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, escrita por Bernardino Sahagún y fundada en la documentación en lengua mexicana recogida por los mismos naturales, vol. 1. ed. A. M. Garibay Kintana, México, Porrúa, i–lxii, 1956, p. xi. 4. This book series published translations into Spanish of some of the manuscripts within the Códices matritenses. León Portilla's edition is Ritos, sacerdotes y atavíos de los dioses (Fuentes indígenas de la cultura náhuatl: Textos de los informantes de Sahagún, I), México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1958. Three subsequent editions are Veinte himnos sacros de los nahuas (Fuentes indígenas de la cultura náhuatl: Textos de los informantes de Sahagún, II), Ángel María Garibay Kintana (ed), México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1958; Vida económica de Tenochtitlán: Pochtecáyotl, arte de traficar (Fuentes indígenas de la cultura náhuatl:Textos de los informantes de Sahagún, III), Ángel María Garibay Kintana (ed), México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1961; and Augurios y abusiones (Fuentes indígenas de la cultura náhuatl: Textos de los informantes de Sahagún, IV), Alfredo López Austin (ed), México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1969. To be noted is that the term 'informantes' might lead at times to confusion as it is also used to name only the Nahua elders. Several scholars argue that, in the manner of a modern ethnographer, Sahagún interviewed them in order to gather information. See, for instance, Cline and Nicolau d'Olwer, 'Sahagún and his works', p. 188; León Portilla, Bernardino de de Sahagún, p. 13, and Klor de Alva, 'Sahagún and the Birth of Modern Ethnography: Representing, Confessing, and Inscribing the Native Other', in J. Klor de Alva, Henry B. Nicholson and Eloise Quiñones Keber (eds), The Work of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-century Aztec Mexico, Albany and New York, The University of Albany and State University of New York, 1988, pp. 31–52, p. 42. 5. Donald Robertson, 'The Sixteenth-Century Mexican Encyclopaedia of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún', Cahiers d'histoire mondiale, 9, 1966, pp. 617–27, p. 625. 6. For a similar argument, see Jesús Bustamante García, 'Retórica, traducción y responsabilidad histórica: Claves humanísticas en la obra de Bernardino de Sahagún' in Berta Ares et al (eds), Humanismo y visión del otro en la España moderna: Cuatro estudios, Madrid, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1992, pp. 246–375, and Walden Browne, Sahagún and the Transition to Modernity, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. One of Sahagún's textual archetypes was the Franciscan Bartholomaeus Anglicus's De proprietatibus rerum (ca. 1240–1260), an encyclopaedia extensively drawn on by the members of his order in their composition of sermons (Donald Robertson, Mexican ManuscriptPaintings of the Early Colonial Period: The Metropolitan Schools, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1959, p. 170, and 'The Sixteenth-Century Mexican Encyclopaedia'). 7. Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Paintings, pp. 48–49. 8. Klor de Alva, 'Sahagún and the Birth of Modern Ethnography', pp. 49–50. 9. Luisa Pranzetti, 'La fauna en las crónicas del Nuevo Mundo a la luz de la cultural medieval' in Alessandro Lupo and Alfredo López Austin (eds), La cultura plural: Reflexiones sobre diálogo y silencios enMesoamérica (Homenaje a Igalo Signorini), México and Roma, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Universitá Degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza', 1998, pp. 69–8, pp. 77–80; Ilaria Palmeri Capesciotti, 'La fauna del libro XI del Códice florentino de Fray Bernardino de Sahagún: dos sistemas taxonómicos frente a frente', Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 32, 2001, pp. 189–221, pp. 211–14.10. Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo, 'Los animales del Códice Florentino en el espejo de la tradición occidental', Arqueología Mexicana, 36: VI, 1999, pp. 52–59.11. Although acknowledging Sahagún as the driving force and main author of Historia universal, James Lockhart maintains that the Florentine Codex, and Book XII specifically, offer a site for 'an indigenous role, for indigenous ideas, frameworks and imperatives' (Lockhart, 'Introduction', We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Eugene, Oregon, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2004 [1st ed. 1993], pp. 1–46, p. 28). Lockhart admits to the difficulties entailed when trying to determine with clarity the respective parts played by Nahua elders and assistants. A clear example of the formers' role, nevertheless, can be found in Book XII, when the respondents, hailing from Tlatelolco, represent themselves as brave war heroes in opposition to the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan (Lockhart, We People Here, p. 30).12. Lockhart, We People Here, pp. 26, 35–36.13. Lockhart, We People Here, p. 37.14. Kevin Terraciano, 'Three Texts in One: Book XII of the Florentine Codex', Ethnohistory, 57: I, 2010, pp. 51–72, p. 51.15. Terraciano, 'Three Texts in One', p. 62. Terraciano cites the end of chapter 39 of the Spanish version as the 'most obvious evidence of Sahagún's intervention', pp. 62–63. A paragraph extols Cortés and the Spaniards' mercy towards the Nahuas, who would otherwise have been massacred.16. Mariana C. Zinni, 'Umbrales hermenéuticos: los "prólogos" y "advertencias" de fray Bernardino de Sahagún', Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 43, 2012, pp. 161–83, p. 163.17. For further reference on the institution, its tutors, students, and programme of studies, see José María Kobayashi, La educación como conquista: Empresa franciscana en México, México, El Colegio de México, 1974.18. Sahagún, Historia general, II, p. 635, Gerónimo de Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana, 2 vols, Atlas, Madrid, 1973, II, p. 187.19. See library catalogue in Michael Mathes, Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco: La primera biblioteca académica de las Américas, México, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 1982.20. Quintilian, De institutione oratoria, H. E. Butler (ed and tr), London, Heinemann, 1922, I, pp. 149, 157.21. Sahagún, Historia general, II, p. 635. For the translation of Aesop's fables, see Gerdt Kutscher, Gordon Brotherston and Günter Vollmer (eds), Aesop in Mexico. Die Fabeln des Aesop in Aztekischer Sprache / A 16th Century Aztec Version of Aesop's Fables, Berlin, Gebr. Mann, 1987.22. Ignacio Osorio Romero, La enseñanza del latín a los indios, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1990, pp. xxxiv–xxxvi.23. Sahagún, Historia general, II, p. 635.24. Sahagún, Historia general, II, p. 635. For Lockhart, Sahagún is, contrary to other friars, gracious enough to openly acknowledge his assistants as 'responsible for the fine points of the phrasing and syntax' (James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1992, p. 256). After her analysis of a large corpus of early colonial doctrinal works in Nahuatl, including collections of sermons and psalms, admonitions, and confession manuals that incorporated Nahua rhetoric, Louis M. Burkhart similarly believes that all of these are collaborative products of the friars and the Nahua assistants who, as 'interpreters and scribes, […] were largely accountable for the wording' (Burkhart, The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico, Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1989, p. 25). For further reference on examples of this collaboration within Sahagún's Psalmodia christiana, see Arthur J. O. Anderson's introduction, Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1993.25. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, pp. 54–55.26. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 55. These assistants became influential men within the colony. Vegerano and Valeriano were tutors at Tlatelolco during a certain period of their lives; Valeriano later occupied the position of governor of Mexico City, and Pedro de San Buenaventura is known to have composed, together with Jacobita and Vegerano, the Annals of Cuauhtitlan, on the history of Culhuacan and Mexico. For further reference, see Ángel María Garibay Kintana, Historia de la literatura náhuatl, 2 vols, México, Porrúa, 1954, II, pp. 224–227, and Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, pp. 357–87. As for two of his scribes in Mexico City, it is known that Severino served as a municipal notary of Xochimilco and that Maximiliano worked as a teacher at Tlatelolco (Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 55; Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, p. 362, and Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest, p. 472). Additional assistants have been put forward, such as Agustín de la Fuente, Andrés Leonardo and Pablo Nazareo. De la Fuente and Leonardo collaborated in other works supervised by Sahagún, and Nazareo occupied the post of rector and preceptor of the College of Tlatelolco for many years (Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, p. 371; Lockhart, The Nahuas, p. 402).27. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 53.28. Sahagún leaves notice of this objective on the top margin of the first surviving page of the 'Memoriales con escolios', where he writes '[d]e la manera que esta este quaderno a de ir toda la obra' (Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, VI, p. 177). He also alludes to this three-column format in his first prologue to Historia universal: 'la primera, de lengua española: la segunda, de la lengua Mexicana: la tercera, la declaration, de los vocablos mexicanos' (Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 51).29. Sahagún echoes the Franciscan Order's lack of favour that prevented him from completing this project in the second prologue to Book II, see Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, pp. 55–56. Cline and Nicolau d'Olwer have also reported on the hostility against works on indigenous matters that was held by the Franciscan provincial Fray Alonso de Escalona, see 'Sahagún and his Works', p. 193. Regarding the 'Memoriales con escolios', for a reprographic reproduction, see Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, volumes VI and VII. The surviving manuscript does not represent a final document but is composed of drafts; for instance, there are two working sheets on the sun, a first draft and a much more polished version of it.30. This passage, extracted from Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, VI, p. 206, has been reproduced thanks to the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut PK, Berlin. The translation of the Nahuatl text in the central column is Anderson and Dibble's in Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, p. 5. I am indebted to Dr Elke Ruhnau's helpful comments on the Nahuatl sentences and phrases that are mentioned hereafter.31. For further reference, see Bustamante García, 'Retórica, traducción y responsabilidad histórica', pp. 336–46.32. The dissemination of the dictionary was such that by the end of the century the 'Calepin', as it was popularly-known, turned into a European polyglot vocabulary, see Bustamante García, 'Retórica, traducción y responsabilidad histórica', p. 341.33. Sahagún, Florentine Codex I, p. 47. This dichotomy between denotative and connotative or metaphorical meaning is suggested in classical works with which Sahagún was familiar, such as Aristotle's treatise on rhetoric and Cicero's on the orator.34. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 50.35. For further reference, see Pilar Máynez Vidal, 'Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, precursor de los trabajos lexicográficos del Nuevo Mundo', Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 29, 1999, pp. 189–197, pp. 192–93.36. The 'amoxtli', currently known as pre-Hispanic codices, codified oral and pictorial representations of Nahua tradition; 'tlacuilolli' was the act of painting or 'writing' them (Serge Gruzinksi, The Conquest of Mexico: The Incorporation of Indian Societies into the Western World, 16th–18th Centuries, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 8–9).37. Olmos devotes chapter VIII, 'De las maneras de hablar que tenian los viejos en sus platicas antiguas', of his Arte de la lengua mexicana (1547) to register fixed phrases, sayings and vocatives that could be incorporated into sermons (Olmos, Arte de la lengua mexicana, Ascensión Hernández de León Portilla and Miguel León Portilla (eds), México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2002). As for the vocatives that appear in the Nahuatl column of Book VI of the Florentine Codex, many of these can be traced in doctrinal works such as Psalmodia christiana and Apéndice a la postilla. Both works have been edited and translated, into English and Spanish, respectively, by Arthur J. O. Anderson. For Apéndice a la postilla, see Adiciones, apéndice a la postilla y ejercicio cotidiano, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1993. For a comparison between Sahagún and Molina's lexicographic projects, see Máynez Vidal, 'El proyecto lexicográfico de dos frailes españoles en México', Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 37, 2006, pp. 85–94.38. Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, VI, p. 199. In the next folio of the 'Memoriales con escolios' the same Nahua assistant writes the Spanish column on the sinful mother or 'madre mala' and, again at the end of description, annotates different vocatives in order to address her, see Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, VI, p. 200. This reverential treatment amongst family members of Nahua society has been studied by Elena Díaz Rubio, 'Acerca de la terminología de parentesco en el náhuatl clásico: Tlacamecayotl', Revista Española de Antropología Americana, 14, 1986, pp. 63–80.39. For the 'Memoriales en tres columnas', see Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, VII and VIII.40. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 54.41. Sahagún's handwriting of titles and keywords summarizing the contents of the Nahuatl text also appears in the 'Memoriales en tres columnas'. The only text with his own handwriting is the paragraph on 'mal sobrino'; see Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, VI, p. 205.42. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 47.43. Another example that illustrates Sahagún's concerns with fluency is the translation of 'yn qualli achtontli' (literally 'good great-grandfather'), which is rendered as 'p[er]o bisabuelo que tiene buen seso'. To the interpretation of 'aoc quimati veue' as 'decrepito' follows the description of the great-grandfather who is 'qualli' or good. Sahagún makes the comparison clear by introducing the adversative 'pero' and by specifying that, by opposition, the 'good' great-grandfather is an old man who keeps his mental capacities or 'tiene buen seso'.44. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, pp. 55–56.45. María del Carmen González Muñoz, 'Estudio preliminar' in Marcos Jiménez de la Espada and María del Carmen González Muñoz (eds), Juan López de Velasco, Geografía y descripción universal de las Indias, Madrid, Atlas, 1971, pp. v–xlviii, p. viii.46. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 47. The nature of this request, in Nahuatl and Spanish for a Spanish-speaking audience, is nevertheless intriguing and might respond to Philip II's passion for collecting exotic art and cultural artefacts.47. Sahagún, Historia general, II, p. 586.48. Upon a new reading, the scribe of the Tolosa Manuscript, a surviving copy of the Spanish version that was written soon after the Florentine Codex reached Spain, polished the text by avoiding the repetition of the adjective 'good'. He replaced 'buena nombradia' with 'mejor nombradía', and 'buena memoria' with 'felíz [sic] memoria'. See whole paragraph in Carlos María de Bustamante's edition, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, 3 vols, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, III, p. 5.49. Sahagún, Historia general, II, p. 585.
Referência(s)