Bernardino de Sahagún ( – 5 February 1590) was a Franciscan friar, missionary priest and pioneering ethnographer who participated in the Catholic evangelization of colonial New Spain (now Mexico). Born in Sahagún, Spain, in 1499, he journeyed to New Spain in 1529. He learned Nahuatl and spent more than 50 years in the study of Aztec beliefs, culture and history. Though he was primarily devoted to his missionary task, his extraordinary work documenting indigenous worldview and culture has earned him the title as "The First Anthropologist."Arthur J.O. Anderson, "Sahagún: Career and Character" in Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: The General History of the Things of New Spain, Introductions and Indices, Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble, translators. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1982, p. 40.M. León-Portilla, Bernardino de Sahagún: The First Anthropologist (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2002), pp. He also contributed to the description of Nahuatl, the imperial language of the Aztec Empire. He translated the Psalms, the Gospels, and a catechism into Nahuatl.
Sahagún is perhaps best known as the compiler of the Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España—in English, General History of the Things of New Spain—(hereinafter referred to as Historia general).Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain (Translation of and Introduction to Historia general De Las Cosas De La Nueva España; 12 Volumes in 13 Books ), trans. Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O Anderson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1950-1982). The most famous extant manuscript of the Historia general is the Florentine Codex. It is a codex consisting of 2,400 pages organized into twelve books, with approximately 2,500 illustrations drawn by native artists using both native and European techniques. The alphabetic text is bilingual in Spanish and Nahuatl on opposing folios, and the pictorials should be considered a third kind of text. It documents the culture, religious cosmology (worldview), ritual practices, society, economics, and history of the Aztec people, and in Book 12 gives an account of the conquest of the Aztec Empire from the Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco point of view. In the process of putting together the Historia general, Sahagún 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,"H. B. Nicholson, "Fray Bernardino De Sahagún: A Spanish Missionary in New Spain, 1529-1590," in Representing Aztec Ritual: Performance, Text, and Image in the Work of Sahagún, ed. Eloise Quiñones Keber (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2002). and Sahagún has been called the father of American ethnography. In 2015, his work was declared a World Heritage by the UNESCO.
Education in Spain Fray Bernardino was born Bernardino de Rivera (Ribera, Ribeira) 1499 in Sahagún, Spain. He attended the University of Salamanca, where he was exposed to the currents of Renaissance humanism. During this period, the university at Salamanca was strongly influenced by Erasmus, and was a center for Spanish Franciscan intellectual life. It was there that he joined the Order of Friars Minor or Franciscans. He was probably ordained around 1527. Entering the order he followed the Franciscan custom of changing his family name for the name of his birth town, becoming Bernardino de Sahagún.
Spanish conquistadores led by Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (on the site of present-day Mexico City) in 1521, and Franciscan missionaries followed shortly thereafter in 1524. Sahagún was not in this first group of twelve friars, which arrived in New Spain in 1524. An account, in both Spanish and Nahuatl, of the disputation that these Franciscan friars held in Tenochtitlan soon after their arrival was made by Sahagún in 1564, in order to provide a model for future missionaries.David A. Boruchoff, "Sahagún and the Theology of Missionary Work," in Sahagún at 500: Essays on the Quincentenary of the Birth of Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, OFM, ed. John Frederick Schwaller (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2003), pp. 59–102. Thanks to his own academic and religious reputation, Sahagún was recruited in 1529 to join the missionary effort in New Spain. He would spend the next 61 years there.
Evangelization of New Spain
During the Age of Discovery, 1450–1700, Iberian rulers took a great interest in the missionary evangelization of indigenous peoples encountered in newly discovered lands. In Catholic Spain and Portugal, the missionary project was funded by Catholic monarchs under the patronato real issued by the pope to ensure Catholic missionary work was part of a broader project of conquest and colonization.
The decades after the Spanish conquest witnessed a dramatic transformation of indigenous culture, a transformation with a religious dimension that contributed to the creation of Mexican culture. People from both the Spanish and indigenous cultures held a wide range of opinions and views about what was happening in this transformation.
The evangelization of New Spain was led by Franciscan, Dominican and Augustinian friars.Jaime Lara, City, Temple, Stage: Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics in New Spain (South Bend: University of Notre Dame, 2005). These religious orders established the Catholic Church in colonial New Spain, and directed it during most of the 16th century. The Franciscans in particular were enthusiastic about the new land and its people.
Franciscan friars who went to the New World were motivated by a desire to preach the Gospel to new peoples.Edwin Edward Sylvest, Motifs of Franciscan Mission Theory in Sixteenth Century New Spain Province of the Holy Gospel (Washington DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1975). Many Franciscans were convinced that there was great religious meaning in the discovery and evangelization of these new peoples. They were astonished that such new peoples existed and believed that preaching to them would bring about the return of Christ and the end of time, a set of beliefs called millenarianism.John Leddy Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970). Concurrently, many of the friars were discontented with the corruption of European society, including, at times, the leadership of the Catholic Church. They believed that New Spain was the opportunity to revive the pure spirit of primitive Christianity. During the first decades of the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica, many indigenous people converted to Christianity, at least superficially.
The friars employed a large number of indigenous Americans for the construction of churches and monasteries, not only for the construction itself, but also as artists, painters and sculptors, and their works were used for decoration and evangelization. In this process, the native artists added many references to their customs and beliefs: flowers, birds or geometric symbols. Friars thought the images were decorative, but the Natives recognized their strong religious connotation.Reyes-Valerio, Constantino, Arte Indocristiano, Escultura y pintura del siglo XVI en México, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2000Eleanor Wake, Framing the Sacred: The Indian Churches of Early Colonial Mexico, University of Oklahoma Press (17 Mar 2010) The mixture of Christian and Indian symbols has been described as Indocristiano or Indochristian art. Inspired by their Franciscan spirituality and Catholic humanism, the friars organized the indigenous peoples into utopian communities. There were massive waves of indigenous peoples converting to Catholicism, as measured by hundreds of thousands of baptisms in massive evangelization centers set up by the friars.Lara, City, Temple, Stage: Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics in New Spain.
In its initial stages, the colonial evangelization project appeared quite successful, despite the sometimes antagonizing behavior of the conquistadores. However, the indigenous people did not express their Christian faith in the ways expected by the missionary friars. Many still practiced their pre-European contact religious rituals and maintained their ancestral beliefs, much as they had for hundreds or thousands of years, while also participating in Catholic worship, a practice known as multiple religious belonging. The friars had disagreements over how best to approach this problem, as well as disagreements about their mission, and how to determine success.
At the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco
Sahagún helped found the first European school of higher education in the Americas, the Colegio Imperial de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco in 1536, in what is now Mexico City. This later served as a base for his own research activities, as he recruited former students to work with him.León-Portilla, Bernardino De Sahagún: The First Anthropologist; Michael Mathes, The Americas' First Academic Library: Santa Cruz De Tlatelolco (Sacramento: California State Library, 1985). The college contributed to the blending of Spanish and indigenous cultures in what is now Mexico.
It became a vehicle for evangelization of students, as well as the recruiting and training of native men to the Catholic clergy; it was a center for the study of native languages, especially Nahuatl. The college contributed to the establishment of Catholic Christianity in New Spain and became an important institution for cultural exchange. Sahagún taught Latin and other subjects during its initial years.Nicholson, "Fray Bernardino De Sahagún: A Spanish Missionary in New Spain, 1529-1590. Other friars taught grammar, history, religion, scripture, and philosophy. Native leaders were recruited to teach about native history and traditions, leading to controversy among colonial officials who were concerned with controlling the indigenous populations. During this period, Franciscans who affirmed the full humanity and capacity of indigenous people were perceived as suspect by colonial officials and the Dominican Order. Some of the latter competitors hinted that the Friars were endorsing idolatry. The friars had to be careful in pursuing and defining their interactions with indigenous people.
Sahagún was one of several friars at the school who wrote notable accounts of indigenous life and culture.Edmonson, ed., Sixteenth-Century Mexico: The Work of Sahagún.