Motolinia, Toribio de Benavente (1482-1568)

Motolinia's History of the Indians of New Spain

      pspan style="font-family: Arial;"xvii+338p with 9 plates, including frontispiece, bibliography and index. Small quarto (10 1/4" x 7") issued in blue cloth with gilt lettering to spine and insignia to cover. Translated and annotated with bio-bibliographical study by Francis Borgia Steck. Preface by Roderick Wheeler. Publications of the Academy of American Franciscan History, documentary Series volume 1. From the library of George M Foster. 1st American edition.br /br /Fray Toribio de Benavente (1482, Benavente, Spain- 1568, Mexico City) also known as Motolinia was a Franciscan missionary and among the first 12 clerics to arrive in New Spain in May 1524. He entered the Franciscan order as a young boy changing his family name Paredes to that of his birth city Benavente, as was the custom among the Franciscans. In 1523 he was chosen to be among the first twelve missionaries to be sent to the New World. After a strenuous journey he arrived in Mexico where he was greeted by Hernan Cortes. Upon riding through Tlaxcala the Indians commented on his ragged Franciscan robes saying "emMotolinia/em" which in the Nahuatl language means "He afflicts himself" or "He is poor". This was the first word he learned in the Nahuatl language and he took it as his name. Motolinia accompanied Cortes on his journey to Honduras and when he returned to Mexico he was named guardian of the Convent of San Francisco in Mexico City where he resided from 1524 to 1527. From 1527 to 1529 he was in Guatemala and Nicaragua studying the new missions in that area. Back in Mexico he stayed at the convent of Huejotzinco near Tlaxcala, where he had to help the natives against the abuse and atrocities committed by Nuno de Guzman. He suggested to the native leaders that they complain to the Bishop Juan de Zumarraga about Guzman but the latter accused him of trying to instigate a revolt among the Indians against the Spanish sovereignty. In 1530 he went to the Convent of Tlaxcala and contributed in the foundation of the City of emPuebla de Los Angeles/em. With Franciscan colleagues he travelled to Tehuantepec, Guatemala and Yucatan to undertake further missionary work. Even though Motolinia protected Indians against the abuse of Guzman he did not share the opinions of the Dominican Bartolome de las Casas who saw the conquest and subjugation of the Indians as a crime and against all Christian morality. Motolinia believed that God would protect the Indians once converted and that the missionary work thus was more important than fighting the encomienda system and he remained a defender of the conquest, the encomienda system and the evangelization. In fact in a famous letter to Charles V of Spain he undertook a virulent attack upon Bishop Bartolome de las Casas, intending to discredit him completely. He called him "a grievous man, restless, importunate, turbulent, injurious, and prejudicial" and even an apostate in that he had renounced the Bishopric of Chiapas. He furthermore advised the king to have him shut up for safe keeping in a monastery. In 1545 the encomenderos of Chiapas asked for him to come there to defend them against Las Casas but he declined, in the same way he declined a position as Bishop offered to him by the king. Having founded many cloisters and convents in Mexico and supposedly baptized more than 400,000 Indians he retired to the Convent of San Francisco in Mexico where he died in 1568. He is remembered in Mexico as one of the most important evangelists.br /br /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. br /br /strongCondition:/strongbr /br /Corners bumped, Foster's stamp on title and date of acquiry on front paste down. Jacket spine sunned, edge wear with closed tears and small chip to spine ends else a better than very good copy in about a very good jacket. /span/p