Note 878 — Chapter III

A few data can be added to the account of Sahagún given in Vol. II. p. 415. J. F. Ramirez completes the bibliography of Sahagún in the Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia de Madrid, vi. 85 (1885). Icazbalceta, having told the story of Sahagún’s life in his edition of Mendieta’s Hist. Eclesiastica Indiana (México, 1870), has given an extended critical and bibliographical account in his Bibliografía Mexicana (México, 1886), vol. i. 247-308. Other bibliographical detail can be gleaned from Pilling’s Proof-sheets, p. 677, etc.; Icazbalceta’s Apuntes; Beristain’s Biblioteca; the Bibliotheca Mexicana of Ramirez. The list in Adolfo Llanos’s Sahagún y su historia de México (Museo Nac. de Méx. Anales, iii., pt. 3, p. 71) is based chiefly on Alfredo Chavero’s Sahagún (México, 1877). Brasseur de Bourbourg, in his Palenqué (ch. 5), has explained the importance of what Brevoort calls Sahagún’s “great encyclopædia of the Mexican Empire.” Rosny (Les documents écrits de l’Antiquité Américaine, p. 69) speaks of seeing a copy of the Historia in Madrid, accompanied by remarkable Aztec pictures. Bancroft, referring to the defective texts of Sahagún in Kingsborough and Bustamante, says: “Fortunately what is missing in one I have always found in the other.” He further speaks of the work of Sahagún as “the most complete and comprehensive, so far as aboriginal history is concerned, furnishing an immense mass of material, drawn from native sources, very badly arranged and written.” Eleven books of Sahagún are given to the social institutions of the natives, and but one to the conquest. Jourdanet’s edition is mentioned elsewhere (Vol. II.).