Note 1099 — Chapter VI

Quaritch, who in his Catalogue of 1870 (no. 259, sub 376) advertised for £105 the original manuscripts of three at least of these councils (1555, 1565, 1585), intimates that they never were returned into the Ecclesiastical Archives after Lorenzana had used them in preparing an edition of the Proceedings of these Councils which he published in 1769 and 1770,—Concilios provinciales de México,—though in the third, and perhaps in the first, he had translated apparently his text from the Latin published versions. Bancroft describes these manuscripts in his Mexico, ii. 685. The Acts of the First Council had been printed (1556) before Lorenzana; but the book was suppressed, and the Acts of the Third Council had been printed in 1622 in Mexico, and in 1725 at Paris. The Acts of the Third also appeared in 1859 at Mexico with other documents. The readiest source for the English reader of the history of the measures for the conversion of the Indians and for the relation of the Church to the civil authorities in New Spain are sundry chapters (viii., xix., etc.) in Bancroft’s Central America, and others (ix., xix., xxxi., xxxii.) in his Mexico. (Cf. references in Harrisse, Bibl. Amer. Vet., p. 209.) The leading Spanish authorities are Torobio Motolinia, Mendieta, and Torquemada, all characterized elsewhere. Alonso Fernandez’ Historia eclesiástica de nuestros tiempos (Toledo, 1611) is full in elucidation of the lives of the friars and of their study of the native tongues. (Cf. Rich, 1832, £2 2s.; Quaritch, 1870, £5; Bancroft, Mexico, ii. 190.) Gil Gonzales Davila’s Teatro eclesiástico de la primitiva Iglesia de las Indias (Madrid, 1649-1655) is more important and rarer (Quaritch, 1870, £8 8s.; Rosenthal, Munich, 1884, for 150 marks; Bancroft, Mexico, ii. 189). Of Las Casas and his efforts, see the preceding chapter in the present volume.