HISTORY OF NEW SPAIN

Northern Advocate, 12 June 1926, Page 4

HISTORY OF NEW SPAIN

j ®LD MONK AND HIS BOOK. I ( ! ADVENTURES OF MANUSCRIPT. There are many famous books in the world whose history is as marvellous as if they were living men passing (through great adventures. One of these is shortly to be published in Europe. It is called "A History of New Spain,” meaning Mexico. It is the oldest book written in the Aztec, the Mexican tongue, and was begun almost 400 years ago by a Spanish monk called Bernardino de Sahagun. He sailed to Mexico in 1589 as a Franciscan missionary. Mexico had been conquered by Cortes only eight years before, and the old Aztec civilisation was not yet crushed out.

From the first Bernardino was intensely interested in the history, customs and: rites of the old Mexican people. Soon he became quite absorbed in the subject and was glad to hand i over the charge of his monastery to someone else and devote himself to study. When he had* compiled the first version of his book he submitted it to a committee of the most able Mexicans he could find, threw’"out what they doubted, and revised the manuscript again. By this time he could write the \ language of the Mexicans (Aztec)' better than any Spaniard of his day, 'and he wrote this marvellous book, which ran to 12 books, in the Aztec - tongue. A generation passed by while Sahagun was thus employed. The Spanish monk became old. His work was his life. He had the true scholar’s zealfor the chosen subject of research, and nothing would take him from it. His course was not easy, and his greatest enemies were those of his own household. His brother monks regarded his time as lost, and while Bernardino was away one day, tracking down another custom he had just heard of, the monks burned part of his manuscript and sent other parts away to other monasteries until the -greater- mass of the' good monk's work was squandered. The monk wrote to a hSgh personage in Madrid, explaining the scope of his work and reporting what had happened to it.