Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas

Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas
Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas
Born	1549 (1549) Cuéllar (Segovia)
Died	March 28, 1626(1626-03-28) (aged 76–77) Madrid
Occupation	Historian
Writing career
Period	Golden Age

Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (Cuéllar, 1549 – Madrid, March 28, 1626) was a chronicler, historian and writer of the Spanish Golden Age, author of the Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme del mar Océano que llaman Indias Occidentales, known as the Décadas and considered one of the best works written about the conquest of America.

He was Chief Chronicler of Castile during the reigns of Philip II and Philip III, and also of the Indies. Cristóbal Pérez Pastor gave him the epithet of "Prince of the historians of the Indies". He is considered the most prolific historian of his time, and his work also comprises a General History of the World, one of Portugal and a Description of the Indies. Also notable in his output is the translation of various works from Italian or Latin into Castilian, and he even ventured to translate his work Descripción de las Indias Occidentales into Dutch.

He is considered the first Spanish historian of Spain's overseas Empire.

Biography

He was born in the Villa of Cuéllar, province of Segovia, into a well-off noble family. He was the son of Rodrigo de Tordesillas (son of another Rodrigo de Tordesillas who died at the hands of the comuneros) and of Inés de Herrera, from whom he took his surname.

He received his early schooling at the Grammar School of his native town, developing a very remarkable skill for forming relationships and an inexhaustible capacity for work, as would later become evident; his education (significant in the Latin language), possibly pursued at Salamanca, reached its culmination in Italy. In 1570 he traveled to Italy, in the service of Prince Vespasiano I Gonzaga, one of the most prominent figures of his time in Italy. His knowledge of Latin increased at the same time as he learned Italian.

In 1575 Gonzaga was appointed viceroy of Navarre, for which reason Herrera returned to his country and settled in Pamplona. He continued to enjoy the Viceroy's confidence when the latter moved to Valencia with the same office (1579), although Herrera moved his residence to the Court as Gonzaga's most trusted man, settling his affairs before the King and the Court. At the same time Herrera kept widening his circle of friends, established contact with influential personalities and, gradually, amassed a small fortune.

In Gonzaga's last years of life, he introduced Antonio de Herrera to King Philip II as a man learned in historical matters; this was the starting point of a relationship that Herrera knew how to maintain, beginning with a series of self-interested courtesies, dedicating his historical works (he had already begun his output) to important personages. To get off on the right foot in this contact with the King, he translated from Italian the work of Minadoy, Historia de la Guerra entre turcos y persianos.

During his stay in Pamplona he met the woman who would become his first wife, Juana de Esparza y Artieda; the marriage, celebrated in 1581, gave him a social standing of some note, even though he had not yet acquired significant capital or wealth, although he was on the way to achieving it. From this first marriage was born Juana de Herrera, his only daughter, who died in 1587 at an early age, three years after her mother Doña Juana.

A decade after being widowed, he married for the second time a native of Cuéllar, María de Torres Hinestrosa, descended on one side from the lords of Henestrosa, and on the other, in natural line, from King Alfonso IX of León; he had no issue with her.

Chronicler

During the years of his widowhood after his first wife, Herrera devoted himself to consolidating his position at Court, to investing in urban properties in Madrid, and of course, to writing, always writing, until he obtained the office of Chief Chronicler of the Indies in 1596, and that of Castile in 1598, with an attractive salary or, as Herrera himself says, optimo stipendio dotatum. In 1601 he moved his residence to Valladolid, with the Court, and there he continued his tireless historiographical activity, intermingled with other activities of a courtly nature and the inevitable ones of an economic nature.

In 1607 he returned to Madrid, residing in some houses on the Puerta del Sol and devoted to his literary tasks, where he enjoyed a comfortable and lordly life. However, the financial entanglements in which he was involved led to his house arrest in 1609, which lasted until 1611, after which he continued his historical and literary activity until his death. The Royal Academy of History links that arrest to his friendship with the Marquis of Siete Iglesias, and specifies that Herrera was not deprived of his prebends, offices or salaries, and that the confinement was followed by a banishment that did not last even a quarter of a year.

Death

The now-vanished Church of Santa Marina (drawing by Francisco Javier Parcerisa in 1865).

Death came to him in Madrid on March 28, 1626. Herrera made two wills, in 1612 and 1622, both with the same concern for leaving his burial arranged. He ordered in his will that his body be buried "in the parish Church of Santa Marina of the town of Cuéllar, at an altar with an arch in the main chapel on the Epistle side, for which purpose it shall be prepared by order and will of my heir, placing on it an inscription in round Castilian letters that will be found set out among my papers, and in the form in which it is found written in Latin it shall be placed over my said tomb", as was afterwards done. Herrera set a maximum period of two years for his body to be buried in Cuéllar, taking into account possible obstacles to doing so immediately, and therefore proposed as first burial place the now-vanished Convent of San Hermenegildo in Madrid, in the chapel of Captain Juan Bautista Anotonelli, of which he was patron, and so it was done.

In the 19th century, during the Confiscation (Desamortización), the church was sold and its owner used the tombstone as a step, thus losing the gilding of its letters, while the mortal remains were moved in 1886 to the nearby Church of San Pedro, and once that church was secularized in 1890, they were taken to one of the halls of the City Council of Cuéllar, where they rest today together with those of his wife, along with the tombstone, which at the request of the Royal Academy of History was donated in 1952 by the owner of the church. The tombstone, which is currently preserved in the premises of the Cuéllar City Council, bears the following inscription, transcribed by Fidel Fita and rendered into Castilian by Antonio Ballesteros Beretta:

Ant. Herrera Tordesillas. Chronicu Philip 2 & 3 Castellæ et Indias. Gene ral. Inquis. Familiaris Nauarr. et Valenti a Secretis Regiæ Familiæ Domesticus. Vixcit cum nobili uxo D.M. de Torres an ....laborib. felix, primiis a suppra. Obiit M ....1626, die 28 Mr. ella 3 .... An 1641.

Antonio Herrera Tordesillas, chronicler of the kings Philip II and III of Castile and of the Indies, familiar of the General Inquisition of Navarre and Valencia, Secretary and servant of the Royal Household, He lived 38 years with his noble wife Doña María de Torres, happy in his (literary) labors, but not attaining the rewards he deserved. He died in Madrid, on March 28, 1626. She (Doña María) on the 30th of the same month, year 1641.

Work

Title page of the Descripción de las Indias in its first edition of 1601, with iconographic engravings of the indigenous people. It also shows the only existing portrait of the author.

Descripción de las Indias Occidentales

Herrera's American historiography began with his Descripción de las Indias, published in 1601, in which he included various maps and fold-outs. Although it is considered an independent work, since it was published as such, it is the introduction to his Décadas, thus setting a pattern much imitated by writers of the 20th century: it deals with the geographical setting in the strictest sense of the word, as a tool to help understand the history he would later publish, locating the main places and presenting the configuration of the territory as the framework of operations where the events took place.

Herrera's Descripción was the culmination of a tradition or databank begun on the first voyage of Columbus, made up of various chronicles, nautical treatises and other manuals, such as the work of Martín Fernández de Enciso, the manuscript works of Alonso de Chaves and Alonso de Santa Cruz, and that of Juan López de Velasco, in addition to an extensive cartography, all of them sources that Herrera used to compose his Descripción and to include in it fourteen maps of America and the Far East. It was common in new editions of his Décadas to include his Descripción as one more part of the work, although on occasion it was published independently, translated into German, French, English and Latin.

The sources Herrera used to compose his description fall into four groups: the geographical works of Juan López de Velasco (Chapters I, II, III, V and XI–XXVII); Codex J-15 of the National Library (I, III, V and VIII–X); the history of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (VII), and archival documentation (II, IV, VI–VII, XI–XV, XVIII–XXVII and XXVIII–XXXII).

Décadas

Main article: Décadas (Herrera)

First and second Décadas of Herrera's Historia general. First edition of 1601.

He owes his greatest recognition to his Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las Islas y Tierra Firme del mar Océano que llaman Indias Occidentales, known as the Décadas, which was published by Juan Flamenco and Juan de la Cuesta between 1601 and 1615, in four volumes. It is the most complete written history of America, and as its name reveals, the work focuses on narrating the events experienced by the Spanish conquistadors during the Conquest, beyond the natural setting, which he had already dealt with in his Descripción, and above the indigenous world, which he considered to have been treated in the works of Las Casas, Sahagún, Olmos or Mendieta, since it is a history of deeds and not of things. Nor is it a history whose primary aim was to understand and assess what happened; rather, it is fundamentally descriptive, leaving personal judgments aside, narrating the events and happenings whose protagonists are the Castilians.

The title pages were engraved with allusions to temples, caciques and other aspects of America, as well as the effigies of some Spanish conquistadors, among them his fellow townsmen Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, Juan de Grijalva or Captain Gabriel de Rojas y Córdova, the portraits constituting a true collection of the most famous faces who took part in the conquest, in many cases unique, an aspect that gives them a special exceptionality.

The Décadas are considered an uninfluenced work, since the author did not live the experiences he describes, seeking to bring them closer to the reader through the chronicles of his predecessors in the office and other men of letters, and through all the official documentation that his office put within his reach, coming from books of the Chamber and papers from the archive of the Council of the Indies, thus being the first history of America that used all the available historical sources and that came to constitute the first General History of the Indies.

... Because I fear that the heroic deeds of the Castilians in the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea may be denied by our enemies.

— Antonio de Herrera, Décadas.

The work was so monumental that Antonio de Solís, who succeeded Herrera in the office of chronicler, did not feel up to continuing the work. The only one who attempted it, without much success, was another chronicler, Pedro Fernández del Pulgar, with goodwill and tenacity, but with a disheartening result, since his manuscript remains unpublished today.

The Décadas were very successful at the time of their publication, and within a few years they were translated into Latin, French and German, later into Dutch and English, numbering some twenty new editions, the latest in 1991 by the Complutense University of Madrid, replacing an earlier one by the Royal Academy of History.

Throughout history the work has received a shower of criticism, both positive and negative: considered by some the best written history of America, others accuse the Décadas of plagiarism, when Herrera himself warns in his work that it is a compilation of the existing chronicles, checked against the documentation of the period and "leaving aside many things that the said authors have said because they could not be verified with authentic writings". Herrera used accounts prepared by protagonists or witnesses, and documentation of various kinds, and some chronicles and official documents kept in archives were disseminated by Herrera before they appeared in an edition of their own; on occasion, certain manuscripts are even known of only because he included them in his work, since in some cases the originals have not been found.

Historia general del Mundo

Main article: Historia general del Mundo

Title page of the Second part of his Historia general del Mundo

He also published a Historia general del Mundo (General History of the World), written in the time of Philip II and divided into three parts, each of them structured in books, and each book divided into chapters. The first part covers the years 1559–1574 (although it begins in 1554 with the marriage of Philip II) and was published in Madrid in 1601, and in Valladolid in 1606, followed by an improved second edition. The second part covers 1575 to 1585 and was published at the same time as the first, with a second edition recorded later. Finally, the third part was published in Madrid in 1612, and covers 1585 to 1598, ending with the death of the King. It constitutes a true annual chronicle, a diary of events encompassing what its title covers, considering the World to be the events of the reign of Philip II within his sphere of influence, and it begins in 1554 with the marriage of the then Prince Philip to Mary I of England. It narrates tumults, rebellions, seditions, betrayals, uprisings, wars of peoples, captures of cities, stormings of fortresses and castles, sackings of places, fires, truces, agreements, breaches of peace, slaughters of people, deaths of princes and other things that happened from the year 1554 to that of 1598, as the author himself notes. He does not devote his pages only to the history of Spain; its contents also refer to Africa, Asia, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the Pacific and the Indies.

History of Portugal

History of Mary Stuart

Comentarios

Other works

He was the most prolific historian of his time, and his historical and literary work did not focus solely on the history of America. Herrera was tireless, a humanist and above all a historian. Other publications of his were:

• Historia de Portugal y conquista de las islas Azores (1582), first edition.

A second edition was published at the press of Pedro Madrigal, in Madrid in the year 1591, in five volumes.

• Historia de María Estuardo, whose actual title is Historia de lo sucedido en Escocia, è Inglaterra, en quarenta y quatro años que biuio Maria Estuarda, Reyna de Escocia, escrita por Antonio de Herrera..., is devoted to the life and history of Queen Mary I of Scotland. It was published in Madrid in 1589 and the following year it was issued in Lisbon under the same title. Later, in the year 1859, it was reissued in Madrid as a bibliographical rarity.
• Crónica de los Turcos (1598).
• Sucesos de Francia or Historia de Antonio de Herrera, criado de su Majestad, y su Coronista mayor de las Indias, de los sucessos de Francia, desde el año de 1585 que començò la liga Catolica, hasta fin del año 1594 (Madrid, 1598).
• Sucesos de Milán or Informacion en hecho, y relacion de lo que passo en Milan, en las competencias entre las jurisdicciones Eclesiastica y Seglar, desde el año de 1595 hasta el de 1598, escrita por Antonio de Herrera... (1599 and 1609), two editions.
• Tratado de los movimientos de Aragón or Tratado, relacion y discurso historico de los mouimientos de Aragon sucedidos en los años de mil y quinientos y nouenta y vno, y de mil y quinientos y nouenta y dos: y de su origen y principio hasta que... Filipe II... compuso y quieto las cosas de aquel Reyno (Madrid, 1612).
• Descripción de las Indias Occidentales (Amsterdam, 1622), Latin edition, translated by its author.
• Comentarios de los hechos de los españoles, franceses y venecianos en Italia, y de otras Repúblicas, Potentados, Príncipes y Capitanes famosos italianos, desde el año 1281 hasta el de 1559 (Madrid, 1624).
• Discursos morales, políticos e históricos inéditos de don Antonio de Herrera, Cronista del Rey don Felipe Segundo, autor de las Décadas de Indias y de otras muchas obras (Madrid, 1804), a work that went to press belatedly.

Other works by Herrera are known, some of them lost but whose existence is recorded:

• Elogio a Don Baltasar de Zúñiga, Comendador mayor de León, del Consejo de Estado y Presidente del supremo de Italia, de Antonio de Herrera.
• Elogio de Antonio de Herrera, Coronista del Rey... a Don Iuan de Zúñiga.
• Elogio de Vaca de Castro, por Antonio de Herrera.
• Exequias de la Reina Doña Margarita de Austria, muerta el 3 de octubre de 1611, por Antonio de Herrera, impresa por orden y a costa de la ciudad de Segovia.

Historia de la guerra entre turcos y persianos

Batalla espiritual

Translations

He did not neglect translation, rendering the works of other authors into different languages:

• Historia de la guerra entre turcos y persianos, escrita por Iuan Tomas de Minadoy... (Madrid, 1588), by Giovanni Tomaso Midanoi Da Rovigo. From Italian into Castilian, in four volumes.
• Diez libros de la razón de Estado; con tres libros de las causas de la grandeza, y magnificencia de las ciudades de Iuan Botero (Madrid, 1592), by Giovanni Botero. From Italian into Castilian. It was reissued twice more: in Barcelona (1599) and in Burgos (1603).
• Advertencias que los catholicos de Inglaterra embiaron a los de Francia en el cerco de París (1592). From French into Castilian.
• Batalla espiritual y arte de seruir a Dios, con la Corona y Ledania de la Virgen Maria, compuesto por el Cardenal de Fermo... (Madrid, 1607), by Cardinal Serafino da Fermo. From Italian into Castilian.
• Los cinco libros primeros de los Annales de Cornelio Tacito: que comienzan desde el fin del Imperio de Augusto hasta la muerte de Tiberio... (Madrid, 1615), by Gaius Cornelius Tacitus. From Latin into Castilian.
• Descripción de las Indias Occidentales (1622), Dutch edition of one of his works, into Latin.

Manuscripts

As if that were not enough, the National Library in Madrid holds some fifteen manuscripts by this illustrious native of Segovia, several of them devoted to the Crónica de los Turcos, a discourse on the death of the Queen of France and other manuscripts belonging to the History of France, and also to that of Portugal; 23 discourses on the rights and customs of the Canary Islands and other subjects; epistles, eulogies and various treatises complete the collection.

Criticism

Herrera does not have a good reputation among some modern writers and historians, who, although paradoxically they come nowhere near the literary stature of the Segovian, have nonetheless managed in some way to tarnish his reputation, alleging a lack of impartiality and making accusations of plagiarism, practices common among writers of the period, in which Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas was not a particularly prominent exponent.

See also

• Timeline of Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas

Bibliography

• Velasco Bayón, Balbino (1996). Historia de Cuéllar (in español) (4th ed.). Segovia. ISBN 84-500-4620-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Cuesta Domingo, Mariano (1998). Antonio de Herrera y su obra (in español). Segovia. ISBN 84-89711-14-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

External links

• Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas in the Polymath Virtual Library (Fundación Ignacio Larramendi), record FILA20120013902.
• Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas in the Diccionario Biográfico electrónico of the Real Academia de la Historia.
• Digitized works of Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas in the Hispanic Digital Library of the National Library of Spain
• Works by Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas at the Internet Archive.
• Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las Islas i Tierra firme del Mar Océano: vol. I, vol. II, vol. III and vol. IV.
• Testamento de Antonio de Herrera. Archived 2008-10-24 at the Wayback Machine
• Epitafio de Antonio de Herrera, cronista mayor de Indias, y noticias relativas a la publicación de sus “Décadas”.
• Fecha de la muerte del cronista Herrera.
• La crónica de los Turcos, de Herrera.
• Las obras de Herrera y Torquemada.