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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
The publication of a handsome facsimile edition of the Cortés Codex in the National Library at Vienna makes it peculiarly appropriate to raise again the long-disputed question why the volume was prepared and what the circumstances were that brought it to the Imperial Library at Vienna. The story of how the codex came to the attention of scholars is well known. In preparing his History of America, William Robertson hunted for Cortés' first letter in Spain without success. He then thought that since Charles V was in the Germanies when the letter arrived in Spain, it might have been forwarded to him and thereafter deposited in the Hapsburg Imperial Library in Vienna. Through the good offices of Sir Robert Murray, then British ambassador at the imperial court, permission was obtained from Empress Maria Theresa for a search not merely for the letter but also for any papers of interest for the History of America. The search did not bring to light the lost first letter but did uncover the Cortés Codex, and in it the letter of the city council of Veracruz written at the same time as Cortés' first letter. The codex contains also a copy of the fifth carta de relatión of Cortés, unknown until then but now known to exist in other manuscript versions. Since Robertson's day, the Cortés Codex has been consulted continually. It has served as the basis for verifying the texts of those relaciones for which there are other copies, and is the sole source for the letter of the city council of Veracruz, which is usually published as the first carta de relatión.
This study was made possible by a grant from the Center of Latin American Studies, Institute of International Studies of the University of California, which enabled me to spend some weeks in the Austrian National Archives and National Library, Vienna.
1 Cartas de relación de la conquista de la Nueva España. Escritas por Hernán Cortés al emperador Carlos V y otros documentos relativos a la conquista, años de 1519–1527. Codex Vindobonensis S. N. 1600. Preface by Josef Stummvoll, introduction and bibliography by Charles Gibson, description of characteristics of the codex by Franz Unterkircher. (Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz, 1960. Codices selecti phototypice impressi, II).
2 Robertson, William, The History of America (2 vols.; London, 1777), 1, x–xi, and II, 521–522.Google Scholar
3 Introduction by Charles Gibson to the facsimile edition, pp. ix–xiv. An excellent summary of the history of editions and scholarly problems of the letters of Cortés will be found in the introduction by Alcalá, Manuel to the Cartas de relación of Cortés (Mexico City, 1960), pp. ix–xxiii.Google Scholar
4 Description of the characteristics of the codex by Franz Unterkircher in the facsimile edition, pp. xxi–xxiii.
5 Ibid., pp. xxii–xxiii.
6 Ibid., pp. xxii–xxiii. Unterkircher cites Charles Briquet, the eminent authority on watermarks for evidence that the gauntlet and flower suggest a date between 1534 and 1540. ( Briquet, Charles M., Les filigranes. Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier des leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600 … [4 vols.; Paris, 1907], 3, 552–555 Google Scholar; and Briquet, Charles M., Briquet’s Opuscula. The Complete Works of Dr. C. M. Briquet without Les Filigranes, pp. 171–234,Google Scholar esp. 199 et seq. The item in the Opuscula is a second printing of “Papiers et filigranes des archives de Gênes 1154 à 1700.”) Actually, Briquet’s dating is based entirely on manuscripts in the archive of Genoa, for this watermark letters sent from Toledo and Barcelona, but the paper is of Spanish manufacture. Mena, Ramón, Filigranas o marcas transparentes en papeles de Nueva España, del siglo XVI (Monografías bibliográficas mexicanas, 5; Mexico City, 1926), p. 17,Google Scholar has found the gauntlet and flower device in approximately the forms in which it occurs in the paper of the Cortés codex on paper in Mexico that can be dated from 1528 to 1545. The paper came from Spain.
7 For a discussion of dating on the basis of the documents, see the introduction by Charles Gibson, pp. x–xiv. For the dating of the key document, the summary of the Pizarro-Almagro voyages, see the careful discussion of Barrenechea, Raul Porras, Las relaciones primitivas de la conquista del Perú (Paris, 1937), pp. 20–21.Google Scholar Porras Barrenechea identifies the author of the now lost original as Francisco de Xerez and dates the writing of the account as between November, 1527 and July, 1528. This dating would mean that the original could not have been received in Spain and the extract prepared before the summer or autumn of 1528.
8 Fol. 227f. of facsimile edition.
9 de Gayangos, Pascual, ed., Cartas y relaciones de Hernán Cortés al emperador Carlos V. (Paris, 1866), pp. viii–ix.Google Scholar Gayangos thought that the codex “debió pertenecer á algun español de los que por aquel tiempo volvian del Nuevo-Mundo.…”
10 Introduction to the facsimile edition, pp. xiii–xiv.
11 de Herrera, Antonio y Tordesillas, , Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i tierra firme del mar oceano … (2d ed.; 9 vols. in 4; Madrid, 1726–[1727]), dec. IV, lib. IV, cap. I.Google Scholar
12 Ibid.
13 de Sandoval, Fray Prudencio, Historia de la vida y hechos del emperador Carlos V … (2 vols.; Pamplona, 1634), 1, 895.Google Scholar
14 See note 7.
15 See the sketch of the early life of Ferdinand in the introduction of Villa, Antonio Rodríguez, ed., El emperador Carlos V y su corte según las cartas de don Martín de Salinas embajador del infante don Fernando (1522–1539) con introducción, notas é indices … (Madrid, 1903), esp. pp. 7–18.Google Scholar
16 The correspondence of the two monarchs in the National Archive at Vienna shows a marked preference for the use of Spanish. Interestingly, Ferdinand used French for his correspondence with his brother, Charles, and his aunt, Margaret. Die Korrespondenz Ferdinands 1 (2 vols, in 3 parts. Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für neuere Geschichte Österreichs, no. 11, 30, 31. Vienna, 1912–1939).
17 See the citation in note 15 of the published work. The manuscript, of 418 ff., is No. 418 in the library of the R. Academia de la Historia, Madrid. It consists of letters to Ferdinand, to his treasurer and intimate friend, Salamanca, and to a few other officials. The published edition is a selection and abridgement of the manuscript, but it appears to publish almost all references to things American. For the key years 1526–1530 of this paper, it publishes all. References here are to the printed version.
I am indebted to the kindness of the Royal Academy of History for film of the manuscript and to the good offices of Prof. Lesley Byrd Simpson, corresponding member of the Academy, for securing the consent of the Academy and rapid photography.
18 P. 146, letter to Salamanca, Burgos, 10 September 1523.
19 See the excellent discussion by Karl A. Nowotny in Museum für Völkerkunde Wien. Mexikanische Kostbarkeiten aus Kunstkammern der Renaissance im Museum für Völkerkunde Wien und in der Nationalbibliothek Wien (Vienna, 1960), pp. 5–55, and especially the quotations from the book of accounts of Ferdinand’s steward (Manuscript 7871 of the National Library, Vienna), pp. 26–27. For a bibliography of the long discussion over the identity of these objects, see pp. 76–80.
20 P. 174, letter to Salamanca, Burgos, 9 April 1524.
21 P. 280, letter to Ferdinand, Toledo, 7 May 1525.
22 P. 306, letter to Ferdinand, Toledo, 13 January 1526.
23 P. 312, letter to Ferdinand, Sevilla, 27 March 1526.
24 P. 318, letter to Ferdinand, Sevilla, 8 April 1526.
25 P. 322, letter to Ferdinand, Granada, 7 June 1526.
26 P. 389, letter to Ferdinand, Burgos, 23 November 1527.
27 P. 410, letter to Ferdinand Monzón, 8 July 1528.
28 P. 420, letter to Ferdinand, Toledo, 13 December 1528.
29 Pp. 562 and 600, letters to Ferdinand, Toledo, 16 March 1534 and Galapar, 28 May 1534. The original of the second letter in the Austrian National Archive (Spanien. Diplomatische Correspondenz, fase. 1) gives the place of writing as Guadalpagar.
30 Pp. 625 and 640, letters to Ferdinand, Madrid, 20 January 1535 and Barcelona, 20 April 1535.
31 P. 800, letter to Ferdinand, Valladolid, 5 April 1537.
32 P. 831, letter to Castillejo, Barcelona, 9 February 1538.
33 Spanien. Diplomatisene Correspondenz, fasc. 3. The letter cited above is 2 ff., Valladolid, 26 September 1550.
34 del Carmen Velázquez, María, “Examen de archivos. Documentos mexicanos en Austria,” Historia mexicana, 10 (1961), 512–513.Google Scholar
35 MS, Austrian National Archive, Spanien. Hofkorrespondez, fasc. 1.
36 María del Carmen Velázquez, op. cit., p. 513.
37 The reports are in Spanien. Diplomatisene Correspondenz, Varia, and Hofkorrespondenz.
38 The first letter of Cortés survived for some decades after his death and was used by Gómara. See Wagner, Henry Raup, “The Lost First Letter of Cortés,” HAHR, 21 (1941), 669–672.Google Scholar According to Wagner, the copy used by Gómara passed via the Bishop of Osma to the library of the Escorial. Like so many other precious records, it was lost in the great fire of 1671.
39 de Gómara, Francisco López, Historia de la conquista de México (ed. by Cabañas, Joaquín Ramírez; 2 vols.; Mexico City, 1943), 1, 143 (cap. XL).Google Scholar
