{
  "id": "juan-bautista-prologo-del-sermonario-1606",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "The prologue to Fray Juan Bautista's Sermonario (Mexico, 1606)",
  "summary": "A Franciscan who had not wanted to learn Nahuatl, and who published eleven books in it, opened his last big one by naming the eight Nahua scholars who had made them: where each was born, what he could do, when he died, and which famous friar's dictionary he had actually helped compose. It is the fullest attribution of indigenous authorship printed in sixteenth-century New Spain, and it survives because a nineteenth-century bibliographer copied it out of a book already almost impossible to find.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "printing",
    "books",
    "indigenous-knowledge",
    "new-spain",
    "language",
    "translation",
    "mexico",
    "seventeenth-century",
    "indigenous-peoples",
    "americas"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hernando-de-ribas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "agustin-de-la-fuente"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "colegio-de-santa-cruz-de-tlatelolco"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "molina-vocabulario-1571"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "sahagun-relacion-del-autor"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "first-printing-press-americas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "pedro-de-gante-san-jose-de-los-naturales"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "catedras-de-lenguas-indigenas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "carochi-arte-de-la-lengua-mexicana-1645"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What is the prologue to Fray Juan Bautista's Sermonario of 1606?",
    "Which Nahua scholars are named as collaborators in Mexican colonial books?",
    "Did indigenous people write the Nahuatl books printed in New Spain?",
    "Who helped Alonso de Molina compose his Nahuatl grammar and dictionary?",
    "Who set the type for the Nahuatl books printed at Tlatelolco?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The book carrying the prologue is described from a copy the bibliographer owned: \"A IESV CHRISTO S. N. OFRECE ESTE SERMONARIO EN LENGVA MEXICANA... Su indigno sieruo Fr. Ioan Baptista de la Orden del Seraphico Padre sanct Francisco, de la Provincia del Sancto Euangelio. Primera Parte\", printed \"En Mexico, con licencia. En casa de Diego Lopez Daualos: y a su costa. Ano 1606\", and sold \"en la tienda de Pedro Arias Librero, enfrente de la puerta del Perdon de la Yglesia Mayor de Mexico\". It is a quarto in roman letter: title page, five leaves of licences, approbations and dedication, five leaves of prologue, one leaf listing the works the author had published, fourteen leaves of summary of the sermons, and text running to page 709. The colophon dates the printing of the first part to 13 June of that year, the day of St Anthony of Padua.",
      "sources": [
        "icazbalceta-bibliografia-mexicana-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "What is read for this object is not the sheets of 1606. The bibliographer states that he is copying the prologue in full \"porque contiene noticias muy curiosas, y el libro en que se encuentra es ya sumamente raro\" - because it contains very curious information and the book it is found in is by then extremely rare. Every wording quoted below is therefore attributed to the 1886 transcription and not to the press of Diego Lopez Davalos, and no copy of the 1606 printing was opened for this entry.",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta",
        "icazbalceta-bibliografia-mexicana-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The prologue opens with an account of the author's own competence and its limits: more than twenty-eight years earlier he had begun to study \"la lengua mexicana por el Arte\", he had long wanted to see a printed Sermonario from which to preach to \"estos naturales\", and, seeing that none appeared, he set about gathering \"mis estudios y los ajenos de religiosos de esta mi provincia del Santo Evangelio\" to make one. He adds that the work looked easy before he put his hand to it and proved immense, and asks readers to supply and correct its defects.",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The attribution then becomes specific and is the reason the document matters: \"Heme ayudado en esta obra de algunos naturales muy ladinos y habiles\" - I have been helped in this work by some very fluent and able natives - after which eight of them are named in turn, each with birthplace, training, particular skill, and in several cases the date of death. Seven of the eight are said to be sons or masters of the Colegio Real de Santa Cruz founded in the convent of Santiago Tlatelolco in Mexico.",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "Hernando de Ribas, native of Tetzcuco and one of the first pupils of the college, is credited with work done for other men's famous books: \"Con su ayuda compuso el P. Fr. Alonso de Molina el Arte y Vocabulario mexicano, y el P. Fr. Juan de Gaona los Dialogos de la paz y tranquilidad del alma\". Of the author's own books, Ribas is credited with the Vocabulario Eclesiastico and a great part of the Vanidades del Mundo of Estella, the Flos Sanctorum and the Exposicion del Decalogo. He is said to have written and translated for the author \"mas de treinta manos de papel\", and to have died on 11 September 1597.",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "Diego Adriano, native of Tlatelolco, is described as \"muy gran latino\" and as having learned the printer's trade: he \"aprendio a componer y componia en la imprenta en cualquier lengua tan bien y tan expeditamente como lo pudiera hacer cualquier maestro, por diestro que fuera en este arte\", and translated Latin into Nahuatl so surely that \"traducia hartos cuadernos sin echar un solo borron ni enmendar cosa\" - he translated whole gatherings without a single blot or correction.",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "Don Juan Berardo, native of Huexotzinco, raised in the Tlatelolco college and afterwards resident of Quauhnahuac for many years, is described as a good Latinist who wrote letters in Latin, \"buen latino... aunque llano, muy congruo y apacible\", and is said to have died in 1594. Don Francisco Bautista de Contreras, a son of the same college, native of Quauhnahuac and at the time of writing governor of the city of Xochimilco, is credited with helping to finish the Contemptus mundi then already in press and with the translation of the Vanidades del Mundo.",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The praise is not uniform, and the passage that qualifies it is on the page with the rest. Esteban Bravo, son of the college and native of San Diego Tlailotlacan near Tetzcuco, is said to have translated from Spanish and Latin into Nahuatl \"con tanta abundancia y multitud de vocablos que pone admiracion\", and then: \"aunque a mi no me ha contentado tanta copia, y asi he ido cortando lo que me ha parecido superfluo en las cosas que de su lengua he tomado\" - the friar cut what he judged superfluous in what he took from Bravo's language. The credit and the editing stand in the same sentence.",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "Don Antonio Valeriano, native of Azcaputzalco, is said to have governed the Mexican Indians for more than thirty years \"con gran prudencia y rectitud\" and to have died in August of the year before the prologue was written; he was a son of the college and one of the best Latinists and rhetoricians it produced, speaking ex tempore in his old age \"con tanta propiedad y elegancia, que parecia un Ciceron o Quintiliano\". One of his Latin letters is then printed entire, closing \"De Mexico. Tui amantissimus etsi indignus. Antonius Valerianus\". The friar adds that Valeriano helped him in the etymology and meaning of many words, whose explanation is carried in the body of the Sermonario.",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "Pedro de Gante - the Nahua of that name, native of Tlatelolco and \"maestro muy antiguo\" of the Colegio de Santa Cruz, not the Flemish friar - is said to have translated many things for the author, especially lives of saints, and to have been consulted throughout the eight years the author lived in the convent of Tlatelolco, six of them in the college itself. He is recorded as having died in November of the year before the prologue.",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "Agustin de la Fuente, native of Santiago Tlatelolco and master of the college, is given the longest notice. He had spent his whole life writing for Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun and Fr. Pedro Oroz until Oroz died on 22 June 1596; he is called \"uno de los mejores y mas liberales escribanos que ha habido en esta nacion de indios\"; he had been ten years with the author, and \"por su mano ha escrito y pasado todo cuanto he impreso hasta aqui y podre imprimir en muchos dias\". Wanting to see the Sermonario printed, he learned to set type, \"y asi va casi todo compuesto en la imprenta por el, que no ha sido de poca ayuda para que vaya bien correcto, que no lleva errata de importancia\".",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "The same prologue records what the enterprise was losing. The author writes that \"el dia de hoy hay tan pocos indios a quien poder preguntar cosas de su lengua, que son contados, y muchos de ellos que usan de vocablos corruptos, como los usan los espanoles\", and warns that one must be careful what is asked of them, especially in words touching the mysteries of the faith and in moral matters. He gives an instance: a fluent and lettered Indian said to him \"Dios itlaneltoquilitzin\", the faith with which God believes, where he should have said \"Dios ineltococatzin\", the faith with which God is believed.",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c13",
      "text": "The purpose of all this labour was conversion and pastoral control, not scholarship for its own sake, and the prologue does not hide it: the books named in it are sermonaries, confessional manuals, catechisms, saints' lives, an ecclesiastical vocabulary and translations of devotional treatises, and the collaborators' skill is valued for how well it carries Christian doctrine into Nahuatl. The author also states that he had three books of plays in Nahuatl ready for the press, made \"con su ayuda\" - with Agustin de la Fuente's help.",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta",
        "icazbalceta-bibliografia-mexicana-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c14",
      "text": "The bibliographer who reprinted the prologue draws from it a conclusion that is not flattering, and it belongs beside the document. Of the author's numerous works he writes that \"no fueron enteramente originales, sino que se sirvio de los trabajos ineditos de otros padres, y en Tlatelolco saco gran partido de los estudiantes indios mas aprovechados, a quienes hacia traducir de castellano a mexicano lo que le convenia\" - he made great use of the ablest Indian students, having them translate from Spanish into Nahuatl whatever suited him. The verdict that follows is narrow: he deserves praise for how much he worked, \"y no puede acusarsele de plagiario, porque declaro con lealtad los auxilios que habia recibido\" - he cannot be charged with plagiarism because he loyally declared the help he had received. On this reading the prologue is evidence of a practice, and the practice is only visible because this friar, unlike others, wrote it down.",
      "sources": [
        "icazbalceta-bibliografia-mexicana-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c15",
      "text": "The author's own beginning is recorded in the same volume and complicates the picture further. Born in 1555 and a native of New Spain, he did not learn Nahuatl as a child \"como otros criollos, y sentia repugnancia a estudiarla\"; Fr. Francisco Gomez pressed him and offered to teach it to him by grammar, and he accepted \"mas por no parecer ingrato, que por gana que tuviese de aprenderla\". Once he had it, he went about \"convidando, buscando y rogando que la aprendiesen los que no la sabian\". In 1595, as guardian at Tezcoco, he nursed with great care those struck by the pestilence that fell on the Indians at the end of that year and the beginning of the next.",
      "sources": [
        "icazbalceta-bibliografia-mexicana-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c16",
      "text": "That Nahua students set type is corroborated independently of the prologue. In the preliminary study of the same volume the bibliographer writes that the seventh and last Mexican printer of the sixteenth century, Melchor Ocharte, whose name is on the Confesonario and the Advertencias of this same friar, 1599 and 1600, had his press in the Franciscan college of Tlatelolco, and that \"los colegiales indios solian ayudar tambien a la composicion de las obras que se imprimian en su lengua\" - the Indian collegians also used to help with the typesetting of the works printed in their language.",
      "sources": [
        "icazbalceta-bibliografia-mexicana-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c17",
      "text": "What this object does not establish should be said. The prologue is the testimony of one interested party, printed in a book he was publishing under his own name, and for six of the eight men named no independent record was opened here; the title pages of the works whose composition they are said to have shared do not name them. The 1606 sheets themselves were not opened, only an 1886 transcription. The year of the friar's death is not established: the bibliographer says only that he was already dead in 1613, when Torquemada finished his history.",
      "sources": [
        "juan-bautista-prologo-sermonario-1606-icazbalceta",
        "icazbalceta-bibliografia-mexicana-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "secondary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "The standard English account of Nahuatl book production in New Spain runs through the friars: Molina made the dictionary, Sahagun made the Historia, Gaona made the Dialogos. This object prints the passage in which a friar of the same province says otherwise about three of those books at once, names eight Nahua men with their birthplaces and dates of death, records that one of them could set type in any language and another translated whole gatherings without a correction, and says of his own scribe that everything he had printed had passed through that man's hand. It also carries what a defensive version would leave out: that the same prologue admits the friar cut what he found superfluous in a collaborator's Nahuatl, that the whole apparatus served conversion, that the language was already being reported as corrupted, and that the bibliographer who saved the passage read it as proof that the friar had made great use of the ablest Indian students and escaped the charge of plagiarism only by declaring it.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-16",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/juan-bautista-prologo-del-sermonario-1606",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/juan-bautista-prologo-del-sermonario-1606.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "The prologue to Fray Juan Bautista's Sermonario (Mexico, 1606)",
    "description": "A Franciscan who had not wanted to learn Nahuatl, and who published eleven books in it, opened his last big one by naming the eight Nahua scholars who had made them: where each was born, what he could do, when he died, and which famous friar's dictionary he had actually helped compose. It is the fullest attribution of indigenous authorship printed in sixteenth-century New Spain, and it survives because a nineteenth-century bibliographer copied it out of a book already almost impossible to find.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/juan-bautista-prologo-del-sermonario-1606",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-16",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Bibliografía mexicana del siglo XVI. Primera parte. Catálogo razonado de libros impresos en México de 1539 á 1600, con biografías de autores y otras ilustraciones, precedido de una noticia acerca de la introducción de la imprenta en México",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=cr0TAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA64"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Prologo del Sermonario en lengua mexicana de Fr. Juan Bautista (Mexico, Diego Lopez Davalos, 1606), reprinted entire in Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, Bibliografia mexicana del siglo XVI, pp. 360-363",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=cr0TAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA360"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "The prologue to Fray Juan Bautista's Sermonario (Mexico, 1606)"
  }
}