Herrera, Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos, Década Octava
The eighth and last Decade of the official history of the Indies, and the volume in which its author explains how such a history was made. Its dedication records that the king and the Council of the Indies ordered him to continue, that the Council attached one of its own members to the work as its Comissario, and that when critics attacked the geographical tables the Council convened a board of cosmographers to examine them.
Why this wins its question: Herrera is usually met either as a bibliographic entry — chronicler major, eight Decades, never crossed the Atlantic — or as a byword for official apologetics, and in both treatments his own account of how the work was produced goes unquoted. It is on the first two leaves of this volume and is transcribed here: a royal and conciliar order to continue after the first four Decades were in print; a named member of the Council of the Indies attached to the history as its Comissario, with a commission to assist and favour the historian; a board of cosmographers convened by the Council to examine a challenge to the geographical tables, with the challenger seated on it and conceding the substance while faulting the engraver; and, in the same dedication, the historian's own admission that he conformed in everything to his commissioner's judgement. That last sentence is why the passage matters in both directions, and it is set down here rather than left out.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The engraved title page of the volume read here gives the work and the office together: "HISTORIA GENERAL DE LOS HECHOS DE LOS CASTELLANOS EN LAS ISLAS Y TIERRA FIRME DEL MAR OCEANO. Escrita por Antonio de Herrera Coronista Mayor de su Magestad de las Yndias y Coronista de Castilla. DECADA OCTAVA", set around the quartered arms of Castile and León. The author holds two chroniclerships at once, of the Indies and of Castile, and the title page states them before it states anything about the contents.
The plate advertises the volume's subject, which is a Spanish civil war fought in Peru rather than a conquest. Its medallions are lettered "El licenciado Pedro de la Gasca", "Grabiel de Rojas General de la Artilleria", "El General Pedro Alonso de Hinojosa Cauallero de Truxillo" and "El Capitan Diego Centeno"; its vignettes are labelled "Batalla del Campo de guarina", "Batalla del Campo de Añaquito", "Batalla de Pocona", "Batalla de Chuquinga", "Batalla de Panama" and "Exercitos Real y Rebelde en Xaquixaguana".
The continuation was ordered, not offered. Herrera opens his dedication: "ESTANDO ya impressas las primeras quatro Decadas de la Historia General de las Indias, su Magestad, y su Real Consejo me mandaron, que las continuasse" — with the first four Decades already printed, the king and the Royal Council commanded him to continue them; and he adds that he took the command as a reason to be encouraged rather than frightened by "las lenguas maldicientes", finishing the other four "por mas que la Hydra silue", because it seemed to him "menos dificultoso el obedecer, que negar".
The history had an officer of the Council of the Indies set over it. The dedication is addressed "A DON FRANCISCO DE TEXADA, Y MENDOÇA del Real, y Supremo Consejo de las Indias, Comissario desta Historia", and Herrera describes the arrangement in institutional terms: it was "mediante la comission que tuuo del Consejo para darme assistencia, y fauor" that Texada helped him. Official history in Castile was therefore not merely a salaried commission but a supervised one, with a named commissioner drawn from the governing council of the territory being written about.
Herrera states that he deferred to that commissioner, and the statement belongs beside any use of his history as evidence. He writes that Texada's parts and universal knowledge of all matters had been of such profit to him "que conformandome en todo con el parecer de v.m. he procurado de ser, alomenos, breue en las palabras, y largo en las sentencias", and that with the favour Texada had given him as Comissario of the History he carried it through "sin respeto, ni miedo". The chronicler says in the same breath that he wrote without fear and that he conformed in everything to his supervisor's opinion.
The cartography of the work was formally challenged and formally adjudicated, and Herrera prints the outcome. Among the objections raised, he writes, was "que las tablas Geograficas de la Descripcion de las Indias no estauan bien"; the matter was therefore committed to "el señor Licenciado Armenteros del Consejo Supremo dellas, que lo examinasse", who convened a board of cosmographers — "auiendo hecho junta de Cosmografos, y con ellos el que hizo esta oposicion". The objector, sitting on the board that examined his own objection, "confessó, que en la sustancia cosmografica eran ciertas: pero que el artifice que las hizo, deuiera ser mas primo, y curioso": the maps were substantively right, and the engraver should have been more careful.
Herrera's own account of his critics is a polemic, and reads as one. He describes it as the habit of the envious "tener por digno de reprehension quanto se escriue, mordiendo en publico lo que ocultamente leen, juzgando en otros, lo que ellos no saben hazer, queriendo beuer antes del arroyo turbio, que de la fuente clara", and says of those who claim learning without study that they "no conocen, que nada se puede saber sin maestro, ni doctrina". Nothing in the dedication names an individual critic or states an objection other than the one about the tables, so this object makes no claim about who the opponents were or what else they said.
The copy read here does not date or place itself. The title page is entirely engraved and carries no imprint line; none of the pages opened — the title, its blank verso, and the two leaves of the dedication — names a city, a printer or a year. The attribution of this volume to 1615, the year of the second set of four Decades, rests on the catalogue record and not on anything printed on the sheets examined.