Enrico Martinez, Reportorio de los tiempos y historia natural desta Nueva Espana (Mexico, 1606)
An almanac, cosmography and natural history computed for the sky over Mexico rather than shipped from Spain, printed in 1606 by its author, the crown's cosmographer. Its prologue says why: books brought from the kingdoms of Spain do not agree with the meridian and climate of this land. Its chapter on the lake of Mexico blames Spanish ploughs and cattle for loosening the hillsides, reasons that the silt is raising the lake bed while the city sinks, and warns the city may suffer for it.
Why this wins its question: Enrico Martinez reaches English almost only as the engineer blamed for the drainage cut that failed to save Mexico City from the flood of 1629, and his book is a line in a bibliography. The sheets are here instead, read from the Mexico 1606 printing he set himself: a prologue saying the almanacs shipped from Spain do not agree with the meridian and climate of this land, which is a statement that science had to be recomputed in the Americas rather than imported; a chapter that traces the silting of the lake of Mexico to the ploughs, cattle and horses the Spaniards brought, works out that the basin is rising while the city sinks into its own saline ground, and warns that the city could in time suffer for it. And on the same footing, because the book will not survive being quoted selectively: the two tratados of judicial astrology, the fall of the Ottoman empire deduced from a conjunction with Nostradamus cited in support, and the Inquisition's interpreter on the title page.
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 title page reads "REPORTORIO DE LOS TIEMPOS, Y HISTORIA NATVRAL DESTA NVEVA ESPANA", the work being "Compuesto por Henrrico Martinez Cosmographo de su Magestad e Interprete del Sancto Officio deste Reyno" and "Dirigido al Excellentissimo Senor Don Iuan de Mendoca y Luna Marques de Montesclaros, Virrey, Gouernador, Presidente y Cappitan General por el Rey nuestro Senor en esta Nueua Espana". Under the arms of Mendoza the imprint runs "CON LICENCIA Y PRIVILEGIO. En Mexico. En la Empremta del mesmo autor ano de 1606" - the author was also the printer, and the book came off his own press.
The two offices named on that title page are worth reading together, because the second is the setting of the first. Martinez signs as cosmographer to the king and as interpreter of the Holy Office of the Inquisition of this kingdom: the man publishing a book of natural philosophy in Mexico held a salaried place in the tribunal that policed belief there, and the book went out under the licence of that same establishment. The title page states both offices; it does not say, and this object does not claim, what he did in either.
Three licences stand in front of the text and record what the censors thought they were approving. The Dominican Fr. Hernando Bacan, examining by commission of the viceroy, found nothing in prejudice of the faith or of good customs and called it "vn libro muy curioso y prouechoso", and licensing its astrology only within a bound he wrote into the approbation itself - the author is to "tratar las de Astrologia con estilo agradable y modestia Christiana, sin darles mas efficacia y certeza, de la que se compadece con la buena y sana doctrina" - at Santo Domingo de Mexico on 8 August 1605. Doctor Hernando Franco Risueno, visitador general, found in it "cosas muy curiosas, y necessarias de saber en este nueuo mundo, y vtiles para conocer los tiempos y temporales de el", at Mexico on 4 June 1605.
The archbishop's licence, given at Mexico on 28 June 1605 by Fr. Garcia de Mendoca y Cuniga and countersigned by Licenciado Sebastian Torrero, repeats the visitador's phrase and grants leave "para que en qualquiera emprenta desta Ciudad pueda hazer imprimir o imprima el dicho Reportorio y Historia, para que con mas facilidad se puedan aprouechar del, todos los que le quisieren". A licence naming any press in the city is evidence that by 1605 Mexico City had a choice of them.
The prologue gives the reason the book exists, and it is a statement about the inadequacy of imported science. Most of what a repertory contains depends on astronomy, Martinez writes, and the like books "traydos de los Reynos de Espana a estas partes no conuienen en muchas cosas con el Meridiano y Clima desta tierra, ni todos conformen con el gusto y pressuroso viuir de la gente della", which is why the work has been accommodated as far as he was able. The almanac that governed sowing, bleeding, sailing and the movable feasts had until then been computed for another sky.
The dedication to the viceroy says plainly what such a book was for and who had to pay for it. Custom is very old among those who write, Martinez begins, to dedicate their works to princes and great lords, and experience has shown how much they reach and are worth under that protection and authority - "por que de la manera que la templanca del ayre haze fertil la tierra, assi el fauor del Principe esfuerca y leuanta los animos e ingenios de sus vassallos". He offers the book as the fruit of his weak talent and describes it as treating "de algunas propriedades deste Clima y Cielo".
The chapter that makes this book matter is tratado tercero cap. XV, at folio 185, headed "QVE TRATA, QVE SEA LA causa de que algunas partes desta nueua Espana que solian ser lagunas y pantanales, se siembren y cultiuen al presente y de parecer q mengua la laguna de Mexico". Its argument is causal and it is about what the conquest changed. Before the Spaniards came, Martinez writes, the natives of this land "no tenian cauallos ni ganado, tampoco se araua la tierra, y las cuestas y laderas eran poco cultiuadas", so that rain and the run-off from the sierras came down less turbid; now that the kingdom is peopled with Christians, the land is ploughed in many parts and trodden continually by cattle and horses, it is loosened, and the downpours "vengan embueltos con mucha lama y tierra".
Folio 186 completes the reasoning and turns it into a warning. The loosened soil settles in the lowest places, which rise little by little until they draw level with the land around them; the histories say that when the Christians came to Mexico the lake reached on the north to the cerro de Tenayuca, on the south to the pueblo of San Mateo, and westward over the plains between Chapultepec and Tlalnepantla, and parts of that known lake bed are now sown and worked. His conclusion is stated as his own opinion: "la laguna de Mexico y Tetzcuco no mengua, pues siempre entran en ella las aguas que solian entrar, sino que el suelo y la tierra ala redonda della crece, haziendo que se estreche y leuante el vaso della, y podria ser por discurso de tiempo llegar a tanto, que la ciudad recibiesse detrimento dello."
The same page records the other half of the problem, which is that the city was going down as the lake bed came up. The site of Mexico City, Martinez writes, is for the most part "tierra mouediza y salitrosa", and it "se consume y abaxa con la humidad y peso de los edeficios". Subsidence under the weight of the Spanish city and siltation of its basin are set out on one page as two movements of the same account.
What the same volume does elsewhere is the honest measure of it, and it is not modern science. Tratado quinto is a discourse on the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn of 24 December 1603 in the ninth degree of Sagittarius, and its chapters ask whether great conjunctions can cause mutations of empires and lordships. At folio 213 Martinez argues from "algunas vaticinios, pronosticos, conjecturas y razones naturales" for the fall and ruin of the Turkish empire, telling over the wars from 1570 to Lepanto and Flanders, and naming as having predicted it "Lucas Gaurico, en sus direcciones sobre la ciudad de Venecia, y Nostradamus". The book that reasoned correctly about erosion also cast the fortunes of empires from a conjunction.
The tabla shows how the work was put together and how much of it is not astrology. Tratado primero runs from the form of the world to the zodiac and includes a chapter on "que sea Astrologia y a quanto se estiende esta sciencia" at folio 10; tratado tercero carries, beside the lake chapter, chapters on why ships from Spain find favourable currents and following winds for most of the crossing, on the tides and the motion of the moon, on why the sea does not rise though so many rivers enter it, on keeping wheat and maize sound from one year to the next, on frosts and irrigated wheat, and on the natural cause of plagues of locusts. After the five tratados, the tabla announces, follows "la relacion de las cosas memorables sucedidas, assi en este nueuo Mundo, como en las otras partes del, desde el ano de 1520. que se conquisto este Reyno hasta el de 1590".
What this source is and is not should be said at the end. It is a printed book opened here page by page: strong evidence of what was composed, licensed and printed at Mexico in 1606, of the reason its author gave for composing it, and of the argument he made about the lake. It is not evidence that the argument was right, that anyone acted on it, or that the book was read - no figure for its printing or circulation is published here. Nothing in the pages read concerns the drainage works of the valley of Mexico, which lay in the future when these sheets came off the press.