Lucas Fernández de Piedrahíta, Historia general de las conquistas del Nuevo Reyno de Granada (1688)
A history of New Granada written in Madrid by a cleric from Santa Fe de Bogotá while prosecutions kept him at court, licensed in 1688. Its two engraved plates give named medallion portraits to the zipas of Bogotá and the zaques of Tunja, and its first book is announced as the site, provinces, first inhabitants, customs, rites and laws of the country before the conquest. Its author says he supplied the motives of Indian kings and Spanish captains himself, for verisimilitude.
Why this wins its question: Piedrahíta is usually met as a name in a bibliography of Colombian historiography, or as the man who transmitted Jiménez de Quesada's lost Compendio - a channel rather than a book. Read from the 1688 sheets, three things are on the record that the channel description loses. The first is visual and immediate: two engraved plates that hand the medallion-and-scroll apparatus of European dynastic portraiture to the zipas of Bogotá and the zaques of Tunja, naming eleven indigenous rulers and five caciques, and a first book announced on the plate itself as the customs, rites and laws used in the country before the conquest. The second is a preface that does source criticism out loud - why Herrera is preferred on conciliar business, why Castellanos comes second and for what quality, why Aguado should be read with caution - and that names the two manuscripts, one unprinted and one eighty years in manuscript, from which the whole was compiled in a single year. The third is the counterpoint, and it is the author's own: he states that the maxims and motives he gives to Indian kings and Spanish captains are supplied by him for verisimilitude, and that his lists of conquistadors are there for a reader descended from them who has a reward to claim. This object binds all three as separate claims, so that a machine consumer quoting a Muisca speech from Piedrahíta is quoting it with the author's own warning attached.
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 volume read here is the 1688 printing. Its engraved title plate reads "HISTORIA GENERAL DE LAS CONQVISTAS DEL NVEVO REYNO DE GRANADA. A LA S.C.R.M. DE D. CARLOS SEGVNDO, Rey de las Españas, y de las Indias. POR EL DOCTOR D. LVCAS FERNANDEZ Piedrahita, Chantre de la Iglesia Metropolitana de Santa Fe de Bogotà, Calificador del Santo Oficio por la Suprema y General Inquisicion, y Obispo electo de Santa Marta", and is signed in the plate "J. Mulder fec."; its verso carries the ownership stamp of the "KAISERLICHE KOENIGLICHE HOFBIBLIOTHEK WIEN". No letterpress title page carrying a place of printing or a printer's name appears among the leaves opened here, and none is asserted; every preliminary document in the book is dated at Madrid in 1688.
The engraved title gives indigenous sovereigns the apparatus a European book of 1688 reserved for dynasties. Ranged around the title are medallion portraits captioned "Saguanmachica, primer Zippa de Bogota", "Nemequene, segundo Zippa de Bogota", "Thisquesusa, tercero Zippa de Bogota", "Saquesazipa, quarto Zippa de Bogota", "Sugamuxi, sumo Sacerdote de la Nacion Moxca", "Guatabita, Cazique poderoso del Reyno de Bogota" and "Vbaqui, Cazique del Reyno de Bogota", together with four battle vignettes named "Batalla de Choconta", "Batalla de las Bueltas", "Batalla del Portachuelo" and "Batalla del Voqueron".
A second engraved plate opens the text and repeats the device for Tunja. It is headed "PRIMERA PARTE DE LA HISTORIA GENERAL DEL NVEVO REYNO DE GRANADA. LIBRO PRIMERO", and its own summary states what the book begins with: "Tratase del sitio, y calidades del Nuevo Reyno de Granada: dase noticia de sus Provincias, primeros habitadores, y de las costumbres, ritos, y leyes que usavan en su gentilidad." Around it run medallions of "Vnsahua, primer Rey de Tunja, El Zaque", "Tomagata, segundo", "Tutasuha, tercero", "Michua, quarto", "Quiminchatecha, quinto" and "Aquiminizaque, ultimo Rey de Tunja", with "Tundama, Cazique soberano entre los Tunjanos", "Gameza, primer Elector", "Busbanja, segundo Elector", "Toca, quinto Elector" and "Icabuco, cazique y señor de muchos vassallos."
The royal privilege states who the author was and what he then held. It recites that "el Doctor D. Lucas Fernandez de Piedrahita, del nuestro Consejo, Obispo de Panamá" had represented that, "siendo Chantre de la Iglesia Metropolitana de Santa Fé de Bogotá en las Indias, en el Nuevo Reyno de Granada, y electo Obispo de Santa Marta", he had written the book, and it grants him licence and privilege for ten years. The dating of the preliminaries is close: the aprobación of Fr. Felipe de Zamora is given at the Real Convento de San Felipe in Madrid on 27 April 1688, the licence of the vicar of Madrid on 28 April 1688, the erratas at Madrid on 5 August 1688 over the name of "Don Martin de Ascarça, Correct. gen. por su Mag.", and the tassa at Madrid on 9 August 1688 by Manuel de Moxica at eight maravedís the pliego. Between the engraved plate, which calls him bishop-elect of Santa Marta, and the licences, which call him bishop of Panamá, the book records its own author's promotion.
What was printed is only a first part. The errata leaf names the book "Primera parte de la Historia general de la conquista del Nuevo Reyno de Granada", and the plate before the text repeats "PRIMERA PARTE". No continuation is present in this volume, and none is asserted here.
The dedication says the book was written in Madrid while its author was being prosecuted, and it says so as flattery. Arguing that the most esteemed Roman crown was the obsidional one, woven of the grass of the country it relieved and given by the besieged to the man who freed them, Piedrahíta applies the figure to himself: who will not confess "que aviendome libertado la grandeza de V. M. del assedio tan largo de persecuciones, que me conduxeron a su Corte", he now lays at the royal feet "esta Coronica, ò Corona, que es lo mismo, texida en Madrid de los primeros verdores de mi Patria, y de la grama de sus Paises". The nature of the persecutions is not stated on any page opened here and is not asserted.
The Al lector names the two manuscripts the book is built on, and both had been lying unread. Having found the conquests of the New Kingdom treated only in passing in the histories of the Indies, "siendo el tercero en grandeza, y magestad de todos los que ay en esta dilatada Monarchia", the author says that in Spain there came into his hands "la quarta parte de la Historia de Indias, que escrivió el Lic. Juan de Castellanos, Cura que fue de la Ciudad de Tunja, aunque con la desgracia de no averse dado a la estampa, teniendo aprobacion para ello", the original being in the library of Alonso Ramírez de Prado, councillor of Castile and of the Cámara de Indias; and that he then met in one of the libraries of the Court with "el Compendio historial de las conquistas del Nuevo Reyno, que hizo, escrivió, y remitió a España el Adelantado D. Gonçalo Ximenez de Quesada", which "por mas de ochenta años avia passado por los vltrages de manuscrito entre el concurso de muchos libros impressos."
Treating Muisca custom as a subject in its own right was a deliberate editorial decision, and the author explains it with an image from an armoury. Because the relation "de las costumbres, ritos, y ceremonias de su gentilidad" repeatedly confused that of the progress of the conquest, "a la manera, que en vna Armeria rebuelta ningun genero de armas se dexa comprehender por el desorden de no estar cada vno en su proprio lugar", he resolved "a poner separadamēte aquellas noticias, que mezcladas quitaban la claridad de la Historia." He adds that he occupied every day of the year sixty-six with the work.
The same preface performs source criticism, and gives a reason for each preference. He follows Quesada's account "menos en la expression de las resoluciones, y despachos del Consejo, y motivos, que para ello tenia", in which he holds he must prefer the chronicler Antonio de Herrera, "como quien para esto se hallaba presente, y no se governaba por relaciones de interesados, como para lo demás, que se contiene en sus Decadas." Second place goes to "el Lic. Castellanos en quanto afirma en los veinte y dos Cantos de su Historia", valued for the care with which he reports the particular deeds of many conquistadors - "que siendo verdaderas, he visto en otros Autores falsedades." He warns the reader against the history begun by Fr. Antonio Medrano and continued in two tomes by Fr. Pedro Aguado, so that the reader may "repare en los yerros, en q̃ cae quien se sigue por relaciones vulgares, como advierte Quesada en su prologo."
The sharpest limit on the book is stated by its own author, and anyone quoting a Muisca king from it is bound by it. He has no more part in the work, he writes, "que la que se me puede atribuir por aver reducido a computo de años, y a lenguaje menos antiguo, la que dexaron escrita los Autores, que ván citados, sin otra adicion, que la verisimilitud de las maximas, y motivos, que tuvieron los Reyes Indios, y Cabos Españoles en sus empressas." He defends the addition on the ground that the plausible is not opposed to the true when it follows from the antecedent causes. The maxims and motives given to indigenous rulers in this book are therefore its author's reconstruction, on his own statement, and not testimony.
The book expects a particular reader and says what it wants from the crown. Its opening paragraph gives as a motive the chance that, its notices reaching the Catholic Monarch, "puedan esperar los sucessores de muchos Mardocheos olvidados, el premio correspondiente a su lealtad heredada" - that the heirs of forgotten men may hope for the reward owed to inherited loyalty. And of the long name-lists it prints: "si al lector fastidiaren las repetidas listas de los Conquistadores, considérese descendiente de algunos dellos, y no le pesará de hallarlos en las categorias de los que concurrieron a las facciones mas atresgadas." The lists are there because the intended reader is a conquistador's descendant with a claim to press.
The preliminaries show which officials of the Indies stood behind it. The approbation is by "Fr. Felipe de Zamora, del Orden de N. P. S. Agustin, Procurador General de la Provincia de Quito en las Cortes de Madrid, y Roma", who states that he can affirm the book "como testigo de vista de lo mas, que contiene dicha Historia". A Latin poem is signed by "D. IGNATIVS MARTINEZ DE AIBAR & Eslava... Quitensis Cancellariæ Regij Fisci vindex, & Indorum Protector generalis" - crown fiscal and protector general of the Indians at Quito - who calls Piedrahíta "patriæ suæ Historiographo, ævi nostri Livio eruditissimo", and writes that a crowd strayed from the true faith once held him captive and yet paid him honours and let him go free to his own house. Fr. Juan Meléndez ends his piece with a sonnet addressed not to the author but to the country: "Nueva Corona ciñes a tu frente, / Nueva Granada, con tu nueva Historia... Aquel valor antiguo de tu gente / Oy resucita a mas inmortal gloria."
Four limits should travel with any use of this book. It is a compilation printed some hundred and fifty years after the events, assembled in one year from two manuscripts its author had not himself gathered; the motives and speeches it gives to Muisca rulers are, by his own statement, supplied for verisimilitude; the medallion portraits of zipas and zaques are engravings cut in Europe by J. Mulder for a book of 1688 and cannot be likenesses taken from life; and the whole is dedicated to Carlos II and written, as its first page says, so that the heirs of conquistadors may be rewarded. What it preserves - a named dynastic sequence for Bogotá and Tunja, and a first book given over to the laws and rites of the country before the conquest - is valuable precisely because it survives inside a book with those interests, and not in spite of the fact.