Bernardino de Sahagún

Timeline

1. c. 1499–1529Sahagún · LeónBorn Bernardino de Ribeira in the town of Sahagún in the Kingdom of León, he later took the place name as his surname. He studied and professed at the Salamanca convent, and in 1529 was sent to New Spain among the earlier wave of Franciscans, beginning over sixty years of mission work and investigation.
2. 1529–1558Tlatelolco · Mexico CityHe missionized in the Basin of Mexico and mastered Nahuatl. After the Colegio de Santa Cruz opened in 1536, he long taught Latin, theology, and the humanities, while learning indigenous languages and customs from sons of Nahua nobles, training bilingual assistants for later large-scale oral investigations.
3. 1558–1577Tlatelolco · Mexico CityFrom 1558 he interviewed elders at Tepeapulco and elsewhere, producing the Primeros Memorias, which he expanded into the twelve-volume General History of the Things of New Spain. Between 1575 and 1577 he and Nahua scribes and painters completed a fine bilingual manuscript amid an epidemic; it later reached the Medicea Laurenziana library in Florence, becoming the Florentine Codex.
4. 1577–1590Tlatelolco · Mexico CityAfter a royal decree banned such records of indigenous religion in 1577, manuscripts circulated abroad. Sahagún continued revising his account of the conquest (rewriting Book XII around 1585) and published Nahuatl hymns and catechisms. He died near Tlatelolco in 1590, past the age of ninety.