Pedro de Cieza de León

Part 1 of the Cronica del Perú

Pedro de Cieza de León (* approx. 1520 in Llerena , Spain , † 1554 in Seville , Spain) was a Spanish conquistador , chronicler and historian of Peru . He wrote the Crónica del Perú ( Chronicle of Peru ) in three parts, the first of which was published during his lifetime, the others only in the 19th and 20th centuries.

life and work

Youth and emigration to America

For a long time all that was known about Cieza was what he himself disclosed in his writings; since his emigration papers, his will and other sources were found in the Spanish archives, his information has been largely confirmed and expanded today. Cieza was born in Villa Llerena / Estremadura near Badajoz in 1520 . His father owned a shop there and traveled around the country on trading trips; the Ciezas were also considered " Erasmists " or " humanists ", i. H. as moderate Catholics; that they were supposed to have been conversos (converted Jews) can be excluded.

Landsknecht and chronicler

Pedro hadn't studied, but he knew the ancient authors, was a good observer and an attentive writer. As a child he witnessed the arrival of the looted treasure of the Inca ruler Atahualpa in Seville and there certified his departure to Cartagena / Colombia in front of the notary in 1535 . From there he moved in 1539 as a lad and mercenary into the interior of the country, into the Caucatal . At the same time he began with his notes, where he said he often used a drum as a desk and a condor pen as a quill; he officially began his diary in 1541 in Cartago , New Granada . In 1546 he got caught in the struggle of the Spaniards for rule over Peru: he accompanied the king's special envoy, the prelate Pedro de la Gasca , on his campaigns against the conquistador usurper Gonzalo Pizarro . In 1548 he was named "Cronista de las Indias" and moved inland, u. a. in Cusco , further inquiries with eyewitnesses and conquistadors ; He did justice to the achievements of the Inca : "In many respects they were far superior to us Spaniards." In 1550 he finished his History of the Andean Peoples in Lima and submitted the manuscript to the local censorship authority; Here he made the engagement with Isabel López, who lived in Spain and whom he married in 1551 after his return to Seville.

Return to Spain, printing of the first part, death

When they returned, the couple lived on Calle de las Armas, now Calle Alfonso XII; here he also prepared his crónica for printing. In 1552 he received the royal imprimatur and at the same time a license protection for 15 years. The work appeared in 1553 with illustrations in folio format in an edition of 1,050 copies as the first published work in the press of the Martín de Montesdoca in Seville . This remained the only edition printed in Spain until 1862. In Flanders , Spain , Cieza had a pocket-sized edition printed, again with (recut) illustrations. Probably because of his criticism of the King and the Council of India - "many uneducated men without tact and respect [have] been appointed to the government by His Majesty and the High West India Council" - his partisanship for the Bishop of Chiapas , Bartolomé de las Casas , which he used in his last will to execute his will, and his open portrayal of the horrors of the conquest and administration of the country, his work was excluded from further publication for three centuries.

Translations of the first volume appeared in Antwerp in 1554 and in Italy since 1555 (seven editions in twenty years). German and French translations are missing, a (poor) English edition did not appear until around 1700.

In the meantime, Cieza was editing the second and third volumes for printing; his wife died in 1552, he himself was now paralyzed and died in Seville in 1554 before it was completed.

content

Based on his own observations, eyewitness reports and trustworthy informants, Cieza describes the history of the Andean peoples up to the arrival of the Spaniards and the conquest of the Inca Empire in the 30s and 40s of the 16th century. In numerous systematic and chronological chapters he describes the Inca empire, its predecessor states, the individual tribes, their customs, customs, clothing, road and public buildings, cities and national products - he was the first to mention the herbal poison curare , the coca plant and the potato . His chronicle and description of the country of Peru are characterized by a concise, simple language and sentence structure, whereby the author is usually very reserved.

History of the rest of the manuscripts

International relations had deteriorated since the first volume went to press: the marriage of King Philip II of Spain to Maria Tudor of England in 1554 had not brought about the longed-for peace between England and Spain, on the contrary; After the abdication of Emperor Charles V (1555), the accession of his brother Ferdinand to the throne as German Emperor (1556) and Maria's childless death (1558), relations deteriorated further and finally failed with the dispatch of the Armada to conquer England in 1588.

Ciezas' manuscripts, which he had sent Bartolomé de las Casas, Dominican and critic of the Spanish conquest of America , remained unpublished because it was feared that the Spanish name would be detrimental and no longer wanted to provide the political opponent with any further propaganda ammunition (" Leyenda Negra" ); the manuscripts that had already been submitted were neither submitted to the censors nor returned to relatives - the West India Council withheld them.

Only the Americans William H. Prescott (1796-1859) inspired his History of the Conquest of Peru (1847) dealing with Cieza again so soon, the second part of the work, was considered lost, the long, 1880 rediscovered in Escorial has been. The rest of his manuscripts, however, remain undetected in the "morass of the Spanish archives" (von Hagen) even after 350 years.

rating

Cieza's comprehensive depiction, based on 17-year journeys along the royal roads through the Inca Empire, can only be compared in its completeness and quality with the work of Bernal Diaz del Castillo on the Aztecs of Mexico and possesses "the greatest objectivity of all historical works that have ever been written about Incas. [...] He was to the New World what Herodotus was to ours. " (von Hagen, preface). For the knowledge of pre-Hispanic South America it is as important as the reports of the half-Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and the Waman Puma de Ayala , who also refers to Inca ancestors .

Name variants

Pedro de Cieza de León, Peter de Cieza, Pedro de Cieça de León, Pietro Cieza de Leone, Pietro di Cieca di Lione, Pietro Cieza

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=de&tab=wl
2. ↑ Klaus Wagner: Martín de Montesdoca y su prensa. Contribución al estudio de la imprenta y de la bibliographia sevillana del siglo XVI . Sevilla: Università 1982. pp. 11,24f., 32ff., 40,48f., 52f., 56.61 (with details of the number of copies and listing of the locations of all the copies still remaining today), 78,80,83,85 , 92,154 (there also the signature of Cieza); according to von Hagen (1959) only 500 copies, of which two years later 218 copies were unsold.

expenditure

Spanish :

• La Crónica del Perú. Buenos Aires 1945
• Obras completas (Carmelo Saenz de Santa Maria, ed.) Ed. crítica. Notas, comentarios e índices. Estudios and documentos adicionales for Carmelo Saenz de Santa Maria. (Monumenta Hispano-Indiana. V centenario del descubrimiento de America); ISBN 84-00-05744-9 . - A critical edition with notes, comments and indices of all of his works, with a bio-bibliographical study of the person and the work.
  • Volume 1: La crónica del Perú. Las guerras civiles peruanas 1984
  • Volume 2: Las guerras civiles peruanas 1985
  • Volume 3: Estudio bio-bibliográfico Cieza de León: Su persona y su obra 1985

German translations :

• Pedro de Cieza de León: On the royal roads of the Incas . Edited by Victor Wolfgang von Hagen. Stuttgart: Steingrüben 1971. - The edition is a translation of the American edition The Incas, which von Hagen published in the University of Oklahoma Press in 1959 based on the original editions of volumes 1 and 2 of the Crónicas del Perú ; both editions are missing chap. I-XXXV (today's Colombia). Contains the Ciezas Testament in German, which was published in Spanish by Miguel de Maticorena Estrada in Anuario de Estudios Hispano-Americanos XII (1955), pp. 614-674 (Cieza de León en Sevilla y su muerte en 1554. Documentos). With von Hagen p.541 also the signature of Cieza, easier to read than with Wagner op.cit.

English translations :

• The Incas / transl. by Harriet de Onis . Ed., With an introd., By Victor Wolfgang von Hagen . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 1959 ( The Civilization of the American Indian Series 53)

Clements Markham , whose editions were published by the Hakluyt Society , contributed to the development for the English reader :

• Civil Wars of Peru ( Hakluyt Society , London).
  • The war of Las Salinas. 1923
  • The War of Chupas. 1918
  • Guerra de Quito. 1909
  • The second part of the chronicle of Peru. 1883
  • The travels of Pedro de Cieza de Leon, AD 1532-50. 1864

Web links

Commons : Pedro Cieza de León  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Pedro de Cieza de León in the catalog of the German National Library