[878] A few data can be added to the account of Sahagún given in Vol. II. p. 415. J. F. Ramirez completes the bibliography of Sahagún in the Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia de Madrid, vi. 85 (1885). Icazbalceta, having told the story of Sahagún’s life in his edition of Mendieta’s Hist. Eclesiastica Indiana (México, 1870), has given an extended critical and bibliographical account in his Bibliografía Mexicana (México, 1886), vol. i. 247-308. Other bibliographical detail can be gleaned from Pilling’s Proof-sheets, p. 677, etc.; Icazbalceta’s Apuntes; Beristain’s Biblioteca; the Bibliotheca Mexicana of Ramirez. The list in Adolfo Llanos’s Sahagún y su historia de México (Museo Nac. de Méx. Anales, iii., pt. 3, p. 71) is based chiefly on Alfredo Chavero’s Sahagún (México, 1877). Brasseur de Bourbourg, in his Palenqué (ch. 5), has explained the importance of what Brevoort calls Sahagún’s “great encyclopædia of the Mexican Empire.” Rosny (Les documents écrits de l’Antiquité Américaine, p. 69) speaks of seeing a copy of the Historia in Madrid, accompanied by remarkable Aztec pictures. Bancroft, referring to the defective texts of Sahagún in Kingsborough and Bustamante, says: “Fortunately what is missing in one I have always found in the other.” He further speaks of the work of Sahagún as “the most complete and comprehensive, so far as aboriginal history is concerned, furnishing an immense mass of material, drawn from native sources, very badly arranged and written.” Eleven books of Sahagún are given to the social institutions of the natives, and but one to the conquest. Jourdanet’s edition is mentioned elsewhere (Vol. II.).
[879] See Vol. II. p. 421.
[880] Those who used him most, like Clavigero and Brasseur de Bourbourg, complain of this. Torquemada, says Bandelier (Peabody Mus. Repts. ii. 119), “notwithstanding his unquestionable credulity, is extremely important on all questions of Mexican antiquities.”
[881] Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., i. 105.
[882] Cf. Vol. II. 417; Prescott, i. 13, 163, 193, 196; Bancroft, Nat. Races, v. 147; Wilson’s Prehistoric Man, i. 325. It must be confessed that with no more authority than the old Mexican paintings, interpreted through the understanding of old men and their traditions, Ixtlilxochitl has not the firmest ground to walk on. Aubin thinks that Ixtlilxochitl’s confusion and contradictions arise from his want of patience in studying his documents; and some part of it may doubtless have arisen from his habit, as Brasseur says (Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, May, 1855, p. 329), of altering his authorities to magnify the glories of his genealogic line. Max Müller (Chips from a German Workshop, i. 322) says of his works: “Though we must not expect to find in them what we are accustomed to call history, they are nevertheless of great historical interest, as supplying the vague outlines of a distant past, filled with migrations, wars, dynasties and revolutions, such as were cherished in the memory of the Greeks in the time of Solon.” In addition to his Historia Chichimeca and his Relaciones, (both of which are given by Kingsborough, while Ternaux has translated portions,)—the MS. of the Relaciones being in the Mexican archives,—Ixtlilxochitl left a large mass of his manuscript studies of the antiquities, often repetitionary in substance. Some are found in the compilation made in Mexico by Figueroa in 1792, by order of the Spanish government (Prescott, i. 193). Some were in the Ramirez collection. Quaritch (MS. Collections, Jan., 1888, no. 136) held one from that collection, dated about 1680, at £16, called Sumaria Relacion, which concerned the ancient Chichimecs. Those which are best known are a Historia de la Nueva España, or Historia del Reyno de Tezcuco, and a Historia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, if this last is by him.
[883] Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, May, 1855, p. 326.
[884] In his Quatre Lettres, p. 24, he calls it the sacred book of the Toltecs. “C’est le Livre divin lui-même, c’est le Teoamoxtli.”
[885] Brasseur’s Lettres à M. le due de Valmy, Lettre seconde.
[886] Catálogo, pp. 17, 18.
[887] Brasseur, Bibl. Mex. Guat., p. 47; Pinart-Brasseur Catal., no. 237.