Diego Duran

Moctezuma represented according to the codex of the 16th century chronicler Diego Durán.

Recorded on a human sacrifice of pre-Columbian America, shown in the book History of the Indias Diego Durán.

Diego Durán (Seville, Spain. June 15, 1537–Mexico City, Viceroyalty of New Spain. c. 1588), also known as Fray Diego Durán, was a historian and Spanish Dominican friar. He is the author of Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e islas de Tierra Firme, one of the first works on various aspects of Mexica society, which he carried out after studying a significant number of original testimonies., both oral and written, in the Nahuatl language.

Work

His most important work is the History of the Indies of New Spain and islands of Tierra Firme and seas , sometimes referred to as Durán Codex of the Good Life; It was published for the first time in several volumes between 1867 and 1880 due to the interest of José Fernando Ramírez in rescuing said manuscript from the National Library of Madrid. Durán composed said History after carrying out an exhaustive investigation in oral sources, codex and various testimonies, which he collated and compared to give a more accurate version of the information about Mexicans and their contemporaries. Like Bernardino de Sahagún, the anthropological purpose of the work was to gain direct knowledge of the customs and traditions of the peoples of Mesoamerica, ranging from drawings to language studies, myths and legends, gods, funeral rites, culture, gastronomy and social and political organization.

The National Library of Spain preserves a handwritten copy dated 1587 entitled History of the Indies and relationship of its idolatry and ancient religion with its calendar and which is considered his work. He also authored the Book of Gods and Rites (1574–1576) as well as the Ancient Calendar (1579).

Regarding the History of the Indies of New Spain and islands of Tierra Firme, the Mexican Mr. José Fernando Ramírez (of the Royal Spanish Academy) transliterated the manuscript and in it warns that:

Its binding is modern and Dutch pasta. It has some fairly spoiled leaves, and when it was bound, there were some very shortened, with detriment of some prints and even words, although they are rare, put aside. It is written to two columns and in the letter of the sixteenth century. It has no more title than the one that appears in the back of the first print, which has been heated, as well as the inscriptions that appear in that print, at its top and to the foot. Following the title, which reads: History of the Indias of N. / And islands and land firmThey modernly added these words—folio: it has 344 folios.