Editing Codex Mendoza (section)

== History ==
[[File:Codex Mendoza (cropped).jpg|right|thumb|The Codex Mendoza on display at the Bodleian Library]]
The manuscript must date from after 6 July 1529, since [[Hernán Cortés]] is referred to on folio 15r as 'marques del Valle'.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Berdan |first1=F. F. |last2=Anawalt |first2=P. R. |title=Codex Mendoza |journal=Scientific American |date=1992 | volume=1 |issue=6 |page=5|doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0692-70 |bibcode=1992SciAm.266f..70A }}</ref> It must have been produced before 1553, when it was in the possession of the French cosmographer [[André Thevet]], who wrote his name on folios 1r, 2r, 70v, 71v.

The final page of the manuscript explains some of the circumstances in which it was produced.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Berdan |first1=F. F. |last2=Anawalt |first2=P. R. |title=The Essential Codex Mendoza |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_JQeAQZHev0IC |date=1997 |page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_JQeAQZHev0IC/page/n433 148]|isbn=9780520204546 }}</ref> {{blockquote | text=The reader must excuse the rough style in the interpretation of the drawings in this history, because the interpreter did not take time or work at all slowly...The interpreter was given this history ten days prior to the departure of the fleet, and he interpreted it carelessly because the Indians came to agreement late; and so it was done in haste and he did not improve the style suitable for an interpretation, nor did he take time to polish the words and grammar or make a clean copy.}}

The manuscript was therefore finished in haste and designed to be sent to Spain. More precise information regarding the exact date of the manuscript and the reasons it was produced is controversial. The testimony of the conquistador Jerónimo López, probably dating from 1547, may be relevant.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Berdan |first1=F. F. |last2=Anawalt |first2=P. R. |title=Codex Mendoza |journal=Scientific American |date=1992 |volume=1 |issue=6 |page=70 |doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0692-70 |bibcode=1992SciAm.266f..70A }}</ref>{{blockquote | text=it must have been about six years ago more or less that entering one day into the home of an Indian who was called Francisco Gualpuyogualcal, master of the painters, I saw in his possession a book with covers of parchment and asking him what it was, in secret he showed it to me and told me that he had made it by the command of Your Lordship, in which he has to set down all the land since the founding of the city of Mexico and the lords that had governed and ruled until the coming of the Spaniards and the battles and clashes that they had and the taking of this great city and all the provinces that it ruled and had made subject and the assignment of these towns and provinces that was made by Montezuma to the principal lords of this city and of the fee that each one of the knights gave him from the tributes of the towns that he had and the plan that he employed in the aforesaid assignment and how he sketched [?] the towns and provinces for it. (tr. H. B. Nicholson)}}

Silvio Zavala argued that the book referred to was the Codex Mendoza,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Zavala |first1=Silvio |title=Las encomiendas de Nueva España y el gobierno de don Antonio de Mendoza |journal=Revista de Historia de América |date=1938 |volume=1 |pages=59–75}}</ref> and his arguments were restated by Federico Gómez de Orozco.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Gómez de Orozco |first1=Federico |title=¿Quien fue el autor material del Códice Mendocino y quien su interprete? |journal=Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos |date=1941 |volume=5 |pages=43–52}}</ref> If this is the case, then the Codex was written {{circa|1541}} ('six years ago more or less' from López's recollection) and was commissioned by Mendoza. As H. B. Nicolson has pointed out, however, the description is not an exact fit for the Codex, and the identification is not certain.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Berdan |first1=F. F. |last2=Anawalt |first2=P. R. |title=Codex Mendoza |journal=Scientific American |date=1992 |volume=1 |issue=6 |page=2|doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0692-70 |bibcode=1992SciAm.266f..70A }}</ref>

According to a later account by [[Samuel Purchas]], a later owner of the Codex, writing in 1625, the Spanish fleet was attacked by French [[privateer]]s and all of the booty, including the codex, was taken to France.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Berdan |first1=F. F. |last2=Anawalt |first2=P. R. |title=Codex Mendoza |journal=Scientific American |date=1992 |volume=1 |issue=6 |page=7|doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0692-70 |bibcode=1992SciAm.266f..70A }}</ref>

It was certainly in the possession of [[André Thévet]], [[cosmographer]] to King [[Henry II of France]]. Thévet wrote his name in five places on the codex, twice with the date 1553. It was later owned by the Englishman [[Richard Hakluyt]]. According again to Samuel Purchas, Hakluyt bought the Codex for 20 [[French livre|French francs]]. Some time after 1616 it was passed to Samuel Purchas, then to his son, and then to [[John Selden]]. The codex was deposited into the [[Bodleian Library]] at [[Oxford University]] in 1659, five years after Selden's death, where it remained in obscurity until 1831, when it was rediscovered by [[Edward King, Viscount Kingsborough|Viscount Kingsborough]] and brought to the attention of scholars.