Narrative of Some Things of New Spain and of the Great City of Temestitan
An eyewitness account of Aztec Mexico by a member of Cortes's expedition, known to scholarship only as the Anonymous Conqueror.
- Original byline
- Anonymous
- Published
- Date not recorded
- Form
- Essays
- Authorship
- Still unknown
- Reason for anonymity
- Unrecorded
- Copyright
- Public domain
- Reference
- Wikipedia · Wikidata
The authorship story
This narrative describes Tenochtitlan, its temples, markets, weapons, and manners, as seen by a participant in the Spanish conquest of Mexico. It survives through a sixteenth century Italian translation published by Ramusio, which credits only 'a gentleman of Hernan Cortes', and scholarship has known the writer ever since as the Anonymous Conqueror. Candidates have been proposed, including Francisco de Terrazas, but none is established, and some scholars have even doubted the writer saw Mexico at all. The label preserves the situation exactly: a firsthand voice from one of history's hinges, permanently detached from a name.
Questions readers ask
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Nobody knows. No author for Narrative of Some Things of New Spain and of the Great City of Temestitan has been identified in the documented record.
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Yes. Narrative of Some Things of New Spain and of the Great City of Temestitan is in the public domain and the full text is free to read at the Internet Archive.
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