Libraries

Gómez Suárez de Figueroa is the name the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega was called by his acquaintances. He was born in Cuzco on 12 April 1539. He descends on his mother’s side, Isabel Isabel Chimpu Ocllo, from the Incas Tupac Yupanqui and Huayna Capac. By his father, Captain Sebastian Garcilaso de la Vega, he closely knew the conquerors who opened the new roads in America, and, later, already in Spain, he met the academic circles of Andalusia. When he died at 77, an Inventario de bienes (Archivo de Protocolos de Córdoba, oficio 29, protocolo 35, folios 521v – 525v) (Inventory of goods) was written that gives account of a part of his library (File of Protocols of Cordova, oficio 29, protocol 35, folios 521v – 525v), which remained after his passage from the city of  Montilla to Córdoba, capital of the province.

With this library, the Inca Garcilaso becomes the first Peruvian as well as the first genuine American humanist. In addition to Italian, Spanish (in a certain way European) literature, he possesses volumes of classical tradition as Aristotle written in Romance or in Latin. All this collection of modern renovation since the Greco-Latin antiquity comes with a huge amount of texts about America, about the New World. The digital library Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, presents inventoried volumes, starting with the classical studies of Dr. José Durand Flórez (jose-durand) and  including others that come from his works by references or quotations.  The library is a fascinating testimony of an Indian Humanist that is between the sixteenth and the seventeenth century, who wrote the history of the discovery of the two worlds: the European who thought have found Paradise lost and the Americans who devoured the overseas culture, that now cohabits with their fantastic geography, transformed and melted.