Libraries

The First part of the Chronicle of Peru by Pedro Cieza de León is described by the BNE as part of the library of the Inca Garcilaso:

Among the chronicles of Peruvian material published before the Comentarios reales, we find the chronicle of the Pedro Cieza de León, born in Extremadura, that was fundamental for introducing the knowledge of the Andes in Europe. Cieza passed very young to America, where he was conqueror, encomendero, merchant and traveler between the New Kingdom of Granada, Quito and Peru. He arrived to Peru in 1548 with the army of the pacifier Pedro de la Gasca and stayed until 1550 or 1551, when he returned to Spain, after 17 years in Indias.

The first part of the chronicle was printed in Seville in 1553, in the workshops of Martín Montesdoca. In the preliminary pages, Cieza details the four parts of his work on Peru, that included a book on the foundations of cities – the only one published – one on “the lordship of the Incas” and two on the conquest and civil wars . The death of the author in 1554, as well as the censorship of the publications that talked about America, would have frustrated, for Cantú, the publication of the complete work in his time. Nevertheless, the unpublished papers of Cieza were used and even looted by historians of his time, especially by the great chronicler Antonio de Herrera and Tordesillas in his General History of the Castilians …, Decades III, IV and V, published between 1601 and 1615.

We also share the printed edition of the Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru, which deals with the lordship of the Inca Yupanquis and their great deeds and governance, collected by Jiménez de la Espada.