Antonio Valeriano

Antonio Valeriano (ca. 1531–1605) was a colonial Mexican, Nahua scholar and politician. He was an assistant to fray Bernardino de Sahagún in the compilation of the Florentine Codex, and served as judge-governor both of his home, Azcapotzalco, and of Tenochtitlan.

Question of authorship of the Nican Mopohua

The question of Valeriano's authorship of the Nahuatl text known as Nican Mopohua has become a point of contention in the long-running dispute over the historicity of the tradition that the Virgin Mary (under the title Our Lady of Guadalupe) appeared to Juan Diego in 1531. The Nican Mopohua was published in 1649 by Luis Lasso de la Vega as part of a composite text known from its opening words as the Huei tlamahuiçoltica, and de la Vega's claims of authorship in the preface to that work notwithstanding, the Nican Mopohua has long been attributed to Valeriano. This attribution is based on a tradition dating back to the Informaciones Jurídicas de 1666 and the assertions of Luis Becerra Tanco and, subsequently, Carlos Sigüenza y Gongora as to Valeriano's authorship and as to their acquaintance with the relative manuscripts in his hand-writing.^[1] Suggestions have been made that its content is incompatible with someone (such as Valeriano) who had close bonds with the Franciscans,^[2] and others have suggested that the Huei tlamahuiçoltica is a unitary work which – despite the considerable objections against such a possibility – de la Vega wrote, with the assistance of a collaborator.^[3] Nevertheless, the general consensus among Mexican scholars (ecclesiastical and secular) remains that Valeriano is indeed the author of the Nican Mopohua.^[4]

Notes

References

• Brading, D. A. (2001). Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition Across Five Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-80131-1. OCLC 44868981. 
• Karttunen, Frances (1995). "From Courtyard to the Seat of Government: The Career of Antonio Valeriano, Nahua Colleague of Bernardino de Sahagún". Amerindia 19/20: pp. 113–120. http://celia.cnrs.fr/FichExt/Am/A_19-20_08.htm. 
• Sousa, Lisa, Stafford Poole and James Lockhart edd. and trans. (1998). The Story of Guadalupe (Nahuatl Studies Series, Number 5). Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. 
• Traslosheros, Jorge E. (2009): "Guadalupan Voices in the History of Mexico" presentation to Marian Congress 6–8 August 2009 Phoenix, Arizona, accessed 2011-02-02