History, Truth and Dialogue: Fernández de Oviedo's Historia general y natural de las Indias (Bk XXXIII, Ch LIV)

Abstract

Fernandez de Oviedo's concept of the making of history figures is one of the distinguishing characteristics of his Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535, 1547, 1557). Living in the geographical and chronological center of the Spanish Conquest of the New World, Oviedo, as Charles V's official Court Chronicler, recorded the momentous events of the Spanish encounter with the New World as they occurred.1 History was being made by the Spaniards, and Oviedo was responsible for gathering information and compiling reports for a history of the New World, which would preserve authentic evidence of the Conquest. Because he lived in the midst of the history about which he wrote, Oviedo's accounts often lack the breadth of information and the perspective time can lend to the writing of history. Writing over a period of thirty years, however, enabled the Court Chronicler to gather new information about incidents he had already recorded and this led him to engage in a process of continual correction, expansion, and revision of the history. Yet more significant to the understanding of Oviedo's concept of history than his own geographical and chronological situation is his preoccupation with writing a truthful representation of historical events. His dedication to the idea of a history that would mirror, as closely as possible, men's actions as they actually occurred, as the omnipresent God would have witnessed them, helps to explain his use of multiple reports of a single incident.2 In keeping with the biblical model of using multiple representations to indicate the author's desire for accuracy, if new information contradicted a previous report, Oviedo often revised the account or wrote another version of it in order to see again the events he had recorded; this methodology, he hoped, would reveal the true nature of the moral and natural history of the Indies.3 The Spanish historian's concept of a truthful history becomes clearer when viewed in light of the intellectual currents and political ideology that influenced him. For example, Oviedo's early exposure to Italian humanism and the classical historian's moralizing tendency;4 the author's belief in Spain's destiny to establish a universal Catholic empire and, therefore, his belief in the need to testify to the validity of the Spanish Conquest; and the author's recent conversion to Erasmian illuminism (about 1525) and its alternative to the novels of chivalry, el libro de verdad (Bataillon 247),5 are all influences that inform Oviedo's historical criteria, which he often elaborates in prologues and passages that correct his own earlier accounts of the same event. One of the most famous sections of the Historia general devoted to revising previous accounts about the Conquest of Mexico is the dialogue between Oviedo and Juan Cano. Included in the narration on the Conquest of Mexico (Bk XXXIII of the Second Part), the dialogue is one of the concluding chapters of the Book (Ch LIV).6 Situated among an assortment of information from various sources, which includes Cortes's Relaciones and Antonio de Mendoza's letters, the colloquy reflects Oviedo's data-collecting methods and his inclusion of multiple reports about the same event in his history.7 Given the frequency with which the Spanish chronicler employs multiple accounts, one is not surprised at his return in Chapter LIV to material treated earlier in Chapters XIV-XV. Rather, what does catch our attention is the historian's use of a new