BENZONI, Girolamo

A good copy of the first Latin edition of this major Americanum the first account of the New World based on the personal experience of a non-Spanish author. A mysterious figure, the Milanese Girolamo Benzoni (1519-72) travelled to Sanl√∫car de Barrameda in Spain to join expeditions in the New World; he spent the years 1541-56 visiting the Caribbean, Central and South America, though the reasons are unknown. In 1565, upon his return to Italy, he published Historia del Mondo Nuovo , the first edition of this successful account of his adventures; in the following decades it was translated into English, French, German and, the present, Latin. It was unsurprisingly not translated into Castilian as the work was accused of being anti-Spanish and adverse to their colonisation methods. In particular, it presented them, following traditional stereotypes, as cruel, greedy and impious conquerors of the meek and frugal Indians. Unlike earlier travel writings, Benzoni did not just focus on exotic items marvellous or strikingly out of the ordinary ; he was interested instead in phenomena which diverged from what was known in Europe (Enders, An Italian , 27). One of these is the Indians habit of smoking petum ( tabacum in the original Italian), the making of which he describes at length and which he characterises as a pestiferous and evil poison ; this detail, and the fact that Indians were stupefied by it, has convinced several botanists that what he saw was not the smoking of what we now call tobacco. The contemporary annotator of this copy highlighted Benzoni s anti-Spanish stance by glossing a passage on the conquistadores gory and vicious deeds as the summary of [Benzoni s] work or books , and added to another that to convert to Christianity good exempla not violence are needed . He also underlined passages on unhealthy climate and vapours . An important work on the European reception of the discovery of the New World.

As highlighted by Sabin, the collation of this edition is variable as some copies are recorded without the final index; or lack the final errata and/or blank, as present.