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Peter Martyr d'Anghiera

Italo-Spanish historian and diplomat

Peter Martyr d'Anghiera (2 February 1457 – October 1526), formerly known in English as Peter Martyr of Angleria, was an Italian historian at the service of Spain during the Age of Exploration. He wrote the first accounts of explorations in Central and South America in a series of letters and reports, grouped in the original Latin publications of 1511 to 1530 into sets of ten chapters called "decades". His Decades of the New World (De Orbe Novo) are of great value in the history of geography and discovery. He describes early contact of Europeans with many Native American civilizations in the Caribbean, North America and Mesoamerica, and makes the first European reference to India rubber. The work was first translated into English in 1555, and in a fuller version in 1912.

Quotes

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  • It was a gentle custom of the ancients to number amongst the gods those heroes by whose genius and greatness of soul unknown lands were discovered. Since we, however, only render homage to one God in Three Persons, and consequently may not adore the discoverers of new lands, it remains for us to offer them our admiration.
    • First Decade, Book I (Tr. F. A. MacNutt, 1912)
  • It is not necessary to be always consistent.
    • First Decade, Book X (Tr. F. A. MacNutt, 1912); the original Latin: Non semper oportet stare pollicitis.
  • [...] in many places bats as large as pigeons flew about the Spaniards as soon as twilight fell, biting them so cruelly that the men, rendered desperate, were obliged to give way before them as though they had been harpies.
  • It is the royal plan to establish fortified places and to take possession of this continent, nor are there wanting Spaniards who would not shrink from the difficulty of conquering and subjugating the territory. [...] The journey, however, is long and the country very extensive. It is claimed that the newly discovered country, whether continent or island, is three times larger than Europe, without counting the regions to the south which were discovered by the Portuguese and which are still larger. Certainly the Spain of to-day deserves the highest praise for having revealed to the present generation these myriad regions of the Antipodes, heretofore unknown, and for having thus enlarged for writers the field of study.
    • First Decade, Book X (Tr. F. A. MacNutt, 1912)
  • Women generally keep the fire better than they do a secret.
    • Second Decade, Book V (Tr. F. A. MacNutt, 1912); the original Latin: Puella vero, quia ferrum est quod feminæ observant, magis quam Catonianam gravitatem.
  • Brought up on soft feathers.
  • He has related the great deeds of the Portuguese, but whether he witnessed them, as he pretends, or has merely profited by the labour of another, I am unable to state. Vivat et ipse marte suo.
  • It is said there is a district of savana in the most westerly province of Guaccaiarima, inhabited by people who only live in caverns and eat nothing but the products of the forest. They have never been civilised nor had any intercourse with any other races of men. They live, so it is said, as people did in the golden age, without fixed homes or crops or culture; neither do they have a definite language. They are seen from time to time, but it has never been possible to capture one, for if, whenever they come, they see anybody other than natives approaching them, they escape with the celerity of a deer. They are said to be quicker than French dogs.
    • Third Decade, Book VIII (Tr. F. A. MacNutt, 1912), of one of the Indian tribes of Hispaniola

See also

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Wikipedia
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  • ——— De Novo Orbe, or The Historie of the West Indies, trans. Rycharde Eden (London, 1612)
  • ——— De Orbe Novo: The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr, trans. Francis Augustus MacNutt (New York: Putnam, 1912), vol. 1; vol. 2
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