Who Copied Whom?Alonso de Molina and the vocabulary appended to Andrés de Olmos’ Arte (1547) of Nahuatl
CasperJacobsen
University of Copenhagen
Abstract
Is the vocabulary appended to a late copy of the Franciscan missionary Andrés de Olmos’ grammar of Nauatl from 1547 an addendum produced by the same author, thus constituting the earliest known lexicographic work of colonial America? By reviewing the debate surrounding this vocabulary found in the so-called Fischer (Tulane, or TULAL) manuscript and examining it using new insights into dictionary-making in the early modern world, I argue that it postdates the 1540s. In contrast to the assumption that the Fischer vocabulary was a source for the famous Spanish-to-Nauatl dictionary from 1555 by the Franciscan missionary Alonso de Molina, I demonstrate that the author of the vocabulary employed Molina’s later dictionaries from 1571 as its main lexicographic sources. The potential relation to Molina’s early dictionary is also examined and similarly indicates that the Fischer vocabulary was copied from Molina rather than vice versa, although the vocabulary may have been composed at different times.
The year 1547 began well for Andrés de Olmos (c. 1485–1568), a Franciscan missionary stationed in the hillside town Ueytlalhpan about 100 miles to the northeast of Mexico City, the capital of colonial New Spain. On January 1, in the convent he himself had founded years earlier, he concluded the final version of his Arte de la lengua mexicana—a grammatical treatise on Nauatl (ISO 639: nci), the polysynthetic language of the vast and past Aztec Empire. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, Nauatl had served for centuries as an international trade language in an extensive multilingual area stretching from west Mexico to El Salvador, and its role as a lingua franca was enhanced by royal and ecclesiastical policies of conversion, which promoted the use of Nauatl as an instrument for Evangelization (Schwaller 2012). It is not hard to imagine Olmos finishing his grammar with a gratifying smile on his face. With this work, he solidified himself as a formidable expert of the single most influential Indigenous language in the region, which additionally was perceived as the key to the unfolding missionary enterprise and native Christianity.
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