Las Casas, Bartolomé de: Castellani, Giacomo, translator:

$2,750 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

ISTORIA Ò BREUISSIMA RELATIONE DELLA DISTRUTTIONE DELL' INDIE OCCIDENTALI.... The second Italian edition of Las Casas' famous indictment of Spanish actions in the New World. Las Casas arrived in Cuba in 1502 and spent most of the ensuing years in the Caribbean and Mexico until his return to Spain in 1547. An early critic of Spanish policy, he nonetheless rose to be Bishop of Chiapas. He witnessed firsthand the appalling destruction of the native population at the hands of the Spanish, and after his return to Spain and throughout his old age, he launched a series of attacks on Spanish policy. The first and most influential of these tracts is Brevissima Relacion de la Destruycion de las Indias, which describes the numerous wrongs inflicted upon the native inhabitants of the West Indies. Written in 1539, it was first published in Seville in 1552, and editions in French, English, and German appeared before 1600. This second Italian edition follows the first of 1626, and is printed in two columns, with the original Spanish text and the Italian translation side by side. It is likely that an Italian edition took considerably longer than other European translations because of strong Catholic influence (indeed, in the 1626 edition the translator Giacomo Castellani hid behind a pseudonym, Francesco Bersabita), whereas mainly Protestant nations speaking German and English were more eager to promulgate news of Spanish misdeeds.

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