The Black Legend – Witnessing Spanish Atrocities in the New World

AMERICAS. VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. Bry, Theodor de (1528-1598); Benzoni, Girolamo (1519-1572?)

Americae Pars Quinta. Nobilis & admiratione plena Hieronymi Bezoni [sic] Mediolanensis secundae sectionis Hi[stori]a[e] Hispaniorum, tùm in Nigrittas seruos suos, tùm in Indos crudelitatem, Gallorumq[ue] pirataru[m] de Hispanis toties reportata spolia; adventu[m] item Hispanoru[m] in Novam Indiae continentis Hispaniam, eorumq[ue]. contra incolas eius regionis saeuitiam explicans. Addita ad singula fere capita scholia, in quibus res Indiae luculenter exponuntur. Accessit praeterea tabula chorographica Nouae Hispaniae in India Occidentali. Ad inuictis Rudolph. II. Rom. Imp. Aug. omnia elegantibus figuris in aes incisis expressa à Theodoro de Bry Leod. cive Franc. A[nno] M D XCV.

Frankfurt: Theodor de Bry, “1595”, but, 1617.

Price: $24,000.00

Folio: 36 x 24.5 cm. In two parts. Pt. I: [2], 72 pages, [2] (blank) pp. Pt. II: [2] pp., 1–22 lvs, [2] (blank) pp. With an added double-page map. Collation: a-h⁴, i⁶ (i6 blank, lacking), A-F⁴ (F4 blank, lacking).

SECOND LATIN EDITION (1st ed. 1595) OF THE FOURTH PART OF DE BRY’S GRAND VOYAGES.

An excellent, tall copy with broad margins. Bound in early 20th c. green morocco with a large central arabesque, gilt, at the center of each board (hinges heavily rubbed and just starting but sound, some wear to the corners and board edges.) Illustrated with an engraved title-page, engraved portrait, double-page engraved map of Mexico, engraved sectional title-page, and twenty-two engraved plates, with printed explanatory text. Short, slim printer’s crease at the top of the map and a short split at the foot, just entering the image but with no loss.

This book constitutes the fifth part of Theodor de Bry's “Grand Voyages” (“America”), the most famous collection of travel narratives from the Americas, printed in fourteen parts from 1590 to 1634. The text of Part V is a translation of the second book of Girolamo Benzoni’s influential “Historia del Mondo Nuovo”, in which Benzoni narrates his experiences in the New World and gives an unflinching account of the Spaniards’ brutal treatment of the Amerindians and Africans whom they enslaved. He gives a great deal of ethnographic detail, describing the various Indigenous societies he encountered, modes of dress and ornamentation, economies, religious practices, etc.; as well as notes on flora and fauna.

First printed in 1565, Benzoni’s work would prove enormously popular. Its popularity would increase dramatically with this deluxe edition published by de Bry, who amplified the text with new, striking illustrations. These 22 large engravings, accompanied by explanatory text, include images of Indigenous social practices, the Amerindians’ encounters with the Europeans -including acts of resistance, such as open warfare and an assassination attempt- and the aforementioned tortures inflicted upon them. Also depicted are battles between the Spaniards and the French (in some of which Indigenous warriors participated), the French sack of Havana, and scenes of events described by Benzoni that occurred before his arrival in the New World (Hernando de Soto’s barbarous treatment of the Floridians and Cortés’ men attacking a Mexica social gathering).

The letterpress text that accompanies each image explain the scene. Plate X shows an Amerindian market in Colombia. “The people of the province of Cartagena have plenty of fruit, fish, and other necessities, and poisoned arrows for weapons. Their trade goods are salt, fish, and pepper, carried inland in exchange for other things. In time of peace they held great markets in grain, fruit, cotton, feathers, feather cloaks, gold ornaments, gems, emeralds, and slaves, each taking only what he needed ‘without any mark of avarice,’ saying ‘take this, give me that.’ Food is what they value most, though many have now learned from our example to prize wealth, a desire that has cooled in most of them.”

In addition to these illustrations, the book features a double-page map of Mexico, “tabula chorographica Novae Hispaniae” (A recent and true description of New or Great Spain), copied, with some changes and additions, from Ortelius’ “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum” (1579). De Bry has populated his map with Native Americans and bison, and has added notes about the inhabitants of various lands: the Guachichiles ("go naked, live under the open sky, intent only on hunting"), the Tepehuanes (gens fera sine legibus, "a fierce people without laws"), and the Chichimecas, “A people wandering far and wide and living under the open sky”. In the same region “the Anthropophagi [the maneaters]—are the ones who inhabit these mountains.”

The book opens with an engraved portrait of Columbus, which de Bry claimed that this portrait was engraved by his son, Jean (or Johann), and was copied from a painting of Columbus commissioned by the King and Queen of Spain, now lost. The portrait, however, was copied from a painting by Sebastiano del Piombo (Sebastiano Luciani). No images of Columbus are known to have been taken from life. De Bry opines that if the avaricious Spanish had followed the example of the magnanimous Columbus, "a great lover of peace and justice”, the New World would have been spared many terrible evils.”

Portrait of Columbus:

Theodor de Bry claimed that this portrait of Columbus was engraved by his son, Jean (or Johann), and was copied from a painting of Columbus commissioned by the King and Queen of Spain, now lost. The portrait, however, was copied from a painting by Sebastiano del Piombo (Sebastiano Luciani). No images of Columbus are known to have been taken from life.”


Benzoni left for the Americas in 1541. His first years were spent on the Pearl Coast (Venezuela), where he joined Spanish expeditions around the Gulf of Paria, before moving through Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Cuba. From Cartagena he joined inland expeditions and crossed the Isthmus to Panama. His account of the doomed Diego Gutiérrez expedition in Costa Rica (1543–44) probably dates from this period. From Panama he sailed up the Pacific coast to Guatemala and back. Around 1550 he went to Peru, reaching Quito and possibly Cuzco, but hostility toward foreign Europeans drove him out through Guayaquil. He returned to Nicaragua with his savings and spent a long illness there, then left Guatemala for Spain in 1554, only to be shipwrecked at Havana and lose much of his money. He finally sailed home with the regular fleet in summer 1556 and reached Seville on 13 September, about fourteen years after he left.

In Book II, Benzoni describes his numerous encounters with various Indigenous peoples. At Cartagena, on the site of the village of Calamarí ("land of crabs"), he meets the Mocaná. On his journey from the Caribbean coast of the Darién to Panamá Viejo, he and a party of merchants surprise an Indigenous hamlet, whose people he does not name. On the Parismina River, in Costa Rica, he marches with Diego Gutiérrez against the people of the Suerre chiefdom; Suerre warriors attack the expedition in the valley of Tayutic, killing Gutiérrez and most of his men Benzoni is one of the few survivors. In the Olancho valley, in Honduras, a village whose people he does not name refuses him food. In Nicaragua, around León and Granada and in the household of the chief Don Gonzalo, he lives for more than a year among Nahua-speaking people, apparently the Nicarao, and probably also among the Chorotega, who controlled most of Pacific Nicaragua. At Almolonga, in Guatemala, near the ruined capital, he speaks with local Indians, apparently including "Mexicanos" from the nearby town of resettled Mexican allies.

“The narrative by Benzoni is often used to gauge the outlook of the de Brys. While in the service of Spain, Benzoni observed and recorded Spanish atrocities in Peru [and the Caribbean] and collected many other first-hand reports on the inroads made by the conquistadors elsewhere… Although a traveler in Spanish America, he despised the Spanish. At almost every turn, Benzoni criticizes Spanish methods of conquest and governance, while frequently siding with Native Americans…

“Benzoni’s narrative contributed to a growing corpus of travel narratives that related the explorations and adventures of Europeans as they traveled to parts unknown. His work was very well received for several reasons: he included harrowing stories, he offered descriptions of the indigenous animals and plants that Europeans had never even imagined, and he described completely new groups of people and beliefs. Just as Spain’s continental ascendency seemed unstoppable, Benzoni offered a vitriolic description of the barbarity of the Spanish that brought their moral authority to rule and exploit the New World into question. The mix of adventure, exotic people and places, and anti-Spanish diatribe made ‘The History of the New World’ an immediate bestseller. Its anti-Spanish rhetoric represents an understudied but historically significant contribution to the Black Legend of Spanish colonialism.”(Schwaller and Byars, introduction to their 2017 edition of Benzoni’s work, “The History of the New World”)

De Bry and The Great Voyages:

Theodor de Bry (1528–1598) was trained as a goldsmith and engraver in Liège, and fled the persecution of Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands around 1570. He lived in Strasbourg from 1570 to 1578 and later (in 1588) settled in Frankfurt am Main, where he established an engraving and publishing business.

In about 1585 had taken his family to London, where the geographer Richard Hakluyt, who was promoting Thomas Harriot's Briefe and True Report on Virginia (1588), encouraged de Bry to publish illustrated accounts of the Americas. While in London, De Bry also obtained John White's watercolors of Virginia and Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues's drawings of Florida, images that would be taken back to Europe and translated into engravings for use in de Bry’s Grand Voyages.

From 1590 until 1634, the De Bry firm issued its collection of voyages. Thirteen volumes on the New World, the America or India Occidentalis series now known as the Les Grands Voyages (and “The Grand Voyages”, in English) which appeared from 1590 to 1634, and twelve volumes on Africa and Asia, the India Orientalis (1597/98–1628). Each volume was published in both German and Latin, and the first America volume also appeared in English and French. Around six hundred large copper engravings secured the collection's reputation.

For the Benzoni volumes (Parts IV–VI, 1594–96), de Bry drew from the 1586 edition of the Latin translation of Benzoni by Urbain Chauveton, who also translated the book into French (1579). The long notes (scholia) to each chapter are those of Chauverton, some taken from his Latin edition, others from the French. They draw on the accounts of authors who had been to the New World (Chauveton's friend Jean de Léry, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Nuño de Guzmán); as well as on the works of Francisco López de Gómara and Peter Martyr, and the physician Nicolás Monardes.

Church, Discovery, 157; Alden and Landis, European Americana, 617/17; JCB, Bibliotheca Americana (3) I, 395. For the map: Cline, “The Ortelius Maps of New Spain, 1579, and Related Contemporary Materials, 1560-1610”, in Imago Mundi , 1962, Vol. 16 (1962), pp. 106-109