Cortes
Cortes: The Life of the Conqueror was written by Cortes' assistant, chaplain, and secretary, Francisco Lopez de Gomara. The text, an epic written in a courtly style that tends to simultaneously enumerate and generalize the presented accomplishments, follows the life of Hernan Cortes, briefly touching on his early life and spending the majority of its pages detailing the explorer's various conquests in Mexico. The author, since he was a companion, advisor, and secretary to Cortes, and was also a secular priest, can be said to be biased towards the glorification of his subject, with whom he was allied, and against the native inhabitants, in his vehement disavowal of the indigenous population's culture and society. His point of view is one of unrestrained admiration mixed with the sureness that Cortes' every action was inspired by the greater good of Christianizing the new land. The sources used by Gomara can be assumed to be a combination of direct reports from Cortes, recollections, reconstructions of events of which he was not a direct observer, and letters and receipts. In my opinion, the book is a formidable historical document that goes into great detail, bu
Recounting the conqueror's early exploits, Gomara states typically that "It is by such adventures and roundabout means that excellent men make their way to the goal of the good fortune that awaits them" (Gomara, 14). Many idols are thrown down and cities burned. The Christian God definitely plays a great role in the text. Gomara describes Cortes' youth very briefly, stating that he was an energetic child who sought wealth and glory by traveling to the West Indies, where he met connections like General Ovando and apparently got into some trouble in Cuba for refusing to marry a woman named Catalina. Describing the author in terms of bias, the reader is often tempted to accuse Gomara of transforming Cortes into a mythical figure. Others listened to the advice of men like Cuauhtemoc, who told his people that "the Christians. The text alternates drama and natural description until the death of its hero, who had returned from Spain to explore Mexican coastal regions and then returned again to Spain, from whence he had hoped to die in Mexico, but did not. t is also a presentation of a historical point of view that sees the unitizing force of a Christian God to be its ultimate goal, and thus, though it may list physiological and architectural descriptions of non-Christian cultures, it otherwise serves no other purpose than to disparage them, while assuring the reader that the actions of its heroic protagonist were universally just. Francisco Lopez de Gomara, in his Cortes: The Life of the Conqueror, presents a fluid and articulate story that is engaging and detailed. Despite this fact, Gomara also mythicizes his central figure, so that his work seems to be suspended somewhere between history and epic poetry. It is my opinion that texts such as his, while they provide an accurate representation of his own culture, work to undermine and discredit the other cultures portrayed in the text. Understandably for his time, the author was seeking to present his hero in terms of theunification of the Christian world. wanted to take over the whole country and. If his point of view were to be compared to Greek authors, it would present an interesting combination of Homer's excited descriptions and portrayals of direct divine intervention (at one point a native inhabitant is depicted as asking an idol, which is then transformed by Gomara into the devil, for advice, which, being the devil, the idol gives deceitfully) and Herodotus' historical reservation and elegance.
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