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Alonso de Molina

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Alonso de Molina (1513[1] or 1514[2][3] – 1579[1] or 1585[2][3]) was a Franciscan priest and grammarian, who wrote a well-known dictionary of the Nahuatl language published in 1571 and still used by scholars working on Nahuatl texts in the tradition of the New Philology.[4][5] He also wrote a bilingual confessional manual for priests who served in Nahuatl-speaking communities.[6]

Biography

He was born in Extremadura, Spain in the Province of Cáceres, and he arrived in Mexico, still a child, in 1522, during the Spanish conquest of Mexico.[7] He grew up playing with monolingual Nahuatl-speaking children in the streets as the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, was being refashioned into Mexico City and so he became a fluent speaker of Nahuatl.[8] In 1528, as a young man, he entered the Franciscan convent of Mexico City becoming a friar. He taught at the Colegio de Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco along with Bernardino de Sahagún, Andrés de Olmos, Arnaldo de Basaccio, Juan de Gaona, and Maturino Gilberti[9] Students at the school were also important. Juan Badiano, a student at the school, translated a Nahuatl herbal into Latin.[9] Besides his clerical duties, Molina devoted himself to studying, understanding, and writing Nahuatl. He composed and preached many sermons in the language.

Vocabulary

Molina's Vocabulary in Castilian and Mexican language, which he composed between 1555 and 1571, was the first dictionary printed in the New World and, together with Olmos's work, was the first published systematic approach to an indigenous language. It is still considered an indispensable tool for students of Classical Nahuatl.[10]

According to James Lockhart, "Molina went far beyond utilitarian basics to include a vast range of vocabulary, making many subtle semantic and grammatical distinctions."[11]

Molina's work creating tools for Nahuatl came under scrutiny by the Inquisition along with those of other Franciscans. In 1574, he attempted to reprint his Vocabulary, an indispensable tool for evangelization in Nahuatl, but the Inquisition compelled him to restate sections of his introduction to the work that it considered to be incorrect.[12]

Lockhart's analysis of Nahuatl as an index of cultural change relies on Molina's 1555 Vocabulary, which translates Nahuatl (Mexicana) to Spanish (Castellana), as a key source for loanwords from Spanish into Nahuatl in which he calls Stage 2, the second generation of language contact (ca. 1550 to 1600).[13] Molina records many nouns from Spanish that became integrated into Nahuatl, but his dictionary also records Nahuatl descriptions of Spanish concepts or objects. Lockhart listed some of them, including "bier" = miccatlapechtli "dead-person platform"; "plow" = quaquauhe ielimiquia "means by which an ox cultivates"; "justice, the law (justicia)" = tlamelahuacahihualiztli "doing things straight"; "pirate" = acalco tenamoyani "one who robs people on a boat".[14]

Molina's Confessionario (1569) includes a model testament, with elements that were standard features of Nahuatl wills: an invocation, the name and the residence of the testator, declarations of the testator being of sound mind, the disposition of property to particular heirs or designation of property to be sold for masses, and the closing section with named executors (albaceas) and witnesses (testigos).[15]

Works

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Alonso de Molina, Franciscan friar, b. probably 1511 or 1512, at Escalona, province of Toledo, Spain; d. 1584, in the city of Mexico. In 1523 his parents came to New Spain, where he learned the Nahuatl, or Mexican language. The first twelve Franciscan missionaries who arrived in 1524, seeing how thoroughly versed he was in the language of the natives, begged Cortes to use his influence with the child's mother that he might be allowed to help them in their preaching and catechizing. The mother readily consented, and young Alonso became so attached to the fathers that he never left them. When he reached the required age he joined the Franciscan order, and for fifty years was indefatigable in his work among the Indians, devoting also some time to the numerous works which he left. In order to allow him to follow uninterruptedly his chosen work, his superiors relieved him of all cares of office, although there is record of his having been superior of the convent of Texcoco, in 1555. Although no great actions mark the life of Molina, he is nevertheless remarkable for his untiring zeal, and for the wonderful constancy with which, for half a century, he continued his work, resisting its monotony, overcoming all hardships and the opposition he often encountered. He left numerous works, the following unpublished: "Traduccion mexicana de las Epistolas y Evangelios de todo el ano"; "floras de Ntra. Sra. en mexicano"; many prayers and devotions for the Indians; "De Contemptu Mundi"; also a treatise on the sacraments. The following have been published: "Doctrina breve mexicana" (1571); "Vocabulario castellano mexicano" (1555); "Confesonario menor" (1565); "Confesonario mayor" (1565); "Doctrina Cristiana" (1578); "Arte mexicano" (1571); and "Vocabulario castellano mexicano y mexicano castellano" (1571, reprinted, Leipzig, 1880), the most important of his works.

References

  1. Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 Guadalupe Hidalgo, Margarita (2006). Mexican indigenous languages at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Walter de Gruyter. p. 39. ISBN 3-11-018597-0.
  2. Back to citation occurrence 2.0 Back to citation occurrence 2.1 Hernández de León-Portilla 2007, p. 63.
  3. Back to citation occurrence 3.0 Back to citation occurrence 3.1 Stevenson, Robert (1968). Music in Aztec & Inca Territory. University of California Press. p. 106.
  4. Back to citation Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en la lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana(1571). Mexico: Editorial Porrúa.
  5. Back to citation Lockhart, James (2001). Nahuatl as written: lessons in older written Nahuatl, with copious examples and texts. Stanford University Press. p. 152. ISBN 0-8047-4282-0.
  6. Back to citation Alonso de Molina, Confessionario mayor en la lengua castellana y mexicana (1569). With introduction by Roberto Moreno. Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México 1984.
  7. Back to citation Escandón, Patricia (2006). De la Iglesia indiana: Homenaje a Elsa Cecilia Frost. UNAM. p. 17. ISBN 970-32-4171-9.
  8. Back to citation Hernández de León-Portilla 2007, p. 74.
  9. Back to citation occurrence 9.0 Back to citation occurrence 9.1 Georges Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico: The First Chronicles of Mexican Civilization, 1520-1569. Translated by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano. Boulder: University of Colorado Press 1995, p. 114.
  10. Back to citation Karttunen, Frances E. (1992). An analytical dictionary of Nahuatl. University of Oklahoma Press. p. xvii (Introduction). ISBN 0-8061-2421-0.
  11. Back to citation James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1992, p. 6
  12. Back to citation Georges Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico: The First Chronicles of Mexican Civilization, 1520-1569. Translated by Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano. Boulder: University of Colorado Press 1995, p. 100 citing Carta del doctor d. Pedro Moya de Contreras al presidente del Consejo de Indias, Mexico, 24 de marzo de 1574, in F. del Paso y Troncoso, Epistolario de Nueva España, Mexico: 1939-43: vol. 11, p. 141.
  13. Back to citation James Lockhart, The Nahuas After the Conquest. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1992, pp. 284-88
  14. Back to citation Lockhart, Nahuas After the Conquest, p. 266, Table 7.1 "Early Nahuatl Descriptions of Spanish Introductions and Concepts". p. 266.
  15. Back to citation Alonso de Molina, Confessionario mayor ff. 61-63v; Lockhart, Nahuas After the Conquest, Appendix B "Molina's Model Testament", pp. 468-474; Sarah Cline, "Fray Alonso de Molina's Model Testament and Antecedents to Indigenous Wills in Spanish America" in Dead Giveaways: Indigenous Testaments of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes, Susan Kellogg and Matthew Restall, eds. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1998.
  16. Back to citation Hernández de León-Portilla 2007, p. 73.

Bibliography

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