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120 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy

and Christian thinkers (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Ramón
Llul) as a guide for the Christian orator. 23 For instance, he
instructs the reader that there are two kinds of memory.
One is natural: “Natural memory is that which has been
imbedded into our minds and has been born at the same
time as thought itself; it is one of the virtues of the soul
that it can return to past things, to measure via them future
things.” The other is artificial: “Artificial memory is that
which is strengthened by certain training and a system of
discipline. As such, artificial memory consists of places and
images, and is amplified by means of study.” 24
This distinction between a natural memory, which is
drawn from experience (I remember burning my hand
in the fire in January), and an artificial one, which is not
gained from direct experience but is cultivated through
study (I  remember the Ten Commandments), is a com-
monplace in classical writings on memory. In fact, Valadés
copied from, perhaps secondhand, the most important
surviving classical treatise on memory, the Rhetorica ad
Herennium, whose author is unknown. Compare the origi-
nal Latin passage by Valadés on natural memory (trans-
lated above): “Naturalis est ea quae nostris animis insista
est, et simul cum cogitatione nata,” with the Rhetorica ad
Herennium: “Naturalis est ea, quae nostris animis insita
est et simul cum cogitatione nata.” Or Valadés on artifi-
cial memory with the same text—here is the Rhetorica ad
Herennium: “Artificiosa est ea, quam confirmat inductio
quaedam et ratio praeceptionis,” and here the original
Latin of Valadés: “Artificialis est ea quam confirmat induc-
tio quaedam, et ratio praeceptionis.” 25 Valadés, like the
Rhetorica ad Herennium, goes on in his text to outline the
specific exercises that one can use to strengthen artificial
memory, memory techniques that also fascinated other
classical, and later, Christian, authors. His advice is meant
both for preachers, so that they might hold in their heads
entire Christian texts, and for novices who are learning
the catechism.
While Valadés’s rhetoric and memory texts are largely
synthetic and derivative, the originality of his work is to be
found in the specific examples of the application of these
techniques from his own experience in the Franciscan
missions of New Spain. We do not know if the Valadés
book ever was put to use by preachers in New Spain or
elsewhere. It was published in halves in 1579, the first half
in Rome and the second in Perugia and bound together
there. Few copies of this work exist today, but the copy of
one of its plates used to decorate the frontispiece of the

second edition of the work of another, later, Franciscan,

Juan de Torquemada, which was published in Madrid in

1723, suggests that it did have some circulation in Europe. 26

While its impact on its contemporary audience may

have been slight, the Valadés book is of great interest today,

not only because it offers an eyewitness account of Pedro

de Gante and his pedagogy, but also because it includes

twenty-seven engravings, a number signed by Valadés;

like the larger text, some of the engravings are somewhat

clumsy reworkings of other prints, but a handful are unique

in their depiction of specific practices in the New World.

Among them is the rendering of the ideal Franciscan mon-

astery discussed at the opening of this chapter (see figure

6.1). We can see the kind of training Valádes remembered

(or perhaps imagined) from his years at San Francisco. The

large open space of the courtyard, or atrio, is populated by

clustered groups of indigenous men and women, who sit or

gather at various stations of Christian instruction, where

robed Franciscans tutor them on Christian sacraments—

marriage, confession, and so on.

A specific connection to San Francisco is found at

upper left, where Pedro de Gante points to a great cloth

lienzo, or painting, upon which various symbols have been

set, not letters or words, but mnemonic devices used to

trigger remembrance in the mind of the neophyte viewer

(figure 6.3). After establishing that his indigenous charges

figuRe 6.3. Diego Valadés, Pedro de Gante teaching in San Francisco,

detail, the Franciscan Monastery, from Rhetorica christiana (Perugia:

Petrumiacobum Petrutium, 1579). Rare Books Division, New York

Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.