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In the case of the Codex Mendoza, its dating seems to group it with other manuscripts connected by Thevet’s interest in the New World: Jean Alfonse’s Les Voyages Aventureus, first published in 1558, and Antonio Pigafetta’s Le voyage & navigation, faict par les Espalgnolz, published in 1537 (Lestringant 1991, 42–43). Thevet assigned all of these a 1553 date, thus grouping them together. Additionally, even though the latter’s publication date was earlier than this, the dating of Alphonse’s book to one earlier than its own publication recalls what Thevet had done with Münster’s book.

One last piece of evidence regarding the 1553 date comes from the Codex Mendoza itself. In his report on the paper and binding of the Codex Mendoza, Bruce Barker-Benfield (Chapter 3 of this volume) proposes that the paper with which one of the folios onto which Thevet stamped his signature dates from the 1570s. Even if Thevet does not write down a specific date in this folio, the very gesture of signing the manuscript over and over again between the 1550s and 1570s marks the action as part of the process of autobiographical revisionism that Lestringant identifies. This same process can be patently observed in Münster’s Universal Cosmography, with its two dates of 1562 and 1558. Considering this and the second hypothesis for the Codex Mendoza’s itinerary vis-à-vis, we must question and problematize one of the traditionally irrefutable elements of the codex’s history: the fact that it was procured by Thevet in 1553. In order to understand the role and context of the 1553 date, it is useful to recount Thevet’s voyages between the 1540s and the 1570s.