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In this section, I wish to explore Clavijero’s gesture of connecting the manuscript with the first viceroy of New Spain. I will also study the manuscript within his bibliographical production and in the context of what Rolena Adorno has identified as the Jesuit’s objective of recovering the Mexican nation. Clavijero’s connection of the manuscript with the first viceroy of New Spain exemplifies a process of cognitive dissonance in which, absent conclusive evidence of this connection, historians find that they wish to find and create an identity for the manuscript that could validate their own goals.

The Storia Antica del Messico

A mere five years after the creation of the United States of America’s Declaration of Independence, Francisco Clavijero’s History of Ancient Mexico was published in Italy as the Storia Antica del Messico. In 1767, the Company of Jesus was expelled from all territories under Spanish rule. When the book was published, Clavijero and a large group of Jesuits thus relocated to Bologna. With the patronage of notable secular and ecclesiastic sponsors (whose names he included in the beginning of his book), Clavijero was finally able to publish his work in Italy.