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As we can observe in table 2, Clavijero organizes his textual sources chronologically. Hence, he begins with Hernán Cortés and Bernal Díaz del Castillo, two prominent authors who participated in the conquest of Mexico, and ends with the texts of Boturini, a famous eighteenth-century historian and collector. However, the way in which Clavijero organizes the Mexican pictographic manuscripts in his bibliography corresponds to a different logic. In this list, Clavijero (1780, 2:22) cites five pictographic manuscripts, which he refers to as collections of paintings useful for writing the history of Mexico. Four of these were introduced as pre-Columbian antiques when, in fact, they contain colonial elements. This sheds light on Clavijero’s bias in approaching this material and the value he sought to bestow upon it in the context of his bibliography: primary sources whose authority, because of their origin, was incontrovertible.

The fifth source on this list is the Codex Mendoza. Although Clavijero grouped it alongside documents of pre-Columbian origin, he never pretended that the Codex Mendoza was anything other than a colonial manuscript. Once more, what interests us here is not just the what but the how. Contrary to the way in which Clavijero organized his historical sources, by presenting the Codex Mendoza atop his list of pre-Columbian materials, he consciously reverts the chronological principle that had apparently guided the presentation of his bibliography, effectively enhancing the colonial manuscript he had just christened.