Agustín de Zárate Biography

Agustín de Zárate

(Valladolid, around 1514-Seville ?, around 1577) Spanish historian.In 1528 he was appointed secretary of the Royal Council of Castile.In 1543 he passed to Peru as a grant accountant for said region and Tierra Firme, with the task of putting in order the boxes of the Royal Treasury of that province, going there in the squad that led Viceroy Núñez Vela.Secretary of the Court, he was involved in the civil strife that ravaged the country.Before the rebellion of Gonzalo Pizarro, Agustín de Zárate sided with Viceroy Blasco Núñez Vela.Later Carlos I awarded his services with the position of governor of the Hacienda de Flandes.In his leisure he composed History of the discovery and conquest of Peru (Antwerp, 1555), which includes from the conquest of the territory to its pacification by Pedro de La Gasca.

Methodical writer and good stylist, his work, not very original, enjoyed high prestige and was translated into Italian, English, French and German.Zárate shows a remarkable mastery of the literary trade; He writes with method and clarity, with great grace of language and style.Vedia, one of the editors of the work, affirmed that this is "one of the most beautiful historical monuments (perhaps the first) of our language".

The first four books of this chronicle narrate the period that goes from Francisco Pizarro's preparations for the discovery of the region to the arrival of Zárate.The last three contain what happened in Peru from 1544 to 1550 and are written (especially the fifth, whose events the author witnessed) with greater realism and dramatic intensity.

As for documentation, the document itself Agustín de Zárate informs us that the main part of the discovery was taken from Rodrigo Lozano, a neighbor of the Peruvian Trujillo, and from others who saw it.In the following, even in the part of the events that he could know for himself, Jiménez de la Espada has verified that he used a manuscript that belonged to La Gasca.Thus, the work conforms to the frequent model of those that educated men write on foreign materials, putting into its good composition all the effort that researchers use to bring them together.

The History of the discovery and conquest of Peru was printed in 1555 by order of Felipe II, still a prince, who read the original on his trip to England; the author kept it unpublished due to the risk involved in publishing it when the actors of the events were still alive.

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