Two intersecting perspectives in American historiography: the discursive modalities of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Fray Bernardino de Sahagún

Abstract

The identification of the chronicler of the Indies with the American world is a discursive trend within the American historiographical tradition initiated by fray Bernardino de Sahagún. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega will follow it with mastery. Both chroniclers present in all their works a great number of means of communication between the indigenous and the Christian culture, those established by making a humanistic approach of the pre-hispanic religions. Both the seraphic friar and Garcilaso understood that in the ancient beliefs of the Indians there was already a glimmer of true faith, a kind of natural theology that allowed them to concile the non-Chistian religions with the Roman Catholicism.