CLAVIJERO, FRANCISCO-JAVIER

CLAVIJERO, FRANCISCO-JAVIER. - Mexican Jesuit, b. in Veracruz in 1731, and admitted to the novitiate in 1748, he taught rhetoric in Mexico City and philosophy in Valladolid and Guadalajara. Exiled in 1767 with the other Jesuits of the Spanish dominions, and deported to Italy, he spent his last twenty years in Bologna and then in Ferrara, where he founded an academy and devoted himself to the study of Mexican antiquities. He died in Bologna on 12 April 1787. In 1949 his remains were identified and will be interred in the National Pantheon of Mexico (cf. *Societas*, 4 [1949], pp. 148-49).

His principal work is *Storia antica del Messico* (4 vols., Cesena 1780-81), which went through fourteen editions, nine in Spanish translation, four in English, and one in German. The original Spanish text was published only recently under the care of Fr. M. Cuevas: *Historia antigua de México* (4 vols., Mexico City 1945). Fr. G. B. Colonès published a *Compendio della storia messicana* of the Abbot C. (Bologna 1781); of special interest, though not always free from criticism, are the ethnographic section and the history of the conquest of Mexico. The *Storia della California* (posthumous, 2 vols., Venice 1799) is chiefly the history of the Jesuit missions in California. Three unpublished pamphlets by C. are included by Fr. M. Cuevas in his *Tesoros documentales de México Siglo XVIII* (Mexico City 1944, pp. 311-98).

BIBL.: A. Maneiro, *De vitis aliquot Mexicanorum*, III, Bologna 1792, pp. 28-78; Sommervogel, II, cols. 1209-12; Streit, *Bibl.*, III, pp. 301-302 and passim; Ad. F. Bandelier, s. V. in *Cath. Enc.*, IV, pp. 8-9; J. T. Medina, *Noticias bibliográficas de los Jesuitas expulsos de América en 1767*, Santiago de Chile 1915, pp. 67-78; J. Uriarte and M. Lecina, *Bibl. de escritores de la Com. de Jesús... de España*, II, Madrid 1925, pp. 245-48; D. Mayagoitia, *Ambiente filosófico de la Nueva España*, Mexico City 1945, pp. 225-32.