Clavijero, Francisco-Javier

CLAVIJERO, FRANCISCO-JAVIER. - Mexican Jesuit, b. at Veracruz in 1731, and having entered the novitiate in 1748, he taught rhetoric in Mexico and philosophy at Valladolid and Guadalajara. Exiled in 1787 with the other Jesuits of the Spanish dominions, and deported to Italy, he spent the last 20 years in Bologna and then in Ferrara, where he founded an academy, devoting himself to the study of Mexican antiquities. He died at Bologna, on 12 April 1787. In 1949 his remains were identified, and they will be buried in the national Pantheon of Mexico (cf. Societas, 4 [1949], pp. 148-49).

His principal work is the Storia antica del Messico (4 vols., Cesena 1780-81), which had 14 editions, of which 9 in Spanish translation, 4 in English and one in German. The original Spanish text was published only recently, edited by Fr. M. Cuevas: Historia antigua de Mexico (4 vols., Mexico City 1945). Fr. G. B. Colones published a Compendio della storia messicana dell'abate C. (Bologna 1781); of special interest in it, although with a criticism not always serene, are the ethnographic part and the history of the conquest of Mexico. The Storia della California (posthumous, 2 vols., Venice 1799), is principally the history of the Jesuit missions of California. Three unpublished opuscules by C. are included by Fr. M. Cuevas in his Tesoros documentales de México Siglo XVIII (Mexico City 1944, pp. 311-98).

Edmondo Lamalle