Antonio Valeriano

Antonio Valeriano was a native Mexican who was born in the same year that the Spanish conquered Tenochtitlan (what is now Mexico City DF). He became the greatest native scholar in his generation, literate in the Aztec language, Nahuatl, as well as in Spanish and Latin. He served as the Governor-Judge of his hometown, Acapotzalto, as well as Tenochtitlan. But he is most well known as the author of the famous account, written in Nahuatl, of the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Nican Mopohua. Regrettably, no original copy of his text survives. It comes to us through a longer work published in 1649 by Luis Lasso de la Vega who does not credit Valeriano. De la Vega was not alive at the time of the apparition and so was obviously relying on an earlier source which the majority of scholars identify as Antonio Valeriano who died in 1609. Biography by Dr. Italy