Agustín Dávila Padilla (1562–1604)
Historia de la fundacion y discurso de la provincia, de Santiago de Mexico, de la Orden de Predicadores por las vidas de sus varones insignes y casos notables de Nueua España
Second edition: En Brusselas: en casa de Iuan de Meerbeque, 1625
F162.b.6.1, title page

In 1521 Cortés had defeated the Aztecs and conquered Mexico. The first Dominican friars arrived in the region some four years later. One, Julián Garcés, was appointed the first bishop of Tlaxcala in October 1525. A house was founded at Mexico City in the following year by Domingo de Betanzos OP. Growth was rapid. By 1555 there were some forty houses in the Mexican province containing some two hundred friars. Fourteen years after that, a friar could walk from Mexico City to Oaxaca in south-eastern Mexico and stop each night at a priory of the Order. Eventually, a separate province of San Hipólito Mártir was established in Oaxaca. A string of friars worked to master the local dialects of Mixtec and Choco. In collaboration with natives to the region who learnt Castilian, the friars led by Benito Hernández produced a Doctrina en la lengua misteca in 1567.

The Order’s early history in the region was written – at the request of the wider Order – in Spanish (‘Romance’) by Agustín Dávila Padilla OP. A native of Mexico, and a professor of Theology, his Historia de la fundacion y discurso de la provincia, de Santiago de Mexico, de la Orden de Predicadores por las vidas de sus varones insignes y casos notables de Nueua España was completed by 1592, but lack of paper prevented its being printed in Mexico itself. The first edition was eventually published in Spain in 1596, and a second edition was published at Brussels in 1625. Padilla drew on chronicles begun by Fr Andrés de Moger OP some forty years’ earlier and continued by two more friars: Vicente de las Casas and Domingo de la Anunciación. The work in large part celebrated a string of holy friars whose biographies it related.