author
José de Acosta
1540–1600
A Spanish Jesuit missionary and writer, he turned years of travel in Peru and Mexico into one of the early great European accounts of the Americas. His work blends close observation, natural history, and reports on Indigenous cultures, helping shape how the New World was understood in Europe.
2 Audiobooks
Historia natural y moral de las Indias (vol. 1 of 2)
by José de Acosta
Historia natural y moral de las Indias (vol. 2 of 2)
by José de Acosta
About the author
Born in Medina del Campo in 1539 or 1540, José de Acosta joined the Society of Jesus while still young and later spent many years in Spanish America as a missionary and scholar. He lived in Peru for roughly fourteen years and also spent time in Mexico, drawing on firsthand experience that would become the basis of his best-known writing.
He is chiefly remembered for Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Natural and Moral History of the Indies), published in 1590. The book brought together observations on geography, climate, plants, animals, and the peoples of the Americas, and it became an influential early attempt to explain the New World to European readers in a systematic way.
Acosta also wrote on missionary work and evangelization, and sources note that his catechetical work in Indigenous languages was important in colonial Peru. He died in Salamanca on February 15, 1600, leaving a body of writing that still matters to historians of science, religion, and the early Atlantic world.