Juan González de Mendoza

Born in Torrecilla en Cameros in 1545, he joined the Augustinian order and built a career that linked Spain, Mexico, Rome, and the wider Spanish world. He later served as bishop in Lipari, Chiapas, and Popayán, combining church leadership with a strong interest in geography, travel, and learning about distant cultures.

He is best remembered for Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China, first published in 1585. Although he never traveled to China himself, he gathered reports from missionaries, travelers, and Chinese sources available to him, and his book became one of the earliest major European accounts of the country.

For generations, that history was widely read and translated, giving European readers a detailed picture of China at a time when reliable information was still rare. He died in Popayán in 1618, but his writing remains an important window into how the early modern world tried to understand Asia.