Diego Durán

His empathetic nature allowed him to gain the confidence of many native people who would not share their stories with other Europeans, and was able to document many previously unknown folktales and legends that make his work unique.

"[4] Durán grew up in Tetzcoco (Texcoco), in the present state of Mexico, an important learning center where there had been an extensive pre-Hispanic library of books in pictorial form, now called "codices".

[5] When he was still young, his family moved to Mexico City where he attended school and was exposed to Aztec culture under the colonial rule of Spain, as well as the many Africans brought by the Spanish as slaves.

He is believed to have been tutored by Dominican Fray Francisco de Aguilar, who had once been a soldier involved in the siege of Tenochtitlan.

On one hand, he respected the Aztecs and their governmental organization before the conquest; and he grew to admire the native people of Mexico, and often said so.

Another of his duties was to document the cultural ways and practices of the native people to serve as a manual for other monks in their attempt to evangelize them.

In 1585, Durán returned to Mexico City in ill health to live and work in the Convent of St. Dominic there, as a translator from Nahuatl to Spanish for the Inquisition.

Although there are few surviving Aztec codices written before the Spanish invasion, the more numerous post-conquest codices and near-contemporary works such as Durán's and Sahagún's are invaluable sources for the interpretation of archaeological theories and evidence, but more importantly for constructing a history of the natives from texts produced by the natives themselves, as exemplified in the New Philology.