Peter Martyr d'Anghiera

He wrote the first accounts of explorations in Central and South America in a series of letters and reports, grouped in the original Latin publications of 1511 to 1530 into sets of ten chapters called "decades".

Martyr was born on 2 February 1457 at Lake Maggiore in Arona in Piedmont and later named for the nearby city of Angera.

This he achieved by strongly asserting that there were no forced conversions and that Granada Muslims had asked for baptism of their own volition - plus, more importantly, promising Spanish help to Egypt against the threat of conquest by the Ottomans [1].

In 1520, Martyr was given the post of chronicler (cronista) in the newly formed Council of the Indies, commissioned by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor to describe what was occurring in the explorations of the New World.

He is estimated to have composed some eight hundred letters addressed to various illustrious persons relating events in Spain and the Spanish court, written in a journalistic style, often quite gossipy.

His Opera, published in Seville in 1511 (Legatio Babylonica, Oceani Decas, Poemata, Hymni, Epigrammata), included the first historical account of the Spanish discoveries.

The Decades consisted of ten reports, two of which Martyr had previously sent as letters describing the voyages of Columbus, to Cardinal Ascanius Sforza in 1493 and 1494.

In 1501 Martyr, as requested by the Cardinal Luigi d'Aragona, added eight chapters on the voyage of Columbus and the exploits of Martin Alonzo Pinzón.