The Memory of Antiquity in Chroniclers, Books, and Libraries within a Knowledge Circulation Network between Europe and the Americas (16th-17th Centuries)

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the reception of classical culture in the New World through books and the early American libraries, within the context of a knowledge circulation network between Europe and the Americas during the 16th and 17th centuries. These forms of classical reception and memory are evident in the written works of evangelizers and chroniclers, who were educated in a Renaissance spirit, demonstrating various ways of appropriating Greco-Roman antiquity and acquiring books that enabled the establishment of the first American libraries. However, the circulation of ideas and knowledge followed a two-way path between Europe and the Americas during the height of European Humanism and empiricist thinking, contributing to the development of scientific reflections on the New World.