Exclusive Monotheism and Sahagún’s Mission: The Problem of Universals in the First Book of the Florentine Codex

This article outlines the missionary methods of the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún, his interaction with Nahua communities in central Mexico, and the production of a text called the Florentine Codex. This article argues that the philosophical problem of universals, whether “common natures” existed and whether they existed across all cultures, influenced iconoclastic arguments about Nahua gods and idolatry. Focusing on the Florentine Codex Book 1 and its Appendix, containing a description of Nahua gods and their refutation, the article establishes how Sahagún and his team contended with the concept of universals as shaped by Nahua history and religion. This article presents the Florentine Codex Book 1 as a case study that points to larger patterns in the Christian religion, its need for mission, and its construal of true and false religion.

Revising the Narrative of the Conquest of Mexico: Bernardino de Sahagún’s 1585 Relación de la conquista de esta Nueva España

2021 represents the five-hundred-year anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire. This essay addresses the rendering of the events that culminated in the Spanish domination of that region in two texts associated with the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590). The first is Book Twelve of the Florentine Codex, a bilingual manuscript written collaboratively with Indigenous intellectuals in Nahuatl with a Spanish translation and accompanied by nearly two thousand illustrations that represent a third text. Completed in 1579, under increasing scrutiny by religious authorities, the manuscript was confiscated and sent to Europe, eventually coming to reside in the Medici Library in Florence. In 1585, Sahagún, authored Relación de la conquista de esta Nueva España, which sought to revise the narrative of the conquest found in Book Twelve. Sahagún’s revision reveals how the narrative of the conquest changed in the hands of the Franciscan friar as the sixteenth century drew to a close.

The Living Feather: Tonalli in Nahua Featherwork Production

Previous studies suggest that late postclassic and early colonial Nahua viewers understood specific artistic creations to contain tonalli, a solar-derived animating force. This article advances understanding of the animacy of Nahua featherworks by examining attention to tonalli in the various stages of featherwork production. Analysis of a classificatory distinction used in the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex between tlazohihhuitl (beloved feathers) and macehualihhuitl (commoner feathers) suggests that this distinction registers specific types of feathers’ differential ability to contain tonalli. Ultimately, this classification posited tlazohihhuitl as living beings and macehualihhuitl as inanimate materials. The relationship between these two classes of feathers is integral to Nahuatl descriptions of the treatment of specific feather types in the production stages of bird hunting, dyeing and selling feathers, and mosaic construction. Understanding these production practices through Nahuatl descriptions suggests that care for tonalli represented a central commercial and artistic concern in featherwork production.

The Disguise of the Hummingbird: On the Natural History of Huitzilopochtli in the Florentine Codex

This essay explores the avian nature of Huitzilopochtli (“Hummingbird on the Left”), the tutelary god of the Mexica, by centering the deity’s association with the hummingbird. Arguing that there is a “natural history of Huitzilopochtli” deployed in book 11 of the Florentine Codex, devoted to “earthly things,” this analysis re-entangles hummingbird ethology with Huitzilopochtli’s cult, a bond that was severed in the early days of colonization. A close reading of the Nahuatl, Spanish, and visual texts in this book reveals that seasonal cycles and hummingbird behavior—energy budgeting, flower nectar diet, swift flight, and long-haul migration—can be interpreted as inspiring the three main feasts of Huitzilopochtli in the Mexica ritual year. Furthermore, reading the natural history entries in book 11 as related to the avian god illuminates how central hummingbirds were as markers of the dry and rainy seasons and their effects in Nahua social and ritual life.