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Histoire Generale Des Choses de La Nouvelle-Espagne #1
Florentine Codex: Book 1: Book 1: The Gods
de Sahagun, Bernardino
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
92 pages, Paperback
First published September 16, 1970
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 22, 2025
The penalty for irritating Omacatl, the Mexican god of invitations and banqueting, can be dire: “And if he were sorely enraged, when one ate he often caused him to swallow a hair which was in the drink, in the food.” So the next time you find a hair in your meal, ask yourself what you did to deserve it.
After reading Book One of the Florentine Codex, I could offer a few insights into Omacatl, but not many. The portraits of Aztec gods are sketchy: name, gender, jurisdiction, gifts and punishments, celebration rites, and appearance. There’s nothing like the convoluted history of the Greek gods immortalized in Hesiod’s “Theogony.” What you get for Mexican deities is name, rank, and serial number.
The reason the gods get such short shrift, of course, is in the title of the work preserved as the Florentine Codex: “General History of the Things of New Spain.” This is the earliest written account of the Mexican gods who went down in the Spanish conquest of 1521, but the Franciscan Father Bernardino de Sahagún was solely interested in making sure they stayed down.
From Sahagún’s perspective, as expounded in a lengthy sermon against idolatry, the Mexicans were downright lucky that the Spanish showed up when they did. The devils masquerading as gods had already shuttled generations of Indians into eternal flames, and Sahagún’s charges were the first with a shot at the Kingdom of Heaven — but only if they abandoned their idolatry.
Therefore, as Sahagún interviewed the old men who remembered the old ways, he transcribed just as much as he and his brothers needed to fight idolatry. They didn’t need to know the gods’ relationships, or origins, or personal histories. These would all be lies, anyway. All Sahagún needed to know was what deference to the gods looked like so he could sniff out old religion even if it wore a Christian face.
Sahagún left the work of reconstructing Aztec spirituality to archaeologists and anthropologists of a less militantly evangelistic age, but that’s not to say his account is devoid of interest. A partial and fractal picture still emerges of feasts and dances, of painted bodies representing the gods, of penitents drawing their own blood, and of slaves bought, cleansed, decorated, and ritually slaughtered so that mercurial deities might bless the free tribes of the Valley of Mexico.
Book One of the Florentine Codex is the opening cannonade in Sahagún’s crusade against these old ways which, in his eyes, were all blood-slicked roads to Hell. That his intentions were benevolent by his self-understanding is beyond question. His sermon against idolatry is a cross-cultural message crafted to convince, not coerce. He writes in Nahuatl, the common language of the Valley. He writes in a Nahuatl rhythm which repeats itself, which says the same thing, which makes the same point.
Sahagún even paraphrases the argument of Isaiah 44 in Mesoamerican terms, and this illustrates the unprecedented situation in which he found himself. The Spanish were accustomed to dealing with Jews and Muslims, but those at least recognized a single god and eschewed idolatry. Here in New Spain, Sahagún had to fall back on texts even more ancient than the Gospels to combat entities such as Xipe Totec, Our Lord the Flayed One, whose worshipers wore human skins of sacrificial victims in their rituals. Given Sahagún’s conviction that the Flayed One existed in Mexico as a very real demon, filled with very real wrath at the loss of souls, it’s remarkable that Sahagún cared enough about Indian souls to write a book dragging all the nasty little secrets of the Prince of Darkness into the light.
After reading Book One of the Florentine Codex, I could offer a few insights into Omacatl, but not many. The portraits of Aztec gods are sketchy: name, gender, jurisdiction, gifts and punishments, celebration rites, and appearance. There’s nothing like the convoluted history of the Greek gods immortalized in Hesiod’s “Theogony.” What you get for Mexican deities is name, rank, and serial number.
The reason the gods get such short shrift, of course, is in the title of the work preserved as the Florentine Codex: “General History of the Things of New Spain.” This is the earliest written account of the Mexican gods who went down in the Spanish conquest of 1521, but the Franciscan Father Bernardino de Sahagún was solely interested in making sure they stayed down.
From Sahagún’s perspective, as expounded in a lengthy sermon against idolatry, the Mexicans were downright lucky that the Spanish showed up when they did. The devils masquerading as gods had already shuttled generations of Indians into eternal flames, and Sahagún’s charges were the first with a shot at the Kingdom of Heaven — but only if they abandoned their idolatry.
Therefore, as Sahagún interviewed the old men who remembered the old ways, he transcribed just as much as he and his brothers needed to fight idolatry. They didn’t need to know the gods’ relationships, or origins, or personal histories. These would all be lies, anyway. All Sahagún needed to know was what deference to the gods looked like so he could sniff out old religion even if it wore a Christian face.
Sahagún left the work of reconstructing Aztec spirituality to archaeologists and anthropologists of a less militantly evangelistic age, but that’s not to say his account is devoid of interest. A partial and fractal picture still emerges of feasts and dances, of painted bodies representing the gods, of penitents drawing their own blood, and of slaves bought, cleansed, decorated, and ritually slaughtered so that mercurial deities might bless the free tribes of the Valley of Mexico.
Book One of the Florentine Codex is the opening cannonade in Sahagún’s crusade against these old ways which, in his eyes, were all blood-slicked roads to Hell. That his intentions were benevolent by his self-understanding is beyond question. His sermon against idolatry is a cross-cultural message crafted to convince, not coerce. He writes in Nahuatl, the common language of the Valley. He writes in a Nahuatl rhythm which repeats itself, which says the same thing, which makes the same point.
Sahagún even paraphrases the argument of Isaiah 44 in Mesoamerican terms, and this illustrates the unprecedented situation in which he found himself. The Spanish were accustomed to dealing with Jews and Muslims, but those at least recognized a single god and eschewed idolatry. Here in New Spain, Sahagún had to fall back on texts even more ancient than the Gospels to combat entities such as Xipe Totec, Our Lord the Flayed One, whose worshipers wore human skins of sacrificial victims in their rituals. Given Sahagún’s conviction that the Flayed One existed in Mexico as a very real demon, filled with very real wrath at the loss of souls, it’s remarkable that Sahagún cared enough about Indian souls to write a book dragging all the nasty little secrets of the Prince of Darkness into the light.
December 12, 2023
I first discovered this book when it was referenced on Khan Academy, in the article 'READ: Mesoamerica', in Unit 3, in the course 'World History Project - Origins to the Present'. The article states that the author, who was a Franciscan priest, learned the Aztec language, 'Nahuatl', and interviewed many Aztec survivors to produce a 12-volume encyclopedia of their customs and beliefs. 'Nahuatl' is still a living language for hundreds of thousands of Mexicans. It has given English such important words as chocolate, tomato, coyote, and tamale.
July 9, 2024
There are some breathtaking depictions of The Gods, but one has to wonder just how much this is mediated through the Spanish's rendering of the oral histories. With the written word, we'll never know.
December 10, 2025
This work contains the first documented observation of fluorescence. Lignum nephriticum, a traditional diuretic, is the first substance ever recorded to exhibit this phenomenon. The observation appears in the Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España (1560–1564), written by Spanish Franciscan missionary and ethnographer Bernardino de Sahagún.
What makes this particularly intriguing is lignum nephriticum's documented influence on the kidneys. Whether this effect stems from the substance's biochemical composition or from some biophotonic mechanism remains an open and fascinating question.
What makes this particularly intriguing is lignum nephriticum's documented influence on the kidneys. Whether this effect stems from the substance's biochemical composition or from some biophotonic mechanism remains an open and fascinating question.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews