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Florentine Codex: Book 8: Book 8: Kings and Lords
Two of the world’s leading scholars of the Aztec language and culture have translated Sahagún’s monumental and encyclopedic study of native life in Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest. This immense undertaking is the first complete translation into any language of Sahagún’s Nahuatl text, and represents one of the most distinguished contributions in the fields of anthropology, ethnography, and linguistics.
Written between 1540 and 1585, the Florentine Codex (so named because the manuscript has been part of the Laurentian Library’s collections since at least 1791) is the most authoritative statement we have of the Aztecs’ lifeways and traditions—a rich and intimate yet panoramic view of a doomed people.
The Florentine Codex is divided by subject area into twelve books and includes over 2,000 illustrations drawn by Nahua artists in the sixteenth century.
Book Eight lists the rulers of Tenochtitlan from the first, Acamapichtli, to the sixteenth, Don Cristobal Cecepatic. It also documents the rulers of the ancient Aztec cities of Tlatillco, Texcoco, and Uexotla. Several chapters are devoted to describing the various articles of clothing that the rulers and noblemen wore and the foods they ate for differing ceremonies and activities.
98 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1954
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August 30, 2025
In the sad and sanguinary story of human violence, we reserve special contempt for those who collaborate with the enemy, even converting their names to curses: Judas, Quisling, Benedict Arnold. True enough, each of these struck in treachery at a crisis point to further his own interests; but their stink sticks even to those who justify collaboration as making the best of a bad deal. No one looks fondly on Vichy France. The eighth book of Father Bernardino de Sahagún’s “General History of the Things of New Spain” is devoted to just such a collaborationist class.
One thing that surprised me when I began my journey in Mexican history was the extent to which Spanish conquistadors married into indigenous aristocracy, grafting legitimacy into their white skins by means of brown brides. Of the three most powerful classes in pre-Conquest Mexico — priests, merchants, and nobles — the latter adapted most successfully to the new world order. The Spaniards dissolved the priests and fed the native economy into predatory mercantilist jaws, but they used regal families to season Castilian power with local flavor.
This is most starkly illustrated in the very first chapter, which lists sixteen rulers of Tenochtitlan, from the dawn of the Mexican state to the year 1560. The political watershed is explicit: “It came to pass in [Quautemoc’s] reign that these Spaniards conquered and took the city of Mexico; and all the cities which lay surrounding. When he ruled, twelve priests, sons of Saint Francis, came…to free men from idolatry and to teach the Faith.” Every native ruler of Tenochtitlan from this point forward bears a baptismal name: Don Andrés Metelchiuh, Don Pablo Xochiquen, Don Diego Vanitl, Don Diego Teuetzquiti, and Don Cristóbal Cecepatic. The erstwhile lords of the valley could rule as Christians or not at all.
When trying to understand why these men participated in the subjugation of their own people, I don’t discount self-interest. Sahagún devotes individual chapters to the astonishingly rich clothing, food, ritual dancewear, and wartime finery that marked the nobility. The chapter on proper regulation of the marketplace drips with the noblesse oblige owed to “the common folk, the vassals, and all dwellers in the city, the poor, the unfortunate.” I’m sure many a Mexican aristocrat, after the Conquest, chose to extract labor from the commoners because it was better than joining them. Humans are humans regardless of how many quetzal feathers we wear, and we don’t like slipping down the pyramid.
However, I also don’t discount the lengths to which noblesse oblige can drive a conscientious leader. In Tenochtitlan, on the death of a ruler, his successor was chosen not by hereditary right but by merit: “They cast votes for all the princes who were sons of lords; men [at arms]; brave warriors, experienced in war, who shrank not from the enemy; who knew not wine—who were not drunkards, who became not stupefied; the prudent, able, and wise; of sound and righteous rearing and upbringing; who spoke well and were obedient, benevolent, discreet, and intelligent.”
This selection process privileged a disciplined and dedicated ethos for the upper class, ideally generating men willing to sacrifice for the common good. From boyhood, noble sons were provided tutors in civility, teaching them to “respect and show reverence to others,” urging them to greet even a poor stranger with the words, “Come hither, my beloved grandfather; let me bow before thee.” Young princes proceeded to training in sacred duties and ultimately for sacred war, at each stage of evolution honed for service to the gods through ritual, battle, and justice. So high was the bar that those who ascended to the post of judge in the high court at Tlacxitlan were prepared to order another aristocrat or even a fellow judge “to be shaven [as a disgrace], or driven [out of the land], or confined, or made a commoner” if proven to be unworthy of his office; and “in what was there made known, the lords did nothing for friendship’s sake; they exacted nothing as reward; nor delayed [any case].”
No doubt many a blue-blooded rogue got a wink and a pass for bad behavior, but expecting such lenience was risky. In living memory, Moctezuma had rendered death penalties on unjust judges and adulterous or corrupt noblemen. In the same way that it would be overly optimistic to expect uniformly noble nobles, it would be overly cynical to assume that not a single Mexican lord truly cared for Mexicans. Let’s imagine, then, the sense of responsibility such rigorous expectations might engender in a decent man. Imagine how helpless he would feel at the end of Cortés’s war: Tenochtitlan in ruins, the army shattered, an alien plague raging, and the dead “no longer…buried; they could only cast them all into the water…And there was a great, foul odor; the smell issued forth from the dead.”
I’m sure that, somewhere, some modern armchair revolutionary disdains the ancient Mexican ruling class as Quisilings who served themselves by serving the Holy Roman Emperor. I imagine some nobles did, but I can equally imagine making the same decisions they did. Moral burdens are real, and can weigh even on those you might discount as selfish. The truth is that when the people you swore to protect are broken by war, ravaged by smallpox, and breathing in the stench of their rotting families, your choices are few and bad. In those circumstances, I might well consider baptism and a puppet kingdom a small price to pay if it means serving as buffer between predator and prey, protecting those who remain from even worse depredations, and giving them a shot at a better tomorrow.
One thing that surprised me when I began my journey in Mexican history was the extent to which Spanish conquistadors married into indigenous aristocracy, grafting legitimacy into their white skins by means of brown brides. Of the three most powerful classes in pre-Conquest Mexico — priests, merchants, and nobles — the latter adapted most successfully to the new world order. The Spaniards dissolved the priests and fed the native economy into predatory mercantilist jaws, but they used regal families to season Castilian power with local flavor.
This is most starkly illustrated in the very first chapter, which lists sixteen rulers of Tenochtitlan, from the dawn of the Mexican state to the year 1560. The political watershed is explicit: “It came to pass in [Quautemoc’s] reign that these Spaniards conquered and took the city of Mexico; and all the cities which lay surrounding. When he ruled, twelve priests, sons of Saint Francis, came…to free men from idolatry and to teach the Faith.” Every native ruler of Tenochtitlan from this point forward bears a baptismal name: Don Andrés Metelchiuh, Don Pablo Xochiquen, Don Diego Vanitl, Don Diego Teuetzquiti, and Don Cristóbal Cecepatic. The erstwhile lords of the valley could rule as Christians or not at all.
When trying to understand why these men participated in the subjugation of their own people, I don’t discount self-interest. Sahagún devotes individual chapters to the astonishingly rich clothing, food, ritual dancewear, and wartime finery that marked the nobility. The chapter on proper regulation of the marketplace drips with the noblesse oblige owed to “the common folk, the vassals, and all dwellers in the city, the poor, the unfortunate.” I’m sure many a Mexican aristocrat, after the Conquest, chose to extract labor from the commoners because it was better than joining them. Humans are humans regardless of how many quetzal feathers we wear, and we don’t like slipping down the pyramid.
However, I also don’t discount the lengths to which noblesse oblige can drive a conscientious leader. In Tenochtitlan, on the death of a ruler, his successor was chosen not by hereditary right but by merit: “They cast votes for all the princes who were sons of lords; men [at arms]; brave warriors, experienced in war, who shrank not from the enemy; who knew not wine—who were not drunkards, who became not stupefied; the prudent, able, and wise; of sound and righteous rearing and upbringing; who spoke well and were obedient, benevolent, discreet, and intelligent.”
This selection process privileged a disciplined and dedicated ethos for the upper class, ideally generating men willing to sacrifice for the common good. From boyhood, noble sons were provided tutors in civility, teaching them to “respect and show reverence to others,” urging them to greet even a poor stranger with the words, “Come hither, my beloved grandfather; let me bow before thee.” Young princes proceeded to training in sacred duties and ultimately for sacred war, at each stage of evolution honed for service to the gods through ritual, battle, and justice. So high was the bar that those who ascended to the post of judge in the high court at Tlacxitlan were prepared to order another aristocrat or even a fellow judge “to be shaven [as a disgrace], or driven [out of the land], or confined, or made a commoner” if proven to be unworthy of his office; and “in what was there made known, the lords did nothing for friendship’s sake; they exacted nothing as reward; nor delayed [any case].”
No doubt many a blue-blooded rogue got a wink and a pass for bad behavior, but expecting such lenience was risky. In living memory, Moctezuma had rendered death penalties on unjust judges and adulterous or corrupt noblemen. In the same way that it would be overly optimistic to expect uniformly noble nobles, it would be overly cynical to assume that not a single Mexican lord truly cared for Mexicans. Let’s imagine, then, the sense of responsibility such rigorous expectations might engender in a decent man. Imagine how helpless he would feel at the end of Cortés’s war: Tenochtitlan in ruins, the army shattered, an alien plague raging, and the dead “no longer…buried; they could only cast them all into the water…And there was a great, foul odor; the smell issued forth from the dead.”
I’m sure that, somewhere, some modern armchair revolutionary disdains the ancient Mexican ruling class as Quisilings who served themselves by serving the Holy Roman Emperor. I imagine some nobles did, but I can equally imagine making the same decisions they did. Moral burdens are real, and can weigh even on those you might discount as selfish. The truth is that when the people you swore to protect are broken by war, ravaged by smallpox, and breathing in the stench of their rotting families, your choices are few and bad. In those circumstances, I might well consider baptism and a puppet kingdom a small price to pay if it means serving as buffer between predator and prey, protecting those who remain from even worse depredations, and giving them a shot at a better tomorrow.
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