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35-518: The Codex Mendoza is an Aztec codex , believed to have been created around the year 1541. It contains a history of both the Aztec rulers and their conquests as well as a description of the daily life of pre-conquest Aztec society . The codex is written using traditional Aztec pictograms with a translation and explanation of the text provided in Spanish . It is named after Don Antonio de Mendoza (1495-1552),

70-453: A catalog of such manuscripts that were published without the forgeries being known at the time. Another mixed alphabetic and pictorial source for Mesoamerican ethnohistory is the late sixteenth-century Relaciones geográficas , with information on individual indigenous settlements in colonial Mexico, created on the orders of the Spanish crown. Each relación was ideally to include a pictorial of

105-488: A census. They list 130 manuscripts for Central Mexico. A large section at the end has reproductions of pictorials, many from central Mexico. Continued scholarship of the codices has been influential in contemporary Mexican society, particularly for contemporary Nahuas who are now reading these texts to gain insight into their own histories. Research on these codices has also been influential in Los Angeles , where there

140-429: A mixture of iconography and writing proper, and those with semasiographical perspectives, which consider them a system of graphic communication which admits the presence of glyphs denoting sounds (glottography). In any case, both schools coincide in the fact that most of the information in these manuscripts was transmitted by images, rather than by writing, which was restricted to names. According to Donald Robertson,

175-523: Is absent. In contrast, post-Conquest codices present the use of European contour lines varying in width, and illusions of tridimensionality and perspective. Later on, Elizabeth Hill-Boone gave a more precise definition of the Aztec pictorial style, suggesting the existence of a particular Aztec style as a variant of the Mixteca-Puebla style, characterized by more naturalism and the use of particular calendrical glyphs that are slightly different from those of

210-596: Is bound at a spine in the manner of European books. The codex is also known as the Codex Mendocino and La colección Mendoza , and has been held at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University since 1659. It was on display as part of the Bodleian's Gifts and Books exhibition from 16 June to 29 October 2023. The Bodleian Library holds four other Mesoamerican codices : Codex Bodley , Codex Laud , Codex Selden , and

245-477: Is not an exact fit for the Codex, and the identification is not certain. According to a later account by Samuel Purchas , a later owner of the Codex, writing in 1625, the Spanish fleet was attacked by French privateers and all of the booty, including the codex, was taken to France. It was certainly in the possession of André Thévet , cosmographer to King Henry II of France . Thévet wrote his name in five places on

280-513: Is still disputed, with some scholars being in favour of them being pre-Hispanic, and some against. The types of information in manuscripts fall into several categories: calendrical, historical, genealogical, cartographic, economic/tribute, economic/census and cadastral, and economic/property plans. A census of 434 pictorial manuscripts of all of Mesoamerica gives information on the title, synonyms, location, history, publication status, regional classification, date, physical description, description of

315-532: The tlacuilo (codex painter) tradition endured the transition to colonial culture; scholars now have access to a body of around 500 colonial-era codices. Some prose manuscripts in the indigenous tradition sometimes have pictorial content, such as the Florentine Codex , Codex Mendoza , and the works of Durán , but others are entirely alphabetic in Spanish or Nahuatl. Charles Gibson has written an overview of such manuscripts, and with John B. Glass compiled

350-596: The Codex Borbonicus and some stylistic elements of trees in Codex Boturini. Similarly, the Matrícula de Tributos seems to imitate European paper proportions, rather than native ones. However, Robertson's views, which equated Mixtec and Aztec style, have been contested by Elizabeth-Hill Boone, who considered a more naturalistic quality of the Aztec pictorial school. Thus, the chronological situation of these manuscripts

385-528: The Selden Roll . The manuscript must date from after 6 July 1529, since Hernán Cortéz is referred to on folio 15r as 'marques del Valle'. It must have been produced before 1553, when it was in the possession of the French cosmographer André Thevet , who wrote his name on folios 1r, 2r, 70v, 71v. The final page of the manuscript explains some of the circumstances in which it was produced. The reader must excuse

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420-431: The viceroy of New Spain , who supervised its creation and who was a leading patron of native artists. Mendoza knew that the ravages of the conquest had destroyed multiple native artifacts, and that the craft traditions that generated them had been effaced. When the Spanish crown ordered Mendoza to provide evidence of the Aztec political and tribute system, he invited skilled artists and scribes who were being schooled at

455-627: The Franciscan college in Tlatelolco to gather in a workshop under the supervision of Spanish priests where they could recreate the document for him and the King of Spain . The pictorial document that they produced became known as the Codex Mendoza: it consists of seventy-one folios made of Spanish paper measuring 20.6 × 30.6 centimeters (8.25 × 12.25 inches). The document is crafted in the native style, but it now

490-574: The Mixtec codices. Regarding local schools within the Aztec pictorial style, Robertson was the first to distinguish three of them: A large number of prehispanic and colonial indigenous texts have been destroyed or lost over time. For example, when Hernan Cortés and his six hundred conquistadores landed on the Aztec land in 1519, they found that the Aztecs kept books both in temples and in libraries associated to palaces such as that of Moctezuma. For example, besides

525-697: The Nahuatl has been translated into English. Also important are the works of Dominican Diego Durán , who drew on indigenous pictorials and living informants to create illustrated texts on history and religion. The colonial-era codices often contain Aztec pictograms or other pictorial elements. Some are written in alphabetic text in Classical Nahuatl (in the Latin alphabet ) or Spanish , and occasionally Latin . Some are entirely in Nahuatl without pictorial content. Although there are very few surviving prehispanic codices,

560-487: The Spaniards and the battles and clashes that they had and the taking of this great city and all the provinces that it ruled and had made subject and the assignment of these towns and provinces that was made by Montezuma to the principal lords of this city and of the fee that each one of the knights gave him from the tributes of the towns that he had and the plan that he employed in the aforesaid assignment and how he sketched [?]

595-710: The Tetzcocans by the Tlaoilolaques and Chimalpanecas, two Toltec tribes from the lands of the Mixtecs. The Mixtec style would be defined by the usage of the native "frame line", which has the primary purpose of enclosing areas of color. as well as to qualify symbolically areas thus enclosed. Colour is usually applied within such linear boundaries, without any modeling or shading. Human forms can be divided into separable, component parts, while architectural forms are not realistic, but bound by conventions. Tridimensionality and perspective

630-767: The Valley of Mexico several generations after the arrival of Europeans, its latest examples reaching into the early seventeenth century. Since the 19th century, the word codex has been applied to all Mesoamerican pictorial manuscripts, regardless of format or date, despite the fact that pre-Hispanic Aztec manuscripts were (strictly speaking) non-codical in form. Aztec codices were usually made from long sheets of fig-bark paper ( amate ) or stretched deerskins sewn together to form long and narrow strips; others were painted on big cloths. Thus, usual formats include screenfold books, strips known as tiras , rolls, and cloths, also known as lienzos. While no Aztec codex preserves its covers, from

665-561: The Valley of Mexico. Three Aztec codices have been considered as being possibly pre-Hispanic: Codex Borbonicus , the Matrícula de Tributos and the Codex Boturini . According to Robertson, no pre-Conquest examples of Aztec codices survived, for he considered the Codex Borbonicus and the Codex Boturini as displaying limited elements of European influence, such as the space apparently left to add Spanish glosses for calendric names in

700-511: The codex, twice with the date 1553. It was later owned by the Englishman Richard Hakluyt . According again to Samuel Purchas, Hakluyt bought the Codex for 20 French francs . Some time after 1616 it was passed to Samuel Purchas, then to his son, and then to John Selden . The codex was deposited into the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in 1659, five years after Selden's death, where it remained in obscurity until 1831, when it

735-661: The comparative value of Roman, Greek, English, and French money. The two manuscripts were bound together in England in the early seventeenth century. Aztec codices Before the start of the Spanish colonization of the Americas , the Mexica and their neighbors in and around the Valley of Mexico relied on painted books and records to document many aspects of their lives. Painted manuscripts contained information about their history, science, land tenure, tribute, and sacred rituals. According to

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770-496: The example of Mixtec codices it is assumed that Aztec screenfold books had wooden covers, perhaps decorated with mosaics in turquoise, as the surviving wooden covers of Codex Vaticanus B suggests. Aztec codices differ from European books in that most of their content is pictorial in nature. In regards to whether parts of these books can be considered as writing, current academics are divided in two schools: those endorsing grammatological perspectives, which consider these documents as

805-579: The first scholar to attempt a systematic classification of Aztec pictorial manuscripts, the pre-Conquest style of Mesoamerican pictorials in Central Mexico can be defined as being similar to that of the Mixtec . This has historical reasons, for according to Codex Xolotl and historians like Ixtlilxochitl , the art of tlacuilolli or manuscript painting was introduced to the Tolteca-Chichimeca ancestors of

840-409: The home of an Indian who was called Francisco Gualpuyogualcal, master of the painters, I saw in his possession a book with covers of parchment and asking him what it was, in secret he showed it to me and told me that he had made it by the command of Your Lordship, in which he has to set down all the land since the founding of the city of Mexico and the lords that had governed and ruled until the coming of

875-472: The rough style in the interpretation of the drawings in this history, because the interpreter did not take time or work at all slowly...The interpreter was given this history ten days prior to the departure of the fleet, and he interpreted it carelessly because the Indians came to agreement late; and so it was done in haste and he did not improve the style suitable for an interpretation, nor did he take time to polish

910-415: The surviving manuscripts during the early colonial period, burning them because they considered them idolatrous. The large extant body of manuscripts that did survive can now be found in museums, archives, and private collections. There has been considerable scholarly work on the classification, description, and analysis of these codices. A major publication project by scholars of Mesoamerican ethnohistory

945-484: The testimony of Bernal Díaz del Castillo , Moctezuma had a library full of such books, known as amatl , or amoxtli, kept by a calpixqui or nobleman in his palace, some of them dealing with tribute. After the conquest of Tenochtitlan, indigenous nations continued to produce painted manuscripts, and the Spaniards came to accept and rely on them as valid and potentially important records. The native tradition of pictorial documentation and expression continued strongly in

980-425: The testimony of Bernal Díaz quoted above, the conquistador Juan Cano de Saavedra describes some of the books to be found at the library of Moctezuma, dealing with religion, genealogies, government, and geography, lamenting their destruction at the hands of the Spaniards, for such books were essential for the government and policy of indigenous nations. Further loss was caused by Catholic priests, who destroyed many of

1015-403: The town, usually done by an indigenous resident connected with town government. Although these manuscripts were created for Spanish administrative purposes, they contain important information about the history and geography of indigenous polities. Particularly important colonial-era codices that are published with scholarly English translations are Codex Mendoza , the Florentine Codex , and

1050-459: The towns and provinces for it. (tr. H. B. Nicholson) Silvio Zavala argued that the book referred to was the Codex Mendoza, and his arguments were restated by Federico Gómez de Orozco. If this is the case, then the Codex was written c.  1541 ('six years ago more or less' from López's recollection) and was commissioned by Mendoza. As H. B. Nicolson has pointed out, however, the description

1085-420: The words and grammar or make a clean copy. The manuscript was therefore finished in haste and designed to be sent to Spain. More precise information regarding the exact date of the manuscript and the reasons it was produced is controversial. The testimony of the conquistador Jerónimo López, probably dating from 1547, may be relevant. it must have been about six years ago more or less that entering one day into

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1120-610: The work itself, a bibliographical essay, list of copies, and a bibliography. Indigenous texts known as Techialoyan manuscripts are written on native paper ( amatl ) are also surveyed. They follow a standard format, usually written in alphabetic Nahuatl with pictorial content concerning a meeting of a given indigenous pueblo's leadership and their marking out the boundaries of the municipality. A type of colonial-era pictorial religious texts are catechisms called Testerian manuscripts. They contain prayers and mnemonic devices, some of which were deliberately falsified. John B. Glass published

1155-608: The works by Diego Durán . Codex Mendoza is a mixed pictorial, alphabetic Spanish manuscript. Of supreme importance is the Florentine Codex , a project directed by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún , who drew on indigenous informants' knowledge of Aztec religion, social structure, natural history, and includes a history of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire from the Mexica viewpoint. The project resulted in twelve books, bound into three volumes, of bilingual Nahuatl/Spanish alphabetic text, with illustrations by native artists;

1190-476: Was brought to fruition in the 1970s: volume 14 of the Handbook of Middle American Indians , Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources: Part Three is devoted to Middle American pictorial manuscripts , including numerous reproductions of single pages of important pictorials. This volume includes John B. Glass and Donald Robertson's survey and catalogue of Mesoamerican pictorials, comprising 434 entries, many of which originate in

1225-440: Was rediscovered by Viscount Kingsborough and brought to the attention of scholars. Written on European paper, it contains 71 pages, divided into three sections: Folios 73 to 85 of MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1, as currently foliated, do not form part of the Codex Mendoza. These folios comprise an originally separate manuscript, apparently written in England in the first half of the seventeenth century. This manuscript contains tables of

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