Fray Bernardino de
Sahagún (1499–1590), Historia general de las cosas de nueva España (General history of the things of New
Spain)
He wrote in the
prologue to Book I, “in religion and the adoration of their gods, I do not
believe that there have ever been idolaters more devoted to their gods, nor at
such great cost to themselves as these [people] of New Spain.
“They are held to be barbarians and of very little
worth; in truth, however, in matters of culture and refinement, they are a step
ahead of other nations that presume to be quite politic.”
[…] the “sins of idolatry
and idolatrous rites, superstitions and omens, and superstitions and idolatrous
ceremonies have not disappeared altogether."
Sahagún gained the
assistance of two important indigenous groups: the elders of a number of towns
in central Mexico (principales) and Nahua students and former students at the College of
Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco, where Sahagún worked for much of his time in Mexico.
The principales answered questionnaires prepared by
Sahagún about their culture and religion, and their responses were recorded in
their own pictorial form of writing. The Nahua students interpreted the images
and expanded the answers, phonetically transcribing Nahuatl using Latin
letters. Sahagún then reviewed the Nahuatl text and added his own Spanish
translation. The
whole process took almost 30 years.
Huitzilopochtli
(“Uitzilobuchtli” in the codex) is called “another Hercules,” Tezcatlipoca
“another Jupiter.” Huitzilopochtli was the patron god of the Aztecs, who guided
them on their pilgrimage from Aztlán, the mythical “white land” of their
origins, to the “promised land,” where in 1325 they founded the city of
Tenochtitlan.
The Templo Mayor (Great Pyramid) was dedicated to
Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc and had separate shrines to each of these gods. This
dual construction had great significance in Mesoamerican cosmology, symbolizing
the two sacred mountains, Tonacatepetl (the Hill of Sustenance), and Coatepec
(the Hill of the Snake).
The shrine dedicated to Tlaloc, the god of rain,
represented the mountain housing maize and other things that Quetzalcoatl stole
from the gods to give to mankind. The shrine dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, the
god of war and of the sun, represented the mountain on which the god was born,
already an adult and dressed as a warrior, his mother Coatlicue having
generated him after she placed a feather ball in her lap.
On the mountain the god defeated his sister
Coyolxauhqui, the moon goddess, and his 400 brothers who were jealous of his
birth. Once dead, they went to form the Milky Way.
