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Florentine Codex: Book 6: Book 6: Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy (Volume 6) (Florentine Codex, General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 6)
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 Six includes prayers to various gods asking for cures, riches, rain, and for the gods to bless or admonish a chosen ruler. In addition to these prayers, the book displays examples of formal conversation used in Aztec life, from the ruler and ambassador to others in the noble class.
260 pages, Hardcover
First published February 8, 1970
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August 13, 2025
The best Super Bowl commercial of all time aired on January 30, 2000. You know the one: grizzled cowpokes drawling out their love for the open range, drinking fireside coffee, and herding cats. I submit that in a world where the Aztecs won, that commercial would be about herding turkeys. I say that because “My task is to guard turkeys” is one Aztec cliche preserved in the sixth book of the 16th-century “General History of the Things of New Spain.” Turkeys peck each other because it’s their nature to peck. Likewise, when commoners squabble, it’s not the ruler’s fault. He’s just a turkey herder.
Most cliches in this volume of “Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy” are not quite that elitist, but it’s a reminder that these formulaic prayers, addresses, and exhortations represent an elite cosmovision. I’m sure everyone in the Valley of Mexico shared the same grid, but it’s best to recognize that what the Franciscan Father Bernardino de Sahagún documented was an aristocratic worldview.
That worldview was pretty conservative for a hegemony not yet a century old when the Spanish arrived. Those ruling the Triple Alliance styled themselves as unworthy conservators of a glorious past: “O that it were still in their time! O that it were still in their presence!...But in their absence we perform in childish, in baby-like fashion. Stuttering, stammering are the word or two which we here deliver; ill-spoken, disordered is what we intone, what we set forth.” Anyone who broke with tradition got reamed out: “Why do you destroy the way of life, the black, the red of our grandfathers, the ancient ones?”
The ruling class knew they held what they might call “a precious green stone, a well-formed precious turquoise” as an ancestral gift: valuable and easily lost by degenerate heirs. This makes sense since the Aztecs originated as immigrants, rose to power as mercenaries, and ruled through a system of collateral succession that balanced the claims of competing houses that might otherwise kill each other.
From parenting to sexuality, the ancient ones loom large. Wives who stray are threatened with degradation and death in terms that shame them for shaming the ancestors. Men are warned against exhausting their youth in sexual misadventures lest they drive their wives to promiscuity through a wastage of masculine energy that leaves them unable to satisfy their women. Everyone bears responsibility not to dim the memory of the generations who built them.
This uneasy conservatism shades all Aztec morality. The middle way of humility and caution is best: “Behold the word; heed and guard it, and with it take your way of life, your works. On earth we live, we travel along a mountain peak. Over here there is an abyss, over there is an abyss. If thou goest over here, or if thou goest over there, thou wilt fall in. Only in the middle doth one go, doth one live.”
At this point, modern readers may fall into an interpretive abyss by failing to recognize that this conservative morality had a goal beyond raw power. The ruling class saw itself not just as governing men, but as preserving existence. Its rules for sexual morality privilege a specific outcome: the production of sons for war, and the production of daughters who can produce sons for war.
For Aztecs, war was not just a continuation of policy by other means: it was a source of captives for the sacrificial stone and, ultimately, the divine sun. A male infant received this exhortation: “Here are only thy cradle; thy cradle blanket, the resting place of thy head: only thy place of arrival. Thou belongest out there; out there hast thou been consecrated. Thou hast been sent into warfare. War is thy [deserving], thy task. Thou shalt give drink, nourishment, food to the sun, the lord of the earth.”
Men who died in war were promised a place in the house of the sun, and women who died in childbirth were promised divinity: “And of this [divinized woman], although there was weeping, there was sorrow….Her parents and the husband rejoiced therefore even more, for it was said she went not to the land of the dead; she went there to the heavens, to the house of the sun.” The sun required blood, and dying in its cause — whether by obsidian blade or birthing bed — guaranteed a blessed eternity.
Aztec civilization thus revolved around sacred war and human sacrifice. All were responsible to do their part, but none more so than the ruler. Priests and nobles prayed the god’s mercy on the ruler as a regent: “Concede to him, designate him, that he may guard this. Give him as a loan for a little while thy reed mat [i.e., throne], thy reed seat, and thy rule, thy realm.” A righteous ruler understood his place: “O master, O our lord, verily I am thy backrest, I am thy flute; not by my [deserving], not by my merit. I am thy lips, I am thy jaw, I am thy eyes, I am thy ears. And me, a commoner, a laborer, thou hast made thy teeth, thy fingernails. Insert, place within me a little of thy spirit, of thy word; it is that which is ever heeded and irrefutable.”
Heavy then was the duty of the ruler to represent the god on earth and to keep the sacrificial blood flowing: “[Will] it perhaps crumble, fall apart? Will the land be conquered? Will it become excrement here? Will it happen here? Will perhaps my glory, my renown disappear? Will I cause nothing of my memory to remain, nothing of my glory to continue on earth? Will I cause my complete disappearance?”
After reading this, I think Moctezuma’s psychological collapse in the sources is more likely than not. Historians who write from a more reductionist secular model frequently struggle to explain his erratic behavior. Some construct ingenious explanations grounded in power politics, or suspect Spanish distortions of the man who lost an empire.
But a ruler of the Triple Alliance who took his role seriously knew he had received the reed mat from his ancestors by the gift of the god, and that he risked the loss of existence itself if he let them all down. Moctezuma might then consider the extinction-level threat of the Spanish as the god’s rejection of him, and a catastrophe of his own making. To understand elite Aztecs as they understood themselves — conservative, moral, devout — might go a long way toward explaining Moctezuma’s panic and paralysis when the reality given into his keeping started coming apart at the seams.
Most cliches in this volume of “Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy” are not quite that elitist, but it’s a reminder that these formulaic prayers, addresses, and exhortations represent an elite cosmovision. I’m sure everyone in the Valley of Mexico shared the same grid, but it’s best to recognize that what the Franciscan Father Bernardino de Sahagún documented was an aristocratic worldview.
That worldview was pretty conservative for a hegemony not yet a century old when the Spanish arrived. Those ruling the Triple Alliance styled themselves as unworthy conservators of a glorious past: “O that it were still in their time! O that it were still in their presence!...But in their absence we perform in childish, in baby-like fashion. Stuttering, stammering are the word or two which we here deliver; ill-spoken, disordered is what we intone, what we set forth.” Anyone who broke with tradition got reamed out: “Why do you destroy the way of life, the black, the red of our grandfathers, the ancient ones?”
The ruling class knew they held what they might call “a precious green stone, a well-formed precious turquoise” as an ancestral gift: valuable and easily lost by degenerate heirs. This makes sense since the Aztecs originated as immigrants, rose to power as mercenaries, and ruled through a system of collateral succession that balanced the claims of competing houses that might otherwise kill each other.
From parenting to sexuality, the ancient ones loom large. Wives who stray are threatened with degradation and death in terms that shame them for shaming the ancestors. Men are warned against exhausting their youth in sexual misadventures lest they drive their wives to promiscuity through a wastage of masculine energy that leaves them unable to satisfy their women. Everyone bears responsibility not to dim the memory of the generations who built them.
This uneasy conservatism shades all Aztec morality. The middle way of humility and caution is best: “Behold the word; heed and guard it, and with it take your way of life, your works. On earth we live, we travel along a mountain peak. Over here there is an abyss, over there is an abyss. If thou goest over here, or if thou goest over there, thou wilt fall in. Only in the middle doth one go, doth one live.”
At this point, modern readers may fall into an interpretive abyss by failing to recognize that this conservative morality had a goal beyond raw power. The ruling class saw itself not just as governing men, but as preserving existence. Its rules for sexual morality privilege a specific outcome: the production of sons for war, and the production of daughters who can produce sons for war.
For Aztecs, war was not just a continuation of policy by other means: it was a source of captives for the sacrificial stone and, ultimately, the divine sun. A male infant received this exhortation: “Here are only thy cradle; thy cradle blanket, the resting place of thy head: only thy place of arrival. Thou belongest out there; out there hast thou been consecrated. Thou hast been sent into warfare. War is thy [deserving], thy task. Thou shalt give drink, nourishment, food to the sun, the lord of the earth.”
Men who died in war were promised a place in the house of the sun, and women who died in childbirth were promised divinity: “And of this [divinized woman], although there was weeping, there was sorrow….Her parents and the husband rejoiced therefore even more, for it was said she went not to the land of the dead; she went there to the heavens, to the house of the sun.” The sun required blood, and dying in its cause — whether by obsidian blade or birthing bed — guaranteed a blessed eternity.
Aztec civilization thus revolved around sacred war and human sacrifice. All were responsible to do their part, but none more so than the ruler. Priests and nobles prayed the god’s mercy on the ruler as a regent: “Concede to him, designate him, that he may guard this. Give him as a loan for a little while thy reed mat [i.e., throne], thy reed seat, and thy rule, thy realm.” A righteous ruler understood his place: “O master, O our lord, verily I am thy backrest, I am thy flute; not by my [deserving], not by my merit. I am thy lips, I am thy jaw, I am thy eyes, I am thy ears. And me, a commoner, a laborer, thou hast made thy teeth, thy fingernails. Insert, place within me a little of thy spirit, of thy word; it is that which is ever heeded and irrefutable.”
Heavy then was the duty of the ruler to represent the god on earth and to keep the sacrificial blood flowing: “[Will] it perhaps crumble, fall apart? Will the land be conquered? Will it become excrement here? Will it happen here? Will perhaps my glory, my renown disappear? Will I cause nothing of my memory to remain, nothing of my glory to continue on earth? Will I cause my complete disappearance?”
After reading this, I think Moctezuma’s psychological collapse in the sources is more likely than not. Historians who write from a more reductionist secular model frequently struggle to explain his erratic behavior. Some construct ingenious explanations grounded in power politics, or suspect Spanish distortions of the man who lost an empire.
But a ruler of the Triple Alliance who took his role seriously knew he had received the reed mat from his ancestors by the gift of the god, and that he risked the loss of existence itself if he let them all down. Moctezuma might then consider the extinction-level threat of the Spanish as the god’s rejection of him, and a catastrophe of his own making. To understand elite Aztecs as they understood themselves — conservative, moral, devout — might go a long way toward explaining Moctezuma’s panic and paralysis when the reality given into his keeping started coming apart at the seams.
August 19, 2024
Starts dramatically with the prayer of a high priest begging cruel God Tezcatlipoca (“The night, the wind, the sorcerer, our lord”) to end the Plague: “Thus are they destroyed, those who are restess in sickness, who toss from side to side, who nowhere can do nothing, whose teeth, whose mouth are filled with dirt.” (Chapter 1)
The tone of almost all 40 chapters is poetic, precise, highly imaginative and honest. The morals are not written in terms of norms and rules, but as monologues, prayers, dialogues. This gives an immediacy that feels very modern.
The morals can also be understood from the focus and choice of themes. Midwives occupied an honorable and central role in Aztec society (while Europe in 1500s was still in full witch hunt), with many chapters devotes to them, even to what they should whisper to the baby as it is born.
The chapters of mothers and fathers advising their children when they “come of age” reminded me of Castiglione’s Libro del Cortegiano from the same era (sprezzatura, “nonchalance”, giving an air of ease, walking and standing in a cool fashion, be careful not to eat too fast or you deserve to choke), but it also brings to mind Hildegard von Bingens medieval treatise of balancing the extremes.
At the core of the Aztecs’ moral philosophy (or at least of the ones exemplified in Sahaguns books), there was the metaphor that “pure life is considered as a precious turquoise; as a round, reed-like, well-formed, precious green stone. There is no blotch, no blemish. Those perfect in their hearts, in their manner of life, those of pure life—like these are the precious green stone, the precious turquoise, which are glistening, shining before the lord of the near, of the night”. (Chapter 22) Their god of wind and night was able to see through them, even through their bones and thoughts, so that their heart and intentions were always known.
This, of course, completely changes and expands the meaning and importance of turquoise in Aztec jewelry.
The book ends with a gorgeous list of proverbs and riddles, one of which gave me goosebumps: “What is it that goes across a valley and keeps clapping its hands like the woman who is making bread?”
“It is the flying butterfly”
The tone of almost all 40 chapters is poetic, precise, highly imaginative and honest. The morals are not written in terms of norms and rules, but as monologues, prayers, dialogues. This gives an immediacy that feels very modern.
The morals can also be understood from the focus and choice of themes. Midwives occupied an honorable and central role in Aztec society (while Europe in 1500s was still in full witch hunt), with many chapters devotes to them, even to what they should whisper to the baby as it is born.
The chapters of mothers and fathers advising their children when they “come of age” reminded me of Castiglione’s Libro del Cortegiano from the same era (sprezzatura, “nonchalance”, giving an air of ease, walking and standing in a cool fashion, be careful not to eat too fast or you deserve to choke), but it also brings to mind Hildegard von Bingens medieval treatise of balancing the extremes.
At the core of the Aztecs’ moral philosophy (or at least of the ones exemplified in Sahaguns books), there was the metaphor that “pure life is considered as a precious turquoise; as a round, reed-like, well-formed, precious green stone. There is no blotch, no blemish. Those perfect in their hearts, in their manner of life, those of pure life—like these are the precious green stone, the precious turquoise, which are glistening, shining before the lord of the near, of the night”. (Chapter 22) Their god of wind and night was able to see through them, even through their bones and thoughts, so that their heart and intentions were always known.
This, of course, completely changes and expands the meaning and importance of turquoise in Aztec jewelry.
The book ends with a gorgeous list of proverbs and riddles, one of which gave me goosebumps: “What is it that goes across a valley and keeps clapping its hands like the woman who is making bread?”
“It is the flying butterfly”
January 2, 2014
Fantastic. Sahagún preserved key elements of Aztec rhetoric and ethical framework. I'd love a more modern translation (and a regularized transcription of the Nahuatl), but this is quite good.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews