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The Florentine Codex is a 16th-century Ethnography research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Sahagún originally titled it La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España (in English: The General History of the Things of New Spain).Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain (Translation of and Introduction to Historia General de Las Cosas de La Nueva España; 12 Volumes in 13 Books ), trans. Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O Anderson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1950–1982). Images are taken from Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, The Florentine Codex. Complete digital facsimile edition on 16 DVDs. Tempe, Arizona: Bilingual Press, 2009. Reproduced with permission from Arizona State University Hispanic Research Center. After a translation mistake, it was given the name Historia general de las Cosas de Nueva España. The best-preserved manuscript is commonly referred to as the Florentine Codex, as the codex is held in the Laurentian Library of Florence, Italy.
In partnership with Nahua peoples elders and authors who were formerly his students at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, Sahagún conducted research, organized evidence, wrote and edited his findings. He worked on this project from 1545 up until his death in 1590. The work consists of 2,500 pages organized into twelve books; more than 2,000 illustrations drawn by native artists provide vivid images of this era. It documents the culture, religious cosmology (worldview) and ritual practices, society, economics, and natural history of the Aztec people. It has been described as "one of the most remarkable accounts of a non-Western culture ever composed."H. B. Nicholson, "Fray Bernardino De Sahagún: A Spanish Missionary in New Spain, 1529-1590", in Representing Aztec Ritual: Performance, Text, and Image in the Work of Sahagún, ed. Eloise Quiñones Keber (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2002).
Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson were the first to translate the Codex from Nahuatl to English, in a project that took 30 years to complete.Ann Bardsley and Ursula Hanly, U Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Professor Charles Dibble Dies , 5 Dec. 2002, University of Utah. Accessed 7 July 2012. In 2012, high-resolution scans of all volumes of the Florentine Codex, in Nahuatl and Spanish, with illustrations, were added to the World Digital Library. In 2015, Sahagún's work was inscribed into the Memory of the World register by UNESCO. In 2023, the Getty Research Institute released the Digital Florentine Codex which gives access to the complete manuscript.
King Phillip II of Spain concluded that was not beneficial for the Spanish colonies in America and, hence, it never took place. That is the reason why the missionaries, including Fray Bernardino de Sahagún continued their missionary work and Fray Bernardino de Sahagun was able to make two more copies of his Historia general. The three bound volumes of the Florentine Codex are found in the Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Palat. 218-220 in Florence, Italy, with the title Florentine Codex chosen by its English translators, Americans Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble, following in the tradition of nineteenth-century Mexican scholars Francisco del Paso y Troncoso and Joaquín García Icazbalceta.Charles Dibble, "Sahagún's Historia", in Florentine Codex: Introductions and Indices, Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble, No. 14, Part I 1982, p. 15
The manuscript became part of the collection of the library in Florence at some point after its creation in the late sixteenth century. It was not until the late eighteenth century that scholars become aware of it, when the bibliographer Angelo Maria Bandini published a description of it in Latin in 1793.Dibble, "Sahagún's Historia", p. 16. The work became more generally known in the nineteenth century, with a description published by P. Fr. Marcellino da Civezza in 1879.
The Spanish Royal Academy of History learned of this work and, at the fifth meeting of the International Congress of Americanists, the find was announced to the larger scholarly community. In 1888, German scholar Eduard Seler presented a description of the illustrations at the 7th meeting of the International Congress of Americanists. Mexican scholar Francisco del Paso y Troncoso received permission in 1893 from the Italian government to copy the alphabetic text and the illustrations.Dibble, "Sahagún's Historia", p. 17.
The three-volume manuscript of the Florentine Codex has been intensely analyzed and compared to earlier drafts found in Madrid. The Tolosa Manuscript ( Códice Castellano de Madrid) was known in the 1860s and studied by José Fernando Ramírez.José Fernando Ramírez, "Códices majicanos de fr. Bernardino de Sahagún." Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, Vol. VI (Madrid 1885), pp. 85-124. The Tolosa Manuscript has been the source for all published editions in Spanish of the Historia General.Dibble, "Sahagún's Historia" p. 21.
The English translation of the complete Nahuatl text of all twelve volumes of the Florentine Codex was a decades-long work of Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble,Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1950-1982. an important contribution to the scholarship on Mesoamerican ethno-history. In 1979, the Mexican government published a full-color, three-volume facsimile of the Florentine Codex in a limited edition of 2,000, allowing scholars to have easier access to the manuscript. The Archivo General de la Nación (Dra. Alejandra Moreno Toscano, director) supervised the project that was published by the Secretariat of the Interior (Enrique Olivares Santana, Secretary). The 2012 World Digital Library high-resolution digital version of the manuscript makes it fully accessible online to all those interested in this source for Mexican and Aztec history. In 2023, the Getty Research Institute released the Digital Florentine Codex which gives access to the complete manuscript and multiple translations.
He had three overarching goals for his research:
Sahagún conducted research for several decades, edited and revised his work over several decades, created several versions of a 2,400-page manuscript, and addressed a cluster of religious, cultural and nature themes.Edmonson, M. S. (Ed.) (1974) Sixteenth-century Mexico: The Work of Sahagún, Albuquerque, New Mexico, University of New Mexico Press. Copies of the work were sent by ship to the royal court of Spain and to the Holy See in the late-sixteenth century to explain Aztec culture. The copies of the work were essentially lost for about two centuries, until a scholar rediscovered it in the Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana) an archive library in Florence, Italy. The Spanish also had earlier drafts in their archives. A scholarly community of historians, anthropologists, art historians, and linguists has since been investigating Sahagún's work, its subtleties and mysteries, for more than 200 years.For a history of this scholarly work, see Miguel León-Portilla, Bernardino De Sahagún: The First Anthropologist (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002).
Scholars have proposed several classical and medieval worldbook authors who inspired Sahagún, such as Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, Isidore of Seville, and Bartholomeus Anglicus. These shaped the late medieval approach to the organization of knowledge.López Austin, "The Research Method of Fray Bernardino De Sahagún: The Questionnaires."
The twelve books of the Florentine Codex are organized in the following way:
Book 12, the account of the conquest of the Aztec Empire from the point of view of the conquered of Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco, is the only strictly historical book of the Historia General.
This work follows the organizational logic found in medieval encyclopedias, in particular the 19-volume De proprietatibus rerum of Sahagún's fellow Franciscan Friar Bartholomew the Englishman. One scholar has argued that Bartholomew's work served as a conceptual model for Sahagún, although evidence is circumstantial.D. Robertson, "The Sixteenth Century Mexican Encyclopedia of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún", Journal of World History 4 (1966). Both men present descriptions of the cosmos, society and nature of the late medieval paradigm. Additionally, in one of the prologues, Sahagún assumes full responsibility for dividing the Nahuatl text into books and chapters, quite late into the evolution of the Codex (approximately 1566–1568).James Lockhart, ed. and trans., We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). "Very likely," historian James Lockhart notes, "Sahagún himself devised the chapter titles, in Spanish, and the Nahuatl chapter titles may well be a translation of them, reversing the usual process."James Lockhart, ed. and trans., We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 30.
The images were inserted in places in the text left open for them, and in some cases the blank space has not been filled. This strongly suggests that when the manuscripts were sent to Spain, they were as yet unfinished.Peterson, "The Florentine Codex Imagery", p. 277. The images are of two types, what can be called "primary figures" that amplify the meaning of the alphabetic texts, and "ornamentals" that were decorative.Peterson, "The Florentine Codex Imagery", p. 273. The majority of the nearly 2,500 images are "primary figures" (approximately 2000), with the remainder ornamental.Peterson, "The Florentine Codex Imagery", p. 274. The figures were drawn in black outline first, with color added later. Scholars have concluded that several artists, of varying skill, created the images.Donald Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period. New Haven: Yale University Press 1959, p. 178. It was deduced that twenty-two artists worked on the images in the Codex. This was done by analyzing the different ways that forms of body were drawn, such as the eyes, profile, and proportions of the body.
It is not clear what artistic sources the scribes drew from, but the library of the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco had European books with illustrations and books of engravings.Peterson, "The Florentine Codex Imagery", p. 278. European elements appear in the imagery, as well as pre-Conquest images done in the "native style".Peterson, "The Florentine Codex Images", p. 279.Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting, pp. 15-23. A number of the images have Christian elements, which Peterson has described as "Christian editorializing".Peterson, "The Florentine Codex Imagery", p. 293. The entirety of the Codex is characterized by the Nahua belief that the use of color activates the image and causes it to embody the true nature, or ixiptla, of the object or person depicted. For the Aztecs, the true self or identity of a person or object was shown via the external layer, or skin. Imparting color onto an image would change it so that it was given the identity of what it was portraying. Color was also used as a vehicle to impart knowledge that worked in tandem with the image itself.
Sahagún systematically gathered knowledge from a range of diverse persons (now known as informants in anthropology), who were recognized as having expert knowledge of Aztec culture. He did so in the native language of Nahuatl, while comparing the answers from different sources of information. According to James Lockhart, Sahagún collected statements from indigenous people of "relatively advanced age and high status, having what was said written down in Nahuatl by the aids he had trained."James Lockhart, ed. and trans., We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 27
Some passages appear to be the transcription of spontaneous narration of religious beliefs, society or nature. Other parts clearly reflect a consistent set of questions presented to different people designed to elicit specific information. Some sections of text report Sahagún's own narration of events or commentary.
He developed a methodology with the following elements:
These methodological innovations substantiate historians' claim that Sahagún was the first anthropologist.
Most of the Florentine Codex is alphabetic text in Nahuatl and Spanish, but its 2,000 pictures provide vivid images of sixteenth-century New Spain. Some of these images directly support the alphabetic text; others are thematically related; others are for seemingly decorative purposes. Some are colorful and large, taking up most of a page; others are black and white sketches. The pictorial images offer remarkable detail about life in New Spain, but they do not bear titles, and the relationship of some to the adjoining text is not always self-evident. They can be considered a "third column of language" in the manuscript. Several different artists' hands have been identified, and many questions about their accuracy have been raised. The drawings convey a blend of Indigenous and European artistic elements and cultural influences.For analysis of the pictures and the artists, see several contributions to John Frederick Schwaller, ed., Sahagún at 500: Essays on the Quincentenary of the Birth of Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2003).
Many passages of the texts in the Florentine Codex present descriptions of like items (e.g., gods, classes of people, animals) according to consistent patterns. Because of this, scholars have concluded that Sahagún used a series of questionnaires to structure his interviews and collect data.
For instance, the following questions appear to have been used to gather information about the gods for Book One:
For Book Ten, "The People", a questionnaire may have been used to gather information about the social organization of labor and workers, with questions such as:
This book also described some other indigenous groups in Mesoamerica.
Sahagún was particularly interested in Nahua medicine. The information he collected is a major contribution to the history of medicine generally. His interest was likely related to the high death rate at the time from plagues and diseases. Many thousands of people died, including friars and students at the school. Sections of Books Ten and Eleven describe human anatomy, disease, and medicinal plant remedies.Alfredo López Austin, "Sahagún's Work and the Medicine of the Ancient Nahuas: Possibilities for Study", in Sixteenth-Century Mexico: The Work of Sahagún, ed. Munro S. Edmonson (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974). The passage on human anatomy appears primarily intended to record vocabulary.
The ethnobotanic section is an insertion into Book Eleven, and reads quite differently from the rest of this book.
The text in this section provides very detailed information about location, cultivation, and medical uses of plants and plant parts, as well as information about the uses of animal products as medicine. The drawings in this section provide important visual information to amplify the alphabetic text. The information is useful for a wider understanding of the history of botany and the history of zoology. Scholars have speculated that Sahagún was involved in the creation of the Badianus Manuscript, an herbal created in 1552 that has pictorials of medicinal plants and their uses. Although this was originally written in Nahuatl, only the Latin translation has survived.
Book Eleven, "Earthly Things", has the most text and approximately half of the drawings in the codex. The text describes it as a "forest, garden, orchard of the Mexican language".Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain (Translation of and Introduction to Historia General de Las Cosas de la Nueva España; 12 Volumes in 13 Books), Prologue to Book XI, Introductory Volume, page 88. It describes the Aztec cultural understanding of the animals, birds, insects, fish and trees in Mesoamerica.
Sahagún appeared to have asked questions about animals such as the following:
Plants and animals are described in association with their behavior and natural conditions or habitat. The Nahua presented their information in a way consistent with their worldview. For modern readers, this combination of ways of presenting materials is sometimes contradictory and confusing. Other sections include data on minerals, mining, bridges, roads, types of terrain, and food crops.
The Florentine Codex is one of the most remarkable social science research projects ever conducted. It is not unique as a chronicle of encountering the New World and its peoples, for there were others in this era. Sahagún's methods for gathering information from the perspective within a foreign culture were highly unusual for this time. He reported the worldview of people of Central Mexico as they understood it, rather than describing the society exclusively from the European perspective. "The scope of the Historia's coverage of contact-period Central Mexico indigenous culture is remarkable, unmatched by any other sixteenth-century works that attempted to describe the native way of life."Nicholson, "Fray Bernardino De Sahagún: A Spanish Missionary in New Spain, 1529-1590." page 27. Foremost in his own mind, Sahagún was a Franciscan missionary, but he may also rightfully be given the title as Father of American Ethnography.Arthur J. O Anderson, "Sahagún: Career and Character", in Florentine Codex: Introductions and Indices, ed. Arthur J. O Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1982).
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