30 May 2025 / 10 House
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Find out moreCould Aztec priests and priestesses marry?
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Marycruz Villaseñor: Could Aztec priests and priestesses marry? I think I read somewhere that some can and some can’t, so what were the laws or traditions concerning marriage when it comes to priests/priestesses? Could they leave their position and marry? (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
The very last page of the Appendix to Book 2 of the Florentine Codex gives an insight into this, titled ‘An Account of How the Women Served There in the Temples’. ‘When she was a grown woman, if this priestess was asked [in marriage], and if the words were well based, if the fathers, the mothers, the men of the neighbourhood. the noblemen consented, then a number of things were bought...’ In other words, as Caroline Dodds Pennock explains, ‘With the consent of community and family leaders, and having “bought” her freedom with gifts, the woman [priestess] was permitted to leave the temple and embark on the next phase of her life.’
So priesthood was NOT necessarily a permanent state, at least for women. That said, during their service to the state religion, their freedom was strictly curtailed: ‘For the priests and priestesses of Tenochtitlan, chastity, abstinence and industry were not private principles but public obligations and, as such, were not only expected but also enforced...’
The Codex refers to both priests and priestesses being expected to be ‘penitent, to live cleanly, to live peacefully, to live chastely, to abstain from vice and filth’ - but it was not a commitment for life...
There was a plethora of different specialisms, duties and ranks in the priesthood, which was in itself only a part-time career: in much the same way as farmers downed tools in the dry season and fought in the army, so many (but not all) priests downed their incense burners and joined the ranks of the military, to be rewarded with high rank if successful in capturing enemy warriors. So priests and priestesses were only bound to be celibate while serving directly in their priestly roles. As soon as a novice priest left the ultra-strict calmecac or élite training school, he was free to marry, even though he might go on to a further career in some field of the priesthood.
Further reading/sources:-
• Caroline Dodds Pennock (2008): Bonds of Blood
• Alfonso Caso (1958): The Aztecs: People of the Sun
• Jacques Soustelle (1961): Daily Life of the Aztecs.
Image sources:-
• Images from the Florentine Codex scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994
• Image from the Codex Mendoza scanned from our own copy of the James Cooper Clark 1938 facsimile edition, London.
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