30 May 2025 / 10 House
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Find out moreDid commoners have access to codices, or only the nobility?
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Madeleine Ogden: Did commoners have access to codices, or was it only the nobility? (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
Excellent question! We think essentially the answer has to be No, it was just the nobility. Ordinary folks like you and I would never have seen the codices, EXCEPT in the all-important naming ceremony, when parents would consult a trained soothsayer, who would name their baby after a date in the sacred, ritual 260-day calendar known as the tonalpohualli or ‘Count of Days’. Here we reproduce a couple of illustrations from the Florentine Codex where you can clearly see mothers holding their babies directly in front of Mexica soothsayers, who hold up codices containing calendars.
We should point out, incidentally, that whilst the soothsayer CHOSE the name from the calendar, the naming itself was actually done by the MIDWIFE. ‘The ceremony, which took place at daybreak with the midwife facing the west, consisted of two parts, the ritual washing of the child and the actual naming’ (Berdan & Anawalt, The Essential Codex Mendoza).
Picture source:-
• Both images from the Florentine Codex (original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence) scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition, Madrid, 1994.
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