30 May 2025 / 10 House
Article suitable for older students
Find out moreDid the Aztecs have coming-of-age rituals?
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Emily McCarthy: Did the Aztecs have any coming-of-age rituals? (Answered by - and thanks to - Dr. Caroline Dodds Pennock)
There aren’t straightforward coming-of-age rituals, but the huehuetlahtolli [speeches of the elders] in the Florentine Codex contain speeches given to boys and girls by their parents at their ‘coming of age’, which I had always assumed from context was when they went off to get married. Boys have to request permission from the telpochcalli [commoners’ school] elders as well as parents, so there’s an element of ceremony there. And, of course, there are many warrior rituals which are part of ‘coming of age’ for many boys: first captive, etc.
In many ways, I guess the marriage itself is the coming of age ritual (for younger people/first marriages) anyway. It is the moment when a young man is inscribed in the register of the community, becoming eligible for labour/military service etc, and when a young woman sets up her own household. And the whole ritual is framed around the family and the community.
Image from the Codex Mendoza scanned from our own copy of the James Cooper Clark facsimile edition, London, 1938.
Comments (2)
Daniel Ward-Cantu
19th Jul 2022
Some other websites list Aztec youth being considered adults at 20 years of age. Is this true? And would this be the same time the youth would be married?
Your team honors us with it’s work thank you.
Mexicolore
Thanks for these interesting questions, and your kind words.
Both questions are closely linked: yes, 20-21 is widely accepted as the age at which a young Mexica man should marry - with his bride being some five years his younger ‘because he had to complete his education and training before taking on the responsibilities of marriage’ (Berdan & Rieff Anawalt). Evidence for this comes from the Codex Mendoza, and from the works of Bernardino de Sahagún and Fray Diego Durán, the latter specifically mentioning that a youth wishing to marry had to wait until he reached that age or until he ‘had performed some notable feat’ (see ‘The Essential Codex Mendoza’).
Regarding reaching adulthood, ‘for most young men and women, marriage was a key moment in their development to adulthood... Marriage was so central to Aztec culture that “if a youth did not marry after having passed the age for marriage, he was dismissed from the house” (ie, the warrior house of which he was a member)... marriage appears to have been a condition of entrance into full membership of the calpulli’ (Dodds Pennock ‘Bonds of Blood’).
Emily
23rd Jul 2017
What a brilliant response! Fascinating!
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