30 May 2025 / 10 House
Article suitable for older students
Find out moreWhy did Aztec priests practice asceticism?
Mexica-Aztec novice priest, Codex Mendoza fol. 57r (detail)
ORIGINAL QUESTION received from - and thanks to - Itay Maor: Firstly i just want to say this website is, in my eyes, a truly wonderful thing. It is a great pleasure for me to read all these intersting details about the mighty Aztecs.
Now, there are a few questions im very intersted by and couldnt find any answers online. Perhapes you could help?
A. It seems that aztec priests practiced Asceticism, but this begs the question - why? In the Dharmic religions or christianity, Asceticism serves a clear purpose related often to the afterlife. Why did the aztec priests practice it?
B. Im very intersted in the treatment of mesoamerican religious clergy after the spanish conquest. How did the spaniards treat aztec or mayan priests? How did the priests react to the foreign religion brought by the conquistadores?
C. And finally, there seems to be a line of thought propagated by portilla that belives the aztecs to have been some sort of monists or pantheists. How accepted is this perspective? Thank you so much (Answered by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
Thanks for your kind words - always appreciated.
A. Asceticism for Mexica-Aztec priests consisted of several things: penance, fasting for up to a week or more at a time, lengthy vigils (one ritual was specifically called ‘Staying Awake at Night’), cold baths, self-sacrifice on special occasions - generally self-denial of comfort, sociability and physical welfare. The novice priest in the (main) picture above (from the Codex Mendoza can be seen with a bloodied ear, having pierced it with a sharp thorn, and a body painted black, symbolic of an austere lifestyle dedicated to the gods. The deliberate self-inflicting of pain helped build his concentration and at the same time enabled him to offer his own precious blood to the gods (who had sacrificed themselves for life to begin, according to Aztec myth). The blackening of the body may have been associated with several deities, its aim being to ‘reduce the distance between people and the gods’ (Olivier). Like self-sacrifice, the priest performed an act of faith that was supposed to please the gods.
All of this focus on sacrifice and abnegation, in Soustelle’s words, was ‘a school of self-control and of firmness towards oneself’. It was also a ritual of reciprocity: male Aztec gods - Quetzalcoatl being the prime example - were believed to have had to undertake auto-sacrifice and to do penance ‘in order to “fertilise” the dough [maize] and allow it to become the foundation of humanity’ (Dodds Pennock) - priests were simply repaying the gods on behalf of all living creatures. What’s more, cosmology was involved: young priests had to bleed themselves and others and then to flick the blood in the direction of Venus, to appease this powerful symbol of death and rebirth.
B. Nahua priests were the first to be killed by conquering Spaniards (often in horrific ways, such as dogging), in an open attempt to do away with the ‘remains’ of ancient religious beliefs and practices.
In Eleanor Wake’s words (follow the link below) ‘The missionaries therefore thought the religion could be eradicated very easily by destroying the gods and everything that appeared to be related to them. They smashed the idols, demolished the temples, burnt the sacred books (in fact, because they couldn’t read them they burnt all the books), and killed off or banished the old priests.’
Whilst the repression was severe, ancient beliefs (and gods) did survive, by being disguised (learn more below).
C. Yes, the belief in a single, all-inclusive, animistic force, called teotl in Nahuatl, that underpins everything in the universe, is widely accepted today. In James Maffie’s words, it is the ‘immanent engenderer of the cosmos’.
Sources/further reading:-
• Dodds Pennock, Caroline (2008) Bonds of Blood, Palgrave Macmillian
• Maffie, James (2014) Aztec Philosophy, University Press of Colorado
• Olivier, Guilhem (2003) Mockeries and Metamorphoses of an Aztec God, University Press of Colorado
• Soustelle, Jacques (1961) Daily Life of the Aztecs, Stanford University Press.
Picture sources:-
• Main: image from the Codex Mendoza (original in the Bodleian Library, Oxford) scanned from our own copy of the James Cooper Clark facsimile edition, London, 1938
• Image from the Codex Tudela (original in the Museo de América, Madrid), scanned from our copy of the Testimonio Compañía Editorial facsimile edition, Madrid, 2002
• Burning books: Image from Diego Muñoz Camargo, Descripción de la ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 242, folio 242r) courtesy of the Special Collections Department, Library, University of Glasgow.
Comments (2)
TD
31st Dec 2024
Julia Madajczak has a very interesting and recent article on fasting and the notion of “penance” in pre-Hispanic religion that’s very much worth a read. Open access
https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/104/3/371/386381/Nahua-Fasting-in-a-Series-of-Don-ts-An
https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/104/3/371/386381/Nahua-Fasting-in-a-Series-of-Don-ts-An
Mexicolore
Many thanks for the recommendation.
Itay Maor
20th Oct 2024
Thank you so much guys! it is very intersting to see how Nahua asceticism serves, in a way, an opossite goal from its indian equivalent (to use, perhapes mistakenly though, a nietzschean analouge of life affirming versus life dneying). Anywyas, thanks again :)
Mexica-Aztec novice priest, Codex Mendoza fol. 57r (detail)
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