30 May 2025 / 10 House
Article suitable for older students
Find out moreFlorentine Codex Book 6
7th Mar 2023
Book 6 of the Florentine Codex is one of the longer ones, titled ‘Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy’, and is devoted to prayers, formal set-piece speeches (of rulers, dignitaries, parents, midwives, soothsayers...) exhortations, and sayings - including some light-hearted riddles and metaphors, many of which you can find in the ‘Aztec Sayings’ page (Aztec Language section - link below).
1). Twenty-seventh chapter, here [are] told those various things which [the midwife] said to the pregnant woman, in order that she should not much hurt the baby when it was born, in order that she should be quickly delivered. Much is mentioned which is memorable - very good discourses of the sort which women say...
’The midwife fired, heated the sweat bath, and she put the maiden in the sweat bath, where she massaged the pregnant woman’s abdomen; she placed aright [the unborn child]. She placed it straight; she kept turning it as she massaged her, as she went on manipulating her...
’And the midwife sternly commanded, the pregnant woman not to sleep by day, for the child when born would be of abnormally large eyelids...
’She said the pregnant woman should not chew chicle [chewing gum], for when the baby was born... it would no more than nibble... since it could no longer suckle, it would die. She said it was necessary that she should look at nothing which angered one, for she would bring the same upon [the child].
’And what the pregnant woman desired should quickly be given... for her child would suffer if what she desired were not quickly given.’ -----
2). Twenty-eighth chapter. Here are told the different things which the midwife did when the pregnant one was ready, when she was about to give birth, in order that she would not suffer...
Twenty-ninth chapter. Here it is told how they made goddesses of those women who died in childbirth, called mociuaquetzque... And the place where the sun set, it is said, they named ciuatlampa after them.
’If already in one day, one night the woman could not give birth, then once again they quickly placed her in the sweat bath; once again they worked there in vain. The midwife straightened out that which was within the woman. And if she was despaired of, if she could in no wise give birth to the baby, then they enclosed the woman. Only the midwife was by her, because she was offering prayers....
’And the midwife who was prudent, who was skilled, if she saw that the baby had died... she inserted an obsidian knife; she dismembered the baby; she removed the body of the baby piece by piece.
’And if the parents dared not that the midwife do this, then [the midwife] enclosed the little woman.’ -----