Article suitable for older students

The story of the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (2)

29th Aug 2023

The story of the {italicCodex Fejérváry-Mayer} (2)

3 facsimile copies of the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer

This is the second part of the story of one of the most beautiful, best preserved and most important Mesoamerican codices, the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer. Shown here (right) are three different facsimile editions of the Codex (from top: 1969, 1971 and 1994). We suggest here that the manuscript was almost certainly not traced (copied) in Hungary but in Austria... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

Obadiah Rich sold at least 25 manuscripts to Lord Kingsborough, c.1828. In 1830, after his move to London, Rich was commissioned by Kingsborough to return to Spain (and again in late 1831) to obtain further manuscripts. Rich wrote later ‘[I have been] on an exploration expedition to Spain: for MSS [manuscripts] relating to Ancient History of America for Lord Kingsborough… I have left ten scribes employed in Madrid with twelve months employment having obtained an order from the King to have all the MSS relating to America in the Libraries and Archives of Spain, held at my disposal to take copies of such as I thought proper’ (his emphasis). King Ferdinand was presented with Antiquities of Mexico in return for his co-operation, and the scribes went on to make copies of nearly a hundred works, many ‘scarcely known to exist, even in Spain’ (Graham, op cit: 50).

It was a time when, to quote Nicholas Basbanes ‘all Europe was ransacked’ for bibliographical rarities (1995: 160), and Rich was ‘the most resourceful nineteenth-century scout of all’ (157); sadly it also coincided with a period in Spain’s history characterised by war and chaos, leading to the looting of many old libraries.
After Kingsborough’s demise in 1837, Rich obtained his manuscripts in 1845 - 60 large folio volumes. He sold them to bibliographer Henry Stevens, who sold them to James Lenox, a celebrated American bibliophile and philanthropist (Knepper 1955: 123).

Fifth, Joseph Mayer (1803-1886), an English goldsmith, merchant and collector of antiquities. Born in Staffordshire, he moved to Liverpool at the age of 20, and after years of success in business he turned his talents to collecting, going on to set up his own museum in Colquitt Street, Liverpool.
His collection grew exponentially, embracing everything from ancient Egyptian artefacts to prehistoric and ethnographic curiosities, from glass, pottery and ivory objects to Anglo-Saxon antiquities.

His Egyptian Museum (pic 3), valued at almost £80,000, was presented by Mayer to the corporation of Liverpool in 1867 (‘In my collecting I always had in view to make the Collection as much illustrative of the Arts of the different nations as I could, so as to connect Ancient and Modern Art’ - Gibson 1988: 20), and became part of the public museum in William Brown Street there; it is now at the World Museum Liverpool. A philanthropist throughout his life, in 1866 Mayer established and endowed a free library of twenty thousand volumes, in six acres of public grounds, in Bebington, near Birkenhead, where he lived from 1860 till his death.

All of these five individuals have a direct or indirect connection to the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer:-
• Lord Kingsborough was the first to bring the Codex to the attention of the (scholarly) world, by including a reproduction of it in his Antiquities of Mexico
• William Bullock introduced Kingsborough in London to artist Agostino Aglio and to a range of ancient Mexican artefacts, including codices, providing a major impetus to Kingsborough to undertake his seminal work
• Agostino Aglio travelled round Europe on behalf of Kingsborough, researching and copying key ancient Mexican manuscripts, including the Codex
• Obadiah Rich may have been key to drawing the attention of both Kingsborough and Aglio to the existence – and, crucially, whereabouts – of the Codex
• Joseph Mayer purchased the Codex from Ferenc Pulszky in London and thanks to him it ended up in the care of the World Museum Liverpool.

Next, we need to link together these elements and characters, including of course Gábor Fejérváry himself.
Perhaps it’s best if we try to trace (forgive the pun…) the European trip of Aglio, since it was he who physically saw, held and literally traced the Codex. Indeed, as Kingsborough himself wrote, ‘”From the method which has been adopted in every instance in copying the Mexican paintings contained in the present work by means of transparent paper, the greatest correctness has been the result...”). Indeed, the fact that he did trace the works may account at least partly for the high quality and accuracy of his work’ (Marhenke 2011). But WHERE did he work on the Codex? Sadly, Aglio’s journal of his journey – which ‘occupies a voluminous book in manuscript’ (Sacchi 1868) has gone missing.

In its absence we can only speculate. Scholars have assumed till now that at the time the Codex was with Fejérváry in Pest. But Fejérváry only purchased it from Vizcay in June 1828 – by which time (April 1828) Aglio had returned to London! What’s more, there is no evidence at all that Aglio actually travelled to Hungary.
We only know that he visited France, Germany, Italy and… Austria. Could it be that Aglio traced the Codex in Vienna when he travelled there in April 1826? If so, it surely couldn’t have belonged to the Vizcay family until later? Aglio went to Vienna to trace the Codex Vindobonensis in Austria’s National Library.

The fact that Kingsborough, in the 1831 edition of Antiquities, refers to the Codex being ‘in the possession of M. de Fejérváry, at Pess [sic] in Hungary’ only muddies the waters: according to Cottie Burland (1971: 13) the Codex was actually ‘seen in Hungary’ by Kingsborough; we have no evidence for this, but we do know Kingsborough entered into negotiations with Fejérváry after Antiquities was published, offering to purchase the Codex from him (for 500 d’or Napoléon – gold coins) and to give him a set of Antiquities in exchange for granting permission for the Codex to be copied (Pulszky c.1847, fol. Germ. 1273, 75r).

The inscription on the front of the British Museum facsimile of the Codex (ref 9789), which Kingsborough presented himself, reads (pic 7) –
‘Fac Simile
Codicij Mexicani Fgervarya
in Hungaria.
at Pesth’. (Intriguingly, ‘at Pesth’ was added later in a different hand, in smaller letters, and with a thinner pen: why and by whom?)
For the moment, it remains a mystery exactly where and when and under whose auspices Aglio made his tracings of the Codex.
How did Kingsborough and Aglio know of the Codex’s existence? One possibility is that it was reported to Kingsborough by super-scout Obadiah Rich – who, it will be recalled, was acting as European agent for Kingsborough at the time.

There is another possibility: on his arrival in Paris, Aglio ‘was fortunate in meeting at the Royal Library with the celebrated savant the Abbe de Remusat who introduced him to Baron [Alexander von] Humboldt who immediately recognised the great ability of our artist, encouraged him in every way and gave him important letters of introduction for Germany which averting [sic] the difficulties likely to be met within Austria and Italy’ (Sacchi 1868). Von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a famous German polymath and explorer who had visited Mexico in 1803-4 and was already an expert on Mexican antiquities, including codices. In the catalogue of the Fejérváry collection written by Pulszky c.1847 there is an intriguing reference (pic 9) to the fact that ‘Alex. Humboldt hielt ihn für einen historischen Kalender...” (Humboldt believed that it [the Codex] was a historical calendar)’ (Papp, personal communication 2015), suggesting that Humboldt already knew of the Codex.
Indeed - ironically - some time earlier von Humboldt had himself expressed the wish ‘that some government would publish... the remains of the ancient American civilisation; for it is only by the comparison of several monuments, that we can succeed in discovering the meaning of these allegories, which are partly astronomical, and partly mystic’ (Prescott 1922: 72).

Humboldt had only a few years before (1816) written a lengthy paragraph on the Codex Vindobonensis in his major work Vues des cordilleres, et monumens des peuples indigenes de l’Amerique, which included early reproductions of the Dresden, Mendoza and other codices.
Humboldt’s crucial assistance is further attested to in Aglio’s biography, where we read of his arrival in Vienna ‘where finding a referral he presented his letter from Baron Humboldt to Prince Metternich [powerful Austrian statesman and chancellor from 1821] who introduced him to the minister who graciously granted permission, previous to which he had begun to doubt of his being able to make copies there’ (Sacchi 1868).

Von Humboldt had been in Vienna in 1792 and 1797, and his brother Wilhelm played a key role in the famous 1814-15 Congress of Vienna on the political future of Europe. Our bet would be on Humboldt briefing Aglio in Paris on both the Vindobonensis and the Fejérváry-Mayer codices.
The tracings that Aglio brought back to London were transferred onto lithographic stones and then hand coloured by Aglio to make coloured plates (Marhenke 2011: 2). The first four volumes of Antiquities of Mexico were printed by J. M(N?)oyes of Took’s Court, Chancery Lane, and volumes 6 and 7 by Richard Taylor, all in early 1930, and they named Aglio as author and publisher (pic 10).
In the next, 1831 edition, the title-page was changed, to make Kingsborough the author and Havell the publisher (Kingsborough was to fall out with Aglio, both ended up bankrupt, and in the end Kingsborough sadly died of typhus fever in a debtor’s prison...)

The entire work consisted of from 7-9 volumes (Kingsborough died before the tenth could be published), all in massive Imperial (‘elephant’) format (each weighing almost 30 kgs.); in all 200 copies were made, costing Kingsborough the enormous sum of 1,200,000 francs – The Athenaeum wrote at the time that ‘the cost of producing the whole will exceed fifty or sixty thousand pounds’ (see pic 12, bottom of p.485).
Some volumes were printed on vellum, others on large paper, some printed plain with line drawings, others with the drawings fully coloured; a dozen ‘specials’ were sumptuously bound (‘red or dark blue morocco tooled in the early Victorian Gothic fashion, with his coat of arms stamped in gold on both covers, and gilt edges’ – Graham, op cit: 53) to be presented as gifts by Kingsborough himself: ‘Ten copies were printed on large paper, 26 x 19 inches, entirely for presents, and two copies were printed on vellum’ (Sabin 1877) (pic 12).

These were donated, for starters, to King William IV, the British Museum, the Bodleian Library at Oxford (the latter two got the vellum copies), the Louvre in Paris, the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg, and the Royal Library in Berlin (Whitmore 2009: 12). Not surprisingly, the coloured copies sold for significantly higher prices.
(We believe ‘Antiquities of Mexico’ was later to play a crucial role in inspiring the creation of a now world-famous game: we will be telling this story separately…)
Time to move the story forward. Fejérváry was very close to his nephew Ferenc Pulszky, who Fejérváry trained as an art historian and collector. On their first European trip together in 1822 ‘they visited Budapest, Vienna, Milan, Padua, Florence, Rome, and Naples, and returned by way of Venice and Vienna. In every town, they spent time with the various antiquarian and art dealers, talking and socializing after the formal business’ (Ruwet 2013: 140).

Pulszky was well known for his revolutionary political activities as part of the Hungarian independence movement of 1848-9, as a result of which he became persona non grata in Hungary, forcing him, in 1849, to go into exile in England (Berger 1998: 27). On Fejérváry’s death in 1851 Pulszky inherited his collection of antiquities but by then he was living in exile in London and could only receive his inheritance via an intermediary, a friend also in London who nominally ‘bought’ the collection and could arrange for it to be sent over from Hungary (János 2015).
On settling in London, Pulszky ‘soon joined the intellectual and cultural circles, especially those forming around museums and collectors’ (Papp 2014), and was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in January 1850 (Gibson 1988: 7).

Two years later, in the summer of 1853, Pulszky exhibited his uncle’s collection at the (Royal) Architectural Institute in London. Amongst the collection was a group of antique ivory carvings ‘of outstanding art historical importance’ – and the Codex. The entry in the 1853 catalogue, published by Pulszky’s friend Imre (Emil) Henszlmann, reads ‘Mexican hieroglyphic Code, on elk skin, covered with white paint, and belonging to the period anterior to the discovery of America. There are but sixteen such codes known; the present one is the only one in private possession’ (pic 14).
However Pulszky was short of money, and was obliged to sell the collection (it was later completely dispersed after he moved to Florence in 1863) (ibid: 10). In April 1855, after unsuccessfully offering it – for £1,700 - to the British Museum (where he had been working in his spare time), Pulszky found in Seler’s words ‘a worthy citizen’ (Seler 1901: 2) living in Liverpool, Joseph Mayer, a collector of mediaeval and Renaissance artistic objects ‘and all with the intention of presenting everything to his native city, and thereby enriching the local museum’. Fejérváry’s ivories, Hungarian prehistoric metalwork and some Mexican items – including the Codex – he sold to Mayer just months later, for the same price.

It’s worth noting that the 1853 exhibition came just two years after the Great Exhibition of 1851, both significantly increasing public awareness of ethnographic artefacts from around the world.
In fact the popular interest shown was such that Pulszky gave a series of twelve lectures, the script of one of which was published in 1857 in Philadelphia and London for the Smithsonian Institute. In one lecture, Pulszky contrasts the traditional view of works of art as ‘articles of furniture for our drawing rooms’ with that of the ancients who ‘felt the origin of art was divine’, to be displayed publicly and to be perceived by all. A museum should give visitors a faithful picture of the development of the artistic imagination of mankind: ‘proof of the affinity of all civilised peoples’ (Wilson 2006).

As we noted at the start, the Codex was – and remains – one of the best preserved of its kind. Cottie Burland noted in his commentary on the ADEVA facsimile ‘It can only very rarely have been exposed to the air during its four centuries in Europe’ (1971: 13). By way of anecdote, in April 1955 Mayer received a letter from an antique coin collector of Oxford and London, one F. R. P. Bööcke – ‘who was obviously familiar with Mayer’s collection… and was involved, in some as yet undefined way, in the purchase of the Fejérváry Collection’ (Southworth 1988: 87) - offering to buy the Codex from him in exchange for a gold snuff box in the latter’s collection, plus payment of £200.

Bööcke’s letter (pic 16) reads –
‘I write to you respecting the Mexican Codex. You mentioned when I was in Liverpool that you would make an exchange with your snuff box now in my possession…’
Happily, the offer was refused… Coincidentally, as well as a set of 120 pieces of glass offered to Mayer by Bööcke, one collection specifically mentioned is that of Count Wiczay (Viczay) (ibid). (It was of course Viczay who sold the Codex to Fejérváry in 1828).
Today the cover of the original Codex bears the reference ‘12014M’, associated with Mayer’s collection. A major study of it was undertaken by Eduard Seler in 1901. He dedicated the edition in August of that year ‘To His Excellency Joseph Florimond, Duke of Loubat’, who generously sponsored the publication (pic 17).

It was Loubat’s facsimile edition (pic 18), an expensive photochromographic reproduction, that was the first to call the manuscript ‘Codex Fejérváry-Mayer’ (León-Portilla 1985). Whilst several scholars have written important studies of the Codex, it wasn’t until 1971 that the next significant facsimile of the Codex was produced, by ADEVA in Graz, Austria (an earlier ‘pre-publication’ edition was published by ADEVA in 1969), followed by the joint ADEVA/Fondo de Cultura Económica (Mexico) facsimile/study edition of 1994 (pic 19).

NOTE: Special thanks are due a) to Júlia Papp for her kind help in guiding me to, sourcing and interpreting the material in the Hungarian National Library; and b) to Karina Cardenas in the Special Collections Department of California State University Library for her equally crucial help in locating and sending me the obscure but key article by Wayne Ruwet.

Sources/references:-
• Adelhofer, Otto (1974) Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus I: History and Description of the Manuscript, Codices Selecti V, Akademische Druck- u.Verlagsanstalt, Graz, Austria
• Basbanes, Nicholas A. (1995) A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, Henry Holt & Co., New York
• Berger, Uta (1998) Mexican Painted Manuscripts in the United Kingdom, British Museum Occasional Paper no. 91, London
• Brotherston, Gordon (1992) Book of the Fourth World, Cambridge University Press
• Brownrigg, Edwin Blake (1978) Colonial Latin American manuscripts and transcripts in the Obadiah Rich Collection: An inventory and index, New York Public LIbrary
• Burland, Cottie A. (1971) Codex Fejérváry-Mayer 12014M City of Liverpool Museums Introduction, Codices Selecti vol. XXVI, ADEVA, Graz, Austria
• Costeloe, Michael (2006) ‘William Bullock and the Mexican Connection’ Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos vol. 22, no. 2, Summer 2006 275-309
• Gibson, Margaret ‘Joseph Mayer’ (Introduction) in Joseph Mayer of Liverpool 1803-1886, edited by Margaret Gibson and Susan M. Wright, Occasional Papers (New Series XI), The Society of Antiquaries of London/National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, London 1988
• Graham, Ian (1977) ‘Lord Kingsborough, Sir Thomas Phillipps, and Obadiah Rich: Some Bibliographic Notes’ in Social Processes in Maya Prehistory, edited by Norman Hammond, Academic Press, London
• ------- (1993) ‘Three Early Collectors in Mesoamerica’ in Collecting the Pre-Columbian Past, edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone, Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Symposia and Colloquia
• Henszlmann, Emil (1853) Catalogue of the Collection of the Monuments of Art formed by the late Gabriel Fejérváry of Hungary, Trubner & Co., London
• János, Gyarmati (2015) ‘A Fejérváry-Mayer-kódex – Egy ősi mexikói könyv Magyarországon’, Élet és Tudomány no. 27 (online)
• Jones, Brian Jay (2011) Washington Irving: The Definitive Biography of America’s Bestselling Author, Arcade Publishing
• Knepper, Adrian W. (1955) ‘Obadiah Rich: Bibliopole’, in The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 49, 2nd. Quarter, New York
• León-Portilla, Miguel (1985) Tonalamatl de los pochtecas, facsimile edition, Celanese Mexicana S.A., Mexico City
• Marhenke, Randa (2011-13) The Aglio-Kingsborough Paris Codex, online - http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/codices/pdf/Aglio-KingsboroughParisCodex.pdf
• Marosi – Klaniczay (2006) The nineteenth-century process of “Musealization” in Hungary and Europe Ernő Marosi, Gábor Klaniczay, eds., (Collegium Budapest Workshop Series; 17), Budapest
• Papp, Júlia (2014) ‘John Brampton Philpot’s photographs of fictile ivory in the Hungarian National Museum: In commemoration of the bicentenary of Ferenc Pulszky’s birth’ RIHA Journal 0091 | 25 June
• Prescott, William H. (1922) The Conquest of Mexico, vol. I, Chatto & Windus, London
• Pulszky, Ferenc (1856) Catalogue of the Fejérváry Ivories, in the Museum of Joseph Mayer Esq. F. S. A. ... etc. preceded by an Essay on Antique Ivories by Francis Pulszky, F. H. A. Liverpool: printed by David Marples, 50A, Lord Street
• -------- (c.1847) német nyelvű kéziratos katalógusa Fejérváry Gábor műgyűjteményéről (Catalogue of the Fejérváry Collection. Manuscript) Signature: Fol. Germ 1273, Hungarian National Library (Országos Széchenyi Könyvtár, Kézirattár), Budapest
• -------- (1958) Életem és korom [My life and age], II., Budapest
• Rechnungs Journal seit 1. Jäner 1827-1835, Signature: Quart. Germ. 1467 Hungarian National Library (Országos Széchenyi Könyvtár, Kézirattár), Budapest
• Ruwet, Wayne (2013) ‘The Provenience of Codex Fejérváry-Mayer; How Gabor (Gabriel) Fejérváry Gained Possession’, Latin American Indian Literatures Journal 29(1): 139-144
• Sabin, Joseph (1877) A Dictionary of Books Relating to America, vol. IX, New York, J. Sabin & Sons
• Sacchi, Frederick (1868) ‘Notes on the Life and Works of Augustine Aglio: Artist of Cremona And Author of the Mexican Antiquities’, online -http://www.guise.me.uk/aglio/aasenior/biographies/sacchi-introduction-english.htm
• Segesvary, Victor (2005) The History of a Private Library in 18th Century Hungary: THE LIBRARY OF PÁL AND GEDEON RÁDAY’, Mikes International, The Hague, Netherlands
• Seler, Eduard (1901-2) Codex Fejérváry-Mayer: An Old Mexican Picture Manuscript in the Liverpool Free Public Museum (12014M), Berlin and London
• Southworth, E. C. (1988) ‘Greek and Roman Antiquities’ in Joseph Mayer of Liverpool (op cit), eds. Margaret Gibson and Susan M. Wright
• Whitmore, Sylvia D. (2009) ‘Lord Kingsborough and his Contribution to Ancient Mesoamerican Scholarship: The Antiquities of Mexico’, The PARI Journal Vol. IX, No. 4, Spring 2009
• Wilson, David (2006) ‘Pulszky’s 1851 London Lectures’, in: Marosi – Klaniczay op cit, 127–140.