General Overview of the Earliest Aztec Codices

Abstract

The importance of Mesoamerican codices as sources for studying the history and culture of the civilizations of this region is difficult to overestimate. More than 300 manuscripts, the origin of which is associated with the Mexica (Aztec) culture have survived to this day. Among other peoples of Mesoamerica, the conquerors from the Old World were the most interested exactly in the Aztecs. The Europeans studied indigenous language, culture and customs in order to know and understand their enemy. Traditional local books (codices) served as both a source of information and a means of influence. They were carefully studied, copied, translated and shipped to the Old World. The attitude of the colonial authorities towards such manuscripts was ambiguous. On the one hand, many codices were destroyed by the Catholic Inquisition as part of a campaign to eliminate traditional beliefs. On the other hand, the authorities actively sponsored the creation of new books, ordered them from local masters and reproduced them. Almost all surviving documents of this type were written after the conquest of the region, so only a few of the earliest manuscripts still embody the original artistic tradition. By studying them, we can trace how local customs are changing and gradually displacing under the influence of European culture. The article, based on the English- and Spanish-language scientific literature, as well as visual sources, contains basic information about the five earliest Aztec codices. Their alternative names and modern place of storage are specified, physical characteristics are given, the history of manuscripts, their content and artistic features are indicated. The work also highlights different views of modern researchers on the problem of dating those codices, the exact time of creation of which has not yet been finally established. Not a single Aztec manuscript that is unanimously recognized by scholars as pre-colonial has survived. The most ancient of them, according to the vast majority of researchers, were created either immediately before the Conquest, or in the first years after its start. On the basis of analyzed sources and literature, it was established that four of the five codices considered in this work to a greater or lesser degree contain obvious traces of European culture’s influence. The article also notes the importance of studying the Mesoamerican codices as sources on the history and culture of the region, with particular emphasis on the relevance of this problem in the Ukrainian-speaking scientific space.