| Codex Mendoza | |
| Width: | 350px |
| Type: | codex |
| Author: | Antonio de Mendoza and Pacheco |
| Date: | 1541 approximately |
| Place Of Origin: | Mexico |
| Language(S): | Glosses in Spanish |
| Material: | bark paper |
| Size: | 140cmby23.5cmcm (60inchesby09.3inchescm) |
| Format: | screenfold book |
| Script: | Aztec script |
The Codex Mendoza is an Aztec codex, believed to have been created around the year 1541.[1] It contains a history of both the Aztec rulers and their conquests as well as a description of the daily life of pre-conquest Aztec society. The codex is written using traditional Aztec pictograms with a translation and explanation of the text provided in Spanish. It is named after Don Antonio de Mendoza (1495-1552), the viceroy of New Spain, who supervised its creation and who was a leading patron of native artists.
Mendoza knew that the ravages of the conquest had destroyed multiple native artifacts, and that the craft traditions that generated them had been effaced. When the Spanish crown ordered Mendoza to provide evidence of the Aztec political and tribute system, he invited skilled artists and scribes who were being schooled at the Franciscan college in Tlatelolco to gather in a workshop under the supervision of Spanish priests where they could recreate the document for him and the King of Spain.[2] The pictorial document that they produced became known as the Codex Mendoza: it consists of seventy-one folios made of Spanish paper measuring 20.6 × 30.6 centimeters (8.25 × 12.25 inches).[3] The document is crafted in the native style, but it now is bound at a spine in the manner of European books.
The codex is also known as the Codex Mendocino and La colección Mendoza, and has been held at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University since 1659. It was on display as part of the Bodleian's Gifts and Books exhibition from 16 June to 29 October 2023.[4] The Bodleian Library holds four other Mesoamerican codices: Codex Bodley, Codex Laud, Codex Selden, and the Selden Roll.
The manuscript must date from after 6 July 1529, since Hernán Cortéz is referred to on folio 15r as 'marques del Valle'.[5] It must have been produced before 1553, when it was in the possession of the French cosmographer André Thevet, who wrote his name on folios 1r, 2r, 70v, 71v.
The final page of the manuscript explains some of the circumstances in which it was produced.[6]
The manuscript was therefore finished in haste and designed to be sent to Spain. More precise information regarding the exact date of the manuscript and the reasons it was produced is controversial. The testimony of the conquistador Jerónimo López, probably dating from 1547, may be relevant.[7]
Silvio Zavala argued that the book referred to was the Codex Mendoza,[8] and his arguments were restated by Federico Gómez de Orozco.[9] If this is the case, then the Codex was written ('six years ago more or less' from López's recollection) and was commissioned by Mendoza. As H. B. Nicolson has pointed out, however, the description is not an exact fit for the Codex, and the identification is not certain.[10]
According to a later account by Samuel Purchas, a later owner of the Codex, writing in 1625, the Spanish fleet was attacked by French privateers and all of the booty, including the codex, was taken to France.[11]
It was certainly in the possession of André Thévet, cosmographer to King Henry II of France. Thévet wrote his name in five places on the codex, twice with the date 1553. It was later owned by the Englishman Richard Hakluyt. According again to Samuel Purchas, Hakluyt bought the Codex for 20 French francs. Some time after 1616 it was passed to Samuel Purchas, then to his son, and then to John Selden. The codex was deposited into the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in 1659, five years after Selden's death, where it remained in obscurity until 1831, when it was rediscovered by Viscount Kingsborough and brought to the attention of scholars.
Written on European paper, it contains 71 pages, divided into three sections:
Folios 73 to 85 of MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1, as currently foliated, do not form part of the Codex Mendoza. These folios comprise an originally separate manuscript, apparently written in England in the first half of the seventeenth century. This manuscript contains tables of the comparative value of Roman, Greek, English, and French money. The two manuscripts were bound together in England in the early seventeenth century.[14]