"The Florentine Codex is an encyclopedic accounting of life in 16th-century Mexico and an invaluable resource for understanding the exchange between European and Indigenous cultures during the Spanish conquest. Emerging from a time of societal upheaval, the codex was written as an attempt to record the culture and beliefs of the Aztec peoples of Mexico in the areas surrounding the once great city of Tenochtitlan."
"Written at a time when Spanish authorities had been and still were actively undermining Aztec culture and beliefs, the Florentine Codex represents an attempt to document and preserve a past and people being systematically censored. It is the product of many minds in collaboration, written in two different languages by numerous scribes and illuminated by a number of artists employing a uniquely syncretic style of illustration,"
The Florentine Codex compiles a comprehensive record of Aztec society immediately after the fall of the empire, covering religion, daily life, flora and fauna, and Indigenous perspectives on the conquest. The work was produced over nearly thirty years and organized into twelve illuminated books with thousands of pages and illustrations. The codex reflects collaborative production in two languages, with numerous scribes and artists using a syncretic illustrative style. The project aimed to document and preserve cultural knowledge during sustained efforts by Spanish authorities to undermine Aztec beliefs and practices. The codex remains a central ethnohistorical source for colonial Mexico.
Read at World History Encyclopedia
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]