Work
Florentine Codex
Twelve-book encyclopaedia of Nahua life in Nahuatl and Spanish; Book 12 tells the conquest from the Nahua side.
- Also known as
- General History of the Things of New Spain
Twelve-book encyclopaedia of Nahua life in Nahuatl and Spanish; Book 12 tells the conquest from the Nahua side.
Connections 9
features
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Cortés enters Tenochtitlan
According to Florentine Codex
Primary record
1
The Nahua account of the first gifts of gold given to the Spaniards on the road to the city.
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Cortés enters Tenochtitlan
According to Florentine Codex
Primary record
1
Book 12 itself says Moctezuma thought the Spaniards gods and that this was Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl come to land. The book was put down decades after, under a Franciscan friar. Restall argues that Franciscan writers appear to have invented the Cortés-Quetzalcoatl link after the conquest.
- Death of Moctezuma Primary record 1
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Moctezuma taken into the Spanish quarters
According to Florentine Codex
Primary record
1
The Nahua account says the Spaniards seized Moctezuma in the palace and kept him under watch.
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Moctezuma taken into the Spanish quarters
According to Florentine Codex
Primary record
1
Book 12 on the plunder of the storehouse: the gold stripped from the shields, the rest burned, the gold made into bars.
- Smallpox in Mexico, 1520 According to Florentine Codex Primary record 1
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Cuauhtémoc tortured over the hidden gold
According to Florentine Codex
Primary record
1
Book 12 has the Captain demanding more gold of the rulers after the fall.
- Toxcatl massacre According to Florentine Codex Primary record 1
author
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Bernardino de Sahagún
Scholarship & press
2
A lesson sheet's description; the Codex's own title page names Sahagún.
Proof 2 sources
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Florentine Codex, Book 12: The Conquest of Mexico (Nahuatl text gathered under Bernardino de Sahagún in the 1500s; English translation by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, second edition, 1975), School of American Research and the University of Utah; the manuscript is on the Getty Research Institute's Digital Florentine Codex, 1975.
Primary record
As if they were monkeys they seized upon the gold.
For in truth they thirsted mightily for gold; they stuffed themselves with it; they starved for it
Thus he thought — thus was it thought — that this was Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl who had come to land.
And Moctezuma had acted thus because he thought them gods, he took them to be gods, he worshipped them as gods.
And when they were seen, when they were known to be Moctezuma and Itzquauhtzin, then they quickly took up Moctezuma in their arms.
Even before it had grown dark, there was terror, there was astonishment, there was apprehension, there was a stunning of the people.
And as all the gold was detached, at once they ignited, set fire to, applied fire to all the various precious things [which remained].
And the gold the Spaniards formed into separate bars.
But the rest of the green stone the Tlaxcallans just stole.
first there came to be prevalent a great sickness, a plague
There was indeed perishing; many indeed died of it.
That which was guarded in Mexico? You will show it all. For our lords seek it diligently!
Thereupon they surrounded the dancers. Thereupon they went among the drums.
without warning them they had slain them by treachery
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Moctezuma and Cortés: primary source analysis activity (Stanford History Education Group lesson, hosted by the University of Connecticut), reproducing excerpts of Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (2003), Stanford History Education Group, via the University of Connecticut, 2021.
Scholarship & press
Source: Excerpt from the Florentine Codex, an account of Aztec life originally written by Mexican natives between 1570-1585 under the supervision of Spanish friar Bernardino de Sahagún
Page history 1 change
- Add 55 stories, each checked against its sources96e92fe6
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