The greatest monument of sixteenth-century ethnography is the work of a Fran-
ciscan friar named Bernardino de Sahagún. From the 1540s to the 1580s, Sahagún
and a number of indigenous students and collaborators produced a series of ethno-
graphic studies combining pictorial and textual materials, the latter not in Spanish
but in Nahuatl. They interviewed experts in different fields, such as medicine, div-
ination, rhetoric, and the ancient ceremonies. Sahagún’s goal was to create an en-
cyclopedia of native culture that not only would assist priests in eliminating “pagan”
religion but also would serve as an extended lexicon for the language and a record
of native knowledge that was good (in his estimation) and useful. The native col-
laborators, like the artist who painted the Codex Mendoza,wanted to present an orderly
and a respectable image of their rapidly changing culture.
The culmination of the project is a document known as the Florentine Codex,com-
pleted in 1577 and now housed in the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy. Its twelve
books are written in Nahuatl, with an accompanying Spanish text summarizing and
commenting on the Nahuatl. Though primarily a written rather than pictorial docu-
ment, the small paintings by native artists found throughout the text are integral to
the work as a whole. The Florentine Codexis the longest text in a native language from236 UNIT 2 COLONIAL MESOAMERICA
Figure 6.13 Florentine Codex.A merchant family is hosting a
party to celebrate the birth of a child. Women guests receive gifts
of flowers and tobacco, enjoy a meal of tamales and turkey, and
dance in honor of the new baby. Florentine Codex,Book 4, folio
69v. Florence, The Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Sahagun, 1979.
Reproduced with permission of MiBACT. Further reproduction by
any means is prohibited.