Barbara_E._Mundy]_The_Death_of_Aztec_Tenochtitlan

124 • The deaTh of azTec TenochTiTLan, The Life of mexico ciTy

with the figure of the Mexica ruler. In fact, a cross erected
in San Francisco’s atrio made of ahuehuetl stood outside
the chapel, and this great tree had been dragged along the
Tacuba causeway from Chapultepec, forested from the
grove of sacred ancient trees that stood there. 35 However,
these great columns were transformed, their memory traces
redirected, as they were painted to look like jasper, the same
kind of columns Valadés instructs readers to construct in
their memory palaces to remember the Gospels. 36

Evidence for this Franciscan process of “redirecting”

pagan memory can be found in their approach to building

in the four altepeme. It will be recalled that each of the alte-

peme that composed pre-Hispanic Tenochtitlan—Moyo-

tlan, Teopan, Atzacoalco, and Cuepopan—had its own cer-

emonial complex, often set somewhere in the central zone.

By about 1530, the Franciscans had occupied these four

complexes and had their shrines at the tops of the temples

dismantled. 37 Evidence suggests that they built Christian

figuRe 6.5. Unknown creator,

diagram of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Codex

Osuna, fol. 8v, ca. 1565. © Biblioteca

Nacional de España, Madrid.