It's actually called The Codex Florentina de Nueva España and I first ran across it when I was looking for primary source information about Cortés. I was led to one of the most interesting Spaniards next to Cortés and Great Grandpa Cervantes. His name is Bernardino de Sahagun, a Franciscan priest who traveled with Cortés to Mexico to convert the native people but ended up doing something more important in the process.
I think of Sahagun as a genius and his gift was that of understanding the importance of language to bring about change. To convert the Aztecs, he understood that he must first understand their language and to do that he started the project of writing the Codex Florentina de Nueva España.
A codex is basically a translation from one language to another when both languages don't have a written alphabet in common. The Florentine Codex turned out to be a huge undertaking and Sahagun must have had a team of writers and artists to complete the project. So this codex would not only allow the Aztec user to better understand the Spanish language, but the Spanish reader could learn Nahautl, and at the same time learn about every aspect of Aztec culture. It was probably all in the effort to convert the indigenous people of the Americas to Catholicism.
Sahagun's codex worked both ways but the Catholic Church only wanted the codex to be used to convert Aztecs to Christianity, and because of this, the book needed to be controlled by the church. The Florentine Codex would be used to translate the bible into Nauhautal, but its details of Aztec life would not be available to people for over 350 years.
Once released, Bernardino de Sahaguin gets credit for being one of the first ethnographers in human history, and he had no idea that what he was doing was ethnography. I do think he was aware of the beauty of the Aztec culture and probably realized that it was being rapidly destroyed. We now know that Aztec culture was dramatically altered / destroyed / changed after Cortés and the Spanish took Tenochtitlan. So Sahagun's work becomes even more important.
It remains the most comprehensive documentation of Aztec culture: 12 volumes, 2,000 pages, and over 3000 illustrations. I think Sahagun must have had a group of Aztec artists, writers, translators, historians, and scholars working for him to complete such a task. It took him 14 years to finish the Codex Florentina de Nueva España, and it probably changed him more than it was to change anyone else.
Sahagun became the first European to understand every aspect of Aztecculture from birth to death, to religion, medicine, diet, art, education,politics, and everything in-between. And what would become of this amazingwork? From what I can tell it was used to convert the indigenous people ofMexico to Catholicism and help convert the Aztec culture into a Christian blendof Aztec/Catholic.
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MC Quixote
General FictionThis story is about a fifteen year old moving from Mexico to the United States with her deaf father. She experiences many challenges and turns to writing songs and creating music to overcome the difficulties of moving to a new culture while growing...
