Constructing a native heritage in New Spain? Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex (1577) as a “cultural encyclopedia”

Abstract

Research has classified the Florentine Codex as a “cultural encyclopedia” of the Nahua world and traced it back to antique and late medieval natural histories and encyclopedic writings. Against this backdrop, this chapter explores the genre and purpose of Sahagún’s manuscript. It relates the codex to earlier Franciscan writings on Amerindian antiquities and demonstrates how firmly it was anchored in early modern chorography and the first generation of Mexican Relaciones geográficas manuscripts, that were sent to Spain in responds to the surveys of the Council of the Indies between the 1530s and 1570s. Like other New Spanish chorographies, the Florentine Codex includes a multitude of voices communicating particular and often conflicting interests and world views. The chapter examines how Sahagún used his framing voice as well as the thematic structure and imagery of the codex to transform this polyphony into display of a Mexican cultural heritage, which he presented as the Nahua’s share in a prisca sapientia, an ancient and divine wisdom still remembered in all parts of the known world.