Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico
I’ve noticed a boom in people dropping by my post about the Codex Badianus, an Aztec book of medicine. Sadly, I’ve never found a full-text copy of that one online as all the translations so far seem to be still under copyright. However, I did find an entire academic exploration of sickness and medicine in Mexico during the colonial period, Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico! Written in 2008 by Sherry Fields, it covers how the colonized peoples of Mexico understood and dealt with illness and health, including viewpoints spanning from persistent pre-Conquest traditions to Colonial syncretisms to the new European concepts. Of particular interest are sections drawn from native-generated primary sources and contemporary colonial medical records. The author’s kindly made the whole text available to read online for free. To check it out, look below.
Go HERE to read Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico.
Update: Updated & Expanded Links For The Cantares Mexicanos & the Ballads of the Lords of New Spain
Sharp-eyed reader M.P. spotted some changes on the University of Texas websites for the Ballads of the Lords of New Spain and the Cantares Mexicanos. Thanks to their timely alert, I’ve updated my links to the full texts and bonus materials for the two foundational collections of Aztec poetry and song. As an extra stroke of good fortune, since my original post they’ve added the Nahuatl-English Dictionary & Concordance volume that originally accompanied the print edition of the Cantares Mexicanos. Just like the main volume, it is also freely available as a downloadable PDF.
Click HERE to check out the updated post!
Flower and Song, Plate 2 of the Codex Borbonicus
Conquistador Helm In Salem, MA Part 2
A quick post today to follow up on my last one. I was digging through a disc of photos my father took while we were visiting Salem, and it turns out he also snagged a shot of the conquistador’s helmet. He had a proper DSLR camera with him and was able to get a larger, higher resolution photo of the helm, so I’m posting it too so you can get a more detailed look. As always, click to view the image in its full size.
Conquistador’s Helm at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA (photo copyright 2012 by John L.)
Conquistador Helm In Salem, MA
Earlier this month I visited the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA and spotted a surprising object in their collection. Amidst the lovely array of East Asian artwork (better than the MFA’s holdings in Boston proper, in my opinion), nautical paintings and artifacts, and other marvels, sitting unobtrusively on a shelf in their gallery devoted to curios collected by local sailors from around the world, sits a conquistador’s helmet. I snapped a couple of photos to share with you all (please excuse the quality, I wasn’t planning on doing any photography and flashes were forbidden in the museum to boot). Click to view the photos full size.
First, a shot of the whole helmet on its shelf.
Conquistador’s Helm at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA (photo copyright 2012 by Cehualli)
Next, a close-up of the antique paper label pasted on the helm by a museum curator (presumably) a long time ago. Judging by the paper, ink, and handwriting style, I’m guessing it was attached to the artifact sometime in the 19th century. The label reads “An Ancient Spanish H[elmet] found in Mexico, and probably [worn?] by some of the followers of Cortez.”
Detail of the label attached to the conquistador’s helmet. (photo copyright 2012 by Cehualli)
Colloquies Of The Twelve
I have quite the research treat for you tonight, dear reader! After quite some time patiently hunting and following threads (and guessing the correct URL behind a broken link when one last barrier tried to put an end to my quest), I successfully tracked down the only English, full-text translation of an important Conquest-era work… the Colloquios y doctrina christiania (“Dialogues and Christian Doctrine”), often known to English speakers by its nickname “The Colloquies of the Twelve.”
The bilingual Nahuatl/Spanish text dates to about 1564 and was penned by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. The work concerns itself with recording a series of debates between Mexican religious and political authorities and a team of twelve friars sent by the Spanish crown to attempt to destroy the indigenous faith. These verbal battles took place in the early 1520’s, shortly after the fall of the Aztec empire. While Sahagún didn’t reach Mexico until 1529 and thus was a few years too late to have witnessed these discussions himself, he did consult ten out of twelve of the friars, as well as four Mexica informants and four eminent native scholars (Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegeriano, Martin Jacobita, and Andres Leonardo), in order to reconstruct the debates (albeit in a highly-poetic and dramatic form).
The lone surviving manuscript was lost for over three hundred years until it was rediscovered in the Vatican archives in the early twentieth century. Sadly, of the thirty chapters, only fourteen have endured the ravages of time. It received a German translation by Zelia Nuttall in the 1940’s, but remained untranslated into English until 1978, thanks to the effort of Jorge Klor de Alva (the first complete modern Spanish translation was executed by Miguel Leon-Portilla in 1977). Its first and only publication was in the final issue of Alcheringa: Ethnopoetics, Volume Four, Number Two, published by Boston University in 1980. This printing is the one I present you with today.
I also recommend poking around in other volumes in Alcheringa’s archives, as they have quite a bit of interesting stuff back there, including more Mesoamerican research and several recordings of indigenous poetry recitations. Thumbs up to Boston University for releasing these archives to the public, including the audio recordings that came with issues of this journal.
P.S. — As a bonus, this particular volume also includes several interesting Mayan legends I haven’t encountered anywhere else, and, related to my previous post, Thelma D. Sullivan’s full text translations of several birth/pregnancy huehuetlatolli speeches from Book 6 of the Florentine Codex.
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Book of the Colloquies; The Aztec-Spanish Dialogues of 1524. English edition translated and edited by Jorge Klor de Alva. Alcheringa/Ethnopoetics vol 4, no. 2:52—193. 1980.
Ballads of the Lords of New Spain & the Cantares Mexicanos
Fantastic news! I recently picked up a copy of John Bierhorst’s English translation of the Ballads of the Lords of New Spain (better known as the codex Romances de los Señores de la Nueva España), and discovered a note in the prefatory material of great interest. The University of Texas and Stanford University have completed an incredibly generous project, something that I’ve been hoping someone would do for years. Enough suspense, I’ll tell you what it is now.
Complete, full-text copies of both the Romances and the Cantares online, complete with commentary and material for comparative study of the two song texts, a Nahuatl-English concordance dictionary, relevant photos and scans from various codices relating to poetry and music, and even audio of performances of some of the actual sixteenth-century drum rhythms intended for the teponaztli, or wooden slit drum, based on the only piece of sheet music preserved recording actual Aztec music.
Folks, this is a huge deal, I can’t state it strongly enough. This is the vast majority of pre-Conquest and early Colonial Aztec poetry and song that has been preserved, in English and Nahuatl, searchable and complete, available for absolutely free, for the first time ever. Most of this material has previously been extremely difficult to get a hold of or flat-out unavailable (no complete English edition of the Romances existed before 2009), not to mention expensive. I own a near-mint paper copy of Bierhorst’s translation of the Cantares Mexicanos, which was produced in a limited run by Stanford University and has been out of print since 1985. It took me almost two years of scanning numerous international book selling services online to eventually secure a copy for under $250. You will never have to go through this difficulty and expense to study this collection of breathtakingly-beautiful poetry, as Stanford University has generously put a full copy of the Cantares Mexicanos on this same website in PDF format, that you can download for free.
Go HERE to the home page of the Ballads of the Lords of New Spain!
And go HERE to download a full PDF copy of the Cantares Mexicanos!
Also HERE for a full PDF copy of the Nahuatl-English Concordance & Dictionary volume for the Cantares Mexicanos!
Finally, go HERE for a list of post-publishing corrections to the Cantares!
In short, many thanks to the University of Texas, Stanford University, and Mr. Bierhorst for making this amazing resource available to all, it’s a move reminiscent of the great wave of public library and museum foundings in the USA in the 19th and early 20th centuries that have been such a force for learning and research. To my readers, I highly encourage you to pick up a print copy of the Ballads in order to support more projects like these in the future, and to give back to those involved in this one. Besides, it’s just nice to have a physical copy of a good book to curl up with.
I’ll be back to discuss these two works of Aztec poetry and song later on, but I just couldn’t wait to share these books with you now. Happy reading!
Flower and Song, Plate 2 of the Codex Borbonicus
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All links updated & more materials uploaded by U.Texas linked on 2/24/2013, courtesy of an alert reader. Thanks M.P.!
Codex Badianus & Aztec Herbal Medicine
While prowling around online I finally rediscovered a page that has some excerpts from the Codex Badianus on it. The Codex Badianus, also known as the Codex Barberini or the Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, was the first book of herbal medicine published in the Americas. It was written by Martin de la Cruz, a young Nahua herbal physician of good repute, and published in 1552. The University of Virginia has a nice little exhibit about the codex, including several traditional Aztec medical recipes and photos of some of the plants. If you’d like to learn a bit more about the codex itself and some general info about Aztec medicine, including a few more recipes, Mexicolore has a handly little introductory article on it to whet your appetite. Finally, if you’re curious to learn more at a more technical level, I even found some professional journal articles on the subject on PubMed. Don’t forget to check the References list at the bottom of the page for more articles on Aztec medicine available on PubMed.
Go HERE to visit the University of Virginia’s excepts from the Codex Badianus.
And go HERE to visit Mexicolore’s feature on the Badianus and Aztec medicine.
Finally, go HERE to read “Aztec Medicine” by Francisco Guerra, in Med Hist. 1966 October; 10(4): 315–338. Full text online, downloadable PDF also available.
- The Herb Quauhtlahuitzquilitl, Page 32 Recto of the Codex Badianus
Flower Songs of Nezahualcoyotl
A little poetry today for your contemplation and enjoyment. I dug up John Curl’s translation of several songs commonly attributed to Nezahualcoyotl over on FAMSI. The translations are quite nice, though I’d ignore his discussion about Nezahualcoyotl and Texcocan religion, as he seems to have bought into the myth that this ruler was a King David-esque poet, monotheist (!!), and crusader against sacrifice. This spurious idea got its birth right after the Conquest, and has been incredibly difficult to get rid of since. If you want to read a systematic study of this misrepresentation, its origins, and its repercussions on Mesoamerican studies since, I recommend checking out Jongsoo Lee’s The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl: Pre-Hispanic Religion, Politics, and Nahua Poetics. Dr. Lee thoroughly dismantles this idea and provides a wealth of information about Colonial distortions of Nahua religion and poetry, particularly where it intersects the “Nezahualcoyotl as pseudo-Christian” myth.
Bad history aside though, Curl’s actual translations are enjoyable, and I invite you to check those out.
Click HERE to read John Curl’s translations of Nahua poetry.
Nezahualcoyotl, From The Codex Ixtlilxochitl
Aztecs At The British Museum
In the spirit of the aphorism “a picture is worth a thousand words,” I recommend stopping by the British Museum’s Aztec collection online. They have available 27 photographs (well, 26 if you ignore the crystal skull that’s been proven to be a hoax) of beautiful Aztec and Mixtec artifacts. Among them are statues of Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Mictlantecuhtli, Tlazolteotl, Tlaloc, Xochipilli, and Xipe Totec, as well as a rare mosaic ceremonial shield, a turquoise serpent pectoral, and a sacrificial knife. The images are thought-provoking and intense, as these objects speak wordlessly the vision of the Nahua peoples without Colonial censorship.
Click HERE to visit the British Museum’s Aztec Highlights.
As a bonus, I located an excellent photograph of a jade mask of Xiuhtecuhtli, God of Time and Fire, which is a part of the British Museum’s collection but is not on their website. Thank you Z-m-k for putting your fine photography skills to work on this worthy subject material and for your kindness in sharing it under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 License.
Jade Mask of Xiuhtecuhtli
Tlacatecco 