The world of the Aztecs : in the Florentine codex
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The world of the Aztecs : in the Florentine codex
(The library on display, 1)
Mandragora, c2007
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
At head of title: Biblioteca medicea laurenziana
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In this book, the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana celebrates one of the most famous 16th-century manuscripts in its collections, the "Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espana" ('General History of the Things of New Spain') by Bernardino de Sahagun, commonly referred to as the Florentine Codex. A Spanish Franciscan friar who had arrived in Mexico as a missionary after the conquest of the region by Cortes (1519-21), Sahagun devoted his life to the study of indigenous cultures. Much like a modern-day anthropologist, he prepared questionnaires for prominent native elders, and from 1558, with the help of young Nahua students who had studied under him at Tlatelolco, compiled an unprecedented encyclopedia about the peoples and cultures of Central America.With its twelve books written in Nahuatl (the language most widely spoken in the region) and translated into Spanish, and its over 2,000 colour illustrations, the "Florentine Codex" is an extraordinary source of information about the myths, religious beliefs and practices, everyday life, history, traditional crafts and even eating habits of the Aztecs, with large sections devoted to animals and plants and a moving account of the Spanish Conquest and its devastating consequences.
It soon began to be suggested that the Historia might encourage idolatry, and in 1577 King Philip II of Spain ordered that all of Sahagun's writings should be sent to Spain so as to prevent the work's circulation. The friar wrote to the king himself in order to find out whether the precious codex had reached Europe, but never knew what had happened to it. At the age of almost eighty he set to work once again, spending his last years desperately trying to recover the material he believed had been lost.
by "Nielsen BookData"