Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research

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From the ‘Memoriales con escolios’ to the

Florentine Codex: Sahagún and his Nahua
assistants' co-authorship of the Spanish
translation

Victoria Ríos Castaño

To cite this article: Victoria Ríos Castaño (2014) From the ‘Memoriales con escolios’ to
the Florentine Codex: Sahagún and his Nahua assistants' co-authorship of the Spanish
translation, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 20:2, 214-228, DOI:
10.1080/13260219.2014.939128

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13260219.2014.939128

Published online: 27 Aug 2014.

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Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 2014
Vol. 20, No. 2, 214–228, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13260219.2014.939128

From the ‘Memoriales con escolios’ to the Florentine Codex: Sahagún

and his Nahua assistants’ co-authorship of the Spanish translation
Victoria Rı́os Castaño*

Victoria University of Wellington

It is generally assumed that Fray Bernardino de Sahagún translated the Nahuatl text of
the Florentine Codex (ca. 1577– 1579) into Spanish. The surviving ‘Memoriales con
escolios’ (Tlatelolco, ca. 1565), a three-column page draft comprising the Nahuatl-
language source text, its translation into Spanish and explanatory notes for the
clarification of relevant Nahuatl terminology, serves as a point of reference to argue
that Sahagún’s group of Nahua assistants were co-authors of the column containing the
Spanish translation that was eventually transferred to the Florentine Codex. In order to
support this argument, this study portrays the learning experiences to which his Nahua
assistants were exposed at the Imperial College of Tlatelolco, and which they applied to
the creation of the ‘Memoriales con escolios’, and examines a passage from the
manuscript that casts light on Sahagún and his assistants’ working methods and on the
translation techniques that they employed.
Keywords: College of Tlatelolco; Florentine Codex; ‘Memoriales con escolios’;
Nahua assistants; Sahagún; Spanish translation

A cursory glance at the surviving drafts of Historia universal de las cosas de Nueva
España, known as the Códices matritenses, and at its final copy, the Florentine Codex,
suffices to open up a Pandora’s Box of concerns about their polyphonic nature and
authorship.1 Traceable throughout the manuscripts is the handwriting of several Nahua
copyists, who drafted passages, rewrote some of them and composed new ones, together
with that of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, who scribbled scattered marginal annotations
and section titles. Sahagún explains the complicated production process through which
these manuscripts came into existence in his second prologue to Historia universal,
increasing the speculation about its authorship by asserting that ‘esta obra a sido
examjnada, y apurada por muchos, y en muchos años’.2 Having devised a summary of all
the topics he wished to cover, Sahagún gathered a group of high-born Nahua elders,
to whom he refers as ‘principales’, in two locations in central Mexico—Tepeapulco
(ca. 1558 – 1561) and Tlatelolco (ca. 1561 –1565) —and asked them questions relating to
his summary. Sahagún also counted on a group of Nahua ‘colegiales’, former students
whom he had trained in Latin grammar and rhetoric at the Franciscan Imperial College of
Santa Cruz in Santiago of Tlatelolco. In their role as Sahagún’s assistants, the ‘colegiales’
acted as cultural mediators, clarifying queries and providing information and explanations
of cultural and linguistic nuances that escaped him. In addition, these assistants jotted
down all the information that Sahagún requested in Nahuatl; they compared, selected, and
edited answers, adding data and turning an amalgam of material into coherent texts that
read fluently in their mother-tongue.

*Email: [email protected]

q 2014 Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia (AILASA)

 Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 215

In his introductory study to the 1956 edition of the Spanish version of Historia
universal, Ángel Marı́a Garibay Kintana foregrounded the Nahuas’ role in the production
of the text, stating that the Códices matritenses are ‘indudable testimonio de lo que dijeron
y redactaron los indios, es obra de éstos más que de Sahagún’.3 The Nahuas merge into a
united front that includes the group of ‘colegiales’ or acculturated assistants and the Nahua
elders who supplied oral and pictorial sources. In 1958, Miguel León Portilla initiated a
book series entitled Fuentes indı́genas de la cultura Náhuatl: Textos de los informantes de
Sahagún, which continued to emphasize that these early drafts should be attributed to the
Nahua elders and assistants rather than to Sahagún.4 Donald Robertson cast doubt on
Garibay Kintana and León Portilla’s stance, reassuring that ‘[t]he role of the informants
was in essence a passive role; the role of Sahagún was the active and dominant role, the
role of editor and controling mind of the whole enterprise’.5 After all, it is Sahagún who
designed the content outline, asked questions, supervised what his assistants wrote, and
modelled the amalgam of heterogeneous writings into sections, chapters and books,
producing a harmonious categorization of knowledge that mirrors classical and medieval
hierarchically-ordered encyclopaedias.6 Leaving aside the Nahua elders’ input, Robertson
nevertheless recognizes the potential contribution of Sahagún’s assistants to the different
drafts of Historia universal. While in Tepeapulco they were still young adults, once in
Mexico City ‘they were old enough to have had some influence on the formation of the
manuscript [ . . . ]. They were no longer so young so as to be without acceptable ideas and
forceful suggestions’.7
The agency of the Nahua assistants in the writing of the Nahuatl-source text of Historia
universal has come to the fore and found support in a number of examples of how they
may have brought a European mindset to bear on their ancestors’ answers. J. Jorge Klor de
Alva compared the descriptions of the god Huitzilopochtli in the Primeros memoriales of
Tepeapulco (ca. 1559 –1561) and the Manuscrito de Tlatelolco (ca. 1561 –1565), and
observed a substantial ideological shift that he attributes to the assistants. In the former
text, Huitzilopochtli is represented as a two-dimensional deity who nurtures and destroys;
in the latter, he is stripped of his virtues and transformed into a Christianized one-
dimensional evil sorcerer.8 In their studies of Book XI of Historia universal, on fauna,
flora and mineralogy, Luisa Pranzetti and Ilaria Palmeri Capesciotti have also unveiled
possible additions on the assistants’ part. Both scholars have identified the depiction of
monogamous snakes, chaste turtledoves and the prodigious eagle’s sight as amply-
disseminated sixteenth-century European topoi contained in Pliny’s Historia naturalis and
Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum.9 Likewise, Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo
has noted analogies with the portrayals of the jaguar and the eagle in passages of Johann
Von Cube’s Hortus sanitatis, and in that of the coyote as a grateful animal in Pliny’s
work.10
The exploration of the Nahua assistants’ involvement in the creation of Book XII, on
the conquest of Mexico, brings to light the assistants’ working methods and their
engagement not only during the composition of the Nahuatl text but also during its
translation into Spanish. In his thorough examination of this book’s manuscript—
following the format of the Florentine Codex; a two-column page work with the Spanish
translation on the left and the original on the right—James Lockhart has perceived the
presence of two scribes who copied previous drafts; one of them the Nahuatl text, and the
other, the Spanish text. As for the author or authors of the originals, Lockhart expresses
uncertainty about the closeness and nature of Sahagún’s supervision, which leads him to
propose that the assistants composed the Nahuatl text and to treat the authorship of the
translation into Spanish cautiously.11 An analysis of this target text, which is riddled with
216 V. Rı́os Castaño

spelling mistakes, due to the scribe’s technique of pronouncing aloud while he was
writing, and with grammatical errors and unidiomatic expressions that reveal the scribe’s
weakness in the Spanish language, would suggest that Sahagún did not revise the final
manuscript.12 The evidence of his absence leaves Lockhart unsure as to whether it was
Sahagún or his assistants who authored the translation. Nevertheless, the paraphrasing, the
use of words such as ‘indios’ versus ‘españoles’, and biased items of information inserted
within the text—for example, the promotion of Cortés, whom the Franciscans revered as
God’s instrument to evangelize the New World—prompts Lockhart to conclude that
Sahagún must have been the author. ‘Although I would not know how to go about proving
it’, Lockhart admits, ‘I doubt that Sahagún’s aides did much direct translation of the
Nahuatl [ . . . ]. I have little reason to doubt that the Spanish text faithfully represents
Sahagún’s intentions and views, and even for the most part his phrasing’.13 Lockhart’s
argument, and above all his final statement ‘even for the most part his phrasing’, open the
door for interpretation, indicating, perhaps, that Sahagún was the main translator and that
his assistants aided him.
The authorship of the Spanish translation, which has been commonly regarded as
Sahagún’s work, has come under scrutiny in recent years and appears to be leaning, like
the authorship of the Nahuatl text, towards the Nahua assistants. Thus, in his study of Book
XII Kevin Terraciano has questioned whether Sahagún is the sole translator of the Nahuatl
text, arguing that ‘Sahagún translated or participated in the translation of the Nahuatl into
Spanish’.14 Bearing in mind the difficulty that the claim of authorship raises, Terraciano
deals with examples in which the Spanish text paraphrases, summarizes, omits, and
distorts information from the Nahuatl-source text. He holds the view that ‘[s]omeone,
perhaps Sahagún himself, seems to have softened the tenor of the Nahuatl text in the
Spanish translation’, hinting that Sahagún’s authorship, or solitary authorship, should not
be assumed.15 In this vein, in her analysis of Sahagún’s prologues to Historia universal
Mariana C. Zinni goes even further to boldly assert that ‘estos estudiantes’, in reference to
the assistants or ‘colegiales’, ‘escribieron la sección náhuatl del texto, [y] la tradujeron al
español (mientras fray Bernardino revisaba la misma)’.16 The extent to which this
statement is valid—or any other challenging Sahagún’s authorship of a text written in his
native language, and which, conversely, is the language that his assistants learnt—proves
difficult to ascertain after the study of not only Book XII but also of the remaining Spanish
translation of the Florentine Codex. After all, the truth is that, in general terms, on reading
the Spanish text it is Sahagún’s Eurocentric and Christian worldview that permeates
throughout, domesticating the source text by inserting sixteenth-century Spanish culture-
specific items, biased interpretations and digressions.
The intention of this article is to gauge the degree to which Sahagún’s Nahua
assistants can be credited with the co-authorship of the Spanish translation. Given that
they were linguistically and culturally equipped to perform a profound analysis of
the Nahuatl text by resolving vocabulary and grammar issues that were raised during the
translation process, their role in textual interpretation and translation activities must be
taken into consideration. In doing so, this article examines a passage from the early
surviving manuscript of Historia universal, the ‘Memoriales con escolios’, composed in
Tlatelolco around 1565. This text, which has three columns per page, comprising the
Nahuatl text, the Spanish translation and explanatory notes of Nahuatl terms, enables a
better understanding of the translation process, and unfolds how the Nahua assistants
clarified linguistic subtleties in Nahuatl, a task that, to a certain extent, makes them
co-authors of the resulting fluent translation into Spanish. In order to demonstrate this, the
article is divided into two interrelated sections. The first one is briefly concerned with the
 Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 217

role that Sahagún played as a tutor at the College of Tlatelolco and the learning
experiences that his students internalized, which were vital for their later linguistic
commissions. The second analyses a passage from the ‘Memoriales con escolios’ so as to
shed light upon the manner in which Sahagún and his assistants transferred the linguistic
activities exercized at Tlatelolco to the working scheme that was in place during the
translation process of the Nahuatl text into Spanish.

Sahagún and his students of Tlatelolco

Officially opened in 1536, the Franciscan Imperial College of Santa Cruz for Nahua boys
in Santiago of Tlatelolco was one of the earliest Franciscan centres of study in the New
World. The friars worked as tutors in the delivery of a European grammar school
programme and continued with their own religious studies, which they combined with the
creation of linguistic and doctrinal texts that facilitated the learning and use of Nahuatl, the
language in which they were struggling to spread the Catholic faith.17 Amongst others,
Fray Juan Focher, a former doctor of Law in Paris, taught rhetoric, logic, and philosophy,
and wrote a Nahuatl grammar, and Fray Andrés de Olmos, a graduate of Canon Law at the
University of Valladolid, taught Latin, translated sermons and religious treatises,
pioneered the writing of accounts of indigenous cultures, and composed the Nahuatl
grammar Arte de la lengua mexicana (1547). As for Sahagún, junior in age and education,
he speaks himself of his first pedagogical role at the College as a tutor of Latin—‘[y]o fuy,
el que los primeros quatro años, trabaje con ellos, y los puse en la intelligencia de todas las
materias, de la latinidad’—, although, with the passing of the years, he would also impart
moral and natural philosophy, subject matters covered in Books VI, VII, and XI of
Historia universal.18
The library collection of the College hoarded an exhaustive inventory of some of the
works that Sahagún and his brethren employed to educate their Nahua pupils. For the
study of grammar, Sahagún availed of Nebrija’s Introductiones latinae, and for rhetoric,
of a copious list of collections of excerpts and works by Quintilian, Cicero, Virgil,
Seneca, Sallust, and Caesar.19 For example, in De institutione oratoria Quintilian called
for the experimentation, discovery and mastery of the language and style of works like
Aesop’s fables and of heroic verses, as found in Virgil’s The Aeneid, by means of
paraphrase and emulation. Taking heed of Quintilian’s advice, the tutors ensured that
students at Tlatelolco received instruction in textual analysis, which meant that they
wrote grammatical commentaries, drew up glosses, and undertook exercises in
abbreviation, amplification, translation, and appropriation or free rewriting.20 These
learning activities can be inferred from the fact that Sahagún took pride in his students’
proficiency to ‘hacer versus heruicus’ in Latin, and because a selected number of
Aesop’s fables might have been translated into Nahuatl by one or more men associated
with the College.21
Trained as skilled linguists and rhetoricians, outstanding students became teachers,
scribes and translators who rendered their services as interpreters of liturgical activities
and collaborated very closely with the friars in the production of religious and linguistic
works in Nahuatl for confessors and preachers. Worthy of mention are Martı́n Jacobita;
tutor and rector of the College; Antonio Valeriano, who aided Fray Juan Bautista in the
writing of Sermonario and Fray Alonso de Molina in researching and drafting meanings
and etymologies for Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana; and Hernando de
Ribas, who also contributed to Molina’s work and translated Fray Juan de Gaona’s
Colloquios de la paz, y tranquilidad del alma, en lengua mexicana.22 Like his brethren,
218 V. Rı́os Castaño

Sahagún benefited from the assistance of a regular cohort of ‘colegiales’. He highlights

their substantial input in the composition of the works that had been attributed to him
when stating that ‘si sermones y postillas y doctrinas se han hecho en la lengua indiana,
que puedan parecer y sean limpios de toda heregia son los que con ellos se han
compuesto’, because, as native speakers of Nahuatl and trained in Latin, classical rhetoric
and grammar at Tlatelolco, ‘nos dan a entender las propriedades de los vocablos y las
propriedades de su manera de hablar; y las incongruidades que hablamos en los sermones o
escrebimos en las doctrinas ellos nos las enmiendan’.23 As their presence was essential for
the understanding of the subtleties of the Nahuatl language, Sahagún insists that
‘cualquiera cosa que se ha de convertir en su lengua, si no va con ellos examinada, no
puede ir sin defecto’, a statement which certifies that the assistants played an indispensable
role in translation tasks; that is, in the search of equivalents, the clarification of grammar
issues, and the proofreading of texts translated from Spanish and Latin into Nahuatl.24 His
indebtedness is such that he eulogizes them as experts in Latin, by calling them ‘latinos’
and ‘gramaticos’, and as ‘trilingues’ or ‘espertos en tres lenguas, latina, española y
indiana’.25 What is more, Sahagún even names some of them and their places of origin in
the second prologue to Historia universal: ‘el principal y mas sabio, fue antonjio
valeriano, vezino de azcaputzalco: otro poco menos, que este fue Alonso vegerano, vezino
de quauhtitlan: otro fue martin Jacobita, [ . . . ] otro pedro de san buenauentura, vezino de
quauhtitlan. [ . . . ] Diego de grado, vezino del Tlatilulco [ . . . ], Bonifacio maximiliano,
vezino del tlatilulco [ . . . ]. Matheo seuerino, vezino de suchimjlco’.26 All of them were to
work hand in hand with Sahagún at some point once the highest Prelate of the Franciscan
Order, Fray Francisco de Toral, commissioned him in 1558 to write ‘en lengua mexicana,
lo que me pareciese, ser vtil: para la doctrina, cultura, y manutencia, de la cristiandad,
destos naturales’.27 Surviving texts resulting from this appointment include Historia
universal, Sahagún’s version of the discussions held by Franciscans and Nahua wisemen
or ‘tlamatinime’; Colloquios y doctrina christiana (ca. 1564), the collection of sermons
and prayers Adiciones, apéndice a la postilla y exercicio quotidiano (1579), the collection
of chants and sermons Psalmodia christiana y sermonario de los sanctos del año (1583),
and a series of manuscripts and sermons held in the Newberry Library and the Biblioteca
Nacional of Mexico.

Glossing and translation in the ‘Memoriales con escolios’

Initially, Sahagún envisaged Historia universal as an encyclopaedic work for preachers
and confessors who would consult a Nahuatl source text in the centre of the page, its
translation into Spanish on the left and relevant explanatory or lexicographic notes relating
to the Nahuatl text on the right.28 Nevertheless, the ambitious project failed due to lack of
funding to cover production costs and salaries, and so the intended layout is only reflected
in the surviving manuscripts of the ‘Memoriales con escolios’, which comprise the first
five chapters of what eventually became Book VII of Historia universal—on the sun, the
moon, the stars, and the clouds—and chapters I, II and part of III of Book X—on the
portrayal of people according to the Christian categorization of virtuous versus sinful
features.29 Below is the example on the virtuous great-grandfather, which, relocated to
Historia universal, is found in chapter I of Book X of the Florentine Codex. The Spanish
column starts under Sahagún’s handwritten title ‘visabuelo’ and the three columns are
written by the same Nahua scribe. The explanations and the Spanish text occupy less space
than the Nahuatl text, which has been written more carefully and in bigger lettering, so it
seems, to facilitate reading.30
 Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 219

The transcription of the Spanish text with its Nahuatl-source text and relevant explanatory notes
follows as:
El bisabuelo es decrepito es (1) Achtontli, (2) aoc 1. bisabuelo. 2. decrepito.
otra vez niño, p[er]o quimati veue, (3) oppa ca. haoc quimati
bisabuelo que tiene buen piltontli, yn qualli achtontli, noueuetcauh [case. my old
seso es hōbre de buen (4) tlillo tlapalo, (5) teyo man no longer knows it]. 3.
exemplo y de buena tocaye, (6) necauhcayo dos uezes niño [.] 4.
dotrina, de buena fama, de amoxtli tlacuilolli. ([1] The persona de buen exēplo. 5.
buena nombradia, dexa Great-Grandfather: [2] [He persona de buena fama o de
obras de buena memoria en is] decrepit, [3] in his buena nombradia. 6.
vida[,] en haziend[a], en second childhood. The persona que dexa obras
generacion[,] escritas como good great-grandfather [4] honrrosas escritas como un
un libro. [is] of exemplary life, [5] libro.
of fame, of renown. [6] His
good works remain written
in books).

This three-column page evinces that far from creating a vocabulario with isolated Nahuatl
words and their Spanish meaning, Sahagún sought to codify the language in its context of
use.31 His lexicographic intention can be seen in the right-hand column entries; annotations
that furnish information on nouns, adjectives and verbs within the central text that Sahagún
wanted to clarify, and which are numbered in order to allow readers to make an immediate
association between the word in its context and the lexicographic entry. The contents of the
central and the right-hand columns are reminiscent of those in the exhaustive monolingual
Latin dictionary Cornucopiae (1502) by the Italian humanist Ambrosio Calepino.32 Entries
consisted of grammar notes, definitions, synonyms, and quotes from classical literature that
‘authorized’ or certified their use. In his first prologue to Historia universal, Sahagún cites
the Calepin in order to argue that, as much as he felt it was necessary to compile a similar
Nahuatl dictionary, unlike Calepino, he did not have recourse to Nahua poets and orators’
written samples, which would have authorized the meaning and use of words in the same
manner as the classical auctoritates had done for Latin. Sahagún, nevertheless, strove to
supply a bank of texts with linguistic authority, a ‘red barredera para sacar a luz todos los
vocablos desta lengua con sus propias y methaphoricas significac
iones’.33 This ambitious
corpus offered ‘todas las maneras de hablar, y todos los vocablos, que esta lengua vsa:
tambien autorizados, y ciertos: como lo que escriujo Vergilio, y Ciceron, y los demas
authores, de la lengua latina’, the core texts or ‘fundamentos’, as Sahagún calls them, that
220 V. Rı́os Castaño

could secure the elaboration of a Nahuatl Calepin in the future.34 In his time, nonetheless,
Sahagún made available to friars a no less remarkable work, thanks to which those looking
for authorized or appropriate excerpts in Nahuatl to, for example, depict old men or
interact with them, whether in a casual meeting or in a religious context, such as in a
sermon or during the administering of the sacrament of penance, had at their disposal
descriptions like that of the virtuous great-grandfather. In the ‘Memoriales con escolios’
the central column in Nahuatl, catching the friars’ eyes with its larger, firmer and clearer
handwriting, is flanked by the fluent translation into Spanish and explanatory notes that
informed them how they could use relevant terms. A general examination of all the
explanatory notes shows that, in order to record the correct grammatical and semantic
application of the language for non-native speakers, Sahagún asked his assistants to write
the first person possessive form of nouns, which differed from their nominative form; the
preterit form of verbs, the construction of which presented several options; and the words
‘persona’ and ‘cosa’ preceding adjectives and nouns and functioning as qualifiers that
dispelled doubts on how best to put those words into practice.35
As regards the explanatory notes, within the passage concerning the virtuous great-
grandfather these range from equivalents like number 1 (‘achtontli’ for great-grandfather), and
figurative or sense-for-sense interpretations like number 2 (‘aoc quimate veue’ as decrepit, and
literally meaning ‘old man no longer knows it’), to definitions by explanation like number 6
(‘necauhcayo amoxtli tlacuilolli’ as ‘persona que dexa obras honrrosas escritas como un
libro’, although ‘amoxtli tlacuilolli’ can be understood literally as ‘work, writing’), and
morphological annotations like number 2 (‘ca. haoc quimati noueuetcauh’, literally meaning
‘case, my old man who loses control of himself’).36 In this final instance a difference is
established between the nominative case and the possessive form. While in the Nahuatl text of
the central column ‘ueue’, as in ‘(2) aoc quimati veue’, represents the nominative case (‘an old
man’ or ‘the old man’), the annotation ‘noueuetcauh’ of the right-hand column expresses the
possessive in the first person singular (‘my old man’). The abbreviation ‘ca.’, standing for
grammatical case—since Sahagún and his contemporaries conceived the modification of
Nahuatl words as Latin cases—displays the complex formation of the possessive form to a
non-native speaker of Nahuatl. In this case, the word ‘ueue’ demands the prefix ‘no’, an
intercalary ‘t’ and the suffix ‘cauh’. As native speakers, Sahagún’s assistants left notice of
how to modify ‘ueue’ (old) and, thus, refer to a penitent or a member of a religious
congregation, without incurring any mistake, with the word ‘noueuetcauh’ (‘my old man’).
In fact, the correct use of epithets and vocatives according to the socio-cultural
aspects with which the Nahuas endowed kinship was a concern for friars like Sahagún,
Olmos and Fray Alonso de Molina, all of whom undertook lexicographic projects.37
Illustrative of this is another passage of the ‘Memoriales con escolios’ that contains the
description of the virtuous father. The Spanish column, which starts under Sahagún’s
handwritten rubric of ‘padre’, registers the distinct vocatives that, depending on the gender
and the status of the speaker, were uttered in order to address a father reverentially:
El hijo del señor dize a su padre nopiltzintzin. Nopiltzintzine. La hija dize le. Noconetzin.
Notecu. Totecu. Notecuiyo.
El hijo del principal, mercader, o oficial dize a su padre, Niccauhtzin. Niccauhtzine. La hija
dizele. Noconetzin.
El hijo del Labrador dize a su p[adre]. Notatzin. Notecutzin. Notecutze. Tecutze, tachitze,
tachietze. La hija dize le. Notecutzin, tecutzin, tachitzin.38
Further analysis of the excerpt describing the virtuous great-grandfather allows
speculation on the order of composition of each column as well as on the working scheme
 Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 221

implemented by Sahagún and his assistants. It seems as if the Nahuatl text of the central
column, in larger handwriting, was the first to be added to the blank page. In another
surviving manuscript dating from 1563– 1565, known as the ‘Memoriales en tres
columnas’, most of the pages only have the Nahuatl column filled in, which tells us that in
the elaboration of his three-column page format Sahagún decided the initial incorporation
of the Nahuatl text, from which the annotations and the translation into Spanish derive.39
The composition of this Nahuatl text, as Sahagún reports in his second prologue to Historia
universal, resulted from the assistants’ juxtaposition of the material collected from the
Nahuas who had answered Sahagún’s series of questionnaires in Tepeapulco and
Tlatelolco. During this scrutiny process that involved the correction, deletion and
expansion of data, Sahagún eulogizes Martı́n Jacobita, at the time rector of the College, as
his most industrious assistant.40 With respect to the composition of the explanatory notes,
this appears to have occurred in a second stage, given that, in the case of the virtuous great-
grandfather description, the Nahuatl and the explanatory notes columns are finished,
whereas the translation of the Nahuatl paragraph into Spanish, as can be observed in the
above illustration, is in the end summarized by following the explanatory notes, and left
partially incomplete.
The creation of the three-column page can be considered as a re-enactment of two
comprehension and writing activities which, as recommended by Quintilian, Sahagún
must have asked his students to put into practice during his Latin classes: the analysis of
the source text by discussing grammatical features, equivalents and definitions, and, once
accurately understood, the translation of the source text into their native language and,
perhaps, into Spanish. Moreover, the three-column page mirrors the translation process, in
which an unspecified number of assistants, together and at times maybe without Sahagún,
analysed the nouns, adjectives and verbs to be included within the explanations column;
exchanged views on how, for instance, the possessive form of a certain word was formed,
and discussed different equivalents so as to concur on the best possible translation of a unit
into Spanish. The paragraph on the virtuous great-grandfather reveals that the translation
units correspond with the entries in the explanatory notes column; for example ‘(2) aoc
quimati veue’, literally meaning ‘old man no longer knows it’, is translated sense-for-
sense as ‘decrepito’, which also appears in the Spanish translation.
As regards the writing of the translation column of the ‘Memoriales con escolios’, it is
to be noted that sometimes Sahagún scribbles down titles and keywords in Spanish,
and he does so alongside the beginning of the Nahuatl text in the central column. His
interventions can be interpreted as evidence of his reading of the Nahuatl text in order to
supervise it, prepare for the translation and point out to his assistants where the translation
ought to be added.41 The possibilities for coming up with the Spanish version are diverse
and might have depended on factors such as the complexity of the text and even Sahagún’s
availability. For the case in hand, that of the paragraph on the virtuous great-grandfather,
one option is that Sahagún and at least one of his assistants worked through the explanatory
notes and the translation into Spanish together. Sahagún must have debated with him on
how best to translate a term or a phrase, which, as a non-native speaker, he found confusing
or he thought required explanation. Another possibility is that, after writing the Nahuatl
column for the first time or copying it from a previous text, the assistant analysed it and
wrote the explanatory notes in a draft, including the translation of terms. Whenever these
posed complications, the assistant consulted Sahagún, who, as a native speaker of Spanish,
dictated the final version that the assistant copied in another more polished draft.
A comparison of the translation of terms within the explanatory notes column and the
more or less matching translation within the Spanish one throws light upon Sahagún and
222 V. Rı́os Castaño

his assistant’s working method. The translations of scholia numbers 1 (‘achtontli’ as

‘bisabuelo’), 2 (‘aoc quimati veue’ as ‘decrepito’) and 5 (‘teyo tocaye’ as ‘persona de
buena fama o de buena nombradia’) remain the same in the Spanish translation column.
Sahagún either agreed with the suggestions offered by his assistant or made the decisions
after consulting him. When choosing the Spanish equivalent for ‘achtontli’ they would
have spoken about family linearity; and when trying to understand the meaning of ‘aoc
quimati veue’ (literally, ‘old man no longer knows it’) and ‘teyo tocaye’ (‘of fame, of
renown’), which imply a more abstract interpretation, Sahagún possible asked his assistant
for the clarification by analysing the terms grammatically and by translating the words
literally. As a result, Sahagún rephrased ‘aoc quimate veue’ by giving it an appropriate
sense-for-sense meaning; that of ‘decrepito’. Interestingly, the translation decisions of the
scholia numbers 3 (‘oppa piltontli’ as ‘dos vezes niño’), 4 (‘tlillo tlapalo’ as ‘persona de
buen exēmplo’) and 6 (‘necauhcayo amoxtli tlacuilolli’ as ‘persona que dexa obras
honrrosas escritas como un libro’) differ from those written in the Spanish column—‘otra
vez niño’, ‘hōbre de buen exemplo y de buena dotrina’ and ‘dexa obras de buena memoria
en vida[,] en haziend[a], en generacion[,] escritas como un libro’, respectively. As in the
case of ‘aoc quimate veue’, Sahagún and his assistant applied word-for-word versus sense-
for-sense translation techniques; in Sahagún’s words ‘propias y metaphoricas
significac
iones’.42 Thus, for the translation of the scholia number 3 (‘oppa piltontli’ as
‘dos vezes niño’), Sahagún and his assistant probably expected the reader to have a basic
knowledge of Nahuatl, and knew that ‘oppa’ would be immediately recognized as ‘two’ or
‘twice’; hence the explanatory or literal translation ‘twice a child’. In the Spanish column
Sahagún opts for the sense-for-sense ‘es otra vez niño’, so as to ensure that the final
translation his fellow missionaries would read did not sound awkward or abrupt.
As a matter of fact, it is very likely that Sahagún felt under pressure to produce clear and
useful explanatory notes and a high-quality translation for his peers. They would observe
how the terms within the Nahuatl text and the explanatory columns were related, and how his
translation into Spanish read not only in isolation but also as intrinsically linked to the source
text and the explanatory notes. Sahagún’s intention of providing friars, the majority of whom
were native speakers of Spanish, with a fluent version is similarly borne out by the fact that
the translation of terms in scholia numbers 4 and 6 is more specific and detailed in the
column with the Spanish text.43 ‘Tlillo tlapalo’ is understood as ‘hombre’, not ‘persona’, and
not only ‘de buen exemplo’, but also ‘de buena dotrina’, whereas ‘necauhcayo amoxtli
tlacuilolli’ is further explained as a man who leaves a legacy of, rather than only ‘obras
honrrosas escritas como un libro’, ‘obras de buena memoria en vida[,] en hazienda, en
generacion[,] escritas como un libro’. The Spanish translation, in both the scholia and the
final translation, retains this interpretation of ‘amoxtli, tlacuilolli’ as ‘obras [ . . . ] escritas
como un libro’, but it seems as if in the Spanish translation Sahagún wanted to convey a
more elaborate explanation of the kind of a book an ‘amoxtli’ was. Although he shared
knowledge of ‘amoxtli’ with his contemporary friars, he wished to pin down its meaning
and stress its value by uttering different explanatory options to ‘honrrosas’ that crossed his
mind, probably after reading notes 7, 8 and 9, which were taken down by an assistant.

The Spanish translation of the ‘Memoriales con escolios’ in the Florentine Codex
In pursuit of further financial support to complete the three-column page work to which he
aspired, Sahagún submitted the first clean copy of Historia universal in Nahuatl, finished
around 1569, to the scrutiny of three or four fellow friars so that they reported on the worth
of the project to the provincial Chapter meeting of the Franciscan Order. Sahagún’s
 Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 223

enterprise, nevertheless, came to a halt and his manuscripts were shelved for five years.44
During this period, the president of the Council of the Indies, Juan de Ovando, and his
former secretary, the royal cosmographer-chronicler Juan López de Velasco, demanded the
dispatch of descriptions of New World territories and inhabitants with a view to create a
chronicle-atlas, an overarching account or ‘Descripción de las Indias’ that would increase
Philip II’s acquaintance with his vassals and possessions on the other side of the Atlantic.45
In 1575, following Ovando’s strong expression of interest in his work, Sahagún regained
support within his order and the Commissary General Fray Rodrigo de Sequera requested
that the twelve books of Historia universal ‘se Romanc
asen: y ansi en Romanc
e como en
lengua mexicana se escribiesen de buena letra’.46 Excluding the incorporation of the
explanatory notes, this new commission developed over the course of two to four years,
during which time the Spanish left-hand column of the ‘Memoriales con escolios’ was
transferred to occupy the same column within the Florentine Codex. Thus, Sahagún’s new
target audience, for which the translation was finally completed, were Spanish officials who
would first cast their eyes upon the text written in their mother tongue.
Mindful of the different purpose that this entire translation of the twelve books into
Spanish was to serve, Sahagún pondered on the extent to which he was to remain faithful
to the original Nahuatl-source text. During the composition of the three-page column
work, he had taken into consideration the manner in which friars would benefit from an
encyclopaedic and lexicographic text that encompassed knowledge of the Nahuas’ culture
and codified their language. Contrary to this, for the new two-page column work Sahagún
realized that the linguistic dimension was superfluous to the needs of Spanish officials,
interested in obtaining knowledge of, for example, indigenous governance for the
improvement of administrative control in off-sea territories. A succinct comparison
between the section on relatives according to the virtuous versus sinful dichotomy of the
‘Memoriales con escolios’ and the first chapters of Book X of the Florentine Codex
underpins this statement. To serve as an example, the passages within the Spanish column
that record vocatives in order to address parents were only relevant to friars using the
Nahuatl language and have no place in the Florentine Codex. The descriptions of relatives,
nevertheless, are almost identical, as exemplified by the Spanish text on the virtuous great-
grandfather that appears in chapter one of Book X. Like the Spanish text of the
‘Memoriales con escolios’ the passage reads: ‘El bisabuelo es decrépito. Es otra vez niño;
pero bisabuelo que tiene buen seso es hombre de buen exemplo y de buena doctrina, de
buena fama, de buena nombradı́a. Dexa obras de buena memoria en vida, en hacienda, en
generación, escritas como un libro’.47 As previously observed, sense-for-sense equivalents
with which the Nahua assistants must have come up or helped Sahagún to think of have
been retained.48 It is interesting to note that, although Sahagún opts not to remove the
translation of these passages, replete with synonyms and repetitive information, he is
aware that such passages might frustrate and displease his new audience. ‘No se debe
ofender el lector prudente en que se ponen solamente vocablos y no sentencias’, Sahagún
dictated to his scribe in this sense, ‘porque principalmente se pretende en este tratado
aplicar el lenguaje castellano al lenguaje indı́gena para que se sepan hablar los vocablos
propios desta materia, de viciis et virtutibus’.49 Sahagún is giving notice to his readers, as
he does mostly in his prologues to Historia universal, that the original aim of the section
was to provide friars with material on reproachable and laudable behaviour for
proselytizing activities, such as for the composition of sermons, in this case by offering
some chapters that resemble the contents of a Christian treatise of vices and virtues.
In the previous quote Sahagún openly acknowledges the intersection of the two
intended audiences of Historia universal; friars who needed works written in Nahuatl in
224 V. Rı́os Castaño

order to evangelize the Nahuas, and Spanish officials working at the Council of the Indies
who demanded information on the New World. These translation purposes determined the
different techniques adopted towards the writing of the Spanish translation. During the
much more detailed and time-consuming composition process of the ‘Memoriales con
escolios’, the Spanish translation was inextricably connected to the other two columns,
and thus the necessity to demonstrate the textual links might have resulted in a more
faithful and thoroughly-thought Spanish text. Parts of the ‘Memoriales con escolios’ are
undeniably the outcome of a process of linguistic documentation and consultation of
Sahagún’s assistants, and for this reason, they should be credited with a certain degree of
co-authorship of these sections; that is, of the explanatory notes column and the Spanish
column of the surviving ‘Memoriales con escolios’, which was eventually transferred to
the Florentine Codex. When in 1575 Sahagún was granted new financial support to
complete a clear copy of the Nahuatl text and its translation, the brief shifts the focus onto
how to convey meanings for readers who will neither consult the Nahuatl text nor compare
literal and figurative translation of words. With this new commission in mind, and under
pressure to meet a deadline, Sahagún perhaps translated those texts that had so far
remained untranslated by wandering away from the Nahuatl source more frequently than
during the writing of the translation of the ‘Memoriales con escolios’, and by
accommodating meanings to his audience in Spain. This explains that, overall, the Spanish
translation of the Florentine Codex emerges as a domesticated text, palatable to sixteenth-
century Spanish readers, as reflected in the insertion of comparisons with Spain’s culture-
specific items, the deletion of data, and the appearance of Eurocentric additional notes and
digressions. Although the column containing the lexicographic and grammatical
explanatory notes disappeared, its former presence is indicative of the preliminary
discussion and analysis of the source text as the method implemented in order to write the
translation. In addition to this, some of the assistants who worked with Sahagún in
Tlatelolco continued to work with him in Mexico City, and their role as linguistic aides
must have proved vital throughout the translation process. The continuation of their
involvement in the rest of the Spanish translation of the twelve books is a reasonable
hypothesis, and yet, it seems extremely difficult, if not impossible, to unreservedly
indicate the passages to which they fully contributed and, therefore, to credit them with the
co-authorship, or authorship, of the entire Spanish text of the Florentine Codex.

Notes
1. The Códices matritenses, divided and held in the Madrid libraries of the Palacio Real and the
Real Academia de la Historia, consist of the Primeros memoriales (Tepeapulco, ca. 1559–
1561) and the Manuscrito de Tlatelolco (1561 – 1565), including the ‘Segundos memoriales’
(ca. 1561– 1562), the “Memoriales en tres columnas” (ca. 1563– 1565), and the “Memoriales
con escolios” (ca. 1565) (Howard F. Cline and Luis Nicolau d’Olwer, ‘Sahagún and his
Works’, in Howard F. Cline (ed), Handbook of Middle American Indians, XIII: Guide to
Ethnohistorical Sources (Part Two), Austin, University of Texas Press, 1973, pp. 186–207,
pp. 190– 91). Francisco del Paso y Troncoso edited a partial facsimile reproduction (Fray
Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia de las cosas de Nueva España. Edición parcial en facsı́mile
de los Códices Matritenses en lengua mexicana que se custodian en las Bibliotecas del
Palacio Real y de la Real Academia de la Historia, VI– VIII, Madrid, Hauser y Menet, 1905–
07). Some of these documents can be accessed online at the Biblioteca Digital Mexicana.
For the consultation of the Primeros memoriales two available editions are the Primeros
memoriales. Facsimile Edition, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1993, and the
Primeros memoriales. Paleography of the Nahuatl text and English Translation, Henry
B. Nicholson and Thelma D. Sullivan (eds), Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
For the facsimile reproduction of the Florentine Codex, see Historia universal de las cosas de
 Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 225

Nueva España: Códice Laurenziano Mediceo Palatino, 3 vols, Firenzi, Giunti Barbera, 1996.
This two-column page manuscript in Nahuatl and Spanish arrived in Spain around 1578–
1579 and, by 1588, entered the Laurentian Library of Florence, for which it receives the title
of the Florentine Codex (Miguel León Portilla, Bernardino de Sahagún: Pionero de la
antropologı́a, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1999, pp. 176– 79). For a
translation of the Nahuatl column into English, see Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles
E. Dibble’s edition, The Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain,
13 vols, Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1950– 82. For the Spanish column, see
Josefina Garcı́a Quintana and Alfredo López Austin’s edition, Historia general de las cosas
de Nueva España, 2 vols, Madrid, Alianza, 1988. In this article Sahagún’s work is titled
Historia universal de las cosas de Nueva España, as annotated by one of his scribes (Sahagún,
Historia de las cosas, VII, p. 401), and referred to hereafter as Historia universal.
2. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 56. This article reproduces the Nahua amanuenses’ spelling.
Sahagún describes the whole process in Florentine Codex, I, pp. 53 – 56. For a comprehensive
history of the evolution of the work, see Cline and Nicolau d’Olwer, ‘Sahagún and his Works’
and Jesús Bustamante Garcı́a, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún: Una revisión crı́tica de los
manuscritos y de su proceso de composición, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México, 1990.
3. Ángel Marı́a Garibay Kintana, ‘Proemio a Historia general’, in Historia general de las cosas
de Nueva España, escrita por Bernardino Sahagún y fundada en la documentación en lengua
mexicana recogida por los mismos naturales, vol. 1. ed. A. M. Garibay Kintana, México,
Porrúa, i – lxii, 1956, p. xi.
4. This book series published translations into Spanish of some of the manuscripts within the
Códices matritenses. León Portilla’s edition is Ritos, sacerdotes y atavı́os de los dioses
(Fuentes indı́genas de la cultura náhuatl: Textos de los informantes de Sahagún, I), México,
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1958. Three subsequent editions are Veinte
himnos sacros de los nahuas (Fuentes indı́genas de la cultura náhuatl: Textos de los
informantes de Sahagún, II), Ángel Marı́a Garibay Kintana (ed), México, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México, 1958; Vida económica de Tenochtitlán: Pochtecáyotl, arte de
traficar (Fuentes indı́genas de la cultura náhuatl: Textos de los informantes de Sahagún, III),
Ángel Marı́a Garibay Kintana (ed), México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,
1961; and Augurios y abusiones (Fuentes indı́genas de la cultura náhuatl: Textos de los
informantes de Sahagún, IV), Alfredo López Austin (ed), México, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, 1969. To be noted is that the term ‘informantes’ might lead at times to
confusion as it is also used to name only the Nahua elders. Several scholars argue that, in the
manner of a modern ethnographer, Sahagún interviewed them in order to gather information.
See, for instance, Cline and Nicolau d’Olwer, ‘Sahagún and his works’, p. 188; León Portilla,
Bernardino de de Sahagún, p. 13, and Klor de Alva, ‘Sahagún and the Birth of Modern
Ethnography: Representing, Confessing, and Inscribing the Native Other’, in J. Klor de Alva,
Henry B. Nicholson and Eloise Quiñones Keber (eds), The Work of Bernardino de Sahagún:
Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-century Aztec Mexico, Albany and New York, The
University of Albany and State University of New York, 1988, pp. 31 – 52, p. 42.
5. Donald Robertson, ‘The Sixteenth-Century Mexican Encyclopaedia of Fray Bernardino de
Sahagún’, Cahiers d’histoire mondiale, 9, 1966, pp. 617– 27, p. 625.
6. For a similar argument, see Jesús Bustamante Garcı́a, ‘Retórica, traducción y responsabilidad
histórica: Claves humanı́sticas en la obra de Bernardino de Sahagún’ in Berta Ares et al (eds),
Humanismo y visión del otro en la España moderna: Cuatro estudios, Madrid, Consejo
Superior de Investigaciones Cientı́ficas, 1992, pp. 246– 375, and Walden Browne, Sahagún
and the Transition to Modernity, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. One of
Sahagún’s textual archetypes was the Franciscan Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De
proprietatibus rerum (ca. 1240– 1260), an encyclopaedia extensively drawn on by the
members of his order in their composition of sermons (Donald Robertson, Mexican
Manuscript Paintings of the Early Colonial Period: The Metropolitan Schools, New Haven,
Yale University Press, 1959, p. 170, and ‘The Sixteenth-Century Mexican Encyclopaedia’).
7. Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Paintings, pp. 48 –49.
8. Klor de Alva, ‘Sahagún and the Birth of Modern Ethnography’, pp. 49 – 50.
9. Luisa Pranzetti, ‘La fauna en las crónicas del Nuevo Mundo a la luz de la cultural medieval’ in
Alessandro Lupo and Alfredo López Austin (eds), La cultura plural: Reflexiones sobre
226 V. Rı́os Castaño

diálogo y silencios en Mesoamérica (Homenaje a Igalo Signorini), México and Roma,

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Universitá Degli Studi di Roma
‘La Sapienza’, 1998, pp. 69 – 8, pp. 77 – 80; Ilaria Palmeri Capesciotti, ‘La fauna del libro
XI del Códice florentino de Fray Bernardino de Sahagún: dos sistemas taxonómicos frente a
frente’, Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 32, 2001, pp. 189– 221, pp. 211– 14.
10. Pablo Escalante Gonzalbo, ‘Los animales del Códice Florentino en el espejo de la tradición
occidental’, Arqueologı́a Mexicana, 36: VI, 1999, pp. 52 –59.
11. Although acknowledging Sahagún as the driving force and main author of Historia universal,
James Lockhart maintains that the Florentine Codex, and Book XII specifically, offer a site
for ‘an indigenous role, for indigenous ideas, frameworks and imperatives’ (Lockhart,
‘Introduction’, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Eugene,
Oregon, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2004 [1st ed. 1993], pp. 1 –46, p. 28). Lockhart admits to
the difficulties entailed when trying to determine with clarity the respective parts played by
Nahua elders and assistants. A clear example of the formers’ role, nevertheless, can be found
in Book XII, when the respondents, hailing from Tlatelolco, represent themselves as brave
war heroes in opposition to the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan (Lockhart, We People Here, p. 30).
12. Lockhart, We People Here, pp. 26, 35 – 36.
13. Lockhart, We People Here, p. 37.
14. Kevin Terraciano, ‘Three Texts in One: Book XII of the Florentine Codex’, Ethnohistory, 57:
I, 2010, pp. 51 – 72, p. 51.
15. Terraciano, ‘Three Texts in One’, p. 62. Terraciano cites the end of chapter 39 of the Spanish
version as the ‘most obvious evidence of Sahagún’s intervention’, pp. 62 – 63. A paragraph
extols Cortés and the Spaniards’ mercy towards the Nahuas, who would otherwise have been
massacred.
16. Mariana C. Zinni, ‘Umbrales hermenéuticos: los “prólogos” y “advertencias” de fray
Bernardino de Sahagún’, Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 43, 2012, pp. 161–83, p. 163.
17. For further reference on the institution, its tutors, students, and programme of studies, see José
Marı́a Kobayashi, La educación como conquista: Empresa franciscana en México, México,
El Colegio de México, 1974.
18. Sahagún, Historia general, II, p. 635, Gerónimo de Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana, 2
vols, Atlas, Madrid, 1973, II, p. 187.
19. See library catalogue in Michael Mathes, Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco: La primera biblioteca
académica de las Américas, México, Secretarı́a de Relaciones Exteriores, 1982.
20. Quintilian, De institutione oratoria, H. E. Butler (ed and tr), London, Heinemann, 1922, I,
pp. 149, 157.
21. Sahagún, Historia general, II, p. 635. For the translation of Aesop’s fables, see Gerdt
Kutscher, Gordon Brotherston and Günter Vollmer (eds), Aesop in Mexico. Die Fabeln des
Aesop in Aztekischer Sprache / A 16th Century Aztec Version of Aesop’s Fables, Berlin, Gebr.
Mann, 1987.
22. Ignacio Osorio Romero, La enseñanza del latı́n a los indios, México, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, 1990, pp. xxxiv– xxxvi.
23. Sahagún, Historia general, II, p. 635.
24. Sahagún, Historia general, II, p. 635. For Lockhart, Sahagún is, contrary to other friars,
gracious enough to openly acknowledge his assistants as ‘responsible for the fine points of the
phrasing and syntax’ (James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural
History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries, Stanford,
Stanford University Press, 1992, p. 256). After her analysis of a large corpus of early colonial
doctrinal works in Nahuatl, including collections of sermons and psalms, admonitions, and
confession manuals that incorporated Nahua rhetoric, Louis M. Burkhart similarly believes
that all of these are collaborative products of the friars and the Nahua assistants who, as
‘interpreters and scribes, [ . . . ] were largely accountable for the wording’ (Burkhart, The
Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico, Tucson,
University of Arizona Press, 1989, p. 25). For further reference on examples of this
collaboration within Sahagún’s Psalmodia christiana, see Arthur J. O. Anderson’s
introduction, Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1993.
25. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, pp. 54 – 55.
26. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 55. These assistants became influential men within the
colony. Vegerano and Valeriano were tutors at Tlatelolco during a certain period of their
 Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 227

lives; Valeriano later occupied the position of governor of Mexico City, and Pedro de San
Buenaventura is known to have composed, together with Jacobita and Vegerano, the Annals
of Cuauhtitlan, on the history of Culhuacan and Mexico. For further reference, see Ángel
Marı́a Garibay Kintana, Historia de la literatura náhuatl, 2 vols, México, Porrúa, 1954, II,
pp. 224– 227, and Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, pp. 357–87. As for two of his
scribes in Mexico City, it is known that Severino served as a municipal notary of Xochimilco
and that Maximiliano worked as a teacher at Tlatelolco (Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 55;
Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, p. 362, and Lockhart, The Nahuas after the
Conquest, p. 472). Additional assistants have been put forward, such as Agustı́n de la Fuente,
Andrés Leonardo and Pablo Nazareo. De la Fuente and Leonardo collaborated in other works
supervised by Sahagún, and Nazareo occupied the post of rector and preceptor of the College
of Tlatelolco for many years (Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, p. 371; Lockhart,
The Nahuas, p. 402).
27. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 53.
28. Sahagún leaves notice of this objective on the top margin of the first surviving page of the
‘Memoriales con escolios’, where he writes ‘[d]e la manera que esta este quaderno a de ir toda
la obra’ (Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, VI, p. 177). He also alludes to this three-column
format in his first prologue to Historia universal: ‘la primera, de lengua española: la segunda,
de la lengua Mexicana: la tercera, la declaration, de los vocablos mexicanos’ (Sahagún,
Florentine Codex, I, p. 51).
29. Sahagún echoes the Franciscan Order’s lack of favour that prevented him from completing
this project in the second prologue to Book II, see Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, pp. 55 – 56.
Cline and Nicolau d’Olwer have also reported on the hostility against works on indigenous
matters that was held by the Franciscan provincial Fray Alonso de Escalona, see ‘Sahagún and
his Works’, p. 193. Regarding the ‘Memoriales con escolios’, for a reprographic reproduction,
see Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, volumes VI and VII. The surviving manuscript does not
represent a final document but is composed of drafts; for instance, there are two working
sheets on the sun, a first draft and a much more polished version of it.
30. This passage, extracted from Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, VI, p. 206, has been reproduced
thanks to the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut PK, Berlin. The translation of the Nahuatl text in
the central column is Anderson and Dibble’s in Sahagún, Florentine Codex, XI, p. 5. I am
indebted to Dr Elke Ruhnau’s helpful comments on the Nahuatl sentences and phrases that are
mentioned hereafter.
31. For further reference, see Bustamante Garcı́a, ‘Retórica, traducción y responsabilidad
histórica’, pp. 336– 46.
32. The dissemination of the dictionary was such that by the end of the century the ‘Calepin’, as it
was popularly-known, turned into a European polyglot vocabulary, see Bustamante Garcı́a,
‘Retórica, traducción y responsabilidad histórica’, p. 341.
33. Sahagún, Florentine Codex I, p. 47. This dichotomy between denotative and connotative or
metaphorical meaning is suggested in classical works with which Sahagún was familiar, such
as Aristotle’s treatise on rhetoric and Cicero’s on the orator.
34. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 50.
35. For further reference, see Pilar Máynez Vidal, ‘Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, precursor de los
trabajos lexicográficos del Nuevo Mundo’, Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 29, 1999, pp. 189–
197, pp. 192– 93.
36. The ‘amoxtli’, currently known as pre-Hispanic codices, codified oral and pictorial
representations of Nahua tradition; ‘tlacuilolli’ was the act of painting or ‘writing’ them (Serge
Gruzinksi, The Conquest of Mexico: The Incorporation of Indian Societies into the Western
World, 16th – 18th Centuries, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 8 – 9).
37. Olmos devotes chapter VIII, ‘De las maneras de hablar que tenian los viejos en sus platicas
antiguas’, of his Arte de la lengua mexicana (1547) to register fixed phrases, sayings and
vocatives that could be incorporated into sermons (Olmos, Arte de la lengua mexicana,
Ascensión Hernández de León Portilla and Miguel León Portilla (eds), México, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México, 2002). As for the vocatives that appear in the Nahuatl column
of Book VI of the Florentine Codex, many of these can be traced in doctrinal works such as
Psalmodia christiana and Apéndice a la postilla. Both works have been edited and translated,
into English and Spanish, respectively, by Arthur J. O. Anderson. For Apéndice a la postilla,
see Adiciones, apéndice a la postilla y ejercicio cotidiano, México, Universidad Nacional
228 V. Rı́os Castaño

Autónoma de México, 1993. For a comparison between Sahagún and Molina’s lexicographic
projects, see Máynez Vidal, ‘El proyecto lexicográfico de dos frailes españoles en México’,
Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 37, 2006, pp. 85 – 94.
38. Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, VI, p. 199. In the next folio of the ‘Memoriales con escolios’
the same Nahua assistant writes the Spanish column on the sinful mother or ‘madre mala’ and,
again at the end of description, annotates different vocatives in order to address her, see
Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, VI, p. 200. This reverential treatment amongst family
members of Nahua society has been studied by Elena Dı́az Rubio, ‘Acerca de la terminologı́a
de parentesco en el náhuatl clásico: Tlacamecayotl’, Revista Española de Antropologı́a
Americana, 14, 1986, pp. 63 – 80.
39. For the ‘Memoriales en tres columnas’, see Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, VII and VIII.
40. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 54.
41. Sahagún’s handwriting of titles and keywords summarizing the contents of the Nahuatl text
also appears in the ‘Memoriales en tres columnas’. The only text with his own handwriting is
the paragraph on ‘mal sobrino’; see Sahagún, Historia de las cosas, VI, p. 205.
42. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 47.
43. Another example that illustrates Sahagún’s concerns with fluency is the translation of ‘yn
qualli achtontli’ (literally ‘good great-grandfather’), which is rendered as ‘p[er]o bisabuelo
que tiene buen seso’. To the interpretation of ‘aoc quimati veue’ as ‘decrepito’ follows the
description of the great-grandfather who is ‘qualli’ or good. Sahagún makes the comparison
clear by introducing the adversative ‘pero’ and by specifying that, by opposition, the ‘good’
great-grandfather is an old man who keeps his mental capacities or ‘tiene buen seso’.
44. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, pp. 55 – 56.
45. Marı́a del Carmen González Muñoz, ‘Estudio preliminar’ in Marcos Jiménez de la Espada
and Marı́a del Carmen González Muñoz (eds), Juan López de Velasco, Geografı́a y
descripción universal de las Indias, Madrid, Atlas, 1971, pp. v – xlviii, p. viii.
46. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, I, p. 47. The nature of this request, in Nahuatl and Spanish for a
Spanish-speaking audience, is nevertheless intriguing and might respond to Philip II’s passion
for collecting exotic art and cultural artefacts.
47. Sahagún, Historia general, II, p. 586.
48. Upon a new reading, the scribe of the Tolosa Manuscript, a surviving copy of the Spanish
version that was written soon after the Florentine Codex reached Spain, polished the text by
avoiding the repetition of the adjective ‘good’. He replaced ‘buena nombradia’ with ‘mejor
nombradı́a’, and ‘buena memoria’ with ‘felı́z [sic] memoria’. See whole paragraph in Carlos
Marı́a de Bustamante’s edition, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, 3 vols,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, III, p. 5.
49. Sahagún, Historia general, II, p. 585.