Aztec human sacrifice as expiation

History of Religions

Volumn 39, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 352-371

  Graulich, Michel ^a,b  

^a PSL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY   (France)

^b UNIVERSITÉ LIBRE DE BRUXELLES   (Belgium)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33744500868     PISSN: 00182710     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/463600     Document Type: Article

References (103)

1. Sir James Frazer, Le rameau d'or, 4 vols. (Paris: Laffont, 1981-84), 1:199, 3:250-55, 3:586-603, 3:664. For dema deities
2. see L. Lévy-Bruhl, La mythologie primitive: Le monde mythique des Australiens et des Papous (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1935), pp. 27-34;
3. Adolphe E. Jensen, Mythes et cultes chez les peuples primitifs (Paris: Payot, 1954).
4. Eduard Seler, Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Amerikanischen Sprach- und Altertumskunde, 5 vols. (Berlin: Asher, 1902-23), 4:57, 1:442, 2:800, 4:448;
5. Konrad Th. Preuss, "Der Ursprung der Menschenopfer in Mexico," Globus 86 (1904): 105-19
6. "Phallische Fruchtbarkeitsdämonen als Träger des altmexikanischen Dramas," Archiv für Anthropologie 1 (1903): 130-88;
7. Mircea Eliade, Traité d'histoire des religions (Paris: Payot, 1949), p. 292;
8. Jacques Soustelle, La pensée cosmologique des anciens Mexicains (Paris: Hermann, 1940);
9. Christian Duverger, La fleur létale: Economie du sacrifice aztèque (Paris: Seuil, 1979);
10. Yólotl Gónzalez Torres, El sacrificio humano entre los mexicas (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica and Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1985);
11. Kay Almere Read, Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998);
12. or Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
13. Some of these types of sacrifices are enumerated in Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, trans. and ed. C. E. Dibble and A. J. O. Anderson, 13 vols. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1950-82), bk. 4, chap. 27, p. 93.
14. The word "sacred" is used with no other signification than the common one of " 1. Consecrated to a god; 2. Having to do with religion" (Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language [New York: Popular Library, 1973]).
15. See J. Haekel, s.v. "Menschenopfer," in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche 7 (1962). I do not hesitate to use the word "sin," first, because its general sense can be "any offense or fault" (Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language), second, because even in the Christian sense, it encompasses transgressions without any knowledge of good or evil - original sin - and third, because Mesoamerican mythology presents several transgressions that very much resemble the biblical ones (Genesis), as Spanish friars immediately realized.
16. Manuel Orozco y Berra, Historia antigua y de la conquista de México, 4 vols. (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1960), 1:160-66;
17. Alma Elisabeth del Río, Bases psicodinámicas de la cultura azteca (Mexico City: Costa-Amic, 1973), p. 257;
18. Laurette Séjourné, Pensamiento y religión en el México antiguo (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1957).
19. see M. Graulich, "El Popol Vuh en el Altiplano Mexicano," Memorias del segundo Congreso Internacional de Mayistas (Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Centro de Estudios Mayas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1995), pp. 117-30.
20. Fray Gregorio García, Origen de los Indios del Nuevo Mundo e Indias Occidentales (Madrid: Martínez Abad, 1729). In a Maya myth the creator had thirteen children, of which the older ones sought to create human beings without their parents' permission ("they became proud") but could produce only common household vessels and were thrown into hell. But the younger ones humbled themselves and therefore were able to create. M. Graulich, "Autosacrifice in Postclassic Ancient Mexico," presents other myths of self-sacrifice (e.g., Quetzalcoatl in Tollan), in which there is no question of feeding the gods.
21. M. Graulich, Montezuma ou l'apogée et la chute de l'empire aztèque (Paris: Fayard, 1994), pp. 97-126.
22. in the Leyenda de los Soles, in History and Mythology of the Aztecs: The Codex Chimalpopoca, trans. J. Bierhorst, 2 vols. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992);
23. and in Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta, Historia Eclesiástica Indiana, 4 vols. (Mexico City: Chávez Hayhoe, 1945).
24. It is not mentioned in the "Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas," in Nueva colección de documentos para la historia de México, ed. J. García Icazbalceta (Mexico City: Chávez Hayhoe, 1941);
25. the "Histoyre du Méchique," ed. E. de Jonghe, Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris, N.S. 2 (1905): 1-41;
26. Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, "Tratado de las supersticiones y costumbres gentílicas que hoy viven entre los indios naturales de esta Nueva España," Anales del Museo Nacional de Historia 6 (1892): 123-224;
27. and Diego Muñoz Camargo, "Descripción de la ciudad y provincia de Tlaxcala," in Relaciones geográficas del siglo XVI: Tlaxcala, tomo primero, ed. R. Acuña (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984).
28. For example, Fray Diego Durán, Historia de los indios de la Nueva España e Islas de la Tierra Firme, ed. A. M. Garibay, 2 vols. (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1967), chap. 16, 1:156;
29. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, bk. 3, chap. 2, p. 11.
30. Mendieta, 1:83-84;
31. Fray Juan de Torquemada, Monarquía Indiana, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1969), 2:37-38, 76-77.
32. In the Codex Vaticanus A (3738) or Ríos, in Antigüedades de México, ed. and comments by J. Corona Núñez, 4 vols. (Mexico City: Secretaria de Hacienda, 1964-67), 3:7-313
33. the first human couple is shown wrapped in a mantle, that is to say, having sex. The spark from Omeyocan that impregnates the woman is symbolized by a flint knife. In the Ritual of the Bacabs, trans. and ed. Ralph L. Roys (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), pp. 61-62, flint is called "genitals" and "1 Ahau," i.e., 1 Xochitl among the Aztecs, the name of Cinteotl-Venus, born from the first transgression in other myths.
34. Ruiz de Alarcón, pp. 208-9, 218-19.
35. On the first transgression, see M. Graulich, "Myths of Paradise Lost in Pre-Hispanic Central Mexico," Current Anthropology 24, no. 5 (1983): 575-88
36. Myths of Ancient Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), pp. 49-59, 91-95, 99-109, 160, 192-201, 210-19;
37. Alfredo López Austin, Los mitos del tlacuache: Caminos de la mitología mesoamericana (Mexico City: Alianza Editorial Mexicana, 1990), pp. 97-100, 475-78
38. and Tamoanchan y Tlalocan (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1994), pp. 73-77, 93-101;
39. Guilhem Olivier, Moqueries et métamorphoses d'un dieu aztèque: Tezcatlipoca, le "Seigneur au miroir fumant" (Paris: Mémories de l'Institut d'Ethnologie, Musée de l'Homme, 1997).
40. M. Graulich, "Autóctonos y recién Ilegados en el pensamiento mesoamericano," in Pensar América: Cosmovisión mesoamericano y andina, ed. A. Garrido Aranda (Córdoba: Cajasur y Ayuntamiento de Montilla, 1997).
41. Codex Vaticanas A (3738), pl. 2, 11;
42. Graulich, Myths of Ancient Mexico, p. 123. On the hereafter
43. see also M. Graulich, "Afterlife in Ancient Mexican Thought," in Circumpacifica: Festschrift für Thomas S. Barthel, ed. B. Illius and M. Laubscher, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1990), 2:165-87;
44. Natalie Ragot, Les au delàs aztèques: Approche des conceptions sur la mort et le devenir des morts (Mexique), (doctoral diss., École Pratique des Hautes Études, Section des sciences religieuses, Paris, 1999).
45. contains an interesting speech addressed by a soothsayer or "confessor" to a penitent, in which the sinner is described as one whom the gods send to death in the underworld but who, thanks to his rite of purification, is born again as a child or as the rising sun. The adventures of the twins in Xibalbá, in the Popol Vuh, are constructed on the same model. In a recent article ("Misterios de la vida y de la muerte," Arqueología mexicana 7, no. 40 [1999]: 4-10, quote on 8-9)
46. López Austin admits my interpretation of a relationship between moral conduct during lifetime and the destination after death, but he denies that we might consider Aztec religion to be a "religion of salvation," comparable, for instance, to Christianity or Islam. But one should not forget, first, that there are many other religions of salvation, morally less exacting than Christianity or Islam; second, that the paradigmatic myth of Teotihuacan clearly implies the idea of expiation and purification to gain a glorious afterlife; third, that we have reliable testimonies according to which warriors died happily in the hope of going to the House of the Sun (Hernán Cortés, Cartas de Relación [Mexico City: Porrúa, 1963], p. 184;
47. "Información de Velázquez," in Documentos Cortesianos I, ed. José Luis Martínez [Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1990], p. 207);
48. fourth, that the Catholic missionaries were the first ones to emphasize the striking similarities between Aztec religion and Christianity, including the salvation aspect and, finally, that if I drew a parallel with Christianity, I also insisted on the differences and suggested that either the religion of the Aztecs was only in the process of being structured into a religion of salvation, or that it had partially lost this original meaning: M. Graulich, "L'arbre interdit du paradis aztèque," Revue de l'Histoire des Religions 207, no. 1 (1990): 30-64.
49. Ruiz de Alarcón, pp. 150-51 and 221-23.
50. "We give the name 'sacrifier' to the subject to whom the benefits of sacrifice thus accrue, or who undergoes its effects": Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function (London: Cohen & West, 1964), p. 10.
51. M. Graulich, Myths of Paradise Lost, Myths of Ancient Mexico, and Quetzalcóatl y el espejismo de Tollan (Antwerp: Institut voor Amerikanistiek, 1988).
52. Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, Apologética Historia," 2 vols. (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1967), 2:650.
53. See also Konrad Th. Preuss, "Die Sünde in der Mexikanischen religion," Globus 83 (1903): 253-57, 268-73, 256.
54. Concerning the "debt payment," nextlahualli (Florentine Codex, bk. 2, App., p. 199), the same word designates human sacrifices generally, as well as rituals without killing or even without bloodshed, like offerings of copal and paper.
55. Graulich, "Popol Vuh," pp. 78-79.
56. M. Graulich, "Tlacaxipehualiztli ou la fête aztèque de la moisson et de la guerre," Revista Española de Antropología Americana 12 (1982): 215-54
57. "Chasse et sacrifice humain chez les Aztèques," Académie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer, Bulletin des Séances 43, no. 4 (1997): 433-46
58. Rituales aztecas: Las fiestas de las veintenas (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1999).
59. Leyenda de los Soles, fol. 81.
60. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, ed. A. M. Garibay, 4 vols. (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1956), 1:271-73. It must be pointed out that Sahagún, in his book, tells the myth about the origin of the gods immediately after referring to the sun's birth in Teotihuacan. Aside from that, there is no context, but it is clear that it was an episode during the migrations.
61. thinks that human sacrifice is never a penalty and "never must look like a repressive and barbarian act." For W. Krickeberg (Las antiguas culturas mexicanas [Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1964], p. 158) also, human sacrifice is not a punishment but an honorable duty.
62. Francisco Javier Clavijero, Historia antigua de México, ed. M. Cuevas (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1964), p. 338. But this passage may be an eighteenth-century construction, like the phrase that follows, also attributed to Motecuhzoma: "No contradigo la bondad del Dios que adoráis, pero si él es bueno para España, los nuestros Io son para México."
63. Cristóbal del Castillo, Historia de la venida de los mexicanos y ostros pueblos e Historia de la conquista, trans. F. Navarrette Linares (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1991), pp. 128-29;
64. see Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, Crónica mexicana precedida del Códice Ramírez, ed. M. Orozco y Berra (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1975).
65. Thelma D. Sullivan, "Nahuatl Proverbs, Conundrums and Metaphors Collected by Sahagún," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963): 93-178;
66. K. Th. Preuss, "Die Feuergötter als Ausgangspunkt zum Verständnis der mexikanischen Religion in ihrem Zusammenhange," Mitteilungen der Wiener Anthropologischen Gesellschaft 33 (1903): 129-233, 190-91;
67. Durán, 1:64, 181-82, 185; Sahagún, Florentine Codex, 4:91;
68. A. J. P. Anderson, "The Institution of Slave-Bathing," Indiana 7 (1982): 81-91.
69. In Fray Andrés de Olmos, Grammaire de la langue nahuatl ou mexicaine, ed. by R. Siméon (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1875), p. 215, a slave was called "teyo, quauhyo," "the one with the stone, the one with the stick," that is, the castigated one.
70. Victor M. Castillo, Estructura económica de la sociedad mexica (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1972), p. 123;
71. Motolinia (Fray Toribio de Benavente), Memoriales e Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles (Madrid: Atlas, 1970), p. 174;
72. Durán, 1:125, 1:183-84, 200, 210;
73. Fray Diego Durán even mentions sacrifice as the fourth mode of execution for trespassers, especially slaves. Slaves paid as tribute - i.e., as a penalty - were also sacrificed: J. L. de Rojas, ed., Información de 1554: Sobre los tributos que los indios pagaban a Moctezuma (Mexico City: CIESAS, 1997);
74. Durán, 1:82; 2:321.
75. Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Obras históricas, ed. E. O'Gorman, 2 vols. (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1975-77), 2:111-13;
76. Juan Bautista Pomar, "Relación de la ciudad y provincia de Tezcoco," in Relaciones geográficas del siglo XVI: México, tomo tercero, ed. R. Acuña (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1986), p. 89;
77. Francisco López de Gómara, Historia general de las Indias, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Iberia, 1965-66), p. 95;
78. Motolinia, p. 41.
79. Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Crónica de la Nueva España, 2 vols., Biblioteca de Autores Españoles (Madrid: Atlas, 1971), 1:56;
80. R. Castañeda Paganini, La cultura tolteca-pipil de Guatemala (Guatemala City: Editorial del Ministerio de Educación Pública "José de Piñida Ibarra," 1959), p. 33, quoting García Palacios's 1574 letter to Philip II;
81. "Relación de Metztitlan," in Relaciones geográficas del siglo XVI: México, tomo segundo, ed. R. Acuña (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1986), p. 66;
82. "Relación de Tecciztán" and "Relación de Ocopetlayuca," both in Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, ed., Papeles de la Nueva España, 7 vols. (Madrid: Tip. Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1905-15), 6:257, 229
83. (also in Relaciones geográficas, p. 242); Ixtlilxochitl, p. 39.
84. "Thomas Lopez Medel, Relación, 1612," in Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatán, trans. and notes by A. M. Tozzer, Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. 18 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University, 1941), p. 222;
85. Torquemada, 2:299;
86. "Costumbres, fiestas, enterramientos y diversas formas de proceder de los Indios de Nueva España," ed. F. Gómez de Orozco, Tlalocan 2, no. 1 (1945): 37-63, 59.
87. Eduard Seler, Comentarios al Códice Borgia, 2 vols. and facsimile (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1963).
88. The first prisoner taken by a ruler was called "his son" and revered as much as the ruler himself, being saluted first, etc.: Motolinia, p. 161.
89. bk. 9, pp. 63-64.
90. Face to face: see, e.g., Leviticus 18:6.
91. According to a modern Totonac myth collected by Ichon (Alain Ichon, La Religion des Totonaques de la Sierra [Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1969], pp. 45, 53)
92. the gods contemplated providing the humans with a kind of visor that would prevent them seeing the heavens and therefore from dying, unless they wanted to die by lifting their heads and seeing the gods face to face; but the gods changed their minds when the first creature committed a transgression. While they climbed the stairs, the sacrifiers did something described as "moquaiiauitiuh," translated by Anderson and Dibble as "they went putting breath to their heads," drawing their inspiration from Sahagún's Historia, bk. 9, chap. 14, p. 55:
93. "y subiendo resollaban las manos y ponían el resuello en las cabezas con las manos," but it is difficult to find resollar: ihiyotia (nin) in iiauitiuh. Another translation for this difficult verb is Schultze Jena's (Leonhard Schultz Jena, Gliederung des Alt-Aztekischen Volks in Familie, Stand und Beruf, Quellenwerke zur alten Geschichte Amerikas aufgezeichnet in den Sprachen der Eingeborenen V [Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1952], p. 340), based on iyaua.nin, "ofrecerse alguno en sacrificio a dios; nitla : ofrecer algo desta manera, o incensar" - "he gave his head as an offering to Huitzilopochtli." This is very interesting in our context but also debatable.
94. On the frequent assimilation of sacrifier and victim (and addressee), see William Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (London: A. & C. Black, 1894);
95. Comte Goblet d'AIviella, Rites, croyances, institutions, 3 vols. (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1911), p. 303
96. even mentions pre-Columbian America in this context; Gerardus van der Leeuw, Phénoménologie de la religion (Paris: Payot [1933] 1970), sec. 50, pp. 341-48;
97. Claude Lévi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage (Paris: Pion, 1962), pp. 295-98;
98. Madeleine Biardeau and Charles Malamoud, Le sacrifice dans l'Inde ancienne, Bibliothèque de l'École des Hautes Études, Section des Sciences Religieuses 79 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976).
99. On the Huichol peyote hunt, see Barbara G. Myerhoff, Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974);
100. S. Nahmad, O. Klineberg, P. T. Furst, and B. Myerhoff, Elpeyote y los huicholes (Mexico City: SepSetentas, 1979);
101. Carl Lumholtz, El México desconocido, 2 vols. (Mexico City: Editorial Nacional, 1904), 1:125-35;
102. Peter T. Furst, ed., La chair des dieux: L'usage rituel des psychédéliques (Paris: Seuil, 1974);
103. Peter T. Furst, Los alucinógenos y la cultura (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1980).