Book
General history of the things of New Spain: Florentine codex: book 4 -- the soothsayers and book 5 -- the omens
The School of American Research and the University of Utah • (14) (5/6) • Published In 1957 • Pages: xviii, 196 , 20 plates
By: Sahagún, Bernadino de, -1590, Anderson, Arthur J. O., Dibble, Charles E..
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
The Franciscan missionary Sahagún presaged modern ethnography when, beginning the 1540s, he initiated a project to better comprehend pre-Conquest Aztec ideology and culture, interviewing elderly elites and having the data transcribed and illustrated by multilingual native scholars over a period of some thirty years. This is English language translation combines two books of the original side-by-side Spanish and Nahuatl text. Book 4 deals with the predicted fortunes of individuals born under each day sign of the calendar. A fairly large amount of information on religious beliefs and social practices was incorporated into the predictions, which also provide an example of Aztec literary art. The appendix to Book 4 is a discourse by Sahagún (written in Spanish only) on Aztec calendrics and associated ceremonials. Book 5 is a collection of omens and superstitious beliefs, including some information on childbirth; most superstitions listed in the appendix likely persisted to the time they were recorded.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Revelation and divination
- Luck and chance
- Ordering of time
- Naming
- Magicians and diviners
- Sex and marital offenses
- Spirits and gods
- Prayers and sacrifices
- Alcoholic beverages
- Mercantile business
- Travel
- Sacred objects and places
- Social placement
- Visual arts
- Techniques of socialization
- Ethnometeorology
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Aztecs
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2017
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Middle America and the Caribbean
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Central Mexico
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Missionary
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Robert Lee ; 1958
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1540-1579
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1500-1579
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- central highland Mexico
- NotesAdditional notes
- Fray Bernadino de Sahagún ; translated from the Aztec, with notes and illustrations, by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble
- Uniform title: Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España. English & Aztec
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 51002409
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Indians of Mexico--Antiquities/Aztecs/Natural history--Mexico/Mexico--History--Conquest, 1519-1540/Mexico--Antiquities