Review: The Florentine Codex: An Encyclopedia of the Nahua World in Sixteenth-Century Mexico, edited by Jeanette Favrot Peterson and Kevin Terraciano

“There is no doubt that the Florentine Codex is the most remarkable and most important intellectual product of the exchange between Indigenous and European cultures in the early modern Atlantic world,” writes Kevin Terraciano in the introduction to this lavishly illustrated edited volume (13). Composed of twelve books treating subjects from the gods to the conquest of Mexico, the Historia general (or perhaps universal) de las cosas de la Nueva España was the result of decades of consultation and collaboration between Fray Bernardino de Sahagún and Indigenous Nahua communities in the Valley of Mexico. Nahua collaborators who contributed substantively to the project include grammarians Antonio Valeriano of Azcapotzalco, Alonso Vegerano of Cuauhtitlan, Martín Jacobita of Tlatelolco, and Pedro de San Buenaventura of Cuauhtitlan; along with scribes Diego de Grado of Tlatelolco, Bonifacio Maximiliano of Tlatelolco, and Mateo Severino of Xochimilco. Sahagún also credits anonymous elders of Tepepulco and Tlatelolco...