Florentine Codex

What it is

The work of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún with Nahua collaborators trained at the College of Tlatelolco: twelve books, written in two columns — Nahuatl on the right, Spanish on the left — with more than two thousand illustrations.

And a useful warning: the two columns do not say the same thing. The Nahuatl text is a good deal longer than the Spanish, which sometimes summarises and sometimes omits.

Two columns, two texts

And the two columns do not say the same thing. The Spanish is a more or less free version of the Nahuatl, with comments by Sahagún that sometimes explain or complete what his informants said.

So it matters which one is being cited. This app uses the Nahuatl and its modern translation where it can, and says when what it cites comes from Sahagún's Spanish.

Book IV

Its fourth book deals entirely with the art of divining by the days: trecena by trecena, what fortune fell to whoever was born in each. It is the main source of what the app tells about the omen, including the warning that the sign could be bettered or ruined by conduct.

Where it is

In the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, from which it takes its name, since at least 1791. It is fully digitised and available online.

This app has read it in facsimile, not second-hand: three volumes from which come the index of the medicinal herbs of Book XI, folio by folio, and the account of Book XII.

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