Codex Telleriano-Remensis

What it is

A tonalámatl to which different hands added Spanish glosses over the paintings, with each day's omen noted in abbreviations: bad, indifferent or good. It has a very close brother, Vaticanus A, which reproduces a good part of the same.

Why it matters

It is one of the few sources that gives the omen day by day, and from it comes the rule that the omen resulted from combining the day with its Lord of the Night.

And it is not alone: Vaticanus A notes the omen in the same way, cell by cell, in Italian.

An example

An example, read in the facsimile. On folios 12v and 13r the glosses name the two figures of the sixth trecena: «tonatiuh · sol» and «meztli · luna · tecuiztecatl» — sun, and moon.

And they explain the name. It was so called because «así como sale del caracol… así sale el hombre del vientre de su madre» — as one comes out of the conch shell, so a man comes out of his mother's womb — and that is why they set it opposite the sun.

Why it must be read with care

But its glosses do not always agree with what Sahagún says. That discrepancy is not a fault to be resolved but the proof that no single authorised reading existed, and this app would rather say so than choose in silence.

It was made between 1548 and 1563, twenty years before Vaticanus A.

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