Florentine Codex

The Florentine Codex is a 16th century ethnographic research project in Mesoamerica by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Bernardino originally titled it: La Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva España (in English: the Universal History of the Things of New Spain). After a translation mistake it was given the name "Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España". It is commonly referred to as "The Florentine Codex" after the Italian archive library where the best-preserved manuscript is held. In partnership with Aztec men who were formerly his students, Bernardino conducted research, organized evidence, wrote and edited his findings starting in 1545 up until his death in 1590. It consists of 2,400 pages organized into twelve books with over 2,000 illustrations drawn by native artists providing vivid images of this era. It documents the culture, religious cosmology (worldview) and ritual practices, society, economics, and natural history of the Aztec people. One scholar described The Florentine Codex as “one of the most remarkable accounts of a non-Western culture ever composed.” Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson were the first to translate the Codex from Nahuatl to English, in a project that took 30 years to complete. As of November 1, 2012, the World Digital Library offers high resolution scans of all volumes at The Florentine Codex.