Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acknowledgements for Literary Material and Illustrations
- Note on Nahuatl
- Maps
- Epigraph
- Introduction
- Part I The City
- Part II Roles
- 3 Victims
- 4 Warriors, Priests and Merchants
- 5 The Masculine Self Discovered
- 6 Wives
- 7 Mothers
- 8 The Female Being Revealed
- Part III The Sacred
- Part IV The City Destroyed
- A Question of Sources
- Monthly Ceremonies of theSeasonal (Solar) Calendar: Xiuitl
- The Mexica Pantheon
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Artefacts
4 - Warriors, Priests and Merchants
from Part II - Roles
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Acknowledgements for Literary Material and Illustrations
- Note on Nahuatl
- Maps
- Epigraph
- Introduction
- Part I The City
- Part II Roles
- 3 Victims
- 4 Warriors, Priests and Merchants
- 5 The Masculine Self Discovered
- 6 Wives
- 7 Mothers
- 8 The Female Being Revealed
- Part III The Sacred
- Part IV The City Destroyed
- A Question of Sources
- Monthly Ceremonies of theSeasonal (Solar) Calendar: Xiuitl
- The Mexica Pantheon
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Artefacts
Summary
Regarding fortitude, which among them was esteemed more than any other virtue, wherefore they raised it to the highest level of worth: they conducted impressive training in this as appears in many parts of this work. As to the religion and the adoration of their gods, I do not believe there have been in the world idolaters to such a degree venerators of their gods, nor at such great cost to themselves as these of this New Spain.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Prologue to the Book of the GodsEuropeans have largely forgotten the glamour which can invest the male born for battle and shadowed in the daylight world by the sacred burden of wounds and death, despite the increasing incidence of such curiously archaic warriors in the mountains, and in the cities, of the late-twentieth-century world. Mexica society was committed to war, not as an occasional heroic obligation, but chronically, and its members had to be brought to bear the social and psychological costs of that commitment. The allure of the warrior style penetrated deep into the few other desired and reputable masculine careers. Neither priests nor merchants, despite their separate professions and institutions, and despite superficially distinctive demeanours, were immune to it. Priests led the warrior march to battle, while merchants boasted of their trade expeditions in warrior idiom, and dispersed much of their hoarded wealth for the privilege of playing a warrior's ceremonial part for a day. The main ceremonial calendar was built out of the swing of the seasons, marking the transitions out of the time of agricultural growth into the season of war.
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- AztecsAn Interpretation, pp. 156 - 199Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014