By Frank D Gardner
The Gods Themselves
The Aztecs wrote many stories about the god Quetzalcoatl. One legend describes his death by self-immolation; after drunkenly seducing a virgin priestess, he became wracked with guilt, and set his own body alight. The only part of the god that did not burn to ash was his heart, which ascended to the heavens to become the morning star.
Many believe that Aztec religious tradition further holds that Quetzalcoatl promised to return, ushering in a new age of world peace and enlightenment for all. However, anthropologists who have deciphered the remnants of the Aztec's religious inscriptions have yet to discover any such indication from primary sources. In fact, the idea seems have to come not from any Nahuatl text, but instead from later Spanish writing, calling into question any claim that those who worshiped the feathered serpent god expected him to return.
Mistaken Impressions
In fact, the first reference to this claim of a divine return seems to have originated with Hernn Corts himself, as a convenient (and rather self-aggrandizing) explanation for his hospitable reception by the Aztec king Montezuma the Second. In his reports to the Spanish court, Corts made note of what he considered the Aztecs' ignorance and naivete concerning the appearance and equipment of his Conquistadors, and attributed their reaction to a messianic belief in their deities descending to the mortal realm.
About half a century after the fall of Tenochtitlan, a Spanish friar composed the Florentine Codex, a voluminous compendium of ethnographic research on the Aztec culture. This codex reiterated the claim that the Aztecs had received Corts as a returning god in even grander form. King Montezuma II was said to have proclaimed:"You have graciously come on earth, approached your water, your high place of Mexico; you have come down to your mat, your throne, which I have briefly kept for you, I who used to keep it for you." However, the friar may have been mistaking the deferential tone for a submissive one, as it was customary for the Aztec elite to show politeness and graciousness as a display of superiority, not of reverence. The Codex further supposed the Aztec ruler to have waxed poetic on the Spanish having "known pain [and] weariness," beseeching them to "come on earth, take your rest, enter into your palace, rest your limbs; may our lords come on earth."
Whether it was hubris, an error of translation, or a simple misreading of kindness shown to the strange and unknown force which had suddenly appeared on their land, the ultimate source of this mistake may be lost to history. However, mistake it appears to have been; on the face of it, one would not expect a true believe in the return of a divine host to be concerned with an immortal being knowing pain or needing to rest weary limbs. Whatever their intentions, by the time the Aztecs had divined the Spaniards' thirst for land and treasure, it was too late; their empire had been doomed from the first cannon shot, and the great city of Tenochtitlan fell before the might of Spanish steel and gunpowder.
To be sure, the conquest of the New World made Corts rich and powerful. However, this was not to last; the Spanish court became progressively less interested in and more distant from Corts , leaving him alienated and embittered. He didn't live to see the mistake of history that would associate his conquest with the return of a living god; dying of pleurisy in 1547, he vanished from the world stage :much like Quetzalcoatl, never to return.
About the Author:
Discovering Mayan History? Onejungle.com has a great number of Mayan History (http://www.onejungle.com/travel-resources/articles/mayan-history) articles. For more specific information on the Mayans try the Mayan Ruins (http://www.onejungle.com/travel-resources/articles/mayan-ruins) pages.
The Gods Themselves
The Aztecs wrote many stories about the god Quetzalcoatl. One legend describes his death by self-immolation; after drunkenly seducing a virgin priestess, he became wracked with guilt, and set his own body alight. The only part of the god that did not burn to ash was his heart, which ascended to the heavens to become the morning star.
Many believe that Aztec religious tradition further holds that Quetzalcoatl promised to return, ushering in a new age of world peace and enlightenment for all. However, anthropologists who have deciphered the remnants of the Aztec's religious inscriptions have yet to discover any such indication from primary sources. In fact, the idea seems have to come not from any Nahuatl text, but instead from later Spanish writing, calling into question any claim that those who worshiped the feathered serpent god expected him to return.
Mistaken Impressions
In fact, the first reference to this claim of a divine return seems to have originated with Hernn Corts himself, as a convenient (and rather self-aggrandizing) explanation for his hospitable reception by the Aztec king Montezuma the Second. In his reports to the Spanish court, Corts made note of what he considered the Aztecs' ignorance and naivete concerning the appearance and equipment of his Conquistadors, and attributed their reaction to a messianic belief in their deities descending to the mortal realm.
About half a century after the fall of Tenochtitlan, a Spanish friar composed the Florentine Codex, a voluminous compendium of ethnographic research on the Aztec culture. This codex reiterated the claim that the Aztecs had received Corts as a returning god in even grander form. King Montezuma II was said to have proclaimed:"You have graciously come on earth, approached your water, your high place of Mexico; you have come down to your mat, your throne, which I have briefly kept for you, I who used to keep it for you." However, the friar may have been mistaking the deferential tone for a submissive one, as it was customary for the Aztec elite to show politeness and graciousness as a display of superiority, not of reverence. The Codex further supposed the Aztec ruler to have waxed poetic on the Spanish having "known pain [and] weariness," beseeching them to "come on earth, take your rest, enter into your palace, rest your limbs; may our lords come on earth."
Whether it was hubris, an error of translation, or a simple misreading of kindness shown to the strange and unknown force which had suddenly appeared on their land, the ultimate source of this mistake may be lost to history. However, mistake it appears to have been; on the face of it, one would not expect a true believe in the return of a divine host to be concerned with an immortal being knowing pain or needing to rest weary limbs. Whatever their intentions, by the time the Aztecs had divined the Spaniards' thirst for land and treasure, it was too late; their empire had been doomed from the first cannon shot, and the great city of Tenochtitlan fell before the might of Spanish steel and gunpowder.
To be sure, the conquest of the New World made Corts rich and powerful. However, this was not to last; the Spanish court became progressively less interested in and more distant from Corts , leaving him alienated and embittered. He didn't live to see the mistake of history that would associate his conquest with the return of a living god; dying of pleurisy in 1547, he vanished from the world stage :much like Quetzalcoatl, never to return.
About the Author:
Discovering Mayan History? Onejungle.com has a great number of Mayan History (http://www.onejungle.com/travel-resources/articles/mayan-history) articles. For more specific information on the Mayans try the Mayan Ruins (http://www.onejungle.com/travel-resources/articles/mayan-ruins) pages.