In a society ruined by devastating epidemics and colonial abuse, the artists of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis were unable to finish their work. The final pages of the manuscript are unfinished sketches, lacking color and glyphs and consisting of only bare notes hurriedly written in Spanish. In addition, the devastating death toll of recent epidemics rendered survivors unable to confront natural disasters, exacerbating social collapse. On this page, we are informed that “in this year one rabbit [1 Rabbit], if one looks carefully at this count, it will always be seen that in this year [Rabbit] there was famine and death. And thus in this year of 1558 there was the most severe frost and scarcity that those living in those parts could remember” (Quiñones 1995:276).
Things would not improve. From 1559 to 1560, Central Mexico experienced locust infestations and frosts that led to crop failure and further starvation. Epidemics followed, in a never-ending cycle of illnesses and climate catastrophes that brought the great American civilizations to ruins.
The codex ends abruptly in 1562. The decline of literary production over the course of the manuscript reflects the chaos of the period: as the artists and authors died, resource supply lines were broken, and the surviving were too sick or hungry to continue working on a book.
Image Source
- Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Mexicain 385 (Codex Telleriano-Remensis), ca. 1563, fol. 48v. Courtesy of gallica.bnf.fr / BnF.
Further Reading
- Cook, Noble David. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650. New Approaches to the Americas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
- Quiñones Keber, Eloise. Codex Telleriano-Remensis: Ritual, Divination, and History in a Pictorial Aztec Manuscript. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.
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