The plants depicted here “give the body the sturdiness of a gladiator, cast away fatigue, shake off fear, and give vigor to the heart.” They are specifically prescribed for the “fatigue of those who administer the Republic and hold public office” (López Austin 1984:96). The artists’ rich palette is particularly noticeable in the plentiful colors of the temahuiztiliquauitl flowers at top left. The semantic symbolism of Nahua painting is clearest in the couaxocotl plant, depicted at bottom left alongside two serpents, a reference to the plant’s name (coua, “serpent,” and xocotl, “fruit”).
The unusual focus on the health of public office holders is likely a nod to Francisco de Mendoza, the son of the viceroy who had commissioned the scholars of the College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco to make the Cruz-Badiano Codex. Mendoza had an interest in commercializing medicinal plants at a large scale. Most likely, he included this book with a shipment of plants to Doña Juana, daughter of the king of Spain, who eventually gave him the office of General Administrator of Mines of New Spain, with permission to commercialize and export medicinal plants from America. The Mendoza family later made a generous donation of eight hundred pesos to the college. This attests to the commercial interests behind the collection of Native American knowledge in colonial documents, as well as how the colonial period brought about a burgeoning global order based on the commodification of knowledge and the extraction of Indigenous resources for commercial purposes.
Image Source
- Martín de la Cruz. Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis [Cruz-Badiano Codex]. Translated by Juan Badiano. 1552. Fols. 38v–39r. Courtesy of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México (CC-BY-NC-ND).
Further Reading
- López Austin, Alfredo. Textos de medicina náhuatl. 3rd ed. Serie de cultura náhuatl: Monografías 19. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984.
- Zetina, Sandra, Tatiana Falcón, Elsa Arroyo, and José Luis Ruvalcaba. “The Encoded Language of Herbs: Material Insights into the De la Cruz-Badiano Codex.” In Colors between Two Worlds: The Florentine Codex of Bernardino De Sahagún, edited by Louis A. Waldman, 220–55. Villa I Tatti 28. Florence: Villa I Tatti and Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, 2012.
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