Fondness for flowers...

Netzahualpilli holds a bouquet of flowers, Codex Ixtlilxochitl

Fondness for flowers...

Flowers played an important role in Aztec/Mexica life, not only as decorations for ceremonial events but also in each individual’s life. The Dominican friar Diego de Durán (1537-1588) commented on the Aztecs’ fondness for flowers:- (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

Bouquet of flowers - detail from Codex Mendoza folio 70r (Click on image to enlarge)

They become the happiest people in the world smelling them, for these natives in general are most sensuous and pleasure loving. They find gladness and joy in spending the entire day smelling a little flower or a bouquet made of different kinds of flowers; their gifts are accompanied by them; they relieve the tediousness of journeys with flowers. To sum up, they find the smelling of flowers so comforting that they even stave off and manage to survive hunger by smelling them.

Garlanding with flowers: Florentine Codex Book 11 (Click on image to enlarge)

Book 11 of the Florentine Codex contains a lengthy paragraph on the ‘offering of flowers’; what follows gives a good feel for Aztec ‘flower power’:-

I offer flowers. I arrange flowers. I thread a flower. I string flowers. I make flowers. I form them to be extending, uneven, rounded, round bouquets of flowers.
I make a flower necklace, a flower garland, a paper of flowers, a bouquet, a flower shield, hand flowers. I thread them. I string them... I provide one with a flower necklace. I place a garland on one... I clothe one in flowers... I cover one with flowers...
When I incite just with words, when I am beguiling him, it is said: “I caress him with flowers. I seduce one. I extend one a lengthy discourse. I induce him with words”...

INFO from: ‘The Essential Codex Mendoza’ by Frances F. Berdan and Patricia Rieff Anawalt (University of California Press, 1997) and ‘Florentine Codex: Book 11 - Earthly Things’ trans. with notes by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur O.J. Anderson (School of American Research and University of Utah, 1963).

Picture sources:-
• Image (portrait of Netzahualpilli) from the Codex Ixtlilxochitl scanned from our copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition (Graz, Austria, 1976)
• Image from the Codex Mendoza scanned from our copy of the James Cooper Clark facsimile edition (London, 1938)
• Image from the Florentine Codex scanned from our copy of the Club Internacional del Libro 3-volume facsimile edition (Madrid, 1994)

Typical! Just at this point in writing and illustrating Book 11 of the Florentine Codex, the artist(s) ran out of colour ink. Imagine the b/w image above in full colour...!

Aztec pleasure gardens

Here's what others have said:

2 At 4.04am on Wednesday September 18 2013, Harry wrote:

Bunning’s is short for ‘Bunning’s Ware House’, it’s an Australian hardware store stocking paints and garden supplies, anyway, I thought that Aztecs and flowers would never mix seeing that they are of total different characteristics but seeing that many Aztecians were poets.. Still the simple things in life are the best, stop and smell the roses... or why not a cactus flower...

Mexicolore replies: Thanks for this! Actually, you’ve hit the nail on the head: the Aztecs par excellence had two totally contrasting sides to them: a fierce, fanatical religion and a gentle, caring and loving side. Flowers were a metaphor for songs, poetry and philosophy, in which they indulged at a serious level. And they say that every Aztec house was decorated with flowers...

1 At 12.05am on Tuesday September 17 2013, florence wrote:

Well colour ink was very hard to come across back then, it took lots of materials such as insects and naturally occuring rock or soil to get enough but its no excuse for the Aztecs to stop, go out, get new stuff, did they know about bunnings back then...

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