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Sacred Consumption

Making a foundational contribution to Mesoamerican studies, this book explores Aztec painted manuscripts and sculptures, as well as indigenous and colonial Spanish texts, to offer the first integrated study of food and ritual in Aztec art. Aztec painted manuscripts and sculptural works, as well as indigenous and Spanish sixteenth-century texts, were filled with images of foodstuffs and food processing and consumption. Both gods and humans were depicted feasting, and food and eating clearly played a pervasive, integral role in Aztec rituals. Basic foods were transformed into sacred elements within particular rituals, while food in turn gave meaning to the ritual performance. This pioneering book offers the first integrated study of food and ritual in Aztec art. Elizabeth Morán asserts that while feasting and consumption are often seen as a secondary aspect of ritual performance, a close examination of images of food rites in Aztec ceremonies demonstrates that the presence—or, in some cases, the absence—of food in the rituals gave them significance. She traces the ritual use of food from the beginning of Aztec mythic history through contact with Europeans, demonstrating how food and ritual activity, the everyday and the sacred, blended in ceremonies that ranged from observances of births, marriages, and deaths to sacrificial offerings of human hearts and blood to feed the gods and maintain the cosmic order. Morán also briefly considers continuities in the use of pre-Hispanic foods in the daily life and ritual practices of contemporary Mexico. Bringing together two domains that have previously been studied in isolation, Sacred Consumption promises to be a foundational work in Mesoamerican studies.

AZTEC RHAPSODIES Flower and Song of the Mexican Conquest

You hold in your hands, dear reader, the story that took place five centuries ago in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the glorious pre-Columbian city, the seat of the Aztec empire, settled in the midst of charming lakes. On August 13, 1521, the Indian city fell under the shots of the "fire trumpets," the cannons of the Spaniards. Then the poets of the defeated tribe started to sculpt in their minds this tragic event that, in its deepest meaning, was the destruction of the American Indian culture by the Spaniard conquerors. The author, as a good rhapsodist, collected the remembrances of the Indian poets to give us the most solemn version of the tragic event. This is essentially the grandeur of this paper. It's convenient to say that this story is told not from the perspective of the conquerors but that of the noble Aztecs. The Aeneid of Virgil, in the same manner, presented to us the tragic defeat of the Trojan people, with the mission to found the Roman Empire. So, too, does Aztec Rhapsodies recount the destruction of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. If you explore the work, you will be amazed by epic addresses, noble dialogues, and immortal expressions of courtesy. The conversation of the Franciscan missionary and the Aztec learned in the forty-seventh rhapsody, is a vivid example of the sublimity attained in this epic. The rhythm of the forty-eight rhapsodies is to be celebrated. In this manner, the tradition of the epic poems of the Greek and Roman people is revived. The Italian poets created the heroic verse that flowered in Spain; in English poetry, it was adopted as blank verse, the heroic rhythm chosen by Milton for his immortal Paradise Lost. Gabriel Michel has achieved a supreme beauty in rhythmical perfection in this poem. Take any of the verses of the poem, and you will enjoy the cadence and the sweetness of every phrase converted into song. A new contribution of the paper honors the Western humanism, capable of appraising all anthropological cultural elements through the most perfect of the arts: literature. The story is from America, and the rhythm is from England.