A major god of the Aztec pantheon, Tezcatlipoca embodied change through conflict and may have been identified with Christ in the generations after the European conquest of Mexico.
Tezcatlipoca, a member of the Aztec pantheon, was the omnipotent god of rulers and warriors as well as the patron of magicians and highwaymen. He was believed to be pure spirit and was connected with the gods of the sky and stars, especially those connected with death, illness, and destruction. Known as the bringer of both fortune and disaster, as both creator and destroyer, Tezcatlipoca embodied change through conflict. Because of his varied nature, he was referred to by many epithets. The most common of these were “smoking mirror” and “the sacrificial offering,” but one modern scholar has identified no fewer than 360 others, including Titlacuahuan, “he whose slaves we are,” Yaotl, “the enemy,” and Youalli Ehecatl, “night wind.” As Yaotl, the patron of soldiers, he was identified with HuiTZiLOPOCHTLi (although Yaotl was the warrior of the north of Mictlan, region of death, while Huitzilopochtli ruled in the south, or the region of life). Tezcatlipoca was also sometimes identified with Xiutecuhtli and considered the inventor of fire.
During the month of Toxcatl (approximately April 23 to May 12), the AzTECS celebrated the principal festival of their year, dedicated to Tezcatlipoca. Each year a young man was selected to embody the god and to serve as the succeeding year’s sacrificial victim. Throughout what was to become the last year of his life, he received all sorts of attention and honors and was encouraged to satisfy his every desire. On the day of the festival, he marched in procession to an altar on Lake Texcoco, where he was made to climb the temple steps. During the climb he played on three ceremonial flutes, which he broke in succession. When he reached the top, having broken the final flute, he was sacrificed, just as the new Tezcatlipoca began his procession through the streets of Tenochtitlan.
It was during a celebration associated with this festival that Pedro de Alvarado attacked the Aztecs in the sacred precinct of the Great Pyramid in Tenochtitlan, taking advantage of the fact that Hernan Cortes had taken his troops to the coast to fight Paneilo de Narvaez, who had challenged his command.
In the religious syncretism that took place after the conquest, indigenous peoples may have identified Tezcatlipoca
With Christ, possibly due to the fact that both were associated with sacrificial offerings. One dramatic representation of this tendency exists in Ciudad Hidalgo in Mexico, where one atrial crucifix is adorned with Tezcatlipoca’s symbol, an obsidian mirror, surrounded by a crown of thorns in the place in which Jesus’ face would normally appear.
Further reading: Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Doris Heyden, “Caves, Gods and Myths: World-view and Planning in Teotihuacan,” in Mesoamerican Sites and World Views, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, D. C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1981); Mary Miller and Karl Taube, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion (London: Thames & Hudson, 1993).
—Marie A. Kelleher
Thevet, Andre (1516?-1592) scholar Royal cosmographer for the king of France, Andre Thevet traveled to the Western Hemisphere and produced several works that rank among the most substantial collections of travel accounts in 16th-century Europe.
Born in Angouleme sometime in the early 16th century—scholars disagree whether he was born in 1504 or in the mid-1510s—Thevet received a formal education through the support of a powerful local family, the La Rochefoucaulds, and then became a private secretary to the cardinal of Amboise. In an age when many individuals interested in the Western Hemisphere were Protestants, Thevet remained a Catholic, and his loyalty to the state and its church paid many benefits during his career. He began to travel widely in the 1540s, with journeys to such disparate places as Italy, Switzerland, and Africa. In 1549 he sailed from Venice to the Levant and stayed four years, touring such cosmopolitan centers as Constantinople, Alexandria, and Athens. Upon his return to France he wrote his first travel book, published under the title Cosmographie de Levant in Lyon in 1554.
In 1555 Thevet sailed across the Atlantic and reached Brazil, but he became ill and returned to France in late January 1556 after only 10 weeks in the Western Hemisphere. He maintained that he returned to America later on a journey that he claimed took him through the Caribbean, near Florida, and, in his words, “very close to Canada.” If he traveled that far north, his expedition would have been especially meaningful to the French, who had long had an interest in lands explored earlier by jACqUES Cartier. When Thevet returned he published his next significant travel account, Les Singularitez de la France ant-arctique, which appeared in Paris in 1557. The book had a wide following in Europe. Sir Walter Ralegh even took a copy with him on his later journey to Guinea.
The appearance of Les Singulari-tez, in combination with his earlier account of the Levant, launched Thevet into the highest possible social and political orbits in Paris. After the subsequent publication of other editions of his American travels, including editions published in London in English and in Venice in Italian, Thevet became royal cosmographer to the French court, a position he held under four kings (Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III); he was also aumonier (“chaplain”) to Catherine de’ Medici, the spouse of Henry II and herself a member of one of Italy’s richest and most powerful families. In addition, he became an overseer of the king’s CABINET OF CURIOSITIES at Fountainebleau. The Catholic Church also offered rewards and positions: abbot of Notre Dame de Masdion in Saintonge and canon of the cathedral of Angouleme in his hometown.
In 1575 he published his masterpiece, La Cosmographie Universelle, in two enormous volumes in Paris. In scale it ranked alongside GIOVANNI BATTISTA RAMUSlo’s three-volume Navigationi e Viaggi, and it gave to a select group of French readers an astonishing glimpse of the world well beyond France. Like other compilers of accounts, Thevet relied heavily on certain authorities, including (not surprisingly) the writings about Florida left by Rene de Laudonniere. Among his book’s charms were illustrations that accompanied Thevet’s description of the Western Hemisphere, including a picture of a ship sailing under a star-filled night sky and another of the Isle du Rats—the “Isle of Rats”—where rodents had become so menacing that they seemed to control the island. He even included a description, accompanied by a map, of a wondrous island covered with beautiful birds and bountiful fruit trees—“a second paradise,” he called it, and then named it “I’Isle de Thevet” to make sure that he would be forever associated with it. However, although his earlier efforts had received virtually universal praise, the Cosmographie Universelle elicited scorn from some readers, including Jean de Lery who criticized what he believed were Thevet’s numerous errors. In the mid-1580s Thevet completed a series of biographical sketches, which he published under the title Vrais Pourtraicts et vies des hommes illustres—True Portraits and Lives of Illustrious Men—published in Paris in 1584, and another major geographical work, entitled “Le Grand Insulaire et pilotage d’Andre Thevet angoumoisin,” which remained unpublished during his lifetime. At some point he also put his signature on the cover page of the Codex Mendoza, thereby linking his identity with one of the major written accounts of the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica and their encounter with the Spanish.
When Thevet died in Paris in November 1592, he left behind a body of work that included not only accounts of his and other travels, but also a preliminary vocabulary list of words used by the indigenous peoples of Canada. Others who followed left behind similar linguistic clues about the early meetings between Europeans and Native Americans. Although such listings have great value, Thevet at the end of his life focused on neither his travels nor his vocabulary but instead on the construction of his own tomb at the Grand Convent of the FRANCISCANS. Having ordered the tomb himself, he apparently spent his last days ensuring that this Parisian grave was suitable for his earthly remains.
Further reading: Frank Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World: The Geographical Imagination in the Age of Discovery (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1994); Roger B. Schlesinger and Arthur P. Stabler, eds. and trans., Andre Thevet’s North America: A Sixteenth-Century View (Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986).
World History
