Page 502 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

hualtin], with usufruct rights to land organized
into localized wards called calpultin, each with a
temple and schools; the serfs bound to the soil
(mayeque), who worked the lands of the nobles;
and the slaves (tlacohtin), most of whom toiled
as domestic servants, farm laborers, and the like.
Slavery was clearly defined under law, and ordi-
narily no slave could be resold without his con-
sent. Slaves were generally persons who had
been unable to meet their debt obligations, and
some of them rose to become estate managers
and enjoyed a degree of prosperity.

Religion and the calendar
As the early Spanish friars came to realize,
there were few if any peoples in the world who
could rival the Aztec in piety. They were com-
pared favorably in this with the conquistadors.
When Cortes had the temerity to suggest to the
emperor Motecuhzoma (whose guest he was)
that he be allowed to set up a statue of the
Virgin Mary in the holiest of sanctuaries (the
adoratory of Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca),
the huei tlatoani's measured reply was

If I had known that you would have said such
defamatory things, I would not have shown
you my gods, we consider them to be very
good, for they give us health and rains and
good seed times and seasons and as many
victories as we desire, and we are obliged to
worship them and make sacrifices, and I pray
you not to say another word to their dishonour. 8
Everything the Aztecs did, from huei tlatoani
to slave, from priest to warrior, was in some
way religiously motivated, whether it be a
prayer for good harvest, a father's advice to his
son, or a human sacrifice. Permeating life, in
fact energizing the entire Aztec nation and the
universe itself, was a complex yet coherent
system of beliefs nurtured and developed by the
9
priesthood. The Aztecs knew that it was their
destiny to maintain the world in good order, and this
structure guided them in every step along the way.
At once optimistic and deeply pessimistic,
the Aztec world view justified all aspects of life,
10
including the state and empire. Its underlying
premises were very different from those of
European Renaissance civilization, and were not fig. 4. The Founding of Tenochtitlan. The first two Aztec conquests, Colhuacan and Tenayucan, are depicted at
really understood by the invaders until long the bottom of the drawing. From Codex Mendoza, ms Arch. Seld.A.l. fol. 2r. The Bodleian Library, Oxford
after the Aztec world had collapsed. Tezcatli-
poca ("smoking mirror") was the real Aztec
supreme deity: even Huitzilopochtli himself
was but one of his aspects. This ancient, dread, struggle between Tezcatlipoca, the god of war implicit in all creation, the sacred calendar
and protean supernatural was both giver and and witchcraft, and his antithesis Quetzalcoatl (tonalpohualli) integrated time with space. It
destroyer of life and fortune. Through him the ("feathered serpent"), lord of priests, produced was based upon the eternal permutation of the
huei tlatoani and empire derived their legiti- the ages of the world and time itself. numbers one through thirteen with a count of
macy. The Aztec ethos embraced the principle In a universe both ordered and inherently 20 named days, producing an ever-repeating
of duality, the unity of opposites. The constant unstable, with change and ultimate destruction cycle of 260 days. Of great antiquity, with roots

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