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MS. Laud Misc. 678

Summary Catalogue no.: 546

Codex Laud

Códice Laud

Codex Mictlan

Códice Mictlan

Codex Laud (Codex Mictlan): Toltec pictorial sacred book ( teoamoxtli )

Language(s): Pictorial content

Divinatory-calendrical compilation

Based on the 260-day calendarial cycle (‘tonalpohualli’), with its division into 20 ‘trecenas’ of 13 days, illustrated with appropriate rituals and offerings used in divination. Scholarship classifies it as part of the ‘Borgia Group’ or ‘Teoamoxtli Group’ of divinatory-ritual books.

Aspects of the sequence and interpretation of the images are disputed. The account given here is abbreviated form the content summary in Elizabeth Hill Boone, Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate (2007), 246-8, which should be consulted for more detail and for a diagrammatic representation. For other interpretations differing in some respects see Ferdinand Anders and Maarten Jensen, with a contribution by Alejandra Cruz Ortiz, La pintura de la muerte y de los destinos. Libro explicativo del llamado Códice Laud (Mexico City, 1994), and Araceli Rojas, Notes on the Manufacture, Colours, and Biography of Codex Laud. Mexican Pictorial Manuscript at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (University of Warsaw, 2020), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4432303, 36-44.

The name ‘Codex Mictlan’ or ‘Book of Death’ has been proposed as an alternative to ‘Codex Laud’ on the basis of the representation of death deities in the first section. See Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez, ‘Renaming the Mexican Codices’, Ancient Mesoamerica 15, no. 2 (July 2004): 267–71, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956536104040179.

(pp. 1–8)

Almanac of forty day signs (two 20-day cycles)

(pp. 9–16)

Lords of the Half-Trecenas (groups of 8 and 5 days). Tonalpohualli organized as a compressed table, reading from right to left.

(pp. 17–22)

Protocol for ritual involving counted offerings.

(pp. 23)

Rain almanac; twenty day signs arranged around a Tlaloc.

(pp. 24)

Eclipse almanac (?) "The sun god seated in a sun disk surrounded by blood is being covered by a dark flow from the death god’s mouth; eight other gods flank the sides. Near the corners are four day signs (Crocodile, Death, Monkey, Vulture), each with twenty-five spacers to represent double trecenas. As trecena signs, Crocodile, Death, Monkey, and Vulture divide the tonalpohualli into quarters".

(pp. 25–32)

Death almanac. Count of 360 days organized as a compressed table, irregularly associated with eight scenes involving skeletal figures.

(pp. 33–38)

Marriage almanac. Numbers 2–26 associated with twenty-five couples

(pp. 39a–42a)

Tonalpohualli in trecenas organized as a compressed table, associated with four figures and rituals of Tlazolteotl.

(pp. 39b–44b)

Forty day signs organized as a grouped list, irregularly associated with eleven scenes of ritual involving tied bundles of kindling and reeds.

(pp. 43a–44a)

Tonalpohualli organized as a compressed table, irregularly associated with five scenes of diverse nature, perhaps funereal.

(pp. 45–46)

Protocols for rituals involving counted offerings.

Physical Description

Form: codex

Support: deerskin (?) with covers of jaguar skin; four strips of animal skin glued together and folded to form twenty-four 'pages', each 'page' c. 165 × 157 mm.

Foliation: Pages are counted 1-46 according to modern scholarly convention, with pages 1-24 on the obverse and pages 25-44 on the reverse, the covers of the manuscript, on the reverse, precede 25 and follow 46 and are not numbered. There is an earlier pencil numeration 1-24.

Decoration

Painting on gesso ground (see Rojas for technical details).

Binding

Preserved in mid-16th century gilt-tooled Italian slip case.

History

Origin: Pre–Hispanic, possibly the 15th century ; Mexican

The manuscript’s date and place of origin is a subject of ongoing debate. See María Isabel Álvarez Icaza Longoria, ‘The Codex Laud and the Problem of Its Provenance’, in Mesoamerican Manuscripts: New Scientific Approaches and Interpretations, ed. Maarten Jansen, Virginia M. Lladó-Buisán, and Ludo Snijders, The Early Americas: History and Culture 8 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 175–211, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004388116_009.

Provenance and Acquisition

William Laud, 1636; previous provenance unknown.

Part of his second donation to the Bodleian, 1636.

Record Sources

Summary description (Sept. 2022) with reference to published literature as cited. Previously described in the Quarto Catalogue (H. O. Coxe, Laudian Manuscripts, Quarto Catalogues II, repr. with corrections, 1969, from the original ed. of 1858–1885).

Quarto Catalogue, col. 490

Quarto Catalogue, p. 578

Summary Catalogue, vol. 2, part 1, p. 26

Availability

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Digital Images

Digital Bodleian (full digital facsimile)
Digital Bodleian (full facsimile from 35mm. slides)

Abbreviations

View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.

Last Substantive Revision

2022-08: Description revised for publication on Digital Bodleian.

A catalogue of Western manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries and selected Oxford colleges