The University of Arizona Press
Incense and Performance
The Lives of Mexica Ritual Specialists
At the time of the conquest of Mexico, the anonymous authors of the Anales de Tlatelolco (1560s) recorded the deaths of two Mexica ritual specialists. During the tumultuous events of the times, Quauhnocthli (a telpochcalli specialist) and Quauhcoatl (a calmecac specialist) died protecting the temple of Huitzilopochtli and his bundled embodiement in the neighborhood of Huitznahuac.
Scholar Josefrayn Sánchez-Perry reconstructs the lives and labors of the two specialists, articulated through Nahuatl-language texts, material culture from neighborhood and temple spaces, and the academic study of religion. The book expands on known theories on Mexica ritual specialists by providing new insights about telpochcalli and calmecac duties, their interrelated educational models, and the collective practices that brought people, animals, flora, specialists, and teteo (more-than-human forces) together. The book demonstrates that telpochcalli and calmecac specialists shared the ritual responsibilities of collective and elective practices.
Giving care to teteo, giving life, and giving offerings were balanced with giving war, giving council, and giving music and dance. As Quauhnochtli and Quauhcoatl ensured the safety of the bundled Huitzilopochtli, they characterized how a Mexica ritual specialist lived and what they did.
“This book tells a remarkable story of two Nahua ritual specialists living in the last decades of Nahua rule in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the so-called Aztec empire. Drawing on a vast array of documentary, visual, and material sources, Josefrayn Sánchez-Perry uses his impressive linguistic and historical skills to reconstruct the life trajectories of two men who were neither rulers nor commoners, but key actors navigating a stunningly complex ritual and social network. Starting from very brief glimpses of their personal details in the sources, Sánchez-Perry uses his much wider understanding of Nahuatl language, society, and religion to trace their likely paths from birth to education to dance, war, divine caretaking, and eventual deaths in the context of the Spanish conquest.”—Brandon Bayne, author of Missions Begin with Blood: Suffering and Salvation in the Borderlands of New Spain
