THE PRIESTHOOD AND RITUAL OF THE ANCIENT MEXICANS
The resemblance of the Mexican priesthood to that of Ancient Egypt was
very marked. However, the influence of the priests among the people of
Anahuac was even greater than that of the analogous caste among the
people of Khemi. Their system of conventual education permitted them to
impress their doctrines upon the minds of the young in that indelible
manner which secures unfaltering adhesion in later life to the dogmas so
inculcated; and no doubt the ever-present fear of human sacrifice
assisted them mightily in their dealings with the people. In short, they
were all-powerful, and the Mexican, accustomed to their influence from
the period of childhood to that of death, submitted unquestioningly to
their rule in all things, spiritual and temporal.
The religious ethics of the Mexican priesthood were lofty and sublime
in the extreme, and had but little in common with their barbarous
practices. They had been borrowed from the more cultured Toltecs, who
during their sole tenure of Anahuac had evolved a moral code to which it
would be difficult to take exception. But although this exalted
philosophy had been adopted by the fierce and uncultured Aztecs, it had
become so obscured by the introduction of cruel and inhuman rites and
customs as to be almost no longer recognisable as the pure faith of the
race they had succeeded in the land. The germ and core of the Aztec
religion was the idea of the constant necessity of propitiating the gods
by means of human sacrifice, and to this aspect of their religion we
will return later.
We have already seen that underlying the mythology of the ancient
Mexicans was the idea of a supreme Being, a 'Great Spirit.' In the rites
of confession and absolution particularly was this Being appealed to in
prayer, and the similarity of these petitions to those offered up by
themselves so impressed the monkish companions of the Spanish conquerors
that their astonishment is very evident in their writings. It is
unlikely that these priests would admit a soul of goodness in the evil
thing it was their business to stamp out; and their testimony in this
respect is of the highest value as evidence that the Aztec Religion
possessed at least the germ of the eternal verities.
The Aztecs believed that eternity was broken up into several distinct
cycles, each of several thousand years' duration. There would seem to
have been four of these periods, concerning the length and nature of
which the old Spanish writers on the subject differ very materially. The
conclusion of each was (according to the Mexican tradition) to witness
the extinction of humanity in one mighty holocaust, and the blotting out
of the sun in the heavens. Whether this universal upheaval applied only
to the sons of men, or, like the Teutonic Gotterdaemmerung, or the
Scandinavian Raegnarok, had an equal significance for the gods, is not
clear. It is worth remarking, however, that it premises the mortal
nature of the sun, and, therefore, the existence of a creative agency
with the ability to set another sun in its place.
With the Mexicans the question of a future life was a very nebulous one,
though perhaps no more so than with the ancient Greeks or Romans. There
was more than one paradise. Mictlan, the shadowy sombre place of the
dead, was the resting-place of the majority, for the Aztecs fully
believed that the higher realms of bliss were preserves for the
aristocracy where the lowly might not enter. And this, in passing, is
perhaps an explanation of the marvellously speedy adoption of
Christianity by the Mexican natives subsequent to the conquest of
Anahuac. Of the higher realms of bliss the 'Mansion of the Sun' was
perhaps the most desirable. There the principal pleasures consisted in
accompanying the sun in his course, and the amusement of choral dancing.
Souls in this paradise might also enter the bodies of humming-birds, and
flit from flower to flower. The exercise of the chase lent to this place
something of the character of a Valhalla, and we hear something of
Gargantuan banquets. Here, too, the blessed might animate the clouds,
and float deliciously over the world they had quitted.
The paradise of Tlaloc was the special dwelling of those who had lost
their lives by drowning, of sacrificed children, and of those who had
died of disease caused by damp or moisture. But two exceptions were made
as regarded the souls of others, and these related to warriors slain in
battle, and women who had died in child-bed, who were permitted to enter
paradise as having forfeited their lives in the service of the state.
All the science and wisdom of the country was embodied in the priestly
caste. The priests understood the education of the people, and so
forcibly impressed their students with their knowledge of the occult
arts that for the rest of their lives they quietly submitted to priestly
influence. The priestly order was exceedingly numerous, as is proved by
the fact that no less than five thousand functionaries were attached to
the great temple of Mexico, the rank and offices of whom were
apportioned with the most minute exactitude. The basis of the priesthood
was eminently aristocratic, and its supreme pontiff was known by the
appellation of _Mexicatl Teohuatzin_, or 'Mexican Lord of Divine
Matters.' Next in rank to him was the high priest of Quetzalcoatl, whose
authority was limited to his own priesthood, and who lived a life of
strict seclusion, not unlike that of the Grand Lama of Tibet. This was
probably a remnant of old Toltec practice. The pontiff seems to have
wielded a very considerable amount of political power, and to have had a
seat on the royal council.
The life of an Aztec priest was rigorous in the extreme. Fasting and
penance bulked largely among his duties, and the idea of the
implacability of the gods which was current in the priesthood appears
to have driven many priests to great extremes of self-inflicted torture.
They dressed entirely in black (with the exception of the caste of
Quetzalcoatl, who were clothed in white), and their cloaks covered their
heads, falling down at each side like a mantilla. Their hair was
permitted to grow very long. They bathed every evening at sunset, and
rose several times during the night for the purpose of paying their
devotions. Some of their orders permitted marriage, while others were
celibate, but all, without distinction, passed an existence of severe
asceticism. As has been said, departmental duties were strongly marked.
Some were readers, others musicians, while others again, probably the
lower orders, attended to the sacred fires, and the more menial offices,
the grand duty of human sacrifice devolving upon the higher orders of
the prelacy alone.
There was also an order of females who were admitted to the practice of
all the sacerdotal functions, omitting only that of human sacrifice.
These appear to have been more of the description of nuns than of
priestesses. Fakirs and religious beggars also abounded, but these seem
to have taken upon themselves mendicant vows for a space only.
Education was wholly sacerdotal. That is, though secular studies were
communicated to the young, the principal part of their training
consisted of religious instruction. The schools were situated in the
temple precincts, and entering these at an early age the boys were
instructed by priests, and the girls by nuns. They resided within the
temple buildings, and those who did not, and who probably consisted of
the lower orders, were enrolled in a society called the
_Telpochtiliztli_, which met every evening at sunset to perform choral
dances in honour of Tezcatlipoca. A secondary school also existed,
called the _Calmecac_, in which the lore of the priests and the reading
of the hieroglyphs, astrology, and the kindred sciences were taught the
young men, whilst the girls became experts in the weaving of costly
garments for the adornment of the idols, and the wear of the higher
orders of the hierarchy.
When the boys and girls left the school at the age of fifteen they were
either sent back to their families, or to public service, to which they
were often recommended by the priests. Others remained to become in
their turn priests or nuns in different convents.
Severe educational tests were required for entrance into the
priesthood, and grades were many. The priests, we have seen, might
occupy one of several ranks, and the nuns could become abbesses, or
merely retain the position of simple sisters, according to their
ambition and abilities. The lower ranks were designated
_Cihuaquaquilli_, or 'lady herb-eaters,' while the higher orders were
known as _Cihuatlamacasque_, or 'lady deaconesses.'
The Spanish conquerors of Mexico were astonished to find among this
peculiar people a number of rites which appeared in many respects
analogous to some of those practised by Catholics. Such were the use of
the cross as a symbol, communion, baptism, and confession. The cross,
which was designated, strangely enough, 'Tree of our Life,' was merely
the symbol of the four winds, which were indeed the life of Anahuac. As
regards confession and absolution, these were permitted to a person only
once in his existence, and that at a late period of life, as any
repetition of the pardoned offence was held to be inexpiable. Penance
was apportioned, and absolution given much in the same manner as in the
Roman Catholic Church. There appears to have been more than one kind of
communion. At the third festival of Huitzilopochtli they made an image
of him in dough kneaded with the blood of infants, and divided the
pieces among themselves. In the case of Xiuhtecutli a similar image was
placed on the top of a tree, which, like our Christmas trees, had been
transported from the forest to the town, and when the tree was thrown
down and the image broken, the people scrambled for the pieces, which
they devoured.
In the rite of baptism the principal functionary was the midwife. She
touched the mouth and breast of the infant with water in the presence of
the assembled relations, and invoked the blessing of the goddess
Cihuatcoatl, who presided over childbirth (and who was a variant of
Centeotl, the maize-goddess) upon it. But it is unlikely that she did so
in the devoutly Christian language ascribed to her by Sahagun.
At death the corpse of a Mexican was dressed in the robes peculiar to
his guardian deity, and in this can be perceived an analogy to every
dead Egyptian becoming an Osirian, or Osiris himself. Covered with paper
charms, as the Egyptian mummy was covered with metal or faience symbols,
the body was cremated, the ashes placed in an urn, and preserved in the
house of the deceased. At the death of a rich man many slaves were
sacrificed to bear him company in the world beyond the grave. This was
obviously a meaningless survival of a prehistoric custom. Valuable
treasures were often buried with the wealthy, and a rich man would often
have his private chaplain sacrificed at his tomb to assist him with
ghostly counsel and comfort in the other world.
Among the ancient Mexicans every month was consecrated to some
particular deity, and in their calendar every day marked a celebration
of some greater or lesser divinity. Those differed considerably in their
character. Some were light and joyous, and their ritual abounded in the
use of flowers and song. Others (and these, unhappily, were in the
majority) were stained with the hideousness of human sacrifice.
The temples of the Ancient Mexicans were very numerous. They were called
_teocallis_,[4] or 'houses of God,' and were constructed by facing huge
mounds of earth with brick and stone. They were pyramidal in shape, and
built in stages which grew smaller as the summit was reached. The bases
of some of these teocallis were more than one hundred feet square. The
great teocalli at Mexico, for example, was three hundred and
seventy-five feet long at the base, and three hundred feet in width.
Its height was over eighty feet. It consisted of five stages, each
communicating with the other by means of a staircase which wound around
the entire edifice. In the case of some teocallis, however, the
staircase led directly up the western face of the building. At the top
two towers, between forty and fifty feet in height, stood perched upon a
broad area. Inside these were kept the idols of the gods to whom the
teocalli was sacred. Before these towers stood the stone of sacrifice,
and two altars upon which the fires blazed night and day. In the city of
Mexico six hundred of these fires rendered any artificial illumination
at night superfluous. Through the very construction of these temples all
religious services were of a public nature. In front of the great
teocalli of Mexico stretched a court twelve hundred feet square, around
which clustered the chapels of minor deities, and those captured from
conquered peoples, as well as the dwellings and offices set apart for
the attendant priests.
Although it appears that the Toltecs, the forerunners of the Aztecs in
Mexico, had at one period of their history been prone to human
sacrifice, they had almost entirely discarded the practice at the time
of their downfall. Some two hundred years before the coming of the
Spaniards the Aztecs had adopted this abomination, and were in the habit
of sparing the lives of immense numbers of prisoners of war solely for
the purpose of offering them up to the national gods. As their empire
extended, these holocausts became greater and more common. On the
teocalli of Mexico the Spaniards could count one hundred and thirty-six
thousand human skulls piled in a horrid pyramid.
Of the sacrifices the most important was that signifying the annual
demise of Tezcatlipoca. The most handsome of the captives who chanced to
be in the hands of the Aztecs was chosen for the purpose. It was
necessary that he should be without spot or blemish, as it was intended
that he should represent Tezcatlipoca himself. He was taken in hand by a
body of tutors, who instructed him how to play his allotted part with
the dignity and grace to be expected from a divine being. Arrayed in
magnificent robes typical of his godhead, and surrounded by an
atmosphere of flowers and incense, he led the life of a voluptuary for
the space of nearly a year. On the occasion of his appearance in the
public streets he was received by the populace with all the homage due
to a god, but was strictly guarded, nevertheless, by eight pages, who
in reality were merely gaolers. Within a month's time of his immolation
four beautiful girls were given him as wives, and he was feasted and
feted by the nobility as the incarnation of Tezcatlipoca.
On the day preceding the sacrifice the victim was placed on one of the
royal canoes, and accompanied by his four wives, was rowed to the other
side of the lake. That evening his wives bade him farewell, and he was
stripped of his gorgeous apparel. He was then conducted to a teocalli
some three miles from the city of Mexico. In scaling this he threw away
the wreaths of flowers with which he had been adorned, and broke in
pieces the musical instruments with which he had amused his hours of
captivity. Crowds thronged from the city to behold the act of sacrifice.
On reaching the summit of the teocalli the victim was met by six
priests, five of whom led him to the sacrificial stone, a great block of
jasper with a convex surface. On this he was placed by the five priests,
who secured his head, arms, and legs, whilst the officiating priest,
robed in a blood-red mantle, dexterously opened his breast with a sharp
flint knife. He then inserted his hand into the gaping wound, and
tearing out the still palpitating heart, held it aloft towards the sun.
Then he cast the bleeding offering into a vessel containing burning
copal, which lay at the feet of the image of Tezcatlipoca. A species of
sermon was then delivered by one of the priests to the people in which
he drew a moral from the fate of the victim illustrative of the
inevitable conclusion of all human pleasure by the hand of death.
Huitzilopochtli had also a representative sacrificed every year who had
to take part in a sort of war-dance immediately before his immolation,
and a woman was annually sacrificed to Centeotl, the maize-goddess.
Before her death she took part in several symbolic representations which
were expressions of the various processes in the growth of the harvest.
The day before her sacrifice she sowed maize in the streets, and on the
arrival of midnight she was decapitated and flayed. A priest arrayed
himself in the still warm skin and engaged in mimic combat with soldiers
who were scattered through the streets. Part of the skin was then
carried to the temple of Centeotl the Son, where a priest made a mask of
it in the likeness of the presiding deity, and afterwards sacrificed
four captives in honour of the occasion. The skin was then carried to
the frontiers of the empire, and buried. It was supposed that its
presence there acted as a talisman against invasion.
We have before described the sacrifices of children to Tlaloc. Even more
gruesome were the awful doings at the festival of Xiuhtecutli, when the
unhappy victims were half-roasted and finally despatched by having their
hearts torn out. Cannibal feasts often followed these sacrifices--feasts
which were the more horrible in that they were accompanied by all the
accessories of a high standard of civilisation; but it must be
remembered that their purport was essentially symbolic, and in no way
partook of the nature of the orgies of flesh-famished savages.
When the great temple of Huitzilopochtli was dedicated in 1486, the
chain of victims sacrificed on that occasion extended for the length of
two miles. In this terrible massacre the hearts of no less than seventy
thousand human beings were offered up! In the light of such appalling
wickedness it is difficult to blame the Spanish conquerors of Anahuac in
their zeal to blot out the worship of the deities whom they designated
'horrible demons.' These victims were nearly always captive warriors of
rival nations, and it was on rare occasions only that native Mexicans
were led to the stone of sacrifice unless, indeed, they were
malefactors.
The great jubilee festival, which was celebrated every fifty-two years
throughout the empire, marked the coincidence of four times thirteen
solar and four times thirteen lunar years. This the Mexicans called a
'sheaf of years,' and when the first day of the fifty-third year dawned,
the ceremony of _Toxilmolpilia_, or 'the binding-up of years,' was held.
Priests and people gazed feverishly at the Pleiades to see if they would
pass the zenith. Should they do so the world would hold on its course
for another similar period; if not, extinction would instantly follow.
Fire was kindled upon a victim's breast by the friction of wood, and
whenever it was alight the prisoner's heart was plucked out, and along
with his body was consumed upon a pile of wood kindled by the new fire.
As the flames ascended, and it was seen that the Pleiades had crossed
the zenith, cries of joy burst from the assembled people below. Faggots
were lighted at the sacred pyre, and domestic fires rekindled from them.
Humanity had been respited for a generation.
It is difficult to believe that a people so imbrued in a religion of
bloodshed could have been punctilious in matters of morality, and it is
still more difficult to believe the evidence of Sahagun and Clavigero
concerning their personal piety. It seems certain, however, that as a
race the Aztecs were austerely moral, pious, truth-loving, and loyal as
citizens, and even the sanguinary priests do not appear to have reaped
any benefit from their terrible offices. All the evidence would seem to
show that it was the belief in the existence of cruel and insatiable
gods which rendered the priests and people alike callous and insensible
to the taking of human life, and this is the more easily understood when
it is remembered that the Aztecs had at a comparatively late period
emerged from a state of migratory savagery into the heirship of an
ancient and complex civilisation.[5]