They have in this great city very great mosques or temples in which they
worship and offer sacrifices to their Idols; but the Chief Mosque was a
marvellous thing to behold, it was as large as a city. It was surrounded
by a high masonry wall and had four principal doorways.
FRAY TORIBIO BENAVENTE or MOTOLINIA, Historia de los Indios de Nueva
España, Treatise No. I. Ch. XII.
There have never been seen or heard of before such temples as those of
this land of Anahuac or New Spain, neither for size and design nor for
anything else; and as they rise to a great height they must needs have
strong foundations; and there was an endless number of such temples and
altars in this country, about which a note is here made so that those
who may come to this country from now onwards may know about them, for
the memory of them all has already almost perished.
These temples are called Teocallis, and throughout the land we find that
in the principal part of the town a great rectangular court is
constructed; in the large towns they measured from corner to corner the
length of a crossbow shot, in the lesser towns the courts are smaller.
This courtyard they surround with a wall and many of the walls are
embattled; their gateways dominate the principal streets and roads, for
they are all made to converge towards the court; and so as to give
greater honour to their temples they lay out the roads very straight
with rope line for a distance of one or two leagues, and it is a thing
worth seeing from the top of the principal temple, how straight all the
roads come from all the lesser towns and suburbs and converge towards
the Court of the Teocallis.
In the most conspicuous place in this court would stand a great
rectangular block (cepa). So as to write this description I measured one
in a moderate-sized town named Tenanyocan [Tenayoca] and found that it
measured forty fathoms from corner to corner all built up with a solid
wall, on the outside the wall was of stone, and the inside was filled up
with stone only or with clay and adobe; others were built of earth well
tamped.
As the structure rose it contracted towards the centre and at the height
of a fathom and a half or two fathoms there were some ledges going
inwards, for they did not build it in a straight line, and the thick
foundation was always worked towards the centre so as to give it
strength and as the wall rose it got narrower; so that when it got to
the top of the Teocalli it had narrowed and contracted itself seven or
eight fathoms on each side, both by the ledges and the wall leaving the
foundation [mound] on the top thirty-four or thirty-five fathoms.
_On the west side were the steps and ascent_, and above on the top they
constructed two great altars, placing them towards the east side, so
that there was no more space left behind them than was sufficient to
enable one to walk round them. One altar was to the right and the other
to the left. Each one stood by itself with its own walls and hood-like
roof. In the great Teocallis there were two altars, in the others only
one, and each one of these altars[12] had upper stories; the great ones
had three stories above the altars, all terraced and of considerable
height, and the building (cepa) itself was very lofty, so that it could
be seen from afar off.
One could walk round each of these chapels and each had its separate
walls. In front of these altars a large space was left where they made
their sacrifices, and the building (cepa) itself had the height of a
great tower, without [counting] the stories that covered the altars.
According to what some people who saw it have told me, the Teocalli of
Mexico had more than a hundred steps; I have seen them myself and have
counted them more than once, but I do not remember [the number]. The
Teocalli of Texcoco had five or six steps more than that of Mexico. If
one were to ascend to the top of the chapel of San Francisco in Mexico,
which has an arched roof and is of considerable height, and look over
Mexico, the temple of the devil would have a great advantage in height,
and it was a wonderful sight to view from it the whole of Mexico and the
towns in the neighbourhood.
In similar courts in the principal towns there were twelve or fifteen
other Teocallis of considerable size, some larger than others, but far
from as large as the principal Teocalli.
Some of them had their fronts and steps towards others[13], others to
the East, again others to the South, but none of them had more than one
altar with its chapel, and each one had its halls and apartments where
the Tlamacazques or Ministers dwelt, who were numerous, and those who
were employed to bring water and firewood, for in front of each altar
there were braziers which burnt all night long, and in the halls also
there were fires. All these Teocallis were very white, burnished and
clean, and in some of them [the temple enclosures] were small gardens
with trees and flowers.
There was in almost all these large courts another temple, which, after
its square foundation had been raised and the altar built, was enclosed
with a high circular wall and covered with its dome. This was [the
temple] of the God of the Air, who was said to have his principal seat
in Cholula, and in all this province there were many of them.
This God of the Air they called in their language Quetzalcoatl, and they
said that he was the son of that God of the great statue and a native of
Tollan [Tula], and thence he had gone out to instruct certain provinces
whence he disappeared, and they still hoped that he would return. When
the ships of the Marqués del Valle, Don Hernando Cortés (who conquered
this New Spain), appeared, when they saw them approaching from afar off
under sail, they said that at last their God was coming, and on account
of the tall white sails they said that he was bringing Teocallis across
the sea. However, when they [the Spaniards] afterwards disembarked, they
said it was not their God, but that they were many Gods.
The Devil was not contented with the Teocallis already described, but in
every town and in each suburb, at a quarter of a league apart, they had
other small courts where there were three or four small Teocallis, in
some of them more, and in others only one, and on every rock or hillock
one or two, and along the roads and among the maize fields there were
many other small ones, and all of them were covered with plaster and
white, so that they showed up and bulked large, and in the thickly
peopled country it appeared as though it was all full of houses,
especially of the Courts of the Devil, which were wonderful to behold,
and there was much to be seen when one entered into them, and the most
important, above all others, were those of Texcoco and Mexico.
SAHAGUN, FR. BERNADINO DE (Bustmamante Edition), p. 194. Report of the
Mexicans about their God Vitzilopuchtli. [Huitzilopochtli,
Huichilobos.]
The Mexicans celebrate three festivals to Vitzilopuchtli every year, the
first of them in the month named Panquetzaliztli. During this festival
[dedicated] to him and others, named Tlacavepancuexcotzin, they ascend
to the top of the Cue, and they make life-size images out of tzoalli:
when these are completed, all the youths of Telpuchcalli carry them on
their hands to the top of the Cue. They make a statue of Vitzilopuchtli
in the district [barrio] named Itepeioc[A]. The statue of
Tlacavepancuexcotzin was made in that of Vitznaoao[14]. They first
prepare the dough and afterwards pass all the night in making the
statues of it.
After making the images of the dough, they worshipped them as soon as it
was dawn and made offerings to them during the greater part of the day,
and towards evening they began ceremonies and dances with which they
carried them to the Cue, and at sunset they ascended to the top of it.
After the images were placed in position, they all came down again at
once, except the guardians [named] Yiopuch.
As soon as dawn came the God named Paynal, who was the Vicar of
Vitzilopuchtli, came down from the lofty Cu, and one of the priests,
clad in the rich vestments of Quetzalcoatl, carried this God
(Vitzilopuchtli) in his hands, as in a procession, and the image of
Paynal (which was carved in wood and, as has already been stated, was
richly adorned) was also brought down.
In this latter festival there went in front of [the image] a
mace-bearer, who carried on his shoulder a sceptre in the shape of a
huge snake, covered all over with a mosaic of turquoise.
When the Chieftain arrived with the image at a place named Teutlachco,
which is the game of Ball [that is at the Tlachtli court], which is
inside the Temple courtyard, they killed two slaves in front of him, who
were the images [representatives] of the Gods named Amapantzitzin, and
many other captives. There the procession started and went direct to
Tlaltelulco.
Many Chieftains and people came out to receive it, and they burned
incense to them [the images] and decapitated many quails before them.
Thence they went directly to a place named Popotla, which is near to
Tacuba, where now the church of S. Esteban stands, and they gave it
another reception like that mentioned above. They carried in front of
the procession all the way a banner made of paper like a fly-whisk, all
full of holes, and in the holes bunches of feathers, in the same way as
a cross is carried in front of a procession. Thence they came direct to
the Cu of Vitzilopuchtli, and with the banner they performed another
ceremony as above stated in this festival.
Account of the Buildings of the Great Temple of Mexico.
The court of this Temple was very large, almost two hundred fathoms
square; it was all paved, and had within it many buildings and towers.
Some of these were more lofty than others, and each one of them was
dedicated to a God.
The principal tower of all was in the middle and was higher than
the others, and was dedicated to the God Vitzilopuchtli
Tlacavepancuexcotzin.
This tower was divided in the upper part, so that it looked like two,
and had two chapels or altars on the top, each one covered by its dome
(chapitel) and each one of them had on the summit its particular badges
or devices. In the principal one of them was the statue of
Vitzilopuchtli, also called Ilhuicatlxoxouhqui, and in the other the
image of the God Tlaloc. Before each one of these was a round stone like
a chopping-block, which they call Texcatl, where they killed those whom
they sacrificed in honour of that God, and from the stone towards the
ground below was a pool of blood from those killed on it; and so it was
on all the other towers; _these faced the West_, and one ascended by
very narrow straight steps to all these towers.
(Sahagun mentions seventy-eight edifices in connection with the Great
Temple, but it is almost certain that these were not all within the
Temple enclosure.)
SAHAGUN, Hist. de la Conquista, Book 12, Ch. XXII.
They [the Mexicans] ascended a Cu, the one that was nearest to the royal
houses [_i. e._ of Axayacatl], and they carried up there two stout beams
so as to hurl them from that place on to the royal houses and beat them
down so as to force an entry. When the Spaniards observed this they
promptly ascended the Cu in regular formation, carrying their muskets
and crossbows, and they began the ascent very slowly, and shot with
their crossbows and muskets at those above them, a musketeer
accompanying each file and then a soldier with sword and shield, and
then a halberdier: in this order they continued to ascend the Cu, and
those above hurled the timbers down the steps, but they did no damage to
the Spaniards, who reached the summit of the Cu and began to wound and
kill those who were stationed on the top, and many of them flung
themselves down from the Cu: finally, all those [Mexicans] who had
ascended the Cu perished.