The Herbal of the Florentine Codex: Description and Contextualization of Paragraph V in Book XI

In contemporary studies, three texts dating from the second half of the sixteenth century continue to be treated as essential primary literature concerning pre-Hispanic and early colonial medicine. These are the herbal Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis (1552), composed by the Nahuas Martín de la Cruz and Juan Badiano in the Imperial College of Santa Cruz of Tlatelolco; the Historia natural de Nueva España, written by Philip II's protomédico (royal physician) Francisco Hernández, a "scientific envoy" in New Spain in the 1570s; and the Florentine Codex, the only extant manuscript of the 12-book encyclopedia on the world of the Nahuas, Historia universal de las cosas de Nueva España (ca. 1577), which was directed by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún.¹

Sahagún's interest in indigenous medicine is attested to by the information that he incorporated into chapters XXVII and XVIII of Book X, on anatomy, illnesses, and remedies, and in several passages of Book XI on flora, fauna, and mineralogy.² The production of the Florentine Codex, in particular of Book XI, shares several traits with the herbal of De la Cruz and Badiano. Sahagún, then at the College of Tlatelolco, supervised most of it sometime between 1561 and 1565, consulting with several Nahua healers whose answers were recorded in the Nahuatl language by a group of Nahua assistants who had themselves trained at the college. To some of them, Sahagún had taught, among other subjects, Latin and moral and natural philosophy. Later, in 1575, he received an official commission from Juan de Ovando, president of the Council of the Indies, to translate the 12 books of Historia universal de las cosas de Nueva España into Spanish.³

Chapter VII of Book XI, on herbs, features a remarkable section on medicinal ones, designated paragraph V, which Mexican scholar Alfredo López Austin conceives as "una obra independiente, simple incrustación al libro."⁴ After a cursory comparison of paragraph V with other paragraphs in the same chapter and with other chapters of Book XI, López Austin notes several points that sustain his argument: "[Paragraph V] es la única parte de este libro en que se mencionan los nombres de los informantes; hay mucha mayor libertad en extensión de contestaciones; no hay petición de vocabulario relacionado con el tema, que sí es abundante en el resto de la obra."⁵ Despite López Austin's finding, paragraph V has been left "untouched," in the sense that it has been studied only as an integral part of chapter VII in scholarly works that range from volumes on pre-Hispanic and colonial health practices to articles on pharmacology.⁶ The intention of this study is to elaborate on López Austin's reasons for claiming that paragraph V stands on its own, and to throw light on the primary purposes for which it was initially produced. To do so, this article is divided into two sections.

The first section sets out to demonstrate the validity of López Austin's statement, that is to say, it pursues further inquiry into the peculiarities of paragraph V. Specifically, it examines features that demonstrate that it is an autonomous herbal attached to the Florentine Codex, namely, its lack of lexicographical-doctrinal notes, its style of visual presentation, and its naming of the Nahua healers who supplied data. In addition, parallelisms in content structure between paragraph V and other paragraphs of Book XI will be explored, in an attempt to prove that although paragraph V was completed as a separate text, it is the result of the same method of data collection that Sahagún applied to those other paragraphs. Following on the establishment of paragraph V as an independent herbal, the second section contextualizes it in the sociocultural milieu of the College of Tlatelolco, and makes the argument that the herbal is a product of the college and of Sahagún's concerns in times of particular duress: a period during which the cocoliztli...