Aztec Christianity?

http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19278#p19278

Acharya
Aztec Christianity?
Sun Mar 21, 2010 4:18 pm

Hmmm... Amalgamating Christianity with other religions?! You don't say - sounds like some crazy conspiracy to me!

"A bilingual description of the Aztecs, in Spanish and the local Nahuatl language, the Florentine Codex reflects the Spaniards' effort to understand the Aztecs, the better to proselytize them. Although missionaries were expected to eradicate all traces of native religion and history, Sahagún set out to document every aspect of Aztec culture by interviewing the elders and persuading them to record their memories and make drawings in their pictograms.

"The idea, Lyons says, was to learn enough about Mexico's indigenous people to synthesize Christianity with Aztec beliefs..."


The Aztecs, through old-world eyes
A Getty Villa exhibit explores how Europeans looked to ancient Rome to understand the Mexican empire.

A 1,200-pound stone head of an Aztec moon goddess has moved into the Getty Villa. So have life-size statues of a warrior adorned with eagle feathers, a duck-billed wind god and a demon known as the Lord of Death.

Made between 1440 and 1521 and on loan from Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology and the Templo Mayor Museum, the massive artworks are among 64 sculptures, paintings and works on paper in "The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire." Opening Wednesday, it's the most surprising exhibition yet to appear at Southern California's bastion of classical Greek and Roman antiquities....

In "Aztec Pantheon," with an eye on its Mexican American audience, the Getty is celebrating the bicentennial of Mexican independence by exploring how Europeans came to understand the Aztecs -- in terms of the Roman Empire....

A group of monumental sculptures will be the visual power center of "Aztec Pantheon." Compelling in artistry and imaginative expression as well as size, they have been plucked from places of honor in Mexico's leading museums.

There's an ancient fertility goddess made of wood and shell, a terra-cotta model of an Aztec temple and a statue of a priest wearing a human skin, also fashioned of terra cotta. Visitors will also find an elaborately carved funerary urn and a 3 1/2 -foot-tall incense burner bristling with agricultural cult images, including the goddess Chicomecoatl, who was compared to the Roman goddess Ceres....

But the linchpin of the exhibition is a relatively modest illustrated book that usually resides in the Medici Library in Florence, Italy. "Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España," better known as the Florentine Codex, is a sort of bible of a disappearing culture created in 1575-77 by Bernardino de Sahagún...

A bilingual description of the Aztecs, in Spanish and the local Nahuatl language, the Florentine Codex reflects the Spaniards' effort to understand the Aztecs, the better to proselytize them. Although missionaries were expected to eradicate all traces of native religion and history, Sahagún set out to document every aspect of Aztec culture by interviewing the elders and persuading them to record their memories and make drawings in their pictograms.

The idea, Lyons says, was to learn enough about Mexico's indigenous people to synthesize Christianity with Aztec beliefs. While the relatively open attitude prevailed, Sahagún's students helped create a text that accompanies more than 2,400 images.

The book was sent to Spain during the Inquisition, when works written in indigenous languages were banned, and later given to the Medici Library. Largely forgotten until the early 19th century, it is available only to specialists and is seldom on public view. "It is an incredible thrill to be able to borrow this iconic work," Lyons says. "This will be the first time it has returned to the New World."

The book has been bound in three volumes. The Getty has borrowed the first volume, which will be open to watercolor illustrations of Aztec deities, some of whom are equated to their Roman counterparts. Huitzilopochtli is likened to Hercules, Tlaculteutl to Venus. Reproductions of other pages also will be displayed....

If Europeans based their knowledge on some of the exhibited prints, they must have had a fanciful, even bizarre, view of Mexico's civilization. One engraving transforms the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli into a winged Satan with a feather headdress and a hairy animal's legs. An encyclopedia of world faiths portrays human sacrifice at Tenochtitlan's Great Temple, with one victim being slain on a platform atop skull-covered walls and another rolling down a steep staircase.

The Getty also has contributed a few Roman bronze objects "to spark ideas," Lyons says. "We don't want people to think there's a relationship or an influence across thousands of miles and 1,500 years." The point is to compare similar forms and subjects through the ages.

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

So, why don't we "want people to think there's a relationship or an influence across thousands of miles and 1,500 years?" Is it absolutely impossible that Romans or other groups could have come to the "New World" thousands of years ago? Is that such a disturbing thought that they had to make this disclaimer? Why?

"The point is to compare similar forms and subjects through the ages."

Indeed, and these similarities of forms and subjects at times come from the common observation of natural phenomena such as the sun's movements and the moon's phases, while at other times this development is clearly because of different cultures sharing ideas.
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