The “Bird of the Heart”: The Florentine Codex

A passage from Book 11 of the Florentine Codex is used by López Austin to support his claim that -yolia traveled to the world of the dead, in this case to the Heaven of the Sun. This place, called in Nahuatl tonatiuh ichan, “the Home of the Sun,” was said to be the destiny of both women who died during their first childbirth and warriors killed in battle (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 6, p. 162). The passage from Book 11 mentions a kind of bird, called yollotototl, “heart-bird”: Injc mjtva iollotototl: iuh qujtoa, in vmpa tlaca. Ca in jquac timjquj: qujmjxiptlatia in tviollo. “The reason, why it is said it is a heart-bird, is that the people from there [Teotlixco] say that when we die, it becomes an ixiptla [embodiment or substitute] for our heart” (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 11, p. 25). From this information, López Austin (Reference López Austin1984:vol. I, p. 253) infers that -yolia was transformed into a bird in the Heaven of the Sun. As we can easily see, however, the Nahuatl text does not mention anything about the tonatiuh ichan or -yolia.

Before we turn to a more detailed analysis of López Austin's argument, it has to be pointed out that there are more textual references that suggest an association between “souls” and birds and this has not passed unnoticed by scholars. In the chapter titled “The Yolia as a Bird,” McKeever Furst (Reference McKeever Furst1995:23–27) quotes data from Books 3 and 6 of the Florentine Codex, as well as from the Codex Vaticanus A. The Appendix to Book 3 claims that, after four years of accompanying the Sun, deceased warriors turned into butterflies, hummingbirds, and other similar kinds of birds, which sucked nectar on earth and “where they dwelled” (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 3, p. 49). Book 6 describes the same belief, adding that these warriors drank from flowers and dwelled in the Home of the Sun (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 6, p. 114). A little further on, the same book of the Florentine Codex reveals that deceased babies were also believed to suck nectar from flowers, adding Ca mjtoa in coconetzitzinti momjqujlia chalchiuhti, teuxiuhti, maqujzti: (…) vmpa vi in tonacatecutli ichan, tonacaquauhtitlan in nemj, “It is said that deceased babies are precious greenstones, jades, bracelets. (…) They go to the home of the Lord of Sustenance; they live among the trees of sustenance” (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 6, p. 115). The Codex Vaticanus A, an early Colonial source bearing a strong European influence, provides a very similar account, although the tree on which the children are fed is called chichihualquahuitl, “breast tree,” and, consequently, what they drink is breast milk (Anders and Jansen Reference Anders and Jansen1996:51). While neither the Florentine Codex nor the Codex Vaticanus A explicitly mentions the transformation of babies into birds or butterflies, McKeever Furst (Reference McKeever Furst1995:25–27) observes that they feed themselves from the tree as if they were nectar-sucking creatures. Finally, Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta (Reference Mendieta2002 [1597]:vol. I, p. 209) makes a reference to a Tlaxcalan belief, according to which the souls of deceased noblemen turned into mist, clouds, birds of precious feathers, and precious stones, while those of commoners were transformed into weasels, foul-smelling beetles, animals whose urine stinks, and other despicable creatures (see also Torquemada Reference Torquemada1983 [1615]:vol. III, p. 128).

A Western mind can easily imagine a belief in souls transforming into birds because European thought has a long tradition of associating souls or spirits (and angels) with birds (Burkhart Reference Burkhart1992:94). This is probably why modern scholars tend to focus on the avian aspect of these transformations, although the data quoted above clearly show that, apart from birds, the dead, at least those of a noble position, could change into butterflies, precious stones, mist, or clouds. The choice is not accidental here: all of these beings form part of a landscape identified by López Austin with Tlalocan, the realm of the god of rain (e.g., Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 10, p. 187), and called “sacred garden” by Burkhart (Reference Burkhart1992:89). It was imagined as a land of fertility and riches where everything sprouted and blossomed, colorful birds fed on flowers, and there was plenty of food and an abundance of jewels, especially greenstones. At the same time, Tlalocan was humid, always in the midst of the rainy season. It was sometimes pictured as a mountain with its summit covered by clouds, the source of both rain and rivers (López Austin Reference López Austin2000 [1994]:182–186). Tlalocan, which the Nahuas also believed to be one of the afterlife destinations, was strongly identified with the Christian paradise after the Spanish Conquest to the point of merging the figures of angels and nectar-sucking birds in Nahuatl religious texts (Burkhart Reference Burkhart1992). The author of the gloss about the “breast tree” in the Codex Vaticanus A refers to the lactating (?) babies-birds with the Italian term puttini, or “cherubs.” He further Christianizes the account by claiming that what went to this Otherworld were the souls (anime) of children (Anders and Jansen Reference Anders and Jansen1996:50). In the same vein, Sahagún (Reference Sahagún2001:bk. 1, pp. 300, 510) tends to insert the Christian term ánima into Spanish versions of accounts that speak about transformations of the deceased into birds. In this way, the conflation of Tlalocan with paradise becomes so intense that it is easy to forget about its original precontact nature. As Burkhart (Reference Burkhart1992:89) points out, the Nahua ideal “garden” was not a place of eternal reward, but rather a sacred aspect of reality, not separate, as the Christian “garden” was, from the material world.

There is more evidence of transformations of the deceased that take place in connection with the “Tlalocan” landscape. Authors who write about -yolia use it to back up their arguments. Both López Austin (Reference López Austin1984:vol. I, p. 376) and Martínez González (Reference Martínez González2014:35) cite a passage from the Anales de Cuauhtitlan describing the death of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl:

López Austin (Reference López Austin1984:vol. I, p. 376) interprets this passage through his concept of man-god (hombre-dios), defined as a receptacle of divine force. According to him, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, who also belonged to this category of beings, experienced the fate of all men-gods: at death, his force returned to the realm of deities. In his book Hombre-dios, written before the Cuerpo humano, López Austin (Reference López Austin1989:126) explains his view without yet using the term teyolia:

In the later Cuerpo he adds: “The mention of Quetzalcoatl's heart leaves no doubt that the animistic entity was the teyolia” (López Austin Reference López Austin, de Montellano and de Montellano1984:vol. I, p. 376, Reference López Austin, de Montellano and de Montellano1988:vol. I, p. 329). Although the text of the Anales speaks about the heart of a quetzal bird, both other sources (e.g., Torquemada Reference Torquemada1983 [1615]:vol. III, p. 124) and strong associations of Quetzalcoatl with Venus suggest that it, in fact, (metaphorically?) refers to the heart of this deity.

In an attempt to understand the postmortem transformations of cultural heroes and rulers, López Austin juxtaposes the passage on Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl with the above-mentioned Tlaxcalan belief recorded by Mendieta and with the discussion of the etymology of “Teotihuacan” from the Florentine Codex. The latter source suggests that, in ancient times, rulers were believed to become gods (oteot) after death: some of them represented (quinmixiptlatique) the Sun, others the Moon, and so on. When they died, they were addressed by the living as if they had just awoken in the garden full of colorful birds and butterflies (Sahagún Reference Sahagún2001:bk. 2, p. 869; Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 10, p. 192). This account resonates with the passage of the Anales de Cuauhtitlan, in which the heart of Quetzalcoatl reportedly transforms into the morning star (Venus) right after his ashes rise and precious birds appear. López Austin also suggests that clouds and mist into which Tlaxcalan lords turn in Mendieta's account represent rain deities, allowing for a similar kind of interpretation. While all these pieces of evidence indeed have much in common, López Austin has a hard time explaining what seems to be a two-step transformation: into birds but, at the same time (or right after), into celestial bodies. He finally concludes that teyolia was of “divisible nature” (López Austin Reference López Austin1984:vol. I, pp. 377–378).

Instead of forcing the data into a preconceived model of a tripartite soul, we propose that each of the accounts discussed in this section is drawing an image of an Otherworld using culturally recognized elements: nectar-sucking creatures, flowers or clouds in the case of the sacred garden (Tlalocan), and foul-smelling animals in the case of Mictlan (for the latter, see Mikulska Reference Mikulska2008:366–375). While it may be evoked for different reasons in origin stories, like the one about Quetzalcoatl or about the rulers of Teotihuacan, this image indicates that the action takes place in a sacred time/place. It should be stressed that the Anales de Cuauhtitlan mention birds, butterflies, and precious stones as hallmarks of the Quetzalcoatl era in Tollan, by no means restricting this motif to the time of his death (Bierhorst Reference Bierhorst1992:8–9). When discussing destinies after death, on the other hand, the image of the Otherworld serves to show a change in the ontological status of a deceased person and his or her transfer to another dimension of the world.

There is yet another passage from the Florentine Codex, which Martínez González (Reference Martínez González2007, Reference Martínez González2011:41) quotes among the pieces of evidence for the link between -yolia, or “heart-souls,” and birds (see also López Austin Reference López Austin1984:vol. I, p. 256). It says, according to him, that “a bad painter had a sleeping bird in his heart” (“un mal pintor ‘tenía un pájaro dormido en su corazón’”). In fact, the passage speaks about the feather worker and the bird in question does not have much in common with hummingbirds and butterflies of the sources discussed above, for upon closer inspection it turns out to be a turkey. (In tlaueliloc amantecatl: tlaixpaniani, tlapâpanquani, motexictiani iolloquimilli totolin iitic cochticac. “The bad feather worker is a hypocrite, a destroyer of good work, he looks down on people, he is heart-bundled, a turkey is sleeping inside him”; Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 10, p. 25). Although turkeys and hummingbirds fall into the same class of birds within the Western classification (while butterflies do not fit there), the texts previously analyzed suggest that the Nahua classification system was different and that it may have grouped animals based on such criteria as colorfulness and feeding on flowers. In such a case, hummingbirds and butterflies fall into the same class, which does not include turkeys. Moreover, according to Martínez González, this turkey was sleeping inside the heart of the bad artisan. The word, which Martínez González interprets as “heart,” is, in fact, yolloquimilli, or “heart-bundle.” In Book 10 of the Florentine Codex this term appears in another similar context, though this time with no turkey around: a bad scribe is characterized as iolloquiquimil, tequalani, texiuhtlati, “his heart is wrapped hard, he angers people, he bothers people” (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 10, p. 28). Molina (Reference Molina1977 [1571]:vol. II, f. 40v) translates yolloquiquimil as “rude or stupid or careless.” He also gives a similarly constructed term ixquimilli, literally “eye- (or face-) bundle” and metaphorically “careless and lazy” (Molina Reference Molina1977 [1571]:vol. II, f. 47r). The concept of blindness and associated punishment was embodied by the deity of cold, Itztlacoliuhqui Ixquimilli, a belligerent and dangerous manifestation of the Maize God, Cinteotl, in his aspect of the morning star depicted with a band over his eyes and lethal weapons (Sullivan Reference Sullivan1976). Apparently, the term quimilli, “bundle,” combined with a body part associated by the Nahuas with mental capacities, like the heart or eyes (see López Austin Reference López Austin1991), served as a metaphor for laziness and incompetence. Similarly, “turkey,” which is said to be sleeping inside the person rather than his heart, is a metaphor for stupidity or ignorance: in the same chapter of Book 10, a bad lapidary is described as xolopitli, totoli, “he is stupid, he is a turkey” (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 10, p. 26). Thus, in the passage presented, both yolloquimilli and totolin function as pejorative epithets and have nothing to do with properties of the heart, let alone the soul.

Summing up, Nahua sources reveal multiple references that link birds to either the afterlife or spiritual components of a human being. Some of these data are mere projections of Christian symbolism into Nahua culture. Other, like the passage about the bad feather worker, should be dismissed as misinterpretations of modern scholars. Still, we are left with a reasonable body of evidence that allows us to study the Nahua concepts of personhood and the afterlife. Many Colonial-era texts suggest that a particular kind of “birds”—nectar-sucking birds and butterflies—formed part of the native imaginary of the “sacred garden,” Tlalocan or Tamoanchan, although the exact conceptualization and the mutual relationship of these places should be subjected to more critical research. Within this context, some sources tell us that particular people or their hearts (-yollo) transformed into elements of the sacred garden at death. While both the sacred garden and the heart are recurring themes in Nahuatl writings, and a promising point of departure for further studies, the term -yolia does not ever accompany them. Therefore, the above-discussed evidence cannot serve to support the indigenous origin of this concept.

“The Meal of our Soul”: Torquemada's Monarquía indiana

The second piece of evidence that actually features the term -yolia appears in the Cuerpo humano in the context of remedies to harm inflicted upon this “soul.” López Austin quotes it after Fray Juan de Torquemada's (Reference Torquemada1983 [1615]:vol. III, pp. 129–130) Monarquía indiana, but the Franciscan friar copied it, along with the entire chapter titled “De muchos agüeros y supersticiones que los indios tenían,” from an early source of Spanish authorship, either directly or through Mendieta's (Reference Mendieta2002 [1597]:vol I, pp. 224–225) Historia ecclesiástica indiana. The passage, referring to the customs of the Totonacs, describes seed and blood dough (tzoalli) in the following way: Llamaban a esta masa toyoliaytlaquatl, que quiere decir manjar de nuestra vida. “They called this dough toyoliaytlaquatl, which means a delicious food of our life.” It renders toyolia as “our life,” correcting the earlier translation, “our soul,” present in the work by Mendieta. Another difference between the two accounts is the classification of the ritual as an indigenous “sacrament of Eucharist” by Mendieta, which is absent from the Monarquía indiana.

An association between rituals involving tzoalli and the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist was very common among Spanish friars, who tended to explain native cultural practices through parallels with their religious background (Pardo Reference Pardo2006:156–158; see Madajczak Reference Madajczak and Tavárez2017 for a similar treatment of confession). In this case, a superficial similarity was based on defining the Christian Eucharist as the flesh of God, while tzoalli was used for manufacturing teteo imixiptlahuan, or substitutes, of Mexican deities, most often bodies or bones. In both cases, worshippers consumed the “flesh” or “bones” of a god. The parallel was so striking for the friars that they not only explicitly mentioned it, but they also reinforced it, using Christian vocabulary in reference to indigenous practices. Fray Diego Durán (Reference Durán and Garibay Kintana2006:vol. I, p. 35), for example, draws the attention of his readers to “devilish” similarities between Easter and a feast of Huitzilopochtli, whose tzoalli-related stage he describes in the following way:

Torquemada (Reference Torquemada1983 [1615]:vol. III, p. 115) makes the same association when discussing this feast. A friar who authored some of the commentaries to the Codex Telleriano-Remensis also associated tzoalli with the Eucharist:

This convention of describing tzoalli-related rituals is also visible in the text by Mendieta. Starting with baptism-like customs and ending with “communion,” he unmasks the “true” nature of indigenous practices, designed by the Devil to mock Christian sacraments. Toyolia itlacual of the Totonacs is his example for the corrupted sacrament of the Eucharist, which he describes using terms such as comunión and comulgar.

Once we become aware of the cultural parallel that Mendieta (and, perhaps, his earlier source) drew, the very term toyolia itlacual, manjar de nuestra alma, reveals its Christian flavor. The term manjar, “feast,” “delicacy,” or “delicious food,” was used in Spanish as a metaphor for the Eucharist. In Christian rhetoric, receiving communion was also frequently compared to spiritually feeding or nourishing oneself (Pardo Reference Pardo2006:131, 141–148). In fact, the reportedly precontact “food of our soul,” which we can literally translate as toyolia itlacual, sounds like a perfect way to metaphorically describe the Eucharist. This degree of cultural parallelism is rather improbable. A more likely option is that toyolia itlacual represents yet another way of reinforcing the association between communion and tzoalli construed by the friars, and it is simply a calque of the Spanish metaphor for the Eucharist. The term -yolia used in the calque does not, therefore, represent any precontact Totonac concept of Nahua origin, as proposed by López Austin (Reference López Austin1984:vol. I, p. 257) in his explanation of an intriguing fact that a Totonac sacred dough had a Nahuatl name. It had a Nahuatl name because it was named by a friar who resorted to Christian-Nahuatl vocabulary. The term -yolia refers here to the idea of a Christian soul nourished by the Eucharist, which has been projected onto a Nahua cultural practice.

“Souls Lost in Mictlan”: The Crónica Mexicayotl

The term -yolia appears in the Crónica Mexicayotl in two passages authored by either Hernando de Alvarado Tezozomoc or Domingo Chimalpahin (Peperstraete and Kruell Reference Peperstraete and Kruell2014:337): ^{ynic yehica yn} yehuantin in ixpolihuia yn izquitzonxiquipilli in teyollia yn teanimashuan yn quinhuicaya ompa mictlan, “and for this reason, numerous souls [teyolia, ánimas] were being lost, he [Huitzilopochtli] was taking them to Mictlan/hell,” and yhuan ynic quinhualmatizque in yehuātin españolesme. ynic quinnemilizcuepaquihui. yhuan ynic huel momaquixtizque yn inyollia yn imanimashuan, “[God wanted] that the Spaniards come to know them [the natives], that they come to change their way of living and that their souls be truly redeemed” (Chimalpahin and Alvarado Tezozomoc Reference Chimalpahin, de Alvarado Tezozomoc, Schroeder and Anderson1997:66). López Austin (Reference López Austin1984:vol. I. p. 253) and Martínez González (Reference Martínez González2014:35, n23) quote these fragments as evidence that the precontact concept of -yolia was, after contact, identified with the Christian concept of “soul,” because both “went to the world of the dead” upon death. With regard to the same passage, McKeever Furst (Reference McKeever Furst1995:21) comments that “the yolia persisted after death and was often carried off to the Christian hell to be punished.” All authors seem to notice that the indigenous writer uses the term -yolia in a Christian context and juxtaposes it with the Spanish term ánima in a doublet. They interpret this as an adaptation of the Nahua concept to the new cultural context, however, rather than, as we see it, as an entirely new creation.

The passages in question belong to the beginning of the Crónica Mexicayotl. Like the majority of Nahua accounts, it starts with migration episodes but the author immediately places them within Christian discourse. He claims that God planned for the azteca to leave their place of origin, disperse throughout the land, and eventually come to “New Spain.” In this way, although the devil Huitzilopochtli succeeded in taking innumerable souls to hell, God put a stop to it, making the chronicler's ancestors meet the Spaniards and receive the true light of faith from them (Chimalpahin and Alvarado Tezozomoc Reference Chimalpahin, de Alvarado Tezozomoc, Schroeder and Anderson1997:66). This fragment contains several pre-Hispanic Nahuatl terms that have been appropriated by the Christian register: mictlan, tlacatecolotl, and maquixtia. The context, however, strongly suggests that the author understood them in an orthodox Catholic way, with no precontact Nahua undertones. It is not the sorcerer Huitzilopochtli taking -yolia to the world of the dead (as McKeever Furst claims) so that they could not be saved. It is the Devil taking souls to hell so that they could not be redeemed.

The doublet -yolia -anima was used extensively in Colonial Nahuatl sources with reference to the Christian soul. It appears in a variety of genres, such as wills, religious treatises, theatrical plays, annals, or petitions, accompanied by other, similarly constructed, Nahuatl-Spanish doublets. For example, in the Dominican Doctrina cristiana (1548:ff. 45r, 62v), we come across a doublet mictlan infiernos, while in the religious play The Merchant we find diablo tlacatecolotl (Burkhart and Sell Reference Burkhart, Louise and Sell2004:262). In each of these cases, the Nahuatl word was chosen because someone (most probably Spanish friars) decided that it was suitable to render the accompanying Christian concept. Mictlan was a scary Otherworld, ruled by a bony lord and often described as situated below the earth, which was enough to compare it to hell (although it was not a place of eternal punishment). Tlacatecolotl resembled the Devil in that he was neither god nor a regular human being and inflicted misery upon people (Burkhart Reference Burkhart1989:41; Griffiths Reference Griffiths2006:33). It is, therefore, easy to conclude that -yolia was also paired with ánima because it referred to a superficially similar precontact Nahua concept. Spanish religious terms, however, were juxtaposed in doublets not only with extensions of Nahuatl vocabulary. In phrases such as cenquizcaqualtlaneltoquiliztli la fe, “the perfect right belief, the faith” (Chimalpahin Reference Chimalpahin, Lockhart, Schroeder and Namala2006:264), tetlechipahualoyan purgatorio, “the place where people are purified by fire, purgatory” (Chimalpahin Reference Chimalpahin, Lockhart, Schroeder and Namala2006:240), or ilhuicac cenpapaquiliztli gloria, “heavenly happiness, glory” (Doctrina cristiana 1548:f. XLIXv), the Nahuatl element is a neologism. As we argue below, this is also the case of -yolia -anima, and in fact, neologisms are the most common kind of words to be employed in doublets with Spanish loanwords.

Cristóbal del Castillo and the “Soul” of Huitzilopochtli

The Colonial-period evidence collected by López Austin has been cited widely by other authors. Martínez González (Reference Martínez González2014) additionally complements it with a passage from Cristóbal del Castillo's Historia de la venida de los mexicanos y de otros pueblos, where the term -yolia is seemingly used in a precontact context. It appears twice in speeches delivered by gods to Huitzitlin, the leader of the Mexicas, who will later transform into the god Huitzilopochtli. The gods inform Huitzitlin that his death is approaching and leave him final instructions, the main focus of which is the elaboration of a tlaquimilolli, or a sacred bundle, out of the leader's remains. The bundle will be used as a means of communication with the deities:

The initial steps of the fabrication of the tlaquimilolli are the following: “Command them [i.e., the Mexica] that when your soul [moyolia] leaves so that you will die, they should bury your body in a stone chest. Your bones will lie there for four years [until] your flesh rots completely [and] turns into earth” (Castillo Reference Castillo and Linares2001:120). As Navarrete Lináres (Castillo Reference Castillo and Linares2001:37–39) points out, Castillo had high competence in fundamental concepts of a precontact Nahua worldview. Only through two brief fragments quoted above are we able to see that he was familiar with the tradition of making sacred bundles, as well as with the importance of the number four in Nahua ritual. Scholars also emphasize that the content of Huitzilopochtli's tlaquimilolli (i.e., bones) in the Historia de la venida de los mexicanos correlate with the generally “skeletal” character of this deity mentioned in the Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas and other sources (Bassett Reference Bassett2015:178–179; Garibay Kintana Reference Garibay Kintana2005:24, 29; Mikulska Reference Mikulska2008:216–217). All of this increases the credibility of Castillo's account. Taking it at face value, López Austin (Reference López Austin1989:126, 140) suggests that Huitzitlin was a man-god (hombre-dios), whose heart was filled with a divine force that left to the land of the dead upon his death. Navarrete Lináres (Castillo Reference Castillo and Linares2001:39, 120, n97) repeats this when he interprets Castillo's -yolia in terms of an animistic entity. Strong evidence suggests, however, that the Nahua author's understanding of -yolia arose from his Christian breeding rather than from profound knowledge of precontact religious concepts.

Cristóbal del Castillo, like all Nahua Colonial chroniclers and annalists, was trained by Spanish ecclesiastics, most probably Franciscans, as some hints in his writings suggest (Castillo Reference Castillo and Linares2001:61). References to a Christian God are frequent in a few surviving fragments of Castillo's work, also mentioned as an inspiration for authoring the chronicle (Castillo Reference Castillo and Linares2001:130). This, of course, is not enough to doubt the precontact “authenticity” of his information or vocabulary: if it were, we should discredit all Colonial authors. It seems, however, that Castillo extensively uses Christian narrative structures and expressions to elaborate his version of the Mexica migration. As Christensen (Reference Christensen1996) has shown, the account on the peregrination of the Mexica told by the Historia de la venida de los mexicanos is modeled on the biblical Exodus, with Huitzitlin/Huitzilopochtli resembling Moses too much to call it a coincidence. Castillo's Mexicas run from cruel rulers of Aztlan and set out for a long journey to a promised land, led by their leader Huitzitlin, who frequently consults with the god Tetzauhteotl. They go across a sea, whose waters part so that they can pass, and when they starve they miraculously receive food from the deity. Tetzauhteotl gives Huitzitlin a set of commandments and, when the death of the leader approaches, he passes to him final instructions on top of a mountain (Castillo Reference Castillo and Linares2001:87–123). It is in the context of these instructions, where the term -yolia appears. The way it is used suggests a Christian understanding of death. According to Castillo (Reference Castillo and Linares2001:120), Huitzilopochtli's body is to lie for four years in a stone chest, during which time occenca palani tlalli mocuepa in monacayo, “your flesh rots completely and turns into earth.” The reflexive verb mocuepa means “to return” or “to turn into” and the phrase mocuepa tlalli is reminiscent of the Biblical words of God “dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return” (Douay-Rheims Bible 1582–1611, Gen. 3, 19). In fact, similar phrasings occur in ecclesiastical texts in Nahuatl. For example, the early seventeenth-century Jesuit Santoral en mexicano says: totlalnacayo (…) palani yn yaya tlalli mocuepa, “our earthen bodies (…) rot, they stink, they turn into earth” (Burkhart Reference Burkhart2001:108, translation by Burkhart). If Castillo's discourse on dying is Christianized to this point, it seems very likely that also the leaving of -yolia, or soul, that he pictures belongs to a European cultural framework.

The term -yolia would not be the only Christian-Nahuatl term interwoven by the Nahua author into the fabric of the “Mexica migration” narrative. Navarrete Lináres notes that Castillo consequently refers to Mexica deities with the term tlacatecolotl, a Christian-Nahuatl translation of “devil.” He also uses a neologism iztlacateteo, “false gods,” when speaking of deities worshipped by other people (Castillo Reference Castillo and Linares2001:52–54). Castillo's contemporaries already grasped the Christian “flavor” of this terminology. Chimalpahin, who either copied passages of Castillo's account or used the same source, inserts the Spanish loanword diablo where Historia has tlacatecolotl (Chimalpahin Reference Chimalpahin and Castillo F.2016 [1991]:18–19; Castillo Reference Castillo and Linares2001:43, 86–87). Castillo (Reference Castillo and Linares2001:116) also projects Nahua terminology referring to a Christian God, totecuiyo, or “our Lord,” upon pre-Conquest deities. Thus, although many details prove Castillo's insights into precontact Nahua culture, both the Christianized model of his narrative and the vocabulary derived from the teachings of friars point to his use of the term -yolia in the vein of Christian, rather than pre-Christian, Nahuas.

The Nicaraguan yulio

Finally, according to López Austin (Reference López Austin1984:vol. I, pp. 217–219, Reference López Austin, de Montellano and de Montellano1988:vol. I, p. 199) -yolia is attested among the Nahuas in Nicaragua who “make a distinction between the heart and the teyolia, the first being the organ, and the second, the animistic entity.” This conclusion is based on references contained in the work by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (Reference Oviedo y Valdés1855) indicating that the local “Nahuas” believed that, at the moment of death, an air resembling a person and called yulio leaves through the mouth. Martínez González (Reference Martínez González2011:36) also acknowledges this evidence with regard to beliefs linked to -yolia, closely related to those of the central Mexican Nahuas. Let us look closely at the source and the context of the key information provided therein.

The argument for the pre-Conquest concept of -yolia comes from the work Historia general y natural de las Indias by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (Reference Oviedo y Valdés1855:vol. IV, pp. 39–48) and, more specifically, from a chapter based on an interrogation carried out in 1528 in Nicaragua by a mercenary friar, Francisco de Bobadilla, at the behest of the governor, Pedrarias Dávila. The purpose of the inquiry was to provide evidence for the claims of the latter to reveal the failure of mass conversion by the previous conqueror (and Pedrarias’ adversary), Gil González Dávila. This was achieved by means of a formal probanza carried out in the town of Teoca, in the jurisdiction of the villa of Granada, and designed not only to document the beliefs and rites of the local population speaking a Nahua language, but also to investigate “what [kind of] Christians they were before Pedrarias went to this land and what they felt about God and the immortality of the soul” (Oviedo y Valdés Reference Oviedo y Valdés1855:vol. IV, p. 39). With the help of three translators, the questions were translated into the local language and answers were then rendered back into Spanish. The chapter in the work of Oviedo follows an original questionnaire and the transcript of the replies: it is structured as a “dialogue” where indigenous respondents answer the sequence of the same or similar questions. The work by Oviedo, however, was only concluded much later, between 1540 and 1549 (and published in 1851–1855); he probably used a copy of a probanza either acquired directly from Bobadilla in Nicaragua or during one of his visits to Spain, where Bobadilla delivered his report to the king in 1529 (León-Portilla Reference León-Portilla1972:22–23). As pointed out by León-Portilla (Reference León-Portilla1972:24), by the time that Oviedo gave the final form to the part of his work containing information on Nicaragua, he had already accumulated a considerable amount of data about New Spain and the Nahuas; indeed, he makes explicit comparisons and parallels between the rites of Nicaragua and those of central Mexico. These circumstances call for cautiousness in the interpretation of the data contained in his account. In general, local leaders and elders who were interrogated appear to have had some initial contact with Christianity and perhaps even some basic instruction in the doctrine. Some admitted being Christians and that they “were poured water over [their] heads,” but did not remember the name they had received upon baptism. One cacique affirmed it is good to be Christian because Christians told him that when one of them dies, he goes to paradise, whereas non-Christians go to hell with the Devil (Oviedo y Valdés Reference Oviedo y Valdés1855:vol. IV, p. 41). The strong impact of a Christian moral valuation of the afterlife destination, alien to pre-Conquest native culture, is visible in recorded testimonies referring to fate after death, where the good ascend to heaven to be with the gods, while the wicked descend to the underworld of the death god “named Mictanteot” (Oviedo y Valdés Reference Oviedo y Valdés1855:vol. IV, pp. 42, 46, 49).

The supposed evidence associated with -yolia comes with a series of questions concerning the immortality of the soul. When asked if the body also departs to heaven, one of the respondents says that upon death something “like a person” and called yulio leaves through the mouth and goes to the heavenly place of the male-female divine couple (Oviedo y Valdés Reference Oviedo y Valdés1855:vol. IV, p. 42). Needless to add, while adhering to the indigenous idea of a primordial couple of creator gods, the testimony also evokes a motif of an anthropomorphic soul leaving through the mouth, common in Christian imagery. The interviews included in the latter part of this account make it quite clear that the friar asked explicitly if it was the heart that left the body and what happened in the case when it was removed in a sacrificial rite (“si se saca el corazón, va arriba?”). Another elder, who declared himself to be too old to be Christian, first stated that “only the heart goes,” but then, upon further interrogation, he said it is not the heart that leaves, but “this which makes them stay alive” (Oviedo y Valdés Reference Oviedo y Valdés1855:vol. IV, p. 44–45). The answers of several persons are surprisingly similar, suggesting a pre-established Spanish formula for that part of the probanza: “The heart does not go, but this which kept them alive and an air that comes out through their mouth which they call yulio” (Oviedo y Valdés Reference Oviedo y Valdés1855:vol. IV, p. 45).

The actual form and content of the key question, translated into a local language, is more fully reconstructed only in the final part of the report. After three days of interrogations, the friar and his helpers gathered 13 local leaders, nobles, and priests and asked: “The souls and hearts of those who are sacrificed, where do they go? Do the body and the heart and the yulio, and the soul [ánima] die?” (Oviedo y Valdés Reference Oviedo y Valdés1855:vol. IV, pp. 48–49). Thus, the question already contained the term yulio paired not only with the “heart,” but also with the Spanish term ánima, which evokes the common doublet -yolia -anima used by the friars in central Mexico. It is therefore quite probable, judging by the very specific form of this question—in fact rather unusual for standard Christian terminology!— that a similar strategy was employed to translate the religious content of Spanish questions into an indigenous language, no doubt strongly influencing the elicited result. As a matter of fact, the answers obtained in the group interview are quite surprising. First, the participants state that “ánimas y corazones” (“souls and hearts”) do not abandon the body but stay with it (contradicting other elicited answers; Oviedo y Valdés Reference Oviedo y Valdés1855:vol. IV, p. 46) and then they affirm that, “if a person lived well, the yulio ascends to our gods and it dies and perishes with the body and there is no memory of it” if a person lived badly (Oviedo y Valdés Reference Oviedo y Valdés1855:vol. IV, p. 49). Thus, although the answers clearly contain some pre-Conquest beliefs, the concept of the afterlife that they convey is strongly Christianized, with wording elicited by the translation of Christian terms strikingly similar to the standard terminology established in central Mexican Nahuatl, including the doublet -yolia -anima. Deviations from Christian concepts, such as affirmations that a spiritual component(s) does not leave the body or that the evil soul perishes, not only contradict other elicited answers alluding to a more Europeanized fate of yulio, but may indeed express originally precontact ideas. After all, Fray Bobadilla, a founder of the Mercedarian convent in Nueva Ciudad de León, had already had some experience in baptizing, preaching, and instructing the native people in Panama and Nicaragua. Therefore, working with interpreters, he must have relied on some, at least basic, Christian vocabulary translated, perhaps ad hoc, into local languages, paralleling the huge translation experiment undertaken in central Mexico at about the same time. Moreover, conspicuously, on purely linguistic grounds, it is quite possible that the term yulio as it appears in the Spanish text should be identified as a misspelling of -yollo, “heart” (or a related form in the local language), rather than as -yolia. As such, it would much better correspond to the Spanish questions, explicitly addressing the nature and fate of the “heart.” To conclude, it is clear that this source cannot be treated as providing any credible evidence of the pre-Conquest existence of the concept of -yolia.

Other Minor Pieces of Evidence

Along with the textual data discussed above, often quoted to support hypotheses regarding -yolia as a heart-soul, scholars also refer to other minor pieces of evidence, usually passages that do not include the word -yolia in any form but contain what modern authors believe to be indirect information on this animistic entity. In search of such data, López Austin (Reference López Austin1984) leans upon his preconceived model of a soul located in the heart, which goes to the Otherworld after death. For this reason, he draws a direct relationship between-yolia and specific beliefs, rituals, and terminology regarding the heart, as well as the data on burial practices and ideas Mesoamericans had about the fate of the deceased. One example of this way of thinking was previously presented by us in the section “The Bird of the Heart: The Florentine Codex”: yollotototl was included in the -yolia-supporting evidence because in the Florentine Codex it was associated with both hearts and the Home of the Sun. When speculating about the origin of -yolia, López Austin (Reference López Austin1984:vol. I, p. 254) suggests that it may have been given to babies by patron gods of an altepetl, metaphorically called altepeyollotl. Additionally, he points out that many other terms combine yollotl with words for a mountain (tepeyollotl), sky, lake, ocean, and so on. He concludes that since all these entities or beings were believed to have hearts, they also must have possessed -yolia (López Austin Reference López Austin1984:vol. I, p. 257).

Martínez González (Reference Martínez González2011:40–41) apparently follows this way of thinking when using a passage from Durán's Libro de los dioses y ritos to support his idea about three aspects of -yolia: ethereal, avian, and anthropomorphic. In his description of the sacrifice of the embodiment of Tezcatlipoca during the feast of Toxcatl, Durán (Reference Durán and Garibay Kintana2006:vol. I, p. 44) says: “the priest cut open his chest and took out the heart and raised it with his hand as high as he could extend his arm and gave its vapor to the Sun.” According to Martínez González (Reference Martínez González2011:40–41), this vapor implied the existence of “something gaseous in the heart,” which he identifies with -yolia. There is no doubt that the vapor or smoke various items gave off was of great significance to the Nahuas. Durán (Reference Durán and Garibay Kintana2006:vol. I, pp. 37, 41) himself suggests that it symbolized the pleas of the people addressed to the Sun and other deities, but Nahua sources speak of it as if it truly contained some kind of precious essence instead of being a mere symbol. Authors of the Florentine Codex describe precious stones as “breathing” and “giving off vapor” (Olko Reference Olko2014:314; Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 11, p. 221; cf. Taube Reference Taube2005:30–47). Some of them, like turquoises, were believed to be hot, “smoked”; others like greenstones, associated with cold and humidity, “breathed” vital essences that provoked growth of plants above the place they lay deposited. An idea that the beating heart of the sacrificial victim emitted some precious essence, which was then carried to the gods, seems plausible: the well-known ritual of substituting greenstone for the heart of a deceased person suggests a conceptual equivalence between the two. Nevertheless, the only hint that allows for the identification of this essence with -yolia is López Austin's idea that this animistic entity was located in the heart. Neither Durán nor any other sixteenth-century author provides a direct link between the “vapor of the heart” and the term -yolia.

Examples of inferring the nature of -yolia from beliefs about postmortem existence abound in the Cuerpo humano. In one of them, López Austin (Reference López Austin1984:vol. I, p. 364) states that -yolia remained near a dead person for four days after death. Among the evidence he cites is a passage from the Florentine Codex referring to the feast of Panquetzaliztli and the accompanying sacrifice of slaves. It was believed that in tlaaltilti in omjcque, “the bathed ones, the dead,” did not descend to Mictlan until four days after their death (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 2, p. 150). Instead of the souls (-yolia) of the sacrificial victims, however, the text, as we can see, mentions the victims themselves.

Here ends the evidence brought up so far in favor of the existence of -yolia in pre-Conquest beliefs. Having reconsidered every piece of this evidence, we can safely conclude that it does not provide any basis for identifying -yolia as a pre-Hispanic term and concept. However, -yolia is a crucial word in Nahua-Christian terminology, however, which provides strong evidence dramatically surpassing any references to -yolia in pre-Conquest contexts.

Where -yolia is Attested and Where It Is Not

Whereas, as we have shown, textual evidence on -yolia in reference to pre-Conquest beliefs can be dismissed, this term is widely attested in the earliest known ecclesiastical texts, such as the Doctrina cristiana en lengua española y mexicana por los religiosos de la orden de Santodomingo of 1548 and the 1555/1571 dictionary by Fray Alonso de Molina. Molina’s (Reference Molina1555:ff. 15v, 18v) entries in an earlier Spanish-Nahuatl part of the dictionary have ‘alma o anima’ and ‘anima de alguno’ rendered as teyolia, teyolitia. The expression ‘Passion del anima’ is rendered simply as toyolia ycocoliz, ‘the sickness/pain of our soul’ (Molina Reference Molina1555:f. 190v). In the 1571 edition of the Nahuatl to Spanish part of the dictionary, the terms teyolia and toyolia are both explained as ‘el alma, o anima’ (Molina Reference Molina1977 [1571]:vol. II, ff. 95r, 148v), while the Spanish to Nahuatl part adds tetonal and totonal to the entries for ‘alma’ and ‘anima’ (Molina Reference Molina1977 [1571]:vol. I, ff. 8v, 10v). The evidence included in Molina's dictionary is often cited by authors who understand teyolia to be a precontact concept (e.g., López Austin Reference López Austin1984:vol. I, p.219; Maffie Reference Maffie2015:190; McKeever Furst Reference McKeever Furst1995:17–18). The friar's use of a pre-Conquest term -tonal as one of the translations for ánima could indeed suggest that -yolia too was of pre-Conquest origin. It is important to reiterate, however, that, in addition to gathering extensive pre-Conquest terminology, Molina included in his dictionary the bulk of Nahua-Christian terms used by ecclesiastics as well as numerous neologisms: those employed in religious sources, those present in the spoken language, and those created ad hoc by him that neither passed on nor took root in everyday speech. An example of an entry, which combines the original Nahua terminology with a neologism, is cuaresma, “Lent,” rendered as neçahualizpan (“in the time of fasting,” a precontact term) but also as nacacahualizpan (“in the time of abandoning meat”), which explains the key practice during the Christian period of Lent.

It is significant that Molina brings up -yolia in a doublet with -anima, which was a common practice in ecclesiastical and mundane sources, especially in wills. The earliest known attestation of this construction appears in the 1549 will of don Pablo Çacancatl of Coyoacan (Lockhart Reference Lockhart1992:553, n215). The standardized doublet, in noyollia in naniman, is often employed in sixteenth-century testaments, such as those of Culhuacan (Cline and León-Portilla Reference Cline and León-Portilla1984:226), while its latest occurrence is recorded in the testaments from Metepec in the Valley of Toluca for 1810 and 1813, a time period when -anima alone is usually used with reference to the soul (Melton Villanueva Reference Melton-Villanueva2012:54, 255). On the other hand, the presence of -yolia alone is not consistently linked to any pattern of use, including indigenous authorship of a text. For example, in the play of “Holy Wednesday,” where native authorship and co-authorship is rather unquestionable (Burkhart Reference Burkhart1996), all three combinations are used: noyolliya, nanimatzin, yn noyolliya nanima. In the 1548 Doctrina cristiana, -yolia is used both alone (Doctrina cristiana 1548:f. 47r) and as part of a doublet (Doctrina cristiana 1548:f. 45r), in each case in reference to the Christian concept of the soul.

More significant, however, is -yolia’s absence from some important primary sources. We do not find any presence of teyolia or -yolia in the Florentine Codex, either in reference to pre-Hispanic beliefs or to Christian concepts. The Christian soul is rendered simply as -anima, as in the case of a “wretched idolater” (tlateotocanipol) who revered a false god “who had no soul” (in atle yanjima; Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 1, p. 57); the wickedness of sinners who kill their own souls (totlatlacultica totlavelilocaiotica ticmjctia in tanjma, mjctlan titlaça, “with our sins, with our wickedness we kill our soul, we thrust it into hell”; Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 1, p. 62); or, the contrary, a good and humane soul (ianima) of an exemplary noble woman (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 10, p. 50). The ánima alone is projected back onto pre-Conquest native gods: thus, the soul of Quetzalcoatl was thrust by God into the land of the dead (auh yn janjma, oqujmotlatzontequjlili in totecujo dios, mjctlan, quimotlaxtili; Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 1, p. 69). No doubt, in all these examples, the native word mictlan is used as a common early Colonial name for Christian Hell. Likewise, -yolia is not mentioned anywhere in the passages referring to the destiny of the dead in pre-Conquest beliefs, those departing to Mictlan, Tlalocan, and Tonatiuh Ilhuicac, or the “Heaven of the Sun God” (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 3, pp. 41–49). The term “soul,” rendered with a Spanish loanword, jmanjmaoã in omjcque (“souls of the dead”) and imanjman (“their souls”), only appears in the title and the initial phrase of this chapter (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 3, p. 41) as a general introduction to the topic. Thus, this fragment introduces the account about “the souls of those who died and went to Mictlan and how they were buried” (yn imanjman in miquja in vmpa via mjctlan yoan in quenjn tocoia), evoking the Christian meaning of Mictlan equated with Hell and the new custom of burying the deceased, which was not part of typical Nahua pre-Conquest funerary practices. It is therefore conceivable to view this passage as an explicatory statement made by Sahagún himself, well in the spirit of Christian theology and practice, assuming the separation of body and soul and the latter's departure to the land of the dead as well as the burial of bodily remains. We can search in vain, however, for content announced by Sahagún at the beginning of the chapter: not a single reference to the “soul” appears in subsequent parts of the account, no doubt provided by indigenous collaborators of the friar.

No less meaningful is the evidence from the so-called Vocabulario trilingüe, a manuscript copy of Elio Antonio de Nebrija's Dictionarium ex Hispaniensi in Latinum sermonem in the Newberry Library that provides Nahuatl equivalents of about 70 percent of the Spanish-Latin entries. It is highly probable that it was composed by an indigenous author for use among speakers of Nahuatl; additionally, it may be the earliest known Spanish-Nahuatl dictionary, possibly predating Molina's work (Clayton Reference Clayton1989, Reference Clayton2003; Gruda Reference Gruda2018). The term -yolia does not appear a single time in this source. Soul, described in Spanish as alma por la qual biuimos is translated as tonalli; accordingly, the term ánima is identified with tetonal. The author of the Vocabulario trilingüe also distinguishes the “soul through which we understand” and “the soul through which we remember,” translated as tlacaquiliztli (“understanding”) and tlelnamiconi (“the means of remembering something”) respectively. Thus, the notion is either equated with a pre-Conquest concept of tonalli/tetonal or rendered with descriptive nouns or ad-hoc neologisms.

By now, we have seen the Nahua concept of tonalli standing for the Christian “soul” in two early Colonial dictionaries. Although after this initial period of coining the “doctrinal Nahuatl” (see Tavárez Reference Tavárez2000), the term tetonal did not proliferate in written sources. Another term, yollotl, “heart,” found its way to Christian discourse. In Book 1 of the Florentine Codex the Latin term spiritus is translated as possessed -yollotzin (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 1, p. 66), while the title of Book 10 uses toyollo when expressing the Christian dichotomy of body and soul or spirit: Inic matlactli amostli, itechpa tlatoa in historia general: in vncan moteneoa in nepapan virtudes qualtiuani, iectiuani: ioan in nepapan tlatlaculli in tonacaiotica chioalo ioan in ica toiollo i çaço aquique quichioa. “The tenth book, which speaks about general history, where various virtues and various sins are mentioned, which are committed with our bodies and with our hearts, whoever practices them” (Sahagún Reference Sahagún, Anderson and Dibble2012:bk. 10, p. 1; the Spanish version refers to these sins as “ansí espirituales como corporales”; Sahagún Reference Sahagún2001:vol. II, p. 762). While the authors of the Florentine Codex establish no explicit terminological equivalence between ánima and yollotl, the latter term is employed in some sixteenth-century testaments in the doublet -yollo -anima in order to render the concept of spiritus (Sp. espirito), mimicking the much more common -yolia -anima (Cline and León-Portilla Reference Cline and León-Portilla1984:86; Karttunen and Lockhart Reference Karttunen and Lockhart1976:94; Lockhart Reference Lockhart1992:553, n215). We suggest that these examples may reflect an early sixteenth-century ecclesiastical discussion about the proper way of rendering ánima into Nahuatl, which was ongoing in New Spain decades after -yolia was first introduced as part of the doublet with -anima. The omnipresence of -yolia in Christian contexts proves that it won the competition with its rivals, probably because tonalli and yollotl were too heavily charged with “heathen” meanings. Regarding yollotl, or heart, it seems to have been perceived in Nahua culture as a vital organ that deals with reproduction, animation, germination, and conceptualized as a “vital core” in many different contexts. This concept, however, requires separate and critical research.