It is evident to anyone who is at all familiar with the documents and witnesses of the times that Aztec society at the time of the discovery of Mexico appears to be intensely religious, that all public and private life was invaded, so to speak, by rites and dominated by beliefs. But what exactly was the place of religion and its ministrants in the hierarchy of powers? To what degree was the priestly function interwoven with that of government and the administration of the city? Can the regime of ancient Mexico be described as a theocracy? To answer these questions, it is of no small use, first, to go back to the period preceding the foundation of Mexico-Tenochtitlan.

When, in the year 221 B.C., China found itself unified under the authority of the lord of Ts'in, the latter decided that his title of king (wang) no longer corresponded to his actual glory. After deliberating with his counselors, he decided that from then on his title would be Houang-ti, an expression which we translate as emperor. And if the dynasty founded by Ts'in Che houang-ti was ephemeral, the title Houang-ti was destined to remain that of the Chinese monarchs until the revolution of 1911. This term, formed by two characters, was a neologism; the monarchs of preceding historical dynasties, Yin and Tcheou, were kings (wang). But if the double expression was new, houang and ti were two very ancient words, belonging to religious terminology.

By its method of posing problems successively, the curiosity of modern historians towards antiquity may sometimes give the impression of snobism or of complaisance towards a “fashion,” even when it is actually following a logical bent : just before the last war the multiplication of works on the “imperial cult,” or the “imperial mystique” of the first centuries of our era, presented dangerous temptations for exploitation in interpretations favorable to the rule of personal authority. Notably in Germany, the most serious and objective study of the notion of “principat” among the first Caesars found itself compromised even by the vocabulary with which the Latin words were translated: how many dissertations of articles appeared at that time on ancient “Fuehrertum”!

“We have chosen our teacher, Lord Sylvester, as Pope, and ordained and created him by the grace of God.” The Emperor Otto III wrote these words in the year 1001 in a document for Pope Sylvester II, the famous Gerbert von Aurillac. It is not known that Gerbert protested against this remarkable formulation, and he accepted harsh words of reproof, also contained in this document, for the “carelessness and ignorance” of his predecessors. The latest of these predecessors on the chair of St. Peter had been Gregory V, a cousin of the emperor; and it had already become clear in his day what conclusions Otto drew from his views. When a Spanish bishop was to be removed, the emperor headed the synod which handled the matter together with the pope, and signed the document that Gregory released on this occasion. He ruled the church together with the popes, or through the popes, and was not the only one to do this.

The preoccupation with the causes of fall of Great Empires has been a continuous focus of interest and object of fascination for historians, philosophers of history and social scientists. It was in their dealing with the causes of downfalls of Empires that historians had at least to imply some of their more general assumptions about human nature and about the nature of society, about the moral and natural forces which sustain or break a social and political order. It was here that even the most antiquarian or matter-of-fact historians were often entrapped into discussing such general problems and had to “show their hand” with regard to such more general questions or assumptions.

Man has always been a collector and presumably always will be one. In the dim ages of his beginnings, he collected food, shellfish, berries and nuts and in his tropical and sub-tropical haunts lived fairly securely through the little changing seasons. When he invaded the temperate regions, with their seasonal variations, he learned to his cost the rise and fall of the tides of food supply and, dreading winters’ want, practised a variety of methods to hoard his food gatherings until the season of food a-plenty came round again. It was the same with the hunters, who, whatever their feasting at the close of a successful hunt, could not consume everything and, experiencing shortages and failures, began to put aside food to be kept. Extra supplies probably in time gave rise to barter of one thing for another more desired—the furrier skin, the sharper antler pick, the more beautifully finished hand-axe or adze. He who had reserves could face a famine, a lost pelt and a broken tool, and doubtless gained in stature and status among his fellows. What he had, he had to hold by strength or guile— or both in combination in himself, his family or his tribe. Hunting no doubt led to the elimination of competitors, who would lower the food supplies, and to the proclamation of hunting rights, just as, later on, occupation of land good for grazing or cultivation, would give rise to tribal or chieftain ownership—and to the unending battle for ownership, over other claimants. This is again collecting, though in another form.