Aztec Bible of Sahagun Completed

1651

The Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun's enormous twelve-volume encyclopedia of Aztec culture, compiled in Nahuatl with Mexica informants, was suppressed and copied in secret. It would be rediscovered centuries later as the single most important documentary source for pre-Columbian Mexico. Ethnography had been invented, then hidden in a vault, preserving a vanishing civilization in meticulous detail.