Here's a famous illustration of tlamacazque "givers of offerings" bloodletting in the Codex Mendoza (1540s) folio 62r.

A thread on what goes unnoticed 1/

The Castilian Spanish gloss around the illustration labels these individuals "alfaqui" or "Islamic Law expert." It's a loan word from Arabic. The author was likely influenced by Andalusian culture, which had acquired numerous linguistic commensurations 2/

Commensuration was the pairing of concepts between different languages. Like a bilingual dictionary. After centuries of Muslim influence in Iberia, Spaniards had acquired many Arabic loan words 3/

With the help of Nahua elites, Spanards in Mexico-Tenochtitlan constantly commensurated concepts between Nahuatl and Castilian Spanish, and for the authors of the Codex Mendoza, "alfaqui" had the lexical congruency of "tlamacazqui," even of the terms were mutually exclusive 4/

The tlamacazqui were a group of ritual specialists from the calmecac "house unit/lineage" in charge of temple religion 5/

The Castilian Spanish gloss in folio 62r makes a distinction between "alfaqui mayor" or "principal tlamacazqui," as it were, and "alfaqui novicio" or a "tlamacazqui in training," known as "tlamcaztoton 6/

What the Codex Mendoza does not tell you is that there were also "cihuatlamacazque" or "women givers of offerings," who seem to have had their own schools and official participation within ritualized activities at the temple precinct 7/

Auto sacrifice, as illustrated in the Codex Mendoza or delineated in the Appendix to Book 3 the Florentine Codex, was a practice called "tlamacehualiztli" typically translated as "penitence," but could also convey the notion of "obtaining merit" 8/

Bloodletting and auto sacrifice was a practice done by vast array of members in Mexica society, not just tlamacazque. The famous Ahuitzotl Dedication Stone at MNA shows rulers bloodletting from their ears 9/

I imagine that scarring was a marker of favor, purity, and virtuosity 10/

There is a lot we don't know about the way that colonial grammarians changed the semantic meaning of Nahuatl words, but the gloss in the Codex Mendoza is just one example 11/

In 1571, Alonso de Molina would translate tlamacazque as "minsters of the temples for idols." What a horrible translation, right? 12/

But Molina was doing the same thing that the authors of the Codex Mendoza did: commensurating. Paring Nahuatl concepts with Castilian Spanish ones—and whatever we can glean from the original meaning now lives in Nahuatl, not Castilian Spanish lexical entries 13/

Want to hear more?! I'm about to publish an article on the subject. Stay tuned /14