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Veintena

Tlacaxipehualiztli

Regular Veintena (20 Days)
Origin 1200 to 1521

The second veintena, dedicated to Xipe Totec, god of springtime renewal. Captives were sacrificed and their skins worn for twenty days by priests and penitents, an act widely read as figuring the maize plant shedding its old husk as new growth emerges.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1200 to 1521 1
Origin Period
Late Postclassic Period, the Aztec Triple Alliance, kept in living informant memory through Sahagun's mid sixteenth century interviews. 1
Place of Origin
Central Mexico, the Basin of Mexico and the wider Nahuatl speaking highlands under the Aztec Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan. 1
Origin of the Name
The Nahuatl name recorded here, Tlacaxipehualiztli, follows the spelling given by Sahagun's informants and set down in the Florentine Codex by Spanish trained scribes; other colonial sources and modern transliterations spell it differently. 2
Language
Classical Nahuatl 3
Identity
Position
2 of 19 1
Disputed
Approximate Gregorian Span
Late February into mid March 1
Scholars have proposed several correlations between the xiuhpohualli year and the Gregorian calendar. The month range given here follows one widely reproduced reconstruction and is offered for relative placement only, not as a settled date: the 365 day count carried no intercalated leap day, so its alignment with the solar year is understood to have drifted across the centuries of its use, and colonial era testimony was recorded decades after the practice had ended.
Attributions
Day Count
20 Days 1
Ruling Deity
Xipe Totec 2
Observance
Principal Festival
Gladiatorial sacrifice and the wearing of flayed captive skins 2
Meaning
Literal Meaning
Flaying of Men 3
Status
Standing as a Comparative Category
A standard analytic category in the study of religion 1
Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Aztec Religion, Religions
Source The Aztecs (Smith, 3rd edition)Michael E. Smith

Under Patronage Of

Xipe Totec, Deities

Tlacaxipehualiztli's ruling deity is recorded as Xipe Totec.

Source The Aztecs (Smith, 3rd edition)Michael E. Smith
Sources
1. The Aztecs (Smith, 3rd edition)
Michael E. Smith, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012The chapter on Aztec religion and ritualView the Source
2. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain
Bernardino de Sahagun; translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, School of American Research and University of Utah Press, 1950Book 2, The Ceremonies, the chapter devoted to this veintenaView the Source
3. Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind
Miguel Leon-Portilla, University of Oklahoma Press, 1963View the Source
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