Veintenas
Tlacaxipehualiztli
Veintenas
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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 Origin PeriodLate Postclassic Period, the Aztec Triple Alliance, kept in living informant memory through Sahagun's mid sixteenth century interviews. 1 Place of OriginCentral 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 NameThe 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 Disputed
Approximate Gregorian SpanLate 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
Ruling Deity Observance
Principal FestivalGladiatorial sacrifice and the wearing of flayed captive skins 2 Meaning
Literal Meaning Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryA standard analytic category in the study of religion 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Under Patronage Of
Tlacaxipehualiztli's ruling deity is recorded as Xipe Totec.
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