As promised in our previous blog about Techialoyan Codex of Tepotzotlán (Mexican MS 1), here is the story of our Mexican MS 2, aka Codex Fischer.
This short manuscript of merely three folios, that is, six pages, contains a text in the Nahuatl language and a few crude drawings. It is written on the same amatl paper as Mexican MS 1, but its condition is worse: the paper fibres are coming apart and it makes deciphering the text difficult (Fig. 1). Researcher Uta Berger has studied the codex and came to the conclusion that it must be a fragment of a longer document discussing the difficulties that arose during the appointment of a new governor of an Indian settlement called Cocoltelli or Cocoltetli (unidentified) by the Spanish crown.
The author of the text does not mention personal names though quite a few characters appear in this rather complicated story. It does, however, mention a number of settlements, which (at least those that can be identified) are located in what is now the Mexican state of Hidalgo. The sketchy drawings of motifs like star, plants, human figures, and hills, are most likely references to these place names. Based on some characteristics of the letters, it has been dated to the early 17th century.
Your first question may be why it is called ‘Codex Fischer’. It is named after August Gottlieb Ludwig Fischer (1825-1887), who was from a German Lutheran family, the son of a butcher. He left the Old World for America and wandered around California and Texas before settling in Mexico. There he converted to Catholicism and was ordained as a priest. After fulfilling different roles from secretary to vicar, he was “discovered” by the Mexican emperor, Maximillian I. Maximillian, the younger brother of the Habsburg ruler Franz Joseph I of Austria, was the first and only ruler of the short-lived Second Mexican Empire (1864-1867). In 1865, the Emperor sent Fischer to Rome to negotiate with Pope Pius IX’s court regarding an important concordat to settle the then strained relationship of the Mexican Empire with the Vatican. Though the negotiations with the Vatican were unsuccessful, on his return, Padre Fisher became the Emperor’s court chaplain, private secretary, and confessor.
Fischer was a collector and a bibliophile, and accumulated a precious collection of Mexican early printed books and manuscripts. When the French troops who backed the Mexican Empire left the country in 1867 and the previous president Benito Juarez regained his position, Maximillian I was tried and executed, while Padre Fischer was pardoned but sent back to Europe. He brought his collection with him.
A couple of years later, in 1869, the collection was put on sale at Puttick & Simpson’s auction house in London. Today, Fischer’s collection is scattered across the world. The so-called Fischer Codex, our Mexican MS 2, is described in the 1869 sale catalogue as “Mexican or Aztec manuscript with some rude drawings. Of great antiquity and curiosity. … of the highest interest to the student of aboriginal remains.” (Lot 1929).
And at this point another fascinating character steps into our story: Manchester-born bibliophile, Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872). According to the sale catalogue, the Fischer codex was purchased by a certain Cole, most probably a bookseller, for £10 (roughly £1000 in today’s value) and it ended up in Phillipps’ vast collection containing around 60,000 manuscripts and 50,000 printed books. Some consider his collection the largest ever created by an individual. In the preface to one of his catalogues, Phillipps himself explains his obsession with books as ‘vello-mania’:
"In amassing my collection of manuscripts, I commenced with purchasing everything that lay within my reach, to which I was instigated by reading various accounts of the destruction of valuable manuscripts…. …. As I advanced, the ardour of the pursuit increased, until at last I became a perfect vello-maniac (if I may coin a word), and I gave any price that was asked. Nor do I regret it, for my object was not only to secure good manuscripts for myself, but also to raise the public estimation of them, so that their value might be more generally known, and, consequently, more manuscripts preserved. For nothing tends to the preservation of anything so much as making it bear a high price.”Preface to one of his manuscript catalogues, printed in his private printing house, Broadway Tower, Middle Hill, Worcestershire [exact edition to be found]
Phillipps died in 1872, and his collection was sold in instalments over the next century. The Fischer codex went on auction by Sotheby’s in 1919 (Lot 178) and was sold to the bookseller Bernard Quaritch, who then offered it to the John Rylands Library in the same year.
Further readings
Berger, Uta. Mexican Painted Manuscripts in the United Kingdom. London: British Museum, 1998. Print. Occasional Paper (British Museum) ; No. 91.
Berger, Uta. “Der Codex Fischer” In Anatomie, Genealogie , Kartographie , Studien zu Dokumenten aus dem alten Mexiko. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2022, pp. 71-115.
Glass, John B. and Donald Robertson. “A Census of Native Middle American Pictorial Manuscripts.” In Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volumes 14 and 15: Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, Parts Three and Four edited by Robert Wauchope, Howard F. Cline, Charles Gibson and H.B. Nicholson, 253-280. New York, USA: University of Texas Press, 1975, p. 164. No. 204. https://doi.org/10.7560/701540
Obermeier, Franz. “Augustin Fischer.” In Biographisch-Bibliographische Kirchenlexikon, vol. 39 (2018), Ergänzungen XXVI, p.459-468.
Puttick and Simpson. Bibliotheca Mejicana: a catalogue of an extraordinary collection of books & manuscripts, almost wholly relating to the history and literature of North and South America, particularly Mexico. 1869 (1968).
Ricci, Seymour De. English Collectors of Books & Manuscripts (1530-1930): And Their Marks of Ownership. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1930. Print. Sandars Lectures; 1929-1930.
Sir Thomas Phillipps, antiquary: collections relating to Gloucestershire, 1263-19th cent.