Eugène Beauvois
1902
translated by Jason Colavito
2016
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NOTE |
The widespread modern myth that the Knights Templar traveled to the Americas and established colonies there traces its roots to an article published in 1902 by Eugène Beauvois (1835-1912), a French diffusionist writer of what we would today call fringe history. He produced dozens of articles claiming to find connections between medieval Europe and the ancient Americas. His claims about the Templars were a sequel, of sorts, to an earlier hypothesis speculating from passages in Plutarch and Spanish missionaries that the Celts had colonized Mexico from Antiquity and in the early Middle Ages evangelized Christianity among native Mexicans. He had put forth that hypothesis in 1897 in an article entitled “Traces d'influence Européenne dans les langues, les sciences et l'industrie précolumbienne du Mexique et de l’Amérique centrale,” which the Journal of American Folk-Lore declared “of doubtful value.” In the sequel, Beauvois relied primarily on the sixteenth century Mexican writer Chimalpahin (Annals 6 and 7) to make a linguistic argument (a popular investigative technique of the era) for Templars in America. Beauvois’s argument was influential among Continental writers and came to influence Anglo-American fringe historians through the racist anthropology of former Nazi collaborator Jacques de Mahieu, who modernized the arguments of Beauvois and gave them a veneer of scientific respectability.
This translation provides the text of Beauvois’s article but omits the voluminous footnotes, which are nearly as long at the text itself. Interested readers can download the French edition below to consult the notes for Beauvois’s sources, which—spoiler alert!—are often biased Spanish accounts of “white gods” or his own earlier articles. 
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THE TEMPLARS OF ANCIENT MEXICO
AND THEIR EUROPEAN ORIGIN
The last of the emigrants who introduced the notions of Christianity and of White men into ancient Mexico had the significant name of Tecpantlacs (Templars), which characterizes rightly the theocratic regime under which they lived. They were divided into three classes: Nonohualcs the Teotlixcs and Tlacochcalcs, which later took the name of Chutes, after landing on the shores and in the vicinity of Lake Chalco, above Anahuac, where they were reinforced in 1504 by the arrival of their peers and the Poyauhtecs and the Panohuayantlacs. Their cradle was Tlapallan Nonohualco or Tlapallan Chicomoztoc, whose name, says Chimalpahin, their national historian, was changed to Nonohualco Tzotzompa Quinehuayan. The Codex Tellerianus and Codex Vaticanus No. 3738 cite Nonoalcs among the tribes that came out of Chicomoztoc, along with the Olmecs-Xicalancs, the Cuextecs, the Totonacs, the Couixcs, the Michuacs, and the Chicimecs. The name of this location signifies that the came out of the seven caverns, grottos, or crypts. It is applied sometimes the first point of departure for the emigrants or to one of their stopping points, and sometimes to the boats on which they crossed the Ocean, or to caverns that numbered seven, or to the place where the emigrants temporarily established their oratories. Chicomoztoc, says Chimalpahin, was situated on east of the Atlantic Ocean, since it is identified with Tlapallan, which means “In the Eastern Sea.” There can be no doubt about its eastern location relative to America, because after leaving Tlapallan, they crossed the great sea and traversed a great river [the Saint Lawrence?], and then the Nonohualcs and Tlacochcalcs returned to the east and had to pass over against the great Ocean to reach a transatlantic station, from which they left for Mexico. We further know from one of the traditions of the Maya that the Nonovalcs established on the banks of the Ocean were the bounty of the boats from the ancestors of the Cakchiquels, who emigrated from the East to the West, which is to say from the Old World to the New.
The translator of Chimalpahin did not try to explain the names of Tzotzompa Quinehuayan, affixed to that of Nonohualco. The first, which he did not include in his Dictionary of the Nahuatl Language, is perhaps an erroneous transcription of tlatzompa, “in the end,” or “to the end,” or the first syllable is a reduplication the second, to strengthen the sense of the word and give it the tautological meaning of final end. This view is confirmed by analyzing Quinehuayan, where we find the participle quinehuac, “not reached,” with the locative suffix yan, meaning: an unattainable country, inaccessible to degenerate descendants of Nonohualcs. It is more difficult to explain the name of the latter and that of their country Nonohualco, which is also written as Onohualco. Dr. Brinton derived it from onohua (it lies) and they approached from an onohuayan (populated place). Adding the possessive prefix no (my, mine) and substituting co for the catl suffix, plural ca (people), we can make Nonohualcs or Onohualcs become the people of my residence or residents. As for the Tecpantlacs, this is the Gallicized form of the plural of the Nahua Tecpantlaca, composed of Tecpan (lord of the manor, palace, or temple), which comes from tecuhtli or tecuyo, lord of the pantli, a pavilion wall, and tlacatl, a person, plural tlaca. It can therefore be rendered literally: “People of the House of the Lord,” or “People of the Temple.” It is in this latter sense that we must take the name of the Tecpantlacs, since the tecpan where they served was that of the god Tezcatlipoca; and this temple, or at least one of those consecrated to this god, was a known feature of Tlacochcalco (the house of arrows, or an arsenal). Unlike teopan (from teotl, god, and pantli) which exclusively means the House of the Heavenly Lord, tecpan combines the same elements (the house of the god Tezcatlipoca) with that of a house of an earthly lord (the Great Master of the Templars). It therefore reproduces with amazing accuracy the name of the particular building from which the first Templars took their name. According to a remark by Jacques de Vitry, the cradle of their order was not the Templum Domini (or Basilica of Jerusalem), but the Templum Militiae (or part of the Royal Palace of the Holy City). If we give preference to tecpan meaning palace, one would find many parallels in the documents relating to the Templars where palatium sometimes designates the part of the Royal Palace of Jerusalem occupied by the primitive Templars and which was long the capital of their order; sometimes, in their main monasteries, the grand ballroom, serving as dining hall and flanked dormitories for hosts. Similarly Tlacochcalco; hence, the name of a fraction of Tecpantlacs, corresponds quite well to the domus militiae Templi, and Tlacochcalca or under the Gallicized form Tlacochcalcs, is the translation of the Latin Milites Templi Christi Commilitones, or Fratres Militiae Templi, names of the Templars of Syria and Europe. The title of Milites and its synonym equites (knights) were given to nobles at birth, or ex-sergeants (servientes) ennobled for their services; it was the aristocratic class of the order, which also included regular and secular priests and laymen, even married men.
The same tripartite division was kept in Tecpantlacs or Templars of Mexico, which included, as we saw: First, the Tlacochcalcs of whom even the simplest (macehualtin) were considered superior to all the lords and nobles, respected for Tozcatlipoca their god and free from labor and tribute; second, Teotlixcs or messengers of God, corresponding to the chaplains of the order (which served the Magistri or who served the churches), as well as secular priests, admitted among the brothers on a permanent or temporary basis; third, the Nonohualcs, residents or monks, corresponding to the brothers and affiliates, ecclesiastical or secular, which the Rule of the Templars and other documents called Fratres residentes or conventuales, or Brothers Residential or of the Convent, or Hospites or Mansionarii Templi, or Brothers of the Castle.
We see from this quick list that the Templars transferred to the Tecpantlacs not only their names in a Nahua form, but their institutions. The date of their arrival in America is not secure. Chimalpahin says at one point that they crossed the great Eastern Ocean (Atlantic) in the year 1 tecpatl (flint), that is to say, in 1272 AD, but he said, under an entry for a date 22 years earlier, that this event took place at a different date, only 533 years before 1629, which we calculate as 1294. It would be tempting to give preference to the latter alternative: it would help us to determine in what way and at what time they made the crossing. We read indeed in Icelandic Annals, confirmed by the Saga of Lawrence, Bishop of Hols, the son Helge, Adalbrand and Thorvald, discovered the Nyja Land (the Newfoundland) east of Iceland, and that same year were discovered the Dúneys (Islands of Down); in 1288 or 1289, a Rolf or Landa-Hrolf (Rollo from the country of the discoverer), as he is called in the Annals of Flatey, was commissioned by the king of Norway, Eirik Magnusson, to explore this land; he went to Iceland in 1290 to recruit traveling companions; but he died in 1295 and we do not know the results of his attempt.
We are no better informed about the precise situation of Nyja Land and Dúneys; but judging by the eagerness with which the King of Norway began to inquire about the new lands, one must believe that it appeared to be advantageous and that it was not the eastern part of Greenland, located in truth to the east of Iceland, but which has long been known under the unflattering name of Obygds (Deserts) as opposed to Greenland (green country) and described as uninhabitable and almost unaffordable. Instead of seeking this inhospitable coastline, we must press onward. It is therefore rational to locate the Nyja Land on the coast of British America or perhaps the United States. It is of no matter to our subject: It is enough to have recalled that the Scandinavians knew towards the end of the thirteenth century of a transatlantic Newfoundland, that the Templars were able to get there in 1272 or 1294, as again later in 1347, a ship of Greenland traveled to Markland, which can be identified with the Nyja Land, that is to say, a place in the same area.
Until the mid-fourteenth century, Europe was communicating more freely with the New World than it would again for almost 150 years, until the discoveries of the Spaniards: the path across the North Atlantic had not yet forgotten, as it was afterward for four or five generations. It is quite probably that it served the Tecpantlacs in traveling from one shore of the great ocean to another using the ships that their order possessed, or rather Scandinavian ships, as the Nahua document does not specify; it says only that, after leaving their residence (nonohualco) in the East (Tlapallan), they crossed on shells the great celestial sea, and they came into a large river [St. Lawrence] that they went up, after which they returned to the East to worship Tonatiuh [the Sun]. It is from this circumstance they derived their name Teotlixcs. Having again crossed the great ocean [Atlantic], they went to visit Acihuatl (the Lady of the Waters), to Michintlaco, the [Gulf of Saint Lawrence]. They scoured the sea in two parts, landed on an island, and then traveled by land, passing by localities it would be superfluous to list, since it is impossible to identify them with the names of the current topography; after three years of wandering about the land, they traveled, as had several other bands of emigrants, to the famous Tullan, probably because it had a similar name if not identical to that of their motherland (Thule), a name that has been successively applied to some of the British Isles, Norway and Iceland, and finally to some localities of the New World. This is probably to one of the last that Giraldus Cambrensis refers, around 1200, as the most remote of islands. This Tyle, as he calls it, was unknown in his time; Yet we all knew that it differed from both Iceland and Tylis in India, where there are palm oil and vines.
The Tecpantlacs were preceded or followed closely in Mexico by various related peoples: Xochimilcs the Mizquics, and the Chalcs. Their relationships with each other are likely to shed light on our subject and it is not inappropriate to provide some details in this regard. According to Fr. D. Duran, the tribe of Xochimilcs and that of Chalcs were the first two to leave Teoculuacan or Aztlan-Chicomoztoc, the first American station for the civilizers of Mexico. The Histoire iconophonique reports that the second, third, and fourth tribe of emigrants were the Suchimilcs [Xochimilcs] with their god Queluzcli [Quilaztli], which was a deer of two heads of Mixcoatl; the Atitlabacs [Cuitlahuacs], with their god Amimitl, who was the rod of Mixcoatl, whom they worshiped and whose memory they preserved; the Mizquics, who worshiped Quizalcoatl [Quetzalcoatl]; and the Chalcs, with their god Tezcatlipoca Napatecli. According to one of the two ethnological traditions related by Torquemada, the Chalcs were the first of the nine tribes of emigrants, the Xochimilcs the fifth and the ninth Mizquics.
The Xochimilcs had great affinities of language and costume with the Toltecs; clever as them in the arts and especially architecture, carpentry and mechanics, they were so versed in the occult sciences that their name, became synonymous with miracle workers, and was in that sense applied to Spaniards. This suggests they were of the race of Toltecs, since their brothers the Mizquics, Quetzalcoatl worshipers, also boasted of being the same. As such, the Xochimilcs had repositories of paintings relating the return and future domination of the whites; so they were among the number of people that Montezuma II questioned about that, and one of their elders, Quilaztli, gave him the most appropriate response, in showing him pictures in which his ancestors were represented as white, bearded men mounted on boats and horses, all consistent with the traditions of Quetzalcoatl and similar to the sketch of Spanish vessels from J. de Grijalva (6). — Secondly, the people of Ocuituco, who were not only neighbors but also parents of the Xochimilcs, retained until the middle of the sixteenth century a great book with characters different from all those of the Spaniards and Mexicans, and they it had been left by a Father in the ninth century or the fourteenth.
The Annals of Xochimilcs having reached us in a brief summary given by Ixtilxochitl, we can supplement it with records collected one by one. We know that when the Xochimilcs submitted to the Spaniards in 1520, they had been established in the city for 218 years, that is to say from the year 1302, and as their migration lasted 180 years, it must have begun in 1122. By a coincidence which is probably not accidental, their exodus took place in the year following that of departure for Vinland (the United States) of the bishop of Greenland, Eirik Upsé. Perhaps this prelate found no more Christians in Vinland, long since evacuated by the Scandinavians and, on indications of Celts that remained in Great Ireland, he pushed on to Mexico with one of the tribes formerly evangelized by the Fathers; but, whether by them or by the Tecpantlacs, the Xochimilcs were informed about Whites, it is certain that at the time of Cortés, they still had positive notions of emigrants of old from transatlantic countries.
Such was also the case for the Chalcs, who mixed with the Tecpantlacs, not only from 1303, but five years earlier, in 1299; so they were also consulted by order of Montezuma II, during the investigation of the Whites. In truth, they had more pictures of the Eastern Men, but it was only one of those bestiaries so widespread in Europe in the Middle Ages, and where there were Cyclops images and unipeds according to the superstitions that Christians had received from the Ancients, they transmitted that to the inhabitants of the New World. However, as discussed at the end of this study, the traditions of the past and future White rulers were so familiar that they caused them to submit willingly to the Spaniards. Specifically, the Cuitlahuacs and Mizquics remembered perfectly, in their capacity as parents of the ancient Toltecs, that their ancestors had predicted the return of the sons of Quetzalcoatl in the land formerly owned by him but that they would have a different costume than that of Mexicans, who would not understand their language. Their old images were not dissimilar to those that the painters of Montezuma had traced for the companions of J. de Grijalva.
We can see from the above, that the Templars were not too disoriented among the Xochimilcs, the Mizquics, the Cuitlachuacs, and the Chalcs, and it is perhaps not without a second thought that they specifically sought to establish themselves among populations that had preserved many memories of Whites. If for this reason the prophecy of Quetzalcoatl was applied to them, belief in the future domination of men from the East was probably not unconnected with the ascendancy they achieved so quickly in their new homeland.
After they had merged in 1304 with one of their more recent immigrant fractions (the Poyauhtecs or People of the Panohuayan), the Nonohualcs, the Teotlixcs, and the Tlacochcalcs settled permanently on the shores of the basin of Lake Chalco, where they took the name of Chalcs, under which they were confused with peoples who preceded them in this country: the Acxotecs the Mihuas the Tlaltecahuas, the Contecs, and finally the Tlayllollas and the Chimalpanecs. The last two tribes, descendants of the Toltecs, came from the Mixteca and beyond, that is to say the countries colonized by the Fathers to the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Their members were particularly given to painting and history; they were more learned and skilled in astrology.
Thanks to their intellectual superiority, the newcomers, although numerically inferior, soon gained supremacy and exercised a sort of suzerainty over the neighboring peoples. From 1299 they conquered Tenantzinco and Aotlan; in 1303, they gave the investiture to the king of Xochimilco-Chirnalhuacan; in 1303, the lord of Tepetlixpan-Xochimilco; in 1356, that of Amaquemecan; in 1342, the King of Tenanco; in 1386, they placed the Matlatzincs in submission. The theocratic and military empire of the Chalcs, before weakening in 1407, extended its protection over twenty-five lordships, including those of Totomihuacan (occupied by Cholultecs), Huexotzinco (owned by Tlilhuihquitepecs), Itztzocan, Tezcuco (colonized by Acoluas), Xochimilco, Totollapan, Quauhnahuac, Culhuacan, Tullocan, Azcaputzalco, Tenanyocan, Cuauhtitlan, Teocalhuiacan, Matlatzinco, Mazahuacan, Xiquipilco, and finally Tlaxealtecs and Quauhquecholtecs. These places and these people occupied a good portion of the current states of Mexico, Morelos, Puebla, and Tlaxcala; although their scope was far from being comparable to the Mexican confederation, in which they were encompassed later, they formed for a time a quite large assemblage, around 100 to 150 kilometers wide. If their submission (to the religious influence, it seems, rather than a military power) had not been entirely voluntary, it became so in the end, since they undertook the defense of their princes dispossessed by the Mexicans.
The Chichimecs themselves, who had founded a vast empire on the ruins of that of that of the Toltecs, and yet were still wild, were somewhat civilized by contact with the Tecpantlacs. They were barely settled on the plateau of Anahuac when the Tecpoyo achcauhtli or Chief Preacher of Mount Xico, began relations with the prince Tlotzin, grandson of the founder of the empire. This made him appreciate maize porridge, cooking, and fabric, so that later when he became king, he ordered his subjects to grow corn and cotton; but some of them preferred to flee into the mountains and Tlotzin himself, who carried the name of the noble chief of the redskins (the Noble Hawk), was, according to the Tecpoyo, imperfectly converted. But the seed sown on barren soil eventually prospered, and to the Chalcs can be largely attributed the revival of the pre-Cortésian civilization which excited the admiration of the Spaniards. It is likely that without them the plateau of Anahuac would have remained barbaric compared to the Yucatan where the Toltecs had transported the fugitives led by Quetzalcoatl.
The unions between Chichimecs and Culuas (owners of crosses or a cross) perhaps contributed more to civilize Chichimnecs than did the teachings of Tecpoyo. A fourth generation descendant of Tlochtli, the famous Nezahualcoyotzin and his son Nezahualpiltzintli (both kings of the city of Tezcuco previously placed under the protection of the Chalcs) had inherited so many memories of Whites and their attempts at evangelization that we could almost regard them as crypto-Christians. First, while practicing in public the mode of idolatry spread by the Tenuchcs of Mexico, their allies, they professed in particular other doctrines: “Although some leaders and lords,” said J.-B. de Pomar (the historian of Tezcuco, grandson of Nezahualpiltzintli) “adored idols and offered burnt sacrifices, however, they doubted their divinity; they thought it was wrong to believe that statues of wood and stone made by human hands, were the Gods. Nezahualcoyotzin was particularly perplexed by seeking the light relative to the true God and Creator of all things, and as our Lord, in his secret judgments, thought about the light, the prince turned back from his ancestor worship as evidenced by many ancient songs known to us in fragments, and because there are many names and epithets in praise of God: He said that there was one God, creator of heaven and earth, who maintained what he had done and created; he remained where he had no equal, at a location beyond the nine levels [of heaven]; he had never shown himself in human form or body or under another figure; and the souls of the righteous dead would remain near him while the wicked were suffering in another place terrible penalties What is apparent is that they had reached the notion of the immortality of the soul.”
Nezahualpiltzintli, who contributed no less than his father in ancient traditions, easily interpreted various predictions of the next arrival of White men and explained them to his ally Montezuma II, who confessed his ignorance in this matter. Thus, despite the care that Mexican kings had taken to destroy memories of the past, these were kept in fair condition among their subjects and their allies the Tezcuco kings, for reminiscences of Christianity were not totally obliterated and persisted in the form of superstition, including many beliefs and practices whose resemblance to Christian doctrines were recorded when the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century.
The Tecpantlacs, like the Culuas, the Chalcs, the people of Mexico and Tezcuco, worshiped Tezcatlipoca, one of the most complex figures of the Mexican pantheon. If it is true, according to the proverb, that one does not lend to the rich, it must be especially the case for Tezcatlipoca. He seemed indeed to be “a real and invisible god that penetrated everywhere, in heaven, on earth, and in hell. …… They were of the belief that he alone was responsible for regulating the world; that he delivered prosperity and wealth; and that only he removed them when he had the whim.” According to the Histoire iconophonique, “Tezcatlipoca, knowing all thoughts, present everywhere, and searching hearts, was accordingly appointed Moyocoya, that is to say, the All-Powerful, or one who does everything without the help of others; in this quality, one does not know whether he represents anything more than air; that is why we do not usually call him by that name.” We see from these quotes and the following that, despite the superfluities and distortions that the disciples of Tecpantlacs, or even their pagan successors did subject the designs of their Christian ancestors or tutors with respect to Tezcatlipoca, the god still retained, at the time of the Spanish conquest, many of the attributes of the first person of the Trinity: “the natives,” says Torquemada, “regarded the uncreated and invisible one as the first among all the gods; they said he was the soul of the world. They worshiped Tezcatlipoca or Titlacahua and recognized him as God or as the image of the deity, but they knew neither the principle nor the origin, holding him not for a mortal being, but for the immortal creator of all things. It was not with the same respect that they worshiped and looked another God named Huitzilopochtli, although they held him for the god of battles and their protectors in wars.”
Tezcatlipoca not only shares some of the attributes of the true God; certain points of worship and one of his symbols are not unlike those of the Christian church. His statue holds in his right hand a utensil that Father D. Duran and A. de Herrera compare to a fan provided in its central part with a gold disk, very bright, like a mirror; it was called in effect ytlaclnayan. From a small concentric circle track in the middle of this alleged mirror departed four shafts which together formed a cross. All around, feathers formed the rays of the sun, that is to say, the modern monstrance, which in Europe, tended to replace the old style of monstrance after the thirteenth century. This utensil seems therefore to be a more or less faithful imitation of our first monstrance or suns. It is used “to conduct religious rites before the sun,” which the Teotlixcs or messengers of God, after establishing themselves in America, traversed the Atlantic to return to the East. This is probably the god-holder [i.e. monstrance] or Teomama, as it was called in Nahuatl, which gave its name to the cleric in charge of the monstrance in the States of the Tecpantlacs. This is the monstrance that also must come from two of the names of the chief deity of the ancient Mexicans: Tezcaltipoca and Tlatlauhquitczcatl. The first means: shining mirror, which despite the difference of the two parts of these compounds is, it seems, also the meaning of the second. We can more clearly designate the sun, which was at once one of the names of Christ and nauholin, the emblem of the commanders of the sun, which was painted on a pendant banner at the altar of their temple in the barracks where they taught military exercises to the noble youth. In the temple of Tezcatlipoca, Mexico, the altar was the same shape as ours; the fire was perpetually lit, like the light at home, shining before the Blessed Sacrament; the weekly officiant (or rather the cinquaine of days), dressed in a robe reaching down to the knees like our dalmatics and holding in one hand the censer, the other a purse full of incense, proceeded in the same way as the Catholic priests, raising and successively lowering his hand. The St. Andrew’s cross that appears on the censer of the priest, the bones arranged crosswise on Tezcatlipoca’s coat, and five flakes of cotton, which form a St. Andrew’s cross on his shield may recall that his worshipers, the Tecpantlacs, were originally from Scotland and dedicated to Saint Andrew.
The day before or the first day of Toxcatl, the fifth month of the Mexican year which, according to Father Duran, started on May 20, or according to Torquemada April 24, there was celebrated in honor of Tezcatlipoca one of the largest festivals, with celebrations and representations. The first of these authors said it “equaled those of Corpus Christi, which almost always falls at the same time.” It also corresponded rather to our Rogation. “She was to ask the sky for water, in the same way as do our rogations and our litanies which are always held in the month of May, which are also celebrated in this month, beginning on the ninth and ending on the nineteenth.” These ceremonies dating back to the Tecpantlacs, who themselves had received both from the Fathers of St. Columba, their predecessors, who were the Templars of the Holy Land, as we learn from curious anecdotes.
In 1332, the Tlacochcalcs of Yacapichtlan Cohuatepec, some of whom had been abused and mutilated (heads shaved, hands cut off), retired to Coyohuacan with the Teomama (God-Holder) which carried Tezcatlipoca; drought began and then, for four years, it did not rain in the land of the Chalcs while water fell on the land of the Tlacochcalcs. To end the famine that had lasted all this time, the Chalcs decided in 1336 to seek out Tezcatlipoca, who was pulled from his tent and carried by the Teomama to Mount Xoyac, on the side of Amaquemecan, where the Chalcs crowded around him and placed him in a tabernacle. Then they were under the protection of the people of Tecpan [Temple], the Tlacochcalcs. Received before the statue, the king of the Chichimecs of Amequameean handed him the shiny curved stick [the cross]; in return, the god awarded him the sovereignty of Amequamecan, which was divided between him and the Tlayllotlas. He received the title of Teohuateuctli (theocratic or spiritual lord), which was for a long time, used by Tlacochcalco, whither Tezcatlipoca was carried.
One or two generations previous, the Templars of Palestine were accustomed to processions of the same kind and for the same purpose, as we learn from the testimony in the trial of the Templars by Anthonius Syci, of Vercelli, Apostolic and imperial notary, who was their clerk and recorder in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. “I saw several times,” he said, “a copper cross, which was apparently worthless, but was said to be made from the basin in which Christ was bathed. The Templars kept their treasure and sometimes when the heat and drought were excessive, the people of Ancon begged them to bring in a procession of the clergy. I have also seen sometimes in this ceremony, the Patriarch of Jerusalem [then titular], accompanied by the Knights Templar, who carried the cross with proper devotion. Following these processions through divine mercy, water watered the earth from the sky and tempered the heat of the air.”
Absent this miraculous cross, which probably remained in the East, the Tecpantlacs used, as with Xoyac, the resplendent mirror or monstrance, the emblem of Tezcatlipoca; or, as the ancient Fathers, a sacred book. It is known, from the life of Saint Columba, their patron, that the monks of Iona, one of the Hebrides, in the wake of a severe drought, made a procession through the fields, waving the white tunic of the saint and reading books written by his hand. For the same purpose they placed three times on the altar the holy books written by the saint. These legends explain a Nahuatl term that the translator of Chimalpahin could not understand. This chronicler speaks in four places of tlacuilolquiauh, which is composed of tlacuilolli, “writing, painting,” and quiauitl, “rain.” Between the two meanings of the first term, the translator chose the less rational and rendered it as “painted rain.” More plausibly is the expression “writing rain,” that is to say obtained through books and miraculously like the Columbites in the British Isles. If they did not always have at their disposal thaumaturgic manuscripts or holy relics, they used the Gospels, missals, rituals, formulas, and litanies for the songs and prayers of Rogation. So, the Nahua phrase is perfectly right: The Mexicans lacked none of these, and until the sixteenth century, they preserved ancient paintings of biblical scenes.
It appears that their reputation for miracle working was based on invocations to Tezcatlipoca. The Tecpantlacs, at first very poor, had spiritual influence, and consequently temporal power. This weakened when, in 1347, they were powerless to avert drought by writing rain, of which he was no mention during the great famine of 1450 to 1454. In the meantime, customs and beliefs had changed significantly. The Tenuchcs, who wandered long on the plateau of Anahuac, settled in Mexico in the first quarter of the fourteenth century and denied the traditions of the Aztecs or which were derived from the Whites and replaced the moral and religious force with the rule of the maquauitl (saber). To terrify their neighbors, they killed the daughter of the king of Culuacan, Achitometl II (1336-1347), whom they had demanded as their queen and goddess. Their example was soon imitated by the Culuas themselves, who for the first time in 1348, performed human sacrifices in the temple of Quauhtitlan, giving a religious cast to exploiting prisoners of war. The Chalcs could not evade the ferocity of contagion, and they even aggravated it by regularizing these human sacrifices. They made an abominable agreement with the Tenuchcs of Mexico, in 1324, and reconfirmed in 1368 or 1376: The Flower War (Xochiyaoyotl) whose disappointing name conceals the inhuman. They fought, not to kill opponents, but to take captives. Those taken on the field of battle had no better fate than the dead: They were to be eaten after being solemnly sacrificed in temples. It is possible, however, that this Flower War was but a single tournament, and the only Tenuchcs sacrificed the prisoners taken by them because B. de las Casas says their god Uchilobos [Huitzilopochtli] “was the first to order human sacrifices, which had never before taken place in Mexico.” It was, in fact, according to J.-B. Pomar, an invention the Mexicans introduced and which were imitated throughout the country, at least from Tezcuco to Tlacuba, in Chalco, Huexotzinco and Tlaxcala, the lands they had detached from the influence of the Tecpantlacs. The first human sacrifice, which had come to the knowledge of Torquemada, was of one of four Xochimilcs taken prisoner by the Tenuchcs, shortly before their establishment in Mexico, that is to say in the first quarter of the fourteenth century. Muñoz Camargo has only an echo, reporting that these bloody rites had originated in the province of Chalco and from there they were transplanted into Tlaxcala, the country where the most human sacrifices were made.
To counter their influence, perhaps descendants or disciples of the Tecpantlacs came, a hundred years after the arrival of the first, to violate the strict prohibitions of the various pre-Columbian evangelizers? In the ninth century, Father Quetzalcoatl had preferred exile from Tula than to tolerate human sacrifice. The anonymous late fourteenth century Father also forbade cannibalism and there is no doubt that Tecpantlacs, from Europe, where cannibalism was an abomination, would have abolished the bloody rites. But few, isolated in the midst of barbarians, losing their power to those thought most capable of getting from Tezcatlipoca a cessation of drought, weakened by their wars with the Tepanocs of Azcaputzalco and the Tenuchcs of Mexico, they did not succeed better than the Spanish, stronger and undisputed masters, in preventing the horrible sacrifices. It is believed that they are attended them, if one wants to take literally the assertions of their national historian or other writers. Father Duran reports that in their last wars against the Mexicans, the Chalcs threatened to sacrifice them to their God Camaxtli to anoint his temple with their blood and feast on their flesh. But it must be noted here that the god in question was that of a nation of cannibals, the Chichimecs, and that these were precisely the Chalcs who carried the name Chichimecs. Four or five years later, in 1469, the three most powerful lords of the country of Chalco and the city of Amaquemecan were called Chalcs, although they were all of Chichimec race. They hanged ambassadors, boiled their flesh, and made those who had sent them eat them surreptitiously.
The Tecpantlacs, they who had become the masters, should not be blamed for this barbaric act, but we cannot exonerate them from having somehow authorized it by metaphorical expressions and a mystical language that were lost on the savages.
The doctrines and practices of Catholicism were unfortunately not always well understood by the rude peoples to whom they taught the metaphors, and this led to singular mistakes when preachers used them on uneducated listeners who are inclined to take everything literally. The Regula pauperum commilitonum Christi Templique Salomonici says that after Communion, no knights were afraid to go into battle, using the words “Divino cibo refecti ac satiati,” which the paraphrase in Old French makes into “feed on the meat of God and get drunk.” If one could without inconvenience express this bluntly before the Christians of the Old World, one was not allowed to do so before lovers of human flesh. How indeed could the Chichimecs or nomadic Mexicans understand the mystery of the sacrament, when Catholics and European Protestants, taught by the holy books, the doctors of the Church, and learned theologians, disagree on transubstantiation? While adopting the dogma in hopes of drawing temporal advantages, the Mexicans applied it in a manner contrary to its intention: besides the wafer which is the body of God's propitiation, they needed a representative body of the divinity. To this end, they chose among the captives a valiant warrior to whom they gave the name and costume of a god, to play the role of the latter for a year, after which they sacrificed him with great pomp and his flesh was divided among the lords who ate it as a divine food. The ritual immolation of this enemy (in Latin hostis, whence host) was an abominable infringement of the Eucharist that degenerated into simple theophagy and theo-androphagy under the influence of the Tenuchcs of Mexico, in an appalling slaughter of prisoners, slaves, and even children, whose blood was used to quench the sun, and the bodies to fill the butcheries of human flesh.
In this regard, the Tlaxcaltecs were no less fanatical than the Tenuchcs, and this is not the only time they refused to be content with symbolic representations: while in other parts of Mexico, in holy mass a statue of the god Huitzilopochtli was drilled to pieces with blows of javelins, they attached, in some festivals, a captive to a cross and killed him with arrows; the next day tortured another to death with darts. Who can fail to see there a cruel imitation of certain mysteries of the Middle Ages wherein they remembered in our churches the various scenes of the Passion?
We have seen that, in imitation of Tezcatlipoca, the monks and nuns of the monasteries, in Mexico, shaved the hair on the forehead, ear to ear, but let it grow on the sides and fall in long tails on their shoulders; those of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, in contrast, had the same coronal tonsure as our monks, both in Mexico and in the territory of Chalco and Huexotzinco; and these were tonsured in the Roman style, having been influenced by the Tecpantlacs; while the others, descended from immigrants who were evangelized by Celtic Fathers, must be related to the traditions of St. Columba.
There was from the beginning antagonism between Huitzilopochtli, the warrior god of the Tenuchcs of Mexico, and Tezcatlipoca, the god of the Chalcs, that made them into enemies, so former took successively the states where the latter was adored. They took the Tepanecs of Azcaputzalco in 1429; the Xoehimilcs in 1430; the Quauhquecholtecs the Mizquics and Cuitlahuacs in 1432; the Quauhnahuacs in 1439; the Chalcs from 1459 to 1465 (after executing all the important princes they were replaced by foreign governors); the Mazahuacs in 1471; Tullocan residents in 1474; the Matlatzincs in 1477; the Xiquipilcs in 1478; and the Huexotzincs only in 1515. As the Aculuas of Tezcuco had long been leagued with the Tenuchcs to form the Federation of Culuas, there remained among them the former subjects of the Chalcs, as the Tlaxcaltecs had stood up to the victors; yet they were retained only by the grace of their adversaries in the Flower Wars to be the victims of horrible sacrifices. As for enslaved Tecpantlacs, if they continued as always to work for the temples, it was not for their tecpan, but for the teocalli of Huitzilopochtli, for the construction of which their ancestors had refused stones, resulting in a long war that eventually led to their subjugation to the Tenuchcs.
The influence they had therefore was not large enough to establish firmly atop Anahuac European civilization and Christianity, of which are nevertheless found many traces in their descendants. If the religion and nationality of the Tecpantlacs did not bleed more and more and leave many traces in the people among whom they were established, it is obvious that they were too different from the mothers of their children and their subjects or allies. The woman, who is the guardian of the hearth and traditions, soon ends up imposing her language, beliefs and customs, not just on those she raises, but also to those around him. But among the Templars, forming only a tiny minority of the population, the lay brothers, farmers, or artisans, were the only ones who could get married. They had probably not brought European women to America, and their posterity after their union with the Natives would not resemble them in every respect. It was like at home with the Franks, Burgundians, Goths, and Lombards, who, while the ruling class, nevertheless allowed themselves to assimilate in the course of a few centuries into their own subjects, or the Gallo-Romans, Italians, and Iberians, who, after a few generations, had forgotten their languages and spoke only neo-Latin dialects. Similarly, the Tlacochcalcs substituted Nahua for their beautiful particular languages. On the other hand, from the fourth generation after their settlement in the basin of Lake Chalco, their power was essentially in spiritual decay; in 1407, the chiefs of the Chalcs had to emigrate to escape the tyranny of the Mexicans. At the time of Cortés, for over half a century their successors were under the yoke, nevertheless retaining their reputation for bravery, and revolting from time to time, in alliance with the enemies of Mexico: Tlaxcala and Tlatelulco; later with the Spaniards on their arrival in the central Anahuac. They powerfully aided in the conquest of Mexico; also they were restored to the land from which the heads of the Culua confederation had dispossessed them by the masters of New Spain.
In 1519, before the entry of F. Cortés into Mexico, most princes of the Chalcs went to Amaquemecan to receive and welcome him, calling him their god (teotl) and, a little before the siege of Mexico (1521), they brought two children of one of their lords who had just died, recommending them to submit to the great leader of Teulcs, because their ancestors had certainly predicted that the country would one day be governed by bearded men from the East, and everything indicated that they were the Spanish. It was known that Tzumpantecutli, Lord of Cuitlahuactizic, descended from Iztac-Mixcoatl (the White, Chief of the Mixs or Scots), had announced the coming of the Whites. He was put to death in 1517 by order of Montezuma II, for saying that Huitzilopochtli was not the true God, but that the reign of the Creator approached. The Mizquics, brothers of the Cuitlahuacs, preserved until the time of Montezuma II an ancient prophecy about the return of Quetzalcoatl: The former had taught them that the sons of the latter were to recover the land that belonged to them and the wealth they had hidden in the mountains and caves. The good Xochimilcs, allies of the Tecpantlacs, had old images of horses with their riders, boats whose sails were like eagles, large ships manned by bearded white men, armed with swords, helmets, and European clothes. — Finally ancient protégés of the Tecpantlacs, the Tlaxcaltecs, still remembered in the sixteenth century a prediction of their ancestors, by which White and bearded men, mounted on tall floating houses, wearing helmets, armed with swords and superior bows to those of the Natives, were to come from a far eastern land to subjugate their country. These prophecies, these memories, these images which concerned the son of the Sun in general, that is to say, the men of the East, the Holy Sacrament of worshipers, were applied to the Spaniards. Also one of the Conquistadores, Francisco de Aguilar, with many others, placed the same tradition in the mouth of the unfortunate Montezuma, for he said that “the Chalcs were, from the beginning, subject to the King [Charles V] and great friends of the Spaniards.”
Behold an imposing set of facts and testimonies, mostly independent, which back one another and which, from the most diverse sources, however, consistently show that the Tecpantlacs and their fellows or former subjects, the Chalcs, the Xochimiles, the Mizquics, the Cuitlahuacs, and the TIaxcaltecs, contemporary with Cortés, had notions of Christianity and Whites from the East. We conclude that their ancestors came from eastern Atlantic countries were from Europe or had been evangelized by members of the military and religious order whose name was exactly rendered in Nahua by the name Tecpantlacs. Even when it seems suspect that some of these traditions or some of these religious beliefs and practices seem too far removed from Catholicism to be imitations or at least an odious counterfeit; even when one challenges the value of some of the evidence and arguments presented above, it would still be enough to make it impossible to reverse our findings, explaining differently than we did the archaeological remains, beliefs, religious practices, historical accounts, and memories.
Here indeed is what emerges from the most reliable documents we have translated and commented upon: The Tecpantlacs were from a distant land located east of the Atlantic Ocean and came from between Cape Nord and Cape Bojador, as south of it Africa was exclusively inhabited by Negroes, and their memories, like the pictures preserved by their descendants, allies, and subjects of the protégé’s of the Tecpantlacs (Chalcs, Mizquics, Cuitlahuacs, Xochimilcs, and TIaxcaltecs) were of White, bearded, men armed and dressed in European style. As the common home of these peoples and other immigrants who preceded them was Tullan-Tlapallan (Thule of the East Sea, with respect to Mexico), and this name applies to populated islands and regions of the Celts, we can say that the Tecpantlacs belonged to the family of the latter; and indeed one of the insignia of Tezcatlipoca, their particular deity, was the crux decussata of St. Andrew, patron of Scotland, and it was on the shield and the coat of the god and on the censers of his priests. This symbol of Christianity, together with the sun or monstrance held by the idol Tezcatlipoca, with its main attributes are those of the true God. Additionally, some details of his worship such as the form of altars, Rogation, censers, tabernacle, cross, thaumaturgic books--these symbols, we say, are a sure sign of the Christian origin of various beliefs held by the Tecpantlacs and the famous Nezahualcoyotl, King of Tezcuco, descendant of a Chichimec prince instructed by a Chalc missionary.
Considering all these facts, drawn from Chimalpahin and other historians, ancient paintings and chronicles, they did not always understand the import, since side by side with the name Tezcatllipoca are the qualities of the devil, a great demon, without suspecting that it was a counterfeit of the true God. — We must identify the Tecpantlacs with our Templars, especially as tecpan, the first part of the Nahua name, is the exact translation of templum, taken the sense of palace and not basilica; the tripartite division of Tecpantlacs in Tlacochcalcs or milites, in Teotlixcs or messengers of God, Nonohualcs or residents, corresponds perfectly to the Templar knights, clergy, and residents or monks; all these lived under a theocratic and military regime, having for chiefs not only Guardians of arrows, gear, and harness, but the Lord-Ministers of God, the God-Holder, Preachers, the Reverend monks, and the shoeless friars. — What now, if we judge these many points of resemblance between the Templars and Tecpantlacs, can be explained any other way than by the original identity of the two warrior and religious orders?
In truth, we do not know of any European documents which inform us, as does Chimalpahin, where, when, and how the Templars passed from Europe to America, but we can surmise they went to a Celtic country during the unrest that desolated these countries in the late thirteenth century. But objectively, how is it that they had not made known to Europe the existence of a New World? The answer is easy if one refers to the time of their migration and to the policies of the Order. It liked to wrap itself in mystery: the chapters were composed only of those the Grand Master thought proper to call and, under penalty of being excluded from the Order, they should not expose to anyone, not even to their colleagues, what was done and said within. “A deep darkness, even mystery, like everything concerning the Templars, surrounds the disappearance of their archives.” According to the testimony of one of them, Brother Geraldus of Causso, a knight, “the elders of the Order agreed in saying that they would win nothing by admitting scholars into its bosom.” With this general tendency to keep things hidden, leaders and other senior members would not engage discoverers in writing travel accounts, and they would not have deposited any in their archives, which are moreover dispersed, or otherwise largely destroyed. “The Grand Master and provincial tutors,” also said Geraldus, “did not suffer brothers to write or keep in their possession, without permission, the Rule of the Order or the regulations made later, not more than others written on the status and business of the Order. The witness thought that it was an abuse and that from this came the suspicions against the Templars. Once or twice, to his knowledge, the Grand Master had, in the countries of Outremer, ordered all the brothers with books related to the Rule, the articles, or the business of the Order to bring them to him. He had burned a few, or so the witness had heard and believed, and gave some others to older members and kept the rest for himself.” Two of his predecessors had done the same.
Also, the ancient manuscripts of the Rule are rare, and there is no mention in any European book, of Templars who, after crossing the Atlantic Ocean, returned at least once in Europe to worship the sun, that is to say the Blessed Sacrament which had once been given this form and had become one of the attributes of Tezcatlipoca, the caricature of the Christian God. If these relations were renewed, it is probable that they would not long have been kept secret and that America would have been known here 200 years before Columbus; but naturally this stopped at the dissolution of the Order, whose members were either burned or imprisoned, or induced to quit the habit and become laborers or craftsmen. Some of them even went to the Saracens and tried to make the most possible harm to their former co-religionists, especially their enemy brothers, the Hospitallers.
Would the Tecpantlacs have sent their revenues to Europe, or would they be given to their new home, when the Templars who had, according to the testimony of a contemporary, escaped the stake or prison, “roamed the world after being stripped of their frocks”? Their situation in Mexico was better than it had ever been in the East and in Europe, where the Order had not managed to carve out an autonomous principality, like the Hospitallers in Rhodes, the Teutonic Knights in East Prussia, and the Brothers of the Sword in Livonia. That they could not win here, in the time of their greatest prosperity, by force of arms, some of its members had done so there very easily, thanks to their intellectual superiority and reputation as miracle workers. They had every interest not to attract the attention of those who could pursue them, enslave them, or compete with them. They did not need, like their unfortunate brothers who remained in Europe, to dress up as peasants and vagabonds for their lives, or to be renegades for their freedom, for they dominated in their transatlantic States through the isolation that was their first defense, but that ended up being one of the main causes of their political and religious decadence.
They were unable to rely, as later did the Spanish colonists, Portuguese, French, English, on the fleets and troops of the mother country. They were deprived of the continual influx of immigrants who would have strengthened them, and they were soon unable to resist the warlike undertakings of the Tenuchcs of Mexico, the Tepanecs of Azcaputzalco, and the Acoluas of Tezcuco, and they allowed themselves to be absorbed by the barbarians around them or by their new masters, so as to become almost unrecognizable. So far the Americanists have neither suspected their origin, nor understood their traditions and superstitions. Scholars who work exclusively with inscriptions, duly signed parchments, initialed and fitted seals, medals, monuments, and antiquities to recover memories and stories of contemporary events, will scarcely believe that a band of Templars had possessed in Mexico, for a century and a half, sovereign states and even suzerainty over many principalities. It is permitted to put aside a question so remote from their studies, but those who say with the poet:
Humani nihil a me alienum puto. [Nothing human is foreign to me.]
and who want to express an opinion as to the Tecpantlacs, should consider the positive developments noted in this essay and, if necessary, discuss our explanations and our arguments; and no true scholar will disdainfully reject our conclusions, under the sole pretext that they are unlikely and that it was impossible for the Templars to found a sustainable state in America without the knowledge of fourteenth and fifteenth century Europeans.
The translator of Chimalpahin did not try to explain the names of Tzotzompa Quinehuayan, affixed to that of Nonohualco. The first, which he did not include in his Dictionary of the Nahuatl Language, is perhaps an erroneous transcription of tlatzompa, “in the end,” or “to the end,” or the first syllable is a reduplication the second, to strengthen the sense of the word and give it the tautological meaning of final end. This view is confirmed by analyzing Quinehuayan, where we find the participle quinehuac, “not reached,” with the locative suffix yan, meaning: an unattainable country, inaccessible to degenerate descendants of Nonohualcs. It is more difficult to explain the name of the latter and that of their country Nonohualco, which is also written as Onohualco. Dr. Brinton derived it from onohua (it lies) and they approached from an onohuayan (populated place). Adding the possessive prefix no (my, mine) and substituting co for the catl suffix, plural ca (people), we can make Nonohualcs or Onohualcs become the people of my residence or residents. As for the Tecpantlacs, this is the Gallicized form of the plural of the Nahua Tecpantlaca, composed of Tecpan (lord of the manor, palace, or temple), which comes from tecuhtli or tecuyo, lord of the pantli, a pavilion wall, and tlacatl, a person, plural tlaca. It can therefore be rendered literally: “People of the House of the Lord,” or “People of the Temple.” It is in this latter sense that we must take the name of the Tecpantlacs, since the tecpan where they served was that of the god Tezcatlipoca; and this temple, or at least one of those consecrated to this god, was a known feature of Tlacochcalco (the house of arrows, or an arsenal). Unlike teopan (from teotl, god, and pantli) which exclusively means the House of the Heavenly Lord, tecpan combines the same elements (the house of the god Tezcatlipoca) with that of a house of an earthly lord (the Great Master of the Templars). It therefore reproduces with amazing accuracy the name of the particular building from which the first Templars took their name. According to a remark by Jacques de Vitry, the cradle of their order was not the Templum Domini (or Basilica of Jerusalem), but the Templum Militiae (or part of the Royal Palace of the Holy City). If we give preference to tecpan meaning palace, one would find many parallels in the documents relating to the Templars where palatium sometimes designates the part of the Royal Palace of Jerusalem occupied by the primitive Templars and which was long the capital of their order; sometimes, in their main monasteries, the grand ballroom, serving as dining hall and flanked dormitories for hosts. Similarly Tlacochcalco; hence, the name of a fraction of Tecpantlacs, corresponds quite well to the domus militiae Templi, and Tlacochcalca or under the Gallicized form Tlacochcalcs, is the translation of the Latin Milites Templi Christi Commilitones, or Fratres Militiae Templi, names of the Templars of Syria and Europe. The title of Milites and its synonym equites (knights) were given to nobles at birth, or ex-sergeants (servientes) ennobled for their services; it was the aristocratic class of the order, which also included regular and secular priests and laymen, even married men.
The same tripartite division was kept in Tecpantlacs or Templars of Mexico, which included, as we saw: First, the Tlacochcalcs of whom even the simplest (macehualtin) were considered superior to all the lords and nobles, respected for Tozcatlipoca their god and free from labor and tribute; second, Teotlixcs or messengers of God, corresponding to the chaplains of the order (which served the Magistri or who served the churches), as well as secular priests, admitted among the brothers on a permanent or temporary basis; third, the Nonohualcs, residents or monks, corresponding to the brothers and affiliates, ecclesiastical or secular, which the Rule of the Templars and other documents called Fratres residentes or conventuales, or Brothers Residential or of the Convent, or Hospites or Mansionarii Templi, or Brothers of the Castle.
We see from this quick list that the Templars transferred to the Tecpantlacs not only their names in a Nahua form, but their institutions. The date of their arrival in America is not secure. Chimalpahin says at one point that they crossed the great Eastern Ocean (Atlantic) in the year 1 tecpatl (flint), that is to say, in 1272 AD, but he said, under an entry for a date 22 years earlier, that this event took place at a different date, only 533 years before 1629, which we calculate as 1294. It would be tempting to give preference to the latter alternative: it would help us to determine in what way and at what time they made the crossing. We read indeed in Icelandic Annals, confirmed by the Saga of Lawrence, Bishop of Hols, the son Helge, Adalbrand and Thorvald, discovered the Nyja Land (the Newfoundland) east of Iceland, and that same year were discovered the Dúneys (Islands of Down); in 1288 or 1289, a Rolf or Landa-Hrolf (Rollo from the country of the discoverer), as he is called in the Annals of Flatey, was commissioned by the king of Norway, Eirik Magnusson, to explore this land; he went to Iceland in 1290 to recruit traveling companions; but he died in 1295 and we do not know the results of his attempt.
We are no better informed about the precise situation of Nyja Land and Dúneys; but judging by the eagerness with which the King of Norway began to inquire about the new lands, one must believe that it appeared to be advantageous and that it was not the eastern part of Greenland, located in truth to the east of Iceland, but which has long been known under the unflattering name of Obygds (Deserts) as opposed to Greenland (green country) and described as uninhabitable and almost unaffordable. Instead of seeking this inhospitable coastline, we must press onward. It is therefore rational to locate the Nyja Land on the coast of British America or perhaps the United States. It is of no matter to our subject: It is enough to have recalled that the Scandinavians knew towards the end of the thirteenth century of a transatlantic Newfoundland, that the Templars were able to get there in 1272 or 1294, as again later in 1347, a ship of Greenland traveled to Markland, which can be identified with the Nyja Land, that is to say, a place in the same area.
Until the mid-fourteenth century, Europe was communicating more freely with the New World than it would again for almost 150 years, until the discoveries of the Spaniards: the path across the North Atlantic had not yet forgotten, as it was afterward for four or five generations. It is quite probably that it served the Tecpantlacs in traveling from one shore of the great ocean to another using the ships that their order possessed, or rather Scandinavian ships, as the Nahua document does not specify; it says only that, after leaving their residence (nonohualco) in the East (Tlapallan), they crossed on shells the great celestial sea, and they came into a large river [St. Lawrence] that they went up, after which they returned to the East to worship Tonatiuh [the Sun]. It is from this circumstance they derived their name Teotlixcs. Having again crossed the great ocean [Atlantic], they went to visit Acihuatl (the Lady of the Waters), to Michintlaco, the [Gulf of Saint Lawrence]. They scoured the sea in two parts, landed on an island, and then traveled by land, passing by localities it would be superfluous to list, since it is impossible to identify them with the names of the current topography; after three years of wandering about the land, they traveled, as had several other bands of emigrants, to the famous Tullan, probably because it had a similar name if not identical to that of their motherland (Thule), a name that has been successively applied to some of the British Isles, Norway and Iceland, and finally to some localities of the New World. This is probably to one of the last that Giraldus Cambrensis refers, around 1200, as the most remote of islands. This Tyle, as he calls it, was unknown in his time; Yet we all knew that it differed from both Iceland and Tylis in India, where there are palm oil and vines.
The Tecpantlacs were preceded or followed closely in Mexico by various related peoples: Xochimilcs the Mizquics, and the Chalcs. Their relationships with each other are likely to shed light on our subject and it is not inappropriate to provide some details in this regard. According to Fr. D. Duran, the tribe of Xochimilcs and that of Chalcs were the first two to leave Teoculuacan or Aztlan-Chicomoztoc, the first American station for the civilizers of Mexico. The Histoire iconophonique reports that the second, third, and fourth tribe of emigrants were the Suchimilcs [Xochimilcs] with their god Queluzcli [Quilaztli], which was a deer of two heads of Mixcoatl; the Atitlabacs [Cuitlahuacs], with their god Amimitl, who was the rod of Mixcoatl, whom they worshiped and whose memory they preserved; the Mizquics, who worshiped Quizalcoatl [Quetzalcoatl]; and the Chalcs, with their god Tezcatlipoca Napatecli. According to one of the two ethnological traditions related by Torquemada, the Chalcs were the first of the nine tribes of emigrants, the Xochimilcs the fifth and the ninth Mizquics.
The Xochimilcs had great affinities of language and costume with the Toltecs; clever as them in the arts and especially architecture, carpentry and mechanics, they were so versed in the occult sciences that their name, became synonymous with miracle workers, and was in that sense applied to Spaniards. This suggests they were of the race of Toltecs, since their brothers the Mizquics, Quetzalcoatl worshipers, also boasted of being the same. As such, the Xochimilcs had repositories of paintings relating the return and future domination of the whites; so they were among the number of people that Montezuma II questioned about that, and one of their elders, Quilaztli, gave him the most appropriate response, in showing him pictures in which his ancestors were represented as white, bearded men mounted on boats and horses, all consistent with the traditions of Quetzalcoatl and similar to the sketch of Spanish vessels from J. de Grijalva (6). — Secondly, the people of Ocuituco, who were not only neighbors but also parents of the Xochimilcs, retained until the middle of the sixteenth century a great book with characters different from all those of the Spaniards and Mexicans, and they it had been left by a Father in the ninth century or the fourteenth.
The Annals of Xochimilcs having reached us in a brief summary given by Ixtilxochitl, we can supplement it with records collected one by one. We know that when the Xochimilcs submitted to the Spaniards in 1520, they had been established in the city for 218 years, that is to say from the year 1302, and as their migration lasted 180 years, it must have begun in 1122. By a coincidence which is probably not accidental, their exodus took place in the year following that of departure for Vinland (the United States) of the bishop of Greenland, Eirik Upsé. Perhaps this prelate found no more Christians in Vinland, long since evacuated by the Scandinavians and, on indications of Celts that remained in Great Ireland, he pushed on to Mexico with one of the tribes formerly evangelized by the Fathers; but, whether by them or by the Tecpantlacs, the Xochimilcs were informed about Whites, it is certain that at the time of Cortés, they still had positive notions of emigrants of old from transatlantic countries.
Such was also the case for the Chalcs, who mixed with the Tecpantlacs, not only from 1303, but five years earlier, in 1299; so they were also consulted by order of Montezuma II, during the investigation of the Whites. In truth, they had more pictures of the Eastern Men, but it was only one of those bestiaries so widespread in Europe in the Middle Ages, and where there were Cyclops images and unipeds according to the superstitions that Christians had received from the Ancients, they transmitted that to the inhabitants of the New World. However, as discussed at the end of this study, the traditions of the past and future White rulers were so familiar that they caused them to submit willingly to the Spaniards. Specifically, the Cuitlahuacs and Mizquics remembered perfectly, in their capacity as parents of the ancient Toltecs, that their ancestors had predicted the return of the sons of Quetzalcoatl in the land formerly owned by him but that they would have a different costume than that of Mexicans, who would not understand their language. Their old images were not dissimilar to those that the painters of Montezuma had traced for the companions of J. de Grijalva.
We can see from the above, that the Templars were not too disoriented among the Xochimilcs, the Mizquics, the Cuitlachuacs, and the Chalcs, and it is perhaps not without a second thought that they specifically sought to establish themselves among populations that had preserved many memories of Whites. If for this reason the prophecy of Quetzalcoatl was applied to them, belief in the future domination of men from the East was probably not unconnected with the ascendancy they achieved so quickly in their new homeland.
After they had merged in 1304 with one of their more recent immigrant fractions (the Poyauhtecs or People of the Panohuayan), the Nonohualcs, the Teotlixcs, and the Tlacochcalcs settled permanently on the shores of the basin of Lake Chalco, where they took the name of Chalcs, under which they were confused with peoples who preceded them in this country: the Acxotecs the Mihuas the Tlaltecahuas, the Contecs, and finally the Tlayllollas and the Chimalpanecs. The last two tribes, descendants of the Toltecs, came from the Mixteca and beyond, that is to say the countries colonized by the Fathers to the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Their members were particularly given to painting and history; they were more learned and skilled in astrology.
Thanks to their intellectual superiority, the newcomers, although numerically inferior, soon gained supremacy and exercised a sort of suzerainty over the neighboring peoples. From 1299 they conquered Tenantzinco and Aotlan; in 1303, they gave the investiture to the king of Xochimilco-Chirnalhuacan; in 1303, the lord of Tepetlixpan-Xochimilco; in 1356, that of Amaquemecan; in 1342, the King of Tenanco; in 1386, they placed the Matlatzincs in submission. The theocratic and military empire of the Chalcs, before weakening in 1407, extended its protection over twenty-five lordships, including those of Totomihuacan (occupied by Cholultecs), Huexotzinco (owned by Tlilhuihquitepecs), Itztzocan, Tezcuco (colonized by Acoluas), Xochimilco, Totollapan, Quauhnahuac, Culhuacan, Tullocan, Azcaputzalco, Tenanyocan, Cuauhtitlan, Teocalhuiacan, Matlatzinco, Mazahuacan, Xiquipilco, and finally Tlaxealtecs and Quauhquecholtecs. These places and these people occupied a good portion of the current states of Mexico, Morelos, Puebla, and Tlaxcala; although their scope was far from being comparable to the Mexican confederation, in which they were encompassed later, they formed for a time a quite large assemblage, around 100 to 150 kilometers wide. If their submission (to the religious influence, it seems, rather than a military power) had not been entirely voluntary, it became so in the end, since they undertook the defense of their princes dispossessed by the Mexicans.
The Chichimecs themselves, who had founded a vast empire on the ruins of that of that of the Toltecs, and yet were still wild, were somewhat civilized by contact with the Tecpantlacs. They were barely settled on the plateau of Anahuac when the Tecpoyo achcauhtli or Chief Preacher of Mount Xico, began relations with the prince Tlotzin, grandson of the founder of the empire. This made him appreciate maize porridge, cooking, and fabric, so that later when he became king, he ordered his subjects to grow corn and cotton; but some of them preferred to flee into the mountains and Tlotzin himself, who carried the name of the noble chief of the redskins (the Noble Hawk), was, according to the Tecpoyo, imperfectly converted. But the seed sown on barren soil eventually prospered, and to the Chalcs can be largely attributed the revival of the pre-Cortésian civilization which excited the admiration of the Spaniards. It is likely that without them the plateau of Anahuac would have remained barbaric compared to the Yucatan where the Toltecs had transported the fugitives led by Quetzalcoatl.
The unions between Chichimecs and Culuas (owners of crosses or a cross) perhaps contributed more to civilize Chichimnecs than did the teachings of Tecpoyo. A fourth generation descendant of Tlochtli, the famous Nezahualcoyotzin and his son Nezahualpiltzintli (both kings of the city of Tezcuco previously placed under the protection of the Chalcs) had inherited so many memories of Whites and their attempts at evangelization that we could almost regard them as crypto-Christians. First, while practicing in public the mode of idolatry spread by the Tenuchcs of Mexico, their allies, they professed in particular other doctrines: “Although some leaders and lords,” said J.-B. de Pomar (the historian of Tezcuco, grandson of Nezahualpiltzintli) “adored idols and offered burnt sacrifices, however, they doubted their divinity; they thought it was wrong to believe that statues of wood and stone made by human hands, were the Gods. Nezahualcoyotzin was particularly perplexed by seeking the light relative to the true God and Creator of all things, and as our Lord, in his secret judgments, thought about the light, the prince turned back from his ancestor worship as evidenced by many ancient songs known to us in fragments, and because there are many names and epithets in praise of God: He said that there was one God, creator of heaven and earth, who maintained what he had done and created; he remained where he had no equal, at a location beyond the nine levels [of heaven]; he had never shown himself in human form or body or under another figure; and the souls of the righteous dead would remain near him while the wicked were suffering in another place terrible penalties What is apparent is that they had reached the notion of the immortality of the soul.”
Nezahualpiltzintli, who contributed no less than his father in ancient traditions, easily interpreted various predictions of the next arrival of White men and explained them to his ally Montezuma II, who confessed his ignorance in this matter. Thus, despite the care that Mexican kings had taken to destroy memories of the past, these were kept in fair condition among their subjects and their allies the Tezcuco kings, for reminiscences of Christianity were not totally obliterated and persisted in the form of superstition, including many beliefs and practices whose resemblance to Christian doctrines were recorded when the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century.
The Tecpantlacs, like the Culuas, the Chalcs, the people of Mexico and Tezcuco, worshiped Tezcatlipoca, one of the most complex figures of the Mexican pantheon. If it is true, according to the proverb, that one does not lend to the rich, it must be especially the case for Tezcatlipoca. He seemed indeed to be “a real and invisible god that penetrated everywhere, in heaven, on earth, and in hell. …… They were of the belief that he alone was responsible for regulating the world; that he delivered prosperity and wealth; and that only he removed them when he had the whim.” According to the Histoire iconophonique, “Tezcatlipoca, knowing all thoughts, present everywhere, and searching hearts, was accordingly appointed Moyocoya, that is to say, the All-Powerful, or one who does everything without the help of others; in this quality, one does not know whether he represents anything more than air; that is why we do not usually call him by that name.” We see from these quotes and the following that, despite the superfluities and distortions that the disciples of Tecpantlacs, or even their pagan successors did subject the designs of their Christian ancestors or tutors with respect to Tezcatlipoca, the god still retained, at the time of the Spanish conquest, many of the attributes of the first person of the Trinity: “the natives,” says Torquemada, “regarded the uncreated and invisible one as the first among all the gods; they said he was the soul of the world. They worshiped Tezcatlipoca or Titlacahua and recognized him as God or as the image of the deity, but they knew neither the principle nor the origin, holding him not for a mortal being, but for the immortal creator of all things. It was not with the same respect that they worshiped and looked another God named Huitzilopochtli, although they held him for the god of battles and their protectors in wars.”
Tezcatlipoca not only shares some of the attributes of the true God; certain points of worship and one of his symbols are not unlike those of the Christian church. His statue holds in his right hand a utensil that Father D. Duran and A. de Herrera compare to a fan provided in its central part with a gold disk, very bright, like a mirror; it was called in effect ytlaclnayan. From a small concentric circle track in the middle of this alleged mirror departed four shafts which together formed a cross. All around, feathers formed the rays of the sun, that is to say, the modern monstrance, which in Europe, tended to replace the old style of monstrance after the thirteenth century. This utensil seems therefore to be a more or less faithful imitation of our first monstrance or suns. It is used “to conduct religious rites before the sun,” which the Teotlixcs or messengers of God, after establishing themselves in America, traversed the Atlantic to return to the East. This is probably the god-holder [i.e. monstrance] or Teomama, as it was called in Nahuatl, which gave its name to the cleric in charge of the monstrance in the States of the Tecpantlacs. This is the monstrance that also must come from two of the names of the chief deity of the ancient Mexicans: Tezcaltipoca and Tlatlauhquitczcatl. The first means: shining mirror, which despite the difference of the two parts of these compounds is, it seems, also the meaning of the second. We can more clearly designate the sun, which was at once one of the names of Christ and nauholin, the emblem of the commanders of the sun, which was painted on a pendant banner at the altar of their temple in the barracks where they taught military exercises to the noble youth. In the temple of Tezcatlipoca, Mexico, the altar was the same shape as ours; the fire was perpetually lit, like the light at home, shining before the Blessed Sacrament; the weekly officiant (or rather the cinquaine of days), dressed in a robe reaching down to the knees like our dalmatics and holding in one hand the censer, the other a purse full of incense, proceeded in the same way as the Catholic priests, raising and successively lowering his hand. The St. Andrew’s cross that appears on the censer of the priest, the bones arranged crosswise on Tezcatlipoca’s coat, and five flakes of cotton, which form a St. Andrew’s cross on his shield may recall that his worshipers, the Tecpantlacs, were originally from Scotland and dedicated to Saint Andrew.
The day before or the first day of Toxcatl, the fifth month of the Mexican year which, according to Father Duran, started on May 20, or according to Torquemada April 24, there was celebrated in honor of Tezcatlipoca one of the largest festivals, with celebrations and representations. The first of these authors said it “equaled those of Corpus Christi, which almost always falls at the same time.” It also corresponded rather to our Rogation. “She was to ask the sky for water, in the same way as do our rogations and our litanies which are always held in the month of May, which are also celebrated in this month, beginning on the ninth and ending on the nineteenth.” These ceremonies dating back to the Tecpantlacs, who themselves had received both from the Fathers of St. Columba, their predecessors, who were the Templars of the Holy Land, as we learn from curious anecdotes.
In 1332, the Tlacochcalcs of Yacapichtlan Cohuatepec, some of whom had been abused and mutilated (heads shaved, hands cut off), retired to Coyohuacan with the Teomama (God-Holder) which carried Tezcatlipoca; drought began and then, for four years, it did not rain in the land of the Chalcs while water fell on the land of the Tlacochcalcs. To end the famine that had lasted all this time, the Chalcs decided in 1336 to seek out Tezcatlipoca, who was pulled from his tent and carried by the Teomama to Mount Xoyac, on the side of Amaquemecan, where the Chalcs crowded around him and placed him in a tabernacle. Then they were under the protection of the people of Tecpan [Temple], the Tlacochcalcs. Received before the statue, the king of the Chichimecs of Amequameean handed him the shiny curved stick [the cross]; in return, the god awarded him the sovereignty of Amequamecan, which was divided between him and the Tlayllotlas. He received the title of Teohuateuctli (theocratic or spiritual lord), which was for a long time, used by Tlacochcalco, whither Tezcatlipoca was carried.
One or two generations previous, the Templars of Palestine were accustomed to processions of the same kind and for the same purpose, as we learn from the testimony in the trial of the Templars by Anthonius Syci, of Vercelli, Apostolic and imperial notary, who was their clerk and recorder in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. “I saw several times,” he said, “a copper cross, which was apparently worthless, but was said to be made from the basin in which Christ was bathed. The Templars kept their treasure and sometimes when the heat and drought were excessive, the people of Ancon begged them to bring in a procession of the clergy. I have also seen sometimes in this ceremony, the Patriarch of Jerusalem [then titular], accompanied by the Knights Templar, who carried the cross with proper devotion. Following these processions through divine mercy, water watered the earth from the sky and tempered the heat of the air.”
Absent this miraculous cross, which probably remained in the East, the Tecpantlacs used, as with Xoyac, the resplendent mirror or monstrance, the emblem of Tezcatlipoca; or, as the ancient Fathers, a sacred book. It is known, from the life of Saint Columba, their patron, that the monks of Iona, one of the Hebrides, in the wake of a severe drought, made a procession through the fields, waving the white tunic of the saint and reading books written by his hand. For the same purpose they placed three times on the altar the holy books written by the saint. These legends explain a Nahuatl term that the translator of Chimalpahin could not understand. This chronicler speaks in four places of tlacuilolquiauh, which is composed of tlacuilolli, “writing, painting,” and quiauitl, “rain.” Between the two meanings of the first term, the translator chose the less rational and rendered it as “painted rain.” More plausibly is the expression “writing rain,” that is to say obtained through books and miraculously like the Columbites in the British Isles. If they did not always have at their disposal thaumaturgic manuscripts or holy relics, they used the Gospels, missals, rituals, formulas, and litanies for the songs and prayers of Rogation. So, the Nahua phrase is perfectly right: The Mexicans lacked none of these, and until the sixteenth century, they preserved ancient paintings of biblical scenes.
It appears that their reputation for miracle working was based on invocations to Tezcatlipoca. The Tecpantlacs, at first very poor, had spiritual influence, and consequently temporal power. This weakened when, in 1347, they were powerless to avert drought by writing rain, of which he was no mention during the great famine of 1450 to 1454. In the meantime, customs and beliefs had changed significantly. The Tenuchcs, who wandered long on the plateau of Anahuac, settled in Mexico in the first quarter of the fourteenth century and denied the traditions of the Aztecs or which were derived from the Whites and replaced the moral and religious force with the rule of the maquauitl (saber). To terrify their neighbors, they killed the daughter of the king of Culuacan, Achitometl II (1336-1347), whom they had demanded as their queen and goddess. Their example was soon imitated by the Culuas themselves, who for the first time in 1348, performed human sacrifices in the temple of Quauhtitlan, giving a religious cast to exploiting prisoners of war. The Chalcs could not evade the ferocity of contagion, and they even aggravated it by regularizing these human sacrifices. They made an abominable agreement with the Tenuchcs of Mexico, in 1324, and reconfirmed in 1368 or 1376: The Flower War (Xochiyaoyotl) whose disappointing name conceals the inhuman. They fought, not to kill opponents, but to take captives. Those taken on the field of battle had no better fate than the dead: They were to be eaten after being solemnly sacrificed in temples. It is possible, however, that this Flower War was but a single tournament, and the only Tenuchcs sacrificed the prisoners taken by them because B. de las Casas says their god Uchilobos [Huitzilopochtli] “was the first to order human sacrifices, which had never before taken place in Mexico.” It was, in fact, according to J.-B. Pomar, an invention the Mexicans introduced and which were imitated throughout the country, at least from Tezcuco to Tlacuba, in Chalco, Huexotzinco and Tlaxcala, the lands they had detached from the influence of the Tecpantlacs. The first human sacrifice, which had come to the knowledge of Torquemada, was of one of four Xochimilcs taken prisoner by the Tenuchcs, shortly before their establishment in Mexico, that is to say in the first quarter of the fourteenth century. Muñoz Camargo has only an echo, reporting that these bloody rites had originated in the province of Chalco and from there they were transplanted into Tlaxcala, the country where the most human sacrifices were made.
To counter their influence, perhaps descendants or disciples of the Tecpantlacs came, a hundred years after the arrival of the first, to violate the strict prohibitions of the various pre-Columbian evangelizers? In the ninth century, Father Quetzalcoatl had preferred exile from Tula than to tolerate human sacrifice. The anonymous late fourteenth century Father also forbade cannibalism and there is no doubt that Tecpantlacs, from Europe, where cannibalism was an abomination, would have abolished the bloody rites. But few, isolated in the midst of barbarians, losing their power to those thought most capable of getting from Tezcatlipoca a cessation of drought, weakened by their wars with the Tepanocs of Azcaputzalco and the Tenuchcs of Mexico, they did not succeed better than the Spanish, stronger and undisputed masters, in preventing the horrible sacrifices. It is believed that they are attended them, if one wants to take literally the assertions of their national historian or other writers. Father Duran reports that in their last wars against the Mexicans, the Chalcs threatened to sacrifice them to their God Camaxtli to anoint his temple with their blood and feast on their flesh. But it must be noted here that the god in question was that of a nation of cannibals, the Chichimecs, and that these were precisely the Chalcs who carried the name Chichimecs. Four or five years later, in 1469, the three most powerful lords of the country of Chalco and the city of Amaquemecan were called Chalcs, although they were all of Chichimec race. They hanged ambassadors, boiled their flesh, and made those who had sent them eat them surreptitiously.
The Tecpantlacs, they who had become the masters, should not be blamed for this barbaric act, but we cannot exonerate them from having somehow authorized it by metaphorical expressions and a mystical language that were lost on the savages.
The doctrines and practices of Catholicism were unfortunately not always well understood by the rude peoples to whom they taught the metaphors, and this led to singular mistakes when preachers used them on uneducated listeners who are inclined to take everything literally. The Regula pauperum commilitonum Christi Templique Salomonici says that after Communion, no knights were afraid to go into battle, using the words “Divino cibo refecti ac satiati,” which the paraphrase in Old French makes into “feed on the meat of God and get drunk.” If one could without inconvenience express this bluntly before the Christians of the Old World, one was not allowed to do so before lovers of human flesh. How indeed could the Chichimecs or nomadic Mexicans understand the mystery of the sacrament, when Catholics and European Protestants, taught by the holy books, the doctors of the Church, and learned theologians, disagree on transubstantiation? While adopting the dogma in hopes of drawing temporal advantages, the Mexicans applied it in a manner contrary to its intention: besides the wafer which is the body of God's propitiation, they needed a representative body of the divinity. To this end, they chose among the captives a valiant warrior to whom they gave the name and costume of a god, to play the role of the latter for a year, after which they sacrificed him with great pomp and his flesh was divided among the lords who ate it as a divine food. The ritual immolation of this enemy (in Latin hostis, whence host) was an abominable infringement of the Eucharist that degenerated into simple theophagy and theo-androphagy under the influence of the Tenuchcs of Mexico, in an appalling slaughter of prisoners, slaves, and even children, whose blood was used to quench the sun, and the bodies to fill the butcheries of human flesh.
In this regard, the Tlaxcaltecs were no less fanatical than the Tenuchcs, and this is not the only time they refused to be content with symbolic representations: while in other parts of Mexico, in holy mass a statue of the god Huitzilopochtli was drilled to pieces with blows of javelins, they attached, in some festivals, a captive to a cross and killed him with arrows; the next day tortured another to death with darts. Who can fail to see there a cruel imitation of certain mysteries of the Middle Ages wherein they remembered in our churches the various scenes of the Passion?
We have seen that, in imitation of Tezcatlipoca, the monks and nuns of the monasteries, in Mexico, shaved the hair on the forehead, ear to ear, but let it grow on the sides and fall in long tails on their shoulders; those of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, in contrast, had the same coronal tonsure as our monks, both in Mexico and in the territory of Chalco and Huexotzinco; and these were tonsured in the Roman style, having been influenced by the Tecpantlacs; while the others, descended from immigrants who were evangelized by Celtic Fathers, must be related to the traditions of St. Columba.
There was from the beginning antagonism between Huitzilopochtli, the warrior god of the Tenuchcs of Mexico, and Tezcatlipoca, the god of the Chalcs, that made them into enemies, so former took successively the states where the latter was adored. They took the Tepanecs of Azcaputzalco in 1429; the Xoehimilcs in 1430; the Quauhquecholtecs the Mizquics and Cuitlahuacs in 1432; the Quauhnahuacs in 1439; the Chalcs from 1459 to 1465 (after executing all the important princes they were replaced by foreign governors); the Mazahuacs in 1471; Tullocan residents in 1474; the Matlatzincs in 1477; the Xiquipilcs in 1478; and the Huexotzincs only in 1515. As the Aculuas of Tezcuco had long been leagued with the Tenuchcs to form the Federation of Culuas, there remained among them the former subjects of the Chalcs, as the Tlaxcaltecs had stood up to the victors; yet they were retained only by the grace of their adversaries in the Flower Wars to be the victims of horrible sacrifices. As for enslaved Tecpantlacs, if they continued as always to work for the temples, it was not for their tecpan, but for the teocalli of Huitzilopochtli, for the construction of which their ancestors had refused stones, resulting in a long war that eventually led to their subjugation to the Tenuchcs.
The influence they had therefore was not large enough to establish firmly atop Anahuac European civilization and Christianity, of which are nevertheless found many traces in their descendants. If the religion and nationality of the Tecpantlacs did not bleed more and more and leave many traces in the people among whom they were established, it is obvious that they were too different from the mothers of their children and their subjects or allies. The woman, who is the guardian of the hearth and traditions, soon ends up imposing her language, beliefs and customs, not just on those she raises, but also to those around him. But among the Templars, forming only a tiny minority of the population, the lay brothers, farmers, or artisans, were the only ones who could get married. They had probably not brought European women to America, and their posterity after their union with the Natives would not resemble them in every respect. It was like at home with the Franks, Burgundians, Goths, and Lombards, who, while the ruling class, nevertheless allowed themselves to assimilate in the course of a few centuries into their own subjects, or the Gallo-Romans, Italians, and Iberians, who, after a few generations, had forgotten their languages and spoke only neo-Latin dialects. Similarly, the Tlacochcalcs substituted Nahua for their beautiful particular languages. On the other hand, from the fourth generation after their settlement in the basin of Lake Chalco, their power was essentially in spiritual decay; in 1407, the chiefs of the Chalcs had to emigrate to escape the tyranny of the Mexicans. At the time of Cortés, for over half a century their successors were under the yoke, nevertheless retaining their reputation for bravery, and revolting from time to time, in alliance with the enemies of Mexico: Tlaxcala and Tlatelulco; later with the Spaniards on their arrival in the central Anahuac. They powerfully aided in the conquest of Mexico; also they were restored to the land from which the heads of the Culua confederation had dispossessed them by the masters of New Spain.
In 1519, before the entry of F. Cortés into Mexico, most princes of the Chalcs went to Amaquemecan to receive and welcome him, calling him their god (teotl) and, a little before the siege of Mexico (1521), they brought two children of one of their lords who had just died, recommending them to submit to the great leader of Teulcs, because their ancestors had certainly predicted that the country would one day be governed by bearded men from the East, and everything indicated that they were the Spanish. It was known that Tzumpantecutli, Lord of Cuitlahuactizic, descended from Iztac-Mixcoatl (the White, Chief of the Mixs or Scots), had announced the coming of the Whites. He was put to death in 1517 by order of Montezuma II, for saying that Huitzilopochtli was not the true God, but that the reign of the Creator approached. The Mizquics, brothers of the Cuitlahuacs, preserved until the time of Montezuma II an ancient prophecy about the return of Quetzalcoatl: The former had taught them that the sons of the latter were to recover the land that belonged to them and the wealth they had hidden in the mountains and caves. The good Xochimilcs, allies of the Tecpantlacs, had old images of horses with their riders, boats whose sails were like eagles, large ships manned by bearded white men, armed with swords, helmets, and European clothes. — Finally ancient protégés of the Tecpantlacs, the Tlaxcaltecs, still remembered in the sixteenth century a prediction of their ancestors, by which White and bearded men, mounted on tall floating houses, wearing helmets, armed with swords and superior bows to those of the Natives, were to come from a far eastern land to subjugate their country. These prophecies, these memories, these images which concerned the son of the Sun in general, that is to say, the men of the East, the Holy Sacrament of worshipers, were applied to the Spaniards. Also one of the Conquistadores, Francisco de Aguilar, with many others, placed the same tradition in the mouth of the unfortunate Montezuma, for he said that “the Chalcs were, from the beginning, subject to the King [Charles V] and great friends of the Spaniards.”
Behold an imposing set of facts and testimonies, mostly independent, which back one another and which, from the most diverse sources, however, consistently show that the Tecpantlacs and their fellows or former subjects, the Chalcs, the Xochimiles, the Mizquics, the Cuitlahuacs, and the TIaxcaltecs, contemporary with Cortés, had notions of Christianity and Whites from the East. We conclude that their ancestors came from eastern Atlantic countries were from Europe or had been evangelized by members of the military and religious order whose name was exactly rendered in Nahua by the name Tecpantlacs. Even when it seems suspect that some of these traditions or some of these religious beliefs and practices seem too far removed from Catholicism to be imitations or at least an odious counterfeit; even when one challenges the value of some of the evidence and arguments presented above, it would still be enough to make it impossible to reverse our findings, explaining differently than we did the archaeological remains, beliefs, religious practices, historical accounts, and memories.
Here indeed is what emerges from the most reliable documents we have translated and commented upon: The Tecpantlacs were from a distant land located east of the Atlantic Ocean and came from between Cape Nord and Cape Bojador, as south of it Africa was exclusively inhabited by Negroes, and their memories, like the pictures preserved by their descendants, allies, and subjects of the protégé’s of the Tecpantlacs (Chalcs, Mizquics, Cuitlahuacs, Xochimilcs, and TIaxcaltecs) were of White, bearded, men armed and dressed in European style. As the common home of these peoples and other immigrants who preceded them was Tullan-Tlapallan (Thule of the East Sea, with respect to Mexico), and this name applies to populated islands and regions of the Celts, we can say that the Tecpantlacs belonged to the family of the latter; and indeed one of the insignia of Tezcatlipoca, their particular deity, was the crux decussata of St. Andrew, patron of Scotland, and it was on the shield and the coat of the god and on the censers of his priests. This symbol of Christianity, together with the sun or monstrance held by the idol Tezcatlipoca, with its main attributes are those of the true God. Additionally, some details of his worship such as the form of altars, Rogation, censers, tabernacle, cross, thaumaturgic books--these symbols, we say, are a sure sign of the Christian origin of various beliefs held by the Tecpantlacs and the famous Nezahualcoyotl, King of Tezcuco, descendant of a Chichimec prince instructed by a Chalc missionary.
Considering all these facts, drawn from Chimalpahin and other historians, ancient paintings and chronicles, they did not always understand the import, since side by side with the name Tezcatllipoca are the qualities of the devil, a great demon, without suspecting that it was a counterfeit of the true God. — We must identify the Tecpantlacs with our Templars, especially as tecpan, the first part of the Nahua name, is the exact translation of templum, taken the sense of palace and not basilica; the tripartite division of Tecpantlacs in Tlacochcalcs or milites, in Teotlixcs or messengers of God, Nonohualcs or residents, corresponds perfectly to the Templar knights, clergy, and residents or monks; all these lived under a theocratic and military regime, having for chiefs not only Guardians of arrows, gear, and harness, but the Lord-Ministers of God, the God-Holder, Preachers, the Reverend monks, and the shoeless friars. — What now, if we judge these many points of resemblance between the Templars and Tecpantlacs, can be explained any other way than by the original identity of the two warrior and religious orders?
In truth, we do not know of any European documents which inform us, as does Chimalpahin, where, when, and how the Templars passed from Europe to America, but we can surmise they went to a Celtic country during the unrest that desolated these countries in the late thirteenth century. But objectively, how is it that they had not made known to Europe the existence of a New World? The answer is easy if one refers to the time of their migration and to the policies of the Order. It liked to wrap itself in mystery: the chapters were composed only of those the Grand Master thought proper to call and, under penalty of being excluded from the Order, they should not expose to anyone, not even to their colleagues, what was done and said within. “A deep darkness, even mystery, like everything concerning the Templars, surrounds the disappearance of their archives.” According to the testimony of one of them, Brother Geraldus of Causso, a knight, “the elders of the Order agreed in saying that they would win nothing by admitting scholars into its bosom.” With this general tendency to keep things hidden, leaders and other senior members would not engage discoverers in writing travel accounts, and they would not have deposited any in their archives, which are moreover dispersed, or otherwise largely destroyed. “The Grand Master and provincial tutors,” also said Geraldus, “did not suffer brothers to write or keep in their possession, without permission, the Rule of the Order or the regulations made later, not more than others written on the status and business of the Order. The witness thought that it was an abuse and that from this came the suspicions against the Templars. Once or twice, to his knowledge, the Grand Master had, in the countries of Outremer, ordered all the brothers with books related to the Rule, the articles, or the business of the Order to bring them to him. He had burned a few, or so the witness had heard and believed, and gave some others to older members and kept the rest for himself.” Two of his predecessors had done the same.
Also, the ancient manuscripts of the Rule are rare, and there is no mention in any European book, of Templars who, after crossing the Atlantic Ocean, returned at least once in Europe to worship the sun, that is to say the Blessed Sacrament which had once been given this form and had become one of the attributes of Tezcatlipoca, the caricature of the Christian God. If these relations were renewed, it is probable that they would not long have been kept secret and that America would have been known here 200 years before Columbus; but naturally this stopped at the dissolution of the Order, whose members were either burned or imprisoned, or induced to quit the habit and become laborers or craftsmen. Some of them even went to the Saracens and tried to make the most possible harm to their former co-religionists, especially their enemy brothers, the Hospitallers.
Would the Tecpantlacs have sent their revenues to Europe, or would they be given to their new home, when the Templars who had, according to the testimony of a contemporary, escaped the stake or prison, “roamed the world after being stripped of their frocks”? Their situation in Mexico was better than it had ever been in the East and in Europe, where the Order had not managed to carve out an autonomous principality, like the Hospitallers in Rhodes, the Teutonic Knights in East Prussia, and the Brothers of the Sword in Livonia. That they could not win here, in the time of their greatest prosperity, by force of arms, some of its members had done so there very easily, thanks to their intellectual superiority and reputation as miracle workers. They had every interest not to attract the attention of those who could pursue them, enslave them, or compete with them. They did not need, like their unfortunate brothers who remained in Europe, to dress up as peasants and vagabonds for their lives, or to be renegades for their freedom, for they dominated in their transatlantic States through the isolation that was their first defense, but that ended up being one of the main causes of their political and religious decadence.
They were unable to rely, as later did the Spanish colonists, Portuguese, French, English, on the fleets and troops of the mother country. They were deprived of the continual influx of immigrants who would have strengthened them, and they were soon unable to resist the warlike undertakings of the Tenuchcs of Mexico, the Tepanecs of Azcaputzalco, and the Acoluas of Tezcuco, and they allowed themselves to be absorbed by the barbarians around them or by their new masters, so as to become almost unrecognizable. So far the Americanists have neither suspected their origin, nor understood their traditions and superstitions. Scholars who work exclusively with inscriptions, duly signed parchments, initialed and fitted seals, medals, monuments, and antiquities to recover memories and stories of contemporary events, will scarcely believe that a band of Templars had possessed in Mexico, for a century and a half, sovereign states and even suzerainty over many principalities. It is permitted to put aside a question so remote from their studies, but those who say with the poet:
Humani nihil a me alienum puto. [Nothing human is foreign to me.]
and who want to express an opinion as to the Tecpantlacs, should consider the positive developments noted in this essay and, if necessary, discuss our explanations and our arguments; and no true scholar will disdainfully reject our conclusions, under the sole pretext that they are unlikely and that it was impossible for the Templars to found a sustainable state in America without the knowledge of fourteenth and fifteenth century Europeans.
Source: Eugène Beauvois, “Les Templiers de l’ancient Mexique et leur orgine européenne,” Le Muséon (nouvelle série) 3 (1902), 185-234.
