Codex Vaticanus B
Also known as: Codex Vaticanus 3773, Vaticanus B, Vat.lat.3773, Codice Vaticano Rituale, Códice Fábrega
A Central Mexican screenfold ritual and calendrical codex of the Borgia Group, Codex Vaticanus B presents divinatory almanacs, deity sequences, and directional schemes associated with the 260-day count and related rites.
Description
Codex Vaticanus B is a small-format deerskin screenfold painted on white gesso, aligned with the Borgia Group of Central Mexican ritual manuscripts. Likely created in the Mixteca–Puebla sphere before the Spanish conquest, it encodes divinatory knowledge for daykeepers and priests through pictorial sequences: the tonalpohualli, directional and rain almanacs, patron-deity tables, and auguries tied to life passages and celestial cycles. Like its sister codices, it maps gods, time periods, and mantic images into a quincunx cosmos, linking ritual practice to agricultural fertility, warfare, marriage, and healing. Read left to right (unlike Codex Borgia), it served as a portable handbook for prognostication and ceremonial timing rather than a continuous written narrative.
Historiography
The manuscript is part of the Borgia Group (with Borgia, Cospi, Fejérváry–Mayer, Laud), generally ascribed to the Mixteca–Puebla tradition. Its provenience is often placed in Puebla; its style and content parallel sections in Codex Borgia and Cospi, including the opening tonalpohualli in extenso. The Vatican Library preserves it as Vat.lat.3773, and high-resolution images are available via DigiVatLib. Scholarship emphasizes its ritual-divinatory function, pictorial literacy, and Central Mexican cosmology.
Date Notes
Pre-Columbian/early colonial pictorial manuscript, likely produced in the Puebla-Mixteca region; now in the Vatican Library (Vat.lat.3773).
Archetypes
Major Characters
- Tezcatlipoca
- Quetzalcoatl
- Tlaloc
- Xipe Totec
- Tonatiuh
Myths
- Tonalamatl Divination
- Gods of Rain and Wind
- Underworld Journeys
- Venus Almanacs and Omens
Facts
- Member of the Borgia Group of Central Mexican ritual manuscripts.
- Shelfmark: Vatican Library, Vat.lat.3773.
- Likely provenance in the Puebla part of the Mixteca region.
- Pictorial, gesso-coated deerskin screenfold with 49 pages.
- Functions as a divinatory and ritual handbook tied to the 260-day calendar.
- Reads left to right, unlike Codex Borgia which reads right to left.
- Depicts deities, day signs, and mantic images arranged in directional schemes.
- Pre-Columbian production with possible early 16th-century horizon.
- Parallels several opening sections of Codex Borgia and Codex Cospi.
- Digitized images available via the Vatican Library (DigiVatLib).