Calmecac

Nahuatl glyph of a calmecac (codex Mendoza, recto of the folio 61).

The Calmecac ([kaɬˈmekak], from calmecatl meaning "line/grouping of houses/buildings" and by extension a scholarly campus) was a school for the sons of Aztec nobility (pīpiltin [piːˈpiɬtin]) in the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerican history, where they would receive rigorous training in history, calendars, astronomy, religion, economy, law, ethics and warfare. The two main primary sources for information on the calmecac and telpochcalli are in Bernardino de Sahagún's Florentine Codex of the General History of the Things of New Spain (Books III, VI, and VIII) and part 3 of the Codex Mendoza.[1]

  1. ^ Edward Calneck, "The Calmecac and Telpochcalli in Pre-Conquest Tenochtitlan," in The Work of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico, J. Jorge Klor de Alva et al., eds. Albany: SUNY Albany Institute for Mesoamerican Studies 1988, p. 170.