Did Moctezuma II really believe Cortes was 'an armor-clad God'?

by Skyicewolf
Ucumu

Probably not.

This is likely a myth that arose after the conquest. It's not mentioned in Cortés's letters to the King of Spain or other sources close to the conquest itself. Bernal Diaz del Castillo (a Spanish soldier who wrote an account of the conquest) does mention it, but he's writing many decades after the fact. The idea that Cortés was seen as a reincarnation of Quetzalcoatl Topiltzin can be traced to the work of Sahagun, who claimed that the Aztecs supposedly believed this and that's why they didn't take action against Cortés sooner. The problem is that Sahagun's Aztec informants were all recent converts to Christianity. Early missionaries, like Motolinia, had found it easier to convert the natives if they saw the conquest as divinely ordained. As a result, they went around collecting "doomsday" prophecies that were supposedly made before the Spanish arrival, and they stressed these in their narratives of the conquest. So by the time that Sahagun was writing his account, this idea of the Spaniards being seen as gods had been accepted as fact for a few decades.

But like I said, Cortés doesn't mention it, and Diaz del Castillo only mentions it in passing. It seems likely that Diaz del Castillo only mentioned it at all because Sahagun did. Furthermore, there are a few passages in Cortés's and Diaz del Castillo's work which seem to directly contradict this notion. For example, in this passage from Diaz del Castillo Motecuzoma explicitly states that he knows both he and Cortés are mortals:

[Motecuzoma's subjects] were terrified by the reports they heard of us, such as that we carried with us thunder and lightning, that our horses killed men, that we were furious [gods], with other follies of that kind; adding that he [Motecuzoma] saw that we were men, that we were valiant and wise, for which he esteemed us, and would give us proofs thereof... He then addressed himself to Cortés in a laughing manner... saying, "Malintzin [name of Cortés's translator], the Tlaxcalans, your new friends, have told you that I am like a god, and that all about me is gold and silver and precious stones. But now you see that I am flesh and blood, and that my houses are built like other houses, of lime and stone, and timber. It is true that I am a great king, and inherit the riches of my ancestors; but for these ridiculous falsehoods, you treat them with the same contempt that I do the stories I was told of you commanding the elements." To which Cortés good-humoredly replied, that the accounts of enemies were not to be relied on.

In Cortés's second letter to Charles the V, he gives almost the exact same event. The Spanish, earlier in the conquest, had attempted to present their gunpowder weapons as magic and tried to convince the natives that the horses were intelligent, angry beasts. It is in this context that the idea of the Spaniards-as-gods was first proposed. Yet when the Spaniards get to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, Motecuzoma tells them unequivocally that he doesn't buy it at all.

EDIT: Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall gives more detail on the historiography behind this legend and talks about how it came to be widely accepted. It's worth looking into if you are curious about learning more.

Searocksandtrees

hi! there's lots of room for input about Moctezuma II specifically, but you may be interested in these earlier posts