The Codex Colombino (later recognized as part of the Colombino–Becker manuscript) was produced as a Mixtec pictorial history, recording—among other narratives—the 11th-century deeds of Lord Eight Deer. It is often dated to the 12th century in modern catalog descriptions.
Across central and southern Mexico, shared Postclassic visual conventions for recording history, ritual, and genealogy developed into what scholars call the Mixteca–Puebla style—a key context for later painted manuscripts (screenfold “codices”) and related media such as murals and ceramics.
The Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus I (Vienna) is a pre-Conquest Mixtec screenfold on deerskin combining mythic origins, ritual-calendrical material, and dynastic/genealogical history. It is commonly dated to the 14th century.
The Codex Zouche-Nuttall (Codex Tonindeye) was created as a pre-Columbian Mixtec pictorial manuscript (deerskin screenfold), preserving dynastic histories and political-religious narratives—famously including the career of Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw. It is generally dated to the 14th–15th centuries.
Several central Mexican ritual/divinatory screenfold manuscripts later grouped as the Borgia Group survived because they reached Europe relatively early, entering elite and ecclesiastical collections. This transatlantic movement shaped what materials remained available for later scholarship.
The Codex Bodley (Bodleian Library, Oxford) is a major Mixtec pictorial history and genealogy in a Mixteca–Puebla variant, dated to circa 1500 and completed before the 1521 conquest. It records dynastic narratives for key Mixtec polities (e.g., Tilantongo/Ñuu Tnoo).
The Codex Borgia (Vatican Library) is a central Mexican ritual and divinatory manuscript and the namesake of the Borgia Group. It is commonly dated to the 16th century and is a primary source for Postclassic-era calendrics, gods, and ritual iconography in the broader Mixteca–Puebla sphere.
The Codex Laud (a Borgia Group manuscript, likely 15th-century in origin) entered the historical record in England when William Laud included it in his second donation to the Bodleian Library in 1636, anchoring its long-term preservation and study at Oxford.
The Codex Cospi (Borgia Group) has an early documented European provenance: it was gifted on 1665-12-26 to the Bolognese collector Ferdinando Cospi, later becoming part of Bologna’s institutional collections—one reason it survived intact into modern scholarship.
Lord Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico (vols. 1830–1831) reproduced multiple Mesoamerican manuscripts (including several later grouped as the Borgia Group) as colored lithographs after copies by Agostino Aglio, substantially expanding European access to these pictorial traditions.
Beginning in 1887, Eduard Seler published influential analyses of central Mexican ritual manuscripts; his work helped establish the scholarly framing of these texts as a coherent set later known as the Borgia Group, shaping 20th-century interpretation of Mixteca–Puebla iconography.
A widely used reference synthesis highlights eight principal pre-Conquest-style Mixtec codices (including Zouche-Nuttall, Bodley, Selden, Vindobonensis, Colombino, and Becker codices), emphasizing their shared material format (deerskin screenfolds) and importance for Postclassic Mixtec historiography.
Researchers demonstrated that hyperspectral imaging can non-invasively recover scenes painted beneath the gypsum/chalk surface of the Mixtec Codex Añute (Codex Selden), revealing previously unseen pictographic content and adding new data for reconstructing Mixtec genealogical history.
Postclassic Codices and Mixtec‑Puebla Manuscript Traditions (c. 900–1521 CE)
