capilla (CholRG)
This painting of the simplex glyph for the Spanish loanword capilla (chapel) shows a frontal view of a chapel attached to a church (iglesia, in Spanish). The painting shows considerable European stylistic influences.
Stephanie Wood
See below for two other Christian architectural examples, both of which (interestingly) were glossed teopan and teopantli, Nahuatl terms for temple. Two other examples show Indigenous temples, by way of contrast.
Stephanie Wood
Cabila
capilla
Stephanie Wood
1581
Jeff Haskett-Wood
capillas, iglesias, religión cristiana, catolicismo, colonización
capilla (a loanword from Spanish that entered Nahuatl), chapel https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/capilla
capilla
Stephanie Wood
https://collections.lib.utexas.edu/catalog/utblac:bfe9df59-d0c1-46a6-8c4...
This map (original: 31 x 44 cm.) of Cholollan (modern spelling: Cholula), from 1581 and housed in the Benson Library at the University of Texas, Austin, which considers it to be in the public domain. It is an indigenous-authored map that was made in response to questionnaires from the Spanish crown about its colonial possessions. Responses to the questionnaires were called Relaciones Geográficas (RG). The map’s glosses are in Nahuatl and Spanish, and the style is mixed indigenous-European. This is an urban plan of the heart of Cholula, emphasizing a grid pattern, which was of special interest to the colonizers. Several altepetl (Nahua socio-political units) are encompassed by the map, although they are called “cabezeras” (cabeceras, Spanish for head town) on the map. San Gabriel is the principal church of the many churches shown. The market square, “tianquizco,” holds a prominent, central place. A fountain occupies this space.
The Benson Library has determined that this pictorial manuscript is in the public domain and is shared through Creative Commons. The library kindly provided this image for inclusion in the Mapas Project, a digital collection of indigenous-authored pictorial manuscripts (soon to be archived) once at the University of Oregon. Student assistant Ellen Heenan processed the images using PhotoShop in 2015, and Stephanie Wood has repurposed these images for use in the Visual Lexicon in 2024.
