Selection by Discipline, Not Birth Alone

Colonial sources describing Aztec religious administration are explicit that reaching either Quetzalcoatl Tlamacazqui post required passage through the calmecac's full course of priestly formation, years of ascetic training, calendar study, ritual practice and demonstrated learning, rather than resting on noble birth alone, though in practice most candidates for the very highest offices did come from established families with the resources to sustain a son through such prolonged, unpaid religious training. Duran and Sahagun both describe the office-holders as figures of exceptional gravity within Mexica public life, consulted on major state and ceremonial decisions and playing central roles at coronations and the dedication of major temples and monuments.

The office did not survive Spanish conquest, and no continuous line of successors is documented past the early sixteenth century, distinguishing it from other offices elsewhere in this atlas that trace an unbroken lineage of office-holders into the present. What survives instead is the colonial-era ethnographic record of how the office functioned while Tenochtitlan's temple system still stood, preserved chiefly through Spanish friars working directly with Nahua informants who remembered the institution from within.