Tonantzin
An Aztec mother goddess worshipped at Tepeyac before the Spanish conquest, whose name means "Our Mother." The Indians performed many sacrifices in her honor at a temple dedicated to her at Tepeyac. After the construction of the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the same site, indigenous people continued to use the name Tonantzin for the Catholic Virgin Mary, which Spanish clergy viewed as syncretistic idolatry.
↻ synthesized from 4 sources
When
- First attested
- 1570 CE
- Attested period
- 1500 – 2020
- Historical notes
- Pre-conquest goddess documented in late 1570s by Sahagún; temple at Tepeyac replaced by church of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Relationships
- co occurs with
- Quetzalcoatl, Xochipilli, Chicomecōātl, Xochiquetzal, Xolotl, Ītzpāpālōtl, Cozcamiauh, Piltzintecuhtli
- syncretized with
- Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, La Virgen de Guadalupe
- parent of
- Nanahuatzin
- has aspect
- Chicōmexōchitl, Chālchiuhcihuātl, Tonantzin Coatlaxopeuh
Mentioned by
Sources
Source passages
“At this place [Tepeyac], [the Indians] had a temple dedicated to the mother of the gods, whom they called Tonantzin, which means Our Mother. There they performed many sacrifices in honor of this goddess”
#1833 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5
“Tonantzin, mother goddess”
#7716 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001
“According to a translation of the Histoyre du Mechique, Nanāhuātzin is the son of Ītzpāpālōtl and Cozcamiauh or Tonantzin, but was adopted by Piltzintecuhtli and Xōchiquetzal.”
#16971 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001
“Tonantzín (spelled with an accent on the final syllable) plays an inspirational role in the Sandra Cisneros short story "Little Miracles, Kept Promises"”
#33447 · extracted by deepseek/deepseek-chat