Ramírez Codex

The manuscript is named after the Mexican scholar José Fernando Ramírez, who discovered it in 1856 in the convent of San Francisco in Mexico City.

The Codex Ramirez comprises three sections or treatises: An Aztec imperial history; a book about deities and their festivals; and a brief account of the native calendar.

[1] Many scholars believe that, while Tovar may have drawn from Durán, both of them, along with Tezozomoc, based their works on an earlier Nahuatl source (now lost), that is presumed to have been compiled by one or more Aztec historians sometime shortly after the conquest.

This earlier document (or documents) is often referred to as "Crónica X" ("Chronicle X") and is proposed to be the original or influential source of a number of early manuscripts (such as the Ramírez, Durán and Acosta codices), based on similarities in their content, which coincide in the exaltation of the Cihuacoatl Tlacaelel as the crucial figure in the consolidation and expansion of the Aztec empire.

[3] The illustrations that accompany the manuscript were created using traditional indigenous techniques by an Aztec book painter or tlacuiloque.