{
  "id": "copal-y-anime-de-la-nueva-espana",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Copal and anime — the incense of the Mexican temples in the European pharmacy",
  "summary": "Copalli, the aromatic resin the Nahua burned before their gods and carried in braziers to meet the first Spaniards, entered European medicine as a fumigant and ointment base. Monardes published it to Europe from Seville in 1580 as one of two New Spain resins, copal and anime; Ximénez's 1615 Mexican imprint of Hernández names it in Nahuatl as copalquahuitl, records copalli as the Indians' general word for any gum, and separates several copal-bearing species. Both read from the page.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "medicine",
    "botany",
    "new-spain",
    "seville",
    "indigenous-knowledge",
    "columbian-exchange",
    "nahuatl",
    "natural-history",
    "sixteenth-century",
    "seventeenth-century"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "monardes-historia-medicinal-1580"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "quatro-libros-de-la-naturaleza-1615"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "tabaco-picietl-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "balsamo-del-peru"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "guayaco-palo-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "columbian-exchange"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What is copal and what was it used for?",
    "Did Mesoamericans use copal before the Spanish?",
    "Where does the word \"copal\" come from?",
    "How did copal enter European medicine?",
    "What is the difference between copal and anime?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Monardes's Historia medicinal (Seville, 1580) treats copal and anime together as \"dos generos de Resinas que se parecen mucho\" brought from New Spain. Copal he describes as \"vna Resina muy blanca, y muy lucida y transparente\", coming in large pieces \"que parecen tajadas de diacitron muy claro\"; anime is the tear or resin of a great tree, whiter and more oily, coming in grains like frankincense but coarser. He rules out the fashionable identification of anime with amber: those who call it a kind of charabe or succino are wrong, \"porque el Charabe, es vn bitumen que se pesca enel mar Germanico\".",
      "sources": [
        "monardes-historia-medicinal-1580"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "Monardes records the pre-Hispanic use plainly and its transfer into Spanish practice. \"Con este Copal hazian los Indios sahumerios en sus sacrificios, y assi era frequente el vso del en los templos por los sacerdotes\"; and when the first Spaniards came to those parts, the priests came out to receive them \"con vnos braseros chicos, quemando en ellos este Copal, dandoles humo a narizes.\" In Seville, he writes, \"vsamos aca del para sahumar con ello en enfermedades frias de cabeça, en lugar de Encienso, o Anime\" — the temple incense turned into a European head-cold fumigant.",
      "sources": [
        "monardes-historia-medicinal-1580"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The Mexican imprint of 1615, Ximénez's Spanish version of Hernández, opens its second book \"de la materia medecinal de la Nueva España\" with the copal tree. It names it in Nahuatl — \"Llamamos copalquahuitl, á vn arbol cuyas ojas son en forma y en grandeza á las de la encina\" — and records the etymology: the tree is called copalquahuitl \"como si dixessemos arbol que lleua goma de copal, ó arbol de copal\", though the word copalli among the Indians \"suele esta palabra significar qualquier genero de goma, con algun adiunto del arbol\", as in mizquicopalli (mesquite gum). The resin, \"como ya es notorio en toda la heuropa, es blanco y trasparente.\"",
      "sources": [
        "ximenez-quatro-libros-1615"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Ximénez gives the geography and a botanical multiplicity that a single trade-name hides. The tree grows in the hot lands of Cuernavaca, Tlalhuacpan, Teotlalco and Copallan and in Michoacán, in plains and hills; in Xicalán or Xicayán and in Uruapan, provinces of Michoacán, a yellow and golden gum is gathered \"muy semejante al anime\". He then separates further species by their Nahuatl names in successive chapters — copalquahuitl patlahuac (the broad-leaved copal), copalquauhxiotl or \"arbol leproso\" so called because its bark comes off easily, and the mountain copal, tepecopalliquahuitl — each distinguished by leaf, habit and the colour of its licor.",
      "sources": [
        "ximenez-quatro-libros-1615"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The 1615 book also shows the resin absorbed into a Europeanised compound pharmacy. Copal is prescribed hot and drying, astringent and resolutive, \"gran remedio para todas las enfermedades que nacen de causa fria y humida\", and it is written into the recipe for a \"Cerroto mexicano\" — a cerate compounded of copal, \"incienso de la tierra\", the oil of liquidambar (estoraque liquido), tecomahaca, common oil, gum of liquidambar, Greek pitch and Campeche wax, \"todo derretido, y misto se haga vngueto\", declared useful for any pains it is applied to. The indigenous incense had become an officinal ingredient measured in ounces.",
      "sources": [
        "ximenez-quatro-libros-1615"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The two witnesses agree on origin and use but each carries the bias of his standpoint, and neither is leaned on for what it cannot support. Monardes wrote to promote the American drug trade of Seville and describes the resins as a Sevillian druggist handling imported goods, at a remove from the plants; Ximénez, working in Mexico from Hernández's field survey, is the closer witness to the tree and the Nahuatl nomenclature but writes them into a therapeutic frame — humoral grades, cerates, \"dizese que tiene las mismas virtudes\" — whose medical claims the object does not endorse. What both independently attest is the pre-Hispanic ritual use, the transfer to European fumigation and ointment, and the resin's Mexican origin; the humoral pharmacology is reported, not affirmed.",
      "sources": [
        "monardes-historia-medicinal-1580",
        "ximenez-quatro-libros-1615"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Copal in English survives mostly as an archaeology caption — lumps of incense in a Maya cache — or as a varnish ingredient, with no early text behind it and the word's Nahuatl root rarely given. This object quotes two period printings from the page: Monardes's 1580 Seville chapter on copal and anime, with the priests meeting the Spaniards braziers in hand and the Sevillian re-use as a head-cold fumigant, and Ximénez's 1615 Mexico imprint naming copalquahuitl, deriving copalli as the Nahua general word for gum, separating the copal-bearing species by their Nahuatl names, and folding the resin into a \"Cerroto mexicano\" measured in ounces. It marks the druggist's distance and the physician's humoral frame, and reports the medical claims without endorsing them.",
  "confidence": 0.82,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-17",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/copal-y-anime-de-la-nueva-espana",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/copal-y-anime-de-la-nueva-espana.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Copal and anime — the incense of the Mexican temples in the European pharmacy",
    "description": "Copalli, the aromatic resin the Nahua burned before their gods and carried in braziers to meet the first Spaniards, entered European medicine as a fumigant and ointment base. Monardes published it to Europe from Seville in 1580 as one of two New Spain resins, copal and anime; Ximénez's 1615 Mexican imprint of Hernández names it in Nahuatl as copalquahuitl, records copalli as the Indians' general word for any gum, and separates several copal-bearing species. Both read from the page.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/copal-y-anime-de-la-nueva-espana",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-17",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Quatro libros de la naturaleza, y virtudes de las plantas, y animales que estan receuidos en el vso de medicina en la Nueua España",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=qQpFp_bImPMC&pg=PP1"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Primera y segunda y tercera partes dela Historia Medicinal: delas cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, que siruen en Medicina",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=eAtm3cE1smAC&pg=PP5"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Copal and anime — the incense of the Mexican temples in the European pharmacy"
  }
}