According to Donald Hemingway, Sahagun refers to the above ceremony as "holy [ritual." (Sahagun, Book 6, p. 204) At another time he spoke of those who were "bathed . . . to lay aside their crimes." (Sahagun, Book 4, p. 91)
This detailed description of bathing and symbolic washing has been commented on by Prescott.
"They [the Spaniards] witnessed another ceremony, that of the Aztec baptism; in which, after a solemn invocation, the head and lips of the infant were touched with water, and a name was given to it. While the goddess Cioacoatl, who presided over childbirth, was implored, . . . that the sin, which was given to us before the beginning of the world, might not visit the child, but that, cleansed by these waters, it might live and be born anew!" (Prescott, Mexico, p. 696) [Donald W. Hemingway, Christianity in America Before Columbus?, p. 55]