On This Day In History: Spanish Priest Diego de Landa Burned The Sacred Books Of Maya – On July 12, 1562

MessageToEagle.com – On July 12, 1562, Spanish Franciscan priest and bishop of Yucatán, Diego de Landa, burns the sacred books of the Maya.

After hearing of Roman Catholic Maya who continued to practice idol worship, he ordered an Inquisition in Mani ending with a ceremony called auto de fé, during which an unclear number of Maya codices (according to Landa, 27 books) and approximately 5,000 Maya cult images were burned.

Only three pre-Columbian books of Maya hieroglyphics (also known as a codex) and, perhaps, fragments of a fourth are known to have survived.
Collectively, these works are known as the Maya codices.

See also:
Dresden Codex – The Oldest And Best Preserved Book Of The Maya

Many of Maya nobles were jailed pending interrogation, and large numbers of Maya nobles and commoners were subjected to examination under torture.

Scholars have argued Mexican inquisitions showed little concern to eradicate magic or convict individuals for heterodox beliefs.

The priest, Diego de Landa, wiped out all knowledge of the written language, and nearly destroyed the spoken language too.

Being a good Roman Catholic, and a carrier of the Intolerance Meme, Landa was furious – he saw this as a betrayal, and started an inquisition that resulted in torture and death across the Yucatan region.

He was determined to wipe out all knowledge of the Mayan religion, and saw the Mayan language and hieroglyphs as a key.

Fifty years later, in 1699, Spanish soldiers burned a town that had the last school of scribes who knew the Mayan hieroglyphs. By 1720, not a single person alive knew what the hieroglyphs meant.

The Roman Catholic church punished Landa but not for torture, murder and not for destroying the Maya’s culture history.

So for what did they punish him?
Diego de Landa’s crime was that he carried out an inquisition without authorization.
Landa spent a few years under house arrest in Spain, contemplating his disobedience , resting and praying. Later, he was promoted to Bishop of Yucatan, and sent back to Central America where he lived out the remainder of his life.

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