The Codices They Burned for Christ
In July 1562, Bishop Diego de Landa burned 27 Mayan codices and over 5,000 ritual objects in the Yucatán. He called it 'the auto-da-fé of the idols.' Then he wrote the Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán — the primary source for everything we know about Mayan religion. The books he burned contained astronomical tables more accurate than European ones of the same era. We know this because fragments survived in European libraries, hidden by monks who recognized their value. The rest is ash.
🎯 What This Teaches
Diego de Landa burned thousands of Mayan books and then wrote the only surviving account of Mayan religion. He is the arsonist who became the historian. We read Mayan cosmology through the eyes of the man who destroyed it.
🏛️ From the SAGE Museum
The Ash of Mani: Burned Mayan Codices
Surviving fragments of Mayan codices hidden in European monastic libraries, alongside de Landa's own account of the 1562 burning.
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