Maya Priesthood - The Mesoamerican Maya Priesthood After The Conquest

The Mesoamerican Maya Priesthood After The Conquest

The priestly hierarchy disappeared in the wake of the Spanish Conquest. Following the disastrous epidemics of the first colonial decades, the Mesoamerican priestly functions were restructured to fit within the incipient new order. In Yucatán, the village herbalists and curers seem to have become responsible for the rituals of the forest and the fields as well, and thus to have become a sort of village priests. Their name, ahmen, already occurs in the earliest colonial dictionaries, yet only with the restricted meaning of ‘craftsman’. Originally only a maker of all sorts of poultices, the curer-ahmen gradually appears to have become a maker of prayers and sacrifices as well. Naturally, then, priestly ahmenob are not yet mentioned in Landa’s account. The literate aspects of the Prehispanic priesthood were partly assumed by local school masters and church singers (maestros cantores), who may also have been among the writers and compilers of the Chilam Balam books.

In the Guatemalan Highlands, the colonial and modern development was different and eventually resulted in thoroughly organized, indigenous priestly hierarchies, such as that of Momostenango. In this town, a hierarchy of ‘mother-fathers’ is charged with the priestly tasks of prayer and sacrifice: two of them on behalf of the town as a whole, fourteen for the wards, and three hundred for the patrilineages. Besides this hierarchy, a large part of the population (about 10000) has been initiated as diviner (ajk’ij).

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