Diego de Landa - Life

Life

Born in Cifuentes, Guadalajara, Spain, he became a Franciscan monk in 1541, and was sent as one of the first Franciscans to the Yucatán, arriving in 1549. Landa was in charge of bringing the Roman Catholic faith to the Maya peoples after the Spanish conquest of Yucatán. He presided over a spiritual monopoly granted to the Catholic order of Franciscans by the Spanish crown, and worked diligently to buttress the order's power while converting the indigenous Maya. His initial appointment was to the mission of San Antonio in Izamal, which served also as his primary residence while in Yucatán. In 1562 he conducted the infamous auto-da-fé of Maní, which attracted negative attention from many other authorities, both secular and ecclesiastical. Bishop Toral saw this action as impinging on the authority of the Bishop and in Landa had to return to Spain to defend himself against accusations of excessive violence in the conversion of the Maya and of overstepping his authority. His actions were strongly condemned before the Council of the Indies. This resulted in a "committee of doctors" being commissioned to investigate Landa's alleged crimes. In 1569 the committee absolved Landa of his crimes and when Bishop de Toral died in 1571 Landa was appointed Bishop in his place and he took the seat in 1573. Landa's period as Bishop was marked by continued campaigns of extirpation of idolatry among the Maya and he continued attracting opposition from secular authorities who found his methods excessive. This caused long conflict between the ecclesiastical judiciary system of de Landa and the Governors of Yucatán. At his death he was succeeded as Bishop by Gregorio de Montalvo, who ended the Franciscan orders monopoly on the catechization of the Maya, which had been supported wholeheartedly by De Landa, by handing it over to secular clergy.

He is the author of the Relación de las cosas de Yucatán in which he catalogues the Maya religion, Maya language, culture and writing system. This manuscript was written around 1566 on his return to Spain; however, the original copies have long since been lost. The account is known to us only as an abridgement, which in turn had undergone several iterations by various copyists. The extant version was produced around 1660, and was discovered by the nineteenth century French cleric Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg in 1862. Brasseur de Bourbourg published the manuscript two years later in a bilingual French-Spanish edition, entitled Relation des choses de Yucatán de Diego de Landa.