Diego de Landa Calderón (1524 – 1579) was Bishop of Yucatán. De Landa was in charge of bringing the Roman Catholic faith to the Maya people 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 dilligently to buttress the order's power while converting the indigenous Maya. He left future generations with a mixed legacy in his writings which contain much valuable information on pre-Columbian Maya civilization, and his actions which destroyed much of that civilization's history, literature, and traditions. Events March 1, 1524/5 - Giovanni da Verrazano lands near Cape Fear (approx. ... Events January 6 - The Union of Atrecht united the southern Netherlands under the Duke of Parma, governor in the name of king Philip II of Spain. ... A bishop is an ordained member of the Christian clergy who, in certain Christian churches, holds a position of authority. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Yucatán Peninsula separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico. ... The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Maya people are a Native American people of southern Mexico and northern Central America. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Spanish Conquest of Yucatán was a long and involved process taking some 170 years to complete. ... Jump to: navigation, search The term Pre-Columbian is used to refer to the cultures of the New World in the era before significant European influence. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Maya are people of southern Mexico and northern Central America (Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and El Salvador) with some 3,000 years of history. ...

Image of the page from Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, in which de Landa describes his Maya "alphabet", which was to prove instrumental in the mid-20th C. breakthrough in Maya hieroglyphics decipherment.

He is the author of the Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán in which he catalogues the Maya language, religion, 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 19th 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. Jump to: navigation, search ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (748x775, 301 KB) Summary Image of the page from Diego de Landas 16thC. manuscript, Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, in which he describes the famous de Landa alphabet. This alphabet shows the letters... Jump to: navigation, search ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (748x775, 301 KB) Summary Image of the page from Diego de Landas 16thC. manuscript, Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, in which he describes the famous de Landa alphabet. This alphabet shows the letters... Maya hieroglyphics is the system of writing used by the pre-Columbian Maya people to record the Maya language. ... The Mayan languages are a family of related languages spoken from South-Eastern Mexico through northern Central America as far south as Honduras. ... Events January 7 - Pius V becomes Pope Selim II succeeds Suleiman I as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Religious rioting in the Netherlands signifies the beginning of the Eighty Years War in the Netherlands. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (8 September 1814 - 8 January 1874) was a Belgian ethnographer. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1862 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ...

After hearing of Roman Catholic Mayans who continued to practise idol worship, he [ordered an Inquisition in Mani ending with a ceremony called auto de fe. During the ceremony on July 12, 1562, a disputed number of Maya codices (or books; de Landa admits to 27, other sources claim "99 times as many") and approximately 5,000 Mayan "idols" were burnt. The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ... The term idol (derived from Greek eid-, videre, to see. ... Jump to: navigation, search Pedro Berruguete. ... Mani may have one of the following meanings. ... Pedro Berruguete. ... Jump to: navigation, search July 12 is the 193rd day (194th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 172 days remaining. ... Events Earliest English slave-trading expedition under John Hawkins. ... Jump to: navigation, search first page of the Codex Argenteus A codex (Latin for book; plural codices) is a handwritten book from late Antiquity or the Early Middle Ages. ...

Describing his own actions later, de Landa wrote that:

• We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.

Only three Pre-Columbian "books" of Maya hieroglyphics (a.k.a. a codex) and fragments of a fourth are known to have survived. Collectively, these works are known as the Maya codices. Jump to: navigation, search The Devil is the name given to a supernatural entity who, in most Western religions, is the central embodiment of evil. ... Maya hieroglyphics is the system of writing used by the pre-Columbian Maya people to record the Maya language. ... Jump to: navigation, search first page of the Codex Argenteus A codex (Latin for book; plural codices) is a handwritten book from late Antiquity or the Early Middle Ages. ... Maya codices (singular codex) are books written by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, using the Maya hieroglyphic script. ...

De Landa's Inquisition showered a level of physical abuse upon the indigenous Maya that many viewed as excessive, and was at the very least unusual. Scores of Maya nobles were jailed pending interrogation, and large numbers of Maya nobles and commoners were subjected to examination under "hoisting." During hoisting, a victim's hands were bound and looped over an extended line that was then raised until the victim's entire body was suspended in the air. Often, stone weights were added to the ankles or lashes applied to the back during interrogation.

Some contemporary observers were troubled by this widespread use of torture. Crown fiat had earlier exempted indigenous peoples from the authority of the Inquisition, on the grounds that their understanding of Christianity was "too childish" to be held culpable for heresies. Additionally, de Landa dispensed with much of the extensive formal procedure and documentation that accompanied Spanish torture and interrogation.

De Landa defended his actions by arguing that in the process of rooting out idolatory, he had discovered evidence of human sacrifice. One of the alleged victims, Mani encomendero Dasbatés, was even found later to be alive.

De Landa was sent back to Spain by Bishop Toral, to stand trial for conducting an illegal Inquisition. His actions were strongly condemned before the Council of the Indies. This resulted in a "committee of doctors" being commissioned to investigate de Landa's alleged crimes. In 1569 the committee absolved de Landa of his crimes. Bishop Toral died in Mexico in 1571, allowing King Phillip II of Spain to appoint de Landa as the fourth-appointed Bishop of Yucatán. Events January 11 - First recorded lottery in England. ... Philip II of Spain (1527 – September 13, 1598), King of Spain (r. ...

De Landa also created a valuable record of the Mayan writing system, which despite its inaccuracies was later to prove instrumental in the later decipherment of the writing system. De Landa asked his informants (his primary sources were two Maya individuals descended from a ruling Maya dynasty, literate in the script) to write down the glyphic symbols corresponding to each of the letters of the (Spanish) alphabet, in the belief that there ought to be a one-to-one correspondence between them. The results were faithfully reproduced by de Landa in his later account, although he recognised that the set contained apparent inconsistencies and duplicates, which he was unable to explain. Later researchers reviewing this material also formed the view that the "de Landa alphabet" was inaccurate or fanciful, and many subsequent attempts to use this transcription remained unconvincing. It was not until much later in the mid-20th century when it was realised and then confirmed that it was not a transcription of an alphabet, as de Landa and others had originally supposed, but was largely rather syllabary-based one. Confirmation of this was only to be established by the work of Russian linguist Yuri Knorosov in the 1950s, and the succeeding generation of Mayanists. Jump to: navigation, search A writing system, also called a script, is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language. ... Decipherment is the analysis of documents written in ancient languages, where the language is unknown, or knowledge of the language has been lost. ... These are the astrological glyphs as most commonly used in Western Astrology A glyph is a carved figure or character, incised or in relief; a carved pictograph; hence, a pictograph representing a form originally adopted for sculpture, whether carved or painted. ... An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ... Jump to: navigation, search A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. ... Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov (Russian: Юрий Валентинович Кнорозов; b. ... Jump to: navigation, search // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the height of the... Jump to: navigation, search Mayanist is a term which has been in widespread use from the late 19th century onwards, to refer to scholars who have specialised in research and study of the Central American pre-Columbian Maya civilization. ...

His initial appointment was to the mission of San Antonio in Izamal, which served also as his primary residence while in Yucatán. Izamal is a small city in Yucatán state, Mexico, 72 km (about 40 miles) East of Mérida, Yucatán, at 20°93′ N 89°02′ W. Izamal has been continuously occupied for thousands of years. ...