July 12, 1562

Diego de Landa

Diego de Landa leads the auto de fe of Maní

Landa's own account records not a number but a reaction: the Maya, he wrote, felt the loss of their books deeply.

12 July 1562, in the plaza at Maní

On 12 July 1562, the Franciscan provincial Diego de Landa and other friars staged a public auto de fe in the plaza of Maní, Yucatán, culminating an investigation into continued Maya religious practices.

Accused Maya were assembled to hear sentences publicly while Maya books, cult images, altar stones, vessels and other ritual objects collected during the investigation were destroyed by fire.

The ceremony proclaimed penalties including flogging, shearing, exile, loss of office and terms of compulsory service. Prominent prisoners were subsequently transferred to Mérida.

The number that is not Landa's

Landa acknowledged finding many books written in Maya characters and burning them because he regarded their contents as superstition and diabolical falsehood. His surviving Relación says only that a "great number" was burned.

The familiar totals — 27 rolls of signs and hieroglyphs on deerskin, 5,000 idols, 13 large altar stones, 22 smaller stones and 197 vessels — derive from a letter written in 1805 and cited by later historians, not from a surviving 1562 inventory.

Landa was neither bishop nor "acting bishop" that year. He was Franciscan minister provincial, exercising contested quasi-episcopal authority before the resident bishop arrived; his episcopal appointment came in 1572.

One month later

Yucatán's first resident bishop, Francisco de Toral, arrived in August. He condemned Landa's methods and halted the extirpation campaign.

The date itself is Julian, as used in sixteenth-century Spanish territories; its proleptic Gregorian equivalent is 22 July.

The man remembered for burning Maya writing also preserved examples of that writing in the book that later aided its decipherment.

Sources

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What the sources leave uncertain

The July 12 date is well attested, but it is a Julian-calendar date as used in sixteenth-century Spanish territories; its proleptic Gregorian equivalent is July 22.
Landa’s surviving Relación says only that a “great number” of books was burned. It does not give the figure 27.
The familiar totals of 27 rolls and 5,000 idols derive from a letter written in 1805 and cited by later historians, not from a surviving 1562 inventory; they must be presented as later reported figures.
The surviving Relación may itself be an incomplete later copy or abridgment of Landa’s original work.