Böcker av Matthew Restall

The Friar and the Maya offers a full study and new translation of the Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán (Account of the Things of Yucatan) by a unique set of eminent scholars, created by them over more than a decade from the original manuscript held by the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid. This critical and careful reading of the Account is long overdue in Maya studies and will forever change how this seminal text is understood and used. For generations, scholars used (and misused) the Account as the sole eyewitness insight into an ancient civilization. It is credited to the sixteenth-century Spanish Franciscan, monastic inquisitor, and bishop Diego de Landa, whose legacy is complex and contested. His extensive writings on Maya culture and history were lost in the seventeenth century, save for the fragment that is the Account, discovered in the nineteenth century, and accorded near-biblical status in the twentieth as the first "ethnography" of the Maya. However, the Account is not authored by Landa alone; it is a compilation of excerpts, many from writings by other Spaniards--a significant revelation made here for the first time. This new translation accurately reflects the style and vocabulary of the original manuscript. It is augmented by a monograph--comprising an introductory chapter, seven essays, and hundreds of notes--that describes, explains, and analyzes the life and times of Diego de Landa, the Account, and the role it has played in the development of modern Maya studies. The Friar and the Maya is an innovative presentation on an important and previously misunderstood primary source.

Driven by a clear and compelling argument, this engaging book traces apocalyptic thinking in two civilizations-Western and Maya. Looking both back and forward, Matthew Restall and Amara Solari build on their previous study, 2012 and the End of the World, to explore the persistence of our civilization's end-of-times anxiety and anticipation.

The Black Middle is the first book-length study of the interaction of black slaves and other people of African descent with Mayas and Spaniards in the Spanish colonial province of Yucatan (southern Mexico).