Translating Kislak Manuscript 1015: A Priest’s Early Fieldnotes Among the Maya

FAIN: FT-248934-16

Garry Sparks
George Mason University (Fairfax, VA 22030-4444)

A scholarly transcription, annotation, and translation of sections of a sixteenth-century Mayan manuscript.

This research project will consist of a critical, annotated, interlinear translation of Library of Congress Kislak Manuscript 1015 – an anonymous set of texts in K’iche’ Maya language. Particular attention will focus on, and thus lead to a polished English translation of, those few sections of Kislak 1015 that seem to date to 1552 and correspond to the later “Theology of the Indians,” which was originally written in K’iche’ Maya in 1553-4 by Spanish friar Domingo de Vico in Guatemala. This critical and comparative intertextual analysis will help to further identify this recently acquired document by the Library of Congress and prepare a planned exact reproduction of it for publication for the wider public. It will also add more detailed understanding of Kislak 1015 to an increasing body of current scholarship on the first documents written in Mayan languages by Catholic missionaries and highland Maya elites within the period of first contact of the early sixteenth century.

Associated Products

“A Sixteenth-Century Priest’s Fieldnotes among Highland Maya: Proto-Theologia as Vade mecum” (Article)
Title: “A Sixteenth-Century Priest’s Fieldnotes among Highland Maya: Proto-Theologia as Vade mecum”
Author: book anthology edited by David Tavárez
Author: Garry Sparks
Author: Frauke Sachse
Abstract: This chapter examines an anonymous Dominican’s notebook now part of the Kislak Collection of the U.S. Library of Congress, specifically the core sections written in K’iche’ Maya dated 1552. Based on intertextual analysis with later mendicant texts written in Highland Mayan languages (i.e., catechisms, coplas (songs), and the Theologia Indorum), this chapter argues that the core of this Kislak manuscript is the earliest version of a set of 50 songs composed by Dominican missionaries (possibly the earliest original Christian pastoral text written in the Americas let alone in an indigenous language) as documented in the Historia by Antonio de Remesal. As a result, this chapter reassess the conventional understanding that the Theologia Indorum work grew out of a set of sermons but rather initiated as a “go with me” summa.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/3225-words-and-worlds-turned-around
Primary URL Description: book site on website of the University Press of Colorado
Access Model: chapter in an academic book
Format: Other
Periodical Title: Words and Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Latin America
Publisher: Bolder: University Press of Colorado

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