Vatican Archives and the Indigenous Books the Church Burned

Описание: The Vatican Library and the Vatican Apostolic Archive still shape how we reconstruct colonial Latin America, New Spain, Yucatán, and the Andes, because so much Indigenous knowledge was targeted as “idolatry” and treated as evidence, contraband, or heresy. This episode follows a documented chain: the 1562 Maní auto de fe under Diego de Landa and his own admission that books were burned; the wider logic of extirpation of idolatry that seized and destroyed ritual media; and the quieter truth of survival through confiscation, copying, translation, concealment, and distance. The story ends in Rome, not to claim a modern plot, but to name a reality harsher than fantasy: major Mexican pictorial manuscripts are catalogued and preserved in the Vatican Library, including Vat. lat. 3738 (Codex Ríos / Codex Vaticanus A) and Vat. lat. 3773 (Codex Vaticanus B). The Vatican Apostolic Archive, formerly called the “Vatican Secret Archive” in the older sense of secretum, meaning “private”, is open to qualified scholars, yet is practically specialist-gated by credentials, languages, and geography. This is not forbidden knowledge. It is documented history that became paperwork, then policy, then catalogues, then shelfmarks. Latin Lora explores myths, history, and real cases, told straight, grounded in primary texts and institutional records.

📚 Sources / Verification
Vatican Library DigiVatLib (Vat. lat. 3738): https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.l...
Vatican Library DigiVatLib (Vat. lat. 3773): https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.l...
Diego de Landa, Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (PDF, Wayeb): https://www.wayeb.org/download/resour...
Wayeb Ethnohistorical Sources: https://www.wayeb.org/resources-links...
Vatican Apostolic Archive – Admission Request: https://www.archivioapostolicovatican...
Vatican Apostolic Archive – Access & Consultation: https://www.archivioapostolicovatican...
Motu Proprio (2019) renaming the Archive: https://www.vatican.va/content/france...
Vatican Library – Admission Criteria: https://www.vaticanlibrary.va/en/info...