74 Chilam Balam, books of Rodriquez-Salgado, M J The Changing Face of Empire: Charles V, Philip II, and Habsburg Authority Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988; Tyler, Royall The Emperor Charles the Fifth London: Oxford University Press, 1956 Norman C Rothman Chilam Balam, books of The sacred books of the Maya of Yucatán, the books of Chilam Balam were written in the Mayan language in Mexico in the 17th and 18th centuries They supposedly contain the secrets of the Mayan civilization They are a major source for contemporary knowledge of Mayan religion, history, folklore, medicine, and astronomy Historians believe that once the books of Chilam Balam collection held many more books, although only a handful, named for the towns in which they were written, have survived Most important among the remaining books of Chilam Balam are Mani, Tizimin, Chumayel, Kaua, Ixil, Tusik, and Codice Perez The books of Chilam Balam is named after the last and greatest Mayan prophet, Chilam, or chilan, meaning the mouthpiece or interpreter of the gods Balam means jaguar, but it is also a common family name in Yucatán The title of the present work could be translated as the Book of the Prophet Balam, who lived during the last decades of the 15th century and foretold the arrival of strangers from the east who would establish a new religion The prophecy came to pass and established the prophet Balam as the authority for many other prophecies in the older books of the same kind, so the Maya named the other books after Balam hieroglyphic writing system The Maya developed a complex system of hieroglyphic writing to record astronomical observations, calendar calculations, and historical and genealogical information centuries before the Spanish conquest To the Maya, the written word had sacred significance and the priests were the only members of the community who wrote Texts were considered divine objects, containing the religious and moral principles of the community, the path of the truth, and the example of ancestors and prescriptions of the gods Priests read the sacred books during religious ceremonies imbuing the community with the meaning of its existence A party of shipwrecked sailors who landed in Yucatán in 1511 was the first group of Spaniards to encounter the Maya In the next 150 years, expeditions of Francisco de Córdoba, Francisco de Montejo, and Pedro de Alvardo extended Spanish domination of Maya territory Finally Martín de Ursúa, the Spanish governor of Yucatán, completed Spanish domination of the entire Maya region in 1697 when he conquered the small group of Maya in the central Petén area The Spanish brought European diseases against which the Maya had no natural immunity; consequently many of them died The Spanish also killed many Maya in battle and forced the survivors to labor on Spanish farms or in gold and silver mines Among the Spaniards’ goals was eradicating Mayan language and culture The Catholic Church of 16th-century Mexico sought to educate and to evangelize Shortly after the Spanish conquest of the Maya, Spanish monks and friars learned the Mayan language for evangelical purposes and adapted the Latin alphabet to Maya, improvising when necessary to include sounds foreign to the Romance languages Spanish monks and friars wrote the books of Chilam Balam in the Mayan language, but used European script instead of Mayan hieroglyphs Each book is a self-contained library covering a vast array of subjects Besides the prophecies there are brief chronicles, fragmentary historical narratives, rituals, native catechisms, mythological accounts of the creation of the world, almanacs, and medical treatises The Spanish friars and the Maya undoubtedly transcribed some of the material from older hieroglyphic manuscripts that still existed in northern Yucatán at the close of the 17th century As time passed, more European material was added to the native Mayan lore In some books, there are a mixture of the old faith with Christianity and translations of Spanish religious tracts and astrological treatises into Maya as well as notes of events occurring during the colonial period Part of a Spanish romance translated into Mayan is found in two of the books The Spanish grudgingly admired the Mayan graphic system, but they were determined to destroy the old manuscripts and erase all knowledge of the hieroglyphs from the minds of the converts For their part, the Maya revered their hieroglyphic writing, which symbolized their old religion The Spanish intended their new, improved version of the Mayan language for Christian use only, but the Maya quickly adapted it to their own purposes They recorded everything from prophecies and rituals to petitions to the Crown, but the books of Chilam Balam were the most important