The research -- The saints, their homes, and their servants -- Mayan festivals for the saints -- Mayan insistence on the mass performed by a Catholic priest -- Traditional Mayan worldview -- The worldview of the Spanish crown at the beginning of the sixteenth century -- Spanish victories and their impact on the Mayan worldview -- The goals of evangelization -- The strategy for communicating the doctrina -- Problems facing the friars -- The secular clergy -- The necessity of the saints in the Mayan worldview -- The necessity of the mass, baptism, and the Catholic priest in the Mayan worldview -- The fiscal -- The mass of the talking saints -- Questions raised by the research
Summary
Mayan ethnographer John Early examines the centuries-long speculation about why the ritual calendars of the Mayan Indians in Guatemala and the regions of Chiapas and Yucatan in Mexico revolve around festivals in honor of the Catholic saints
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-295) and indexes
