author
Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar
1555–1648
A colonial-era priest and writer from Yucatán, he is remembered for documenting Maya religious practices and for the forceful anti-idolatry campaign described in his best-known book from 1639.
1 Audiobook
Reports on the Maya Indians of Yucatan
by Antonio García Cubas, Francisco Hernández, Santiago Mendez, Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar
About the author
Born in Valladolid, Yucatán, in 1555, Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar became a cleric and later earned a doctorate in theology. A biographical source states that he studied first under Gaspar Antonio Xiú in Tizimín and later continued his education in Mexico City at the Colegio de San Ildefonso, where he was ordained.
He is best known for Informe contra idolorum cultores del obispado de Yucatán (1639), a work written in Spanish and Latin that focused on the survival of Indigenous religious practices in colonial Yucatán and argued for stronger action against what he saw as idolatry. Because of that book, he is often cited today by historians studying Maya religion, evangelization, and colonial society.
Catalog and reference records identify him as living from 1555 to 1648. The surviving sources consulted here confirm his importance as a religious writer of colonial Yucatán, though they leave some personal details of his later life uncertain.