Rewriting Maya Religion: Domingo de Vico, K'iche’ Maya Intellectuals, and the “Theologia Indorum.”

Garry Sparks's recent book examines the interreligious encounters in the highland Maya region of Guatemala during the early decades after Spanish contact. In this volume, intended as a companion to The Americas' First Theologies: Early Sources of Post-contact Indigenous Religion (2017), Sparks presents a theological and intertextual analysis of the Theologia Indorum, or the “Theology for and of the Indians,” presumably written in K'iche’ Maya by the Spanish Dominican friar Domingo de Vico. Completed in 1554 and never published, the Theologia Indorum spanned two volumes and over 800 manuscript pages, becoming the first original theology produced in the Americas. Sparks's assiduous theological and linguistic analysis of the remaining fragments from multiple Theologia Indorum copies uncovers its important role in the transmission of Catholic and Maya religions. Sparks argues that to fully understand its impact, it must be evaluated in relation with contemporaneous religious and legal highland Maya texts, especially...