An Annotated Translation of a Colonial Yucatec Manuscript:
On Religious and Cosmological Topics by a Native Author

(On Confession)

Endnotes #65-84

65. In 1580 and 1593, Gaspar Antonio Chi filed probanzas for his services, which included writing sermons in Yucatec for the Franciscans (Tozzer 1941:45; Restall 1998:146). A list of books confiscated by order of the Inquisition in Mérida in 1586 includes a Postillae Mayores, sine nomine Auttoris taken from Gaspar Antonio (Fernandez del Castillo 1982:325). His possession of such a book, Latin quotations organized around liturgical themes, provides evidence for his claim to sermon writing, since postillae served as reference works for authors of sermons. That the government granted Gaspar Antonio Chi a pension for the services he listed further corroborates his claim.

66. For example, from A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 1634, "Because how many things is the drunkard and the intoxicated person responsible for doing in a day? If he goes following along the road, he excites and upsets himself like a snake, throwing up at and shooting poison at other people’s honor, or like a dog who goes repeatedly dragging his poisonous spittle down the entire street" (Sell et.al.:121).

67. Garbled Latin.

68. This is one of surprisingly few mentions of the Virgin Mary in this text.

69. "What does it profit man if he gains the world, but loses his soul" in garbled Latin.

70. The author switches metaphors, from restitution for wrongs done, to sickness and healing. Louise Burkhart discusses the latter as metaphors for sin and penance in chapter six of The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico.

71. kak could also mean fire, but I am assuming a continuation of the sickness metaphor.

72. That is, in humility, to contemplate the sufferings of Christ at His passion.

73. I am reading this as thochpalac. thochpahal: CMM, tropezar.

74. The verb choch means to untie, detach or come loose. Besides being used with reference to keban, sin, it is used for the dissolution of spells. See CMM: chochaan u cunyah Juan, deshecho está el encantamiento de Juan, o su hechizo que avia hecho.

75. The author sometimes writes ch in this word.

76. Medieval confesionarios recommend three days of preparation for confession based on the number symbolism of the Trinity and on the triduum, the seventy-two hour period between Good Friday and Easter (Alva: 43).

77. confesal, the Spanish verb confesar used here as a noun by the Maya author.

78. A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 1634 emphasizes the importance of a correct count of sins. If a man has kept a concubine for years, the priest is to suggest that he use grains of corn to count the number of times he sinned with the woman, "because it is very necessary to count and remember in confession how many times the sin was done" (Alva:107).

79. CMM, zopp, en composición, hazer a bulto, a ciegas y a tiento sin concierto ni orden, ni consideración de lo que el verbo importa.

80. confesal here inflected as a verb.

81. a cisin thanilex, literally means your devil speech.

82. BMTV: Jurar [en el nombre de] Dios hach than tu kaba Dios, Jurar [en] falso hal ach than y[c]hil tuz [.1.] ti ma hah, Jurar [por] Dios, mintiendo hach than tah u kaba Dios ychil tuz.

83. Domigo: sic, misspelling of Domingo.

84. a mansic than yokolob, literally, you let word pass above them.

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