Spanish friar (or fray), and later bishop of Yucatan, Diego de Landa is most famous for his fervor in destroying Maya codices, as well as for the detailed description of Maya society on the eve of the conquest recorded in his book, Relación de las Cosas de Yucatan (Relation on the Incidents of Yucatan). But the story of Diego de Landa is far more complex.
Diego de Landa Calderón was born in 1524, into a noble family of the town of Cifuentes, in the Guadalajara province of Spain. He entered the ecclesiastic career when he was 17 and decided to follow the Franciscan missionaries in the Americas. He arrived in Yucatan in 1549.