of Christ much sooner. Many historians believe there can be little doubt old traditions would continue even during Spanish rule, and because of "the resilience of the old social order, and the determination of its custodians to sustain the old ways, some human killings persisted into the post-conquest period...." While Landa did coerce exaggerated confessions by torture, he believed so fully that human sacrifice was occurring around him that he was willing to sacrifice a handful of sinners to save the overall community. Landa's Relación De Las Cosas De Yucatán is about as complete a treatment of Maya religion as is ever likely. While controversy surrounds his use of force in the conversion process, few scholars would debate the general accuracy of his recordings. Allen Wells calls his work an "ethnographic masterpiece," and William J. Folan, Laraine A. Fletcher and Ellen R. Kintz have written that the account of Maya social organization and towns before conquest is a "gem." The writings are the main contemporary source for Maya history, without which the knowledge of Maya ethnology would be devastatingly small. Much more would now be known about Mayan history and culture if de Landa had not burned anywhere from 27 to what Mayan Historian George Stuart speculates as "hundreds, maybe thousands of [Maya] books. We will never know." Consecrated as bishop Landa was sent back to Spain by Bishop Toral, to stand trial for conducting an illegal Inquisition. His actions were strongly condemned before the Council of the Indies. That resulted in a "committee of doctors" being commissioned to investigate Landa's alleged crimes. In 1569, the committee absolved Landa of his crimes. Bishop Toral died in Mexico in 1571, allowing King Philip II of Spain to appoint Landa as the second bishop of Yucatán. Landa and contemporary Mayanist studies Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatán also created a valuable record of the Maya writing system, which, despite its inaccuracies, was later to prove instrumental in the decipherment of the writing system. Landa asked his informants (his primary sources were two Maya individuals descended from a ruling Maya dynasty who were literate in the script) to write down the glyphic symbols corresponding to each of the letters of the (Spanish) alphabet, in the belief that there ought to be a one-to-one correspondence between them. The results were faithfully reproduced by Landa in his later account, but he recognised that the