Toribio de Benavente Motolinia
Encyclopedia
Benavente
Benavente may refer to: Benavente, Portugal— a municipality in Portugal Benavente, Zamora— a municipality in Zamora province, Spain Benavente, Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico one of the five Barrios that make up Hormigueros.As a surname...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
- 1568, Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
) also known as Motolinia was a Franciscan
Franciscan
Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....
missionary and among the first 12 clerics to arrive in New Spain
New Spain
New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...
in May 1524.
Life and times
He entered the Franciscan order as a young boy changing his family name Paredes to that of his birthcity Benavente, as was the custom among the Franciscans. In 1523 he was chosen to be among the first twelve missionariesTwelve Apostles of Mexico
The Twelve Apostles of Mexico or Twelve Apostles of New Spain were a group of twelve Franciscan missionaries who arrived in the newly-founded Viceroyalty of New Spain in May 1524, with the goal of introducing its indigenous population to the Christian faith...
to be sent to the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
.
After a strenuous journey he arrived in Mexico where he was greeted by Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century...
. Upon riding through Tlaxcala
Tlaxcala (Nahua state)
Tlaxcala was a pre-Columbian city state of central Mexico.Tlaxcala was a confederation of four altepetl — Ocotelolco, Quiahuiztlan, Tepeticpac and Tizatlan — which each took turns providing a ruler for Tlaxcala as a whole.-History:Tlaxcala was never conquered by the Aztec empire, but was...
the Indians commented on his ragged franciscan robes saying "Motolinia" which in the Nahuatl language means "He afflicts himself" or "He is poor". This was the first word he learned in the nahuatl language and he took it as his name. He was named guardian of the Convent of San Francisco in Mexico City where he resided from 1524 to 1527.
From 1527 to 1529 he was in Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
and Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
studying the new missions in that area. Back in Mexico he stayed at the convent of Huejotzinco near Tlaxcala, where he had to help the natives against the abuse and atrocities committed by Nuño de Guzmán. He suggested to the native leaders that they complain to the Bishop Juan de Zumárraga
Juan de Zumárraga
Juan de Zumárraga was a Spanish Basque Franciscan prelate and first bishop of Mexico.-Origins and arrival in New Spain:...
about Guzmán but the latter accused him of trying to instigate a revolt among the Indians against the Spanish sovereignty. In 1530 he went to the Convent of Tlaxcala and contributed in the foundation of the City of Puebla de Los angeles
Puebla, Puebla
The city and municipality of Puebla is the capital of the state of Puebla, and one of the five most important colonial cities in Mexico. Being a planned city, it is located to the east of Mexico City and west of Mexico's main port, Veracruz, on the main route between the two.The city was founded...
. With Franciscan colleagues he travelled to Tehuantepec, Guatemala and Yucatán to undertake further missionary work.
Even though Motolinia protected Indians against the abuse of Guzmán he did not share the opinions of the Dominican
Dominican Order
The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...
Bartolomé de las Casas
Bartolomé de Las Casas
Bartolomé de las Casas O.P. was a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar. He became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians"...
who saw the conquest and subjugation of the Indians as a crime and against all Christian morality. Motolinia believed that God would protect the Indians once converted and that the missionary work thus was more important than fighting the encomienda system and he remained a defender of the conquest, the encomienda
Encomienda
The encomienda was a system that was employed mainly by the Spanish crown during the colonization of the Americas to regulate Native American labor....
system and the evangelization. In fact in a famous letter to Charles V of Spain he undertook a virulent attack upon Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas, intending to discredit him completely. He called him "a grievous man, restless, importunate, turbulent, injurious, and prejudicial" and even an apostate in that he had renounced the Bishopric of Chiapas. He furthermore advised the king to have him shut up for safe keeping in a monastery. In 1545 the encomenderos of Chiapas asked for him to come there to defend them against Las Casas but he declined, in the same way he declined a position as Bishop offered to him by the king.
Having founded many cloisters and convents in Mexico and supposedly baptized more than 400,000 Indians he retired to the Convent of San Francisco in Mexico where he died in 1568. He is remembered in Mexico as one of the most important evangelists.
Ethnographies
Motolinia is well-known for his two histories of the Aztecs:- Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España which was not published until 1858, by Joaquin Garcia IcazbalcetaJoaquín García IcazbalcetaJoaquín García Icazbalceta was a Mexican philologist and historian. He edited writings by Mexican writers who preceded him, wrote a biography of Juan de Zumárraga, and translated William H. Prescott's Conquest of Mexico...
. - Memoriales, first published in 1903.