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The Franciscan Missionary Plan for the Conversion to Christianity of the Natives of the Austral Lands as Proposed in the Memorials of Fray Juan de Silva, O. F. M.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
During the forty years from 1567 to 1607 there were three Spanish expeditions from Peru to the South Seas. The first, under Alvaro de Mendaña in 1567, was for the discovery of some rich islands, called Solomon, believed to lie in the equinoctial region between New Guinea and Peru. In the following year he reached a group of islands. Mendaña did not then give them a collective name, but subsequently they became known as the Solomon Islands. With the expedition were four Franciscan friars acting as chaplains and missionaries. The second, a colonizing expedition, was in 1595, again under the Adelantado Mendaña. And here we introduce the celebrated figure and the one to achieve immortal fame in the proto-history of Australia, Pedro Fernández de Quirós. He accompanied the adelantado as captain of his capitana and chief pilot of his fleet of four ships. Because of errors in reckoning latitude and longitude Quirós brought the fleet with close on four hundred settlers to Santa Cruz Island instead of the Solomons, discovering on the way the Marquesas group. At Santa Cruz the settlement knew only tragedy. There was mutiny and disease. Pestilence thinned their ranks by death, and—above all—the adelantado himself died there on October 18, 1595. The settlement, then only a month old, was a month later abandoned. Quirós, by a remarkable feat of navigation, brought the remnants of the expedition to Manila.
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1961
References
1 Zaragoza, Justo, Historia del descubrimiento de las regiones Austriales hecho por el General Pedro Fernández de Quirós (3 vols.; Madrid, 1876–1882), 1, 316.Google Scholar
2 The term “Austral Lands” is used in this article to denote the island discoveries of Quirós in the southwest Pacific, as well as the mainland, “the mother of these islands,” which he believed existed close by.
3 BML (British Museum, London), C.62.i.18 (71).
4 BML. 62.i.18 (68).
5 See Silva’s prefatory memorial to his Advertencias importantes, written before May 14, 1621. BML. 521.1.7 (1–3); BNM. (Biblioteca Nacional Madrid), 2/42222.
6 BML. C. 62.i.18 (70).
7 In 1637 this building functioned as Colegio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe—a postgraduate college for the Provinces of Lima and Cuzco. Its first constitutions were promulgated on March 22, 1637. Originally there was an ermita on the property dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. It was built by Alonso Ramos Lerbantes and his wife Doña Elvira de la Lerna and donated by them, together with a garden and an endowment to the Spanish monastery of that name in 1603. On October 17, 1611, it passed to the friars. The college does not appear in the tabla capitular of 1630 but is found in the one for 1640. Construction on the building was stopped about the year 1627. In the wars of independence it was used as a powder magazine. The original chapel still survives and the old site is used today as a hospital. I am indebted to Fr. Antonine Tibesar O. F. M. for supplying the details of this note. See also, de Córdoba, Diego, Papeles de la fundación de la Santa Previa de los Doze Apóstoles del Perú, Trinity College, Dublin,Google Scholar MS.K.3.20, ff. 82v–83.
8 MS addition to memorial. BML. C.62.i.18 (70).
9 Cedula, March 22, 1595; quoted by Geiger, Maynard O.F.M., The Franciscan Conquest of Florida (1573–1618) (Washington, D. C., 1937), p. 62.Google Scholar The Cedula refers to the ordering of a ship to transport the friars.
10 Lopez, Atanasio O.F.M. (ed.), Relación histórica de la Florida escrita en el siglo XVII por Jerónimo de Ore, P. Fr. O.F.M. (Madrid, 1931), pp. 92–93.Google Scholar
11 The 1613 volume has no title page, but has for its incipit: Este Tratado que contiene dos memoriales informativos, tocantes al bien espiritual y temporal de todos los Regnos de las Indias. BNM, 2/51255, fr. 81–114v, also BNM, MS. 13239, f. 81 ff. (defective).
12 In the 1621 edition there is a difference in foliation binding in the copy at the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid and in that at the British Museum. In the former, for instance, the a los lectores comes after the prefatory memorial and is followed by the aprovaciones; in the latter the a los lectores comes at the end of the third memorial.
13 The General chapters were probably those held at Salamanca in 1618 and the Intermediate Chapter at Rome in 1615.
14 Silva, Advertencias, ff. 59v–60.
15 AGI, Indif. Gen. 615 (140–3–10).
16 BML. C.62.i.18 (71).
17 BML. 62.i.18 (71); Silva, Advertencias, ff. 54v–60v.
18 Silva, Advertencias ff. 60v–61. The Vicar General was Fray Antonio de Trejo (1613–1618).
19 BML. C.62.i.18 (71); Silva, Advertencias, f. 61.
20 Dr. Sebastián Clemente, in an información from Cuzco in 1603, stated that his brother went on the 1595 expedition but did not return and was believed to be still alive on some unknown Pacific island, and offered to accompany Quirós in 1605. AGI, Lima 322 (71–3–30), Cartas y expedientes de personas eclesiasticas 1603–1605.
21 Archivio di Prop. Fide, Scritt. rif. nelle Congreg. Generali, Memoriali del 1622. 382, ff. 156–157v.
22 Ibid. f. 164, with endorsement on f. 167v.
23 AGI. Indif. Gen. 615 (140–3–10). Carpeta without memorial. The memorial mentions the death of the President of the Indies Council, probably that of the Lie. Don Fernando Carillo, who died on April 23, 1622. BML, 62.i.18 (70).
24 Cf. Bull Immortalis Dei of August 1, 1627.
25 BML. C.62.i.18 (68).
26 The full text of the memorial follows this article, under “Documents.”
27 This treatise—if it ever was completed—so far as is known has not yet been found.
28 BML, 4.745, f. 11 (18), Papeles tocantes a la Iglesia Española 1625–1790, 7 ff., also same edition in BNM, R. 17.270; BML. 1.324, k.5 (72), Materias de Govierno de las Indias (C.62, i.l8, 72), BML, Add. MS 13.992, ff. 567–73; also printed by Murray & Cochran, Edinburgh, 1773, 26 pp. (bound in Alexander Dalrymple’s Collection of Charts and Memoirs, 1772-BML, 569, k.3); Medina, José T., El Piloto Juan Fernández … (Santiago de Chile, 1918), pp. 228–255.Google Scholar Translations: Excerpt in Dalrymple, , A Historical Collection of the Several Voyages … (2 vols.; London, 1770–1771) 1, 143 f.Google Scholar; and in full by Major, Richard H., Early Voyages to Terra Australis, now called Australia (Hakluyt Society, ser. I, no. 25, London, 1859), pp. 1–30 Google Scholar; Markham, Clements, The Voyages of Pedro Fernández de Quirós 1595 to 1606 (Hakluyt Soc, ser. II, nos. 14–15, London, 1904), 2, 517–36Google Scholar; Collingridge, George, The Discovery of Australia (Sydney, 1895), pp. 225–228.Google Scholar
29 See de Navarrete, Martín Fernández, Biblioteca Maritima Española, 2 (Madrid, 1851), 176–178.Google Scholar
30 Markham, op. cit., II, 517 n.