Commentary

Daza's account of the martyrdom (here given in translation) is evidence that almost immediately after the slaying of the Five Servants of God, their death was viewed as a supreme sacrifice in testimony to the Faith. First published only thirteen years after the report of the martyrdom had reached Spain, this narrative identifies correctly four of the five friars, and one mistakenly. Listed correctly are Fray Miguel de Añon (here called de Ocaña and Fray Pedro de Corpa, both identified as priests of the Province of Castile; and Fray Blas Rodríguez and Fray Antonio (de Badajoz), identified as a priest and a lay friar of the Province of San Gabriel. The fifth friar listed by Daza, Fray Pedro de Velasco, is said to have been, along with Añon and Corpa, a member of the Province of Castile. All the qualified sources of the story of the slaying clearly name the fifth of the Martyrs as Fray Francisco de Veráscola, a member of the Province of Cantabria. It is possible that the slight similarity of "Veráscola" and "Velasco" may have contributed to the confusion from which resulted the mistaken identification. No source at our disposal lists any friar called Pedro de Velasco as ever having been assigned to the Florida mission. It is difficult to determine now the source of this admittedly minor slip in the information which Daza presents in the matter. Daza refers to the Martyrs as "blessed" (in Spanish bienaventurados). The same usage will occur in several of the texts yet to be examined in this study (where sometimes the Spanish term may also be beatos) in reference to the Martyrs of 1597. This is a popular and non-technical usage of the word. It is to be distinguished from the canonical term "Blessed" referring to a Servant of God officially proposed by the Church as worthy of being honored in a specified locality or in a limited way in the liturgy. For that reason, as used here in its non-technical sense, the term is spelt with a small "b." The meaning is approximately akin to that implicit in the "Beatitudes" promulgated by Christ the Savior, as recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew (5.3-1 I) and Luke (6.20-22).

The Daza account is quite specific in designating the time of the martyrdom, but errs in its suggestion that all five of the Martyrs were killed on one and the same day and in the same place. Trustworthy documents establish the truth that the several slayings took place at four different sites and on different days. Moreover, the one day suggested, "Thursday, the feast of Our Lady in September," presents a further problem. The most prominent feast of Our Lady in the month of September is the ancient feast of Our Lady's Nativity, a feast still celebrated on September 8. In 1597, however, September 8 fell on a Monday and not on a Thursday, the day specified by Daza. Possibly he is referring to some other "day of Our Lady" in that month, though some subsequent commentators unquestioningly cite that date, and up to relatively recent times it was accepted as the true one.

The specification of two years of apostolic labor in Guale would seem to indicate the beginning of that apostolate in the year 1595. While it is true that the year 1595 saw a new impetus given to the Guale mission, evangelization among those natives had a considerably earlier beginning at Tolomato and Tupiqui (scene of the slaying of Corpa and Rodríguez, respectively), as also on Guale (St. Catherines) Island (where Añon and Badajoz met their death). While the implication is probably exact that Añon and Badajoz had been working on that island for only two years, evidence is at hand that Badajoz, as well as others of the Martyrs, might have worked in different missions in Guale for as long as six or eight years The reference to the friar whom the natives intended to kill but who was in fact spared from death at their hands is to Fray Francisco de Avila. At the outbreak of the Revolt he was in charge of the mission at Ospo (Jekyll Island). Wounded and taken prisoner, after months of severe physical and spiritual torture, in June of 1598 he was released. By order of his superiors, he wrote an account of his ordeal, part of which is reproduced in Oré's Relación de los Mártires. Oré does not hesitate to call him a martyr, even though he did not give his life, for by his fidelity to the Gospel and his profession as a friar he gave witness to the truth of the Gospel during the almost ten months he was held prisoner. He is known to have returned to Spain, in the early 1600's, and is said to have passed the remaining years of his life in recollection, and to be buried in the Convento de los Reyes in his native Avila.¹

Finally, the explicit statement that the five slain friars were killed by being shot with arrows is not substantiated by the testimony which was later given by the Indians. In all cases the instrument of death was the more brutal and more effective macana, that crude stone hatchet known as the tomahawk used by most tribes of North American natives.

The defects in Daza's account, while not negligible, do not detract from the importance of the fact that, a mere decade and a half after the martyrdom at a remote and little-known area of the New World, a distinguished and well-known author should take cognizance of the event. As the first-known account of the slaying to be published in Europe, Daza's information was quite readily used in later narratives. Later authors will correct his two most egregious errors – the misidentification of one of the Five Martyrs, and his mistaken information about the time and the place of the slayings.

Commentary

In 1612, one year after the appearance of Daza's book, there was published another work which summarily alluded to the 1597 martyrdom. The chronicle and the history of the very ancient Province of Castile was composed by that Province's Minister, Fray Pedro de Salazar. A distinguished professor of theology, Salazar also held the office of censor (calificador) of the Council of the Inquisition.

Salazar's historical work, directed to an elite audience, is clearly designed to emphasize the values of orthodoxy and traditional piety. It was dedicated to the Princess Royal, the Most Serene Lady Margarita de Austria y de Cruz, professed nun of the Poor Clare Monastery in Madrid. The work abounds in references to caballeros, to las Condes e las Condesas, to various Duquesas. This orientation may help to explain why Fray Miguel de Añon is the only one of the Five Martyrs selected for special mention by name: one remembers that Fray Miguel is described by Oré as being muy noble en sangre, de solar conocido,² and of him Escobedo says, "he was so well trained in theology that he had a great reputation among scholars."³ The other member of the Province who was slain in the same revolt of 1597, Fray Pedro de Corpa, though in many ways more notable for his part in the story of the Florida mission and the tragic slaughter, does not merit explicit recognition by name. Fray Pedro, who entered the Order and the Province from the fanning community of Corpa, a village a short distance from Alcala de Henares, is presumed to have been of peasant stock.

Not surprisingly, given the title and the thrust of the history gathered by Salazar, the three martyrs belonging to other provinces, likewise receive no mention. Along with Corpa, these friars who did not belong to the Province of Castile are anonymously – and not exactly – described as "otros compaiieros hijos della Provincia de Castilla." While Corpa was "a son of the Province," the three other martyrs belonged to two other Franciscan provinces. This cavalier treatment of the four unnamed martyrs may likely be the consequence of the fact that, though the sto1y of the slaughter in its general outlines may have been quite commonly known to the friars, as yet no detailed account had been written or published; it would still be several years before anything like a complete description, such as Oré's, would become available.

No specific time is defined for the slaughter, and the place of the martyrdom is described by the general and vague term: the land of La Florida. It is clear that the account is neither constructed through the prism of rigorously certain history nor intended to be the definitive record of the event in the chronicle of the Province. More realistically, the martyrdom is remembered as a triumph of the spirit and a glory in the life of the ancient Province of Castile. While as pure history it may fail to be a satisfying narrative, yet it does have a certain power for illustrating the spirit of that venerable province which traces its origin, according to tradition, to the very days of St. Francis himself.

It is significant that, of the thirteen friars mentioned in Chapter XXII under the heading "Some other Blessed Friars of this Province," Fray Miguel de Anon is the only one who gave his life in bloody profession of the Faith. All the other twelve are indeed notable and worthy of praise, whether for a life of mortification, for their spirit of prayer, for their zeal in preaching, for their power of miracles. In a sense therefore the title of "blessed" attributed to these holy friars is most obviously applicable to the martyr among them, for "there is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for his Friend" (cf. John 15.13).

Commentary

Of the early accounts of the martyrdom, for many reasons that of Fray Juan de Torquemada (c. 1563-1624) enjoys a special distinction. If nothing else, the very length of the detailed narrative establishes for it a unique place among the contemporary treatments of the slayings. First published in 1615, Torquemada’s Monarquia Indiana was thus in circulation less than two decades after the slaying. A century later it was still in sufficient demand to merit a second edition. A modern edition was published in three volumes in 1975. In the 1615 (the original) printing the story occupies almost four folio pages; in that of 1723 it likewise fills the better part of four folios. With the exception of Oré's account in his Relación de los Mártires, this is by far the most extensive and detailed telling of the events associated with the martyrdom.

Torquemada's Monarquia Indiana is basically a comprehensive account of Mexico's history from the Toltec period (900 AD. to 1200) up to the time of the Spanish Conquest by Hernan Cortes in 1519, and then goes on to include in greater detail a description of all the important happenings in the Kingdom of New Spain during the first century following the introduction of Christianity. That the story of an event in La Florida should be found in a history of geographically distant Mexico is understandable, given the fact that the Florida mission maintained some association with Mexico. In addition, there was a very close linkage between La Florida and Cuba, even if the foundation in Cuba was juridically part of the Mexican Province. Though canonically separate, the Provinces of Santo Evangelia and of Santa Elena shared much in common.

Such interchange between the two missionary entities explains the otherwise unusual fact that – a mere fifteen or twenty years after the slaughter of the martyrs in primitive and disorganized Florida – a detailed description of the event was known in the capital of New Spain, had been digested, and was being proclaimed as significant for the wider Franciscan Order. The martyrdom was seen as a spiritual event of importance in the life of the Province of Santo Evangelia, inasmuch as the Mission of La Florida was its sister-foundation.

In the Third Part of Monarquia Indiana, Torquemada devotes Chapter XX to the Franciscan presence in La Florida, bringing the story up to the establishment of the full fledged Province of Santa Elena in 1612. In a long sub-division of that chapter he recounts the death of the five friars slain in the uprising of 1597. The detailed facts which he narrates lend some strength to the supposition that he had received first-hand reports of the event, not improbably from conversations with one or other of the friars who, having previously spent time in Florida, later took up work in Mexico.

His account is characterized by the exact identification of the four places where the several slayings occurred. He corrects some of the mistaken information to be found in the Daza description (which appeared in Spain at the time this history was being composed in Mexico). Torquemada does not, for example, repeat the name of a non-existent Fray Pedro de Velasco; and he does record the death of the sometime omitted Fray Francisco de Veráscola (whose surname he modifies, calling him "de Velasco"). Though he fails to give the personal name of Fray Pedro de Corpa, he describes that friar's part in the story with considerable detail. Such features of the Torquemada recounting confirm the surmise that for the composition of his account the author had the benefit of a knowing informant.

Some confusion, however, is caused by the fact that Torquemada calls the friar martyred in Tupiqui, not Fray Blas Rodríguez but Fray Blas de Montes. There was indeed, at the time of the slaughter, a friar by that name assigned to the Florida mission; he had arrived in La Florida in September of 1595, Following the slaying of the five missionaries, Fray Blas de Montes was appointed by the Commissary to accompany Governor Canzo on his trip to the region of Guale, charged with the task of gathering any objects which had been in the use of the slain friars and with seeing to the decent burial of the remains of these martyrs.⁴

The confusion in regard to the surname of the friar slain in Tupiqui can perhaps be explained by the fact that Torquemada, who did not personally know the friars in the Florida Mission, in his writing had already referred, and correctly, to Fray Blas de Montes as one of the friars who had arrived from Spain in 1595. When shortly thereafter in his account he referred to the Fray Blas who was martyred in Tupiqui, mistakenly he may have assumed that it was the friar whose coming he had just noted. The confusion may have been compounded by the practice quite common within the fraternity to use only the religious name of a fellow-friar without his apellido (family surname). it would be an easy mistake to use the surname of another friar named Fray Blas, in that way changing Rodríguez into de Montes. Fr. Atanasio Lopez points out (Relación Histórica de La Florida, I, Page 35, note 2) that almost all the historians of the Franciscan Order base their accounts on Torquemada as their primary source. It is primarily in virtue of Monarquia Indiana, his opus magnum, that Torquemada is best known. His knowledge of the lore of the native races of Mexico as found in the surviving codices and hieroglyphics, and his ability to gather the notable facts of both the pre-Hispanic and the Hispanic periods, make him deserving of the title that has been bestowed on him: "The Livy of New Spain." The modern Franciscan historian, Lino Gomez Canedo, has written that Monarquia Indiana is "absolutely basic for knowledge of both the pre-Hispanic and Hispanic origins of Mexico."⁵ Its account of the martyrdom of 1597 is a most valuable testimony to the significance of this event for the growth of the Church being established in the New World by Catholic Spain.

Fray Juan de Torquemada was an outstanding figure in the Mexican Province of Santo Evangelia, of which he served as Minister Provincial for a brief period (1614-17). Trusted and beloved friend of the natives, he also guided his fellow religious to a sublime vision of spiritual generosity in the service of the infant Church in Mexico. The Mexican historian, Miguel León-Portilla has drawn a profile of this churchman, stating he "stands out preeminently among the Franciscan friars"⁶ of his time.