The King's Surprise: The Mission Methodology of Toribio de Mogrovejo

1993 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary M. McGlone
Keyword(s):  
Southern Hemisphere ◽  
New World ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Church

In 1579 King Philip II selected the presiding inquisitor of Granada as the second archbishop of Los Reyes, or Lima. Countering precedents which favored the episcopal nomination of priests who had spent time in the New World, Philip chose Toribio de Mogrovejo, a man totally lacking in both clerical and missionary experience, to preside over the most important episcopal see in the Southern hemisphere. That curious choice revealed Philip's strategy for the future of the church of the Viceroyalty of Peru. Philip presumably named the young jurist to implement a rigorous organization of the Church in the territory that retiring Viceroy Francisco de Toledo had only recently brought under effective civil governance. This article will demonstrate that, contrary to Philip's expectations, Toribio de Mogrovejo not only failed toinstill a Toledan spirit in the Church, but that he actively developed a mission methodology in accord with that promoted by Bartolomé de Las Casas and his followers in Peru.

Church and Commonwealth in the Catholic World

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-110
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
New World ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
The Status ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Juan Gines De Sepulveda ◽  
The Church

Early in 1532, the Catholic professor Fransisco de Vitoria lectured his students ‘On the Power of the Church’ at the University of Salamanca. Efforts like this to defend the status of the Church led, perhaps paradoxically, to a new appreciation of the state’s foundations and its basis in the order of nature. Vitoria was anxious to protect the authority of the universal Church, he also believed that there should exist a multiplicity of civil powers, each with its own integrity and degree of autonomy. While there could only be one true Church, there could and should be many commonwealths; he, like many others, was sceptical of imperial ambitions in the temporal sphere. His thinking, and that of other Catholics like Bartolomé de Las Casas, generated a critique of political or temporal empire that would gather momentum as reports of Spanish cruelty in the New World began to circulate. Yet there were also Catholics, like Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who embraced the pursuit of empire and sought to defend it, often using classical ideas but adapting them to current circumstances. As this clash of beliefs unfolded, it came to include lengthy reflection on power, natural rights and authority, including the influential work of Fernando Vázquez de Menchaca. At the heart of the debate was a question about the relationship between a universal natural law and the particular rules and commands of specific communities, be they the Catholic Church or localized political communities.

A Prophetic Radical Reform of the Church: The Last Word of Bartolomé de las Casas

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 267
Author(s):  
Luis N. Rivera-Pagán
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
New World ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Radical Reform ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

In 1566, after several decades of intense and exhausting endeavors to influence and shape the policy of the Spanish state and church regarding the Americas, years of drafting countless historical texts, theological treatises, colonization projects, prophetic homilies, juridical complaints, political utopias, and apocalyptic visions, Bartolomé de Las Casas knows very well that the end is at hand: the end of his life and the end of his illusions of crafting a just and Christian empire in the New World. It is a moment of searching for the precise closure, the right culmination of a human existence that since 1502 had been intimately linked, as no other person of his time, to the drama of the conquest and Christianization of Latin America, a continent, as has been so aptly asserted, “born in blood and fire. 

Alonso de Zorita: Early and Last Years

1976 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-513
Author(s):  
Ralph H. Vigil
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
New World ◽  
Applied Anthropology ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Active Interest ◽  
The Masses

Alonso De Zorita’s career as a Spanish judge in the Indies in the years 1548–1556, though not as well known as the career of Bartolomé de las Casas and other pro-Indian reformers, merits serious study. The arrival of Zorita and his subsequent actions as an administrator and legist represent one example of the serious efforts of the Crown in the 1540’s to impose royal control over a quasi-feudal class of conquerors and pobladores which had from the early sixteenth century entrenched itself in the New World. Moreover, Zorita was not only a jurist who attempted to implement the New Laws of 1542–43, but an inspired humanitarian who took an active interest in the native civilizations of the New World and questioned the relations that had evolved and created “a Hispano-Indian society characterized by the domination of the masses by a small privileged minority…” His ardent defense of the Indians against the charge that they were “barbarians” included a relativist line of argument that anticipated Michel de Montaigne’s celebrated comment that “everyone calls barbarian what is not his own usage.” In addition, his inquiries into native history, land tenure and inheritance laws may be considered “in effect exercises in applied anthropology, capable of yielding a vast amount of information about native customs and society” and is an example of what Europe saw or failed to see in the sixteenth century when confronted with a strange new world.

scholarly journals Bartolome de Las Casas and the Tradition of Medieval Law

1970 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Pennington
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Steady Flow ◽  
New World ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Medieval Law

As a defender of the Indians and an opponent of the methods used by the Spanish conquistadors, Bartolomé de Las Casas was as controversial a figure in the sixteenth century as he has been in the last four hundred years of historiography. Las Casas' fight to preserve the freedom of the Indians has gained for him not only devoted admirers, but also angry detractors.1Las Casas was not the only Spaniard who defended the Indians, but his efforts are the best known. He labored for fifty years before death finally halted the steady flow of polemics from his pen. However, he was not just a sheltered academician like Vitoria, but he actively championed the rights of the Indians by working and living among them in the New World.

Domingo de Salazar’s Letter to the King of Spain in Defense of the Indians and the Chinese of the Philippine Islands (1582)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina H. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Population ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Dominican Order ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria ◽  
Insight Into

Domingo de Salazar (c.1512–1594) was the first bishop of the Philippines, a member of the Dominican order, and a follower of noted critics of the Spanish imperial enterprise like the jurist Francisco de Vitoria and the historian/activist Bartolomé de las Casas. In this letter to King Philip II, Salazar denounces the abuses of the indigenous population and the mistreatment of Chinese migrants by the Spanish colonists, and calls upon the crown to intervene in the colony’s affairs. In so doing, he provides invaluable insight into the work of colonization, and the complex relationship that the Spanish Philippines developed with China and with the burgeoning Chinese population of the islands themselves. Christina Lee provides biographical and historical context.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document