Missionaries and brothers by Daniel R Luna OFM

Image source: Leonardo Tertuliano OFM Conv

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1. Profiles and stories around

To know someone it is necessary to be able to look at that person face to face and by looking at them identify the traits and physical characteristics that distinguish them from other people. Through confrontation; That is to say, the frequency in which we find it and share with it, there is mutual knowledge, through experience that can be gradual, a deepening occurs to the point of knowing elements such as their way of being, of responding to the stimuli that the environment gives, of behaving, in short, that which makes each person unique, which is called the personality that is expressed in the way of living, of relating, their faith, etc.  In the case of someone who is not physically present or has already fulfilled their earthly mission and has experienced death, it can be known through the testimony of those who knew that person when they were still alive and who testify to the experience that has been had. 

In the book Franciscan America, Mariano Errasti tries to give a physical profile of how the two brave lay brothers who first arrived on the American Continent were described. It is interesting that a person does not live in an isolated world, which is why the small description ago is encompassed in a context that interconnects with other events and characters:

The first Franciscan Friars who arrived in America were Fray Juan de la Deule or el Bermejo -redhead- and Fray Juan de Tisin. Both came from the convent of Ath, the current Belgian province of Hainut. They were both laymen, that is, not priests. Two months after Columbus's arrival on his first voyage, the Franciscans of the observant branch held their general chapter in Florenzac, France. The news excited the friars and thus ignited a missionary ardor. Only Brother Jean de la Deule and Brother Jean de Tisin obtained permission from the Vicar General of the Observants, Brother Olivier Maillard, to go on a mission. 

Roughly speaking, reference is made to macro-history, that is, to the entire historical, social, political and religious framework, this encompasses events and people specifically giving a general overview of both physical and character, the place of origin is described, mentions the branch of the Order to which they belonged - in this case the observance - and events of a legal and institutional nature such as the general chapter of Florezanc, France, specifically the observance that was taking canonical and institutional form. Since from the 14th century and even more so in the 15th century it will experience its greatest consolidation, going from being a germ of return to poverty, to the radicality of the beginning to establishing itself as a movement with legal personality and a reforming organization within the Franciscan Order.

All this thanks to friars of great tenacity, great witness, care and apostolic zeal, of which the most prominent can be listed: Saint Bernardino of Siena, blessed Alberto de Sarteano, Saint John of Capestrano and Saint James of the Marches (known as “le quattro colonne dell'Osservanza” the four columns of the Observance). It should be noted that at the time the two brave missionaries lived there was only one Order of Friars Minor - without the divisions that are known today within the first Order founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. This is why it is referred to in Mariano Errasti's description of Brother Olivier Maillard, who was vicar for the observant, since the Minister General of the entire Order at that time was Brother Francesco Nanni, known as Sansoni, who probably belonged to the conventual current, while our Maillard was in charge of matters of observance.

 Without forgetting that the two factions of the Order had been facing each other for centuries, which led the Church on different occasions to seek to mediate a consensus. One of the attempts was in 1446 by Pope Eugene IV with the bull “Ut sacra Ordinis Minorum religio” which granted the observants definitive autonomy, although after the election of the observant vicar general confirmation of all the observances had to be requested from the Minister General. the Order. It is important not to forget that most of the confrontations existed over the question of how to authentically live foundational poverty. In 1430 an attempt was made to create a consensus between the two parties, with the approval of the constitutions drawn up by San Juan de Capistrano where it was prohibited:

• The use of money
• Real estate assets were renounced

 For a moment this constitution was accepted but then internal struggles began. Without forgetting either that within the observance there were groups such as the Cismontanos and Oltramontanos and other "minor congregations" that could be considered reforms within the reform movement among them: Coletinos, Amadeitas, Guadalupenses, Clarenis (some of them end up being heretics and form a group called Fraticelli), Villacrecianos. 

The two lay brothers live in this environment since thanks to the expansion of the observants in the first half of the 15th century and the bull of Pope Eugene IV, the Franciscan friars of the observance spread throughout France, Flanders and other kingdoms in Europe.

Saint Francis, Saint Anthony and Saint Bernardino of Siena in the desert, image painted for a convent of the Observance. Author: Pietro Paolo Agabiti.

As all history is connected, we cannot talk about Franciscan missionaries in these centuries without first introducing an exceptional character: Gonzalo Jimenez de Cisneros was born in Torrelaguna in 1436. He studied philosophy, theology, civil and canon law in Salamanca, from there he went on to Rome where he was ordained a priest and where he practices as a lawyer. He returned to Spain specifically to Toledo where he obtained the archpriestship of Uceda.  About to turn 50, after a profound spiritual crisis he abandons everything and joins the observant branch of the Franciscan Order, the most rigorous and strict of the two factions of the Order: Conventuals and Observants with all their reforms and derivatives.

It is there that he replaced his name, Gonzalo, with that of Francisco in honor of the founder of the religious family that welcomed him. He began a life of profound austerity and poverty that took him to the convent of La Salceda, where he directed it with care for seven years. It is there specifically that in the year 1492, Queen Elizabeth meets him, the Catholic who convinces him to be her confessor and who accepts only on the condition that he not live at court and be able to live a life of itinerancy.

In 1495, upon the death of the Archbishop of Toledo (primary seat of Spain), he was appointed by the queen herself to serve as Archbishop of the most important seat of the Iberian country. The friar archbishop and later cardinal of Santa Iglesia Romana was distinguished by many works he carried out: restoring the Cathedral of Toledo, the creation of a University in Alcalá de Henares equipped with the best humanist professors of that time and the translation of a polyglot bible that united the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin versions. He was a reformer of the clergy of his Archdiocese, a man of politics - since for all intents and purposes he was the queen's political advisor - after the Reconquista he will be in charge of the Christianization of the territories taken from the Moors and in the same way he was inquisitor of the kingdom of Castile.

As seen in this image, even after Primate Archbishop of Spain was created and Cardinal Cisneros continued to wear his Franciscan habit, which means that he never departed from his Order, it is said that under the archbishop's cloth he wore the Franciscan sackcloth that he himself mended, even In the episcopal palace he led the life of a penitent, praying and fasting daily. Because of the simple life he led, it is said that the Pope caught his attention because such simplicity was not according to his “rank.”

Why then do we talk about Cardinal Cisneros in relation to the first Franciscan missionaries in America?

 We expressly saw that the two missionaries who embarked with Columbus on his second voyage left with the permission of the father vicar of the observance. Cisneros was concerned with strengthening and consolidating the missionary work carried out by the Franciscan friars and the Hieronymite monks in the Caribbean. But not only since he would be the recipient of the information and news that came from the New World since he held the title of "Special Commissioner over all the religious of the Observance of the Order of Friars Minor in the kingdoms and dominions of our Lords." King and Queen of Spain.”  The only letter that is preserved in the hand of Brother Juan de la Deule is addressed to Cardinal Cisneros, where he expresses the way in which the inhabitants of those new lands showed themselves willing to accept the Gospel, through baptism. Later in 1500, the cardinal friar sent his own secretary, friar Francisco Ruiz, who would baptize a large number of indigenous people and offer the cardinal the situation of the new discovered territories.

Specifically, from our missionaries, let us try to compile the information found about the two lay brothers. First of all, we must start from the fact that the first two friars who first arrived in the new world were literate, that is, they knew how to read and write, from the life they led in their convent of Ath (today the Dutch part of Belgium). Much is known, but it can be assumed that they led the same rigorous, strict life as the other observant convents in Europe, between liturgical services, manual work, fasting, penances and itinerants. In the book of Franciscan America it is reported that: 

“On January 1, 1489, Brother Juan de la Deule made a sworn statement in front of the notary Guillermo de Marscal and before the witnesses Nicolàs Bourgeois and a certain Juan Eligio, deacon, all of them honorable and discreet men, as expected. And that by that date Juan de la Deule had been in that monastery for eight or nine years, that months before embarking with Columbus the two brothers had said goodbye to their guardian father, who was Brother Jacobo Florens, and that they then traveled to Spain with the permission of Brother Olivier Maillard, Vicar General of the Observant Franciscans.”  

At this point it is prudent to say that once in Spain the two lay brothers seem to have been oriented towards the missions they were carrying out to convert the Moors in Granada; But soon the two Belgian friars saw that it was not the terrain that suited their apostolic zeal. It is then that, being about to set sail, Columbus's ships join the odyssey because they were found “robust in body, pious and virtuous” according to Grassberger.

A traveling companion, Bartolomé de las Casas in his History of the Indies attests to the profile of the two brothers in his History of the Indies:

“I managed to meet two religious of Sant Francisco, who went with him (Bernardo Boyle), lay friars, but notable people, natives of Picardy or Burgundians, and who were moved to come here out of the sole zeal for the conversion of these souls, and who Although lay friars, they were very well-known and literate, so it is known that out of humility they did not want to be priests; one of whom was called Brother Juan de la Deule or Brother Juan el Bermejo, because he was one, and the other Brother Juan de Tisin; They were well known to me, and in friendship and conversation, at least one of them, very close."  

2. Dreamers of a new way of Evangelizing 

As described below, these images are the first representations made of the inhabitants of the new discovered lands taken from the book Franciscan America.

In the book Franciscan America, Brother Mariano Errasti reports how the missionaries entered the interior of the Island of Hispaniola, named after Columbus himself. First of all, Brother Juan de la Deule's interest was to know and understand the indigenous people and in a certain way to identify as much as possible with them and their lifestyle. He did not come to look for gold or get rich but to put himself at their service. , an ideal that he shared with the Hieronymite hermit Ramón Pané.

At this point it is important to say that Brother Juan de Tisin returned to Spain in 1496. While the devout and brave red friar delves into the depths accompanied by his traveling companion, the Catalan hermit Brother Ramón Pané. The latter wrote a work that is considered the first written on the entire continent. Entitled “Relation about the antiquities of the Indians”, he began it when in the spring of 1495 he moved with Brother Juan de la Deule to the domains of the chief Guarionex - currently La Vega, RD - where he lived for more than two years. along with an indigenous friend named Guaicabanux who would later become a Christian with the name of Juan, according to Pané himself.

The Island of Quisqueya, upon the arrival of the explorers of the empire of Castile and Aragon, was distributed into five chiefdoms, headed by a leader called cacique who inherited their position through their mother's noble line. (This was a matrilineal kinship system, in which social status was transmitted through female lines.) He ruled in a pyramidal structure through nobles with influence in the chiefdom and at a religious level with the shamans called bohiques. - in image 2 the postage stamp dedicated to Cacique Guarionex by the Dominican Republic in 1975.

The life that the two missionaries led is described by Brother Mariano Errasti who in the book tells us that the two missionaries learned the language of the indigenous people, whether well or poorly. Where it also says that according to Bartolomé de las Casas, Fray Ramón searched as much as he could to learn why there were more than three languages ​​on the island. The two missionaries entered to live and share the life of the indigenous people: they lived in bohíos - a style of huts made of sticks and branches usually of palm trees -, they slept in hammocks, they ate corn, cassava and tubers, jobos, guavas and guanabanas and even more identified so much with the Tainos that the two cultivated their own conuco - piece of land - of sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes or sweet potatoes. 

There is a quite interesting fact about Brother Juan de la Deule that is attested in turn by the scholar Glassberger regarding how he had to live his vow of poverty in Quisqueyan lands since due to the humidity the Franciscan habit that he brought on his trip had become damaged. rotten. The Vermejo brother then wove with natural threads and fibers a tunic that he used as a habit with his rope. 

Gradually the first two ethnographers studied the culture of the Taíno, discovering their myths and beliefs. In the words of Errasti:

 “In their nocturnal evenings or in the shadows of the gigantic ceibas, the Indians tell them where they came from and the origin of the sun and the moon and how the sea was made and where the dead go.”

In this constant relationship they learn to understand the Tainos and to see how they had the capacity to grow, to understand life, to believe, which is why they recognize that they are easy to evangelize. Mariano Errasti tells us a step that may well illustrate what we have said before:

“They come to love the Guaicabanù Indian so much that they have him as a son and brother. When Guaicabanù dies shouting: God naboria daca! God naboria daca! (I am a servant of God!), Brother Ramon let himself be overcome with the noblest feeling and exclaimed: Praise God, who gave it to me and then took it away from me!” 

The work of the two missionaries is contrasted with the heartless attitude of the other explorers and sailors who did not care about the well-being or evangelization of the primitive inhabitants. This is how Deule and Pané find themselves in the situation of having to be prophets against all the abuses that were being committed against the indigenous people. They were able to see how the indigenous people went from an open and welcoming attitude to one of resistance and defense, especially with the same chief Guarionex who had shown good will and desire to be baptized, but upon seeing that the “Christians were evil and had taken over their lands by force” and rebelled against them. 

In 1499, after the evangelizing experience, Brother Juan de la Deule returned to Spain where he met Brother Juan de Tisin, his primary companion who had returned in 1496, and together they met with Brother Olivier Maillard, vicar of the observance.

Already in 1500 the first two missionaries traveled with a fleet made up of four new missionaries, in total there were 6: Brother Juan de la Deule, Brother Juan de Tisin, Brother Juan de Robles, Brother Juan de Trasierra, Brother Francisco Ruiz and Brother Juan de Baudin. Once they touched land, Deule informed Cardinal Cisneros:

“although the land tested us all a little or a lot with fevers, so that when the caravels broke up everyone was already well, except for Brother Ruiz, we are not yet free of them” He told the Cardinal that “more than two had been baptized.” a thousand souls.” 

In the description given by Fray Juan, information about the trip and arrival on dry land is given. But according to a personal appreciation, when the missionary brother states that “animas” were baptized, he is recognizing that these individuals possessed a sacred dignity in them for being people. Endowed with will and the capacity for rationality, they were children of God and equal in respect and dignity.  Already at this very first moment the Franciscans of Santo Domingo were beginning to express dissatisfaction with Columbus and his policies towards the Indians, de la Deule expresses this explicitly when in a letter he says that "there were many occupations because of the Admiral and his brothers."

Brother Mariano Errasti tells us that these “tired occupations” meant that the Franciscans had begun an intense campaign against Columbus. He also tells us that Father Trasierra and Robles confront the Admiral, specifically Father Fray Juan de Robles informs Cardinal Cisneros that “we have had a lot of work getting these gentlemen out of here” and making the request to Cardinal Cisneros:

      “Work like the Admiral, and nothing of yours will ever return to this land, because everything will be destroyed and there would be no Christian or religious left on this island.” 

He does not stop there, as he categorizes Colon's government as “Pharaoh's power” and asks the Cardinal that the admiral not return to the island, saying that if the Kings had the intention of serving the Lord and the conversion of souls, it should be done. With all these actions, the first manifestations of what would modernly be known as “human rights” began throughout the new world, in the face of abuses and abuses by a group of conquerors.

The Franciscan friars respond by denouncing the despotism and insatiable thirst of those who ventured by sea seeking to enrich whoever sponsored the ship and with the hope of being able to ascend in social and economic status. But the friars not only stop to go against the expedition members but also to recognize the pain and oppression that these people of the Islands were experiencing, whom the Lords, the Kings of the Islands, recognize as children of God and subjects with all rights. Castile and Aragon.

At this point it is important to report a few steps from the Testament of Queen Elizabeth, the Catholic called the Codicil, there is a section in which the sovereign speaks about the Indies and its inhabitants in the Codicil, which is a posthumous provision to the will, specifically in number IX it says : 

I also command that since the Pope granted us the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea discovered and to be discovered [America and the nearby islands], and as it was my intention to seek, induce and attract the peoples who populate them to the Catholic faith , and send to the Islands and the Mainland prelates and religious and clerics and other learned people... to instruct the inhabitants of those lands in the Catholic faith, and teach them good customs. Furthermore, I beg the king, my lord, very affectionately, and I charge and command the princess, my daughter, and the prince, her husband, to do so and fulfill it, and to make this their main goal and to put great diligence into it, and that they do not consent or give rise to the Indians, neighbors and inhabitants of the Indies and Tierra Firme, won and to be won, receiving any injury to their persons or property, but on the contrary that they are well and fairly treated, and if they have received any grievance that they remedy it and provide so that nothing is exceeded in anything that was ordered and established in the apostolic letters of said concession.

It is possible that the Queen was influenced by this attitude in favor of the Indians of the islands and that she asked that their persons and property be respected, since she herself, as we could read previously, was spiritually guided by a friar -Cisneros- and considered herself herself daughter of Saint Francis, showing how the Order of Friars Minor was one that identified with the Indian and his culture, defending and spreading the message of God that makes us all children and therefore brothers. When Queen Elizabeth stipulates how her funeral should be, she asks that:

And I want and order that my body be buried in the monastery of San Francisco, which is in the Alhambra of the city of Granada, being dressed in the habit of the blessed poor man of Jesus Christ Saint Francis, in a low grave that has no relief whatsoever, except for a flat slab with letters carved into it… 

Returning to the Caribbean, specifically to the missionaries who left in the fleet of 1500 with the presence of the two intrepids, it must be said that their action did not only consist of denouncing the abuses committed against the Taínos. As a deepest aspiration, Brother Juan de la Deule wanted to establish the Church there in those new lands. On his trip he and his fellow friars provided the nascent Church with its first objects of worship: crosses, gold and silver displays, several wooden altarpieces and religious paintings. According to the historian Antonio Maza, the friars carried “a small organ and some bells with which they greatly cheered the Indians.”

The year 1505 means an important year for the presence of the Friars in the Greater Antilles. In the General Chapter of Pentecost of that year, the observants erected the first Franciscan Province in the entire new world, named “Province of Santa Cruz de las Indias” with headquarters in Santo Domingo, and to make new foundations they had to have the permission of the Cardinal. Cisneros. A province that was born with an ardent missionary vocation and with a notable apostolic zeal since a large number of the friars that made it up from the beginning moved not only through the Antilles but also reached the coasts of Nueva Andalusia - the eastern coast of Venezuela. -.

 In the 17th and 18th centuries it was a flourishing institution with a presence in Hispaniola - DR and Haiti -, San Juan Bautista - Puerto Rico -, Jamaica and Venezuela, in Darién - Panama - Cuba but in 1609 they passed to the Santa Elena Province of the Florida. In the words of Brother Mariano Errasti, it was a “launch of missionaries” since many of the other friars who during the years came as missionaries to America passed or lived in some of the convents of the Province, such is the case, for example, of San Junípero Serra who rested for a month in Puerto Rico or Brother Pedro de Gante who was in the Convent of Santo Domingo in the same conditions and many other missionaries.

In 1508, Brother Juan de la Deule went to Jamaica where, according to some historians, he died in the year 1511. Thus, a man passed through this world in love with Jesus Christ so deeply that he wanted to make him known where the message of the proclamation of the Good News had not reached. News of the Gospel. H. Lippens, his countryman, called him “hero of the first American mission.” Errasti writes about him: 

“The first Franciscan apostle of America evangelized in the midst of clearly unjust incipient social structures, which he denounced. And, living with the Indian and assimilating their culture with love and a spirit of service, he had the brilliant success of opening, the first in the New World, the path that leads to an authentic liberating evangelization. 

There is little information about Brother Juan de Tisin, in 1511 he and four other friars went to Cuba with the advance Diego Velazquez. In 1513 there is news of him, in the massacre of Cacique Hatuey who had revolted against the Spanish and dominated almost all of Cuba in an insurrection. The Spanish manage to win and he is punished by burning at the stake. This is when Brother Juan enters:

“Before burning him at the stake,” said the Dominican Father Las Casas, “a Franciscan approached him to talk to him about heaven and eternal salvation. The unfortunate Indian asked him if the Spaniards went to heaven, and upon his affirmative response, he expressed his desire to go to hell.” 

After that, it was most likely that he died right there in Cuba, the truth is that there is no more information about him. Who, despite returning to Spain in 1496, returns to die in these new lands of good men and women, brothers in faith, recipients of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Some of the convents of the Province of the Holy Cross of the Indies – today almost all in ruins – where the living memories of the tireless work of the Franciscans in the Antilles and Venezuela are still preserved. The image below in black and white is the official seal that was granted by the Order to the first province of the New World. Certainly the Province is the culmination of the mission of Brother Juan de la Deule and his fellow missionaries.

3. Memory and legacy

Remembering that Juan de la Deule once arrived on the island of Hispaniola, he continued his mission, joining the hermit Ramón Pane of the Order of Saint Jerome. Their job was to collect ethnographic information, so Brother Mariano Errasti gives an assessment that is valid and that is presented in a fair way with the historical facts surrounding the insertion of the first missionaries in America. Since Pané's work is often isolated without forgetting that, as in the Gospel, the command to the disciples was to go two by two; Thus two were the pioneers of Evangelization in the New World:

“The titles of first ethnographer, first catechist and first anthropologist of America given to Brother Ramón Pané should also be granted to Brother Juan de la Deule, because together they studied the customs, myths and beliefs of the Indians, and together they catechized them. ”.

  In the Pastoral Letter of the Dominican Episcopate of 2015, two paragraphs are dedicated to them and to the work of the Franciscan friars in the Quisqueyan territory, which read as follows:

70. We remember with admiration the pioneers of evangelization and catechists who were religious brothers, not priests, who went to live among the indigenous people to learn their language and know their customs and religious ideas and thus transmit the gospel to them, respecting and valuing their culture. . They were Fray Ramón Pané, monk of the Order of San Jerónimo, who was the first European to study and learn an indigenous language, Taíno, and the first to write the first treatise on indigenous Taíno culture; and his fellow Franciscans Fray Juan de la Duelle and Fray Juan Tissin…

71. We recognize Fray Juan de la Duella and his companions as the founders of the first Christian community formed by indigenous people in America by conferring baptism on Juan Mateo and his brother Antón who became the first catechists of the New World upon achieving baptism. of Cacique Guaticagua and 16 members of his family.

72. We remember the first religious community established among us in 1502 by the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor when they founded the first monasteries in La Vega, La Vera Paz (today in Haiti) and Santo Domingo, and becoming the largest religious group of the Island throughout its colonial history. The Franciscans were committed to the defense of the Indians and were the ones who created the first school for the education of indigenous leadership in their monastery of La Vega and founded their general studies for the training of their members. 

The Church and the Order present throughout the American continent owe their foundation to these intrepid lay brothers who with courage and devotion came to the New World to establish the Kingdom of God in the lives of all the people who encountered the Gospel.

Sources

 History of the Franciscan Order: C. Schmitt, DIP, vol. VI (1980), col. 1027.

For the party concerned Cardinal Cisneros:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gipD-TBwcR0

P. Domenico Cresi, San Francesco e i suoi Ordini, Edizioni Francescani di Firenze, Siena, 1955.

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