“I Heard it through the Grapevine”: Analysis of an Anti-Secularization Initative in the Sixteenth-Century Arequipan Countryside, 1584–1600

Abstract

Franciscan historian Antonine Tibesar’s study of the early evangelical accomplishments of the Franciscan Order in the Andes constitutes a landmark contribution to an insufficiently examined subject. Trying to detach his work from Joachimist debates, Tibesar did not deem the spirituality shared by peninsular friars to be relevant in explaining their poor early evangelical results. Although Tibesar acknowledged such shortcomings, he sustained that they were caused by an apathetic Franciscan engagement in parish work among the Indians. The inexperience of Spanish friars and the turmoil of the civil wars that ravaged the Andes in the aftermath of the conquest greatly explain this situation, he sustains. Additionally, Tibesar advances the idea that the undecided approach towards Indian conversion amongst sixteenth-century Franciscan authorities was the major cause of these first evangelical failures. Troubled by the hardships of life in Indian parishes and concerned about the lack of familiarity with parish administration among the Order’s ranks, the Franciscan establishment sent the friars contradictory orders, thus preventing them from bringing together a more coherent evangelical plan.

Missions and Missionaries in the Americas:A Special Teaching and Research Collection of The Americas

“…María N. Marsilli, in her study of the Arequipan countryside, has shown that the support of the indigenous leadership of the Collagua and Cabana Indians for the antisecularization campaign of the late sixteenth century was motivated by many factors, including pre-Hispanic indigenous organization, the social ambitions of the Native elite and priests, and the economic ties that bound the Arequipan countryside to places like Lima and Potosí. 24 She shows that both the economic elite and priests depended upon maintaining good relations with the indigenous elite, who controlled access to labor and who could make or break an ambitious priest's career. Political and economic factors like these could be as limiting as cultural barriers and misunderstandings.…”