The Guadalajara Reporter

Franciscan brothers, the first Catholic order in Mexico, struggled to convert and try to protect Indians set adrift by the conquest

It is June 24, 1524. Hernan Cortes kneels before twelve ragged and barefooted men, and kisses the soiled, frayed hem of the habit of their leader, Martin de Valencia. At that moment the Spiritual Conquest of Mexico began.

The twelve exhausted Franciscan missionaries, who had just walked from Veracruz to the new capital of New Spain (being built on the ruins the former capital of the Aztec empire) were stunned. And the Mejica members of the large retinue accompanying Cortes were astonished to see, the great captain, the conqueror of all Mexico, humbling himself before a band of haggard, bearded men whose bare feet were bleeding, whose clothes were torn.

All along their long (nearly 300 mile) route from the Veracruz, they were called “motolinias” ­— “the poor ones,” “the unfortunates ones” — by Nahuatl-speaking natives. It was a name that the twelve Franciscans embraced, for these “servants of God” were ascetic, humble and cloistered — and exceptionally energetic and initutive. One of them, Toribio de Benavente adopted motolinia as his last name.

The first group of missionaries sent to Cortes disappointed him. They were Flemish Franciscans headed by a bastard son of the Spanish king. The Spanish disliked Nordics almost as much as the Moors. But Cortes diplomatically did not reject them; he sent them off to Texcoco and asked the king for something better. He was pleased with the second group, which was quickly known as The Twelve, echoing the Twelve Apostles.

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