Toribio de Benavente Motolinia - Life and Times

Life and Times

Toribio entered the Franciscan Order as a young boy, dropping his family name of Paredes in favor of his birth city, as was the custom among the Franciscans. In 1523 he was chosen to be among the first twelve missionaries to be sent to the New World.

After a strenuous journey he arrived in Mexico where Toribio was greeted with great respect by Hernán Cortés. Upon riding through Tlaxcala the Indians commented on his ragged Franciscan robes, saying "Motolinia", which in the Nahuatl language means "He afflicts himself" or "He is poor". This was the first word he learned in the Nahuatl language and he took it as his name. He was named Guardian of the Convent of San Francisco in Mexico City where he resided from 1524 to 1527.

From 1527 to 1529 Toribio worked in Guatemala and Nicaragua, studying the new missions in that area. Back in Mexico he stayed at the convent of Huejotzinco near Tlaxcala, where he had to help the natives against the abuse and atrocities committed by Nuño de Guzmán. He suggested to the native leaders that they complain to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga about Guzmán but the latter accused him of trying to instigate a revolt among the Indians against the Spanish sovereignty. In 1530 he went to the Convent of Tlaxcala and contributed in the foundation of the City of Puebla de Los angeles. With Franciscan colleagues he traveled to Tehuantepec in Guatemala and to the Yucatan to undertake further missionary work.

Even though Motolinía protected Indians against the abuse of Guzmán, he did not share the opinions of the Dominican bishop Bartolomé de las Casas, who saw the conquest and subjugation of the Indians as a crime and against all Christian morality. Motolinía believed that God would protect the Indians once converted and that the missionary work thus was more important than fighting the encomienda system and he remained a defender of the conquest, the encomienda system and the evangelization. In fact, in a famous letter to King Charles V of Spain, he undertook a virulent attack upon Las Casas, intending to discredit him completely. He called him "a grievous man, restless, importunate, turbulent, injurious, and prejudicial" and even an apostate, in that he had renounced the Bishopric of Chiapas. He furthermore advised the king to have Las Casas shut up for safe keeping in a monastery. In 1545 the encomenderos of Chiapas asked for him to come there to defend them against Las Casas but he declined, in the same way he declined a position as bishop offered to him by the king.

Having founded many cloisters and convents in Mexico and supposedly baptized more than 400,000 Indians, Toribio retired to the Convent of San Francisco in Mexico City, where he died in 1568. He is remembered in Mexico as one of the most important evangelists.