Fray Pedro Simón was a missionary and educator belonging to the Franciscan order. He stood out for his work as a chronicler of the New Continent; during the times of the Spanish conquest, this territory was called the West Indies. The most relevant work of Fray Pedro Simón was to record in writing everything that happened in the places he visited.
Later he sent it to the king so that he would know about the customs, manners and languages of the original inhabitants of the American lands. It also had to record things related to vegetation and animal species. Fray Pedro Simón made harsh criticisms of other chroniclers of the time for writing about things they never witnessed.
Faced with this, this friar took care to appear in the places from where he related many of his stories, and tried to report as faithfully as possible - according to his appreciation - what he witnessed.
Biography
Fray Pedro Simón was born in the municipality of San Lorenzo de la Parrilla, in the province of Cuenca, Spain. He was born in the year 1574; this date is certain because Fray Pedro himself affirmed it in one of his manuscripts.
Regarding his childhood, his youth and his training, more information is unknown. However, from the positions he held within his religious order and from his writings, it is deduced that he was a man of faith.
In addition, it is presumed that he was extremely studious, a lover of research, knowledgeable about the power of the written word and a faithful subject of the Spanish Crown.
Presence in America
He arrived in America at the call of his superior Fray Agustín de la Muela. This notified him about the inauguration of a Recoletas convent in the town of Santa Fe, and requested his support to practice as a teacher in arts and theology.
He was a teacher for 14 years and, in addition to his work as a chronicler and researcher, he held various important administrative positions. Among these stand out those of guardian of the Convent of the Purification, qualifier of the Holy Office and retired reader in theology.
Plays
Fray Pedro's account is known as Historical News, although he gave it the title Historical News of the conquests of Tierra Firme in the West Indies.
This religious visited many localities; however, there were two in particular where he stayed for a long time. From those places he managed to collect more and more detailed information: the General Captaincy of Venezuela (current Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) and the New Kingdom of Granada (current Republic of Colombia).
His notes discover the historical roots of both nations. This is one of the reasons why they constitute mandatory reference documents for students of history and anthropology.
The information compiled in all his work was distributed in five volumes. The first of them dedicated to his passage through Venezuela. Each volume was divided into 7 parts, and each of these parts could have more than 50 chapters.
Fray Pedro Simón worked as a historian and linguist. In his journeys, he tried to learn indigenous words from the local ethnic groups, in order to compile data for a glossary. This vocabulary list, made up mostly of nouns, was intended to facilitate the work of Spaniards arriving in those territories.
Style
His way of telling stories is recognized for several reasons:
- For using an entertaining and simple language. His style when narrating is similar to the novels of gentlemen, which were precisely in fashion at that time.
- For its usefulness. Fray Pedro Simón did not want to count to count. He made sure that his work served a moralizing function. For this reason, its pages overflowed with examples showing characters of honorable behavior (according to their criteria) in contrast to others of reprehensible and immoral behavior.
Position before the Conquest
Writers are never impartial and Fray Pedro Simón is no exception. In his texts, he used literary, philosophical and religious ornaments to justify the atrocities committed by the Spanish.
His writings are far from recognizing the genocide committed by the Europeans to the original ethnic groups that inhabit the American lands.
This is easy to see when it is observed in his works that almost always those who are on the bright and heroic side in his stories are his compatriots battleships, while the aborigines, naked and devoid of advanced war gadgets, always carried derogatory qualifiers. According to the chronicler, the latter exercised the most cruel and vile actions.
For Fray Pedro Simón, all the punishments inflicted on the Indians were just, since they happened by divine will. To give glory to the name of God and exalt the honor of the Crown, it was legitimate to use any method. The carnage and the excesses of violence were natural and understandable in the eyes of Fray Pedro Simón.
The Council of the Indies was in charge of demanding loyalty from all chroniclers to the Spanish king in their narratives. They had no right to question his procedures or his orders.
Only one of them, also a Franciscan, dared to bravely question the barbaric methods used against the innocent Indians: Fray Bartolomé de las Casas.
Merits
The effort made by Fray Pedro Simón to compile and defend his writings must be recognized, since for his time there were many who wrote and few who finished their writings.
The number of writers who managed to overcome the filters and censorship imposed by the Crown, which were an essential requirement to see their published texts, was also small.
In addition, if any idea that displeased the Inquisition was expressed, not only was it prohibited from publication, it also ran the risk of having to pay some of the penalties imposed by the Holy Inquisition.
These penalties ranged from jail to death at the stake, depending on how they considered the seriousness of the offense. Fray Pedro Simón, died in Spain in 1628.
References
- Echeverry, A (2005) Dialectic of utopias: From no place to the perfect place in the Franciscan imaginary 1550 - 1630. Scientific journal Guillermo de Ockham. Vol. 3, No. 1. Recovered from: Bibliotecadigital.usb.edu.co:8080
- Mantilla, L. (1989). The Franciscans in the New World (17th century): Fray Pedro Simón, historian and linguist. Recovered from: dspace.unia.es
- Rey, C (2016) Aguirre's story told by Fray Pedro Simón. Recovered from: revije.ff.uni-lj.si
- Roldán, A. (2015) Pedro de Ursua, Francisco Cesar and Sir Francis Drake after the treasures of New Granada: in Historical News of the Conquests of Tierra Firme in the West Indies. Recovered from: academicworks.cuny.edu
- Shüntz, G. (1988) Thesaurus. Volume XLIII Nos. 2 and 3 Trials, review of Fray Pedro Simón and his Dictionary of Americanisms. Recovered from: cvc.cervantes.es