San Francisco de San Miguel: Fraile, Embajador y Mártir en Japón by Roberto Blanco Andrés

Abstract

Reviewed by: San Francisco de San Miguel: Fraile, Embajador y Mártir en Japón by Roberto Blanco Andrés Grace Liza Y. Concepcion ROBERTO BLANCO ANDRÉS San Francisco de San Miguel: Fraile, Embajador y Mártir en Japón Valladolid: Editorial Galland Books, 2016. 190 pp. Roberto Blanco is one of the few Spanish historians who specialize on the Philippines, his research being part of a new wave of Spanish historiography on the Spanish empire. His works, generally on nineteenth-century church–state relations, include Entre Frailes y Clérigos: Las Claves de la Cuestión Clerical en Filipinas (1776–1872) (CSIC, 2012) and El Estado en Filipinas: Marco Político y Relaciones Internacionales (1986–2010) (Edicions Bellaterra, 2012). He collaborates with the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) on various research projects, but he is a full-time secondary school teacher in Valladolid. In San Francisco de San Miguel Blanco ventures into the early Spanish period in the Pacific, focusing on the life story of San Francisco de San Miguel, a simple man from a small Spanish town whose biography exhibits events that determined the course of Spain’s imperial expansion and the Catholic Church’s mission in Asia. Fray Francisco never occupied any high position in the Franciscan order. Never ordained into the priesthood, he served as porter, cook, and nurse. He was not an intellectual. Yet by focusing on an ordinary Franciscan brother whose life unfolded in an extraordinary context, Blanco draws attention to the significance of biography in history. Biography gives the interplay of political, economic, and religious interests a human touch, even as these factors affected the course of an individual’s life. [End Page 97] Francisco was one of the twenty-six Christians (including six Franciscans, three Jesuits, and seventeen Japanese Christians who were associated with the Franciscans) who were executed on 5 February 1597 in Nagasaki upon Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s orders. Despite the enduring significance of this martyrdom, scholarly material on Francisco is scarce, leading Blanco to contribute a “detailed, rigorous and critical study of the character” (14) and help readers understand Francisco’s life in the context of the counterreformation and Spain and the Philippines in the sixteenth century. Blanco’s book thus fills a lacuna in a literature dominated by hagiographies. The complexity of Francisco’s life owes to overlapping dimensions that Blanco discusses throughout the book’s nine chapters: (a) the spirit of reform among religious orders during the counterreformation, (b) the beginning of missionary work in the Philippines, and (c) the responsibility given to Franciscan friars as ambassadors to Japan (15). The stages of Francisco’s life in the Franciscan order (first in the reformed observant branch, subsequently in the recently approved and more rigorous discalced branch), his years as a missionary in the Philippines, and his final mission as a member of the Spanish embassy in Japan all bear witness to these dimensions. The book can be divided into two parts. The first part consists of the first three chapters about Francisco’s youth and early years as a Franciscan. The last six comprise the second part, which is about his missionary life in three territories: Mexico, the Philippines, and Japan. Chapter 1 traces the origin of Francisco de la Parilla, as Francisco de San Miguel was popularly known. Blanco gives details on the missionary’s birthplace and upbringing by examining Franciscan chronicles. Chapter 2 narrates Francisco’s life as a lay brother in Valladolid and Abrojo. He was admitted to the Franciscan order on 9 January 1567 in the convent of Valladolid, which followed the observant branch of the Franciscans (34). Blanco clarifies the series of reforms within the Franciscan order that gave rise to the observant Franciscans, who practiced the spirit of St. Francis rigorously, especially concerning poverty and austerity. Chapter 3 relates Francisco’s move to the Franciscan province of San Jose, whose jurisdiction included Valladolid, Segovia, Madrid, and a part of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain. This province advocated the strictest observance of poverty, represented by the friars going discalced. It also focused on the Christianization of America and Asia. Francisco’s entry into the province [End Page 98] of San...