Page:History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas.pdf/82

Rh Fuensalida and Orbita. The account continues thus:

“Three or four years later, when the year 1618 was already running its course, on the 25th of March, while Francisco Ramirez Briceño was governing these Provinces, the Provincial Chapter of the Religious Order of San Francisco was held in the City of Merida; before it,...Padres Fray Bartolomé de Fuensalida and Fray Juan de Orbita offered to go and preach the Holy Evangel to the Itzaex; both of these were Learned Men and of consummate Virtue, they were Priests well versed in that Maya Tongue which was natural to those Itzaex as to the Yucatecs, where they had been before.

“...It was determined that they should set forth on that Holy Errand; and they, well pleased, and trusting in God, determined to depart without delay and without other arms than the loving force of the Divine Word, thus fulfilling the will of the King that only Religious should go, and without the clangor of Soldiery. The Provincial gave them their patents which were presented before the Bishop, Don Gonzalo de Salazar, who was so overjoyed at their holy resolution that had his presence not been needed for the Government of his Bishopric, he would have gone with the Padres.

“Since this could not be, the Bishop despatched to them with great pleasure very ample Authority, in which he gave them as much Power over the Spaniards as they would have had if he had been present with them; and especially in regard to the People of the Town of Salamanca de Bacalar and its territory, commanding the Beneficiado of that Town and District, which includes Tipu, under penalty of the greater Excommunication, in no manner direct or indirect to embarrass or to expel the Religious while they were in Tipu, from which point they were to make ready for their Entrada to the Itzaex.

Briceño's Opposition. “And the Bishop perceived that the Religious were going without attention to temporal matters, for the Governor Francisco Ramirez Briceño, in spite of His Majesty's command that in such Cases the Necessary Funds for the Divine Worship and the Viaticum for the Religious should be given from the Royal Chest, did not wish to give anything to these men; nor did he wish to give them even the