Abstract

CARRILLO CAZARES, Alberto. The utopia of friar Jacobo the Dane and his struggle in favor of an indigenous clergy. Relac. Estud. hist. soc. [online]. 2012, vol.33, n.130, pp.189-216. ISSN 2448-7554.

Against the backdrop of the Mexican Church's 16^th-century evangelization project, this work sets out to contextualize the efforts of Friar Jacobo Daciano, a Danish Franciscan, to defend the religious rights of those Indians who, though baptized, were denied access to other sacraments, including the right to enter the priesthood; this because of racist arguments that clearly contradicted the practices of the so-called primitive Church of the Apostles. Daciano, the last Provincial of the Seraphic Order in Denmark, was expelled from his homeland upon the introduction of Protestantism into the country. He first went to Spain whence he found his way to Mexico in 1542, where he was named Custodio of his Order in Michoacán. His dream of evangelization was spelled out in a work written in Latin and Castilian entitled Declamación del pueblo bárbaro de los indios que habiendo recibido el bautismo desea recibir los demás sacramentos [Declamation of the barbarous peoples of the Indies who having received baptism desire to receive the other sacraments], which set off a heated controversy inside his own Order. His memory has been kept alive for over four centuries in the indigenous towns of Zacapu and Tarecuato in Michoacán.

Keywords : Indian's religious rights; indigenous clergy; history; utopia.

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