Diocese of Telde

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Current coat of arms of the city of Telde u. a. with a crosier and the motto Fortunatarum Prima Civitas et Sedes (First City and First Bishopric of the Happy Islands)

The diocese of Telde was founded as the diocese of the Happy Islands (Fortunatae Insulae) in 1351 by Pope Clement VI. created. Not until 1369 was it called the Diocese of Telde . It probably existed until 1393. The evangelization of the inhabitants of the Canary Islands associated with the establishment of the diocese was limited exclusively to peaceful means.

prehistory

Based on the ideas of Ramon Llull , the plan arose around 1340 among various Mallorcan priests and monks to convert the population of the Canary Islands to Christianity exclusively through peaceful missionary work. Natives who had previously been converted to Christianity were to be used as bringers of faith.

The organizers' first step was to teach the faith to twelve natives from the island of Gran Canaria who had come to Mallorca in 1342 or at a later date. After they were baptized, they would be used as active contributors to the evangelization of the Canary Islands.

The second step of the proponents of the peaceful mission was to find shipowners and traders who financed the peaceful expedition, which could also have an economic aspect at the same time. Soon two wealthy Mallorcan traders offered themselves. Juan Doria and Jaime Segarra wanted to organize and financially support the expedition.

In a third step, they wanted to ask the Pope to grant the selfless expedition participants his spiritual grace.

Juan Doria and Jaime Segarra declared Pope Clement VI. your proposal in a personal conversation. They wanted to go to the island of Canaria and the neighboring islands with another thirty people who were loyal and devoted to God , with the deliberate intention of teaching the inhabitants, who were idolaters and pagans, the true Catholic faith and the honorable Christian customs . Pope Clement responded to the request and granted all those who took part in the mission, Mallorcans and Canaries, both lay people and clergy, the special grace of perfect indulgence for the sins they truly repented. From May to November 1351, the Roman Curia , keenly interested in the project , asked the ecclesiastical authorities in Mallorca and Catalonia for information on the economic progress of the plan of evangelization and the number of participants who had joined it. The King of Aragon and Mallorca, Peter IV , supported the project with real enthusiasm. He advocated the peaceful approach and the use of natives.

Establishment of the diocese

With the bull "Coelestis rex regum" of November 7th, 1351 Pope Clement VI. the Diocese of the Happy Islands. He appointed from Palma coming Carmelites Bernado font for the first bishop. The episcopal ordination took place in November or December 1351 in the cathedral of Avignon .

The newly created diocese was a real diocese. Although it was in an "area of ​​the unbelievers" (in partibus infidelium), it was still not a titular bishopric , as it had not fallen into the hands of unbelievers, heretics or schismatics , but the Pope assumed that in the foreseeable future a church people, there would be a clergy and a cathedral . It was therefore more like an Apostolic Prefecture . The diocese did not belong to any church province , but was directly subordinate to the Pope.

Dioceses are usually named after the place of the bishopric . At the time the diocese, later named after the city of Telde, was founded, the papal curia was not aware of any place after which the diocese could be named. Therefore, in the bull Coelestis rex regum, the foundation of the diocese of the "Happy Islands" (Fortunatae Insulae) was determined. The Pope exhorted the new bishop to build a cathedral on the islands, to elevate the chosen place to the city and to use its name as an episcopal designation. The designation as the diocese of Telde was only used at the consecration of the third bishop of Telde, but now also retrospectively.

Bishops

The first bishop Bernardo Font, appointed in 1351, was a leading member of the Carmelite Order . He was educated and politically active. In June 1354 Pope Innocent VI appointed him bishop of Santa Giusta in Sardinia. He has probably never been to the Canary Islands in his three-year tenure.

From 1354 to 1361 the bishop's seat was not occupied. Innocent VI appointed by the bull "Coelestis rex regum" of March 2, 1361 . Fray Bartolomé, a Dominican monk as the second bishop of the Happy Islands. However, he died a few months after his appointment.

It was not until 1369 that Pope Urban V in Avignon appointed the Franciscan Bonanato Tarí, born on the island of Menorca , bishop of Telde with the bull "Intercaetera" of July 2, 1369 . The papal chancellery also sent separate information on the appointment of the new bishop to the cathedral chapter, the clergy and the population of the diocese. It is assumed that this was a routine matter and that in reality these addressees did not exist. In 1390 the third bishop of Telde died. Whether he was ever in his diocese has not been proven, but it cannot be ruled out either.

On January 31, 1392, Clement VII appointed Jaime Olzina, who was born in Mallorca , to be the fourth bishop of Telde. In the bull of appointment of the new bishop "Apostolatus officium", the merits of his predecessor are emphasized without naming them in detail. The new bishop was previously u. a. worked in Fès as a diplomat in the liberation of Christian prisoners. It cannot be ruled out that he was in the Canary Islands for the whole of 1392 and at the beginning of 1393. From 1394 he supported the bishop of Mallorca in the typical function of titular bishop. He probably died in 1411, about seven years after the Rubicón diocese was established for the Canary Islands.

Missionary work

There was no adequate activity for the bishops during the construction phase on the islands, so that, apparently with the approval of the Pope, they did not meet their obligation to be present in the diocese. They were limited to occasional contacts, visits and stays of varying lengths. They organized the supply of the mission by fundraising and recruiting missionaries.

No documents are available about the missionary work in detail. In 1352 the first group of missionaries came to the island of Gran Canaria with the traders. After the traders had loaded the ship with traded products from the country, they returned to Mallorca. Communication and contact were maintained through repeated trips by traders between the Balearic and Canary Islands. New missionaries came to the island and others returned home.

The missionary work with the help of the baptized locals showed some results. In the course of time chapels and crosses were erected in different places. Overall, however, there doesn't seem to have been a targeted plan for the work, so that it lacked perspective and depth.

From 1362 the starting point of missionary efforts in the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon had shifted from Mallorca to Barcelona . From here the missionary work in the Canary Islands, which had apparently almost come to a standstill, should be intensified again. After establishing contact with Pope Urban V , he issued the bull "Ad hoc semper" on August 31, 1369 in which he stated that there were people on the Happy Islands who worshiped the sun and the moon and that it should be easy to convert them to faith in Christ by preaching the Divine Word. The previous missionary work in Gran Canaria was not mentioned in the bull. In the bull, specific instructions are made for recruiting members, equipping and carrying out the new expedition. Ten secular priests and twenty friars are to be taken with them. The suggestion to spread the faith in the national language with the help of locals, as in previous expeditions, was taken up. In conclusion, the Pope emphasized that the expedition's sponsors should provide the clerics and monks who were going on the journey with everything necessary so that they could remain there decently. At the end of the reign of King Peter IV and under the episcopate of Bishop Bonanat Tarí, the last missionary trip to the Canary Islands was organized in Catalonia. The preparations for this trip were made in a letter from the King of Aragon dated February 20, 1386 to Pope Urban VI. in which the king asked for indulgence for a number of monks who wanted to preach the gospel on the archipelago.

The Chronicle of King Henry III. of Castile was written by its chancellor Pedro López de Ayala. In it it is noted for the year 1393 that ship owners from Seville, from the coast of the Biscay and from Guipúzcoa in Seville armed some ships, loaded them with horses and drove them to the Canary Islands. The chronicle describes in detail how the Castilians rounded up the locals by the hundreds and returned with more booty, animal skins, wax, etc. If the mission escaped this severe blow - which is very unlikely - it would have to go under in the time to come, because the devastation continued at more or less short intervals. The Canaries, who saw no difference between the missionaries and the looters, believed themselves betrayed by the missionaries and killed them.

A brief information in the 40th chapter of the Chronicle Le Canarien in the version of Gadifer de la Salle is regarded as a description of the end of the mission. There is reported a will that the French conqueror Gadifer de la Salle was given by Guanches in the Telde area in 1403. It says that twelve years earlier 13 Christian brothers were killed who had lived with the Canarian population for seven years. They were accused of sending letters to Christian countries calling on their compatriots to attack the Canary Islands.

Further development

On July 7, 1404, Pope Benedict XIII founded with the bull "Romanos Pontifex" a new diocese for the Canary Islands on the island of Lanzarote , the diocese of San Marcial del Rubicón , without making any reference to the lost diocese of Telde. In 1483 the seat of the diocese of the Canary Islands was moved to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

In 1969, Pope Paul VI judged. for the submerged diocese of Telde, the titular archbishopric Telde .

literature

  • Antonio Rumeu de Armas: El obispado de Telde . Misioneros mallorquines y catalanes en el Atlántico. Ed .: Ayuntamiento de Telde Gobierno de Canarias. 2nd Edition. Gobierno de Canarias, Madrid, Telde 1986, ISBN 84-505-3921-8 , pp. 227 (Spanish).

Individual evidence

  1. Antonio Rumeu de Armas: El obispado de Telde . Misioneros mallorquines y catalanes en el Atlántico. Ed .: Ayuntamiento de Telde Gobierno de Canarias. 2nd Edition. Gobierno de Canarias, Madrid, Telde 1986, ISBN 84-505-3921-8 , pp. 51 (Spanish).
  2. Antonio Rumeu de Armas: El obispado de Telde . Misioneros mallorquines y catalanes en el Atlántico. Ed .: Ayuntamiento de Telde Gobierno de Canarias. 2nd Edition. Gobierno de Canarias, Madrid, Telde 1986, ISBN 84-505-3921-8 , pp. 52 ff . (Spanish).
  3. Antonio Rumeu de Armas: El obispado de Telde . Misioneros mallorquines y catalanes en el Atlántico. Ed .: Ayuntamiento de Telde Gobierno de Canarias. 2nd Edition. Gobierno de Canarias, Madrid, Telde 1986, ISBN 84-505-3921-8 , pp. 62 (Spanish).
  4. Antonio Rumeu de Armas: El obispado de Telde . Misioneros mallorquines y catalanes en el Atlántico. Ed .: Ayuntamiento de Telde Gobierno de Canarias. 2nd Edition. Gobierno de Canarias, Madrid, Telde 1986, ISBN 84-505-3921-8 , pp. 53 (Spanish).
  5. Antonio Rumeu de Armas: El obispado de Telde . Misioneros mallorquines y catalanes en el Atlántico. Ed .: Ayuntamiento de Telde Gobierno de Canarias. 2nd Edition. Gobierno de Canarias, Madrid, Telde 1986, ISBN 84-505-3921-8 , pp. 56 (Spanish).
  6. Antonio Rumeu de Armas: El obispado de Telde . Misioneros mallorquines y catalanes en el Atlántico. Ed .: Ayuntamiento de Telde Gobierno de Canarias. 2nd Edition. Gobierno de Canarias, Madrid, Telde 1986, ISBN 84-505-3921-8 , pp. 71 (Spanish).
  7. Antonio Rumeu de Armas: El obispado de Telde . Misioneros mallorquines y catalanes en el Atlántico. Ed .: Ayuntamiento de Telde Gobierno de Canarias. 2nd Edition. Gobierno de Canarias, Madrid, Telde 1986, ISBN 84-505-3921-8 , pp. 90 (Spanish).
  8. Alejandro Cioranescu, Elías Serra Rafols (ed.): Le Canarien: crónicas francesas de la conquista de Canarias (=  Colección de textos y documentos para la historia de Canarias . Volume 8 ). Instituto de Estudios Canarios, La Laguna, Las Palmas 1959, p. 150 (Spanish, [1] [accessed on July 28, 2016] quotations in French).
  9. Julio Sánchez Rodríguez: San Marcial de Rubicón y los obispados de Canarias. (PDF) Diario de Las palmas, 2013, accessed on July 25, 2016 (Spanish).
  10. ^ Archbishop Cristóbal Bencomo Rodríguez †. David M. Cheney, 2015, accessed June 25, 2016 .