It is especially fitting that the Academy of American Franciscan History is being formally inaugurated this month, for in this same month of April, three hundred and thirty-five years ago, the Franciscan Commissary General of the Indies, by authority of the General of the Franciscan Order, instructed Fray Juan de Torquemada to prepare an official history of the Franciscan province of New Spain, the first to be published, in words that may well be repeated here. He wrote: “Considering how just and desirable it is that the memory of saintly men, who by their heroic deeds honored our Holy Religion, … be preserved for all time … :We are of the opinion that in our own times it is desirable to prepare chronicles that make known these deeds … And having investigated with special care the persons in this province of ours of talent, learning, virtue, and the other qualifications necessary for such an important and arduous undertaking, we have agreed that your reverence, who has all of these qualifications, be entrusted and charged … with bringing to light the many unknown facts of importance that are worthy of being recorded and known by everyone. And thus, by these presents, we request, and if necessary so order, that your reverence undertake to gather all of the reports and writings … that may be found, for the preparation of new chronicles of all the provinces, verifying anew the facts in each case, and inquiring into, or tracing and checking, the specific and general matters of importance … which in that and the other provinces of New Spain may be verified and written up, your reverence preparing all in good literary style and in historical form…

The enormous native state which Cortés overthrew August 13, 1521, is commonly called the Aztec Empire. This is true more of the English literature than of the Spanish, which sometimes prefers the half-correct “Imperio de los Mexicanos”. The writer has no quarrel with the word “Empire”, which has been questioned from time to time, but he does have with the word “Aztec” used in this connection. This originates, apparently, with Clavijero and was diffused by Prescott, a mere hundred years ago. The latter speaks initially of “the ancient Mexicans, or Aztecs as they were called” and after that uses “Aztec Empire” incessantly. This nomenclature, vulgarized through such dross as Bancroft, has swamped everything else. Nevertheless, neither Cortés nor Bernal Díaz nor Tápia, all actors in the Conquest, ever so much as mention the word “Aztec”, much less say “we conquered the Aztec Empire”. Nor does Sahagun in his encyclopedic work use the term “Aztec Empire”, nor does Motolinía. If it appears in any of these works, or anywhere among the first generation of conquerors and settlers, it is so subordinately mentioned that it has escaped the writer. Below we shall see what its conquerors did call the Empire they overthrew.

Although the Franciscan Province in the West Indies was the first in the New World, it was the Province founded in Mexico shortly after its conquest by Cortés that became the parent unit of most of the other Provinces in Spanish America. By its extraordinary missionary achievements it likewise set the pace for the work of the other Provinces. It would require much more than a few pages to present a mere outline of the history of the Franciscan mother Province of Spanish America; we can call attention only to some outstanding facts.

A Survey of the history of the Franciscan Provinces and Mission Colleges of Hispanic America, particularly of the colonial period, it seems to the writer, will be a contribution to historical scholarship inasmuch as it will point the way for further investigations by those who are devoting or who wish to devote themselves to historical research.

To many others who perhaps have heard only of the Franciscan Missions of California, such an outline will convey a faint idea at least of the magnitude and extent of the missionary work which has been carried on by the sons of St. Francis in the vast Spanish and Portuguese portions of the New World.

When Father Bartolomé Lledó, parish priest of St. Peter’s Church, Petra, Mallorca, entered another name into the baptismal register on Nov. 24, 1713, he automatically became the originator of “Serrana” as we will henceforth call Serra literature. He wrote but five succinct lines in current Mallorquín and no doubt looked upon it as a routine though obligatory task. The subject of his entry might have turned out to be no more than a God-fearing, industrious Mallorcan farmer and thus the body of Serrana would have remained just five lines of Mallorquín. But by the time another priest, Father Francisco Palou, on Sept. 5, 1784, at the Indian mission of San Carlos de Monterey, in California, wrote an unusually long death record in the libro de difuntos, events fraught with significance in Church and State had occurred. Miguel Joseph Serra had died as Fray Junipero Serra, founder and Presidente of the California missions. Seventy full and energetic years had passed, packed with thoughtful plans, arresting drama, and ceaseless activity in which oratory, authorship and practical administration were happily blended. Seventy years of Serrana had come into existence.