Toribio de Benavente
Spanish Friar Minor, Catholic missionar in Mexico, Novohispanic mesoamericanist
Toribio of Benavente (1482, Benavente – 1565, Mexico City, New Spain), also known as Motolinía, was a Franciscan missionary and one of the famous Twelve Apostles of Mexico who arrived in New Spain in May 1524. His published writings are a key source for the history and ethnography of the Nahuas of central Mexico in the immediate post-conquest period as well as for the challenges of Christian evangelization.
He is probably best known for his attacks on the Dominican defender of the rights of the indigenous peoples, Bartolomé de las Casas, who criticized the Conquest. Though agreeing with Las Casas's criticism of the abuses of the conquistadors, he did not agree with the wholesale condemnation of the Spanish Conquest, as well as criticisms of the Franciscan practice of baptism en masse of the indigenous people of the new world. Due to these differences he went on to vilify Las Casas.
Early life
Toribio entered the Franciscan Order at the age of seventeen, dropping his family name of Paredes in favor of his city of birth, as was the custom among the Franciscans. In 1523, he was chosen to be among the Twelve Apostles of Mexico, to be sent to the New World.
Evangelist New Spain
After a strenuous journey he arrived in Mexico, where he was greeted with great respect by Hernán Cortés. Upon walking through Tlaxcala the Indians said of his ragged Franciscan robes "Motolinia", Nahuatl for "one who is poor or afflicted." That was the first word he learned in the language, and he took it as his name.
For the Franciscan Order, poverty was an important and defining virtue.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q532539. VIAF identifies the subject as 104831464. The Library of Congress control number is n80132768. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1482, 1565, 1524 and 1523.
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This entry incorporates text from “Toribio de Benavente” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.