Ramón Pané
A friar of the order of St Jerome who stayed on Hispaniola after Columbus’s second voyage, lived with the island’s people, and wrote an account of their religion together with a record of the first baptisms there.
Pané introduces himself as “a poor hermit of the Order of St Jerome” writing at the admiral’s command about the beliefs and idolatry of the Indians (Pané, Antiquities of the Indians p. 11). He says that when the other friars returned to Castile he stayed, first at the fort of Magdalena in the province of Macorix, whose language he learned, and then for almost two years with the cacique Guarionex, taking with him a convert who knew both languages (Pané, Antiquities of the Indians pp. 27–29).
He records the first baptism on the island, that of Guaticaua, renamed John Matthew, on St Matthew’s day 1496, and the deaths of John Matthew and his brother at the hands of Guarionex’s people, whom he regards as martyrs (Pané, Antiquities of the Indians pp. 27–29) (Pané, Antiquities of the Indians pp. 30–31). He ends by urging that chiefs who keep their people from Christian teaching be punished (Pané, Antiquities of the Indians pp. 30–31). His treatise survives only at second hand; see Account of the Antiquities of the Indians and Christianity Crosses the Atlantic.
In the timeline
- 1493, firm dateChristianity Crosses the Atlantic
In 1493 Pope Alexander VI grants the lands Columbus has found to the crown of Castile and charges it to convert their peoples. A second fleet carries priests to Hispaniola, where mass is said in January 1494 and a friar, Ramón Pané, records the first baptisms.