Mission in the Marianas

Mission in the Marianas was first published in 1975. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.The source of this translation is a pamphlet published in Madrid in about 1671 about the culture of the people of the Marianas Islands and a report of the second year of the Jesuit mission there. It was compiled by Jesuit Andrés de Ledesma from letters written by Father Diego Luis de Sanvítores and his companions at the mission. As Professor Barrett writes in his commentary: "Its pages ring and echo with the rhetoric of the missionaries who with single-minded devotion both followed and preceded the sword in the Spanish Empire. It was the fervid zeal of Diego Luis de Sanvítores that altered so greatly the lives of the people of the Marianas and led to his celebrated martyrdom there in 1672." This is a publication from the James Ford Bell Library of the University of Minnesota.