History of the Conquest of PeruPrescott, William Hickling
History
History of the Conquest of Peru
Prescott, William Hickling
Incas; Peru -- History -- Conquest, 1522-1548
As the leading files of the procession entered the great square, larger,
says an old chronicler, than any square in Spain, they opened to the right
and left for the royal retinue to pass. Everything was conducted with
admirable order. The monarch was permitted to traverse the plaza in
silence, and not a Spaniard was to be seen. When some five or six
thousand of his people had entered the place, Atahuallpa halted, and,
turning round with an inquiring look, demanded, "Where are the
strangers?"
At this moment Fray Vicente de Valverde, a Dominican friar, Pizarro's
chaplain, and afterward Bishop of Cuzco, came forward with his
brevidry, or, as other accounts say, a Bible, in one hand, and a crucifix in
the other, and, approaching the Inca, told him, that he came by order of
his commander to expound to him the doctrines of the true faith, for
which purpose the Spaniards had come from a great distance to his
country. The friar then explained, as clearly as he could, the mysterious
doctrine of the Trinity, and, ascending high in his account, began with
the creation of man, thence passed to his fall, to his subsequent
redemption by Jesus Christ, to the crucifixion, and the ascension, when
the Saviour left the Apostle Peter as his Vicegerent upon earth. This
power had been transmitted to the successors of the Apostle, good and
wise men, who, under the title of Popes, held authority over all powers
and potentates on earth. One of the last of these Popes had
commissioned the Spanish emperor, the most mighty monarch in the
world, to conquer and convert the natives in this western hemisphere;
and his general, Francisco Pizarro, had now come to execute this
important mission. The friar concluded with beseeching the Peruvian
monarch to receive him kindly; to abjure the errors of his own faith, and
embrace that of the Christians now proffered to him, the only one by
which he could hope for salvation; and, furthermore, to acknowledge
himself a tributary of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who, in that event,
would aid and protect him as his loyal vassal.16
Whether Atahuallpa possessed himself of every link in the curious chain
of argument by which the monk connected Pizarro with St. Peter, may be
doubted. It is certain, however, that he must have had very incorrect
notions of the Trinity, if, as Garcilasso states, the interpreter Felipillo
explained it by saying, that "the Christians believed in three Gods and
one God, and that made four." 17 But there is no doubt he perfectly
comprehended that the drift of the discourse was to persuade him to
resign his sceptre and acknowledge the supremacy of another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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