As the leading lines 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, Atahualpa 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 breviary,
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, who, in that event, would aid and
protect him as his loyal vassal.
Whether Atahualpa 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." 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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