TENORIO, GONZALO

Franciscan theologian and missionary; b. Jaén, Peru, 1602; d. Spain, 1682? Tenorio, son of a noble family, was a professor of law at the University of San Marcos before entering the Franciscans on July 18, 1626. During his years in the order he taught most of the time, with the exception of the period from 1642 to 1647, when he worked in the Indian missions of Cerro de la Sal. While there he did some exploration of the rivers in an attempt to find a water route to link the missions of Peru and Quito. He became provincial of the Franciscan province of Peru in 1650, and in 1657 he was appointed by the Crown to survey and tax the lands of southern Peru. He was the author of a number of theological treatises (Comentario a las sentencias, De auxiliis, Quaestiones scholasticae, etc.). His major work, 16 manuscript volumes, which might be titled Biblia virginea, never received royal permission for publication because it was Scotistic. In it he centered the Bible and the Church about Mary; thus the work is important for the history of Mariology. However, he extended his concepts far beyond that. He saw a special providence unfolding in history through a chosen people, through Spain to the Creoles of the New World. He envisioned a future in which the pope would take refuge in Peru and govern the world from there. Tenorio stressed the superiority of the Creole learning and spirituality over that of the Europeans and exemplified the Creole pride on a theological level at the time when they were beginning to demand political equality with the peninsulares.

Bibliography: j. l. phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World (Berkeley 1956). a. eguiluz, "Father Gonzalo Tenorio, O.F.M. and His Providentialist Eschatological Theories on the Spanish Indies," Americas 16 (1959–60) 329–356.

[a. eguiluz]