Focher, Juan
FOCHER, JUAN
Franciscan lawyer and author, date and place of birth unknown; d. Mexico City, 1572. Of French origin, Focher had already received the doctorate in law in Paris before entering the Franciscan Order in the Province of Aquitania. He went to New Spain in 1540 and spent the rest of his life there. In the complex problems of beginning Church organization, his personality and training made him something of an oracle, consulted by episcopal chapters and committees. His treatises cover the main problems of colonization and evangelization of the period, and are of special importance for religious history and for the development of Mexican civil law. They demonstrate a systematic theory of evangelization for the Americas and show its application, thereby constituting the manual for the Franciscan missionaries in New Spain and the source, in great part, of the inspiration of their methods and practices. His Itinerarium catholicum is universally considered as the first attempt at a manual of systematic missiology in which is stated, for the first time, the theory of the royal vicarship in the Indies to explain the relations between Spain and the Native American Church. His numerous works were circulated at the end of the 19th century among bibliophiles, but they are largely unknown and unpublished.
Bibliography: j. focher, Itinerario del misionero en América, tr. a. eguiliz (Madrid 1960).
[a. eguiluz]