archivum franciscanum historicum Periodica Publicatio PP. collegii S. bonaventurae
annus 107 iulius - december 2014 - Fasc. 3-4
ProPrietaS litteraria Fondazione collegio S. bonaventura Frati editori di Quaracchi via vecchia di Marino, 28-30 00046 grottaFerrata (roma) italia
recensiones
539
en blanco y negro, más 5 planimetrías, todas sin un número de orden, como hubiera sido conveniente. el Apéndice B tiene 36 páginas sin numerar y 17 ilustraciones a toda plana, esta vez numeradas, bajo el rótulo Restituciones gráficas ideales. Mil plácemes a los autores por una obra que enriquece sobremanera la historiografía franciscana más reciente de la región Murciana. Francisco Víctor sánchez Gil, oFM instituto teológico de Murcia oFM, españa
stachera, siMeón czesław, oFM. – Franciscanos y Sultanes en Marruecos. Relaciones entre el poder (al-sulṭān) y la obra religiosa y humanitaria de los Frailes Menores. – 18011 Granada, Facultad de teología de Granada (
[email protected]), Profesor Vicente callao 15, españa, 2013. – 240 x 170 mm, 276 p., cD-rom. – (Biblioteca Teológica Granadina 41).€ 25,50 the Franciscan liturgical calendar celebrates early friars who shed their blood preaching conversion to the Gospel among Muslims in Morocco. the liturgy recalls the courage of Berard and companions, the protomartyrs of the Franciscan order (1220), and Daniel and companions, who died at ceuta (1227), but it quietly passes over the equally heroic but less dramatic ministry of many missionary friars in the centuries since. simeón czesław stachera, himself a missionary in Morocco, has written a book attempting to remedy that imbalance. this published version of the author’s doctoral dissertation from the University of Granada honors the diligent charitable work of friars in Morocco and makes a major contribution to the study of the christian presence there in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. stachera’s study moves from missiology to history and back again. he opens with a description of the early friars and st. Francis’ distinctive approach to islam (part one), then chronicles Franciscan missionary endeavors in Morocco and the relationship between the spanish friars and the sultans (part two), and concludes with missiological propositions for the church today (part three). the author primarily focuses on a particular collection of ẓahīrs (sp. firmanes) issued by various Moroccan sultans on behalf of spanish Franciscans from 1637-1794. these open letters with orders from the sultan grant various rights and privileges to these spanish friars and attest the esteem the friars held in the eyes of Muslim rulers. the sultan Mawlāy ismā’īl (r. 1672-1727) provides the most interesting contrast here. typically remembered as a terribly harsh despot, he simultaneously acted as the greatest protector of the spanish friars, especially Friar Diego de los ángeles. stachera attributes the sultans’ esteem to the friars’ persevering care for christian captives, fulfilling their missionary call to be lesser brothers among the least. Most of the ẓahīrs relate to this ministry among prisoners, granting the spanish friars permission to enter, leave, and travel within the kingdom, permission to enter and leave compounds of captives, and the authority to adjudicate disputes among christians. in this period, neither orders dedicated to the redemption of captives (like the trinitarians and Mercedarians) nor French Franciscans enjoyed the favor these ẓahīrs promised
540
recensiones
to the spanish friars. stachera describes the sultans’ affection for the spanish friars as a testimony to the friars’ virtue, but also as evidence against long held european assumptions about Muslims’ unique responsibility and guilt for piracy and slavery. the ẓahīrs never describe the friars as dhimmīs, but guarantee protections for them which, in the author’s assessment, emerge from the years of disinterested service the friars had performed. these documents thus demand a more complicated and nuanced understanding of the relationship between Muslim rulers and their christian subjects than this period typically receives. the author does a fine job of contextualizing the ẓahīrs with regard to the history of Franciscan missions in general, but offers less help with regard to the social and political context of the mission in Morocco. lists of dynastic succession and the friars who served in Morocco enable a reader to keep names and dates straight, but one should bring to this book some substantial background knowledge of Moroccan history in the period. the text lacks any comparison to the situation in algiers or other centers of corsair activity. such comparison could aid stachera’s worthwhile effort at some historical revision. stachera is at his best in his up-close descriptions of the ministry of the friars, including a vivid portrait of the conditions of christian captives in the mazmorras. the lasting contribution of stachera’s work will be the availability of the ẓahīrs themselves, previously unedited and unstudied. in chapter six, stachera offers a brief summary of the contents of each of the 112 ẓahīrs and eight letters on similar themes. these summaries more than suffice for most historians who have an interest in this period. the volume contains an invaluable cD with fine color images of all of the manuscripts on which the author based his research. these include the original arabic ẓahīrs as well as, in most instances, the handwritten spanish translation P. Francisco María cervera prepared in the 1920s. the disc also provides transcriptions of the arabic text and stachera’s fine translations into more contemporary spanish with consistent transliteration. stachera’s spanish translations are searchable. Depending on one’s computer, one may struggle to search or to copy the arabic text, but the arabic transcription is easy to read and generally free of error, to this reader’s eye. the disc and the book together thus function more as a reference work than a historical narrative. while one expects this archival style from a doctoral dissertation, the text suffers from a consistent decision to report data rather than analyze it. For example, in chapter seven, the author attempts to weave the contents of the ẓahīrs together by organizing the privileges thematically, but this leaves the overall impression that little changed in the friars’ ministry and the sultans’ favor for it over the course of two centuries. one could read the ẓahīrs in the opposite direction: if friars requested and received documents renewing similar or identical privileges many times over the course of decades, did this result from the failure of local officials to recognize those privileges and the friars’ need to continually petition sultans for them? while this question does not affect stachera’s primary point about the sultans’ esteem for the friars, stachera subtly implies throughout that the ẓahīrs manifest the reality of daily life without investigating whether this is the case. stachera’s inclination to take archival documents at face value also shows in his use of early Franciscan sources. he reports the words st. Francis supposedly uttered upon hearing of the deaths of the protomartyrs, that “finally
recensiones
541
i can say that i have five true lesser brothers” (p. 9). stachera also reports that st. Francis did not travel to the sultan with any intent to establish dialogue, but with the dual intent to preach conversion to the Gospel and to receive the grace of martyrdom. scholars have questioned the historicity of both of these reports, due to the theological approaches manifested by the texts in which they appear. stachera is far from alone in concluding that Francis journeyed with the intent to convert the sultan Mālik al-Kāmil and the expectation that he would receive the martyr’s palm—indeed, this reviewer shares that assessment. however, stachera’s failure to acknowledge any debate about this matter is significant here. reports about Francis’ travel to egypt have great consequence for a Franciscan theology of mission among Muslims; in a work of history and theology on this topic, these reports merit a scrutiny they do not here receive. stachera does emphasize the unanticipated consequences of Francis’ meeting with the sultan. the complimentary virtues of these two men yielded a mutual respect that continues to serve as a model; Francis’ crusade is a crusade of “encounter” (53), an encounter characterized by submission. however, if Francis returned to europe transformed by the encounter, as stachera argues he did, why does Francis react with such jubilation to the deaths of the protomartyrs? stachera never addresses this tension. the book’s structure shows the author’s drive toward properly theological and missiological questions. he uses the dynamism of the early Franciscan missionary impulse in conjunction with the data of the ẓahīrs as a means to reflect on Franciscan mission today. stachera’s approach to the history of the Moroccan mission gives little attention to the protomartyrs and the martyrs of ceuta, focusing instead on the broader context of the friars’ presence in Morocco. that context has largely been a peaceful mission of presence which engaged well with the reigning powers. stachera insists that for Franciscans, the only possible attitude toward Muslims according to the Gospel is “neither rejection nor condemnation, but dialogue” (197). the ẓahīrs manifest this reality: a world in relationship. in stachera’s reading, the friars never expected that this would be a relationship of equals, and in the era of the ẓahīrs, such equality never occurred. the friars simply sought to obey the rule and become subject to others, just as today friars should strive to be “brothers in relation” avoiding every kind of exclusion (199). stachera urges a “dialogue of borders” which enables participants to move across borders to a real encounter (230). the proper vocation of the friar minor is to live as a pilgrim and to move toward borders, then cross them (245). in addition to his Franciscan heritage, stachera’s missiology draws on the life and writings of st. John Paul ii. the encyclical Redemptoris missio provides a theoretical lens to reflect on the period of the ẓahīrs, which stachera considers an evangelizing mission precisely because it revealed the love of God for the world which was manifest in Jesus christ. the friars “became the sacrament of christ for those who had not known him,” and did so among Muslims who confessed, with the friars, the absolute sovereignty of God (215). these reflections occur in chapter ten, the book’s final chapter, which has a scattered quality. stachera describes how the friars’ work conformed to the eight different forms of evangelizing mission articulated by John Paul; the author’s decision to fit the friars’ labors into a theological framework developed centuries later rather
542
recensiones
than to explore the consequences of RM for missionaries today is curious. to see the significance of this framework, one must notice the disc’s inclusion of a ẓahīr which King Ḥassan ii of Morocco sent to the pope in 1983. stachera thus frames the contemporary situation, in which the ruler respects the rights and practices of christian minorities in Morocco, in continuity with sultans’ past admiration for the spanish friars minor. this parallel limps, however. earlier sultans granted privileges to the spanish friars who ministered to christian captives, many of whom arrived in Morocco via piracy, while the sultans simultaneously denied those privileges to other christians. the sultans’ supportive treatment of this christian minority—a small group of spanish friars—depended upon certain narrowly limited conditions. while Ḥassan ii cast his letter in a format familiar from centuries past, the stark geopolitical differences between the seventeenth century context and the 1980s are clear. stachera’s inclusion of this ẓahīr, along with brief biographical sketches of the exemplary missionaries Bl. Juan de Prado (d. 1631), P. José lerchundi (d. 1896), and Bishop antonio Peteiro (d. 2010) seem intended to plug gaps in the historical narrative but leave the text hovering somewhat between a more comprehensive history of the Moroccan mission and a much more limited focus on ẓahīrs in the early modern period. in sum, one must commend stachera for publishing a work with both historical and theological value, bringing to the public eye new primary sources and putting them in conversation with recent insights from the church’s magisterium and the leadership of the order of Friars Minor. his exhortations to selfless, evangelical service among Muslims flow from his deep commitment to the Moroccan mission and his careful archival work offers an enduring benefit to historians. Jason welle, oFM
