Luis Gerónimo de Oré. Relacion de los martires que a avido en las provincias de la Florida. Madrid?: ca.1617.
Luis Jerónimo de Oré, a Franciscan, preached in many cities throughout Peru. He was expert in Quechua and Aymara, the two most important Indian languages in the Andean region. He was named bishop of La Imperial, Chile, in 1620. A tireless worker, he published many books, most notably the Symbolo cathólico indiano (Lima, 1598), which includes the first scientific prose written in Quechua. He travelled to Europe around 1605 and published his Rituale seu Manuale Peruanorum (Naples, 1607), a polyglot manual for priests working in the Indies.
While in Europe he recruited priests to participate in the spiritual conquest of Florida, a region he visited on several occasions. Years later, in 1612, he went to visit Garcilaso Inca de la Vega in Córdoba. His religious chronicle entitled Relación de los mártires... de la Florida was published around 1617, probably in Madrid, and it is a bibliographical rarity. At the end of his life, while serving as bishop in the southern part of Chile, Oré advocated the peaceful conquest of the Araucan indians and called for an increased number of religious workers in the region.
The Durand Collection has the rare first edition, enhanced by a marginal note that refers to Garcilaso Inca's Florida. There is just one other known copy in Spain, in which no date appears.
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