Fray Juan de Torquemada

Juan de Torquemada
Fray Juan de Torquemada, from Lucas Alamán's Historia de la República Mexicana (1860)
Title	Minister Provincial, Province of Santo Evangelio, México
Personal
Born	Juan c. 1562 Torquemada, Palencia, Kingdom of Spain
Died	1624 (aged 61–62) convent of Tlatelolco, New Spain
Religion	Roman Catholic
Notable work(s)	architect, engineer, historian
Organization
Order	Franciscan (1579–1624)
Senior posting
Period in office	1614-1617
Successor	Juan López
Ordination	c. 1587

Juan de Torquemada (c. 1562 – 1624) was a Franciscan friar, active as missionary in colonial Mexico and considered the "leading Franciscan chronicler of his generation."^[1] Administrator, engineer, architect and ethnographer, he is most famous for his monumental work commonly known as Monarquía indiana ("Indian Monarchy"), a survey of the history and culture of the indigenous peoples of New Spain together with an account of their conversion to Christianity, first published in Spain in 1615 and republished in 1723. Monarquia Indiana was the "prime text of Mexican history, and was destined to influence all subsequent chronicles until the twentieth century."^[2] It was used by later historians, the Franciscan Augustin de Vetancurt and most importantly by 18th-century Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero. No English translation of this work has ever been published.