THE REDEMPTIVE ORDERS – PART 2

Both the Trinitarian and Mercedarian orders functioned quite effectively and pursued their virtuous goal of ransoming captives throughout the era of the Crusades and of the Reconquista in Spain. In the turbulent times of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, however, they began to struggle.

The Trinitarians were hit especially hard.

Though they had been originally founded at Cerfroid (located about 40 miles/65 kilometers northeast of Paris), within a couple of generations they gravitated closer to the center of French power, and they became headquartered in and around Paris. They were also, however, a wide-spread organization, with houses scattered across Europe. Not only did they lose all their properties in the north, in what became Protestant Europe, but by the late sixteenth century many of their houses in Catholic Europe, and even in France, were foundering, and the Order began to fail at its primary mission—ransoming captives. It was also riven by internal strife. In Spain, a reformed faction known as the discalced (barefoot) Trinitarians emerged and, after receiving a Papal blessing, began competing for resources as a rival organization—leaving the Order split between the new and the old factions.

The Mercedarians, a wealthier and more powerful order, fared better than their rivals and never lost their ability to organize ransom expeditions. Between 1600 and 1635, for instance, they managed to launch eighteen successful missions, ten to Tetouan, on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco, two to Salé, one to an unspecified location in “Africa,” and five to Algiers. In total, they redeemed very nearly 2,500 captives during this period.

The Mercedarians left quite extensive records that have been collated and published. These records provide a glimpse into what the ransoming process was like.

The first thing to keep in mind when looking at the Mercedarian records is that the Barbary corsair enterprise was ,above all, an absolutely ruthless business enterprise, and when it came to ransoming captive slaves, North African corsairs drove the hardest of hard bargains. They did, after all, have the whip hand, for they had the power to do whatever they liked to their captives.

Here for example, is a typical complaint about the difficulties of negotiation:

“Friar Andres Ruiz, of Aragon, and Friar Thomas Ramon, of Valencia, went to Algiers in 1641 to ransom suffering captives. Despite having brought large sums of money, they could only rescue 110 people because the captives were only offered for sale at enormously high prices.”

Here is another example:

“Friar Domingo Usabiaga, of Aragon, and Friar Juan Bautista Guerau, of Valencia, traveled to Algiers with 5,000 escudos in gold, and with cloth and merchandise worth another 6, 000. They arrived in Algiers on June 2, 1604. After two months there, they redeemed 104 captives, of all ages, gender, and nation. Among those redeemed were five priests whose liberation cost an enormous amount of money and wrangling and fatigue, for the Algerians made outrageous demands. In the end, one of these priests, a Carmelite, died before he could even embark on the ship, due to the terrible mistreatment and torment he had suffered at the hands of the barbarians during his painful captivity.”

And a third example:

“In 1615, Friar Juan Cavero, of Aragon, Friar Isidro Valcazer, of Castilla, Friar Ginés de Arrieta, of Andalusia, and Friar Tomás Sanz, of Valencia went to Tetuan, and in the kingdoms of Fez and Morocco. There they liberated 258 Christians, less than they thought, because most of them were children, boys, or women, all of whom were in great danger and cost very high prices.”

Children, boys, and women enslaved in North Africa were “in great danger” (and very expensive) because they were objects of sexual desire. The children and boys were also seen by North Africans as potential converts to Islam, and the Mercedarian friars would have considered them to be in great spiritual danger.

The Mercedarians, like the Trinitarians, can sometime seem a little too self-congratulatory in the records they kept. Look at the following for example:

“Friar José de Toledo did not rest and was continually striving to liberate the poor captives held in North Africa. In the year 1646, seeing the success of preceding expeditions, and knowing the great suffering of the captives in Algiers, he sailed to that city. After a thousand penalties and endless days of arduous negotiations, he rescued 293 Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian captives, who embark for Spain. Upon his arrival, Friar José was admired by all the world, for when people saw the captives he had liberated, they realized the generous intrepidity of the Mercedarian Friars, who, in order to break the chains of the poor suffering captives, continually exposed themselves to the dangers of the sea and the brutality of the Moors.”

The records also make it clear that the Mercedarian Friars traveled to North Africa not only to free captives but to proselytize. Like the following, for example:

“Father Cuellar was so wise that he had several disputes in Africa with the Jews, for he wanted to convince them to accept our faith. The Rabbis, however, no matter how much they may have felt the overwhelming truth of his arguments, were most stubborn and obstinate in not wanting to convert.”

Like so many of us, the Mercedarians (and the Trinitarians) seem sometimes to have been full of their own self-importance. But they were also genuinely moved by the suffering of the captives they sought to liberate. Witness the following:

“In the year 1624, Friar Francis de Benavides, of Castilla, and Friar Gaspar Nuñez, of Andalucía, went to Africa, to the cities of Tetuan, Alcazar, and Salé. There they found a multitude of unhappy captives mired in suffering. These two redeemers were not able to hold back their tears when they saw the ragged, half starved captives hauling carts like beasts, sad, pale, and despondent, so weak and fatigued that could hardly sustain themselves.”

This was, finally, the point of the many ransom expeditions launched by both the Mercedarians and the Trinitarians: to liberate captives in North Africa from their suffering. The two orders did this successfully for thousands of people.

The irony of it all, however, was that the enormous sums of money that the Mercedarians and the Trinitarians handed over to free captives served to encourage the Barbary corsairs to go out and take yet more captives—so that they could then ransom them to the Mercedarians and Trinitarians for huge profits.

Such, as we all know,  is the way of the world.

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The list of Mercedarian ransom expeditions to North Africa can be found in Jose Antonio Gari y Siumell, La Órden Redentora de la Merced ejecutora del plan trazado por su excelsa Fundador; Ó sea Historia de Las Redenciones de Cautivos Cristianos (The Redemptive Order of Mercy, Executor of the Plan Outlined by its Exalted Founder; That is, History of the Redemptions of Christian Captives), Barcelona: imprenta de los herederos de la calle de Cádiz, 1873. I have drawn on various entries from pages  279-317.