The Life and Martyrdom of the Father Diego Luis de San Vitores, S.J.

The Life and Martyrdom of Diego Luis de San Vitores, S.J.is a collection of official and unofficial letters and documents in addition to testimonies collected shortly after the death of Diego Luis de San Vitores, S.J., the Jesuit priest who established the Catholic religion in the island of Guam in the late 1600s. This book captures both the life and events surrounding the death of San Vitores and a narrative of subsequent events in the Mariana Islands from 1672 to 1681. The scope of the book includes not just the four brief years of San Vitores? time in Guam, but another ten years of missionary work following his death. It offers a detailed description of the early critical years of mission activity between 1668 and 1682 in this earliest of mission fields in Oceania.

"Francisco Garcia's book is of a genre that has no modern equivalent. Although its title would seem to stamp it as a biography, the book might better be described as part history, part hagiography, part travel adventure, and part devotional literature. It is easy to understand why Garcia's biography was translated into English piecemeal. Three different translators extracted from the volume what corresponded to their own interests: Margaret M. Higgins selecting what touched on the local history and culture of the [CHamoru] people, Sr. Felicia Plaza excerpting those parts that touched directly on the life of San Vitores, and Fr. Juan Ledesma translating the remainder. Garcia's original was intended as a testimony to the saintliness of Diego Luis de San Vitores, the man who introduced the Christian faith to the Marianas. It was written as a tale of personal heroism, its hero the Jesuit missionary priest whose virtues were not allowed to speak for themselves but were authenticated by numerous instances of divine intervention [?] As a historical source for this period Garcia's book is indispensable."