ANDRÉS DE OLMOS. - Missionary in Mexico, b. at Oña (Spain) around 1491, d. at Tampico (Mexico) on 8 October 1571. After the death of his parents he was educated at Olmos, near Valladolid, by his sister, whence his surname. He then studied civil and canon law and in 1511 took the Franciscan habit. Juan de Zumárraga, guardian of Abrojo, appointed inquisitor for the extirpation of witchcraft in Cantabria, took A. as a companion of his labors and, later elected bishop of Mexico, brought him with him (1528). In Mexico A. devoted himself to the study of the native languages and in a short time learned Nahuatl, Totonac, and Huastec; it seems he also knew Tarascan. A.'s apostolate extended over almost all of Mexico, yet the region evangelized more than the others was the Huastec region, in the present State of Tamaulipas. He founded the mission of Panuco in 1530, and had a part in the founding of the Franciscan custody of Tampico, erected in the same year. In 1551 he was a teacher of Latin in the college of Tlatelolco, opened in 1536 to form a native clergy and a ruling class.
He wrote several linguistic works: a grammar of Nahuatl in 1547, and a vocabulary of the same language; a grammar and a dictionary of Huastec and of Totonac. His other works are: Libro de los siete sermones; Tratado de los pecados mortales; Tratado de los Sacramentos; Tratado de los sacrilegios in the Nahuatl language; a catechism and a manual of confession in the Huastec language. He is also the author of a sacred drama on the Last Judgment, written in the Nahuatl language, which was performed in Mexico with the participation of 800 Indian actors, in the presence of the viceroy Mendoza and of Archbishop Zumárraga. At the request of Ramírez de Fuenleal and of Father Martino de Valencia he wrote a work on Mexican antiquities, whose manuscript was lost. He then composed a summary of this work, which Mendieta knew.
Bibliography5 works
Pancrazio Maarschalkerwerd