BAUCKE (PAUCKE), FLORIAN. - Jesuit missionary and writer, b. at Witzingen (Silesia), 24 Dec. 1719, d. at Hradec Jindřichův (or Neuhaus, in Bohemia), 13 Apr. 1780. Having entered the novitiate of the Bohemian province in 1736, he sailed for Paraguay in 1748, where he became especially distinguished among the Mocobí Indians for his great skill in music and in many arts and crafts. In 1768, he shared the fate of his brethren, expelled from the Spanish missions by order of Charles III, and retired to Bohemia, where he devoted himself to writing his missionary memoirs.
A bulky manuscript of more than a thousand pages, which he left with the prior of the Cistercians at Zwettl, furnished the material first for several fragmentary publications and adaptations by the Cistercian G. Frast (Vienna 1829), and by the Jesuits A. Kölber (P. Fl. B., ein Jesuit in Paraguay, Ratisbon 1870), J. Svoboda (Prague 1874), A. Brinckmann (Freiburg in Br. 1908), J. Auweiler (Buenos Aires 1900), etc. But the interest it presents, not only for history but also for the ethnography, zoology, and botany of America, and for the numerous curious drawings with which it is illustrated, brought the work to the attention of a group of Argentine scholars, who have recently published an edition with illustrations by Fr. Furlong: P. Fl. B., Noticias de las regiones rioplatenses en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII. Costumbres y trajes de españoles, criollos e indios (ibid. 1935); P. Fl. B., Hacia el Plata 1749-70 y para acá. Una estada entre los Indios Mocobies 1749-70 (2 vols., Spanish tr. by E. Wernicke, Tucumán-Buenos Aires 1942-44).