The Five Franciscan Martyrs of Morocco

Berardo and his companions - First martyrs of the Franciscan Order - † January 16, 1220, Marrakech

In January 1220, five minor friars were beheaded in Marrakech by order of the Sultan Almohade. They were called Berardo, Peter, Acursius, Adyuto and Oton. They had crossed the Mediterranean and then the Strait to preach the Gospel in the land of Islam, following the spirit of the man who sent them: Francis of Assisi. His death was the first documented martyrdom of the Franciscan movement, and his blood unexpectedly germinated: a young Augustinian cleric in Coimbra, when he saw his remains passed, left everything he had to become a minor friar. That young man's name was Fernando de Martins. History would know him as Saint Anthony of Padua.

Francis of Assisi and the dream of mission among unbelievers

To understand the martyrdom of these five friars, we must begin with its founder. Francis of Assisi - born about 1181-1182 in Umbria, Italy - experienced a profound conversion around 1205-1206 that led him to radically embrace the Gospel: total poverty, universal fraternity, service to the sick and the poor. But in the heart of Francis another fire was also burning: the desire to go to preach to non-Christian peoples, especially the Muslim world, with which the Christian West was at that time in full armed conflict because of the Crusades.

Francis's attitude to Islam was radically different from the dominant cross-logic. He did not see Muslims as enemies to fight, but as brothers to proclaim Christ, if necessary with the price of his own life. This missionary intuition was deeply evangelical: not the shield and the sword, but the word and witness, even to death.

Francis himself tried to reach Muslim land several times before he did. In 1212, he tried to reach Syria but a storm forced him to return. In 1214, he tried to go to Morocco, but was seriously ill in Spain and could not continue. In 1219, he finally crossed to the Holy Land and arrived at the cross camp in Damieta (Egypt), from where he addressed the Sultan al-Kamil and held a meeting with him that was recorded in the Franciscan memory as a model of respectful and courageous dialogue.

This desire for mission among Muslims was not kept by Francis for himself: he transmitted it to his friars, especially to the most fiery. Thus, about 1219, he sent the first missionary group to Morocco.

The five friars: who were they?

The five men that Francis chose for this mission had different profiles, but they were united by the same inner disposition: the will to preach without weapons, accepting the possibility of martyrdom as the culmination of Christ's follow-up.

Berardo de Carbio (or Bérard) was probably the most experienced in the group and acted as its natural guide. It came from the Italian region of Umbria. He spoke Arabic, which was exceptional among the friars of the time and made it especially valuable for the mission. He was a priest. He would then be considered the leader of the group and always head the lists of the five martyrs.

Pedro He was also a priest. The sources mention him as Berardo's intimate partner from before the mission. His precise identity is less known than Berardo's, but his name always appears second in the martyrology.

Adyto (or Adiuto) was also a priest. Together with Peter, he was part of the priestly core of the group, who could celebrate the sacraments and exercise the liturgical ministry.

Acursio y Othon were lay friars - unordained priests - who had joined the Franciscan movement as brothers in fraternal life and in service. His presence in the group illustrates the non-clerical dimension of the first Franciscan: the missionary vocation was not exclusive to the clergy.

The trip: from Italy to Seville, from Seville to Ceuta, from Ceuta to Morocco

The itinerary of the five friars from Italy to Morocco reflects the geopolitical and religious complexity of that time. They left Italy for the Iberian Peninsula with the intention of preaching in the territories of the Almohad Empire, which at the beginning of the 13th century controlled North Africa and a large part of Al- Ándalus.

They first arrived in Seville, which in 1219 was still a Muslim city - it would not be reconquered by Fernando III of Castilla until 1248 -. In Seville they tried to preach publicly in the major mosque, which was worth being expelled from the city. The preaching on lands of Islam without permission was dangerous and unusual even for the most bold missionaries.

From Seville they crossed to Ceuta, a coastal enclave of North Africa, and from there they took the road to Morocco itself, to the city of Marrakech, which was at that time the capital of the Almohad empire and the Sultan's residence. The full period lasted several months.

Along the way, the friars preached with the audacity characteristic of the first Franciscan: without concessions, without concealing their faith, without strategy of infiltration but with direct announcement. This attitude, which in Europe could be eccentric but rarely put life at risk, in the Almohad world - where the apostasy of Islam was penalized with death and missionary preaching was seen as subversion - was a real and calculated risk.

Marrakech: preaching and imprisonment

In Marrakech the friars soon became visible. According to the oldest Franciscan sources, they openly preached in the main mosque of the city, which was an extraordinary provocation from the point of view of the Islamic authorities. The mosque was the sacred space par excellence of the Islamic world, and the Christian proclamation within it amounted, in the cultural code of the time, to a desecration.

They were immediately arrested and brought before the authorities. The Sultan of Morocco at that time is identified in a somewhat confusing way in medieval sources: some texts speak of the Sultan Miramamolin, a title that the 13th century Hispanic chronists applied to the sovereign Almohades. Modern historiography places martyrdom under the reign of Sultan Yusuf II al-Mustansir (1213-1224), son and successor of the great Abu Yusuf al-Mansur.

Taken before the Sultan, the friars refused to bet or stop preaching. They were imprisoned. During the time of their captivity they continued to preach to the other prisoners. The Sultan, according to the chronicles, expelled them on several occasions from their territory, but they always returned. This relevance was interpreted by the authorities as a deliberate and unabated provocation.

Finally, the Sultan ordered his execution. On January 16, 1220, Berardo, Pedro, Adyuto, Acursio and Oton were beheaded in Marrakech. They were between twenty and thirty years old.

The transfer of the remains and the conversion of Antonio de Padua

The bodies of the five martyrs were collected by Christians living in Morocco - probably merchants and captives of peninsular origin - and transferred to Portugal, specifically to Coimbra, where King Alfonso II of Portugal received them with great honor and delivered them to the church of the Augustinian monastery of Santa Cruz.

What happened then already belongs to the history of the saints. In that monastery of Santa Cruz de Coimbra, a young man, just over twenty years old, named Fernando de Martins, was born in Lisbon around 1195, with a noble family, lived as a cleric. When the procession with the remains of the martyrs passed before him, Fernando experienced an inner shock that led him to make a radical decision: to abandon the comfortable and safe life of the Augustinian monastery and to join the poor minor friars who had just given their lives by preaching the Gospel on the land of unbelievers.

Fernando de Martins became Franciscan, took the name of Antonio, and marched also to Morocco, moved by the same dream of martyrdom that had driven Berardo and his companions. A disease forced him to return; the winds diverted him to Sicily; he ended up in the general chapter of Assisi of 1221. There he began his extraordinary career as a preacher, theologian and taumaturgo, which led him to be canonized just a year after his death in 1232, and to become one of the most popular saints in the history of the Church: St. Anthony of Padua.

Thus, the martyrdom of the five Franciscans of Morocco not only produced the testimony of five given lives: it also produced the conversion of one of the most loved saints of the universal Church. The blood of the martyrs was literally a seed of holiness.

Canonization and the place in Franciscan history

For almost two and a half centuries, the five martyrs of Morocco were venerated in Portugal, especially in Coimbra, where their relics remained in the monastery of Santa Cruz. His veneration was growing with the passage of time, favored by the expansion of the Franciscan Order on the Iberian Peninsula and by the memory that the minor friars were jealous of their first martyrs.

The formal canonization came on January 16, 1481, when Pope Sixto IV recorded them in the catalogue of the saints. The date chosen was not casual: it was the anniversary of his martyrdom on January 16. Canonization took more than two hundred and sixty years to produce - an exceptionally long period - but this does not in any way diminish the authenticity of the cult that had been imposed on them for long before.

They are recognized as protomartyres Ordinis Minorum, the first martyrs of the Order of the Minor Friars. Its meaning within Franciscan spirituality is therefore foundational: they embody the missionary ideal of Francis himself, the will to go to meet each other without weapons, preaching only with example and word, willing to pay with life if so required by the Gospel.

Marian devotion in the Franciscan spirit

Francis of Assisi had a particular devotion to the Virgin Mary who impregnated all the spirituality of her Order from the beginning. The chapel of the Porciuncula, near Assisi, was the heart of the first Franciscan community, and was dedicated to Our Lady of Angels. In that small church Francis prayed daily; there he called the first chapters of the Order; there he died in 1226.

This Marian devotion was naturally transmitted to his friars and, in particular, to the missionaries. The five martyrs of Morocco carried with them, in addition to their faith in Christ, the spiritual heritage of an Order that saw in Mary the perfect model of the disciple: the one that said yes without reservations, the one that accompanied his Son to the Cross, the one that did not flee when the decisive moment came.

In the context of martyrdom, Franciscan Marian devotion has a particularly luminous dimension: Mary is the mother who accompanies her children to the end of the road, just as she accompanies her. The martyrs of Morocco, in that regard, died as children of the Order that was born under the cloak of Our Lady of Angels.