The Franciscan Mission of Mequínez

The Franciscans among the Christian captives of Meknès - XVII-XVIII century

In the 17th century, the city of Meknès - or Mequínez, in its historical Spanish form - became the stage of one of the darkest and most luminous chapters of the Christian presence in Morocco. Dark, because Sultan Alauí Mulay Ismaíl chained tens of thousands of European captives there to build his imperial palace. Luminous, because in the midst of that suffering, a handful of Franciscan friars settled together with the prisoners, celebrated the sacraments, kept the faith alive, negotiated bailouts and, in some cases, gave their lives for it. This is the story of that silent and tenacious mission.

Meknès: the city that Mulay Ismaíl built with captives

Mulay Ismaíl ibn Sharif (1672-1727) was one of the most powerful and long-lived sultans in Morocco's history. His reign of more than fifty years was marked by the unification of the country under the Alauí dynasty, the expulsion of the Spanish and Portuguese garrison from several coastal enclaves, and the construction of Meknès as a new imperial capital, in conscious competition with the large European courts of the late baroque, especially that of Louis XIV in Versailles.

To build the immense palatine complex of Meknès - palaces, gardens, stables, warehouses, walls - Mulay Ismaíl needed labour in extraordinary quantities. Part of this labour force was slave or of servile origin, from sub-Saharan Africa. But a very significant part came from a source that the Mediterranean offered with bitter regularity: Christian captives captured by the corsaries of the Atlantic and the Moroccan Mediterranean.

During the reign of Mulay Ismaíl, Moroccan piracy reached one of its highest levels. The corsaries of Salé and other Atlantic ports of the sultanate raided European vessels and attacked the coasts of Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Canary Islands. The crew and passengers captured were taken to Morocco and sold as slaves or used directly by the Sultan. It is estimated that at times of greater activity of corsarism, the number of Christian captives in Moroccan territory could rise to several thousand, with particularly high concentrations in Meknès, where the works of the imperial palace demanded constant work.

The living conditions of the captives varied considerably depending on their condition, their trade and the fortune of their master. Those who fell directly into the hands of the Sultan were employed in the construction works, in the royal stables - Mulay Ismaíl was famous for his passion for horses - or in the house service of the palace. Those who had specialized trades - masons, smiths, carpenters, doctors - could reach a certain position and enjoy greater freedom of movement. The most unfortunate were those who lacked qualifications and ended up in the works of greater physical hardness.

Mulay Ismaíl's ambivalence with Christians

One of the most complex and disconcerting aspects of Mulay Ismaíl's reign is his attitude towards the captives and Christian communities under his control. The Sultan was a ferociously authoritarian ruler, capable of extraordinary cruelty to his own rebel subjects or to the captives who refused to work. And yet his relationship with the European Christian world was marked by a pragmatic ambivalence that often surprised his contemporaries.

Mulay Ismaíl maintained diplomatic relations with the major European powers, especially France and Spain. He negotiated trade treaties, exchanged embassies and, in certain periods, was willing to discuss the release of captives in exchange for economic or diplomatic compensation. This negotiating provision was not altruism: it was political. European captives had market value, and European nations paid bailouts or sent emissaries to recover their subjects.

In this context, Mulay Ismaíl tolerated and even facilitated the presence of Christian religious in Meknès for a purpose that mixed the humanitarian and the political: the friars served as informal intermediaries between the Sultan and the European courts, facilitated the rescue negotiations and helped to maintain a certain social peace among the captives. A community of well-served prisoners was a community less prone to revolt.

By 1672, Mulay Ismaíl formally granted permission to the Franciscans to establish a mission in Meknès. This concession was exceptional in the context of the Morocco of the time: no other state of the Maghreb so explicitly allowed the presence of religious missionaries in its territory. Permission was not unlimited or unconditional - the friars could not freely preach among the Muslim population - but it did allow them to exercise their ministry among Christian captives with relative freedom.

The life of the captives: between suffering and faith

To understand the role of the Franciscans in Meknès, it is necessary to know the daily reality of the captives they served. The life of a Christian prisoner in the Morocco of Mulay Ismaíl could take place in very different conditions according to each other's circumstances, but there were common elements that defined the experience of captivity.

The work was the central focus of the life of the prisoners employed in the palace works. The buildings of Meknès were gigantic and demanding: walls between two and three kilometres long, palaces of extraordinary dimensions, stables capable of hosting thousands of horses. The main construction material was the tabia, a mixture of clay, lime and straw, compact in encofrates, which required intense and constant physical work. The captives worked from sun to sun, with insufficient food rations and without protection from weather conditions.

Sunday rest was a usual friction point: Christian captives claimed the right to Sunday rest as part of their religious practice, and Franciscans frequently intervened to negotiate this right with the authorities. Mulay Ismaíl was, according to some testimonies of the time, relatively respectful of this point, but not in a systematic way.

Christmas and the great feasts of the Christian calendar were moments of special spiritual and emotional importance to the captives. On those dates, the friars organized liturgical celebrations that gave the prisoners an anchorage in time and in the memory of their home. The Christmas Mass, the song of the Psalms, the recitation of the rosary in the small chapel of the mission: these acts were, in the context of the captivity, gestures of inner resistance as important as any material organization.

The Franciscan mission: a presence among the captives

The friars who served in Meknès were not all of the same origin: there were Spanish, Portuguese and Italian among them, which reflected the cosmopolitan composition of the captive population they attended. The mission had a small chapel or church where the sacraments could be celebrated: the mass, confession, the viatic for the sick, the baptism of children born in captivity - a circumstance that occurred, as some Christian women were also captured - and the Christian burial of the deceased.

This last point had a psychological and spiritual importance that should not be underestimated. For a 17th-century Christian, dying without sacraments and being buried without the rites of the Church was a terrifying perspective. The friars were striving to reach the seriously ill and dying, sometimes challenging prohibitions or restrictions of movement, to administer the last sacraments. This assistance at the time of death was, for the captives and their families, one of the most precious ministries of the mission.

The Franciscans also played an information and communication role. They wrote letters for the captives who sent them to their families in Spain, Portugal or Italy, informing them of their situation and sometimes asking for the money necessary for the rescue. This epistolar work was, in practice, one of the only channels of communication between prisoners and the outside world.

Some friars were also highlighted for their medical work. The disease was omnipresent among the captives, decimated by hard work, insufficient food, exposure to the sun and infectious diseases. The Franciscans who had basic medical knowledge - not uncommon in the religious of the time - put them at the service of the sick, with the limited means available.

The redemption of captives: the other great mission

Parallel to and sometimes inseparable from spiritual assistance, the institution of the redemption of captives: the systematic rescue of Christian prisoners through the payment of sums of money. This practice, which had medieval roots and had been encoded by the redeeming orders - trinitarian and merchant - since the 13th century, involved the collection of funds in the parishes and European communities and their subsequent surrender to the rescuers travelling to Morocco to negotiate the release of the captives.

The Franciscans of Meknès participated actively in this process. Their continued presence in the city and their relations with the Sultan authorities made them natural intermediaries for the rescue negotiations. When official emissaries arrived from Spain or Portugal to rescue captives - missions that sometimes had the support of the king and the Pope - the mission friars provided them with information about who was captive, under what conditions and what were the possibilities of negotiating their release.

The expeditions of redemption could free tens or even hundreds of captives in a single operation, in exchange for considerable sums of money. The funds came from various sources: parish collections, donations from wealthy families, contributions from guilds and cofradies, and in some cases real subsidies. The act of redemption was publicly celebrated upon the return of the rescued to Spain or Portugal, with processions, graces and theatrical performances that served to raise awareness and encourage new donations.

The Virgin of the Pilar and the Marian devotion of the captives

Among the thousands of Spanish captives locked in the dungeons and in the works of Meknès, devotion to the Virgin Mary was the most powerful spiritual bond that united them to their land and faith. And among the Marian claims, the one that occupied a special place in the heart of the Aragonese, Navarre and Castilian captives was that of Our Lady of the Pilar of Zaragoza.

The apostolic tradition links the apparition of the Virgin Mary to the Apostle James in Zaragoza with the very birth of Christianity in Hispania. For the Spaniards of the 17th century, the Virgin of Pilar was not only an object of personal devotion: it was the symbol of the Christian identity of the nation. Carrying with it the image or medal of the Virgin of Pilar in captivity was a way of not losing the thread back home.

The Franciscans of the Meknès mission encouraged these Marian devotions among the captives. The rosary was a common practice, easy to perform without specific liturgical objects and accessible to all types of people, regardless of their level of instruction. The friars taught the rosary to those who did not know it, directed it communitatively when circumstances allowed it and recommended it as prayer in the times of greatest hardness of captivity.

La advocación de Nuestra Señora de la Merced, patrona de la Orden Mercedaria —la otra gran orden redentora—, también era muy popular entre los cautivos, precisamente porque los mercedarios eran uno de los actores principales del rescate. La Virgen de la Merced era la «liberadora», la que intercedía por los cautivos y los sacaba de sus cadenas; su imagen aparecía representada muchas veces con un cautivo liberado a sus pies.

The spiritual legacy: the Church that did not abandon its own

The Franciscan mission of Meknès did not end with a spectacular martyrdom or a council or a foundation that would last. It ended discreetly, with the progressive decline of Moroccan corsarian piracy throughout the 18th century - a consequence of the greater European naval military power - and the gradual decrease in the number of captives. As the causes of the problem were reduced, the need for the mission was also reduced.

What this mission left, however, was something more difficult to quantify but more lasting: the testimony that the Church did not abandon her children when they fell into the hands of the enemy. The friars who lived in Meknès - often in conditions not much better than those of the captives themselves, with freedom of movement restricted and under the constant threat of a Sultan's retaliation - chose to stay with the prisoners because they believed that no Christian should die without sacraments, no child should grow up without baptism and no one desperate should lack a word of hope.

In this sense, the mission of Meknès is an example of what is called the animarum curethe care of souls: not the evangelization of others, but the perseverance together with their own in the moments of greater vulnerability. A humble, invisible service that did not generate great chronicles or produce famous martyrs, but that kept the flame of faith on fire in the midst of the darkness of captivity.