González Holguín, Diego
GONZÁLEZ HOLGUÍN, DIEGO
Jesuit linguist; b. Cáceres, Spain, 1552; d. Mendoza, Argentina, 1617 or 1618. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1568. In May 1581, he arrived in Lima and in 1584 he went as a missionary to Cuzco. Assigned to the group who were to establish the society in Ecuador, he went to Quito in 1586. In 1600 he was rector at Chuquisaca (today Sucre, Bolivia), and later held the same post at Asunción, Paraguay. Devoted by preference to academic work, on occasional excursions as a missionary he made close contacts with the Indian world, and became a specialist in Quechua. He composed a grammar of the language and a dictionary, along with an account of the privileges granted to the Indians. As a moralist, in 1611 he published a treatise defending the compulsory character of obedience to royal orders and an instruction on "the conduct that should be observed in the tribunal of penance with the encomenderos." He achieved a balanced Indianist judgment, rare among the extreme tendencies usually shown by jurists dealing with the disputes over the encomiendas at the beginning of the 17th century.
Bibliography: a. de egaÑa, Monumenta Peruana (Rome 1954–61). e. torres saldamando, Los antiguos jesuítas del Perú (Lima 1882).
[a. de egaÑa]