Another perspective of the Convent, another view at this place recognized in the World and testimony of America as the most important Heritage, prostrated at the foot of the Andes Mountains and already reaching five hundred years of its presence as a living testimony of old Europe, the crown of Spain, before the Kingdom of Castile and Aragon that came and conquered Quito.
Quito, the city in the middle of the world, the city in the center of the world, the only one where life converges especially between days of sun and cold and where a Franciscan brother named Jodoco arrived. He intuited and did not doubt that his house, the house of God, will be there forever.
Stone upon stone, for decades and thousands of people who surprised each other with what was started and along the way evangelized, acculturated and included in this order, worked and reached this end, this magnificent architecture that the King of Spain of that time he did not hesitate to say that he had another Escorial in America.
To a humble young man, free of material thought already at that time but from the beginning of his life with a very careful and noble family formation for the same reason included from childhood in his education with whom Carlos V would be and they developed a friendship forever, and to have privileged growth in the Europe of the 16th century, of Flemish origin (today the countries of Holland and Belgium) that in the reign of Isabella the Catholic and her conquest and enlargement as a Kingdom to the “new” continent, the news arrived in her group of the Religious Order, the Franciscan, the immense need to take, to go to America with the Word of their God. According to reports from missionaries around the world, not only was this Order carrying out a work of evangelization but also of social service and including a different culture in these “new” peoples, this young man then understood and did not hesitate, guided by his intuitive temperament and enormous education in the study of science and religión, Fray Jodoco Rijcke was called, an almost unknown character these days, already as a faithful Franciscan brother and believer to join and offer to go to the Missions of America (1529 app) who also did not hesitate to learn the Castilian language and would arrive later of a maelstrom of trips and experiences.
From the dreamed Empire of the Incas, he will reach the existing population today, the city of Quito, walking!!! Before the Kingdom of Quito, because its stone constructions and greatness base of the colonial until our days testify to it, conquered and founded on December 6, 1534.
Quito offers lodging to this young man a few years later The ancestral Quito and understand these lifestyles, understand the imaginary of communities of diverse collective notions, geography of sacred places with paths and processional routes, symbolic visions and millenary constructions and also understand a landscape historical this dreamer in building, in carrying out his Mission and fulfilling his aspirations and learning the ancestral local language Quechua and bringing his message of “salvation” to the people of Quito a historical landscape to a new approach that can become an alternative to the beginning of multicultural inclusion.
What was there, what did the place offer so that first about the ancestral settlements, then plant an architecture that surprises on the outside and inside with its fantastic construction, a facade that speaks of changes in that World of Rebirth, of wanting to be better and recognize its mistakes to leave physical legacies but no less magnificent when starting an esplanade that will serve for crops, that embraced Fray Jodoco, brought the first wheat seeds, because he knew that bread could not miss, that some superb steps people will climb and that they will arrive at the temple to knees, imaginary thoughts will leave their energy before what has been achieved inside with a religious expression never seen before with shapes and colors that will be concretized by the skill developed in the natives, in front of columns of different order, Ionic, Doric, even configured diamond tips in stone they will face a splendid square that today adorns this city, this place of privilege in the world and mentality.
Once everything has been re-named after this super man and religious Fray Jodoco Rijcke, it is enough to read the biography of Father Augustin Moreno, another human being that the Franciscan religiosity and community formed, to understand what character we have to pay tribute to in the city, the city that He offered lodging and without having or bringing material fortune, but he had his own, that of immense charity of soul and heart for his neighbor, to the vanquished, to the conquered who by then, suffered in his own home from enormous abuse for being “unfaithful” , unfaithful to a God he did not know, but that would end up being part of his existence forever and ever. Faith, religion, language will be your conquest.
Our tribute to Him, the Brother, the Teacher, the Believer, the Protector and why not the adventurer, Fray Jodoco Rijcke.
We will look at doors, walls converted into canvases, testimonial dates of work, shapes, colors, images, enlarged works with coffered ceilings which fit rings like male and female and exuberant decoration. Before life-size wooden sculptures, the Virgin of Quito, San Francisco, Angels and Archangels in their own streets or altars in sight wins an exquisite work embossed in silver (Inca influence) immense wings that support and transform these sculptures, armed finger by finger, arms, heads, wooden skirts decorated and with movement, expectant and sweet faces and gazes that say a lot without speaking but saying here we are for you… and beautifully decorated that even seem to fly and so on between arches, niches, altars, choirs, crucifixes, chapels means the dawn of life without end, because how can we not understand that what this young Jodoco wanted.
He grew old where he made his home, his people, his God, his epistle, his gospel, left for us not to diminish our gaze of a people who became believers, suffered and sleepless before him without understanding their state and lower their heads to ask, to go out in procession with their faith and behind those moments that with or without reason took you. There are emotions and expressions to follow, to kneel down and believe… Our tribute to Him, the Brother, the Teacher, the Believer, the Protector and why not the adventurer, Fray Jodoco Rijcke.
By Patrcia Rivas García
