draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

The Jesuit missionary mentioned in this passage is Ignacio Maria Franciscis (b. 1705 Palermo –
d. 1777 Palermo), 150 and although González Suárez is likely correct in identifying Franciscis as the
source of the manuscripts, it is highly unlikely that he was the author of the Omagua catechism
fragment (see §??).
Regarding the content of the manuscripts, González Suárez (1904:75) continues:
El manuscrito contiene toda la doctrina cristiana en el idioma de los Icaguates y de
los Yameos: en el idioma de los Omaguas no tiene las oraciones, sino solamenete las
preguntas: además tiene dos catecismos en lengua quichua, por los cuales se conoce cuál
era el aspecto o la fisionomía filológica (diremos así), que a fines del siglo décimo octavo
presentaba el quichua, introducido y vulgarizado por los misioneros en las reducciones
cristianas de la comarca oriental transandina. 151
Crucially, it should be noted that the original manuscript apparently contained a complete
Omagua catechism and not only the fragment printed in González Suárez (1904), and reproduced
in Chapter 5, as indicated by the following footnote:
En nuestro manuscrito no hay más que las preguntas y las respuestas de la doctrina en
la lengua omagua: faltan enteramente las oraciones; por esto transcribimos sólo doce
preguntas.
(González Suárez 1904:66) 152
The fate and current location of the original manuscript is unknown to us. Note that the text
that we analyze in §5.2 is the original González Suárez (1904) version, and not the Rivet (1910)
version, which was based on the González Suárez version, or the Cabral (1995) version, which was
based on the Rivet (1910) version.
5.1.2 Rivet (1910)
The catechism fragment was analyzed and republished in Rivet (1910), in conjunction with the
Omagua Lord’s Prayer, as discussed in §4.1. As with his treatment of the Omagua Lord’s Prayer,
Rivet provides mostly accurate morphemic segmentations and French glosses, as well as altering the
graphemic representation to avoid orthographic choices inherited from the Spanish orthography used
for the original. For this latter reason, González Suárez’s version remains essential for obtaining an
accurate version of the orthography in the original manuscript.
150 Jouanen (1943:732). de Velasco ([1789]1981:518) gives Viterbo as the place of death, and he is likely correct, since
Uriarte ([1776]1986:290) also indicates that Franciscis was residing in Viterbo when Uriarte was writing the second
part of his diaries, no earlier than February 1773 (Uriarte [1776]1986:187).
151 Translation (ours):
The manuscript contains the Christian doctrine in the language of the Icaguates and the Yameos:
in Omagua it does not have the prayers, only the questions: additionally there are two catechisms
in Quechua, by which we can know what the appearance or philological features (so to speak) were,
which Quechua exhibited at the end of the 18th century, introduced and corrupted by the missionaries
in the Christian settlements of the eastern trans-Andean region.
152 Translation (ours):
In our manuscript there are not more than the questions and answers to the doctrine in Omagua: the
prayers are lacking entirely; because of that we transcribe only twelve questions.
68