Note V-38 — Chapter V · CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. 1825-1830.

He sought refuge in the parish church, but was pursued by the crowd. His only safety lay in the pulpit, the remonstrances of the religious, and the presence of the host. The religious succeeded at times in calming the rabble, promising that Flores should be sent into exile. But Antonio Corzo, who was in the court-yard with a few poorly armed militiamen, fired a volley upon the mob, which became still more excited. The women dragged Flores from the pulpit, took him out of the temple, 'y le inmolaron en un claustro bárbara y horrorosamente.' Mem. Rev. Cent. Am., 57-8. Squier's Travels, ii. 396, has it that the Indians had been infuriated by the harangues of a friar from the pulpit, and that the rabble slaughtered Flores at the very foot of the altar, literally rending his body in pieces; the apparent cause of this vindictiveness of the priests being that in the general levy of taxes for the state the property of the convents had not been spared. 'And thus was the movement started by the aristocrats, seconded by their allies, the priests.' Ex-president Morazan, referring to that catastrophe, uses these words: 'Puesto en manos de un feroz populacho, instigado por las funestas ideas que le inculcaron sus sacerdotes, pereció al pié de las imágenes de los santos, á la vista de sus inicuos jueces, y en presencia de la eucaristía, que estos cubrieran.' Apuntes, MS., 4. Flores had been noted for his charity to the poor, specially to the Indians, to whom he constantly gave medical aid, medicines, and other necessaries. The state assembly, after being restored in 1829, decreed honors to his memory, and ordered placed in its hall of sessions an inscription in letters of gold, as follows: 'Al inmortal Vice-jefe Ciudadano Cirilo Flores, mártir de la Libertad, sacrificado en Quezaltenango, en las aras de la ley.' In May 1831 the name of Ciudad Flores was given in his honor to the head town of the district of Peten. Marure, Efem., 17, 28.