Note 43 — Chapter XLIII

In the unfortunate event which Father Medina mentions with as much minuteness as candor, two important points must not be overlooked by the judicious reader, which were the cause of this unfortunate deed. One was the extreme harshness of the provincial in his government, which must have been very excessive.... The imposition of new commands must have been very heavy for the religious, since even laymen intervened with the provincial, either for him to moderate unnecessary harshness or to renounce the provincialate. The second fact which also enters strongly into this case, is human passion exasperated even to obscuring the intelligence, and personified in Father Juan de Ocadiz, ... a man peevish and melancholy.... Hard beyond measure must he have thought the measures taken against him. He saw in the distance his perpetual dishonor, yet did not have the virtue sufficient to resign himself; and, instigated by the spirit of evil, perpetrated the crime which he expiated with his own life.—Coco.