Vincente de Valverde

The Right Rev. Lord Brother Vicente de Valverde y Alvarez de Toledo, O.P.
Bishop of Cuzco
Valverde in a detail from The Battle of Cajamarca in the Monastery of Santo Domingo, Cuzco, Peru (17th century)
Province	Seville
See	Cuzco
In office	1537-1541
Successor	Juan Solano, O.P.
Orders
Ordination	c. 1525
Consecration	1537
Personal details
Born	c. 1499 Oropesa, Province of Toledo, Crown of Castile
Died	31 October 1541 Puná Island, New Spain
Parents	Francisco de Valverde & Ana Alvarez de Toledo

Vicente de Valverde y Alvarez de Toledo, O.P. or Vincent de Valle Viridi was a Spanish Dominican friar, who was involved in the Conquest of the Americas, later becoming the Bishop of Cuzco. He became the first resident bishop in South America. He was born in Oropesa, Spain, about 1495 and most sources claim he died on Puná Island, now part of Ecuador, in 1541, at the hands of the indigenous peoples.

He was born in Oropesa, near Toledo, at the end of the 15th century. He was the son of Francisco de Valverde and Ana Alvarez de Toledo, and was related to many noble families of the region, in particular to that of Francisco Pizarro, the conquistador of Peru, and that of Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico. In 1515 he was sent to study at the University of Salamanca. While a student there, he later asked to be received into the Dominican Order, which he was in 1523 at the Priory of San Esteban at Salamanca. He became a professed friar of the Order in April 1524, being ordained a priest within the next few years.

Valverde accompanied Pizarro as a missionary on his intended voyage of conquest of Peru according to the 1529 agreement. He arrived in Peru about 1530, although it is not certain whether he traveled directly there with Pizarro from Spain in 1529 or arrived at San Miguel de Piura in 1531 with re-enforcements from Panama, the initial staging base for the Spanish forces.

Before the Battle of Caxamarca on 16 November 1532, Valverde endeavoured to obtain the Great Inca Atahuallpa's peaceful submission. When Atahualpa rejected a pact of friendship with Pizarro, Friar Vicente joined in the conversation: “He came forward holding a crucifix in his right hand and a breviary in his left and introduced himself as another envoy of the Spanish ruler . . . Friar Vicente called upon the Inca to renounce all other gods as being a mockery of the truth.” Atahualpa simply replied that he could not change his beliefs in the all powerful and ever living Sun and other divinities.