Francis Quiñones

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Francis Quiñones (Kingdom of León, c. 1482 – Veroli, Italy, November 5, 1540) was a Spanish cardinal.

He was the son of Diego Fernandez de Quiñones, Count of Luna, was educated as a page of Cardinal Ximenes, and at the age of sixteen entered the Order of Friars Minor in the convent of Los Angeles (Spain), taking the name of Francis of the Angels (1498). Having completed his studies, he successively discharged all the various offices of his orders as custos, commissary general, and minister general. In 1521 he had obtained special permission and faculties from Leo X to go to the missions in America, together with Father Glapion, confessor of Charles V, but Glapion died in the same year, and Quiñones was elected commissary general of the Ultramontane Franciscans (1521-23). In the general chapter of the order at Burgos, in 1523, he was elected minister general (1523-27). As general, he visited the convents of Spain (1523-25), and a great part of Italy and Belgium (1525-27), promoted studies, maintained general discipline, and was not less active in behalf of missions. In 1524 he sent twelve missionaries to Mexico, among them Father Juan Juarez, who later became the first bishop within the present territory of the United States.

After the sack of Rome and the imprisonment of Clement VII (May, 1527), Quiñones, who was distantly related to Emperor Charles V, and also his confidant, seemed the aptest man to effect the release of the pope, and a full reconciliation between him and the emperor. He was thrice sent to the emperor for this purpose, and his efforts were crowned with success by the deliverance of Clement (December, 1527), and the treaties of Barcelona (1528) and Cambrai (1529). As these embassies rendered his effective government of the order impossible, Quiñones renounced the generalship in December, 1527, and in September of the following year he was created cardinal of the title of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, hence his name "Cardinal of the Holy Cross". From 1530 to 1533 he was also Bishop of Coria, in Spain, and for a short time, in 1539, administrator of Acerno (Naples), but he was never Cardinal Bishop at Palestrina, as some authors assert.

Cardinal Quiñones always occupied a distinguished position in the Sacred College and closely followed the movement of the Reformation in Germany. When Paul III contemplated assembling a general council at Mantua, he sent (1536) the Cardinal of the Holy Cross to Ferdinand I, King of the Romans and of Hungary, to promote that cause. The cardinal, however, did not live to see the opening of the Council of Trent in 1545. His body was brought from Veroli to Rome and buried in his titular church in a tomb which he had prepared himself.

Quiñones left some legislative compilations for his order, but is best known for his reform of the Roman Breviary undertaken by the order of Clement VII.

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