Jaime Olzina

Jaime Olzina —also written Olcina in some sources— was a Dominican friar from Mallorca and the last bishop of the diocese of Telde, the Canarian missionary see created in 1351 as the bishopric of the Islas Afortunadas. Neither his birth date nor his birthplace is preserved, although the episcopal sources identify him as Mallorcan. He belongs to the series of prelates who, during the fourteenth century, upheld on paper the ecclesiastical presence in the Canaries before the Castilian conquest; his episcopate began in the fourteenth century, but his death, in 1411, already belongs to the fifteenth.

On 31 January 1392 he was appointed bishop of Telde-Canarias as successor of Bonanat Tarí, whose death is placed around 1390. The datum appears in the modern episcopologies, which also record his Mallorcan origin. With his appointment a two-year vacancy in the see was closed and the episcopal line begun by Bernardo Font in 1351 and continued by the short-lived Fray Bartolomé in 1361 was resumed, at least formally.

Like his predecessors, Olzina did not reside in the Canaries. From 1400 to 1411 he is documented as auxiliary bishop of Zaragoza, according to Francisco García Santos's study of the bishopric of Telde (1992, p. 63). His Aragonese career reflects the eminently nominal nature of the see of Telde, a jurisdiction that existed in the papal documentation without any stable Christian community to serve in the archipelago. The chronology of the Canarian sees should be stated precisely: the diocese of San Marcial del Rubicón, in Lanzarote, was created in 1404 on Castilian initiative, while that of Telde still existed, so both coexisted for seven years until the latter disappeared in the early fifteenth century, according to Canarian historiography.

Jaime Olzina died in 1411, the date accepted by Canarian historiography; some old lists circulated erroneous dates such as 1441. According to the Canarian studies of Fernández Serrano, his death extinguished the see of Telde, which disappeared in the early fifteenth century after six decades of intermittent history. Canarian scholarship devoted a notable sequence of studies to him by Francisco Fernández Serrano: El último obispo teldense, fr. Jaime Olzina, en 1411 (1970), Estudios, viajes y estancias de fray Jaime Olzina, obispo de Telde (1973, pp. 237-256) and Fray Jaime Olzina, O.P., Obispo de Telde (siglos XIV-XV). Nuevos textos y horizontes para una biografía (1978, pp. 255-274), which brought together unpublished texts to reconstruct his career. A titular see of Telde exists today, but its historical line ended with this Mallorcan prelate in 1411.