José de Anchieta (March 19, 1534 – June 9, 1597) was a
Canarian Jesuit missionary to
Brazil in the second half of the 16th century. A highly influential figure in Brazil's history in the first century after its discovery on
April 22 1500 by a
Portuguese fleet commanded by
Pedro Álvares Cabral, Anchieta was one of the founders of
São Paulo, in 1554, and
Rio de Janeiro, in 1565. He was a
writer and
poet, and is considered the first Brazilian writer. Anchieta was also involved in the
catechesis and conversion to the
Catholic faith of the
Indian population; his efforts at Indian
pacification, together with another Jesuit missionary,
Manuel da Nóbrega, were crucial to the establishment of stable colonial settlements in the new country.
Early life
José de Anchieta Llarena was born on
March 19,
1534, in
San Cristóbal de La Laguna on
Tenerife in the
Canary Islands,
Spain, to a rich family. His father, Juan López de Anchieta, was a landowner from
Urrestilla, in the
Basque Country, who had escaped in 1525 to Tenerife after participating in a failed
rebellion against the King,
Charles V. His mother, Mencia Díaz de Clavijo y Llarena, was a descendant of the conquerors of Tenerife, and came from a
Jewish family. He was a relative of
Loyola's.
Anchieta first went to study in
Portugal when he was 14 years old, in the Royal College of Arts in
Coimbra. He was intensely religious and felt the vocation for priesthood, so he sought admission in 1551 to the Jesuit College of
University of Coimbra as a
novice. During his studies, the young Anchieta became quite sick, with an affliction of the
spine which tormented him throughout his life, but he was considered an exceptionally intelligent student and a gifted poet. He learned to write in
Portuguese and
Latin as well as in his mother tongue. at the age of seventeen, and when a novice nearly ruined his health by his excessive austerity, causing an injury to the spine which made him almost a hunchback.
Missionary in Brazil
Statue of Father Anchieta in Santos, Brazil In 1553, just nineteen years old, Anchieta was chosen to travel to Brazil as a missionary of the third group of Jesuits sent to the New World, accompanying
Duarte da Costa, the second
governor general nominated by the Portuguese crown. After a perilous journey and a
shipwreck, Anchieta and his small group arrived in
São Vicente, the first village which was founded in Brazil, in 1534. There, he had his first contact with the
Tapuia Indians living in the region.
In the same year,
Manuel da Nóbrega, a Portuguese Jesuit, sent 13 Jesuits, Anchieta among them, to climb the fearsome
Serra do Mar to a
plateau which the Indians had named
Piratininga, along the
Tietê river, where the Jesuits established a small missionary settlement. This was done in
January 25,
1554, the date when the first
mass was celebrated. There, Anchieta started with his Jesuit colleagues the work of conversion,
baptism and catechesis and education for which the Society of Jesus was so famous. Anchieta taught Latin to the Indians and began to learn their language,
Old Tupi, and to compile a
dictionary and a
grammar, as it was the aim and custom of Jesuit missions all over the world, after their first contact with the "
heathens". The
Jesuit College of São Paulo of Piratininga, as it was called, soon began to expand and to prosper as a population nucleus.
Meanwhile, due to the systematic killings and ransacking of their villages by the Portuguese colonists and attempts at
enslaving them, the Indian tribes along the coast of present-day states of
São Paulo,
Rio de Janeiro and
Espírito Santo rebelled and formed an alliance, the
Tamoyo Confederation, which soon supported the
French colonists who in 1555 had settled in the
Guanabara Bay under the command of a
Huguenot Vice-
Admiral,
Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon. The Confederation attacked São Paulo several times from 1562 to 1564, but the town resisted. Anchieta and Nóbrega, who were against the way the Portuguese colonists treated the Indians, and had had a serious conflict with Duarte da Costa over the matter, decided to initiate peace negotiations with the Tamoyos, in the village of
Iperoig (in present-day
Ubatuba, in the northern coast of São Paulo state). Anchieta's skill with the
Tupi language was crucial in these efforts. After many incidents and the near massacre of Anchieta and Nóbrega by the Indians, they finally succeeded in gaining the Indian's confidence, and peace was established between the Tamoyo and
Tupiniquim nations and the Portuguese.
framed
Peace was broken, however, when
Estácio de Sá, a nephew of the new governor-general of Brazil,
Mem de Sá (1500-1572), was ordered to expel the French colonists definitively. With the influential support and blessings of Anchieta and Nóbrega, he departed with an army from São Vicente and founded the ramparts of
Rio de Janeiro, at the foot of
Pão de Açúcar, in 1565. Anchieta was with him and participated in a number of battles between the Portuguese and their Indian allies and the French and their Indian allies; acting as a
surgeon and
interpreter. He was also responsible for reporting back to the governor-general headquarters in
Salvador,
Bahia and participated in the final, victorious battle against the French, in 1567.
An apocryphal story places Anchieta and Nóbrega against this background and blames them for the arrest of a
Huguenot refugee, the tailor
Jacques Le Balleur, by Governor General
Mem de Sá in 1559. Out of a desire to eliminate "heresy," Anchieta supposedly killed Le Balleur himself after an executioner refused to carry out the Protestant's death sentence. Although this spurious story was long-ago disproved through documental evidence, it refuses to die.
After the peace, a Jesuit college was founded in Rio under the direction of Nóbrega, and Anchieta was invited to stay, succeeding him after his death, in 1570. Despite his frailty and ill health, and the rigors of slow travel by foot and ship of the time, in the next ten years Anchieta travelled extensively between Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Espírito Santo and São Paulo consolidating the Jesuit mission in Brazil. In 1577 the fourth superior general of the Jesuits,
Everard Mercurian, appointed Anchieta
provincial superior of the order's members in Brazil.
With worsening health, Anchieta requested relief from his duties in 1591. He died in his country of adoption, on
June 9,
1597, at Reritiba, Espírito Santo, mourned by more than 3,000 Indians, who much valued his intercession in the defense of their souls and human dignity.
During and after his life, José de Anchieta was considered almost a
supernatural being. Many legends formed around him, such as when he supposedly preached and calmed down an attacking
jaguar. To this day, a popular devotion holds that praying to Anchieta protects against animal attacks.
José de Anchieta is celebrated the founder of Brazilian letters and, with Nóbrega,
Apostle of Brazil. He gives his name to two cities,
Anchieta, in the State of
Espírito Santo (formerly called Reritiba, his place of death), and
Anchieta, in the state of
Santa Catarina, and many other places, roads, institutions, hospitals, and schools.
Beatified by Pope
John Paul II in 1980, Anchieta acquired the title "Blessed José de Anchieta." A movement exists to promote his eventual
canonization and thus veneration as a Catholic
saint.
Works
In the tradition of Jesuits, Anchieta was a prolific rapporteur, communicating mainly by letters to his superiors, writing flawlessly in Spanish, Portuguese, Latin and Tupi. His writings are published in
Cartas, Informações, Fragmentos Históricos e Sermões (Letters, Reports, Historical Fragments and Sermons), and he has also written volumes on
theology, religious instruction,
theater and poetry, and the first published work on the Old Tupi language. He was accomplished at singing religious chants and wrote several ones, as well as a
drama to teach
morals to the Indians by means of
music and theater. He wrote a famous poem to
Virgin Mary, allegedly writing it every morning on the wet sand of a beach at Iperoig and committing it to memory until he could much later transcribe its more than 4,900 verses to paper. Because of this, Anchieta is the patron of literature and music in Brazil.
He was also a
historiographer, a keen
naturalist (he described several new plants and animals) and an excellent
surgeon and
physician. The lucid and detailed reports he left are still important today to understand the lifestyle, knowledge and customs of Indian and Europeans during his time, as well as the astounding novelties of Brazil's wildlife and
geography.
Anchieta's poem
De Gestis Meni de Saa, written around 1560, described the "heroic deeds" of Portuguese soldiers fighting these wars of conquest "in the immense wilderness."
See also
