Jose de Acosta was a sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit missionary and naturalist in Latin America. He is famous for being the first missionary, who provided the first detailed description of the geography and culture of Latin America, Aztec history, and the uses of coca. His studies of the Indian civilizations of the New World became a major source of information for several centuries.
Background
Jose de Acosta was born in 1539, in Medina del Campo, Spain. His parents lived in this city of the plain, about twenty-four miles from Valladolid, in Old Castile, on the left bank of the swampy river Zapardiel, and overlooked by the old castle of La Mota. His parents had five sons, Gerónimo, Christóval, José, Diego, and Bernardo. The Acosta brothers were fellow townsmen of the old soldier Bernal Diaz, who told the story of the conquest of Mexico, but they were many years younger than him.
Education
At the age of fifteen José de Acosta entered the Jesuit order in his native city and underwent rigorous theological and literary training.
Career
Before leaving Spain, José de Acosta was lecturer in theology at Ocana, and in April, 1569, was sent to Lima, Peru, where the Jesuits had been established in the proceeding year. At Lima, Acosta again occupied the chair of theology; his fame as an orator had proceeded him.
Jose left Spain in 1570 and sailed via Panama to Peru in 1571, where he remained for fourteen years. Having been provincial of his order there (1576–81), he was appointed theological adviser to the Third Provincial Council of Lima (1582), later writing a catechism in local Indian languages, the first book printed in Peru. For many years Acosta lived at the Jesuit college on the shore of Lake Titicaca and learned enough of both Aymara and Quechua to produce a trilingual catechism (1583).
Acosta founded a number of colleges, among them those of Arequipa, Potosí, Chuquisaca, Panama and La Paz, but met with considerable opposition from the Viceroy Toledo. His official duties obliged him to investigate personally a very extensive range of territory, so that he acquired a practical knowledge of the vast province, and of its aboriginal inhabitants. At the 1582 session of the Third Council of Lima, Father Acosta played a very important part and was its historian. He delivered an eloquent and learned oration at its last sitting on October 18, 1583.
After acting as historian of the third council of the church at Lima (1582-1583), he embarked for Mexico, where he spent three years. Next he went to Rome, and then to Spain, where he filled several important posts for the Jesuits.
On returning to Spain in 1587, he wrote Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590; Natural and Moral History of the Indies), which attempted to place his observations of the physical geography and natural history of Mexico and Peru (including the aboriginal religious and political institutions) in the context of contemporary Jesuit and scientific thought. Acosta’s work is especially valuable as a firsthand account of western South America at this time, based on his 16 years’ life and travel in the region.
Acosta’s other significant study is the De procuranda indorum salute (1588), a systematic examination of the problems of missionary work among the newly discovered “pagans” of the New World.
Acosta led the opposition to Claudio Aquaviva (the general of the Jesuits), helping to call the fifth Jesuit congregation to redress alleged grievances. The reformers’ proposals were rejected and Acosta was imprisoned (1592–93). After submitting in 1594 Acosta became superior of the Jesuits at Valladolid and rector of the Jesuit college at Salamanca (1598), where he remained until his death. Acosta died while serving as rector of the Jesuit college of Salamanca.
Religion
Acosta joined the Jesuits in 1570 and went to Peru as a missionary in 1571. Having been provincial of his order there (1576-81), he was appointed theological adviser to the Third Provincial Council of Lima (1582).
Views
José de Acosta early displayed a strong interest in the New World, and although he was offered a chair of theology in Rome, he asked to be sent to the Americas.
The problems that he encountered in trying to interpret the new observations according to the principles of Aristotelian philosophy of nature led him to contradict openly many of the established opinions of this philosopher, whose authority was only then beginning to be questioned in educated European circles. In direct violation of the Aristotelian approach, Acosta relied on experimental observation. For example, he described the temperate climate of the tropical regions on the basis of his own observations, when Aristotle had always taught that these areas were extremely hot and dry. He was not afraid to entitle chapter 4 of book 2 "That the tropics (torrida) have great abundance of water and vegetation in spite of Aristotle denying it." Even when he considered the Bible, he set himself apart from a literal interpretation, and when dealing with the subject of the sphericity of the heavens, he remarked that "in the divine Scriptures we must not follow the letter that kills but the spirit that gives life." His continuous confrontation with experience gave him considerable freedom with respect to many established scientific opinions.
In respect to geophysical phenomena, we may single out his treatment of magnetic declination, motions of the oceans, earthquakes, volcanic activity, different climates, and the types and causes of winds.
Acosta treated magnetic declination in relation to the problem of the origin of the native inhabitants of America. Travel by ship was ruled out on the basis of the ignorance of the use of the magnetic compass for navigation in antiquity. He described the use of the compass, the angle of declination, and the difference between magnetic and geographic north. Declination was already known to 15th century Spanish and Portuguese sailors, and Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) is sometimes credited with the discovery of its variation. Acosta described the variation of declination from one point to another. With special reference to the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, he identified the places of zero declination, one of these being in the Azores Islands, where the declination changes from east to west.
In the discussion of the distribution of lands and oceans, Acosta dealt with the problem of tides. He discussed the question of whether the tides are a local or a general phenomenon and whether they have the same or opposite motion at opposite sides of the same sea. On the basis of observations at the Strait of Magellan, where the tides at either end of the strait have same sense of motion, he established that the tides are general phenomena, affecting the whole ocean. It must be remembered that prior to the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the origin of the tides had not been explained. Acosta described the periodicity of this phenomena and their relationship to the phases of the moon.
His observations about volcanoes and earthquakes caused him to deny the common opinion that both phenomena have the same cause, since in America there are large earthquakes in regions where there are no volcanoes. However, he maintained that the cause was analogous and had to do with the presence of hot gases in the interior of the earth (the common opinion since classical antiquity). He briefly described the effects of the large earthquakes in Valdivia, Chile, in 1575; Arequipa, Peru, in 1582; Lima, Peru, in 1586; and Quito, Ecuadora in 1587. The sequence of these shocks made him propose a migration of large earthquakes in this region, from south to north, along the coast. This question is still debated among modern seismologists. He described the propagation of the motion in the Chile earthquake of 1575 along the coast for 300 leagues (about 1500 km) and in the Lima earthquake of 1586 for 170 leagues (~ 800 km) along the coast and 50 leagues (~ 250 km) toward the interior. Both of these earthquakes produced tsunamis that Acosta described, stating that in the Lima earthquake the water rose approximately 25 m and penetrated inland 10 km.
Meteorological observations are given a large exposure in books II and III and are without doubt the most important part of this work. The first question that Acosta treated is the general climate in the tropical regions. According to Aristotle, this should be an extremely hot and dry region, which openly contradicts the observations. Acosta described the variety of climate found in tropical regions, which varied according to its location near the coast or in the highlands. According to Acosta, different climates are found in the same latitude because of the proximity of the ocean, the regime of rains and winds, and the properties of the land. He dedicated considerable space to the classification and properties of the winds. Their cause was attributed to the influence of the sun, a theory that went against the commonly held Aristotelian doctrine. Especially interesting is his explanation of the origin of the trade winds. This was probably the first time that these east winds, which have fairly constant direction inside tropical latitudes, had been described in detail. The regularity of the trade winds was explained by their origin, which according to Acosta was the east to west rotation of the celestial spheres with respect to the earth. This is the closest that he could get to the modern answer while holding to the geocentric theory. Copernican views at that time were not yet widely accepted. The west winds outside the tropics were also described, and their origin was explained by the reaction of the air to the east winds of the tropics. He was also one of the first writers to suggest that human migration into the Americas was facilitated by a land bridge from Asia.
Quotations:
Acosta was aware of being the first to try to get at the causes of the natural phenomena of the new World and he writes: "Till now I do not know of any author who has tried to declare the causes and reasons of these novelties and peculiarities of Nature." Often, as Acosta noted, the new observations did not fit the accepted views of the natural philosophy predominant in Europe, "because they are natural things that are outside of the generally accepted philosophy."
One a journey he crossed the Andes and spent some time on the high plateau known as the Altiplano. Many of his party became sick when crossing the high pass at Pariacaca (4800 meters). He himself was "suddenly surprized with so mortall and strange a pang, that I was ready to fall" and considered that "the aire is there so subtle and delicate, as it is not proportionable with the breathing of man."
Membership
Acosta was a member in the Society of Jesus in Medina del Campo.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Experts on American ethnology have praised José Acosta's insightful understanding of the origins of the Native Americans: that they came from Asia by way of a now-submerged land connection with Alaska, and the fact that they then switched from hunting to urban living and built the magnificent cities that the Spanish conquistadors found. A prominent ethnologist said: "It was an astonishing bit of scholarly deduction for the time, given the absence of knowledge about the existence of such a land bridge."