The Society of Jesus is a scholarly religious congregation of the Catholic Church which originated in sixteenth-century Spain.
Background
José de Anchieta was born on March 19, 1534, in Sao Cristóvao de la Laguna on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. His father, Juan Anchieta y Zelaiaran, was a landowner from Urrestilla, in the Basque Country, who had escaped to Tenerife in 1525 after participating in an unsuccessful rebellion against the Emperor Charles V. Through him, Anchieta was related to Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus.
His mother was Mencia Díaz de Clavijo y Llarena, a descendant of the conquerors of Tenerife. Mencia was the daughter of Sebastián de Llarena, a Jew who had converted to Christianity, from the kingdom of Castile.
Education
His well-to-do Spanish family sent him to the Jesuit College at Coimbra University, Portugal, in 1547.
His biographers credit him with being an exceptionally intelligent student whose intellectual prowess compensated for physical infirmity.
Career
In 1553 Anchieta accompanied Duarte da Costa, the second governor general of Brazil, to the New World. In 1549 the Portuguese King had established a central government for the huge but underpopulated American colony.
The Jesuits, first sent out in 1549, bore the primary responsibility of concentrating the seminomadic Indians into aldeias, or villages, where they could hear the word of God and learn the ways of the Portuguese.
The Jesuits also looked after the spiritual welfare of the Portuguese officials and colonists in their new environment. Anchieta, then, was one of 128 Jesuits who arrived in Brazil in the 16th century with the task of transplanting Portuguese Church-centered civilization to that colony. Though few in number, the Jesuits left a lasting imprint on the new land because of their exceptional missionary zeal. Anchieta began to teach in the south in Sao Vicente, Portugal's first permanent settlement in Brazil, founded in 1532.
Anchieta was instrumental in helping to found two of Brazil's most important cities, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The master of several Indian languages, Anchieta helped to make the Tupi tongue, the language of the principal Indian group along the coast, the lingua franca of the otherwise heterogeneous Indians.
He wrote a grammar of the Tupi language which was later published in Lisbon and widely used by missionaries, compiled a Tupi-Portuguese dictionary, and translated prayers, hymns, and the catechism into the Indian language. Anchieta's many letters and reports provided later historians with invaluable primary sources for the study of Brazil's development in the 16th century.
They span the period 1554-1594 and discuss a wide variety of subjects, such as the civil authorities in Brazil, the bishops and prelates, the French incursions, the Society of Jesus and its activities, education, and the customs of the Indians. Anchieta also wrote poetry, composing his verses with equal ease in Portuguese, Spanish, Latin, and Tupi, as well as theatrical pieces, principally for didactic purposes.
In 1578 the father general of the Jesuit order in Rome appointed Anchieta to the office of provincial of Brazil, a position he held for 8 years. As before, he traveled extensively along the Brazilian coast to visit the principal settlements and missions from Pernambuco in the north to Sao Vicente in the south. Retiring from the office of provincial in 1585, he went to Espirito Santo to continue his teaching and missionary work.
He died in Reritiba (today Anchieta) in the state of Espirito Santo on June 9, 1597.
Religion
He entered the Society of Jesus in 1551.
Views
One of his principal concerns was to introduce to Christianity the various Indian tribes, but this Christianization also served as an effective means of incorporating the diverse indigenous inhabitants within the pale of the Portuguese Empire.
Anchieta recognized that violence could be necessary to create the conditions for evangelizing the indigenous inhabitants and later praised the colony's third Governor General, Mem de Sá (1500–1572), for what he accomplished in killing large numbers of Amerindians.
Quotations:
His detailed testimony with respect to cannibalism is often cited by anthropologists. He explained, for example, that the Amerindians "believe that true kinship comes from the side of the fathers, who are the agents, and . .. that the mothers are nothing more than bags in which the children grow" and therefore treat the children of a captured female and a member of their tribe with respect but sometimes eat the children of a captured male and a female member of their own tribe.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
According to one assessment, "His grammar and dictionary still rank among the best ever produced of a Brazilian language, nearly 500 years later. .. . Anchieta was a dedicated linguist whose work can be considered the beginning of Amazonian linguistics (indeed it would not be stretching matters too far to call his work the beginning of linguistics in the Americas. "