José de Anchieta

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José de Anchieta (1534–1597) was a Spanish 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 21, 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, and therefore his efforts at their pacification, together with another Jesuit missionary, Manoel da Nóbrega, was crucial to the establishment of stable colonial settlements in the new country.

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Early life

José de Anchieta was born on March 19, 1534, in San Cristóbal de La Laguna on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, to a rich family. His father, João Lopez de Anchieta, was a landowner from Urrestilha, in the Basque Country, who had escaped in 1525 to Tenerife after participating in a failed rebellion against the King. His mother, Mência Dias de Clavijo Llerema, was descendant from the conquerors of Tenerife, and came from a Jewish family.

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.

Missionary in Brazil

In 1553 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 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, Manoel da Nóbrega, a Portuguese Jesuit, ordered that 13 priests, Anchieta among them, to escalate the fearsome Serra do Mar to a plateau which the Indians had named Piratininga, along the Tietê river, and to establish a small entrepost for the Jesuits. 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 Company of Jesus was so famous. Anchieta taught Latin to the Indians and began to learn their language, Tupí-Guaraní, 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 have established themselves in 1555 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 Tupí-Guaraní language was crucial in this efforts. After many incidents and the near massacre of Anchieta and Nóbrega by the Indians, they finally suceeded in gaining their confidence, and peace was established between the Tamoyo and Tupyninquim nations and the Portuguese.

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 definitely the French colonists. 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 Sugar Loaf, 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.

Anchieta and Nobrega made the governor-general Mem de Sá to arrest an huguenot refugee in 1559, the taylor Jacques Le Balleur, who was put into jail, and under instigation of the jesuits condemned to death in 1567. Le Balleur was transfered from Salvador to Rio Janeiro for his execution, but the executor denied to kill him, and alleging to exterminate the "Protestant heresy", Anchieta killed Jacques Le Balleur with his own hands.

After the peace, a Jesuit college was founded in Rio under the direction of Nóbrega, and Anchieta was invited to stay, suceeding 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, carrying out an astounding, extensive work of consolidation of the Jesuit mission in Brazil. He helped to found other colleges and villages, and was rewarded by the Society of Jesus with the highest rank in the new colony, that of Provincial, in 1577.

With aggravating health, Anchieta requested relief of 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 valued so much 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, his worshippers believe that praying to Anchieta is effective against attacks of animals! Thus, in the eyes of the Roman Church, he was a performer of miracles. He was beatified by the Vatican in June 22, 1980, and is being considered for canonization. He is celebrated as a Venerable of the Jesuits and the Apostle of Brazil. and gives his name to two cities, Anchieta, in the State of Espírito Santo (former Reritiba, where he died), and Anchieta, in the state of Santa Catarina, and many other geographical places, roads, institutions, hospitals, schools, etc.

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-Guarani. 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 Tupi-Guarani 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 comitting 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.

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