St. José de Anchieta
Posted on June 11, 2019 by admin No comments
Born: 19 March 1534 San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
Died: 9 June 1597 (aged 63) Reritiba, Espírito Santo, Governorate General of Brazil, Portuguese Empire
Venerated: in Catholic Church (Brazil, Canary Islands, and the Society of Jesus)
Beatified: 22 June 1980, Saint Peter’s Square, Vatican City, by Pope John Paul II
Canonized: 3 April 2014 (equivalent canonization), Vatican City, by Pope Francis
Major shrine: Cathedral of San Cristóbal de La Laguna (in Canary Islands) and National Shrine of San José de Anchieta (in Brazil)
Feast: 9 June
Patronage: Catechists, of those who suffer scoliosis and compatrono of Brazil
José de Anchieta y Díaz de Clavijo, S.J. (Joseph of Anchieta) (19 March 1534 – 9 June 1597) was a Spanish Jesuit missionary to the Portuguese colony of Brazil in the second half of the 16th century. A highly influential figure in Brazil’s history in the first century after its European discovery, Anchieta was one of the founders of São Paulo in 1554 and of Rio de Janeiro in 1565. He is the first playwright, the first grammarian and the first poet born in the Canary Islands, and the father of Brazilian literature. Anchieta was also involved in the religious instruction and conversion to the Catholic faith of the Indian population. His efforts along with those of another Jesuit missionary, Manuel da Nóbrega, at Indian pacification were crucial to the establishment of stable colonial settlements in the colony.
With his book Arte de gramática da língua mais usada na costa do Brasil, Anchieta became the first person to provide an orthography to the Old Tupi language most commonly spoken by the indigenous people of Brazil.
Anchieta is commonly known as “the Apostle of Brazil”. He was canonized by Pope Francis on 3 April 2014. He was the second native of the Canary Islands, after Peter of Saint Joseph Betancur, also a missionary to Latin America, declared a saint by the Catholic Church. Anchieta is also considered the third saint of Brazil.
Early life
Anchieta was born on 19 March 1534, in San Cristóbal de La Laguna on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Spain, to a wealthy family. He was baptized on 7 April 1534 in the Parish of Our Lady of Remedies (now La Laguna Cathedral).
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.
When he was 14 years old, Anchieta went to study in Portugal at the Royal College of Arts in Coimbra. He was intensely religious and felt he had a vocation to the priesthood. He sought admission to the Jesuit College of the University of Coimbra and was accepted into the Jesuits on 1 May 1551, at the age of 17. While he was a novice, he nearly ruined his health by his excessive austerity, causing an injury to the spine that made him almost a hunchback. He learned to write Portuguese and Latin as well as his mother tongue.
Missionary in Brazil
In 1553, the Jesuits included Anchieta among the third group of their members sent to the Portuguese colony of Brazil, believing that the climate would improve his health. After a perilous journey and a shipwreck, Anchieta and his small group arrived in São Vicente, the first village that had been founded in Brazil in 1534. There he made his first contact with the Tapuia Indians living in the region.
In late 1553, Manuel da Nóbrega, the first Provincial of the Jesuits in Brazil, sent 13 Jesuits including Anchieta to climb the Serra do Mar to a plateau along the Tietê River that the Indians called piratininga (from Tupi pira “fish” + tininga “drying” – according to Anchieta, more than 12,000 fish could be found drying along the Tietê river floodplains after one of its customary floods). There the Jesuits established a small missionary settlement and celebrated Mass for the first time on 25 January 1554, date of the conversion of Saint Paul, according to tradition. That date is now celebrated as the founding of São Paulo. Anchieta and his Jesuit colleagues began their efforts to instruct the native people in the rudiments of Christianity and convert them, while also introducing basic education in other subjects. He taught Latin to the Indians, began to learn their language, Old Tupi, and started compiling a dictionary and a grammar. Their mission settlement, the Jesuit College of São Paulo of Piratininga, soon developed into a small population center.
Anchieta and Nóbrega had long opposed the way the Portuguese colonists were treating the Indians and had a serious conflict about it with Duarte da Costa, who served as Governor-General of Brazil from 1553 to 1558. They nevertheless supported the Portuguese against their French rivals in establishing claims to Brazil and welcomed the support of Portuguese authorities against the Huguenot Protestants whom the French at times welcomed to their settlements. In fact, the two Jesuits saw the French colony as a generally Protestant enterprise, ignoring its Catholic components and making no distinction between Lutherans and Calvinists. 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.
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 the present-day states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Espírito Santo rebelled and formed an alliance, the Tamoyo Confederation, which soon allied themselves to the French colonists who had settled in Guanabara Bay in 1555 under the command of Vice-Admiral Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon. The conflict was brutal and at once international and inter-religious. In one instance the Portuguese hung ten Frenchmen in an attempt to intimidate their enemies into submission. In another in 1557, a Protestant named Jacques le Balleur was put to death and Anchieta, in some interpretations, helped the executioner carry out the sentence, though the facts are much disputed.
The Tamoyo Confederation attacked São Paulo several times between 1562 and 1564 without success. Anchieta and Nóbrega initiated peace negotiations with the Tamoyos in the village of Iperoig in modern Ubatuba on 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 Indians’ confidence, and peace was established between the Tamoyo and Tupiniquim nations and the Portuguese.
Portuguese-French hostilities were renewed when Estácio de Sá, a nephew of the new Governor-General of Brazil, Mem de Sá, was ordered to expel the French colonists. With the 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 the French, each side supported by their Indian allies. He acted as a surgeon and interpreter. He was also responsible for reporting back to the governor-general’s headquarters in Salvador, Bahia, and participated in the final victorious battle against the French in 1567.
After the peace settlement, a Jesuit college was founded in Rio under the direction of Nóbrega. Anchieta was invited to remain and succeeded him upon his death in 1570. Despite his frailty and ill health, and the rigors of slow travel by foot and ship of the time, over the next ten years Anchieta traveled 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.
As his health worsened, Anchieta requested relief from his duties in 1591. He died in Brazil on 9 June 1597, at Reritiba, Espírito Santo, mourned by more than 3,000 Indians.
Veneration
When beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980, Anchieta acquired the title “Blessed José de Anchieta.” Pope Francis announced his canonization as a saint on 3 April 2014. The announcement was first communicated to three priests from the Canary Islands (hometown of Anchieta) who attended the Mass of the Pope in his residence in Santa Marta, who communicated it to the Bishop of Tenerife, Bernardo Álvarez Afonso.
He used a process known as equivalent canonization that dispenses with the standard judicial procedures and ceremonies in the case of someone long venerated. Anchieta was the first Spaniard canonized by Pope Francis.
During and after his life, José de Anchieta was considered almost a supernatural being. Many legends formed around him, such as that he once preached to and calmed an attacking jaguar. To this day, a popular devotion holds that praying to Anchieta protects against animal attacks.
José de Anchieta is highly revered in the Canary Islands. A bronze statue by Brazilian artist Bruno Giorgi in the city of San Cristóbal de La Laguna depicts José de Anchieta departing for Portugal. It was a gift from the Government of Brazil to Anchieta’s hometown, where a wooden image of him is also venerated in the Cathedral of La Laguna and carried in procession through the streets every 9 June. In the Basilica of Our Lady of Candelaria (patron saint of the Canary Islands), there is a painting of José de Anchieta founding the city of São Paulo. In 1997, a biographical comic book was published.
Patronage
Saint José de Anchieta is the patron and model of catechists. He was also declared by Pope Benedict XVI as one of the thirteen Intercessors of the World Youth Day 2013, held in Rio de Janeiro.
In April 2015 he was declared by the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil a copatron of Brazil, whose patron saint is Our Lady of Aparecida.