The Jesuits, 1534-1921: A History of the Society of Jesus from Its Foundation to the Present TimeCampbell, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
History
The Jesuits, 1534-1921: A History of the Society of Jesus from Its Foundation to the Present Time
Campbell, Thomas J. (Thomas Joseph)
Jesuits -- History
Chile and Peru--Valdivia--Peruvian Bark--Paraguay Reductions--
Father Fields--Emigration from Brazil--Social and religious
prosperity of the Reductions--Martyrdom of twenty-nine
missionaries--Reductions in Colombia--Peter Claver--French West
Indies--St. Kitts--Irish Exiles--Father Bath or Destriches--
Montserrat--Emigration to Guadeloupe--Other Islands--Guiana--
Mexico--Lower California--The Pious Fund--The Philippines--
Canada Missions--Brébeuf, Jogues, Le Moyne, Marquette--Maryland
--White--Lewger.
In 1567 Philip II asked for twenty Jesuits to evangelize Peru. The
request was granted, and in the Lent of 1568 the first band arrived at
Callao and made its way to Lima. They were so cordially welcomed, says
Astrain, that the provincial found it necessary to warn his men that
much would have to be done to live up to the public expectation. Means
were immediately put at their disposal, and they set to work at the
erection of a college. While the college was being built they heard
confessions, visited the jails and hospitals, gave lectures on canon law
to the priests of the cathedral, and started their great training school
on Lake Titicaca, to which we have already referred. There the novices
were set to learn the native languages to prepare them for their future
work. For the moment the population of the city also gave them plenty to
do. It was made up of three classes of people: negroes, half-breeds, and
wealthy Spaniards. Father López looked after the negroes, and by degrees
succeeded in putting a stop to their orgies and indecent dances. Others
were, meantime, taking care of the whites and mestizos. The usual
Jesuit sodalities were put in working order, and soon it was a common
thing to see the young fashionables of the city laying aside their
cloaks and swords, and helping the sick in the hospitals, going around
to the huts of the poor or visiting criminals in the jails.
A new detachment of missionaries arrived in the following year with the
Viceroy Toledo, who evidently took to them too kindly on the way over,
for besides their normal duties, he wanted them to assume the office of
parish priests, and he immediately wrote to Philip II to that effect.
They refused, of course, with the consequence of an unpleasant state of
feeling in their regard on the part of the authorities. Indeed, the
pressure became so great that the superior finally yielded to a certain
extent, and even assigned some of his professed to the work, but he was
promptly summoned to Europe for his weakness. Meantime novices came
swarming in, among them Bernardin d'Acosta, whose virtues merited for
him, later on, a place in the "Menology." There was also little Oviando,
called the Stanislaus of Peru. He was an abandoned child whose parents
had come out to America and had lost him or had died, and he was begging
his bread in the streets of Lima when the Fathers picked him up. They
sent him to the college and helped him to become a saint.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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