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
As for Nobrega, the day before he died, he went around to call on his
friends. "Where are you going?" they asked him. "Home to my own
country," he answered, and on the morrow they were kneeling around his
coffin. Southey says that "so well had Nobrega and Anchieta trained
their disciples that in the course of half a century, all the nations
along the coast of Brazil, as far as the Portuguese settlements
extended, were collected in villages under their superintendence"
(History of Brazil, x, 310). "Nobrega died at the close of the sixteenth
century," says Ranke, "and in the beginning of the seventeenth we find
the proud edifice of the Catholic Church completely reared in South
America. There were five arch-bishoprics, twenty-seven bishoprics, four
hundred monasteries and innumerable parish churches." Of course, with
due regard to Ranke, all that was not the work of Jesuits, but men of
his kind see "Jesuit" in everything. It may be said, however, that they
contributed in no small degree to bring about this result.
In 1570 Azevedo conducted thirty-nine Jesuits from Madeira to Brazil.
Simultaneously, thirty more in two other ships set sail from Lisbon for
the same destination. But the day after Azevedo's party had left
Madeira, the famous Huguenot pirate, Jaques Soria, swooped down upon
them, hacked them to pieces on the deck, and then threw the mangled
remains to the sharks. The amazing Southey narrates this event as
follows: "He did by the Jesuits as they would have done by him and all
their sect:--put them to death." When the news reached Madeira, the
brethren of the martyrs sang a Te Deum which Southey informs us, "was as
much the language of policy as of fanaticism." Four days later, one
English and four French cruisers which Southey fails to tell us were
commanded by the Huguenot Capdeville, caught the other missionaries and
did their work so effectually, that of the sixty-nine splendid men whom
Azevedo started out with, only one arrived in Brazil. The struggle did
not end with the massacre. Sixty years afterwards the same enemy
attacked the missions of Pernambuco in Brazil where, "one hundred and
fifty tribes"--a Protestant annalist calls them "hordes"--had been
brought into alliance with the Portuguese, and were rapidly making
progress both in Christianity and civilization; on Good Friday in the
year 1633 the freebooters, passing at midnight through the smoking ruins
of Olinda, attacked Garassu in the early morning, while the inhabitants
were assembled at Mass, with the result, says Southey, that "the men who
came their way were slaughtered, the women were stripped, and the
plunderers with cruelty tore away ear-rings through the ear-flap, and
cut off fingers for the sake of the rings that were upon them. They then
plundered and burnt the town."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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