prosperity was due to a number of factors but not least to the marvelous leadership provided early on by Nóbrega and Anchieta. The broad scope of Jesuit action in Brazil was twofold: the seacoast towns and the deep forests. In the towns the colleges, directed to the Portugueseand Creole population, were here as elsewhere the center of Jesuit operations. They soon became mature institutions. When in 1566 the Portuguese wrested Rio de Janeiro from the French, Nóbrega transferred Jesuit headquarters there, where he soon opened a novitiate and a house of studies for the training of Jesuit scholastics. At Bahia in 1572, the college introduced philosophy into its curriculum and a few years later conferred its first masterâs degrees. Firm foundations for the future were thus laid.
Among the Indians, the Jesuit objective was to settle them in fixed communities, known as
aldeias,
where they could be weaned from superstition, drunkenness, and cannibalism and be instructed in the Christian faith. When Anchieta was involved in the process, it went reasonably well through his amazing output of lively and attractive songs, hymns, and religious plays. Even as Anchieta was molding the spiritual temper of early Brazil, he was laying the foundations for a national culture.
Although such efforts smack of paternalism and were inspired by a sense of cultural superiority, they were not engaged in by the Jesuits without some feeling of mutuality, and they contrast favorably with the attitudes and practices of many other Europeans who had settled there. In Brazil Jesuits took courageous stands against the enslavement of the natives and evoked great wonderment as word sped through the jungles that among the Portuguese there were some who defended them.
Although the Jesuits arrived in Brazil in 1549, they did not enter the Spanish domains of the western hemisphere until nineteen years later, 1568. The delay was due to the wary attitude toward the Society of Philip II. Unlike in Brazil, where the Jesuits were the first missionaries to arrive, the Dominicans, Franciscans, and other orders had arrived in Spanish territories some seventy-five years before they did and were well established. This situationbrought the Jesuits the advantage of being able to learn from the experience of the others but the disadvantage of being drawn into the sometimes unseemly, even vicious, competition among religious orders.
Once arrived the Jesuits soon entered three major areas claimed by the Spanish crownâFlorida, Mexico, and Peru. In the first they suffered incredible hardships, made no headway with the Indians, and met death at their hands. The survivors retreated either to Havana, where they and their confreres soon opened a college, or to Mexico City to begin another successful chapter in the Societyâs history. In Mexico by 1574 the Jesuits had, with their church and school for six hundred boys in Mexico City and their schools at Oaxaca and Patzcuaro, entered as an important force into the cultural and religious life of the colony.
Among the first to arrive in the Viceroy of Peru was Alonso Barzana, who penetrated into the wilds of upper Peru and then into the eastern valleys of the Andes. These experiences allowed him to produce a dictionary and a prayer book in five Indian dialects. He was not alone among the Jesuits in his mastery of such languages and dialects. But the most enduring of the Jesuit undertakings in these early years was the founding of the college of San Pablo in Lima almost as soon as they arrived in the Viceroy. The oldest Jesuit school in Spanish America, San Pablo developed into a nerve center in the New World for the entry of European intellectual currents, and for two centuries it sparked the cultural life of Peru.
With the native populations in the forests of this vast territory, the Jesuits for the most part met hostility, identified as they perforce were with the Spanish aggressors. However, the mission among the
Among the Indians, the Jesuit objective was to settle them in fixed communities, known as
aldeias,
where they could be weaned from superstition, drunkenness, and cannibalism and be instructed in the Christian faith. When Anchieta was involved in the process, it went reasonably well through his amazing output of lively and attractive songs, hymns, and religious plays. Even as Anchieta was molding the spiritual temper of early Brazil, he was laying the foundations for a national culture.
Although such efforts smack of paternalism and were inspired by a sense of cultural superiority, they were not engaged in by the Jesuits without some feeling of mutuality, and they contrast favorably with the attitudes and practices of many other Europeans who had settled there. In Brazil Jesuits took courageous stands against the enslavement of the natives and evoked great wonderment as word sped through the jungles that among the Portuguese there were some who defended them.
Although the Jesuits arrived in Brazil in 1549, they did not enter the Spanish domains of the western hemisphere until nineteen years later, 1568. The delay was due to the wary attitude toward the Society of Philip II. Unlike in Brazil, where the Jesuits were the first missionaries to arrive, the Dominicans, Franciscans, and other orders had arrived in Spanish territories some seventy-five years before they did and were well established. This situationbrought the Jesuits the advantage of being able to learn from the experience of the others but the disadvantage of being drawn into the sometimes unseemly, even vicious, competition among religious orders.
Once arrived the Jesuits soon entered three major areas claimed by the Spanish crownâFlorida, Mexico, and Peru. In the first they suffered incredible hardships, made no headway with the Indians, and met death at their hands. The survivors retreated either to Havana, where they and their confreres soon opened a college, or to Mexico City to begin another successful chapter in the Societyâs history. In Mexico by 1574 the Jesuits had, with their church and school for six hundred boys in Mexico City and their schools at Oaxaca and Patzcuaro, entered as an important force into the cultural and religious life of the colony.
Among the first to arrive in the Viceroy of Peru was Alonso Barzana, who penetrated into the wilds of upper Peru and then into the eastern valleys of the Andes. These experiences allowed him to produce a dictionary and a prayer book in five Indian dialects. He was not alone among the Jesuits in his mastery of such languages and dialects. But the most enduring of the Jesuit undertakings in these early years was the founding of the college of San Pablo in Lima almost as soon as they arrived in the Viceroy. The oldest Jesuit school in Spanish America, San Pablo developed into a nerve center in the New World for the entry of European intellectual currents, and for two centuries it sparked the cultural life of Peru.
With the native populations in the forests of this vast territory, the Jesuits for the most part met hostility, identified as they perforce were with the Spanish aggressors. However, the mission among the
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