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Francis Xavier, SJ, venerated as Saint Francis Xavier, was a Spanish Catholic missionary and saint who co-founded the Society of Jesus and, as a representative of the Portuguese Empire, led the first Christian mission to Japan.
The Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits, is a religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and six companions, with the approval of Pope Paul III. The society is engaged in evangelization and apostolic ministry in 112 nations. Jesuits work in education, research, and cultural pursuits. Jesuits also conduct retreats, minister in hospitals and parishes, sponsor direct social and humanitarian ministries, and promote ecumenical dialogue.
This timeline of Christian missions chronicles the global expansion of Christianity through a listing of the most significant missionary outreach events.
Alessandro Valignano, S.J., sometimes Valignani, was an Italian Jesuit priest and missionary born in Chieti, part of the Kingdom of Naples, who helped supervise the introduction of Catholicism to the Far East, and especially to Japan and China.
The Japanese term Kirishitan, from Portuguese cristão, meaning "Christian", referred to Catholic Christians in Japanese and is used in Japanese texts as a historiographic term for Catholics in Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries.
In Christianity, inculturation is the adaptation of Christian teachings and practices to cultures. This is a term that is generally used by Catholics and the Orthodox, whereas Protestants, especially associated with the World Council of Churches, prefer to use the term "contextual theology".
Christianity in Japan is among the nation's minority religions in terms of individuals who state an explicit affiliation or faith.
The Catholic Church in India is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope. There are over 20 million Catholics in India, representing around 1.55% of the total population, and the Catholic Church is the single largest Christian church in India. There are 10,701 parishes that make up 174 dioceses and eparchies, which are organised into 29 ecclesiastical provinces. Of these, 132 dioceses are of the Latin Church, 31 of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and 11 of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. Despite the very small population that Indian Catholics make up percentage wise, India still has the second-largest Christian population in Asia after the Catholic Church in the Philippines.
Anjirō (アンジロー) or Yajirō, baptized as Paulo de Santa Fé, was the first recorded Japanese Christian, who lived in the 16th century. After committing a murder in his home domain of Satsuma in southern Kyushu, he fled to Portuguese Malacca and he sought out Saint Francis Xavier (1506–1552) and returned to Japan with him as an interpreter. Along with Xavier, Anjirō returned to Japan with two other Jesuits, two Japanese companions, and a Chinese companion who had been baptized to Catholicism to form the first Jesuit mission to Japan.
Missionary work of the Catholic Church has often been undertaken outside the geographically defined parishes and dioceses by religious orders who have people and material resources to spare, and some of which specialized in missions. Eventually, parishes and dioceses would be organized worldwide, often after an intermediate phase as an apostolic prefecture or apostolic vicariate. Catholic mission has predominantly been carried out by the Latin Church in practice.
Marcello Francesco Mastrilli was an Italian Jesuit missionary who was martyred in Japan on Mount Unzen during the Tokugawa Shogunate, which had banned Christianity in 1614. After sailing for Japan to find and possibly reconvert the notorious apostate Cristóvão Ferreira, who went to Japan and renounced his faith there, he was arrested as soon as he got off his ship. After three days of torture in the pit of Nagasaki, he was beheaded. A painting of his death, Martyrdom of Saint Marcello Mastrilli (1664), was made by Antonio Maria Vassallo.
Juan Fernández was a Spanish Jesuit lay brother and missionary. He was the first European to write a grammar and lexicon of the Japanese language.
Christian missionaries arrived with Francis Xavier and the Jesuits in the 1540s and briefly flourished, with over 100,000 converts, including many daimyōs in Kyushu. It soon met resistance from the highest office holders of Japan. Emperor Ōgimachi issued edicts to ban Catholicism in 1565 and 1568, but to little effect. Beginning in 1587, with imperial regent Toyotomi Hideyoshi's ban on Jesuit missionaries, Christianity was repressed as a threat to national unity. After the Tokugawa shogunate banned Christianity in 1620 it ceased to exist publicly. Many Catholics went underground, becoming hidden Christians, while others died. Only after the Meiji Restoration was Christianity re-established in Japan.
St. Paul's College of Macau also known as College of Madre de Deus was a university founded in 1594 in Macau by Jesuits at the service of the Portuguese under the Padroado treaty. It claims the title of the first Western university in East Asia.
Christianity and colonialism are often closely associated with each other due to the service of Christianity, in its various sects, as the state religion of the historical European colonial powers, in which Christians likewise made up the majority. Through a variety of methods, Christian missionaries acted as the "religious arms" of the imperialist powers of Europe. According to Edward E. Andrews, Associate Professor of Providence College Christian missionaries were initially portrayed as "visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery". However, by the time the colonial era drew to a close in the later half of the 20th century, missionaries were viewed as "ideological shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them", colonialism's "agent, scribe and moral alibi".
Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu is a monumental six folio-volume work about history of the Society of Jesus published in Rome in 1650–1673 by the Jesuit historian Daniello Bartoli. It is the most extensive classic of Italian literature, over ten thousand pages long. It begins the centenary history of the Jesuits between 1540 and 1640 with an authoritative if somewhat ponderous biography of the founder Ignatius Loyola.
The history of the missions of the Jesuits in China is part of the history of relations between China and the Western world. The missionary efforts and other work of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, between the 16th and 17th century played a significant role in continuing the transmission of knowledge, science, and culture between China and the West, and influenced Christian culture in Chinese society today.
In 1544, during the Crisis of the Sixteenth Century (1521–1597) in the Jaffna Kingdom, Cankili I killed 600 Catholic converts. Portuguese missionaries attributed the baptism, martyrdom and intercession of the Mannar Martyrs for the rapid conversion and growth of Catholicism in Sri Lanka. In a letter found in the Archives of the Society of Jesus (S.J.) dated 19 December 1561, Anrique Anriquez the first Mannar parish priest (1561–1564) gives details to how rapidly the island was converted, and churches and hospital built all around the island. The Christians of the island of Mannar were held up as a model. He wrote since their arrival, over a thousand people converted to Christianity. A Sri Lankan trilingual film named Praana, was made in 2022, based on this incident.
References
- ↑ Encounters Between Jesuits and Protestants in Asia and the Americas . Netherlands, Brill, 2018. 12.
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