The Jesuit Missions to China and Peru, 1570-1610

Expectations and Appraisals of Expansionism

Ana Carolina Hosne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415529822
• eBook ISBN: 9781135018337
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios étnicos

The rulers of the overseas empires summoned the Society of Jesus to evangelize their new subjects in the 'New World' which Spain and Portugal shared; this book is about how two different missions, in China and Peru, evolved in the early modern world. From a European perspective, this book is about the way Christianity expanded in the early modern period, craving universalism.

In China, Matteo Ricci was so impressed by the influence that the scholar-officials were able to exert on the Ming Emperor himself that he likened them to the philosopher-kings of Plato's Republic. The Jesuits in China were in the hands of the scholar-officials, with the Emperor at the apex, who had the power to decide whether they could stay or not. Meanwhile, in Peru, the Society of Jesus was required to impose Tridentine Catholicism by Philip II, independently of Rome, a task that entailed compliance with the colonial authorities' demands.

This book explores how leading Jesuits, Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) in China and José de Acosta (1540-1600) in Peru, envisioned mission projects and reflected them on the catechisms they both composed, with a remarkable power of endurance. It offers a reflection on how the Jesuits conceived and assessed these mission spaces, in which their keen political acumen and a certain taste for power unfolded, playing key roles in envisioning new doctrinal directions and reflecting them in their doctrinal texts.

Part I

The men and the missions

1 The men

Selective biographies of José de Acosta and Matteo Ricci

Besides being the main figures in this book, José de Acosta (1540–1600) and Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) were two exemplary representatives of the Jesuit intellectual apostolate. In fact, their versatility makes it impossible to encompass all the different facets of their personalities and their works. This chapter is not limited to merely providing facts about their lives, but will attempt to provide ‘selective’ life histories of the two Jesuits. Basically, Acosta and Ricci have three things in common: their education in Jesuit colleges, which they both put to good use in their missions and expressed in the works composed in those spaces; their melancholic moods; and, most important, their taste for power. Much has been said about the closeness to power, typical of the Jesuit Order. However, there are always new angles to discover in particular contexts, especially when contrasting different mission spaces, such as Peru and China. Even though Acosta and Ricci are the main figures in these pages, this chapter also features other less known, sometimes self-effacing, Jesuits in Peru and in China, who also contributed to shaping these missions.

Given that Acosta was twelve years senior to the Italian Jesuit, and merely for chronological purposes, his selective life history is the first to follow this brief introduction.

José de Acosta: Jesuit, theologian and politician

Life in Spain and arrival in Peru

José de Acosta was born in 1540 in Medina del Campo, at the time a prosperous city in Castile. His father was a merchant; four of the five brothers joined the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, José among them. All did their basic studies at the Jesuit College in Medina del Campo. José also had three sisters, two of whom became nuns. This devout family was later claimed to have Jewish blood, to be new Christian – cristianos nuevos – both the information and accusation being spread by another member of the Society, Alonso Sánchez (1547–93), a missionary in the Philippines, when José de Acosta was already an elderly man.

In 1551, Acosta joined the Jesuit College in Medina del Campo, where he took his first three religious vows in 1554. Besides his studies in the field of humanities, he also wrote comedies and religious plays on biblical themes. Already a man of frail health, in 1559 Acosta settled in the Jesuit college at Alcalá de Henares, where he followed regular philosophy and theology courses from 1559 to 1567.¹ It was during this period that Acosta demonstrated his interest in scholastic matters together with an in-depth study of Thomism. The Thomism he was taught was deeply influenced by the great Dominican theologian in Salamanca, Francisco de Vitoria. Through both public and private disputes, Acosta had the chance to display his public-speaking skills.

Acosta made a brilliant career at the University of Alcalá, becoming an expert not only in theology but also in other disciplines – ecclesiastical and civil law, natural sciences and history, among others (Mateos 1954: IX). He showed a particular interest in the events and problems related to the conquest of America, especially the points of view of the Spanish professors in the School of Salamanca: Francisco de Vitoria, Diego de Covarrubias and Melchor Cano, among others. In 1566, towards the end of his theology studies and at the age of twenty-six, Acosta was ordained priest and taught theology at the newly inaugurated Ocaña College, something he was very good at, according to the first catalogue – primus – included in the triennial catalogue.²

But the most important fact in those years was his decided inclination towards a ‘vocation for the Indies’ (Lopetegui 1942: 39–42). The Jesuit colleges in Spain sought to channel missionary enthusiasm towards the Spanish Indies. In 1561, Acosta expressed his desire to become a missionary to Jerome Nadal (1507–80), one of the first members of the Society, but apparently he did not have in mind the Indias Occidentales. This can be inferred from an ambiguous statement of Acosta’s: ‘I long to go to the Indies, despite having to live among the blacks, and I feel the calling to work for the love of Our Lord, with whatever my capacities allow me until the very end’.³ León Lopetegui, who wrote an extensive biography of Acosta, surmises from the contents of the letter and the date of his missionary vocation that Acosta initially wished to be sent to the Portuguese Indies, as indicated in his remark about the ‘blacks’ under Portuguese jurisdiction (Lopetegui 1942: 43). Eventually, Acosta’s explicit acceptance of being sent to Spanish America seems to be weakened by his need to make clear that this destination is not of inferior quality to the Portuguese Indies:

I have no preference for going to any place in particular, but I think I would feel better among people with certain abilities and not too thick-headed … . Also, now that there is a route to Spain’s Western Indies, I thought that if I were among those, Your Paternity would send me there. I could do my part if I were ordered to do what I do here, like reading theology or preaching or any other ministry. And if obedience sent me to those other Indies and I had to stay in Goa or nearby, I feel a certain disgust to think that what is over there is more than what is over here.⁴

In sum, beyond preferences, Acosta always expressed his missionary fervour, and so he wrote to the General of the Society, Francisco de Borja (1510–72), mentioning his desire to be ‘a soldier of Christ’ in the Indias in a letter of 1568, repeated in April 1569 (Acosta 1954c: 251–52, Escritos Menores – hereafter cited as EM). It was precisely in 1568 that Phillip II authorized the Society of Jesus for missions in Spanish America, a destination previously restricted to the four mendicant orders: Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians and Mercedarians. General Borja had nurtured plans for Acosta in the Roman College, but the authorities of the Viceroyalty of Peru had repeatedly requested virtuous and learned men and that made him change his mind. Towards the end of 1570 Borja wrote to the Provincial of Peru, Jerónimo Ruiz de Portillo, in these terms:

Send Father Fonseca, who is currently Vice-chancellor in Cordoba, to establish the novices, and F. José de Acosta to teach and preach – they are among the best we have in Spain – and two or three other good men.

(Egaña 1954, Monumenta Peruana I: 390 – hereafter cited as MP I, etc.)

In 1570 in Alcalá, Acosta pronounced the fourth vow and in 1571 Borja finally sent him to Peru to teach theology, a subject in demand because of the increasing number of students in Lima.⁵ Before landing in Peru, Acosta stayed in the Antilles and Central America – Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, South Cuba and, seemingly, Jamaica – for approximately one year. Here Acosta gathered information that he later reported in his main works, i.e. De Procuranda Indorum Salute (1588) and the Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias (1590) (hereafter cited as HNyM). A few days after his arrival in Lima in 1572, Acosta inaugurated the studies of moral theology at the Jesuit College in that city, the first of the Society in the province of Peru. Soon after, in mid-1573, the provincial, Jerónimo Ruiz de Portillo, sent him on a lengthy mission through the interior of Peru and the main cities of the Viceroyalty. The information Acosta gathered in this journey of a year and a half was included in his work De Procuranda Indorum Salute, which he finished in 1577 and published in Spain in 1588. His travels took him to regions inhabited solely by natives and a few Spanish settlements in the burgeoning cities of this widespread territory. Acosta made this trip in the company of the Jesuit Antonio González de Ocampo, but mostly he travelled with the Jesuit Luis López and with Brother Gonzalo Ruiz, a mestizo – mixed-race – with ‘sound knowledge of the Indian language’ (Mateos 1954: XI). Besides Cuzco, Acosta visited Arequipa, La Paz, Potosí and Chuquisaca, cities that would host future Jesuit colleges. It was then that Acosta acquired the rudiments of the Quechua language. In those visits he also became familiar with the reducciones, i.e. Spanish-style towns and villages into which Indians were resettled, under the orders of Viceroy Toledo (1515–84), to ‘more efficiently’ organize mining labour and the Indians’ conversion to Christianity. Toledo wanted to meet Acosta and therefore invited him to Chuquisaca. There he met important dignitaries in the viceroy’s entourage, who counselled him in matters concerning the basic organization being carried out in Peru. One of these was the Licenciado Polo de Ondegardo, whose work Informaciones acerca de la Religión y Gobierno de los Incas – Information about the Religion and Government of the Incas – proved to be of great value to Acosta, becoming one of the main sources of De Procuranda.

In late October 1574, Acosta returned to Lima, the capital city of the Viceroyalty. He had been summoned by Provincial Portillo to a prosecution by the Inquisition against the Dominican Francisco de la Cruz, who had arrived in Peru in 1561. Acosta was appointed qualifier of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in a case that ended with an auto de fe celebrated in Lima in April 1578, when Francisco de la Cruz was burned at the stake after six years in prison. It was a long process with political connotations that went far beyond the theological and doctrinal aspects: there was suspicion of a conspiracy of Lascasian tone during the Viceroyalty of Toledo (Abril Castelló 1992: 79 onward). Acosta accused Francisco de la Cruz of being ‘a devilish cunning Heresiarch’; indeed, the reason for condemning de la Cruz was his Erasmian tone, which was questioned in this trial. As we shall see in Chapter Four, these are matters that Acosta would analyse in the fourth and fifth book of his De Procuranda Indorum salute. The issue in question was de la Cruz’s stand regarding the knowledge needed for the salvation of the Indians. The charge of Lutheran heresy in the case of de la Cruz is linked to the Protestant doctrine of Justification solely by faith (Bataillon 1977: 173; Estenssoro 2003: 191).⁶ But accusations by the Inquisition were not exclusively made against the Dominicans. A Jesuit, Luis López, was imprisoned in 1578 as well; but, unlike de la Cruz, López did not go through an auto de fe and was not burned at the stake (Abril Castelló 1992). Very critical of Toledo’s regime, López was accused by Toledo himself of being one of de la Cruz’s collaborators and of introducing ‘false sects’ in Peru (MP II: 734). As a result of his good relationship with the Inquisition, Acosta gradually drew apart from some of the Jesuits in Peru. Moreover, his close ties with Viceroy Toledo aroused suspicion. Beyond these internal disagreements, the Society of Jesus was given a pre-eminent role by the royal authorities regarding the evangelization and indoctrination of the Indians in Peru, while the Dominicans were pushed into the background. The royal representatives expelled them in 1572 from the Chucuito Province.

José de Acosta’s provincialate in Peru (1576–81)

In 1576, aged thirty-five at the time, Acosta was appointed provincial, in replacement of Jerónimo Ruiz del Portillo. Being provincial entailed a yearly visit around the province and keeping detailed records of all the activities carried out in each of the residences by each of the individuals, meaning that Acosta was unable to continue teaching theology at the University of Lima. He had started teaching at the university at Toledo’s request, interrupting his lessons at the Jesuit college in Lima.

In 1576 the Provincial Congregation of the Society was held. It consisted of two stages: the first in Lima, in January 1576, and the second in Cuzco, in October of the same year. The constitutions of the Congregation, signed by the secretary Luis López, contain an outline of several points later developed by Acosta in De Procuranda (MP II: 54–87; 201–05). Acosta had prepared a draft of this work for this first provincial congregation to set the basis for the Society’s evangelization project. The most outstanding Jesuit lenguas – a Spanish term referring to those who mastered the vernaculars – in Peru, Alonso de Barzana, Bartolomé de Santiago and the mestizo Jesuit Blas Valera, worked very intensively in Cuzco those days. But it was Barzana who mainly wrote the catechisms in Quechua and Aymara, the same ones that the Society used until the approval of the Doctrina y Catecismo para Instrucción de Indios, the Third Lima Council corpus. In a letter that General Mercurian sent to Alonso de Barzana on November 19 1576, Mercurian congratulates the latter for the Quechua lexicon he had composed – the Bocabulario – that would enable the fathers to learn the language. And the general also mentions how he found consolation in Barzana’s catechisms, both the brief and the greater. In that same letter, we find out that Barzana originally wanted to go to the China mission. However, in order to prove that Barzana belonged to the mission in Peru, Mercurian told him: ‘The vow you made to go to China, you have it well commuted in those lands – Peru – where there is more predisposition to preach the Gospel than in China’ (MP II: 37). At that time, there had been a succession of missionaries from different orders who had failed to enter China, until Michele Ruggieri succeeded in the early 1580s. Jesuit Barzana was one of Luis López’s fellows. They were together in the Cuzco, Potosí and Arequipa colleges, and López was his confessor as well. López had a difficult personality and was a nonconformist who had written some very critical ‘Chapters’ against Viceroy Toledo and the titles of Spanish domain in the Indias Occidentales (Mateos 1954: XV). As mentioned above, López was arrested by the Lima Inquisition and accused together with the Dominican Francisco de la Cruz in the same process, in 1573–76 (Mateos 1949: 150 onward).

Apart from the catechisms in Quechua and Aymara, and the lexicon – the Arte and Bocabulario – Barzana also wrote a confession manual in those languages – Confessionario. Unlike Mexico, where a printing press already existed, it was not possible to print these works in Peru, so it was agreed that Baltasar Piñas would take all the texts to Rome. They had to be reviewed by lenguas and theologians to then obtain a confirmation papal bull and a licence from Philip II. Piñas embarked in 1577 and must have arrived in Rome in 1578, where he met with Mercurian, who agreed on the printing of all the texts, recommending that permission be asked of the Consejo Real – the royal council – first. However, in the end, Mercurian warned that Piñas had not brought the texts to be printed, and claimed that it was not convenient to request the papal bull as previously agreed (Vargas Ugarte 1953: XII–XIII).

In his capacity as provincial, Acosta visited Cuzco in 1578 when he toured the new foundations; the doctrina de indios – Indian parish – of Juli, in Chucuito, for Indians only; and the colleges of Potosí, Arequipa and La Paz. The doctrinas de indios were Indian parishes in which the priests – curas doctrineros – were in charge of the religious instruction of the Indians. In Acosta’s times, each doctrina had 400 Indians. The main problem that the Society of Jesus had to deal with was Toledo’s imposition of the doctrinas de indios as the preferred evangelization method in the province of Peru, for this represented a harsh attack on the Jesuit vocation of mobility. As mentioned in the introduction, the Jesuits’ fourth vow – in Part Seven of the Constitutions – by which the professed members of the Society oblige themselves to ‘special obedience to the sovereign pontiff regarding missions’, was a vow about ‘missions’ – circa missiones. In short, mobility lay at the core of Jesuit missions. But the doctrinas de indios required a commitment to spiritual care – cura de almas – in the long term, so Jesuits had to settle there. Moreover, in the doctrinas the parish priests received a stipend, which was also against the Formula of the Institute – the fundamental rules of the Society. In this regard, José de Acosta played a key role by adopting a conciliatory approach regarding the doctrinas; in fact the Society did not have much of a choice if the Jesuits wanted to stay in Peru after Toledo’s threatening tone. However, Acosta’s good relationship with Viceroy Toledo would eventually divide the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on translations, orthography and citation norms
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I: The men and the missions
• Part II: The missions and their texts
• Conclusions
• Glossary of Chinese terms
• Bibliography
• Index