Bento de Góis, S.J. "Seeking Cathay He Found Heaven,"

Bento de Góis, S.J.

When the leaders of the Mission at the Court of Akbar heard from Musulman travellers of a great and rich empire called Khitai, to be reached by a long and devious course through the heart of Inner Asia, the idea seized their imaginations that here was an ample and yet untouched field awaiting the labours of the Society, if the way could but be found open; and this way they determined to explore. The person selected for this venturesome exploration was Bento de Góis. Before he started on his journey doubts had been suggested whether this Cathay were not indeed the very China in which Ricci and his companions were already labouring with some promise of success; but these doubts were overruled, or at least the leader of the Agra Mission was not convinced by them, and he prevailed on his superiors still to sanction the exploration that had been proposed. 

The gallant soldier of the Society, one not unworthy to bear the Name on which others of that Company's deeds and modes of action have brought such obloquy, carried through his arduous task; ascertained that the mysterious empire he had sought through rare hardships and perils was China indeed; and died just within its borders. "Seeking Cathay he found heaven," as one of his brethren has pronounced his epitaph. 

And thus it is that we have thought his journey a fitting close to this collection; for with its termination Cathay may be considered finally to disappear from view, leaving China only in the mouths and minds of men. Not but that Cathay will be found for some time longer to retain its place as a distinct region in some maps

Link (here) to read this and more

Portuguese Jesuit On The Priesthood

Several participants spoke about the issues faced by priests today, and the council's vocational commission gave a presentation. The secretary from the Portuguese conference, Jesuit Father Manuel Morujão, stated that "the definition of a priest is not the function or the task he performs." He affirmed that a priest is a "human being who specializes in God" in order to serve others twenty-four hours a day. Father Morujão added that the priest must be "an expert in the art of encountering God," and for this reason he must know how to "draw on the Eucharist as his highest expression of fulfillment."

Link (here) to the full story

If you would like to read more about the priesthood read this book entitled, Jesus Lives In The Priest, By Fr. Pierre Millet, S.J.

Queen Christina Of Sweden And Her Jesuit Father Macedo

Three years after the election of Father Goschwin Nickel as Superior General a Portuguese Jesuit, Father Antonio Macedo, was instrumental in the conversion of Queen Christina of Sweden, who when a child had succeeded her father Gustavus Adolphus.

Father Macedo, a former missionary in Africa, was attached by John IV. of Portugal to the Portuguese embassy at Stockholm. Although he was obliged to conceal his priesthood under the employment of secretary, his real calling became known to the queen, whose mind had been favourably inclined towards the true faith by her intercourse with the famous philosopher, Descartes, a pupil of the Jesuits of La Fleche. After several conferences with Father Macedo she declared her intention to abdicate the throne, and to become a Catholic, a resolve which she executed some months later.

In spite of her violent passions and wayward undisciplined character, Christina appears to have been sincere in this the great act of her life; and through all the vicissitudes of her strange career she remained stanch to the Catholic faith. Out of gratitude to her Jesuit instructor, she besought the Pope to make him a cardinal—a dignity that Father Macedo constantly declined, and to the end of his life his favourite occupation was teaching the poor children of Lisbon, where he died in 1693.

Link (here)

"You Are My Witnesses That I Am Dying For The Catholic Faith."

Bl. Ignatius de Azevedo, S.J. (Portuguese: 1527-1570) was one of the Forty Martyrs of Brazil who met their death off the Canary Islands at the hands of Huguenots. Ignatius had worked in Rome as procurator for India and Brazil, then the Superior General, Francis Borgia assigned him to Brazil as Visitor to find how Rome could help the Jesuits working there. The answer was more Jesuits, so Ignatius went to visit the Spanish and Portuguese provinces of the Society to seek volunteers for the Brazil mission and succeeded in gathering 49 young Jesuit volunteers.

The 40 martyrs In spite of the clear danger of pirate ships they sailed off in two ships. Ignatius expressed his feeling: "If the Huguenots should capture us, what harm can they do? The most they can do is to send us speedily to heaven."

On July 15, 1570 as they were heading into the Port of Palms, near the Canary Islands, one of the two ships, with 40 Jesuits aboard, was overtaken by five faster pirate ships under the command of a French Huguenot, formerly a Catholic, now a declared enemy of Jesuits. When the pirates boarded the ship and saw

Fr. Azevedo in the center of the ship holding a painting of the Virgin Mary, a pirate slashed him with a sword as he protested: "You are my witnesses that I am dying for the Catholic Faith." The pirates picked up his body and hurled him overboard with the painting still held tightly in his hands.

They then hacked to death the rest of the 39 Jesuits and threw them all into the sea, leaving unharmed the rest of the passengers. (Ban, Cor, Ham, JLx, Tyl)

Painting is not of the actual incident, but I think best represents the post and what these heroic unarmed Jesuits faced.

Link (here)

Jesuit's Invented Tempura? Come On!

Tempura holds a bit of Japanese history

Apr. 30, 2008
By MARICEL E. PRESILLA
Tempura embodies qualities Japanese cooks hold dear: fresh ingredients, precision cooking and beautiful presentation. It also exemplifies the uncanny ability of the Japanese to absorb outside influences -- in this case, from the Iberian peninsula -- and mold them into new constructs that are very much their own.

The idea of frying fish and seafood in a light batter came to Japan with Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century. These learned and zealous men were the evangelical arm of the Portuguese crown in Asia.

They arrived in Japan in 1549 following the wreck of a Portuguese ship along the coast of Kyushu, Japan's most southwesterly island.

Led at first by Francis Xavier, who was born in Navarre, Spain, the Jesuits gained Japanese converts to Christianity even in the upper echelons of the nobility (daimyo) and the samurai warrior class.

They also managed to secure a stronghold in Nagasaki, which became the hub of Japanese trade with Portugal. Naturally, as the Jesuits came into contact with all levels of Japanese society, their influence extended beyond religion to other aspects of Western culture such as technology and science and even cooking. In the book Japan: Its History and Culture (MacGraw-Hill, 2005), historian W. Scott Morton writes that by 1569, there were about 300,000 Christian converts in Japan and that linguistic borrowings from this period include the Portuguese words for bread (pan, from the Portuguese pao) and tempura ``for fried shrimp in batter, derived from the fact that on Ember Days, quattour tempora [days of fasting and abstinence], the Jesuit fathers ate only seafood.''

Japanese rulers began issuing edicts banning Christianity as early as 1587, and soon the Jesuits, along with all the Portuguese, were expelled, effectively closing Japan to the outside world until the 1850s.

Nonetheless, Portuguese culinary borrowings like tempura became embedded in Japanese popular cooking. By the 18th century, tempura had become a popular street food all over Japan, often sold from wheeled carts. The idea was to eat the fritters as soon as they were fried -- the kind of freshness and immediacy diners still find today in Japanese tempura restaurants, where the cook working across the counter places the crispy morsels on your plate as soon as he pulls them from the hot oil. Batter-fried seafood is common in Portugal, Spain and all over Latin America, but our coatings are never as crisp and lacy as in tempura. In fact, Cuban foods (mostly fish or vegetable like eggplant) that are rebozadas (batter-fried) are meant to have a spongy crust. One of the keys to the Japanese method is careful calibration of the batter ingredients.

You can find tempura batter flour in Japanese markets that contains dehydrated egg yolks, carotene coloring and baking powder, but I much prefer making my own mix with fresh eggs and a low-gluten cake flour. Though I am partial to shrimp tempura, squid, eel, king crab and even sea urchin roe (uni) lend themselves beautifully to this cooking method.

Small Japanese eggplant (usually cut in a fan shape) and thinly sliced starchy vegetables like kabocha squash, yams and boniato (white sweet potato) are also delicious tempura style. Like the cameras and luxury cars that have become a hallmark of Japanese technological sophistication, tempura is the result of felicitous borrowing coupled with ingenuity and meticulous attention to detail.

Link (here)

16th Century Portuguese Jesuit: Luis Frois

My Friend Frois

The novel explores the life and times of the 16th-century Portuguese missionary, Luis Frois. It is composed of a series of letters to and from Frois. Hideyoshi was uniting Japan during this turbulent period that is referred to as the Sengoku Jidai, or Period of the Warring States. He met Oda Nobunaga himself and witnessed many of the events that shaped what was to become Japan for some 250 years. Frois was given the name Policarpo, was born in 1532. He became an apprentice scribe in the Secretaria Real (the Royal Secretariat) in Lisbon, and in 1548, age 16, entered the Society of Jesus there, taking the name Luis.

In March of that year he departed for India, arriving in Goa in October. He was never to see his family again. He soon met Father Francis Xavier, as well as a Japanese convert from Kagoshima named Jiro.

Frois worked for some years under the Provincial of India as the person in charge of reporting on East Asia to the church in Europe; and in 1563, age 31, he arrived in Japan for the first time, at Yokoseura, Nagasaki. In 1565 Frois journeyed to Kyoto, but with the downfall of his protector, Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiteru, he was forced to take refuge in Sakai. It was in 1569 that he met Nobunaga at Nijo Castle and received permission to proselytize. He spent the ensuing years in missionary work while writing The History of Portuguese Territories in East India. In 1581, in the capacity of interpreter, he accompanied Visitor General Alessandro Valignano on the latter’s travels in Japan, and was welcomed in Kyoto and Azuchi by Nobunaga. Nobunaga died the following year. Alessandro ValignanoIn 1583, at age 51,

Frois began writing his History of Japan on the order of Vice Provincial of Japan Gaspar Coelho. Part One of the history was completed in 1586. In that year, Frois traveled to Arima, Amakusa, Nagasaki, Ohmura, Hirado, Sakai, Osaka and Kyoto in the company of the Vice Provincial. Hideyoshi promulgated the edict on the expulsion of the missionaries in 1587, and Frois was given this order by his envoy. From then on, Frois devoted himself to writing his history.

In 1590, at age 60, Frois was sent to Macao, accompanying Visitor General Valignano. Three years later he returned to Nagasaki; and two years after that, in 1597, the persecution of Christians began in earnest in Japan. Frois’ last report was on the fate of the twenty-six martyrs crucified in Nagasaki. That year—1597—Frois died at the church in Nagasaki.

Link to the full post My Friend Frois, Inoue Hisashi in a blog entitled Japan Focus

Fr. Atlas: Portuguese Jesuit Cartographer Ludivico Teixeira

Mapping history
By Chris Reagle
Fri Apr 04, 2008
MATTAPOISETT - Imagine a world where you were literally at the center of it and everything beyond it was a complete mystery. Is the world flat or round? Does it have any shape at all? Now imagine trying to figure out how to navigate the unknown. That was the dilemma of early cartographers as they mapped the New World, whatever that was. People with even a passing interest in maps may be interested in knowing that the Mattapoisett Free Public Library is now in possession of at least eight ancient and historically significant maps of parts of the world, thanks to the donation of a former local man with a passion for cartography. In the library, and under the stern gaze of a portrait of George Purrington Jr., the venture capitalist who donated the money for the construction of the library in 1904,

Betts laid out the maps that span several centuries on a long wooden table. One is dated 1584 and is considered the first published map of the Azores by Ludovico (Luis) Teixeira, a Portuguese Jesuit priest and royal cartographer to Spain. In addition to his work in the Azores, Teixeira was the first European to map Japan

, Betts said. “This map was published in Abraham Ortelius’ Theatrum, (neat)' which is generally considered to be the first world atlas,” he said.

Link (here)