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Portugal Counter-Reformation and Overseas Evangelization
The eruption of the Protestant Reformation in the first
decades of the sixteenth century brought forth a Roman
Catholic
response, the Counter-Reformation, a determined campaign
to
strengthen the Roman Catholic Church and restore religious
unity
to Europe. One of Rome's key instruments to purify
doctrine and
root out heresy was the Inquisition. The
Counter-Reformation soon
reached Portugal and Joao III was granted permission to
establish
the Court of Inquisition in 1536. The court did not began
its
work until 1539 when the first inquisitor general was
replaced by
a religious zealot, the archbishop of Évora, who stood for
public
confession and immediate execution. As elsewhere, the
Inquisition
in Portugal dealt with all forms of heresy, corruption,
and
disbelief, but its main victims were the so-called New
Christians, Jews who had converted to Christianity after
Manuel I
had ordered in 1497 the expulsion from Portugal of all
Jews who
refused to accept the Christian faith. Many Portuguese
believed
that the New Christians secretly practiced Judaism at home
and
the Inquisition was used to stop such an "abomination."
Courts of
the Inquisition functioned in larger settlements around
Portugal.
The first auto-da-fé, or public burning of a heretic, took
place
in 1540 in Lisbon. In the next 150 years, an estimated
1,400
people perished in this manner in Portugal.
Another of Rome's strongest weapons in the CounterReformation was the Society of Jesus, a religious order
founded
by Ignatius de Loyola in 1539. The order was dedicated to
furthering the cause of Catholicism and propagating its
teachings
in missions among nonbelievers. In 1540 three of Loyola's
followers, Simão Rodrigues, who was Portuguese; Paulo
Camerte,
who was Italian; and Francisco Xavier, who was Spanish;
arrived
in Portugal. Simão Rodrigues became the tutor of the
king's son
and later founded Jesuit schools at Coimbra and Évora. By
1555
the Jesuits had control of all secondary education in the
realm
and by 1558 had established a university in Évora.
João III invited the Jesuits to carry out their
apostolic
mission in the lands of Portugal's overseas empire.
Francisco
Xavier left Portugal in 1541 for India as a result of the
king's
request. He arrived in Goa in 1542 and immediately began
prosletyizing among the indigenous inhabitants, converting
many
thousands. From Goa he went to Cochin and Ceylon; in 1545
he
traveled to Malacca, and in 1549, to Japan, where he
stayed for
two years. After returning to Goa, in 1552 he went to
China,
where he died.
Evangelization began in Brazil in 1549 with the arrival
of
six Jesuits led by Father Manuel de Nóbrega, who
accompanied Tomé
de Sousa, the first governor general. They built a church
at São
Salvador da Baía, as well as schools at Rio de Janeiro and
São
Paulo. They evangelized northern and southern Brazil. In
the
south, Father José Anchieta opened a school for Indians
and
authored the first grammar in a native language,
Tupí-Guaraní.
The Jesuits built churches, schools, and seminaries. They
settled
the indigenous inhabitants in villages and defended them
against
attempts to enslave them.
Data as of January 1993
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