Francis Xavier

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Styles of Francis Xavier
The Reverend Father
Spoken style	Father
Posthumous style	Saint

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Francis Xavier,

Francis Xavier was born in the

In 1512,

In 1525, Francis went to study in Paris at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, University of Paris, where he spent the next eleven years.^[20] In the early days he acquired some reputation as an athlete^[21] and a high-jumper.^[22]

In 1529, Francis shared lodgings with his friend

In 1530, Francis received the degree of Master of Arts, and afterwards taught Aristotelian philosophy at Beauvais College, University of Paris.^[24]

Missionary work

On 15 August 1534, seven students met in a crypt beneath the Church of Saint Denis (now

In 1540, King John of Portugal had Pedro Mascarenhas, Portuguese ambassador to the Holy See, request Jesuit missionaries to spread the faith in his new possessions in India, where the king believed that Christian values were eroding among the Portuguese. After successive appeals to the Pope asking for missionaries for the East Indies under the Padroado agreement, John III was encouraged by Diogo de Gouveia, rector of the Collège Sainte-Barbe, to recruit the newly graduated students who had established the Society of Jesus.^[30]

Ignatius promptly appointed Nicholas Bobadilla and Simão Rodrigues. At the last moment, however, Bobadilla became seriously ill. With some hesitance and uneasiness, Ignatius asked Francis to go in Bobadilla's place. Thus, Francis Xavier began his life as the first Jesuit missionary almost accidentally.^[31][32][33]

Leaving Rome on 15 March 1540, in the Ambassador's train,^[34] Francis took with him a breviary, a catechism, and De Institutione bene vivendi by Croatian humanist Marko Marulić,^[35] a Latin book that had become popular in the Counter-Reformation. According to a 1549 letter of F. Balthasar Gago from Goa, it was the only book that Francis read or studied.^[36] Francis reached Lisbon in June 1540 and, four days after his arrival, he and Rodrigues were summoned to a private audience with the King and the Queen.^[37]

Francis Xavier devoted much of his life to missions in Asia, mainly in four centres: Malacca, Amboina and Ternate (in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia), Japan, and off-shore China. His growing information about new places indicated to him that he had to go to what he understood were centres of influence for the whole region. China loomed large from his days in India. Japan was particularly attractive because of its culture. For him, these areas were interconnected; they could not be evangelised separately.^[38]

Goa and India

Francis Xavier left

The Portuguese, following quickly on the great voyages of discovery, had established themselves at Goa thirty years earlier. Francis's primary mission, as ordered by King John III, was to restore Christianity among the Portuguese settlers. According to Teotonio R. DeSouza, recent critical accounts indicate that apart from the posted civil servants, "the great majority of those who were dispatched as 'discoverers' were the riff-raff of Portuguese society, picked up from Portuguese jails."[40] Nor did the soldiers, sailors, or merchants come to do missionary work, and Imperial policy permitted the outflow of disaffected nobility. Many of the arrivals formed liaisons with local women and adopted Indian culture. Missionaries often wrote against the "scandalous and undisciplined" behaviour of their fellow Christians.^[41]

The Christian population had churches, clergy, and a bishop, but there were few preachers and no priests beyond the walls of Goa. Xavier decided that he must begin by instructing the Portuguese themselves, and gave much of his time to the teaching of children. The first five months he spent in preaching and ministering to the sick in the hospitals.^[42] After that, he walked through the streets ringing a bell to summon the children and servants to catechism.^[43] He was invited to head Saint Paul's College, a pioneer seminary for the education of secular priests, which became the first Jesuit headquarters in Asia.^[44]

Conversion efforts

Xavier soon learned that along the Pearl Fishery Coast, which extends from

He devoted almost three years to the work of preaching to the people of southern India and Ceylon, converting many. He built nearly 40 churches along the coast, including St. Stephen's Church, Kombuthurai, mentioned in his letters dated 1544.

During this time, he was able to visit the tomb of Thomas the Apostle in Mylapore (now part of Madras/Chennai then in Portuguese India).^[33] He set his sights eastward in 1545 and planned a missionary journey to Makassar on the island of Celebes (today's Indonesia).

As the first Jesuit in India, Francis had difficulty achieving much success in his missionary trips. His successors, such as de Nobili, Matteo Ricci, and Beschi, attempted to convert the noblemen first as a means to influence more people, while Francis had initially interacted most with the lower classes; (later though, in Japan, Francis changed tack by paying tribute to the Emperor and seeking an audience with him).^[45]

Southeast Asia

In the spring of 1545 Xavier started for Portuguese Malacca. He laboured there for the last months of that year. About January 1546, Xavier left Malacca for the Maluku Islands, where the Portuguese had some settlements. For a year and a half, he preached the Gospel there. He went first to Ambon Island, where he stayed until mid-June. He then visited the other Maluku Islands, including Ternate, Baranura, and Morotai.^[42] Shortly after Easter 1547, he returned to Ambon Island; a few months later he returned to Malacca. While there, Malacca was attacked by the Acehnese from Sumatra, and through preaching Xavier inspired the Portuguese to seek battle, achieving a victory at the Battle of Perlis River, despite being heavily outnumbered.^[46]

Japan

In Malacca in December 1547, Francis Xavier met a Japanese man named Anjirō.^[42] Anjirō had heard of Francis in 1545 and had travelled from Kagoshima to Malacca to meet him. Having been charged with murder, Anjirō had fled Japan. He told Francis extensively about his former life, and the customs and culture of his homeland. Anjirō became the first Japanese Christian and adopted the name 'Paulo de Santa Fé'. He later helped Xavier as a mediator and interpreter for the mission to Japan that now seemed much more possible.

In January 1548 Francis returned to Goa to attend to his responsibilities as superior of the mission there.

Europeans had already come to Japan; the Portuguese had landed in 1543 on the island of Tanegashima, where they introduced matchlock firearms to Japan.^[48]

From Amboina, he wrote to his companions in Europe: "I asked a Portuguese merchant, ... who had been for many days in Anjirō's country of Japan, to give me ... some information on that land and its people from what he had seen and heard. ...All the Portuguese merchants coming from Japan tell me that if I go there I shall do great service for God our Lord, more than with the pagans of India, for they are a very reasonable people." (To His Companions Residing in Rome, From Cochin, 20 January 1548, no. 18, p. 178).^[38]

Francis Xavier reached Japan on 27 July 1549, with Anjiro and three other Jesuits, but he was not permitted to enter any port his ship arrived at until 15 August,

In Cangoxima, the first place Father Master Francisco stopped at, there were a good number of Christians, although there was no one there to teach them; the shortage of labourers prevented the whole kingdom from becoming Christian.

— Pacheco 1974, pp. 477–480

Francis was the first Jesuit to go to Japan as a missionary.

Having learned that evangelical poverty did not have the appeal in Japan that it had in Europe and in India, he decided to change his approach. Hearing after a time that a Portuguese ship had arrived at a port in the province of Bungo in Kyushu and that the prince there would like to see him, Xavier now set out southward. The Jesuit, in a fine cassock, surplice, and stole, was attended by thirty gentlemen and as many servants, all in their best clothes. Five of them bore on cushions valuable articles, including a portrait of Our Lady and a pair of velvet slippers, these not gifts for the prince, but solemn offerings to Xavier, to impress the onlookers with his eminence. Handsomely dressed, with his companions acting as attendants, he presented himself before Oshindono, the ruler of Nagate, and as a representative of the great kingdom of Portugal, offered him letters and presents: a musical instrument, a watch, and other attractive objects which had been given him by the authorities in India for the emperor.[43]

For forty-five years the Jesuits were the only missionaries in Asia, but the Franciscans began proselytizing in Asia, as well. Christian missionaries were later forced into exile, along with their assistants. However, some were able to stay behind. Christianity was then kept underground so as to not be persecuted.^[51]

The Japanese people were not easily converted; many of the people were already Buddhist or Shinto. Francis tried to combat the reservations of some of the Japanese. Many mistakenly interpreted Catholic doctrine as teaching that demons had been created evil, and they thus concluded the God who had created them could not be good. Much of Francis' preaching was devoted to providing answers to this and other such challenges. In the course of these discussions, Francis grew to respect the rationality and general literacy of those Japanese people whom he encountered. He expressed optimism at the prospect of converting the country.^[52][53][54]

Xavier was welcomed by the

During his trip from Japan back to India, a tempest forced him to stop on an island near Guangzhou, Guangdong, China, where he met Diogo Pereira, a rich merchant and an old friend from Cochin. Pereira showed him a letter from Portuguese prisoners in Guangzhou, asking for a Portuguese ambassador to speak to the Chinese Emperor on their behalf. Later during the voyage, he stopped at Malacca on 27 December 1551 and was back in Goa by January 1552.^{[citation needed]}

On 17 April he set sail with Diogo Pereira on the Santa Cruz for China. He planned to introduce himself as Apostolic Nuncio and Pereira as the ambassador of the King of Portugal. But then he realized that he had forgotten his testimonial letters as an Apostolic Nuncio. Back in Malacca, he was confronted by the captain Álvaro de Ataíde da Gama who now had total control over the harbour. The captain refused to recognize his title of Nuncio, asked Pereira to resign from his title of ambassador, named a new crew for the ship, and demanded the gifts for the Chinese Emperor be left in Malacca.^{[citation needed]}

In late August 1552, the Santa Cruz reached the Chinese island of

Xavier was first buried on a beach at

The mostly-incorruptible body^[57] is now in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa, where it was placed in a glass container encased in a silver casket on 2 December 1637.^[58] This casket, constructed by Goan silversmiths between 1636 and 1637, was an exemplary blend of Italian and Indian aesthetic sensibilities. There are 32 silver plates on all four sides of the casket, depicting different episodes from the life of Xavier:

• Francis lies on the ground with his arms and legs tied, but the cords break miraculously.
• Francis kisses the ulcer of a patient in a Venetian hospital.
• He is visited by Jerom as he lies ailing in the hospital of Vicenza.
• A vision about his future apostolate.
• A vision about his sister's prophecy about his fate.
• He saves the secretary of the Portuguese Ambassador while crossing the Alps.
• He lifts a sick man who dies after receiving communion but is freed from fever.
• He baptises in Travancore.
• He resuscitates a boy who died in a well at Cape Comorin.
• He cures miraculously a man full of sores.
• He drives away the Badagas in Travancore.
• He resuscitates three persons: a man who was buried at Coulao; a boy about to be buried at Multao; and a child.
• He takes money from his empty pockets and gives it to a Portuguese at Malyapore.
• A miraculous cure.
• A crab restores his crucifix which had fallen into the sea.
• He preaches in the island of Moro.
• He preaches in the sea of Malacca and announces the victory against the enemies.
• He converts a Portuguese soldier.
• He helps the dying Vicar of Malacca.
• Francis kneels down and on his shoulders there rests a child whom he restores to health.
• He goes from Amanguchi to Macao walking.
• He cures a mute or unable to speak and paralytic man in Amanguchi.
• He cures a deaf Japanese person.
• He prays in the ship during a storm.
• He baptises three kings in Cochin.
• He cures a religious in the college of St. Paul.
• Due to the lack of water, he sweetens the seawater during a voyage.
• The agony of Francis at Sancian.
• After his death, he is seen by a lady according to his promise.
• The body dressed in sacerdotal vestments is exposed for public veneration.
• Francis levitates as he distributes communion in the College of St. Paul.
• The body is placed in a niche at Chaul with lighted candles. On the top of this casket, there is a cross with two angels. One is holding a burning heart and the other a legend which says, "Satis est Domine, satis est." (It's enough Lord, it's enough)

The right

Macao (2008)

Sign accompanying Saint Francis Xavier's humerus

A relict from the right hand of St Francis Xavier is on display at St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney.

In 2006, on the 500th anniversary of his birth, the Xavier Tomb Monument and Chapel on Shangchuan Island, in ruins after years of neglect under communist rule in China, was restored with support from the alumni of Wah Yan College, a Jesuit high school in Hong Kong.^{[citation needed]}

From December 2017 to February 2018, Catholic Christian Outreach (CCO) in cooperation with the Jesuits, and the Archdiocese of Ottawa (Canada) brought Xavier's right forearm to tour throughout Canada. The faithful, especially university students participating with CCO at Rise Up 2017 in Ottawa, venerated the relics. The tour continued to every city where CCO and/or the Jesuits are present in Canada: Quebec City, St. John's, Halifax, St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish (neither CCO nor the Jesuits are present here), Kingston, Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, and Montreal before returning to Ottawa.^[61] The relic was then returned to Rome with a Mass of Thanksgiving celebrated by Archbishop Terrence Prendergast at the Church of the Gesu.^{[citation needed]}

Veneration

Beatification and canonization

Francis Xavier was beatified by

Goa

Saint Francis Xavier's relics are kept in a silver casket, elevated inside the

Other pilgrimage centres include Xavier's birthplace in Navarra;^[71] the Church of the Gesù, Rome;^[72] Malacca (where he was buried for two years, before being brought to Goa);^[73] and Sancian (place of death).^[74]

Xavier is a major venerated saint in both Sonora and the neighbouring U.S. state of Arizona. In Magdalena de Kino in Sonora, Mexico, in the Church of Santa María Magdalena, there is a reclining statue of San Francisco Xavier brought by pioneer Jesuit missionary Padre Eusebio Kino in the early 18th century. The statue is said to be miraculous and is the object of pilgrimage for many in the region.^[75] Also the Mission San Xavier del Bac is a pilgrimage site.^[76] The mission is an active parish church ministering to the people of the San Xavier District, Tohono O'odham Nation, and nearby Tucson, Arizona.

Francis Xavier is honored in the

The Novena of Grace is a popular devotion to Francis Xavier, typically prayed either on the nine days before 3 December, or on 4 March through 12 March (the anniversary of Pope Gregory XV's canonisation of Xavier in 1622). It began with the Italian Jesuit missionary Marcello Mastrilli. Before he could travel to the Far East, Mastrilli was gravely injured in a freak accident after a festive celebration dedicated to the Immaculate Conception in Naples. Delirious and on the verge of death, Mastrilli saw Xavier, who he later said asked him to choose between travelling or death by holding the respective symbols, to which Mastrilli answered, "I choose that which God wills."^[79] Upon regaining his health, Mastrilli made his way via Goa and the Philippines to Satsuma, Japan. The Tokugawa shogunate beheaded the missionary in October 1637, after undergoing three days of tortures involving the volcanic sulphurous fumes from Mt. Unzen, known as the Hell mouth or "pit" that had supposedly caused an earlier missionary to renounce his faith.^[80]

Legacy

Francis Xavier became widely noteworthy for his

A small chapel designed by Achille-Antoine Hermitte was completed in 1869 over Xavier's death-place on Shangchuan Island, Canton. It was damaged and restored several times; the most recent restoration in 2006 marked the 500th anniversary of the saint's birth.^[82]

Francis Xavier is the patron saint of his native Navarre, which celebrates his feast day on 3 December as a government holiday.^[83] In addition to Roman Catholic Masses remembering Xavier on that day (now known as the Day of Navarra), celebrations in the surrounding weeks honour the region's cultural heritage. Furthermore, in the 1940s, devoted Catholics instituted the Javierada, an annual day-long pilgrimage (often on foot) from the capital at Pamplona to Xavier, where the Jesuits built a basilica and museum and restored Francis Xavier's family's castle.^[71]

Personal names

• Rubens (1577–1640) painted St Francis Xavier Raising the Dead for a Jesuit church in Antwerp, in which he depicted one of St Francis's many miracles.^[88]
• The Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Republic, features a statue of Francis Xavier.
• In front of
  Oita Prefecture (previously known as Bungo Province
  ) in Japan, there stands a statue of Francis Xavier.
• The monument
  Belém (Lisbon)
  , Portugal, features a Francis Xavier image.

• Marc-Antoine Charpentier, In honorem Sancti Xaverij canticum H. 355, for soloists, chorus, flutes, strings and continuo (1688 ?)
• Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Canticum de Sto Xavierio H. 355a, for soloists, chorus, flutes, oboes, strings and continuo (1690).

Missions

Shortly before leaving for the East, Xavier issued a famous instruction to Father

And if you wish to bring forth much fruit, both for yourselves and for your neighbours, and to live consoled, converse with sinners, making them unburden themselves to you. These are the living books by which you are to study, both for your preaching and for your own consolation. I do not say that you should not on occasion read written books... to support what you say against vices with authorities from the Holy Scriptures and examples from the lives of the saints.

— Kadič 1961, pp. 12–18

Modern scholars assess the number of people converted to Christianity by Francis Xavier at around 30,000.^[

Francis Xavier's work initiated permanent change in eastern Indonesia, and he became known as the "Apostle of the Indies" – in 1546–1547 he worked in the Maluku Islands among the people of Ambon, Ternate, and Morotai (or Moro), and laid the foundations for a permanent mission. After he left the Maluku Islands, others carried on his work, and by the 1560s there were 10,000 Roman Catholics in the area, mostly on Ambon. By the 1590s, there were 50,000 to 60,000.^[90]

Role in the Goa Inquisition

In 1546, Francis Xavier proposed the establishment of the Goa Inquisition in a letter addressed to the Portuguese King, John III.^[6] Xavier addresses the King as the 'Vicar of Christ', owing to his royal patronage over Christianity in the East Indies. In a letter dated 20 January 1548, he requests the king to be tough on the Portuguese governor in India so that he may be active in propagating the faith.^[11] Xavier also wrote to the Portuguese king asking for protection in regards to new converts who were being harassed by Portuguese commandants. Francis Xavier died in 1552 without ever living to see the commencement of the Goa Inquisition.^[91][92][10]

Educational institutions

A number of educational institutions are named after him, including:

• St. Xavier's High School, Fort
• St. Xavier's College, Mumbai
• Xaverian College, Manchester, England
• Xavier High School (New York City)
• Xavier School — San Juan City, Philippines
• Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan, Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines
• St. Francis Xavier University - Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada
• St. Francis Xavier Catholic Secondary School - Milton, Ontario, Canada
• St. Francis Xavier Catholic Secondary School - Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
• St. Xavier's Institution - Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia
• Xavier College - Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
• Xavier Catholic College, Llandilo - Penrith, New South Wales, Australia
• St. Francis Xavier's College, Hong Kong
• St. Xavier's College, Kolkata
• St. Xavier's School, Kolkata
• St. Francis Xavier Catholic School - South Weymouth, Massachusetts, USA

See also

• Catholicism in China
• Catholicism in Japan
• Catholicism in India
• Catholicism in Indonesia
• Christianity in China
• Christianity in Japan
• Christianity in India
• Christianity in Indonesia
• Goa Inquisition
• History of Roman Catholicism in Japan
• Jesuit China missions
• List of Westerners who visited Japan before 1868
• Mission San Xavier del Bac — San Xavier District, Tohono O'odham Nation, Arizona
• Xaverian Brothers — religious order in America
• Saint Francis Xavier, patron saint archive

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

• This article incorporates material from the
  Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religion
• Astrain, Antonio (1909). "St. Francis Xavier" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 6. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Attwater, Donald (1965). The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. Penguin.
• Brodrick, James
  (1952). Saint Francis Xavier (1506–1552). London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne Ltd. p. 558.
• Coleridge, Henry James (1872). The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier. Vol. 1. London: Burns and Oates.
• Davies, Stephen (2016). "Achille-Antoine Hermitte's surviving building". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch. 56: 92–110.
  JSTOR jroyaaisasocihkb.56.92
  .
• De Rosa, Giuseppe (2006). Gesuiti (in Italian). Elledici. p. 148.
  ISBN 9788801034400
  .
• Duignan, Peter (1958). "Early Jesuit Missionaries: A Suggestion for Further Study". American Anthropologist. 60 (4): 725–732.
  JSTOR 665677
  .
• Kadič, Ante (1961). "St. Francis Xavier and Marko Marulić". The Slavic and East European Journal. 5 (1): 12–18.
  JSTOR 304533
  .
• Lach, Donald Frederick (1994). Asia in the making of Europe: A century of wonder. The literary arts. The scholarly disciplines. University of Chicago Press.
  ISBN 978-0-226-46733-7
  .
• George M. Moraes (1952): St. Francis Xavier, Apostolic Nuncio (1542-52), Bombay, Konkan Institute of Arts and Science, 35p.
• Jou, Albert (1984). The Saint on a Mission. Anand Press, Anand, India.
• ISBN 9780521548854
  .
• Pacheco, Diego (1974). "Xavier and Tanegashima". Monumenta Nipponica. 29 (4): 477–480.
  JSTOR 2383897
  .
• Pinch, William R., "The Corpse and Cult of St. Francis Xavier, 1552–1623", in Mathew N. Schmalz and Peter Gottschalk ed. Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations, and Resistances (New York, State University of New York Press, 2011)
• Rao, R.P (1963). Portuguese Rule in Goa: 1510–1961. Asia Publishing House.
• Sagredo, Iñaki (2006). Navarra: castillos que defendieron el Reino [Navarre: castles that defended the Kingdom] (in Spanish). Vol. 1. Pamiela.
  ISBN 978-84-7681-477-2
  .

Further reading

• Guo, Nanyan (2020). Making Xavier's Dream Real: Vernacular Writings of Catholic Missionaries in Modern Japan (First English ed.). Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture.
  ISBN 978-4-86658-134-7
  .
• Jayne, Kingsley Garland (1911). "Xavier, Francisco de" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 882–883.
• Saint Francis Xavier
  as a typical example.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Francis Xavier.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Francis Xavier.

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Xavier, Francisco de".

• Official website of Basilica of Bom Jesus, Old Goa The Shrine of Saint Francis Xavier
• Basilica of Bom Jesus, Old Goa The Shrine of Saint Francis Xavier
• The Life of St. Francis Xavier
• The life and letters of St. Francis Xavier Francis Xavier, Saint, 1506–1552 Coleridge, Henry James, 1822–1893 London: Burns and Oates, (1872)
• Saint François Xavier (in French)
• Picture of Shangchuan island. The chapel marks the location of his death
• The Miracles of St Francis Xavier by John Hardon, SJ
• Brief History of Saint Francis Xavier Archived 10 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine
• Colonnade Statue St Peter's Square
• Works by or about Francis Xavier at Internet Archive
• Works by Francis Xavier at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)