Inácio de Azevedo
Roman Catholic Church | |
---|---|
Beatified | 11 May 1854, Rome by Pope Pius IX |
Feast | 17 July |
Inácio de Azevedo (1526–1570) was a
Early life
He was born
He was an illegitimate son, legitimated by a
Jesuit Priest, Visitor of Brazil
In 1548 he made an irrevocable choice of religious life and entered the Society of Jesus where he was finally ordained in 1553.[8] That same year he was nominated rector of the Jesuit college of Santo Antão, in Lisbon, an institution he would endow - 7 years later - with a sum of 600,000 reais.[9] From the beginning of 1557 to February 1558 Azevedo was rector of the College of Arts in Coimbra and from 1560 to 1564 he was the dean of the Jesuit College of Saint Paul, in the city of Braga. On April 9, 1563, he made his four final vows - of poverty, obedience, chastity, and special obedience to the Pope - in Coimbra.[10]
In the early 1560s, Azevedo was involved in the financing for the construction of the
In 1565 Francis Borgia nominated him Visitor to Brazil, with special powers for the inspection of the Jesuit missions in that Portuguese colony. He arrived in the then capital city of Salvador da Bahia in August 1566 and he proceeded to visit all the Jesuit missions in Brazil, as a passenger of the fleet that governor Mem de Sá sent to Rio de Janeiro with the aim of expelling the French from Guanabara Bay. Azevedo witnessed the final, successful Portuguese assault on the French garrison in Guanabara that took place on January 18, 1567.[1] He then proceeded towards São Vicente, where he met the priest Manuel da Nóbrega; they agreed on the foundation of a new Jesuit college in Rio de Janeiro,[1] an institution whose charter was signed in 1568, with Nóbrega as its first dean.
Accompanied by Nóbrega and
In October 1568 he was back in
Martyrdom
During the trip to Brazil, on July 15, 1570, while sailing near the Canary Islands, the Santiago was attacked and captured by a fleet led by the French
Veneration
The death of Inácio de Azevedo and his 39 companions on their voyage to Brazil at the hands of Calvinist corsairs was the biggest collective martyrdom of missionaries of the modern era and had great repercussion in the Europe of the time, torn by wars of religion and with a Catholic church strongly committed to developing its missions in America, Asia and Africa.[14]
As early as 1571, on July 7,
Legacy
The human and material loss of the martyrdom of Azevedo and his companions was certainly a momentary setback for the Jesuits in their project of conversion to Catholicism of the Brazilian Indians. However, the will to emulate the "forty martyrs of Brazil" soon gave rise to a new impulse and vitality in the movement for the overseas missions to which Inácio de Azevedo dedicated much of his life. And in Asia, his younger brother D. Jerónimo de Azevedo, governor and captain-general of Portuguese Ceylon from 1594 to 1612, was in a sense a prosecutor of Azevedo's work in another continent - for he was a dedicated supporter of the Jesuits and their missions, in the territory of present-day Sri Lanka.[15]
In 1999, forty concrete crosses at the place of martyrdom, about 200 meters off the Fuencaliente Lighthouse were placed on the seabed by the government of the island La Palma. This place is situated in a depth of about 20 meters and is today a popular diving destination.
Adjacent to the old tower, another monument for the Forty Martyrs of Brazil has been erected in October 2014. This monument is a stone cross, with a plate on which the names of the martyrs are engraved.
References
- ^ OCLC 2305684.
- ^ Cardoso, Augusto-Pedro Lopes (July 2013). "Dom Manuel de Azevedo, Pai do Beato Inácio de Azevedo, sj". Brotéria Cristianismo e Cultura. 177: 41–51.
- ^ Cardoso, Augusto-Pedro Lopes (2005). A Honra de Barbosa - Subsídios para a sua História Institucional (Século XII - 1834). Porto, Portugal: Livraria Esquina. p. 30.
- ^ a b Freire, Anselmo Braamcamp (1908). "A Gente do Cancioneiro, IV - João Gomes de Abreu". Revista Lusitana. XI: 318–344.
- ^ Braga, Isabel M. R. Mendes Drumond (1996). "D. João III e D. Filipa de Eça, Abadessa do Mosteiro de Lorvão: um conflito resultante da intervenção régia" (PDF). Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra. p. 513. Retrieved 2023-12-02. [Genealogical Tree of the Eça family, Francisca de Abreu]
- ^ "PT-TT-ID-1-54_m0001.TIF - Chancelaria de D. João III - Perdões e Legitimações, fls 235v - Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo - DigitArq". digitarq.arquivos.pt. Retrieved 2019-09-21.
- ^ Garcês, Patrícia Maria Rocha (2016). A Honra de Barbosa: para uma retrospeção construtiva do seu Solar. Braga (Portugal): Biblioteca da Universidade do Minho - Master's Thesis. pp. passim.
- ^ "Inácio de Azevedo e 39 companheiros, beatos". Jesuítas Brasil Centro-Leste. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
- OCLC 29952153.
- ^ Manuel G. da Costa, op. cit., p. 223.
- ^ "Constitutions | Jesuits". www.jesuit.org.uk. Retrieved 2021-02-07.
- ^ Manuel G. da Costa, op. cit., p. 220 - 221.
- ^ Rodrigues, Francisco (1931). "História da Companhia de Jesus na Assistência de Portugal, Volume 01b — Jesuit Online Library". jesuitonlinelibrary.bc.edu (in Portuguese). p. 479. Retrieved 2023-07-24.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - ^ a b Osswald, Maria Cristina (2010). "The 1570 martyrdom of Blessed Ignatius de Azevedo and his thirty nine companions in the hagiography of the Society of Jesus between the 16th and 19th centuries". Cultura - Revista de História e Teoria das Ideias. 27: 163–186.
- ISBN 978-9004-17981-3.
External links
- Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. .
- Catholic Forum article
- Catholic Online article