THE JESUITS
One of John III.'s strongest reasons for undertaking a more extensive
colonisation of Brazil was the pious conviction that it was his
Christian duty to promote the dissemination of the true religion in
dominions which he owed to the gift of the Holy Father. He was the first
and most steadfast friend of the Jesuits, then just organised and San
Francisco Xavier, the Apostle of the East Indies, was sent out to one
hemisphere, while the conversion of the Brazilian aborigines was
determined upon in the other. With Thomas de Souza sailed an able
Jesuit, Manuel Nobrega, accompanied by several other Fathers. They began
a carefully planned campaign to convert the Indians and, incidentally,
to exploit them in the interests of the Order.
It is impossible not to admire the courage, shrewdness, and devotion of
the Jesuits. They went out alone among the savage tribes, living with
them, learning their languages, preaching to them, captivating their
imaginations by the pomp of religious paraphernalia and processions,
baptising them, and exhorting them to abandon cannibalism and polygamy.
Tireless and fearless, they plunged into an interior hitherto
unpenetrated by white men. The reports they made to their superiors
frequently afford the best information that is yet extant as to the
customs of the Indians and the resources of the regions they explored.
The Indians were easily induced to conform to the externals of the
Christian cult. Wherever the Jesuits penetrated, the aborigines soon
adopted Christianity, but to hold the Indians to Christianity the
Fathers were obliged to fix them to the soil. As soon as a tribe was
converted, a rude church building was erected, and a Jesuit installed,
who remained to teach agriculture and the arts as well as ritual and
morals. His moral and intellectual superiority made him perforce an
absolute ruler in miniature. Thus that strange theocracy came into
being, which, starting on the Brazilian coast, spread over most of
central South America. In the early part of the seventeenth century the
theocratic seemed likely to become the dominant form of government south
of the Amazon and east of the Andes.
The Jesuit wanted the Indian to himself, and fought against the
interference or enslavement by the lay Portuguese. The colonists wanted
the Indians to work on their plantations, to incorporate them as slaves,
or in some analogous capacity, with the white man's industrial and civil
organisation. The home government stood by the Jesuits, but the
colonists constantly evaded restrictions and steadily fought the
priests. The encouragement of the negro slave trade was an attempt at a
compromise--intended to induce the colonists to leave the Indians alone
by furnishing another supply of labour.
Primarily, at least, the Jesuit purpose was altruistic, though the
material advantages and the fascination of exercising authority were
soon potent motives. The Jesuits gave the South American Indian the
greatest measure of peace and justice he ever enjoyed, but they reduced
him to blind obedience and made him a tenant and a servant. Though
virtually a slave, he was, however, little exposed to infection from the
vices and diseases of civilisation; he was not put at tasks too hard for
him; and under Jesuit rule he prospered. On the other hand, if this
system had prevailed there would have been little white immigration, the
Indian race would have remained in possession of the country, and real
civilisation would never have gained a foothold.
Immediately after the founding of Bahia, Nobrega sent members of the
Order to the other colonies. He himself visited Pernambuco, where the
stout old proprietor met him with effective opposition. Duarte did not
welcome a clergy responsible solely to a foreign corporation, and over
which he could have no control. In Bahia and the south the Jesuits,
however, prospered amazingly. In Sao Paulo they laboured hard, spread
widely, converted a large number of Indians, and perfected their system,
but it was there they came most sharply in conflict with the spirit of
individualism, and there they suffered their first and most crushing
overthrow.
[Illustration: PADRE JOSE DE ANCHIETA.
[From an old wood-cut.]]
Thomas de Souza laboured diligently during the four years of his
administration, fortifying posts, driving away contraband traders,
dismissing incompetent officials, and even building jails and
straightening streets where the local authorities had neglected them. He
visited all the captaincies south of Bahia and entered Rio Bay, then the
principal rendezvous for the French privateers and traders. He
appreciated its strategic and commercial importance, and was only
prevented by lack of means from establishing a strong post there. In Sao
Paulo he prohibited the flourishing trade which had grown with the
Spaniards in Paraguay and Buenos Aires. Duarte da Costa, his successor,
was accompanied by a large re-enforcement of Jesuits. Among them was
Anchieta, one of the most notable men in the history of the Order, whose
genius, devotion, and pertinacious courage laid the foundations of
Jesuit power so deeply in South America that its effects remain to this
day. This remarkable man was born in Teneriffe, the son of a banished
nobleman, who had married a native of the island. Educated at home, from
his infancy he showed marvellous talents. At fourteen, his father, not
daring to risk his son's life in Spain, sent him to the Portuguese
University at Coimbra. His career was so brilliant, the reputation he
acquired for profound and ready intelligence, his eloquence, and his
pure and elevated ideals so remarkable, that he attracted the attention
of Simon Rodrigues, John III.'s great Jesuit minister, who, like all the
leaders of the Order, was on the watch for talented young men. The
ardent youth was easily convinced that no career was so glorious as
that of a missionary, and when only twenty years old he solicited and
obtained permission to go to Brazil. Nobrega, the Provincial, selected
him to go to Sao Paulo and establish a school to train neophytes and
proselytes into evangelists. His own letter to Nobrega best tells what a
life he found and what sort of man he was:
"Here we are, sometimes more than twenty of us together in a little
hut of mud and wicker, roofed with straw, fourteen paces long and
ten wide. This is at once the school, the infirmary, dormitory,
refectory, kitchen, and store-room. Yet we covet not the more
spacious dwellings which our brethren have in other parts. Our Lord
Jesus Christ was in a far straiter place when it was His pleasure
to be born among beasts in a manger, and in a still straiter when
He deigned to die upon the cross."
They herded together to keep warm, for in winter it is cold on the Sao
Paulo plateau. They had no food except the mandioc flour, fish, and game
which the Indians gave them. To the little college came Creoles and
half-breeds and learned Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, and Tupi. Anchieta
was indefatigable. Within a year he had acquired a complete mastery of
the Indian tongue, and had devised a grammar for it. He wrote his own
text-books, and employed his great poetical talents in composing hymns
and verses to be chanted to the pupils, recounting the stories of Holy
Scripture. He visited the most savage tribes in person, and acquired a
marvellous moral supremacy over them. When the Tamoyos attacked the
Portuguese, and the destruction of all the southern settlements seemed
inevitable, he fearlessly went to the Indian camps and persuaded the
chiefs to consent to a truce while he remained among them three years as
a hostage to guarantee its faithful performance by his countrymen. The
savages regarded him as more than human, and tradition tells of the
miracles he performed. It is related that during these three years of
solitary captivity he composed, without the aid of pen or paper, his
Latin "Hymn to the Virgin," celebrated as one of the masterpieces of
ecclesiastical poetry.
He and his companions did not disdain to labour with their hands. They
used the spade and trowel, made their own shoes, taught the Indians
agriculture, introduced new plants from Europe, practised medicine, and
studied the botany, topography, and geology of the country. The villages
of converted Indians under their government and protection rapidly
spread over the Sao Paulo plains, and they were refuges for Indians
flying from slavery on the plantations. The colonists pursued their
fugitive slaves, and soon were at open war with the Jesuits. In the
course of this conflict the original half-breed settlement on the
plateau was destroyed and the lay Portuguese came near being wiped out.
Peace was temporarily patched up, but the Paulistas soon turned the
tables and compelled the Jesuits to devote themselves to their
educational institutions in the towns, or to withdraw farther and
farther into the wilderness.