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Inácio de Azevedo

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Blessed Inácio de Azevedo
Jesuit missionary and martyr
Born1526 (1526)
Porto, Kingdom of Portugal
DiedJuly 15, 1570(1570-07-15) (aged 43–44)
Atlantic Ocean, near the Canary islands
Venerated inRoman Catholic Church
Beatified11 May 1854 by Pope Pius IX
Feast17 July

Blessed Inácio de Azevedo (1526–1570) was a Portuguese Jesuit missionary. He is one of the Forty Martyrs of Brazil, beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1854.

Early life

He was born Dom Inácio de Azevedo de Ataíde Abreu e Malafaia in the city of Porto, probably in the first quarter of the year 1526.[1] His family was prominent in the Portuguese nobility of that era. His father, Dom Manuel de Azevedo,[2] was heir to two ancient feudal properties in northern Portugal, the honras of Barbosa and Ataíde.[3] His mother, Dona Francisca de Abreu, was a daughter of the celebrated Portuguese poet and navigator, João Gomes de Abreu.[4] And one of his younger brothers, Dom Jerónimo de Azevedo, was captain-general of Portuguese Ceylon and viceroy of Portuguese India.

The manor house of the 12th century honra de Barbosa,[5] in northern Portugal. Inácio de Azevedo was the presumptive heir to the lordship of the honra, but he renounced his rights to his father's estate when he became a Jesuit in 1548.

He was an illegitimate son, legitimated by a Royal decree on July 22, 1539 as Dom Inácio de Ataíde[6] (a surname of his grandmother - who was heiress of the honra of Ataíde - that he stopped using after joining the Jesuits) and educated at the Portuguese court of King John III. At the age of 18 he became administrator of his family's estate. However, after attending the sermons and speeches of Jesuit priest Francisco Estrada he decided to renounce his possessions, including his rights to the Feudal lordships of his father, in the northern Portuguese province of Entre Douro e Minho.[1]

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.[7] 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 Father Manuel da Nóbrega, who he later nominated Jesuit Provincial for Brazil.[1]

Accompanied by Nóbrega and Blessed José de Anchieta he then visited the missions in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro whose foundations were being laid. Azevedo returned to Salvador in January 1568 and in August he boarded a ship headed to Portugal, thus completing his two-year stay in Brazil.

In October 1568 he was back in Lisbon[1] and in May 1569 he proceeded to Rome to report to Pope Pius V and Saint Francis Borgia. In his final report, Inácio de Azevedo asked for more people to be sent to the missions and Saint Francis Borgia duly gave him broad powers to recruit new elements for the Jesuits in Brazil.[1] Then, after several months of intense preparations that included several meetings with King Sebastian of Portugal, Azevedo and his companions finally left Portugal for Brazil on the merchant vessel Santiago on 5 June 1570,[1] while another group of more than 20 companions boarded the military fleet of the newly appointed Governor General of Brazil.

Martyrdom

Monument to Inácio de Azevedo and his 39 companions (the Forty Martyrs of Brazil) at Fuencaliente Lighthouse in the island of La Palma, Canary Islands.

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 Huguenot corsair Jacques de Sores off Fuencaliente Lighthouse. Following the capture of the Santiago, the attackers spared the lives of some members of the crew but Azevedo and his 39 companions were massacred and their bodies thrown in the ocean.[1]

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 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.[8]

As early as 1571, on July 7, Pope Pius V honored the forty martyrs, referring to their "voluntary martyrdom" in the Brief Dum Indefese. According to tradition, St. Francis Borgia prayed daily to the forty martyrs,[8] thus beginning a cult that would lead to their Beatification by Pope Pius IX on 11 May 1854.

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 Dom Jerónimo de Azevedo, governor and captain-general of Portuguese Ceylon from 1594 to 1612, was in a sense a prosecutor of Blessed Inácio'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.[9]

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

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Costa, SJ, Manuel G. da (1946). Inácio de Azevedo, o Homem e o Mártir da Civilização do Brasil. Braga (Portugal): Livraria Cruz. pp. 22, 29, 292, 293, 331, 343, 427, 475.
  2. ^ Cardoso, Augusto-Pedro Lopes (July 2013). "Dom Manuel de Azevedo, Pai do Beato Inácio de Azevedo, sj". Brotéria Cristianismo e Cultura. 177: 41–51.
  3. ^ Cardoso, Augusto-Pedro Lopes (2005). A Honra de Barbosa - Subsídios para a sua História Institucional (Século XII - 1834). Porto, Portugal: Livraria Esquina. p. 30.
  4. ^ Freire, Anselmo Braamcamp (1908). "A Gente do Cancioneiro, IV - João Gomes de Abreu". Revista Lusitana. XI: 318–344.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ "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.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. ^ "Inácio de Azevedo e 39 companheiros, beatos". Jesuítas Brasil Centro-Leste. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
  8. ^ 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.
  9. ^ Maryks, Robert Aleksander (2009). The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews : Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus. Leiden - Boston: Brill. p. 100. ISBN 978 9004 17981 3.
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