BERSE (BARZEG), GASPAR

BERSE (BARZEG), GASPAR. - Disciple and companion of s. Francesco Saverio, born in Goes (Netherlands) in 1515. After a troubled youth, he entered the Society of Jesus in Coimbra (1546) and, having been ordained a priest, in May 1547 he was sent to the Indies. He began by teaching in Goa, then Saverio commissioned him to evangelize Ormuz, giving him specific instructions (published in the Monumenta Xaveriana, I, pp. 858-70, and, in the new ed., Epistolae S. Franc. Xaverii, II, pp. 80-101). B. worked there for two and a half years (1549-1551) with remarkable success, also holding disputations with Muslims and Jews (cf. G. Schurhammer, Die Trinitätspredigt Mag. Gaspars in der Synagoge von Ormuz 1549, in Archiv. hist. S. I., 2 [1933], pp. 279-309). Saverio, who had recalled him intending him for Japan, subsequently kept him in India as rector in Goa and vice-provincial of India when he himself left for China (instructions in Mon. Xaveriana, I, pp. 900-23, Epist. s. Franc. Xaverii, II, pp. 301-434), but B., who did not know how to spare himself, died on Oct. 18, 1553, just as the mortal remains of Saverio, who had breathed his last on Sancian a year earlier, were expected in Goa. He had lived only seven years in religion and five in India, but, like Saverio whom he strove to imitate, he profoundly stirred souls with the example of a zeal pushed to the ultimate limit. His letters have been collected in Documenta Indica, 1540-49 (Mon. Historica S. I., 70), Rome 1948.