Berse (Barzeg), Gaspar

BERSE (BARZEG), GASPAR. - Disciple and companion of St. Francis Xavier, b. at Goes (Holland) in 1515. After a restless youth, he entered the Society of Jesus at Coimbra (1546) and, having been ordained a priest, was sent to the Indies in May 1547. He began by teaching at Goa, then Xavier entrusted him with the evangelization of Hormuz, giving him specific instructions (published in the Monumenta Xaveriana, I, pp. 858-70, and, in the new edition, Epistolae S. Franc. Xaverii, II, pp. 80-101). B. worked there for two and a half years (1549-1551) with notable success, disputing also 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). Xavier, who had recalled him intending to assign him to Japan, then kept him in India as rector at Goa and vice-provincial of India, when he himself departed for China (instructions in the Mon. Xaveriana, I, pp. 900-23, Epist. s. Franc. Xaverii, II, pp. 301-434), but B., who did not know how to spare himself, d. on 18 Oct. 1553, when the mortal remains of Xavier, who had died at Sancian a year earlier, were awaited at Goa. He had lived only seven years in religion and five in India, but, like Xavier whom he strove to imitate, he profoundly stirred souls by the example of a zeal carried to the utmost limit. His letters have been collected in the Documenta Indica, 1540-49, (Mon. Historica S. I., 70), Rome 1948.

Edmondo Lamalle