BERTONIO, LUIGI. - Jesuit missionary and distinguished linguist. Born in Rocca Contrada in the Marca of Ancona around 1555, he entered the Society of Jesus in Rome in 1574 and transferred to the Province of Peru in 1581. For forty years he worked as a missionary among the Indians, mainly at the residence of Juli on Lake Titicaca, spending his final years in the colleges of Arequipa and later Lima, where he died on 3 August 1625. While one of the major languages of Peru, Quechua, was being studied by Fr Diego González Holguín, the other, Aymara, was the subject of Bertonio’s work, as he resided precisely at Juli among tribes renowned for the purity of their language.
He wrote: *Arte breve de la lengua aymará* (Rome 1603); *Arte y grammatica muy copiosa de la lengua aymará* (ibid. 1603, but perhaps actually 1608; reprinted at Juli in Peru, 1612); *Vocabulario de la lengua aymará* (2 vols., Juli 1612); these two fundamental works, the *Arte* and the *Vocabulario*, were reproduced in facsimile by J. Platzmann (Leipzig 1879). Bertonio also composed a *Confessionario muy copioso en dos lenguas, aymará y española* (Juli 1612) and, with the assistance of an Indian from Juli, adapted for the needs of the indigenous people the *Libro de la vida y milagros de N. S. Iesu Christo* by Alonso de Villegas (Juli 1613).