Cerqueira, Luiz

CERQUEIRA, LUIZ. - Portuguese Jesuit, bishop in Japan, b. in 1551 at Alvito, d. 15 February 1614. He first taught philosophy at Coimbra (1581-86) and theology (1586-88), and after 1588 theology at Evora. Manuscript copies of his lectures are preserved in the public libraries of Lisbon, Evora and Braga. Designated by Philip II as coadjutor and future successor of the bishop of Japan Pietro Martines (d. 18 February 1598) and consecrated in 1594, he arrived at Nagasaki on 5 August 1598. He had to repair the ruins accumulated by the bloody persecution of 1596-97 and took great pains to form, despite the difficulties and his extreme penury, a beginning of an indigenous clergy: and yet in fourteen years he was able to ordain only thirteen Japanese. He died at Nagasaki shortly after the outbreak of the great persecution ordered by Yeyasu.

Many letters of his remain, several of which (1601-1613) are published (cf. Streit). A Relazione della gloriae morte patita da sei christiani giapponesi per la fede di Christo, Rome 1607, had many editions (1604 in Portuguese, 1606 in Spanish, 1607 in German, French, and three times in Italian, 1609 in Flemish...). Of much greater bibliographical and missiological interest is the Manuale ad Sacramenta Ecclesiae ministranda, printed at Nagasaki in 1605; of a manual of cases of conscience, which he had printed in Japanese for his indigenous priests, no copy has so far been able to be found.