FRANCIS XAVIER (Don FRANCISCO de JASU y XAVIER), Saint. — Jesuit missionary and patron of missions, born in the castle of Xavier (Navarre) on 7 April 1506 to Don Juan de Jasu, doctor of the University of Bologna, dawn of the court and president of the royal council, and Doña Maria de Azpilcueta, of the ancient local nobility; died on the island of Sancian, off the coast of China, on 3 December 1552.
SUMMARY: I. Preparation, — II. In India, — III. In Japan, — IV. The voyage to China, — V. Conclusion, — VI. Iconography.
I. PREPARATION. After preliminary studies in his homeland, F. X., who wished to emulate his ancestors not in the career of arms, as his brothers did, but in the ecclesiastical career, went in September 1525 to the University of Paris, lodging as a boarder in the College of Sainte-Barbe.
Having earned the degree of Doctor in four years of study, he immediately began teaching philosophy at the Collège Dormans-Beauvais. He harbored ambitious designs and dreamed of rich benefices in Pamplona; but his companion at Sainte-Barbe, Ignatius of Loyola, drew him to his own cause by inducing him to reflect on the words of the Gospel: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” (Mk 8:36). The death of his mother (1529) and of his holy sister Magdalene (1533), the discovery of revolutionary intrigues among the heterodox who frequented the university, and the corrupt examples of some professors and many students had also made a deep impression on his soul. On 15 August 1534, with Ignatius and five other students, he made a vow in the chapel of the Martyrs at Montmartre to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to consecrate himself to an apostolic life in poverty and chastity. Under Ignatius’s guidance, before beginning theological studies, he made the full Spiritual Exercises of forty days, which fixed him forever in a burning love of God and souls.
In 1537 he was in Venice, where, awaiting a ship for the East, he served the poor in the hospital; on 24 June 1537 he was ordained priest, celebrated his first Mass at Vicenza, and then, in 1537–38, exercised his ministry in Bologna; next he went to Rome, where in the spring of 1539 he took part in the founding of the Society of Jesus, which received oral confirmation on 3 September. Soon after, King John III of Portugal insistently requested Ignatius of Loyola to send missionaries to the Indies. Ignatius designated F. X., who on 16 March 1540 left Rome, arrived in Lisbon in June, and on 7 April 1541 set sail for India as papal legate for all lands east of the Cape of Good Hope.
II. IN INDIA (1542–47)
Arriving in Goa on 5 May 1542, F. X. devoted himself especially to the Portuguese colony, which left much to be desired in the practice of Christianity, greatly scandalizing everyone, especially the pagans who were to be converted; then he extended his apostolate to the sick and prisoners, with a special solicitude for children and slaves, teaching them Christian doctrine. In September of the same year the governor of the Indies sent him to the southern regions, which promised fruitful conversions. In truth, Christianity had already been brought there by Portuguese soldiers who had landed to build their fortresses and establish their commerce; but all had amounted to administering Baptism to war captives and natives without sufficient instruction or preparation. Thus, once the priests who had baptized them had left, many had fallen back into their former idolatry. Such had been the case with the pearl fishers of the Parava coast, who, persecuted by the Moors, eight years earlier had sought the help of the Portuguese and had been baptized. With the aid of interpreters, F. X. immediately translated into their language the principal prayers and the most essential articles of the Faith; then he went from village to village, tirelessly acting as their teacher, physician, arbiter in disputes, defender against the injustices of pagan rulers and Portuguese officials, esteemed and treated as a saint and wonder-worker.Even here, in two years of labor, he founded schools and churches and reaped a prodigious harvest. The inhabitants of the island of Manaar called upon him and received Baptism; the fishers of the Macau coast, in Travancore, were all baptized, numbering 10,000; already before this the Saint had written that often his arm would fall from fatigue and his tongue falter from thirst while continuing the ritual prayers. While baptizing the Macau, he received news that 600 of the Christians of Manaar, invited to return to paganism, had preferred to seal their faith with their blood.
In the following years, 1545–47, F. X. opened up new fields of work for himself and his companions. He preached for four months in Malacca, the preeminent commercial city; he visited the Moluccas; he went to the island of Ambon, near New Guinea, and to the neighboring islands of Waranula or Ceram and of Uliassar; then he pushed on as far as Ternate, the extreme fortress of the Portuguese; and beyond to the Moro Islands: Malimhera, Morotai, and Rau, inhabited by headhunters; indeed, they had killed their last missionary. After three months of intense work in these islands, where many of the natives proved refractory to every word of the apostle, but where he attests to having enjoyed the most intimate consolations, even to the point of his eyes drying up from tears of joy, he returned to Ternate, where he converted Neachile, the mother of the deceased sultan; but he could achieve nothing with the reigning sultan, who preferred his hundred wives and numerous concubines to the new religion.
III. IN JAPAN (1547–51)
Having finally reached Malacca in December 1547, while engaged in sending missionaries to confirm and increase the Christians in the places he had visited, he was introduced to a Japanese perfume merchant, Anjiro, who had fled his homeland for homicide, torn by remorse and desirous of finding peace. The information he received from Anjiro about Japan, its inhabitants, their religion, and culture inflamed F. X., who judged it fitting to bring the faith even to that people, whom he would later call “his delight.”He accordingly set out in 1548 for the newly conquered territory and landed at Kagoshima on 15 August, accompanied by Anjizo, now baptized and ready to assist him in his apostolate. The daimyo Shimazu Takahisa welcomed him warmly, and while the saint studied the language, Anjizo won over to the Catholic faith more than a hundred relatives and acquaintances; he even won one of the wives of the commander of the nearby Ichiku castle, Niro Ise-no-Kami. The prospects were thus promising; but when the daimyo, alarmed and frightened by the bonzes, forbade any further baptisms, Francis decided to present himself even to the king at Miyako (Kyoto) and to the universities of the capital, to win them for Christ. He accordingly set out on his journey; along the way, at Hirado, where he was well received by the Portuguese merchants and by the governor Matsura Takanobu, he succeeded in making more than a hundred Christians in a few days. At Yamaguchi, however, despite the warm welcome of the daimyo Ouchi Yoshitaka, who even granted him an audience, he could achieve nothing, nor did he succeed when he reached Miyako (at the beginning of 1551), his heart swelling with the hope of soon hearing the hymns of glory to the true God resound there. For a civil war had broken out: the bonzes and the universities refused to open their doors to him; the king would not receive a foreigner who presented himself in poverty and without gifts. He then returned to Yamaguchi, presented himself to the daimyo in the splendor of his finest clothes and with precious gifts. He was received amiably and granted the fullest freedom. Thus there soon arose a flourishing Christian community, which extended even into the neighboring kingdom of Bungo, whither Francis had been invited by the young prince Otomo Yoshishige.
IV. THE JOURNEY TO CHINA (1551–52)
Departing from Japan in the winter of 1551 to return to India, where urgent matters called him, Francis left behind a Church now founded and numbering some 1,000 Christians. Another thought then took shape in the mind of the saint. Since China was for Japan of that time the source of all truth and wisdom, it was fitting to win it for the faith so as to give Christianity in the East a secure base. But entry into that empire was strictly forbidden to all foreigners. Francis, who had set out on 17 April 1552, reached the island of Sancian in August. There he found old friends who offered him hospitality and, after much effort, also found a Chinese man who, for 200 ducats, would secretly land him at the gates of Canton. But he waited in vain; on the appointed day, 19 November, the Chinese did not appear. The winter was harsh, the cold intense, and the ships that had accompanied him had departed. Francis fell ill with pneumonia; deprived, far from any care, on the morning of 3 December he gave his soul to God.His body was placed by his servant Antonio de Santa Fe (who had come with him and was later to serve as his interpreter) in a wooden chest filled with lime and buried in the northern part of the island. From there, as I read in full, the corpse was later transferred first to Malacca and then to Goa, where it is preserved in a rich and precious silver sarcophagus in the church of the Bom Jesus (his right forearm is kept in the church of the Gesù in Rome).
The solemnity of the transfer is recounted by Pietro della Valle, who was present at the ceremony. The silver statue of the saint that adorns his chapel was donated in 1670 by a Genoese devotee, Maria Francesca Sopranis. When the governor of India entered upon his office, he was accustomed to hand his bamboo staff to the saint and receive in exchange the one Francis had held, as a sign that he wished to leave all governance in the hands of the great protector of India. The sarcophagus is a gift of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando II de’ Medici (cf. G. Schurhammer, *S. F. S.*, profile, Venice 1922, pp. 112–113).
V. CONCLUSION
Francis Xavier should be regarded as the pioneer of the modern missions, conducted according to a systematic plan of study, conquest, and adaptation. He is also an effective and compelling example of zeal and fervor. His letters continue to inspire souls to enthusiasm; his figure is esteemed and venerated even by those outside the Church and by pagans. If there were exaggerations, for example, in the count of conversions he effected, historical criticism has now reduced these to about 30,000; and if his continual travels from region to region might suggest a restless and unstable character, it must be remembered that he was not merely a missionary but a papal legate, superior, provincial, and pioneer, who had to survey his territory, prepare the ground, and organize the work.He was beatified by Paul V on 25 October 1619; canonized by Gregory XV on 12 March 1622, though the bull bore the date 1623. In 1924 Pius X declared him patron of the work of the Propagation of the Faith (Apostolicam in the brief of 25 March 1904); in 1927 Pius XI proclaimed him, together with St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, patron of all missions; and his feast (3 December) was raised in 1929 to the rank of a double of the second class. — V. tav. CVI.
VI. ICONOGRAPHY
The oldest surviving image of St. Francis Xavier is that preserved in the chapels of St. Ignatius beside the church of the Gesù in Rome, which some scholars identify with one of the two portraits of the saint commissioned by the visitor Valignani in 1583 in Goa.Nevertheless, a foundation for his iconography can be considered an oil painting on canvas, now in the storerooms of the Vatican Pinacoteca, which was likely the painting placed on December 2, 1599, in the church of the Gesù in Rome, to the right of the larger one, opposite that of St. Ignatius, commissioned at the same time by Cardinals Baronio and Bellarmino. The fact that the halo and the lily held by the Saint in his hands appear to have been added to the original painting—probably when the Saint was canonized in 1622—confirms this hypothesis. In this painting, St. FRANCIS XAVIER wears the cassock and cloak, is bareheaded, and has his face framed by a dark beard. The painting, perhaps temporarily placed on the altar dedicated to the Saint in the church of the Gesù, was to be replaced around 1623, shortly after the canonization, by another painting, this one of great artistic merit and also now preserved in the Vatican Pinacoteca. We refer to the painting by A. van Dyck depicting the Saint in the act of walking with long strides against a country backdrop. The Saint’s face, turned toward heaven, has an ecstatic expression, while his hands open his tunic over his chest, as if to relieve the great ardor that inflames his heart. This gesture then became typical of the Saint’s iconography. Completing the scene is a group of angels descending from heaven to place a crown of roses on the Saint’s head, while in the background of the painting is depicted one of his visions: namely, the one in which he saw himself in a deserted countryside carrying an old Indian on his shoulders, alongside the evangelizing mission to which St. FRANCIS XAVIER sacrificed his life.
However, the van Dyck painting itself was later removed when, between 1674 and 1678, Brother Pozzo, with the assistance of C. Maratta, redesigned the altar of the Gesù, and Maratta himself painted the picture depicting The Death of the Saint. Numerous and important for their artistic value, some paintings depicting scenes from the life and miracles of the Saint include, among others, particularly notable ones: Rubens’ Preaching, in the Hofmuseum in Vienna; a miracle painted by Nicolas Poussin in 1642 and now in the Louvre; and a painting by Luca Giordano in the church of the Jesuits in Naples, depicting the Saint instructing the Indians.
Other images of particular interest include a painting by Carlo Dolci in the Pitti Gallery in Florence; another by Sassoferrato, in which the Saint holds a pilgrim’s staff; another by Giovanni di Rucellai in the University of Seville; a statue in the chapter hall of the cathedral of León, in which the Saint holds a cross; and also a statue by Günther V. Starnberg, a work from the second half of the 18th century.
Special mention should also be made of the painting executed in 1698 by the Colombian artist Gregorio Vásquez (1638–1711), now in the sanctuary of Bogotá, depicting the preaching of the Saint, as well as a large series of his painted images by artists from the countries where the Saint carried out his apostolic work.