FRANCIS XAVIER (Don Francisco de Jasu y Xavier), Saint. - Jesuit missionary and patron of the missions, b. in the castle of Xavier (Navarre) on 7 April 1506 to don Juan de Jasu, doctor of the University of Bologna, alcalde of the court and president of the royal Council, and to doña Maria de Azpilicueta, of the ancient nobility of the place; d. on the island of Sancian, on the coast of China, on 3 December 1552.
I. THE PREPARATION (1506-42)
Having completed his preliminary studies in his homeland, F. S., who wished to emulate his ancestors not in the career of arms, like his brothers, but in the ecclesiastical career, moved in Sept. 1525 to the University of Paris, taking lodging, as a boarder, in the College of St. Barbara.
Having acquired in four years of study the degree of « Doctor », he immediately began his lectures in philosophy at the Dormans-Beauvais College. He harbored ambitious designs and dreamed of rich benefices at Pamplona; but his companion at St. Bar-
Id. O. Scherhammer, Jugendprobleme des M. Franz Xavier, in Studie Marionelle, II, B, Rome 1932, p. 229
FRANCIS SAVIER, saint. Coat of arms of the family.
bara, Ignatius of Loyola, drew him to himself and to his cause, leading him to reflect on the words of the Gospel: « What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he then loses his soul? » (Mk. 8:36). The death of his mother (1529) and of his holy sister Magdalena (1533), the discovery of revolutionary intrigues on the part of the heterodox, who frequented the University, the perverse examples of certain professors and of many students had also made a deep impression on his soul. On 15 Aug. 1534, with Ignatius and five other students, he made a vow, in the chapel of the Martyrs of Montmartre, to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to consecrate himself to the apostolic life in poverty and chastity. Under the guidance of Ignatius, before beginning his theological studies, he made the spiritual exercises of forty days, which fixed him forever in an ardent love of God and of souls.
In 1537 he is at Venice where, while awaiting the ship for the East, he serves the poor in the hospital: on 24 June 1537 he is ordained priest there; he celebrates his first mass at Vicenza; then, in 1537-38, he exercises the spiritual ministry at Bologna; then at Rome, where in the spring of 1539 he takes part in the founding of the Society of Jesus, of which oral confirmation was obtained on 3 Sept. Immediately afterward King John III of Portugal insistently asks Ignatius of Loyola for missionaries for the Indies. Ignatius designates F. S., who on 16 March 1540 leaves Rome, in June arrives at Lisbon and on 7 April 1541 sails for India as « papal legate for all the lands situated to the east of the Cape of Good Hope ».
II. IN INDIA (1542-47)
Having arrived at Goa on 5 May 1542, F. S. devoted himself above all to the Portuguese colony, which left much to be desired as regards the practice of Christianity, to the great scandal of all, especially of the pagans, who were themselves to be converted; then he extended his apostolate in favor of the sick and of prisoners, with a quite special solicitude for children and slaves, teaching them Christian doctrine. In Sept. of the same year the governor of the Indies sent him to the southern regions, which promised abundant fruits of conversions. In truth, Christianity had already been brought there by the Portuguese soldiers, who had landed there to build their fortresses and to start their commerce; but everything had been reduced to administering Baptism outright to prisoners of war and to the natives, without sufficient instruction or preparation. So that, once the priests who had baptized them had departed, many had relapsed into their primitive idolatry. Thus it had happened for the pearl fishers of the coast of the Paravi, who, persecuted by the Mohammedans, had eight years earlier asked for the help of the Portuguese and had had themselves baptized. F., with the help of interpreters, immediately translates into their language the principal prayers and the most essential articles of the Faith; then he goes from village to village, making himself untiringly their teacher, physician, judge in disputes, defender against the injustices of the pagan rulers and of the Portuguese officials, esteemed and treated as a saint and a thaumaturge.
Here too, in two years of work, he founds schools and churches and gathers a prodigious harvest. The inhabitants of the island of Manaar call him and receive Baptism; the fishers of the Macua caste, in Travancore, all have themselves baptized, to the number of 10,000; already before this the Saint had written that often his arm fell from weariness and his tongue was parched, from the burning thirst, in continuing the ritual prayers. While he was baptizing the Macua he received the news that 600 of the Christians of Manaar, invited to return to paganism, had preferred to seal the Faith with their blood.
In the following years, 1545-47, F. exposed himself and his new fields of labor. He preached, in fact, for four months at Malacca, the commercial city par excellence; he visited the Moluccas; he passed to the island of Amboina, near New Guinea, and to the neighboring islands of Waranula or Seran and of Uliasser; then he pushed on as far as Ternate, the outermost fortress of the Portuguese; and still further into the islands of the Moor: Halmahera, Mocotai and Rau, inhabited by head-hunters; they had in fact killed their last missionary. After three months of intense work in these islands, where many of the natives showed themselves refractory to every word of the apostle, but where he attests to having enjoyed the most intimate consolations, to the point of feeling his eyes grow dry from tears of joy, he returned to Ternate, where Neachile, the mother of the deceased sultan, was converted; but he succeeded in concluding nothing with the reigning sultan, because to the new religion the latter preferred his hundred wives and his numerous concubines.
III. IN JAPAN (1547-51)
Having finally reached Malacca in Dec. 1547, while he is occupied with sending missionaries to confirm and increase the Christians in the places visited, a Japanese refugee is presented to him, Anjiro, who had fled from his homeland because he was guilty of murder, torn by remorse and desirous of finding peace. The news that he heard from him about Japan, its inhabitants, their religion and culture inflamed F., who deemed it fitting to set about bringing the religion also to that people, which he was later to call « his delight ».
He set out in fact in 1548 for the new territory of conquest and landed at Kagoshima on 15 August, accompanied by Anjiro, by then baptized and ready to help him in the apostolate. The daimyō Shimazu Takahisa received him amicably, and while the Saint studied the language, Anjiro won more than a hundred relatives and acquaintances to the Catholic Faith; he also won one of the wives of the commander of the nearby castle of Ichiku, Niirō Ise-no-Kami. The harvest was therefore promising; but when the daimyō, incited and frightened by the bonzes, forbade any further Baptism, F. decided to present himself directly to the king at Miyako (Kyoto) and to the universities of the capital, in order to win them to Christ. He accordingly set out on his journey; along the way, at Hirado, well received by the Portuguese merchants and by the governor Matsūra Takamobu, he managed to make, in a few days, more than a hundred Christians; at Yamaguchi, on the other hand, despite the courteous welcome of the daimyō Ōuchi-Yoshihaka, who even granted him an audience, he could accomplish nothing, just as he accomplished nothing when he set foot in Miyako (at the beginning of 1551), his heart swelling with the hope of soon hearing there the hymns of glory to the true God. Civil war had in fact broken out: the bonzes and the universities would not open their doors to him; the king would not receive a foreigner who presented himself poorly and without gifts. He then went back down to Yamaguchi and presented himself to the daimyō in the pomp of his finest clothes and with precious gifts. He was received splendidly and had the fullest freedom. Thus there soon arose a flourishing Christianity, which extended also into the neighboring kingdom of Bungo, where F. had been invited by the young prince Ōtomo Yoshishige.
IV. THE JOURNEY TO CHINA (1551-52)
Departing from Japan in the winter of 1551, to return to India, where urgent business called him, F. left the Church by then founded and rich with about 1000 Christians. Another thought then matured in the Saint's mind. Since China was for the Japan of that time the source of all truth and wisdom, it was fitting to conquer it in order to give Christianity in the East a secure base. But entry into that Empire was severely forbidden to every foreigner. F., having set out on 17 April 1552, landed in August on the island of Sancian. There he found old friends who offered him hospitality and found, after much effort, also a Chinese man who for 200 ducats would land him secretly at the gates of Canton. But he waited for him in vain; on the appointed day, 19 November, the Chinese man did not appear. The winter was harsh, the cold intense, and the ships that had accompanied him had moved away. F. fell ill with pneumonia; deprived, as he was, of every care, on the morning of 3 December he gave up his soul to God.
His body was enclosed by the servant Antonio of 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 India. From there, whole and intact, the corpse was transported first to Malacca and then to Goa, where it is preserved in a rich and precious silver sarcophagus in the church of the Good Jesus (the right forearm is preserved in the church of the Gesù in Rome).
The solemnity of the transfer is reported 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 devout Genoese woman devoted to him, Maria Francesca Sopranis. When the governor of India entered office, he used to hand over his own bamboo staff to the Saint and take the one that the latter had previously held, as a sign that he wished to leave the whole government 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., profilo, Venice 1922, pp. 112-13).
V. CONCLUSION
F. S. must be regarded as the pioneer of the missions of modern times, conducted according to a systematic plan of study, conquest and adaptation. He is also an effective and overwhelming example of ardor and zeal. His letters continue to attract and enthuse souls; his figure is esteemed and venerated even by the heterodox and by pagans. If there were exaggerations, e.g., in the count of the conversions he accomplished, historical criticism has now reduced these to about 50,000; if his continual moving from region to region may give the idea of an inconstant and fickle character, one must consider that he was not a simple missionary, but was a legate of the Pope, superior, provincial, pioneer, who had to take cognizance of his territory, prepare the ground and organize the work.
He was beatified by Paul V (25 Oct. 1619); canonized by Gregory XIII (12 March 1622), although the bull bore the date 1623. In 1904 Pius X declared him patron of the work of the Propagation of the Faith (brief In Apostolicum 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 Dec.) was elevated in 1929 to the rite of double of the 2nd class. - See plate CVI.
Bibliography22 works
Celestino Testore
VI. ICONOGRAPHY
The oldest image of St. F. X. that has come down to us is the one preserved in the chapels of St. Ignatius near the church of the Gesù in Rome, which some scholars identify with one of the two portraits of the Saint commissioned by the visitor Valegnani in 1583 at Goa.
However, the foundation for his iconography may be considered an oil painting on canvas, today in the storerooms of the Vatican Pinacoteca, and which is in all likelihood the picture placed on 2 December 1599 in the church of the Gesù in Rome, to the right of the high altar, opposite that of St. Ignatius placed there at the same time by Cardinals Baronio and Bellarmino. The fact that the halo and the lily that the Saint holds in his hands appear to have been added to the original painting, and therefore probably when the Saint was canonized in 1622, confirms that hypothesis. In this painting St. F. X. wears the clerical habit and the mantle, is bareheaded, and has his face framed by a small dark beard. The picture, perhaps placed provisionally on the altar dedicated to the Saint in the church of the Gesù, must have been, around 1623, that is, shortly after the canonization, replaced by another painting, this one of great artistic merit and likewise today preserved in the Vatican Pinacoteca. Reference is being made to the painting by A. van Dyck representing the Saint in the act of walking with long strides against the background of a countryside. The Saint's face turned toward heaven has an attitude of ecstasy, while his hands open his tunic at the breast as if to find relief for the great ardor that inflames his heart. This gesture thereafter remained typical of the Saint's iconography. Completing the representation 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 one sees depicted one of his dreams: namely the vision he had of himself in a deserted countryside in the act of carrying on his shoulders an old Indian, an allusion to the evangelizing mission to which St. F. X. sacrificed his life.
But even van Dyck's painting was in its turn removed when, between 1674 and 1678, Fra Pozzo, with the help of C. Maratta, redid the altar of the Gesù and Maratta himself painted there the picture depicting The Death of the Saint. Numerous and important for their artistic merit are certain paintings depicting scenes from the life and miracles of the Saint; among others, particularly notable are those by Rubens with his Preaching, in the Hofmuseum of Vienna, a miracle painted by Nicolas Poussin in 1642 and today in the Louvre, as well as a painting by Luca Giordano in the church of the Gesuiti in Naples, depicting the Saint instructing the Indians.
Other images of his of particular interest are a painting by Carlo Dolci in the Pitti Gallery in Florence, another by Sassoferrato in which the Saint has the pilgrim's staff, another still by Giovanni di Ruelas in the University of Seville, a statue in the chapter hall of the cathedral of León in which the Saint holds the Cross, and also a statue by Günther and Sternberg, a work of the second half of the 18th century.
Particular mention also deserves the picture painted in 1698 by the Colombian painter Gregorio Vásquez (1638-1711), today in the sanctuary of Bogotá, depicting the preaching of the Saint, and a numerous series of his images painted by artists of the countries where the Saint carried out his apostolic activity.
Bibliography5 works
Emilio Lavagnino