HENRIQUEZ, ENRIQUE. - Jesuit, missionary, b. at Villaviciosa (Portugal) in 1520, d. at Pumai-kayal (coast of the Pescheria in southeastern India) on 6 Febr. 1600. Accepted into the Society of Jesus by its very founder in 1546, he left for Goa the following year at the disposal of s. F. Saverio, who promptly sent him to the Pescheria with the task of thoroughly studying the language for the benefit of the missionaries. During the last 25 years of his life he directed the mission as superior.
He became so proficient in the indigenous tāmil language that he composed its first grammar and first dictionary, and disseminated in it catechisms, lives of Jesus, Mary, and the saints, and collections of prayers. The Doctrina Christinà, a maneira de Dialogo, feita em Portugal pelo p. M. Jorge..., translada em língua Malavar Tamul pelo p. Anrique Anriquez (Cochin, 14 Nov. 1579) was published. He also left an abundant correspondence, some letters from which had already been published in Avisi particolari delle Indie di Portogallo (Rome 1522), in Nuovi avisi delle Indie di Portogallo (ibid. 1553), and in Selectae Iudiarum epistolae nunc primum editat (Monroe 1887), and now more fully and critically in Documenta indica, of which 2 vols. have so far appeared (op. cit., V. BIBLICA.).