HENRIQUEZ, ENRIQUE. - Jesuit, missionary, b. at Villaviciosa (Portugal) in 1520, d. at Punan-kayal (on the Fishery Coast in southeastern India) on 6 Feb. 1600. Accepted into the Society of Jesus by its founder himself in 1546, he left the following year for Goa at the disposal of St. Francis Xavier, who immediately sent him to the Fishery Coast with the task of thoroughly studying the language for the benefit of the missionaries. In the last 25 years of his life he governed the mission as superior.
He became so proficient in the Tamil language that he composed the first grammar and the first dictionary, and disseminated in it catechisms, lives of Jesus, Mary and the saints, and collections of prayers. The Doctrina Christia, a manual of Dialogue, was printed in Portugal by Fr. M. Forge... translated into the Malabar Tamil language by Fr. Henrique Anriquez (Cochin, 14 Nov. 1579). He also left an abundant correspondence, some of whose letters were already published in Avisi particolari delle Indie di Portogallo (Rome 1522), in Nuovi avis delle Indie di Portogallo (ibid. 1553), and in Selectae Indiarum epistolae nunc primum editae (Florence 1887), and now more fully and critically in Documenta indica, of which two volumes have so far appeared (op. cit., V. BIBLICA.).