Diogo Carvalho (1578-1624)

Clergy of the Society of Jesus who worked mostly in Japan. He was born in Coimbra, around 1578, and died in Sendai on 22nd February, 1624. His parents were Álvaro Fernandes and Margarida Luís. He entered the Society on 14th November, 1594, when he was sixteen years old. On 4th April, 1600, he left for India on board of the São João ship; then he moved on to Macau on 1st May, 1601, where he studied: in October, 1603, he was a third-year student of Philosophy and in November, 1606, he was a third-year student of Theology. He arrived in Japan in 1609; in 1613 he was in Amasuka, but returned to Macau in November, 1614. In early 1615 he went on to Cochinchina and from there left for Japan, where he arrived already in 1616. He professed the solemn 4 vows in Nagasaki, at the house of Francisco Martins, on 5th August, 1617, having undertaken the spiritual exercises there as well. He immediately went to the North of Japan, where he collaborated with Father Jerónimo de Angelis and visited Hokkaidô, in 1620. He died by the torture of cold water in Sendai. He changed his name to Nagasaki Goroyemon.

Bibliography: COSTA, João Paulo Oliveira e, O Cristianismo no Japão e o Episcopado de D. Luís de Cerqueira, dissertação de doutoramento em História apresentada à Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, 1998 (texto fotocopiado). Monumenta Historica Japoniae, dir. de Josef Franz Schütte S. J., Roma, Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1975.

Translated by: Maria das Mercês Pacheco