Manuel Barreto (1563-1620)

Clergy of the Society of Jesus who worked mostly in Japan. He was born in Feira around 1563 and died in Japan on 29th September, 1620. He joined the Society in Goa in 1579. He reached Japan in 1590 and started by teaching Latin at the seminary. In 1600 he founded the Kamigyo residence; on 11th February, 1600, he professed vows as spiritual coadjutor in Miyako. Then he went to Nagasaki for a brief period of time; in October 1603 he was the companion of D. Luís Cerqueira, a position he held until July 1607, when he was replaced by Juan Baptista Baeza. In 1611 he was in charge of a residence in the territory of a gentile tono - most probably the Yanagawa residence, in Chikugo. In February 1613 he was back at Nagasaki, where he worked as preacher and confessor; in that same year he returned to Macau on a small vessel, because the Nanban trade carrack ship did not sail that year. Valentim de Carvalho had appointed him procurator of the mission in Goa, but Barreto, besides being the consultant of the college, fulfilled that function in Macau. He was procurator in Macau until 1616; then, he was sent to Conchichina (nowadays a region in southern Vietnam) and from there he went to Japan, having worked in Osaka. He had a solid knowledge of the Japanese language.

Bibliography:
Monumenta Historica Japoniae, dir. de Josef Franz Schütte S. J., Roma, Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1975. 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).

Translated by: Maria das Mercês Pacheco.