Nicolau da Costa (1569-1640)

Clergy of the Society of Jesus who worked mostly in Japan. He was born in Lisbon, around 1569, and died in Goa, on 3 March 1640. He entered the Society in Goa, in 1587. He took his third year in probation house in Macau, between 11 January 1601 and 10 January 1602. He must have left for Japan shortly after, because the Jesuit rooster of October 1603 mentions he had come to Japan less than a year ago; he was then in the Omura residence, where he was starting to administer confession in Japanese. In 1606 he was the headmaster of the college of Nagasaki, and the next year he fulfilled the same post in the noviciate, in Todos os Santos; in 1613 he worked once more in the the college of Nagasaki, having some nearby communities under his care. He returned to Macau in November 1614 and he professed his spiritual coadjutor vows there, on 21 October 1616. He returned to India after 1621, where he became procurator of Japan.

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: Dominique Faria