João Mateus Adami (1577-1633)

Clergy of the Society of Jesus who worked mostly in Japan. He was born in Mazzara, Sicily, around 1577, and died in Nagasaki on 22nd October, 1633. In 1603 he left from Goa to Macau where, in October, he attended Theology classes at the Madre de Deus College. In 1604 he moved to Japan, where D. Luís Cerqueira and the priests Francisco Pacheco and Pedro da Cruz administered his final exams on 23rd September. Adami started working in Bungo but in 1607 he became head of the Yanagawa residence, a position he held until the residence was closed. He professed the four vows in Nagasaki on 27th September, 1611. In November 1614 he left for Macau, where he became consultant of the rector of the college. He returned to Japan in July 1618 and remained, at first, in the Amasuka region. In October 1620 he was already at the northern part of the country, where he was consultant and confidential advisor of Jerónimo de Angelis. He must have stayed in Oshu at least until 1624. At an unknown date he was captured and succumbed to pit torture, after four days of suffering.

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