Jerónimo de Angelis (1568-1623)

Clergy of the Society of Jesus who worked mostly in Japan. He was born in Enna, Sicily, in 1568, and died in Edo (Tokyo) on 4th December, 1623. When he was still a student he volunteered to missions in the Far East; he left Genoa in December 1591 and left Lisbon on 10th April, 1596. Carlo Spinola and Jerónimo de Angelis lived great adventures in Brazilian, Puerto-Rican and British territories. He finished his studies in Macau and reached Japan in July 1602. For about a year, he stayed in Arima and studied the Japanese language; in October 1603 he was at the Osaka residence, already administering confession in the Japanese language. Then he moved to the Fushimi residence, where he worked for eight consecutive years. On 11th December, 1611, he professed the four vows. In February 1613 he was in Miyako as consultant of the rector. In order to start a new mission he was sent to Suruga but, due to the incidents that lead to the final rupture process between bakufu and Christianity, the mission failed to inaugurate. When of the expulsion edict he went to Nagasaki, but managed to stay in Japan and from 1615 on he worked permanently on the north of the country, having based his activity in Sendai and visited mostly the provinces of Mutsu, Kai and Sado; it's worth mentioning that he was the first European to set foot on the Hokkaido Island. He was burned alive in Edo (Tokyo).

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