Francisco Xavier em Lisboa a caminho do Oriente (1540-1541)

Abstract

The decision of Ignatius Loyola do send, in 1540, the Spaniard Francis Saviour and the Portuguese Simão Rodrigues to the missions in the East, via Lisbon, originated as it is known in the suggestion of the humanist Diogo de Gouveia. The later wrote a letter from Paris to the portuguese king D. João III who then invited those two Jesuits to Portugal. But his initiative of Gouveia was based on information received from the humanist Jerónimo Osório regarding the need for missionaries in Portuguese India. This article analyses the information sources of Osório, who had epecial family ties with the East. This is followed by study of the documentation on the apostolic works of Francis Saviour and Simão Rodrigues while in Lisbon, during the months of preparation for the departure to India. It also studies the documentation on Saviour's decision to take with him other volunteers who had joined him in the Portuguese Capital. Meanwhile Simão Rodrigues was to remain in Portugal to start, in Coimbra the following year (1542), the first college of the order in the world.