ABSTRACT

In 1554 Pedro Correia and João de Sousa became the first Jesuit martyrs in Brazil. The men, both talented linguists, had traveled from the Jesuit residence in São Paulo deep into Guarani territory to the south and west. The details of their deaths – one shot with arrows, the other’s head smashed with a war club – were soon known in São Paulo. There, the Jesuits had complex reactions to these deaths. On the one hand, they were greatly saddened by the loss of their best interpreter and by the treachery exhibited by the Guarani. On the other, they saw the deaths as “glorious” and worthy of emulation. “These blessed brothers suffered death in holy obedience, in the preaching of the Gospel, in peace, and for the love and charity of their neighbors,” José de Anchieta wrote to Ignatius of Loyola, and “all of us wish mightily and ask God through constant prayer that we might die in this way.” 1