Origin from 1549
In 1549, King Joao the Third of Portugal sent the first Jesuit mission to Brazil under Father Manuel da Nobrega, who sailed to Salvador da Bahia alongside the colony's first governor-general, Tome de Sousa. Nobrega and his fellow Jesuits became the first of a long line of missionaries devoted to converting the Indigenous Tupi peoples, work bound up from the start with Portuguese colonisation and, as elsewhere in the Americas, with the destruction of existing Indigenous religious life and increasingly with the forced labour of both Indigenous people and, before long, enslaved Africans; Nobrega himself resisted planters seeking Indigenous people for enslavement even as the wider colonial project he served made both forms of forced labour part of Brazil's founding economy.
Facts
Dates
Start Year1549 is the well documented arrival of Manuel da Nobrega and his fellow Jesuits at Salvador da Bahia alongside governor-general Tome de Sousa, opening the Society of Jesus's mission to Brazil. Learn More
How the Jesuits Arrived in Brazil
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
In 1549, King Joao the Third of Portugal sent the first Jesuit mission to Brazil, led by Father Manuel da Nobrega, who sailed to the new settlement of Salvador da Bahia alongside the colony's first governor-general, Tome de Sousa. Nobrega and his fellow Jesuits became the first in a long line of missionaries devoted to converting the Indigenous Tupi peoples, arriving as part of the same voyage that founded Portugal's colonial administration in Brazil.
That missionary work was bound up from the start with Portuguese colonisation, and, as elsewhere across the Americas, with the destruction of existing Indigenous religious life and increasingly with forced labor, first of Indigenous people and then of enslaved Africans; Nobrega himself resisted planters who sought to enslave Indigenous converts even as the wider colonial project he served made both forms of forced labor part of Brazil's founding economy.
What this changed for Christianity's spread was the planting of a Catholic mission at the very outset of Portuguese Brazil, arriving with the colony's first governor rather than following behind it. The Jesuits' arrival made the church an institution present from Brazil's founding moment onward, its later growth into the hemisphere's largest Catholic nation rooted in a mission that began on the same ships as colonial rule itself.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Americas directly: "colonisation and, as elsewhere in the Americas, with the destruction of existing Indigenous religious life and increasingly with the forced labour of both Indigenous people and, before long..."
This source names Portugal directly: "In 1549, King Joao the Third of Portugal sent the first Jesuit mission to Brazil under Father Manuel da Nobrega, who sailed to Salvador da Bahia alongside the colony's first governor-general, Tome..."
Occurred In
Salvador da Bahia, the colony's first capital.
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