with Diogo Pereira, the captain, a project for a missionary journey to China. He devised the plan of persuading the viceroy of Portuguese India to despatch an embassy to China, in whose train he might enter, despite the law which then excluded foreigners from that empire. He reached Goa in February 1552, and obtained from the viceroy consent to the plan of a Chinese embassy and to the nomination of Pereira as envoy. Xavier left India on the 25th of April 1552 for Malacca, intending there to meet Pereira and to re-embark on the “Santa Cruz.”
The story of his detention by the governor (officially styled captain) of Malacca—a son of Vasco da Gama named Alvaro de Ataide or Athayde—is told with many picturesque details by F. M. Pinto and some of the Jesuit biographers, who have pilloried Ataide as actuated solely by malice and self-interest. Ataide appears to have objected not so much to the mission as to the rank assigned to Pereira, whom he regarded as unfit for the office of envoy. The right to send a ship to trade with China was one for which large sums were paid, and Pereira, as commander of the expedition, would enjoy commercial privileges which Ataide had, ex officio, the power to grant or withhold. It seems doubtful if the governor exceeded his legal right in refusing to allow Pereira to proceed;[1] in this attitude he remained firm even when Xavier, if the Jesuit biographers may be trusted, exhibited the brief by which he held the rank of papal nuncio, and threatened Ataide with excommunication. On Xavier’s personal liberty no restraint was placed. He embarked without Pereira on July 16th, 1552. After a short stay at Singapore, whence he despatched several letters to India and Europe, the ship at the end of August 1552 reached Chang-chuen-shan (St John Island) off the coast of Kwang-tung, which served as port and rendezvous for Europeans, not then admitted to visit the Chinese mainland.
Xavier was seized with fever soon after his arrival, and was delayed by the failure of the interpreter he had engaged, as well as by the reluctance of the Portuguese to attempt the voyage to Canton for the purpose of landing him. He had arranged for his passage in a Chinese junk, when he was again attacked by fever, and died on December 2nd, or, according to some authorities, November 27th, 1552. He was buried close to the cabin in which he had died, but his body was later transferred to Malacca, and thence to Goa, where it still lies in a magnificent shrine (see J. N. da Fonseca, An Historical and Archaeological Sketch of Goa, Bombay, 1878). He was beatified by Paul V. in 1619 and canonized by Gregory XV. in 1621.
In appearance Xavier was neither Spanish nor Basque. He had blue or grey eyes, and fair hair and beard, which turned white through the hardships he endured in Japan. That he was of short stature is proved by the length of the coffin in which his body is still preserved, less than 5 ft. 1 in. (Fonseca, op. cit. p. 296). Many miracles have been ascribed to him; an official list of these, said to have been attested by eye-witnesses, was drawn up by the auditors of the Rota when the processes for his canonization were formed, and is preserved in manuscript in the Vatican library. The contention that Xavier should be regarded as the greatest of Christian missionaries since the first century A.D. rests upon more tangible evidence. His Jesuit biographers attribute to him the conversion of more than 700,000 persons in less than ten years; and though these figures are absurd, the work which Xavier accomplished was enormous. He inaugurated new missionary enterprises from Hormuz to Japan and the Malay Archipelago, leaving an organized Christian community wherever he preached; he directed by correspondence the ecclesiastical policy of John III. and his viceroy in India; he established and controlled the Society of Jesus in the East. Himself an ascetic and a mystic, to whom things spiritual were more real than the visible world, he had the strong common sense which distinguished the other Spanish mystics, St Theresa, Luis de Leon or Raimon Lull. This quality is nowhere better exemplified than in his letters to Gaspar Baertz (Barzaeus), the Flemish Jesuit whom he sent to Hormuz, or in his suggestions for the establishment of a Portuguese staple in Japan. Supreme as an organizer, he seems also to have had a singularly attractive personality, which won him the friendship even of the pirates and bravos with whom he was forced to consort on his voyages. Modern critics of his work note that he made no attempt to understand the oriental religions which he attacked, and censure him for invoking the aid of the Inquisition and sanctioning persecution of the Nestorians in Malabar. He strove, with a success disastrous to the Portuguese empire, to convert the government in Goa into a proselytizing agency. Throughout his life he remained in close touch with Ignatius of Loyola, who is said to have selected Xavier as his own successor at the head of the Society of Jesus. Within a few weeks of Xavier’s death, indeed, Ignatius sent letters recalling him to Europe with that end in view.
Bibliography.—Many of the authorities on which the biographies of Xavier have been based are untrustworthy, notably the Peregrinaçam of F. M. Pinto (q.v.), which minutely describes certain incidents of his life in the Far East (especially in Japan and Malacca). Xavier’s extant letters, supplemented by a few other 16th-century documents, outweigh all other evidence. It is perhaps noteworthy that Xavier himself never mentions Pinto; but the omission may be explained by the numerous gaps in his correspondence. A critical text of the letters, with notes, bibliography and a life in Spanish, will be found in Monumenta Xaveriana ex Autographis vel ex Antiquioribus Exemplis collecta, vol. i. (Madrid, 1899–1900), included in Monumenta historica Societatis Jesu. For translations, The Life and Letters of St Francis Xavier, by H. Coleridge, S.J. (2 vols., London, 1872), is useful, though the historical commentary has little value. There are numerous older and uncritical biographies by members of the Society; best and earliest are De vita Francisca Xaverii . . . libri sex, by O. Torsellino (Tursellinus) (Antwerp, 1596; English by T. F., The Admirable Life of St Francis Xavier, Paris, 1632); and Historia da Vida do Padre Francisco de Xavier, &c., by João Lucena (Lisbon, 1600). Later works by the Jesuits Bartoli, Maffei, de Sousa, Poussines, Menchacha, Léon Pagès and others owe much to Torsellino and Lucena, but also incorporate many traditions which can no longer be verified. St François de Xavier, sa vie et ses lettres, by J. M. Cros, S.J. (2 vols., Toulouse, 1900), embodies the results of long research. The Missionary Life of St Francis Xavier, by the Rev. H. Venn, prebendary of St Paul’s cathedral, London (London, 1862), is polemical, but contains an interesting map of Xavier’s journeys. For a non-partisan account of Xavier’s work in the East, see K. G. Jayne, Vasco da Gama and his Successors, chapters 25–32 (London, 1910); and Otis Cary, A History of Christianity in Japan (2 vols., London, 1909). (K. G. J.)
XENIA, a city and the county-seat of Greene county, Ohio,
U.S.A., in the township of Xenia, about 3 m. E. of the Little
Miami river, and about 55 m. S.W. of Columbus and about
65 m. N.E. of Cincinnati. Pop. (1900) 8696, of whom 410
were foreign-born; (1910 census) 8706. Xenia is served
by the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, and the Pittsburg,
Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis (Pennsylvania System) railways,
and by interurban electric lines to Springfield and
Dayton.
It is the seat of the Ohio Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphans’
Home and of the Xenia Theological Seminary (United Presbyterian;
founded in 1794 at Service, Pa., and united in 1874 with
the Theological Seminary of the North-West, founded in 1839
at Oxford, Ohio). About 3 m. N.E., at Wilberforce, is Wilberforce
University (co-educational; opened in 1856 and reorganized
in 1863), conducted by the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The public buildings of Xenia include a public library, the county
court-house and the municipal building. Xenia is situated in
a fine farming and stock-raising region, and among its manufactures
are cordage and twine, boots and shoes, carriages and
machinery. The township was first settled about 1797. Xenia
was laid out as a village in 1803, was incorporated as a town
in 1808 and was chartered as a city in 1870.
XENOCRATES, of Chalcedon, Greek philosopher, scholarch or rector of the Academy from 339 to 314 B.C., was born in 396. Removing to Athens in early youth, he became the pupil of the Socratic Aeschines, but presently joined himself to Plato, whom he attended to Sicily in 361. Upon his master’s death
- ↑ See R. S. Whiteway, Rise of the Portuguese Power in India (London, 1898), appendix A. The question is complicated by the fact that the Sixth Decade of Diogo do Couto, the best contemporary historian of these events, was suppressed by the censor in its original form, and the extant version was revised by an ecclesiastical editor.
