Luís de Azevedo (born at
Carrazedo de Montenegro, in the
Diocese of Braga, in Portugal, in 1573; died in
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...
in 1634) was a Portuguese
Jesuit
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
scholar and missionary.
Life
He became a Jesuit in 1588, and sailed for the East Indies in 1592. In 1605 he began his missionary work in Ethiopia, where he remained until his death. Azevedo was called the Apostle Agarus.
Works
He translated into
Chaldaic the commentaries of
Francisco de Toledo
Francisco Álvarez de Toledo ( Oropesa, 10 July 1515 – Escalona, 21 April 1582), also known as ''The Viceroyal Solon'', was an aristocrat and soldier of the Kingdom of Spain and the fifth Viceroy of Peru. Often regarded as the "best of ...
on the ''
Epistles of St. Paul to the Romans'' and those of
Francisco Ribera on the ''
Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews''; the ''Canonical Hours'', the ''Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary'', and other works. He is the author of a grammar of the Ethiopic language, and translated into the same tongue the New Testament, a Portuguese
catechism
A catechism (; from , "to teach orally") is a summary or exposition of Catholic theology, doctrine and serves as a learning introduction to the Sacraments traditionally used in catechesis, or Christian religious teaching of children and adult co ...
, instructions on the Apostles' Creed, and other books of the same nature. Azevedo concentrated on the
Ge'ez language, rather than
Amharic
Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amhara people, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other metropolitan populati ...
, since Ge'ez was the language of literacy.
[Leonardo Cohen, ''The Jesuit Missionary as Translator (1603-1632)'' pp. 16-17, Verena Böll
(editor), ''Ethiopia And the Missions'' (2005)]
Notes
References
;Attribution
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Azevedo, Luiz de
1573 births
1634 deaths
Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries
16th-century Portuguese Jesuits
17th-century Portuguese Jesuits
People from Valpaços