Anselm Eckart

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Anselm Eckart SJ (born August 4, 1721 in Mainz , † June 29, 1809 in Polazk ) was a German religious priest , missionary and naturalist in Brazil .

Life

Anselm Eckart came from an influential family of legal scholars who had worked at the archbishopric court chamber for generations . He decided to become a Jesuit and joined the Jesuit Order in his hometown of the Upper Rhine province in 1740. After his ordination in 1751, the young religious was sent as a missionary to the Rio Xingu , one of the great right tributaries of the Amazon in the lowlands of Brazil , via Genoa and Lisbon in 1752 . Little information was known about the course of the river in the Latin American mission area, which was under Portuguese patronage. From 1754 he worked in another station on the Rio Madeira and later in Trocano. After the Jesuit order in Brazil and Portugal was dissolved in 1759 as a result of the church policy of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello , the order members were arrested. Anselm Eckart spent 18 years in a prison in Lisbon before he was released in 1777.

On his return to Germany he was accepted into the house of his eldest brother, the Electorate Mainz secret council and customs clerk of Bingen am Rhein Heinrich Christian Adam Eckart. There he wrote down his missionary and scientific experiences and findings. In his writings he addressed the everyday life of his missionary work, the relationship to the indigenous population and his imprisonment. In 1792 he fled to Nuremberg from the French revolutionary troops . In 1803 Eckart traveled to Russia because the Jesuit order was not forbidden there. He died on June 29, 1809 in Polatsk, now Belarus.

Eckart's writings are seen as an "important source for reconstructing the natural history and ethnology of Brazil".

literature

  • Nelson Papavero, Antonio Porro (ed.): Anselm Eckart SJ eo Estado do Grao-Pará e Maranhao Setecentista (1785) (= Anselm Eckart SJ and the state province of Groß-Para and Maranhao in the 18th century), Museo Goeldi in collaboration with the Institute for Church History in Mainz, Belém, 2013, 406 pages, ISBN 978-85-61377-73-1
  • Antonio Porro: Uma crônica ignorada: Anselm Eckart ea Amazônia setecentista A forgotten account: Anselm Eckart and the 18th Century Amazon University of São Paulo , São Paulo, Brazil

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Josef Albert Otto SJ:  Eckart, Anselm Franz Dominik von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 283 f. ( Digitized version ).
  2. ↑ Uwe Glüsenkamp: The fate of the Jesuits from the Upper German and the two Rhenish provinces after their expulsion from the mission areas of the Portuguese and Spanish patronage (1755-1809) sehepunkte 9 (2009), No. 2
  3. ^ Kurmainzischer Hof- und Staats-Kalender to the year 1790, St. Rochus Hospitals-Buchdruckerei, 1790, p. 16
  4. ↑ In the 18th century, missionary Anselm Eckart documented the book publication about the Mainz Jesuits in Brazil, Mainzer Bistumsnachrichten No. 19 of May 21, 2014
  5. ^ Christoph Nebgen , Institute for Church History in Mainz
personal data
SURNAME Eckart, Anselm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eckart, Anselm Franz Dominik von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German religious priest and missionary
DATE OF BIRTH August 4, 1721
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 1809
Place of death Polatsk