Anton Sepp

Anton Sepp (* around November 21, 1655 in Kaltern , today South Tyrol ; † January 13, 1733 in San José (Misiones) , Argentina ) was a Jesuit missionary in the Jesuit province of Paraguay. He taught Guaraní -Indianer a Baroque church music.

Time in Europe

Anton was baptized as the son of Johann Baptist Sepp, a bourgeois, and Eva Leis from the small nobility on November 22nd, 1655 in Kaltern and was probably born the day before, in the Salegg residence. He spent the first few years in his birthplace Kaltern until his family moved to the neighboring village of Eppan . From around 1665 he was a court choirboy in Vienna and then from 1667 attended the Jesuit grammar school in Innsbruck for seven years . He then entered the Jesuit order in Landsberg am Lech and took his vows there after two years in 1676 . He studied philosophy in Ingolstadt for three years, and after teaching for four years in Landsberg, Solothurn and Lucerne, he returned to Ingolstadt for four years of theology. In 1687 he was ordained a priest in Augsburg and served his third year of probation in Altötting .

Anton Sepp was not only very interested in music, he was also gifted, and besides the theorbo he played other instruments. As a student he wrote plays that were performed at the end of school and sometimes attracted large audiences. Early on he felt the desire to lead Indians to the Catholic faith. He therefore applied to pursue this appointment and also received permission. So he embarked from Genoa to Cadiz (Spain) from 1689 . He used the 16 months of involuntary stay in Spain in Seville to learn the Castilian language . It was not until January 1691 that the next fleet left for Buenos Aires , with which he was able to cross over to South America .

Time in South America

After a 19-week voyage by ship, he arrived in Buenos Aires, which at that time had little more than 2,000 inhabitants. On his trip he had brought several musical instruments with him, as well as a copy of the miraculous image of Altötting , which was to accompany him everywhere later.

For three years he supported the pastor of the Reduction Yapeyú (today in Argentina on the border with Brazil). The baptized Indians lived in so-called reductions, where they were to some extent protected from the Spanish conquerors. Anton learned the Guaraní language in Yapeyú and taught the local population to make music with European instruments. The principle “compelle intrare” (compel them to enter the church) of the Jesuits, according to the Evangelist Luke 14, 16-23, was probably the lesser evil compared to the enslavement by the Spanish conquerors. Anton Sepp recognized that the Indians could imitate to perfection what was being shown to them, but he was of the opinion that they had a "short" mind and lived haphazardly. It seems that in his eagerness to have to teach them about European culture and religion, he made little effort to understand their peculiarities. However, he did not agree with the “compelle” (compel them) of the Spanish Jesuits. As possibly the only German, or better said, German-speaking (it is not known exactly whether his brother Heinrich Cordule was a Sudeten German ), he lived for a long time among many Spanish missionaries.

Jesuit reductions in Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina

From 1694 to 1696 he was in Santa Maria de Fe , where the plague broke out at that time and killed around an eighth of the population. There and also in San Ignacio Guazú he looked after the plague sufferers whom he visited daily. As a result, he himself was so weakened that he needed a vacation in San Xavier after a short stay in San Carlos .

His next place of employment was from 1697 San Miguel (near Santo Ângelo , today Brazil), where he founded a new village with part of the population ( San Juan Bautista ). He himself led the clearing and construction work, whereby the houses of the reduction were regularly laid out so that the streets ran at right angles to each other. He became the first pastor there. Since there were no European artisans and farmers, he taught the natives various handicrafts. He discovered iron ore deposits and built blast furnaces. In addition to various iron and steel utensils, weapons were also made, as there were frequent incursions by slave hunters. Johann Neumann from the Jesuit Province of Vienna set up a printing shop in the village. Some Guaraní had already learned to write and paint.

Anton was accused of immoral acts by defamers among the village population and chased out of the village. A commission investigated his case, concluded that he was innocent and reinstated him in the same place where he stayed until 1710. He was then transferred further west to San Luis , where he served for three years.

Isolated from civilization, the missionary's life had become lonely. In addition to Latin and German, he began to write in Spanish as well. Notes and letters have been received from him and some have been translated into other languages. We also know about him through the notes of other people (e.g. the Jesuit Pedro Lozano).

In the next station, La Cruz (now Argentina), he stayed for 16 years. During the War of the Spanish Succession he probably had no postal connection with his European friends and relatives. It was not until 1717 that 13 Jesuits arrived from the Upper German province, to which he himself belonged, and in 1729 another 13 arrived from the Upper German and Austrian provinces. At that time, Anton's German had become very bumpy and clumsy, as he had only spoken Guarani and Spanish.

Around 1730, Father Anton Superior was in the Jesuit Province of Paraguay. That year, he was already 75 years old, he was transferred to San José (now Argentina), where he also died.

plant

For the missionary himself, leading to the Catholic faith was the most important thing in his life. He was considered "their Paraquarian true apostles". In Santo Angelo a monument was erected to him, the pioneer of the iron and steel industry in the 20th century, although his achievement in this regard was only of regional importance. He wrote hymns in the Guaraní language. Since he came into contact with the Guaraní, who were not influenced by civilization, his records are also interesting from an ethnological point of view.

swell

• Johann Mayr: Anton Sepp - South Tyrolean in the Jesuit state . Bolzano: Publishing house Athesia 1988.
• Jesuit reduction
• Encarta Atlas 2009, Microsoft Corporation

Further literature

• Esther Schmid Heer (Ed.): Anton Sepp SJ: Paraquarischer Blumengarten . Jesuitica series, Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner 2012. ISBN 978-3-7954-2555-5

Footnotes

1. ↑ Quoted from Franz Braumann : The great attempt. An epilogue . In: the same company Paraguay . Herder Verlag, Vienna 1967, pp. 216–225, here p. 218.

Web links

• Music in the Jesuit reductions