Ivan Ratkaj

Ivan Ratkaj, memorial picture with scenes from his life (1727)

Ivan Ratkaj (also Ratkay , Rattkay ; born May 22, 1647 in Ptuj , Slovenia ; † December 26, 1683 in Carichí , Chihuahua , Mexico ) was a Croatian Jesuit who worked as a missionary and cartographer in northwestern Mexico.

Life

In Europe

Ratkaj was born in Ptuj on May 22, 1647 as a member of an important noble family, the Barons of Veliki Tabor . In his childhood he was a page at the court of Emperor Leopold I in Vienna , where he also attended the academic high school. He joined the Jesuit order in 1664 , completed his studies in philosophy in Graz and taught at schools in Gorizia (1670–1671) and Zagreb (1672). After studying theology , he was ordained a priest in 1676.

When the Superior General of the Jesuits was looking for missionaries for the "West Indies" (America and the Philippines) in the Central European countries in 1678, Ratkaj volunteered. The twenty missionary candidates sailed from Genoa to Cádiz . Because of a storm, they arrived too late to catch the Spanish fleet, which had already set sail. The missionaries had to spend almost two years in Seville until the next opportunity to embark. During that time he learned Spanish and the arts and crafts.

In America

In July 1680 they joined a fleet led by the new Viceroy of New Spain and landed in the Mexican port of Veracruz . Ratkaj was sent to the province of Tarahumara (in today's Mexican state Chihuahua), where the Jesuits had already set up mission stations a few years earlier . He learned the Tarahumara language in a few months and was entrusted with the work in a small mission in Tutuaca. He organized the building of a small church there and after a month he had baptized about 50 Indians. He was then assigned to the already well-organized Misión de Jesús de Carachíc (now Carichí), where he baptized several hundred Indians within three years.

Ratkaj only wore old and well-worn clothes and distributed everything he owned to the local population. He taught beliefs to children and adults twice a day. He also regularly visited three neighboring settlements that were part of the mission. When Ratkaj tried to stamp out the nightly drinking and extravagant festivities of the Indians, they poisoned him in return, so that he died on December 26, 1683.

Fonts

Ratkaj was an attentive observer of his surroundings and sent three detailed reports to Europe containing anthropological , ethnographic and geographical inventories. He tried largely to show the Tarahumara in an objective light. He presented them as "gentle and civilized" in contrast to some of the neighboring tribes. But they are like other tribes "violently devoted to magic".

His first report described his trip from Vienna to Mexico.

In his second letter, written on February 25, 1681 on the border with New Mexico , he described his journey from Mexico City to the land of the Tarahumara. He also mentions his observations of the Great Comet from 1680 :

“... On November 17, 1680, I left Mexico City with the venerable Father Thomas de la Harza, the current Rector of the College in Patras, and we were accompanied by a group of Indian archers for protection. We made rapid progress so that we covered 108 miles in twenty days and arrived at the Zacatecas silver mines on December 7, 1680 . On this trip I saw nothing as wonderful as a large curly star that first appeared at Spica Virginis at around 4 a.m. in late November with a long tail that stretched west. The tail was dark at first, but grew lighter from day to day. The movement of the star was directed from west to east, but so fast that after two days the star was 40 ° further east and closer to the sun. After three or four weeks, when the star passed the southern hemisphere, it reappeared after sunset with a horrific tail that was up to 50 ° in length. The body of the hurrying star was small and was now moving west, while the tail pointed east for some time and then north soon, until the star itself turned after midnight and the tail turned around noon, and everything slowly faded. I leave the interpretation of all this to God. But I fear that this curly star does not mean anything good for Western Europe, ie for the Spanish monarchy. "

His third report from 1683 contained a map of the province, in which distances and elevations as well as the mission stations, Spanish fortresses and Indian tribes were recorded, as well as a list of rivers and mountains. It is the oldest map of a Mexican province. It is now in the central archive of the Jesuits in Rome .

Web links

Commons : Ivan Ratkaj  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hrvatska Enciklopedija. Retrieved June 1, 2014 (Croatian, with picture by I. Ratkaj). 
2. ^ Nikša Petrić: Description of the AD 1680 comet observed in Mexico by the Croatian Jesuit Ivan Ratkaj. In: Hvar Observatory Bulletin. Vol. 18, No. 1, 1994, pp. 37-40, ( bibcode : 1994HvaOB..18 ... 37P ).
3. ↑ Mijo Korade: Znanost u Hrvata - Kartografija i putopisi. Retrieved June 1, 2014 (Croatian, with a small image of the map).