Jacobus de Dacia
Jacobus de Dacia OFM (* around 1484; † October 29, 1566 in Michoacán , Mexico ) was a Danish Franciscan who worked as a missionary among the Purépecha in Mexico since 1542 .
origin
Jacobus de Dacia, who also drew as Jakob Johanson , Jacobus Joannis , Jacobus Gottorfius or Jacobo Daciano , was probably a son of the Danish king Hans and his wife Christina of Saxony and brother of the Danish king Christian II and the Brandenburg electress Elisabeth . His name does not appear in Danish chronicles, but only in the Oldenburg Chronicon by Hermann Hamelmann , the author of which, however, expressly states that apart from an unspecified Saxon chronicle, he has no evidence of Jacob's existence.
Jørgen Nybo Rasmussen cites several pieces of evidence for the assumption of Jacobus' descent from the Danish royal family. In addition to the Mexican chronicles, he included the high birth attested by Emperor Charles V and the nickname Gottorfius , with whom Jacobus signed some letters after his expulsion from Denmark. He also refers to Jacobus' extraordinary education - in addition to German and Danish, he also spoke Hebrew, Greek and Latin - and emphasizes how much the Queen was devoted to the Franciscans. She donated two Poor Clare monasteries and furnished the church of the Odense Franciscan monastery with a magnificent altar by the Lübeck carver Claus Berg . The Franciscan depicted right next to the cross may represent her son. The proximity to this monastery is also evident in the fact that the queen, who died in 1521, was not buried in Roskilde Cathedral , but in Knut's Church in Odense. The name of the youngest son of the royal couple, Francis, points in the same direction. When he died in 1511 at the age of 14, he was buried in the Franciscan Church in Odense.
Life
Franciscans during the Reformation
It is not known when and where Jacobus entered the Franciscan order. Nothing is known about him from the reign of Christian II. Christian II, who turned to Luther from 1521 , was deposed in 1523 and went into exile in the Netherlands. His successor was his uncle Friedrich . He did not actively promote the Reformation , but tolerated its spread. During his reign, Jacobus met in 1527 as Jacobus Joannis , Vice Guardian in Malmö . In his chronicle De expulsione fratrum minorum (“On the expulsion of the Friars Minor”), written by himself together with Erasmus Olai, Jacobus reports on his disputation with the leaders of the Lutheran party. The following years were marked by the conflict with the Lutherans. In 1529 there were attacks against the Malmö monks. They were expelled from the church and monastery and fled to Lund . From Næstved , Jacobus defended the monasteries against accusations of heresy made by the Lutherans until the Franciscans were expelled there in 1532. In order to be able to explain the injustice suffered at the Reichstag in 1534, he wrote his chronicle, whereby he overemphasized the violent intrusion of the Lutheran citizens into the monasteries compared to their reform proposals. The Reichstag did not come about in 1534, however, because after King Friedrich's death the feud between the supporters of Christian II and Friedrich's son Christian broke out.
After his victory in the count's feud, King Christian III. 1536 a Lutheran church ordinance for Denmark. It banned all orders in Denmark. The brothers were only allowed to stay in the country if they shed their habit and refrained from all Catholic rites and sermons. Together with many other expelled Franciscans, Jacobus found acceptance in Mecklenburg , whose Duke Albrecht and his wife, Jacobus' niece Anna of Brandenburg , supported the Catholic side. There he was appointed the last provincial minister of the order province of Dacia in 1537 , which included Denmark, Sweden, Norway and southern Finland as well as the Franciscan monastery in Flensburg . From the Schwerin monastery he organized the whereabouts of the expelled brothers and the estate of the dissolved monasteries. In 1538 he appointed Lütke's name to be his commissioner and a little later left Mecklenburg with an unknown destination. He had signed several of the documents received from this period with Jacobus Gottorfius , possibly a quiet protest against the deposition and imprisonment of his brother Christian II, as his younger brother he could have been Duke of Gottorf if he had not become a monk.
Missionary in Mexico
It was not until 1542 that Jacobus de Dacia reappeared in the sources, in Seville as a participant on a missionary trip to New Spain . Since non-Spaniards were actually not allowed to enter the colonies, he personally received a letter of escort to the viceroy from Emperor Charles V, the brother-in-law of his brother, the deposed King Christian II, in which the emperor gave him a letter of conduct in addition to piety and education attested noble birth. Before leaving, Jacobus learned Spanish and Arabic.
In Mexico he first attended the Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Santiago Tlatelolco in Mexico City , a college originally founded in 1536 for the purpose of educating local priests. But as early as 1540, the native Christians were denied higher orders . In 1546 the Franciscans gave up the Colegio, which then served only as a language school for newcomers from Spain.
After learning Nahuatl , the most important language of the Aztec Empire , Jacobus went to the Michoacán province as a missionary in 1543 and quickly learned the Taraskan language spoken by the Purépecha . He defended the inhabitants against the encomienda system of the Spanish colonialists and founded villages in the vicinity of the monasteries, in which the indigenous population was safe. When the first council of Lima in 1552 prohibited the ordination of natives to the priesthood and they were also often excluded from receiving the sacraments of the Eucharist and the anointing of the sick , Jacobus defended himself with two writings. He even questioned whether the church would be founded on the Holy Spirit at all if the indigenous believers were withheld the sacraments. Under pressure from his order, however, he had to renounce in 1553 and pay church penance . His writings have only survived together with a counter-writ by Provincial Master Juan de Gaona in various church histories in Mexico from the 16th century. In the last years of his life he officiated as superior of the custody of St. Peter and Paul for Michoacán and Jalisco , whose elevation to the province of 1565 he still saw. After his death, he was venerated like a saint by the Purépecha.
literature
- Alberto Carillo Cazares, Jørgen Nybo Rasmussen : Broder Jakob den Danske. Indianerven og Kongesøn , 2003
- Jørgen Nybo Rasmussen: Broder Jakob den Danske, kong Christian II.s yngre broder , Odense, 1986
- Jørgen Nybo Rasmussen: Brother Jakob the Dane OFM as defender of the religious equality of the Indians in Mexico in the XVI. Century , 1974
Web links
- De expulsione fratrum minorum Chronicle of the expulsion of the Franciscans from Denmark (Latin with Danish translation)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cazares / Rasmussen: Broder Jakob den Danske. Indianerven og Kongesøn ; 2003; P. 33; see. but Hermann Hamelmann: Oldenburgisch Chronicon. That is, description of the praiseworthy clock old counts of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst [et] c. From which the current kings of Dennemarck and Herthaben zu Holstein sprang ... , p. 218, according to which Hamelmann had learned about a son Jacob from a Saxon chronicle, but could not confirm this. There are also contradicting traditions about the other children of the royal couple.
- ↑ Martin Schwarz Lausten: The Reformation in Denmark (writings of the Association for Reformation History 208) Gütersloh 2008; P. 21
- ↑ Leif Grane / Kay Hørby (ed.): The Danish Reformation against its international background: The Danish Reformation against its international background ; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990, p. 36
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jacobus de Dacia |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Danish minorite |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1484 |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 1566 |
| Place of death | Michoacan , Mexico |