Francis Xavier: The Missionary Whose Body Refused to Decay

In February 1553 a burial party on a Chinese island dug up a crate they had packed with quicklime ten weeks earlier, expecting bones. The quicklime had been the whole point: it would strip the flesh, the skeleton could be carried home, and the problem of moving a corpse across the South China Sea would be solved. They opened the crate and found Francis Xavier intact. The body is still in Goa, in the Basilica of Bom Jesus, in a silver casket above a marble tomb. It is brought down and shown to the public roughly every ten years, and hundreds of thousands of people queue for it. That fact is the reason most people search for him at all, and it tends to overshadow what he actually did in the ten years before he died: cross most of the known maritime world, open the first Christian mission to Japan, and change his methods so completely that he ended up doing the opposite of what he started with.

 

Navarre, 1506: Born on the Losing Side

Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta was born on 7 April 1506 in the castle of Xavier, in the Kingdom of Navarre. Navarre was then an independent kingdom, and within six years it would not be. Ferdinand of Aragon invaded in 1512. Xavier’s father, Juan de Jasso, had been president of the royal council of Navarre and died in 1515 with the kingdom gone. His elder brothers fought in the revolts that tried to take it back, and after the last of them failed the family castle was partly demolished on Castilian orders. So the man who would spend his life as the most famous agent of Iberian Catholic expansion grew up in a family ruined by Iberian expansion. He was Basque, from a kingdom Spain had annexed, and he sailed for the Indies in the service of the King of Portugal. None of the labels sit comfortably, which is why calling him simply Spanish flattens something real.

Paris, and the Roommate Who Would Not Give Up

He went to Paris in 1525, to the College de Sainte-Barbe, took his Master of Arts in 1530 and began teaching Aristotelian philosophy. He was ambitious in an ordinary way: a clever provincial nobleman looking for a benefice and a career. He shared a room with Pierre Favre, a Savoyard, and then with a limping Basque veteran fifteen years his senior named Inigo de Loyola, who had come to Paris to study with schoolboys after a cannonball ended his military life. Ignatius went to work on him and took years to do it. The line the sources put in his mouth is from Matthew: what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul. Xavier resisted, and then did not.

 

On 15 August 1534, in a chapel on Montmartre, seven of them took vows of poverty, chastity and a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The pilgrimage never happened, war in the Mediterranean closed the route, and the fallback clause, to put themselves at the disposal of the pope instead, is how the Society of Jesus came to exist. Xavier was ordained in Venice in 1537. The order was approved in 1540.

Goa, 1542

That same year John III of Portugal asked Rome for missionaries for his eastern possessions. The two men originally chosen fell ill. Xavier was told on a few days’ notice. He left Lisbon on 7 April 1541, his thirty-fifth birthday, and reached Goa on 6 May 1542 after thirteen months at sea, having refused a servant and washed his own clothes on the way. Goa was a Portuguese colonial capital with churches, a cathedral and a nominally Christian population behaving as colonial populations did. He spent five months there, then went south to the Fishery Coast, to the Paravar pearl divers who had accepted mass baptism years earlier for political protection and had received almost no instruction since. This is where his method took shape and it was not glamorous. He learned enough Tamil, with help, to render the creed and the basic prayers. He set them to simple tunes. He taught children and sent them home to teach their parents. He walked between villages ringing a handbell.

 

What Rubens Made of Him

Compare that with the picture Europe built. In 1617 and 1618 Peter Paul Rubens painted a pair of enormous altarpieces for the Jesuit church in Antwerp, one for Ignatius and one for Xavier. In the Xavier, the saint stands raised on a platform with his arm out. Below him the sick are healed, a corpse sits up in its shroud, a blind man’s eyes open, and in the upper background a pagan idol topples off its pedestal. It is superb painting and it is propaganda in the precise sense: it was finished a year before Xavier was beatified, and it was arguing a case.

 

The oil sketch survives too, and it is worth looking at beside the finished work. Rubens settled the whole crowded machine in a small panel first. Xavier’s own letters describe something else. They are full of exhaustion, of catechism drills, of complaints about Portuguese officials whose behaviour undid his work faster than he could do it, and of a man asking for more people because he cannot be in three places at once.

Japan, 1549, and the Reversal

In Malacca in 1547 he met a Japanese man called Anjiro, a fugitive from a killing at home, who had come looking for absolution. What Anjiro told him about Japan, a literate, ordered, curious country, redirected the rest of his life. He landed at Kagoshima on 15 August 1549 with Anjiro and two companions. Almost everything he had learned in India was wrong for Japan. Voluntary poverty, which had opened doors on the Fishery Coast, read in Japan as the condition of a beggar, and beggars were not received. Buddhist clergy were not impressed by a shabby foreigner with bad grammar. He had translated key terms using Buddhist vocabulary on Anjiro’s advice, which produced two years of misunderstanding.

 

So he reversed. In 1551 he presented himself at Yamaguchi to the daimyo Ouchi Yoshitaka not as a poor friar but as the envoy of the Portuguese viceroy, in good robes, with a clock, a music box, a telescope and letters of credential. He was given permission to preach and the use of an empty monastery. The mission that followed left a church of perhaps a thousand converts, and a lesson the Jesuits in Japan applied for the next fifty years. He also drew a conclusion that killed him. The Japanese scholars he argued with kept deferring to Chinese authority. If Christianity could not answer in China, it would not hold in Japan. So he decided to go to China, which was closed to foreigners on pain of death.

 

The Portrait Painted Where He Worked

Most images of Xavier were made in Europe by people who never saw Asia. One was not. In the Kobe City Museum there is a seventeenth century painting of him on paper, made in Japan by a Japanese artist trained in the Western technique the Jesuits taught in their painting seminary. He holds a flaming heart. A banderole carries the Latin words Satis est Domine, satis est, it is enough Lord, it is enough. Below, a gold band carries Japanese verses and two red seals. The painting was found in 1920 at Ibaraki, near Osaka, among objects kept by a family of kakure kirishitan, hidden Christians, who had held on through nearly three centuries in which possessing such a thing was a capital offence. It is the only major early portrait of Xavier produced in the country he opened, and it survived because people hid it in a farmhouse.

Shangchuan, 3 December 1552

He got as far as Shangchuan, a small island off the Chinese coast used for smuggling, and waited for a boat that would take him to the mainland illegally. The merchant who had taken his money did not come back. He fell ill in November, was put ashore in a hut, and died on 3 December 1552, aged forty-six, attended by a single Chinese companion named Antonio. He never entered China. He is buried nowhere near it.

The Body

They buried him on the island in a crate of quicklime, intending to recover the bones later. When the grave was opened in February 1553 the body was undecayed. It went to Malacca, then to Goa in 1554, where it has stayed. What follows is the ordinary history of an extraordinary relic. In 1554 a Portuguese noblewoman, Dona Isabel de Caron, bit off the little toe of the right foot; it is preserved. In 1614 the Jesuit general Claudio Acquaviva ordered the right arm removed below the elbow and sent to Rome, where it is displayed in the Church of the Gesu. That is the arm people search for when they type in his name and the word hand. Further fragments went to Jesuit houses across the world. The body in Goa is shown publicly about every ten years. It should be said plainly that four and a half centuries have taken their toll: what is displayed now is a much reduced and desiccated body, not a sleeping man, and the Church has never made a scientific claim about it. What is documented is the fact that startled the men who dug it up in 1553, and everything since is veneration built on that morning.

Goa, and the Part That Is Not Comfortable

One thing belongs in any honest account. In 1546 Xavier wrote to John III of Portugal asking that an Inquisition be established in Goa. It was set up in 1560, eight years after his death, and it operated with severity against converts suspected of retaining Hindu or Jewish practice, and against non-Christians, for more than two centuries. Xavier did not create it and did not live to see it. He did ask for it. Both statements are true, and a page about him that prints only the first is not telling you the whole thing.

Canonised With His Friends

He was beatified in 1619 and canonised on 12 March 1622, in the same ceremony that raised Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, Isidore the Farmer and Philip Neri. Rome made five saints in a morning and three of them were from the Iberian peninsula, which tells you something about where the energy of the Counter-Reformation was coming from. In 1927 Pius XI named him patron of the missions, jointly with Therese of Lisieux, a cloistered Carmelite who never left her convent in Normandy.

Francis Xavier Paintings Featured in This Article

Painting	Artist	Date	Museum
Nanban Byobu, Portuguese carrack and traders	Attributed to Kano Domi	16th or 17th century	Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon
Saint Francis Xavier	Anonymous Japanese painter	17th century	Kobe City Museum
The Miracles of Saint Francis Xavier	Peter Paul Rubens	1617-1618	Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
The Miracles of Saint Francis Xavier, modello	Peter Paul Rubens	1616-1617	Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Arrival of the Southern Barbarians	Anonymous	1595	Cleveland Museum of Art
San Francisco Javier	Bartolome Esteban Murillo	about 1675	Location not recorded

Ten Years, and the Thing He Never Reached

Xavier was in the East for ten and a half years. He was in India, Sri Lanka, Malacca, the Moluccas and Japan, mostly on ships, mostly ill, writing letters that ask for more men and better ones. The image the Baroque made of him, arm raised, idols falling, is the opposite of the letters, which are the record of somebody improvising badly and then improvising better. The most telling thing about him is not the undecayed body. It is that he changed his mind. The man who arrived on the Fishery Coast ringing a handbell in a worn cassock is the same man who walked into Yamaguchi in silk with a clock under his arm, because he had worked out that the first approach did not function there. Then he died on a beach waiting for a boat to a country he never saw.

Important Facts About Francis Xavier

• Born: 7 April 1506, castle of Xavier, Kingdom of Navarre. Basque, from a family ruined by the Castilian conquest of Navarre in 1512.
• Died: 3 December 1552, Shangchuan Island off the Chinese coast, aged 46.
• Feast day: 3 December.
• Co-founder: one of the seven who took vows at Montmartre on 15 August 1534, with Ignatius of Loyola and Pierre Favre.
• Sailed: Lisbon, 7 April 1541. Reached Goa on 6 May 1542 after thirteen months at sea.
• Japan: landed at Kagoshima on 15 August 1549, the first Christian mission to Japan.
• The body: buried in quicklime, found undecayed ten weeks later, and in Goa since 1554. The right arm was sent to Rome in 1614.
• Canonised: 12 March 1622, with Ignatius of Loyola and Teresa of Avila.
• Patron of: the missions, Navarre, Goa, and the Indies. Named patron of the missions in 1927, jointly with Therese of Lisieux.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was Francis Xavier famous for?

For being the first and most travelled of the Jesuit missionaries. In ten years he worked in Portuguese India, on the Fishery Coast of southern India, in Sri Lanka, Malacca and the Moluccas, and in 1549 he opened the first Christian mission to Japan. He was a co-founder of the Society of Jesus, and he is the patron saint of the missions. His body, which did not decay, is a large part of why he is remembered in the way he is.

What happened to Saint Francis Xavier?

He decided that converting Japan required first reaching China, which was closed to foreigners. He sailed to Shangchuan, a small island off the Chinese coast, and waited for a boat to smuggle him to the mainland. The merchant he had paid never returned. He fell ill in November 1552 and died on 3 December, aged forty-six, in a hut on the shore, attended by one Chinese companion. He never set foot in China.

Is Francis Xavier incorrupt?

His body was buried in quicklime, which was meant to reduce it to bones, and when the grave was reopened ten weeks later in February 1553 the body was intact. That is the documented event. After four and a half centuries the body now displayed in Goa is much reduced and desiccated, and the Church makes no scientific claim about it. The remains are shown publicly roughly every ten years at the Basilica of Bom Jesus.

Where is the arm of Saint Francis Xavier?

In Rome. In 1614 the Jesuit superior general Claudio Acquaviva ordered the right arm removed below the elbow and sent to the Church of the Gesu, where it is displayed in a reliquary. It has occasionally travelled on tour. The rest of the body remains in Goa, and a toe bitten off by a Portuguese noblewoman in 1554 is preserved separately.

What were Francis Xavier’s last words?

The tradition, reported by those who gathered accounts from his companion, gives him a line from the psalm used in the Te Deum: In te, Domine, speravi; non confundar in aeternum, in you, Lord, I have hoped, let me never be put to shame. He died in a hut on Shangchuan with almost no one present, so the account comes at second hand and should be read as tradition rather than transcript.

Did Francis Xavier go to Japan?

Yes. He landed at Kagoshima on 15 August 1549 with a Japanese guide named Anjiro and two companions, and stayed until late 1551. His first approach failed because voluntary poverty, which had worked in India, read in Japan as beggary. He changed tactics, presented himself at Yamaguchi as the envoy of the Portuguese viceroy with gifts and good robes, and was permitted to preach. He left a church of roughly a thousand converts.

What is Francis Xavier the patron saint of?

Of the missions and of missionaries, declared jointly with Therese of Lisieux by Pius XI in 1927. He is also patron of Navarre, where he was born, of Goa, where his body lies, and is widely invoked across the former Portuguese East and in the Philippines.

Can you buy Francis Xavier paintings?

You can buy Francis Xavier paintings at jesuschrist.pictures, in our shop, along with the wider Spanish Golden Age and Baroque collections. The two great images of him are by Rubens, whose Antwerp altarpiece turned the missionary into a Baroque spectacle, and by Murillo, who gave him the quieter Spanish face. For the world he came from, see our Spanish saints guide and the companion article on Teresa of Avila, canonised on the same morning as Xavier, and on John of the Cross, the poet Teresa recruited. The Spanish Baroque and El Greco pages extend the period, and the wider saints collection covers the rest.