Goa
A Portuguese city on the west coast of India, which Francis Xavier calls the capital of India. He landed there in 1542, and the Japanese who went with him to Japan studied at its college of Santa Fe.
The Goa of the sixteenth century is the present Old Goa, on the west coast of India. Francis Xavier wrote that he arrived there on 6 May 1542, thirteen months after leaving Lisbon, and describes it as the capital of India, a fine city wholly in Christian hands, with a cathedral and a Franciscan convent (Xavier, Letters, letter 10, Goa, 18 September 1542). He later reported three Japanese students at the college of Santa Fe in the city, among them the man he calls Paul (Xavier, Letters, letter 63, to Ignatius, Cochin, 14 January 1549). See Francis Xavier in India and Japan.
What happened here
- 1542 to 1552, firm dateFrancis Xavier in India and Japan
The Jesuit Francis Xavier lands at Goa in 1542, teaches and baptizes among the Christians of Cape Comorin, and in 1549 carries the Christian message to Japan with the Japanese convert Anjiro. He dies in 1552 on an island off China.