St. Francis Xavier—“Patrón desta jornada”: Jesuit Writings and the Spanish Re-Appropriation of the Pacific

Abstract

Abstract The figure of St. Francis Xavier was a tool used in Spanish texts as an instrument to increase the prestige and dissemination of colonial endeavors. In the seventeenth century, amidst the tense rivalry between the Spanish and the Portuguese empires, several Jesuit writings take a stand in support of the Spanish monarchy’s interests in Asia, reinforcing the legitimacy of its conquests and the appropriateness of Spain’s intervention in the area. This article studies two of these texts: Diego de Bobadillas’s Relación de las gloriosas victorias and Diego Calleja’s San Francisco Javier, el Sol en Oriente, focusing on the textual strategies employed in them to vindicate the fight against Muslims in the Philippines and the wider Spanish intervention in the Pacific through the celebration of St. Francis’s endeavors.