Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, SJ (13 June 1585 – 11 April 1652) was aJesuitpriest andmissionary in theParaguayanReductions.
Montoya was born in Lima, Peru, on 13 June 1585.[1] He entered theSociety of Jesus on 1 November 1606. In the same year, he accompaniedDiego Torres, the first provincial of Paraguay, to this mission.[1]
In co-operation with José Cataldino and Simon Mazeta, he founded the Reductions ofGuayra. He also brought a number of tribal groups into theCatholic Church, and is said to have personallybaptized 100,000Indians. As head of the missions from 1620 he had charge of the "Reductions" on the upper and middle course of theParaná River, on theUruguay River, and the Tape River, and added thirteen further "reductions" to the twenty-six already existing.[1]
When the missions of Guayra were endangered by the incursions ofPaulistas fromBrazil in search ofslaves, Mazeta and Montoya resolved to move the Christian Indians, about 15,000 in number, to the reductions in Paraguay, partly by water with the aid of seven hundred rafts and numberless canoes, and partly by land through the forest.[2] The plan was successfully carried out in 1631. "This expedition", saysvon Ihering, "is one of the most extraordinary undertakings of this kind known in history" [Globus, LX (1891), 179].[1]
In 1637 Montoya (on behalf of the governor, theBishop of Paraguay, and the heads of the orders) laid a complaint beforePhilip IV of Spain as to the Portuguese policy of sending kidnapping expeditions into the neighboring regions. He obtained from the king important exemptions, privileges, and protective measures for the reductions of Paraguay. Soon after his return to America, Montoya died in Lima, Peru, on 11 April 1652.[1][3]
Ruiz de Montoya was a scholar of theGuaraní language of theAmerindians, and left standard works on it. These are:
Marion Mulhall calls Ruiz de Montoya's grammar and vocabulary "a lasting memorial of his industry and learning". German linguistGeorg von der Gabelentz regarded them as the very best sources for the study of the Guaraní language, whileHervas declares that the clearness and comprehensive grasp of the rules to which Montoya traced back the complicated structure and pronunciation of Guaraní are most extraordinary. All three works were repeatedly republished and revised. In 1876Julius Platzmann, the German scholar in Native American languages, issued at Leipzig an exact reprint of the first Madrid edition of this work "unique among the grammars and dictionaries of the American languages". A Latin version was edited by the German scholarDavid Christoph Seybold [de] at Stuttgart in 1890-91. A collected edition of all Montoya's works was published at Vienna under the supervision of theVicomte de Porto Seguro in 1876.[1]
Of much importance as one of the oldest authorities for the history of the Reductions of Paraguay is Montoya's work,Conquista espiritual hecha por los religiosos de la C. de J. en las provincias del Paraguay, Paraña, Uruguay y Tape (Madrid, 1639), in quarto; a new edition was issued at Bilbao in 1892.[6] In addition to the works already mentioned Montoya wrote a number ofascetical treatises.[1]
Letters and various literary remains of Ruiz de Montoya are to be found in theMemorial histor. español, XVI (Madrid, 1862), 57 sqq.; inLitterae annuae provinc. Paraguariae (Antwerp, 1600), and in theMemorial sobre limites de la Repúbl. Argentina con el Paraguay (Buenos Aires, 1867), I, appendix; II, 216-252; cf. Backer-Sommervogel,Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, VI, 1675 sqq.[1]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Antonio Ruiz de Montoya".Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
