Xavier, FRANCISCO, the 'Apostle of the Indies,' was born of a noble family at his mother's castle of Xavero or Xavier, near Sanguesa, in the Basque country, April 7, 1506, youngest son of Jnan de Jasso, privy-councillor to Jean d'Albret, king of Navarre, and his wife Maria Azpilcueta Xavier. He was sent in his eighteenth year to the college of St Barbara at Paris, and was already a lecturer on the Aristotelian philosophy when he made the acquaintance of Ignatius Loyola (q.v.), with whom ere long he became associated in the foundation of the Jesuit Society (1534). Ordained priest at Venice in 1537, he lived some years at Rome in the service of the society. John III. of Portugal having resolved to send out members of the new order as missionaries to the Portuguese colonies in the east, Xavier was chosen in the place of Bobadilla, who was prevented from going by sickness. He sailed from Lisbon, April 7, 1541, wintered at Mozambique, and arrived at Goa, May 6, 1542. His first task was to rouse a spirit of penitence and religious fervour among the corrupt Europeans, and thus remove the great obstacle to the conversion of the native population. His efforts were eminently successful, and he was equally blessed in his labours among the pearl-fishing population of the coast. After a stay of more than a year in this region he returned to Goa, and with fresh assistants visited the kingdom of Travancore, where in a single month he baptised 10,000 natives. Passing thence to Malacca, he next proceeded in 1546 to the Banda Islands, to Amboyna, and the Moluccas, and then retraced his steps by Malacca (1547) and Manassar to the island of Ceylon, where he converted the king of Kandy with many of his people. His next ambition was the conversion of the Japanese empire, which had been suggested to him at Malacca by Han Siro, a Japanese exile. His preaching at Miako and Fucheo was attended with extraordinary fruits, and the splendour he had put on here from motives of policy so much impressed the Japanese that the mission he founded was allowed to flourish for above a hundred years. Xavier's mission to Japan occupied about two and a half years; he returned to Goa in 1552 to organise a mission to China. But the intrigues of the Portuguese merchants and the envious hatred of the governor of Malacca to Pereira, the envoy to China he had chosen, raised so many difficulties that his spirit gave way, and he sank under the combined weight of mental depression and physical sickness, on the very threshold of what he had looked to as the great enterprise of his life, in the island of Sancian, December 22, 1552. His body was conveyed to Malacca, and thence with great solemnity to Goa, March 15, 1554. Many miracles, attested by numerous witnesses, were reported of Xavier in almost all the stages of his career. Among these is reckoned the miraculous gift of tongues, and this was fortunate, for it appears that by nature he had no gift for languages. The evidence of these miracles was submitted to the usual process of inquiry at Rome, and, many miracles having been established, Xavier was beatified by Paul V. in 1619, and canonised by Gregory XV. in 1622, his festival being fixed upon 3d December.
His only literary remains are a collection of Letters, in 5 books (Paris, 1631), and a Catechism, with some short ascetic treatises. His Life, by Père Bouhours (1684), was translated by James Dryden, brother of the poet. There are also Lives in Latin by Torsellino (1596), in Italian, by Bartoli and Maffei (1653), in German, by De Vos (1877), and in English, by Venn (1862), H. J. Coleridge (1873), and Mary H. McClean (1896). See also Sir J. Stephen's Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography (1849).