(1539-1600) theologian, philosopher, naturalist
Jose de Acosta was born in Medina del Campo and entered the Society of Jesus when he was 12. Spain sent him as a Jesuit missionary to Peru and Mexico, where he lived from 1570 to 1587. Although he authored various minor works, three notable titles brought him fame.
In 1589 Acosta published De natura novi orbis, a valuable historical and scientific sourcebook that is considered to be his most important work. It joins the author’s missionary concerns with his scientific interests by placing Mexico and Peru in harmony with the popular scientific view of reality of the time. Acosta translated De natura into Spanish and published it along with Historia natural y moral de las Indias into a single work. In Historia natural he studies the problems he found in Mexico and Peru and speculates on their origins. He presents a view of the New World as part of the natural order assigned by God to nature and the course of history.
Another of Acosta’s important works is De procuranda indorum salute, also published in 1588. In this work, he examines the fundamental problems of evangelization in America in the 16th century. Significantly, the work is the first systematic and complete presentation of early missionary problems with the balancing of rights, obligations, and parochial functions in the New World.
Acosta’s works are important because they represent the ideological culmination of the religious, philosophical, and scientific conquest of the New World in terms of the historical and ontological process of incorporating the New World into existing culture.
English Versions of Works by Jose de Acosta
Natural and Moral History of the East and West Indies. Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger Publishing, 2003.
Natural and Moral History of the Indies. Translated by Frances M. Lopez-Morillas. Raleigh, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002.
Works about Jose de Acosta
Burgaleta, Claudio M. Jose De Acosta, S.J. (1540-1600): His Life and Thought. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1999.
Shepherd, Gregory J. An Exposition of Jose De Acosta’s “Historia Y Moral de Las Indias,” 1590.
New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002.
