Jesuits who Cartographed the World

The scientific tradition of the Jesuits in the mission lands involved contributions in the fields of astronomy, natural history, ethnography, botany, medicine. And, also, in cartography. 

The curia in Rome required from their missionaries information on the cosmography of the distant lands they had gone to evangelize. This information was sent in the form of letters (called Cartas Annuas) that included numerous images, details of the mission lands and also maps, some of which would be the first cartography of certain geographical areas unknown until then.

His cartographic works stand out especially from his first expeditions until the Suppression of the Society in 1773. Some Jesuits like Marquette, Kino, Consag, Fritz, Quiroga and Román made important geographical discoveries and captured them in their maps. Other discoverers saw their work reflected in the maps of other Jesuits of the same era. The key to this task of exploration and subsequent mapping would be their close contact with the indigenous people, true guides in those lands, and their knowledge of their languages.

In Persia, the Polish Jesuit Judas Tadeo Krusin’ski, who was Attorney General of the Jesuit mission in that region, stood out. His map of Persia is most certainly one of the sources of William Delisle’s map, Carte des Pays Voisins de la Mer Caspienne of 1723.

And in the Philippines, the Carta Hydrografica y Chorografica de las Yslas Filipinas made 1734 by Spanish Jesuit Pedro Murillo Velarde (1696-1753), and drawn by Nicolas de la Cruz Bagay, was one of the first to be published of the Philippine Islands and exerted a great influence on European cartographers of the 18th and 19th centuries. It was the only reliable one that could be counted on until the 19th century, when the maps of the archipelago drawn up by the Malaspina expedition were published in the Dirección de Hidrografía.

The cartographic work of the Jesuit missionaries stands out especially in American territories. In Canada, the Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette (1637-1675), together with the French-Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet, were in 1673 the first Europeans to explore and map the upper reaches of the Mississippi, from the territory of present-day Canada. Marquette’s knowledge of several languages of the indigenous tribes of the region contributed to this.

The missions in the viceroyalty of New Spain (present-day Mexico) were located in the Internal Provinces, as the territory of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Sonora and Texas was called at that time. In this area the work of the Austrian Jesuit Eusebio Francisco Kühn, Spanishized as P. Kino (1637-1675) stands out. He arrived in Mexico in 1681 and four years later he participated as cosmographer of King Charles II in the expedition of Atondo to California and captured the route followed and the missions and existing settlements in New Spain in the Tabula Californiae ex autoptica observatione delineata a R.P.Eusebio Chino S.J. (1685).

Although Hernán Cortés had already pointed out that California was a tongue of land joined to the mainland, in the early 1600s it was still thought to be an island and maps depicted it as separate from the mainland. It was Father Kino who determined that it was connected to the mainland at the mouth of the Colorado River and captured it in his map Passo por Tierra a la California y sus confinantes nuevas naciones y nuevas missiones de la Cia de Jesús, drawn in 1701, which is one of the most important maps in the history of North America. Throughout his life he continued to draw maps to illustrate the different activities he carried out in those lands.

In South America, the missions were settled along the main rivers where the indigenous tribes they wanted to evangelize lived. The discovery of the Orinoco-Amazonas communication through the Casiquiares river, in the first half of the 18th century, was thanks to Jesuit Father Manuel Román (1696-1764) and it would be his companion, Father Rotella in 1747 who consigned the map that today is the first graphic testimony of those regions. Román’s companion would be Joseph Gumilla (1686-1750) who explored the Orinoco River basin in 1731 and wrote a book of great historical value about the river, including the map of the province and missions of the Society of Jesus in the New Kingdom of Granada.

Cartography of the Amazon basin began to be explored and made known at the end of the 17th century, when Father Samuel Fritz (1654-1725) arrived in 1686 at the Jesuit school in Quito, sent from his native Bohemia. Four of his maps have survived, such as Tabula Geographica missiones Omaguae Societatis Iesu, c., 1689, or Tabula geographica del rio Marañon o Amazonas of 1690, which was printed in Quito in 1707 and was known in Europe from 1745.  

José Quiroga (1707-1784), who before joining the order was a sailor, carried out with the Jesuits Cardiel and Strobel a maritime expedition in 1745-46 from Buenos Aires along the Patagonian coast to Puerto Deseado and Puerto de la Cruz, and of their voyage there is a report and cartography. After having accurately determined the geographical position of the thirty towns of Misiones and that of the cities of Asunción, Corrientes, Santa Fe, Colonia, Montevideo and Buenos Aires, he drew up his map Description of the Paraguay River, from the mouth of the Xaurú to the confluence of the Paraná.

Finally, the Jesuit Alonso de Ovalle (1603-1651) published the Histórica relación del reino de Chile, printed in Spanish and Italian in Rome in 1646. The work is accompanied by a map that extends from Peru to Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn and from the Pacific to the Atlantic. In addition to the geographical data, the historical information, legends, and images of men, strange birds and game animals, local customs… This map, like those of many other Jesuits mentioned in this text, served as a model for European cartographers who were never in America.

Source: Spanish Geographical Society.