Missionaries of the World

The churches and convents of Goa, the former capital of the Portuguese Indies – particularly the Church of Bom Jesus, which contains the tomb of St Francis-Xavier – illustrate the evangelization of Asia. These monuments were influential in spreading forms of Manueline, Mannerist and Baroque art in all the countries of Asia where missions were established. These monuments of Goa exerted great influence in the 16th-18th centuries on the development of architecture, sculpture, and painting by spreading forms of Manueline, Mannerist and Baroque art throughout the countries of Asia where Catholic missions were established. In so doing they illustrate the work of missionaries in Asia. The Portuguese explorer Alfonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa in 1510 and the Portuguese ruled the territory until 1961. The colony of Goa, which has its centre in Old Goa, became the capital of the vast eastern Portuguese Empire, sharing the same civic privileges as Lisbon. By 1635, the successive waves...

David Livingstone, the Pathfinder of Africa, was a Scottish Congregationalist Pioneer Medical Missionary with the London Missionary Society and explorer in Africa, born on 19th March 1813 at Blantyre, Lanarkshire, Scotland to Neil Livingstone and Agnes, a protestant Christian family. At the age of ten, David was employed in the cotton mill of H.Monteith. He and his brother John working for 12-hours daily as "piecers," tying broken cotton threads on the spinning machines. The mill offered their workers schooling took advantage David. His father, Neil Livingstone, a Sunday school teacher and teetotaler, was very committed to his beliefs, handed-out Christian tracts on his travels as a door to door tea salesman and who read extensively books on theology, travel and missionary enterprises. This rubbed off on the young David, who became an avid reader, but he also loved scouring the countryside for animal, plant and geological specimens in local limestone quarries. His fath...

Las Lajas Sanctuary is a basilica church located in the southern Colombian Department of Nariño, municipality of Ipiales and built inside the canyon of the Guáitara River. The church is of Gothic revival architecture and was built from January 1, 1916 to August 20, 1949, with donations from local churchgoers, replacing an old nineteenth-century chapel. The name Laja comes from the name of a type of flat sedimentary rock similar to floor tiles found in the Andes Mountains. There was a claim that an apparition of the Virgin Mary was seen. There is now a miraculous image on a stone there. It is still possible to see this today. The reason for the church's creation is that in 1754 an Amerindian named Maria Mueces and her deaf-mute daughter Rosa were caught in a very strong storm. They found refuge between the gigantic Lajas, and to Maria Mueces's surprise, Rosa exclaimed "the mestiza is calling me..." and pointed to the lightning-illuminated 'painting' ...

John Smith was an English missionary and the Demerara Martyr, born on 27th June 1790 at Rothwell near Kettering in Northamptonshire. He had the misfortune at a very early age, lost his father (name not known), who fell while fighting the battles of his country on the plains of Egypt. His mother being then left destitute, he was deprived of the advantage of an early education, except that which he derived from an occasional attendance at a Sunday school. At the age of fourteen, he entered the service of a biscuit-maker in London named Blunden which assisted him to improve his education. He married Jane Godden. He was accepted by the London Missionary Society and he was ordained on 12th December 1816. He arrived at Demerara, a region in South America in what is now Guyana, on 23rd Feb. 1817 under the auspices of the London Missionary Society. He lived at the 'Le Resouvenir' plantation, where he preached at Bethel Chapel, primarily attended by African slaves. In his first i...

Cluny Abbey is a Benedictine monastery in Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, France. It was built in the Romanesque style, with three churches built in succession from the 10th to the early 12th centuries. Cluny was founded by William I, Duke of Aquitaine in 910. He nominated Berno as the first Abbot of Cluny, subject only to Pope Sergius III. The Abbey was notable for its stricter adherence to the Rule of St. Benedict and the place where the Benedictine Order was formed, whereby Cluny became acknowledged as the leader of western monasticism. The establishment of the Benedictine order was a keystone to the stability of European society that was achieved in the 11th century. In 1790 during the French Revolution, the abbey was sacked and mostly destroyed. Only some small parts of the original remain. Around 1334, the abbots of Cluny had a townhouse in Paris known as the Hôtel de Cluny, what is now a public museum since 1833. Apart from the name, it no longer possesses anything originally conn...