ARRIAGA, PABLO JOSÉ DE

Jesuit missionary and author; b. Vergara, Guipúzcoa, Spain, 1564; d. in a shipwreck near Cuba, Sept. 6, 1622. Arriaga had been a student in Madrid before he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Ocaña Feb. 24, 1579. He taught rhetoric there and at Belmonte before going to Peru in 1585. He became a professor of rhetoric in Lima and made his profession in the society March 19, 1594. With the exception of a few intervals, he served as rector of the Colegio de San Martin in Lima and the Colegio in Arequipa for 24 years. He made a trip to Spain in 1601 and was on his way there again as a representative of his province when he died. Arriaga was a man of action as well as of study. Much concerned with the apostleship to the unfortunate native Peruvians in both urban and rural areas, he worked particularly in the cities where they were mixed with Europeans. In Lima he supervised the building of a school for the children of the neighboring caciques. He was the author and translator of many spiritual books, including La retórica cristiana and some works of Mariology. His experiences as official visitor of the native people resulted in his most important work, Extirpación de la idolatría del Perú (Lima 1621). José Toribio Medina felt that this volume, of all such books printed in Lima in colonial times, was worthy of being reprinted because of the information it contained on the history and ethnology of the Quechua area and especially of the Inca religion.

Bibliography: j. e. de uriarte and m. lecina, Biblioteca de escritores de la Compañía de Jesús pertenecientes a la antigua asistencia de España desde sus orígenes hasta el año de 1773, 2 v. (Madrid 1925–30).

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