Acosta, Jose de

ACOSTA, JOSE DE: Jesuit; b. at Medina del Campo (26 m. s.s.w. of Valladolid), Spain, about 1539; d. at Salamanca as rector of the university Feb. 11, 1600. He joined the Jesuits as early as 1553. In 1571 he went to the West Indies and later became second provincial of Peru. He wrote Confessionario para los curas de Indios, in Kechua and Aymara (1583), perhaps the first book printed at Lima; a catechism in Spanish and the native tongues (Lima, 1585); De natura novi orbis et de promulgatione evangelii apud barbaros (Salamanca, 1589), which he afterward translated into Spanish and incorporated in the Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Seville, 1590; Eng. transl., The Natural and Moral History of the East and West Indies, London, 1604), one of the most valuable of the early works on America; De Christo revelato et de temporibus novissimis (Rome, 1590); Concilium provinciale Limense in anno MDLXXXIII. (Madrid, 1590); Concionum tomi iii. (Salamanca, 1596).