Timeline of Christian Missions - 1500 To 1600

1500 To 1600

Main article: Christianity in the 16th century See also: Timeline of Christianity#Reformation See also: Protestant Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and Catholic Church and the Age of Discovery

• 1500 - Franciscans enter Brazil with Cabral
• 1501 - Pope Alexander VI grants to the crown of Spain all the newly-discovered countries in the Americas, on condition that provision be made for the religious instruction of the native populations
• 1502 - Bartolomé de las Casas, who will later become an ardent defender of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, goes to Cuba. For his military services there he will be given an encomienda, an estate that included the services of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas living on it.
• 1503 - Mar Elijah, Patriarch of the East Syrian church, sends three missionaries "to the islands of the sea which are inside Java and to China."
• 1506 - Mission work begun in Mozambique
• 1508 - Franciscans begin evangelizing in Venezuela
• 1509 - First church building constructed on Puerto Rico
• 1510 - Dominicans begin work in Haiti
• 1511 - Martin de Valencia came to believe that Psalm 58 prophesied the conversion of all unbelievers. While reflecting on the Scripture passage, he asked, "When will this be? When will this prophecy be filled . . . we are already in the afternoon, at the end of our days, and the world's final era." Later that same week, while reading aloud from the prophet Isaiah, he reportedly saw a vision of vast multitudes being converted and baptised. He began to pray to be chosen to preach and convert all heathen. He would die 20 years later as a missionary to Mexico.
• 1512 - Dominican missionary Antonio de Montesino returns to Spain to try to convince King Ferdinand that all is not as it should be in the new western colonies. He reported that on the islands of Hispaniola (now Dominican Republic and Haiti) and Cuba, the indigenous peoples were rapidly dying out under the system of slavery used by the colonists.
• 1513 - In Cuba, Bartolomé de las Casas is ordained (possibly the first ordination in the New World). Soon thereafter, Las Casas will renounce all claims to his Indian serfs
• 1514 - Franciscans begin missionary work in California
• 1515 - Portuguese missionary Francisco Álvares is sent on a diplomatic mission to Dawit II, the Negus or Emperor of Abyssinia (an old name for Ethiopia)
• 1515 - Portuguese missionaries begin work in Benin, Nigeria
• 1517 - The Mughal Rulers of Delhi opened the door of Bengal to Christian missionaries
• 1518 - Don Henrique, son of the king of the Congo, is consecrated by Pope Leo X as the first indigenous bishop from sub-Saharan Black Africa
• 1519 - Two Franciscans accompany Hernán Cortés in his expedition to Mexico
• 1520 - German missionary Maximilian Uhland, also known as Bernardino de San José, goes to Hispaniola with the newly appointed Bishop Alessandro Geraldini.
• 1521 - Pope Leo X grants Franciscan Francis Quiñones permission and faculties to go as a missionary to the New World together with Juan Clapión
• 1522 - Portuguese missionaries establish presence on coast of Sri Lanka and begin moving inland in the wake of Portuguese military units
• 1523 - Martin Luther writes a missionary hymn based on Psalm 67, May God Bestow on Us His Grace. It has been called "the first missionary hymn of Protestantism."
• 1524 - Martin de Valencia goes to New Spain with 12 Franciscan friars
• 1525 - Italian Franciscan missionary Giulio Zarco is sent to Michoacán on the western coast of Mexico where he will become very proficient in some of the indigenous languages
• 1526 - Franciscans enter Florida; Twelve Dominican friars arrive in the Mexican capital
• 1527 - Martyrs' Synod — organized by Anabaptists, it is the first Protestant missionary conference
• 1528 - Franciscan missionary Juan de Padilla arrives in Mexico. He will accompany Coronado's expedition searching for the Seven Cities and eventually settle among the Quivira (now called the Wichita)
• 1529 - Franciscan Peter of Ghent writes from Latin America that he and a colleague had baptized 14,000 people on one day
• 1531 - Franciscan Juan de Padilla begins a series of missionary tours among Indian tribes southeast of Mexico City
• 1532 - Evangelization of Peru begins when missionaries arrive with Francisco Pizarro's military expedition
• 1533 - The Pechenga Monastery is founded in the Extreme North of Russia to preach Gospel to the Sami people; Augustinian order arrives in Mexico; First Christian missionaries arrive in Tonkin, what is now Vietnam
• 1534 - The entire caste of Paravas on the Coromandel Coast are baptized—perhaps 20,000 people in all
• 1536 - Northern Italian Anabaptist missionary Hans Oberecker is burned at the stake in Vienna.
• 1537 - Pope Paul III orders that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas of the New World be brought to Christ "by the preaching of the divine word, and with the example of the good life."
• 1538 - Franciscans enter Paraguay
• 1539 - The Pueblos of what is now the U.S. Southwest are encountered by Spanish Franciscan missionary Marcos de Niza
• 1540 - Franciscans arrive in Trinidad and are killed by cannibals
• 1541 - Franciscans begin establishing missions in California
• 1542 - Francis Xavier goes to Portuguese colony of Goa in West India;
• 1543 - Anabaptist Menno Simons leaves the Netherlands and begins planting churches in Germany
• 1544 - Franciscan Andrés de Olmos, leads group of Indian converts to Tamaulipas
• 1545 - Testifying to the power that letters back home from missionaries have had, Antonio Araoz writes about Francis Xavier: "No less fruit has been obtained in Spain and Portugal through his letters than has been obtained in the Indies through his teaching."
• 1546 - Xavier travels to the Indonesian islands of Morotai, Ambon, and Ternate
• 1547 - Wealthy Spaniard Juan Fernández becomes a Jesuit. He will go to Japan as a missionary.
• 1548 - Xavier founds the College of the Holy Name of God in Baçaim on the northwest coast of India
• 1549 - Dominican Luis Cancer, who had worked among the Mayans of Guatemala and Mexico, lands at Tampa Bay (Florida) with two companions. They are immediately killed by the Calusa.
• 1549 Jesuit missionaries led by Xavier arrive in Japan and built a base in Kyushu. Their aggressive proselytizing was most successful in Kyushu, with about 100,000 to 200,000 converts, including many daimyo.
• 1550 - Printed Scriptures are available in 28 languages
• 1551 - Dominican Jerome de Loaysa founds the National University of San Marcos in Lima (Peru) as well as a hospital for indigenous peoples
• 1553 - Portuguese missionaries build a church in Malacca Town, Malaysia
• 1554 - 1,500 converts to Christianity are reported in Siam (now called Thailand)
• 1555 - John Calvin sends Huguenots to Brazil
• 1555 - The first, failed, attempt to set up a Christian mission in Cambodia, by Dominican Gaspar da Cruz.
• 1556 - Gaspar da Cruz spends a month preaching in Guangzhou, China.
• 1557 - Jesuit bishop André de Oviedo arrives in Ethiopia with five priests to convert the local Ethiopian Christians to Catholicism.
• 1558 - The Kabardian duke Saltan Idarov converts to Orthodox Christianity
• 1559 - Missionary Vilela settles in Kyoto, Japan
• 1560 - Goncalo da Silveira, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary, visited the Munhumutapa Empire, where he rapidly made converts
• 1562 - Diego de Landa burns the libraries of the Maya civilization
• 1563 - Jesuit missionary Luis Frois, who will later write a history of Jesuit activity in Japan, arrives in that country; Omura Sumitada becomes the first daimyo (feudal landholder) to convert to Christianity
• 1564 - Legaspi begins Augustinian work in Philippine Islands
• 1565 - Jesuits arrive in Macau.
• 1566 - The first Jesuit to enter what is now the United States, Pedro Martinez, is clubbed to death by fearful Indians on the sands of Fort George Island, Florida
• 1567 - Missionaries Jeronimo da Cruz and Sebastiao da Canto, both Dominicans, arrive at Ayutthaya, Thailand
• 1568 - In the Philippines, Diego de Herrera baptizes Chieftain Tupas of Cebu and his son
• 1569 - Jeronimo da Cruz is murdered along with two newly-arrived missionaries
• 1570 - Ignacio Azevedo and 39 other Jesuit missionaries are killed by pirates near Palma, one of the Canary Islands, while on their way to Brazil
• 1571 - Capuchin friars of the 'Strict Observance' arrive on the island of Trinidad with conquistador Don Juan Ponce of Seville.
• 1572 - Jesuits arrive in Mexico
• 1573 - Large-scale evangelization of the Florida Indian nations and tribes begins with the arrival of Franciscan friars; Augustinian order enters Ecuador
• 1574 - Augustinian Guillermo de Santa Maria writes a treatise on the illegitimacy of the war the Spanish government was waging against the Chichimeca in the Mexican state of Michoacán
• 1575 - Church building constructed in Kyoto. Built in Japanese architectural style, it was popularly called the "temple of the South Barbarians"
• 1575 - Spanish Augustinians Martín de Rada and Geronimo Martín spend four months in Fujian, China, trying to arrange for long-term missionary work there. The attempt ends in failure due to unrelated events in the Philippines.
• 1577 - Dominicans enter Mozambique and penetrate inland, burning Muslim mosques as they go
• 1578 - King of Spain orders the bishop of Lima not to confer Holy Orders on mestizos
• 1579 - Jesuit Alessandro Valignano arrives in Japan where, as "Visitor of Missions", he formulates a basic strategy for Catholic proselytism in that country. Valignano's adaptationism attempted to avoid cultural frictions by covering the gap between certain Japanese customs and Roman Catholic values.
• 1580 - Japanese Daimyo (feudal landholder) Arima Harunobu becomes Christian and takes the name Protasio
• 1582 - Jesuits, with Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci as the pioneers, begin mission work in mainland China; introduce Western science, mathematics, astronomy
• 1583 - Five Jesuit missionaries are murdered near Goa (India)
• 1584 - Matteo Ricci and a Chinese scholar translate a catechism into Chinese under the title Tian Zhu Shi Lu（天主實録） (A True Account of God)
• 1585 - Carmelite leader Jerome Gracian meets with Martin Ignatius de Loyola, a Franciscan missionary from China. The two sign a vinculo de hermandad misionera—a bond of missionary brotherhood—by which the two orders would collaborate in missionary work in Ethiopia, China, the Philippines, and the East and West Indies.
• 1586 - Portuguese missionary João dos Santos reports that locals kill elephants to protect their crops in Sofala, Mozambique.
• 1587 - All foreigners ordered out of Japan when shogun fears they are as divisive and might present the Europeans with an opportunity to disrupt Japan. They stay but persecution escalates.
• Manteo becomes the first American Indian to be baptized by the Church of England
• 1590 - A book by Belgian pastor Hadrian à Saravia has a chapter arguing that the Great Commission is still binding on the church today because the Apostles did not fulfill it completely
• 1591 - First Catholic church built in Trinidad; First Chinese admitted as members of the Jesuit order
• 1593 - The Franciscans arrive in Japan and establish St. Anna's hospital in Kyoto; they dispute with the Jesuits.
• 1594 - First Jesuit missionaries arrive in what is today Pakistan
• 1595 - Dutch East India Company chaplains expand their ministry beyond the European expatriates
• 1596 - Jesuit missionaries travel across the island of Samar in the Philippines to establish mission centers on the eastern side
• 1597 - Twenty-six Japanese Christians are crucified for their faith by General Toyotomi Hideyoshi in Nagasaki, Japan. Full-scale persecution destroys the Christian community by the 1620s. Converts who did not reject Christianity were killed. Many Christians went underground, but their communities died out. Christianity left no permanent imprint on Japanese society.
• 1598 - Spanish missionaries push north from Mexico into what is now the state of New Mexico .
• 1599 - Jesuit Francisco Fernandez goes to what is now the Jessore District of Bangladesh and builds a church there