page_title: Missionary
section_title: Historic
hierarchical_section_title: Missionary / Missionaries by religion / Christian missions / Historic
caption_attribution_description: Martires de Elicura. Sacerdotes jesuitas siendo asesinados por guerreros mapuches en 1612
context_page_description: A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to promote their faith or perform ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin missionem, meaning "act of sending" or mittere, meaning "to send". The word was used in light of its biblical usage; in the Latin translation of the Bible, Christ uses the word when sending the disciples to preach the gospel in his name. The term is most commonly used for Christian missions, but can be used for any creed or ideology.
context_section_description: The Christian Church expanded throughout the Roman Empire already in New Testament times and is said by tradition to have reached even further, to Persia (Church of the East) and to India (Saint Thomas Christians). During the Middle Ages, the Christian monasteries and missionaries such as Saint Patrick (5th century), and Adalbert of Prague (ca 956-997) propagated learning and religion beyond the European boundaries of the old Roman Empire. In 596, Pope Gregory the Great (in office 590-604) sent the Gregorian Mission (including Augustine of Canterbury) into England. In their turn, Christians from Ireland (the Hiberno-Scottish mission) and from Britain (Saint Boniface (ca 675-754), and the Anglo-Saxon mission, for example)  became prominent in converting the inhabitants of central Europe.
  During the Age of Discovery, the Catholic Church established a number of missions in the Americas and in other Western colonies through the Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans to spread Christianity in the New World and to convert the Native Americans and other indigenous people. About the same time, missionaries such as Francis Xavier (1506–1552) as well as other Jesuits, Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans reached Asia and the Far East, and the Portuguese sent missions into Africa. Emblematic in many respects is  Matteo Ricci's Jesuit mission to China from 1582, which was totally peaceful and non-violent. These missionary movements should be distinguished from others, such as the Baltic Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries, which were arguably compromised in their motivation by designs of military conquest.
  Much contemporary Catholic missionary work has undergone profound change since the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965, with an increased push for indigenization and inculturation, along with  social justice issues as a constitutive part of preaching the Gospel.
  As the Catholic Church normally organizes itself along territorial lines and had the human and material resources, religious orders, some even specializing in it, undertook most missionary work, especially in the era after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. Over time, the Holy See  gradually established a normalized Church structure in the mission areas, often starting with special jurisdictions known as apostolic prefectures and apostolic vicariates. At a later stage of  development these foundations are raised to regular diocesan status with a local bishops appointed. On a global front, these processes were often accelerated in the later 1960s, in part accompanying political decolonization. In some regions, however, they are still in course.
  Just as the Bishop of Rome had jurisdiction also in territories later considered to be in the Eastern sphere, so the missionary efforts of the two 9th-century saints Cyril and Methodius were largely conducted in relation to the West rather than the East, though the field of activity was central Europe.
  The Eastern Orthodox Church, under the Orthodox Church of Constantinople undertook vigorous missionary work under the Roman Empire and its successor the Byzantine Empire. This had lasting effects and in some sense is at the origin of the present relations of Constantinople with some sixteen Orthodox national churches including the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Georgian Orthodox and Apostolic Church, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (both traditionally said to have been founded by the missionary Apostle Andrew), the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (said to have been founded by the missionary Apostle Paul). The Byzantines expanded their missionary work in Ukraine after the mass baptism in Kiev in 988. The Serbian Orthodox Church had its origins in the conversion by Byzantine missionaries of the Serb tribes when they arrived in the Balkans in the 7th century. Orthodox missionaries also worked successfully among the Estonians from the 10th to the 12th centuries, founding the Estonian Orthodox Church.
  Under the Russian Empire of the 19th century, missionaries such as Nicholas Ilminsky (1822–1891) moved into the subject lan
caption: Jesuits who were martyred by the Araucanian Indians in Elicura in 1612
exif: {}