Jean de Léry and the First Reformed Mission

On March 7, 1557, a French ship landed into Guanabara Bay, near modern-day Rio de Janeiro, carrying fourteen French Protestant men ready to bring the gospel to this new continent. One of them, 23-year-old Jean de Léry, kept a detailed journal. These men, according to Léry, were sent in response to a request by Nicolas Durand, Chevalier de Villegagnon, a former Knight of Malta who had founded a colony in Guanabara the previous year. Villegagnon sent his request directly to John Calvin, whom he had met while they were both students. Calvin responded promptly.

Sending preachers for the spiritual sustenance of colonists or commercial ventures was a common practice at that time. But while this group of men included two ministers, the others were equally “anxious to establish the pure service of God”[1] both in the colony and among the Tupi people, one of the largest groups of indigenous people in Brazil at that time. Their mission, as the two ministers explained it, was “to establish a Reformed church according to the word of God in that country.”[2]

            Villegagnon received them with eagerness, thanking God for their arrival and confirming their mission: “Because I want our church to be renowned as the best reformed of all, from now on I intend that all vices be repressed, that sumptuousness of apparel be reformed and, in short, that everything that could prevent us from serving God be removed from our midst.” He explained that he wanted his colony to become a refuge for victims of religious persecution in Europe, so that, fearing neither king, nor emperor, nor any other potentates, they can serve God purely according to his will.”[3]

His intentions didn’t last long, and he soon found himself clashing with the newcomers, particularly about the Eucharist (although Villegagnon rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation, he didn’t agree with Calvin’s views either). The disagreement escalated to the point that, after only eight months, Villegagnon had three of the fourteen men killed and plotted to kill the rest. The survivors then moved near the Tupi where they lived for two months in improvised shacks until the next commercial ship left for France. This allowed Léry to immerse himself in the Tupi culture, as disorienting as it was for a foreigner who didn’t speak their language.

When the ship arrived, it was leaky and unstable, so much that, only a few days into their journey, five of the Frenchmen decided to abandon the ship and take a boat back to shore. Three of them were then killed by Villegagnon, who had given to the captain a letter for the French authorities, instructing them to burn the whole group of French Protestants as heretics. The captain of the ship revealed the plot to the Frenchmen, and the burning was averted.

The ship ended up drifting off course. When their provisions ended, both crew and passengers had to survive on whatever they could find on board, including boiled leather, chamois garments, and tallow candles – while working hard to keep the boat afloat. 

Pastor and Author

Once the ship arrived in Europe, Léry traveled back to Geneva to finish his studies, then returned to France as a pastor, serving in different communities. He married around the same time, but nothing is known of his wife.

In the meantime, France was devastated by its Wars of Religion, and Lévy barely escaped the massacre of Protestants on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, 1572. He moved to the town of Sancerre, only to be caught with others in an eight-month-long siege that reduced the population to starvation. Besides providing pastoral care, Léry taught the people what he had learned in his travels about survival on whatever was available: from dogs and cats to mice, rats, boiled leather, and parchment. He recounted shockingly the disturbing stories of a family who ate the flesh of their little daughter who had died and soldiers who ate the bodies of that had been killed in war.

After the war, Léry wrote an account of the siege. In 1578, he published his History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil. This book was motivated by an accusation by André Thevet, a Franciscan friar who had pointed at the fourteen Frenchmen as the reason for the wreck of the French colony.

The cover of this book included a verse that illustrated the original desire of Léry and his companions: “I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people: and I will sing praises unto thee among the nations” (Psalm 108:3).

Léry described the local population and their land, including “strange” fruits such as bananas and pineapples. His description of the natives is sympathetic. They didn’t differ much from Europeans in physical size, but they were stronger and healthier. He praised their detachment from material goods and their humanity in war (while they were in constant war with the Margaia people, they didn’t fight for possessions or expansion, and killed their enemies with a single blow).

They all – men and women - went around naked, but Léry points out how this nudity didn’t provoke lust. In fact, the community knew nothing of sexual tension and erotic fantasies. He concluded that clothes can be much more provoking.

What shocked him, though, was their habitual cannibalism – mostly for ceremonial reasons – an aversion he continued to feel when faced with some people’s desperate acts during the Wars of Religion. He never condoned the practice, under any circumstance. The shock turned to panic when he woke up to find the Tupi offering him the grilled foot as a delicacy, and he assumed he was going to be their next meal – to the amusement of the Tupi.

He also admired the Tupi’s relation with nature and how they felt at ease both in the forests and in the rivers. Their ignorance, he said, was in their attribution to nature of what should be attributed to God. As Romans 1 teaches, this people had a perception of the divine. They believed that, after death, good people would go to a heaven-like place, and bad people to a hellish place where they would be incessantly tormented by a devil-like figure named Aygnan. Their fears of hell were soothed by shamans who performed ceremonies that Léry compared to idolatrous Roman Catholic cult of relics. They told the story of a great flood, a modification of the biblical account which Léry considered defective because it had been passed on for centuries by word of mouth, instead of being written down as it is in Scriptures.

Proclaiming God’s Greatness

Being educated in the Psalm-singing atmosphere of Geneva, Léry found in the Psalter a constant companion during his travels. The troubled sea journey, when all the men, their “senses reeling, staggered about like drunkards,” was to him a living illustration of Psalm 107. The extreme highs and lows of a ship tossed by the waves was to him a clear reminder of God’s might and the fragility of human’s life. He concludes, poetically: “So any man is mad, we’ll say, who, faith not in God, sets out on the sea. For none but God can life’s savior be.”[4]

The beauty of the Brazilian land moved him to exclaim, with the Psalmist, “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.” (Psalm 104:24). “Thus happy would be the people who dwell here,” he continued, “if they knew the Author and Creator of these things.”[5]

Once, when he was walking through a forest with a group of natives, he felt compelled to sing Psalm 104 out loud. The natives were so impressed by the beauty of the music that they asked him what the words of the song meant. Léry explained it was a praise to the God who made and sustains everything, and that song had first been sung centuries before then by one of God’s prophets. The natives’ attention and appreciation confirmed Léry’s conviction that the people living in Brazil were “teachable enough to be drawn to the knowledge of God, if one were to take the trouble to instruct them.”[6]

Léry continued his ministry in the Vaud region of Switzerland, where he died in 1613 of the plague. He was 79 years old. Most textbooks consider his mission a failure. But he was one of the first Protestant voices to convey the strong evidence of the image of God in all peoples and to encourage the preaching of the gospel in other lands. His book on his journey to Brazil is also a proof that, contrary to popular belief, John Calvin and other 16^th-century Protestants were sensitive to the need for missions and quick to respond when a door opened.