Bertonio, Ludovico
BERTONIO, LUDOVICO
Jesuit missionary and linguist; b. Rocca Contrada, Ancona, Italy, 1557; d. Lima, Peru, Aug. 3, 1625. He entered the Jesuit province of Rome on Oct. 29, 1575. Assigned to Peru, he arrived in Lima in 1581 and taught humanities there. He was sent to the mission of Juli in the department of Puno, Peru, in 1585 "because he much desired to concern himself with the Indians and he is an angel and has much aptitude for helping them." He made his profession on Nov. 1, 1593. For 40 years he served as a missionary in that Aymara parish. Then, suffering from arthritis, he was transferred to Arequipa and then to Lima. In addition to his extraordinary virtues, he was distinguished for his specialization in the Aymara language and for his devotion to the principle of adaptation, even when it ran counter to certain directives of the civil power. He composed two dictionaries, one Spanish-Aymara and one Aymara-Spanish, plus a grammar "with a forest of phrases," a treatise for confession in both languages, and a life of Christ published in Peru and Chile in 1613. His work as a linguist is an indispensable source for the history of linguistic evolution that occurred in Upper Peru.
Bibliography: a. de egaÑa, Monumenta Peruana (Rome 1954). j. e. de uriarte and m. lecina, Biblioteca de escritores de la Compañía de Jesús …, 2 v. (Madrid 1925–30) 1:477–479.
[a. de egaÑa]