José de Acosta

José de Acosta (Medina del Campo, 1540 – Salamanca, 1600) was a Spanish Jesuit, naturalist and missionary who worked in the Viceroyalty of Peru and wrote one of the most influential accounts of the New World in the sixteenth century. His writing sits between the chronicles of conquest and a more observational study of nature and of American societies.

He came from a family of merchants in Medina del Campo, probably of converso origin. He joined the Society of Jesus as a boy, entering the novitiate in his home town, and studied at Alcalá de Henares in philosophy, theology and natural sciences. After being ordained he taught theology in Ocaña and Plasencia, and then asked to be sent to the American missions.

He reached Peru in 1572. There he founded colleges, taught at the University of San Marcos in Lima, served as provincial of his order and took part in the Third Council of Lima, where he directed the preparation of a catechism and a breviary in three languages. His work took him across large Andean territories, which gave him first-hand knowledge of the geography and of the indigenous peoples. His style is clear and attentive: he describes rites, beliefs and natural phenomena, and tries to explain them through observation rather than through the authority of the ancients alone.

In 1586 he travelled to New Spain and, shortly afterwards, returned to the Iberian peninsula, where he held posts within the order until his death in Salamanca. His Natural and Moral History of the Indies (1590) was soon translated into French and English and remained a standard reference for centuries. In it he proposed that the peoples of America had come from Asia and classified their forms of government. Today he is remembered as an early figure in environmental medicine, and a variety of altitude sickness bears his name.