Antonio Ruiz de Montoya

Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, SJ (13 June 1585 – 11 April 1652) was a Jesuit priest and missionary in the Paraguayan Reductions.

Life Montoya was born in Lima, Peru on 13 June 1585.

In co-operation with José Cataldino and Simon Mazeta, he founded the Reductions of Guayra. He also brought a number of tribal groups into the Catholic Church, and is said to have personally baptized 100,000 Indigenous people. As head of the missions from 1620, he had charge of the missions on the upper and middle course of the Paraná River, on the Uruguay River, and the Tape River; he added thirteen missions to the twenty-six already existing. The plan was successfully carried out in 1631. "This expedition", says von Ihering, "is one of the most extraordinary undertakings of this kind known in history" [Globus, LX (1891), 179].

Works Ruiz de Montoya was a scholar of the Guaraní language of the Amerindians, and left standard works on it. These are:

(Madrid, 1639), a quarto of 407 pages (Madrid, 1639). A newer edition was made at Bilbao: Corazón de Jesús (1892). (Madrid, 1640), a quarto of 234 pages (Madrid, 1640), a quarto of 336 pages (1640), unedited in Montoya's times. The first edition was made in 1991 by the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima. More recently a new transcription of the original manuscript found in Lilly's Library has been edited: Juan Dejo, , Lima, UARM-BNP, 2018. Vol. 2.

Marion Mulhall called Ruiz de Montoya's grammar and vocabulary "a lasting memorial of his industry and learning". German linguist Georg von der Gabelentz regarded them as the very best sources for the study of the Guaraní language, while Lorenzo Hervas y Panduro declared that the clearness and comprehensive grasp of the rules to which Montoya traced back the complicated structure and pronunciation of Guaraní are most extraordinary. All three works were repeatedly republished and revised. In 1876, Julius Platzmann, the German scholar in Native American languages, issued at Leipzig an exact reprint of the first Madrid edition of this work "unique among the grammars and dictionaries of the American languages". A Latin version was edited by the German scholar at Stuttgart in 1890-91. A collected edition of all Montoya's works was published at Vienna under the supervision of the Vicomte de Porto Seguro in 1876. In addition to the works already mentioned, Montoya wrote a number of ascetical treatises.

Letters and various literary remains of Ruiz de Montoya are found in the , XVI (Madrid, 1862), 57 sqq.; in (Antwerp, 1600), and in the (Buenos Aires, 1867), I, appendix; II, 216-252; cf. Backer-Sommervogel, , VI, 1675 sqq.