An Interview with Ernest J. Burras, S.J

Abstract

April 20, 1907. He grew up on a farm at Ysleta, Texas, downstream from El Paso, where he spoke French and German, the languages of his Alsatian parents, and he learned Spanish and English, the languages of the area. Father Burrus's multilingual background, reinforced by a classical education in the Jesuit tradition, has made him a most talented textual critic in the field of colonial Mexican history. Educated in the United States, Canada, and Europe, he broadened his knowledge of mathematics and science, learned his philosophy, theology, and history, and expanded his languages to include Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Since 1923, when he entered Spring Hill College High School in Mobile, Alabama, Ernest Burrus has had a distinguished career in Jesuit education, especially in the training and formation of young members of the Order. * * Father Burrus first went to Rome in 1925 while a student-the first of many sojourns in Europe over the next six decades. In the mid- 1930S he prepared for his ordination in the theologate in Valkenburg, Holland, and in Innsbruck, Austria. He was ordained on July 17, 1938. These were anxious years in Europe for young Burrus, who witnessed the Nazi peril and did what his conscience demanded in alleviating the sufferings of the Jews. Arrested and deported by the Gestapo on March 30, 1939, he watched developments from Italy until he was called home. For the next decade he taught Jesuit juniors in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. During this time, and owing largely to the encouragement of Gabriel Mendez Plancarte (editor of the scholarly Mexican journal Abside, historian, essayist, and outstanding poet), Burrus developed his knowledge of colonial Mexico, publishing his first work in 1949, a critical edition of the first complete history of colonial Mexico, by the exiled Jesuit Andres