Villaurrutia, Xavier, 1903-50, Mexican poet and playwright. Villaurrutia was deeply influenced by Ramón López Velarde. He worked on the Mexican literary review Contemporáneos (1928-31) and in 1928 founded the first experimental theater in Mexico. His poetic writing includes Reflejos (1926) and Nocturnos (1933). Villaurrutia's intense preoccupation with death permeates the poems in Nostalgia de la muerte (1938) and Décima muerte [tenth death] (1941); it is also the subject of his play Invitación a la muerte (1941). His most notable theatrical works are the short dramatic pieces, Autos profanos, included in Poesía y teatro completos (1953). Villaurrutia greatly influenced the work of younger Mexican poets, notably Alí Chumacero.

Xavier, Saint Francis: see Francis Xavier, Saint.

(born April 7, 1506, Xavier Castle, near Sangüesa, Navarre—died Dec. 3, 1552, Sancian Island, China; canonized March 12, 1622; feast day December 3) Spanish-born French missionary to the Far East. Born into a noble Basque family, he was educated at the University of Paris, where he met Ignatius of Loyola and became one of the first seven members of the Jesuits. He was ordained in 1537, and in 1542 he embarked on a three-year mission to India. In 1545 he established missions in the Malay Archipelago, and in 1549 he traveled to Japan, where he was the first to introduce Christianity systematically. He returned to India in 1551 and died the following year while attempting to secure entrance to China. He is believed to have baptized about 30,000 converts; his success was partly due to adaptation to local cultures. In 1927 he was named patron of all missions.

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(born April 7, 1506, Xavier Castle, near Sangüesa, Navarre—died Dec. 3, 1552, Sancian Island, China; canonized March 12, 1622; feast day December 3) Spanish-born French missionary to the Far East. Born into a noble Basque family, he was educated at the University of Paris, where he met Ignatius of Loyola and became one of the first seven members of the Jesuits. He was ordained in 1537, and in 1542 he embarked on a three-year mission to India. In 1545 he established missions in the Malay Archipelago, and in 1549 he traveled to Japan, where he was the first to introduce Christianity systematically. He returned to India in 1551 and died the following year while attempting to secure entrance to China. He is believed to have baptized about 30,000 converts; his success was partly due to adaptation to local cultures. In 1927 he was named patron of all missions.

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known as Mother Cabrini

(born July 15, 1850, Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Lombardy, Austria—died Dec. 22, 1917, Chicago, Ill., U.S.; canonized July 7, 1946; feast day December 22) Italian-born U.S. missionary, the first U.S. citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic church. She was determined from childhood to become a missionary, and she took her vows in 1877. She founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart in 1880, and in 1889 Pope Leo XIII sent her to the U.S. to work among Italian immigrants. She lived in New York City and Chicago but traveled in the Americas and Europe to found 67 houses of her order.

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(born Jan. 19, 1798, Montpellier, France—died Sept. 5, 1857, Paris) French thinker, the philosophical founder of sociology and of positivism. A disciple of Henri de Saint-Simon, he taught at the École Polytechnique (1832–42) but gave free lectures to workingmen. He gave the science of sociology its name and established the new subject on a conceptual (though not empirical) basis, believing that social phenomena could be reduced to laws just as natural phenomena could. His ideas influenced John Stuart Mill (who supported him financially for many years), Émile Durkheim, Herbert Spencer, and Edward Burnett Tylor. His most important works are Cours de philosophie positive (6 vol., 1830–42) and Système de politique positive (4 vol., 1851–54).

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known as Mother Cabrini

(born July 15, 1850, Sant'Angelo Lodigiano, Lombardy, Austria—died Dec. 22, 1917, Chicago, Ill., U.S.; canonized July 7, 1946; feast day December 22) Italian-born U.S. missionary, the first U.S. citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic church. She was determined from childhood to become a missionary, and she took her vows in 1877. She founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart in 1880, and in 1889 Pope Leo XIII sent her to the U.S. to work among Italian immigrants. She lived in New York City and Chicago but traveled in the Americas and Europe to found 67 houses of her order.

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François-Xavier-Joseph Droz (December 31, 1773 - November 9 1850), was a French writer on ethics, political science and political economy.

He was born at Besançon, where his family had supplied many notable members of the legal profession. Droz's own legal studies led him to Paris in 1792; he arrived the day after the dethronement of King Louis XVI of France, and was present during the massacres of September; on the declaration of war he joined the volunteer battalion of the Doubs, and for the next three years served in the Army of the Rhine. Discharged on health grounds, he obtained a much more congenial post in the newly-founded école centrale of Besançon; and in 1799 he made his first appearance as an author by an Essai sur l'art oratoire (Paris, Fructidor, An VII.), in which he acknowledges his indebtedness more especially to Hugh Blair.

Moving to Paris in 1803, he became friendly not only with the like-minded Ducis, but also with the sceptical Cabanis; and it was on this philosopher's advice that, in order to catch the public ear, he produced the romance of Lina, which Sainte-Beuve has characterized as a mingled echo of Florian and Werther.

Like several other literary men of the time, he obtained a post in the revenue office known as the Droits runis; but from 1814 he devoted himself exclusively to literature and became a contributor to various journals. Already favorably known by his Essai sur l'art d'être heureux (Paris, 1806), his Éloge de Montaigne (1812), and his Essai sur le beau dans les arts (1815), he not only gained the Montyon Prize in 1823 by his work De la philosophie morale ou des différents systèmes sur la science de la vie, but also in 1824 obtained admission to the Académie Française.

The main doctrine that this treatise seeks to inculcate is that society will never be in a proper state until men have been educated to think of their duties and not of their rights. It was followed in 1825 by Application de la morale à la politique, and in 1829 by L'économie politique ou principes de la science des richesses, a methodical and clearly written treatise, which was edited by Michel Chevalier in 1854. His next and greatest work was a Histoire du règne de Louix XVI in three volumes (Paris, 1839 1842). As he advanced in life, Droz became more and more decidedly religious, and the last work of his prolific pen was Pensées sur le christianisme (1842). In the words of Sainte-Beuve, "he was born and he remained all his life of the race of the good and the just."

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