António Vieira

Father António Vieyra[1] (Portuguese pronunciation: [ɐ̃ˈtɔniu viˈɐjɾɐ]; 6 February

António Vieyra
1608, Lisbon, Portugal – 18 July 1697, Bahia, Portuguese Colony of Brazil) was a
Portuguese diplomat, orator, preacher, philosopher, writer, and member of the Royal
Council to the King of Portugal.

Contents
Life
Quote
Works
Recognition
References
Publications
External links

António Vieyra, by an unknown artist

Life of the early 18th century.

Vieyra was born in Lisbon to Cristóvão Vieira Ravasco, the son of a mulatto woman,
Born 6 February 1608
and Maria de Azevedo.[2] In 1614 he accompanied his parents to the colony of
Lisbon, Kingdom of
Brazil, where his father had been posted as a registrar.[3] He received his education
Portugal
at the Jesuit college at Bahia. He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1625, under Father Died 18 July 1697
Fernão Cardim, and two years later pronounced his firstvows. At the age of eighteen (aged 89)
he was teaching rhetoric, and a little later dogmatic theology, at the college of Bahia, Portuguese
[4]
Olinda, besides writing the "annual letters" of the province. Colony of Brazil
Nationality Portuguese
In 1635 he entered the priesthood. He soon began to distinguish himself as an orator,
and the three patriotic sermons he delivered at Bahia (1638–40) are remarkable for Occupation diplomat, philosopher,
their imaginative power and dignity of language. The sermon for the success of the Jesuit priest, orator
arms of Portugal against Holland was considered by the Abbé Raynal to be "perhaps and writer
[4][5]
the most extraordinary discourse ever heard from a Christian pulpit. Known for Diplomacy as member
of the Royal Council
When the revolution of 1640 placed John IV on the throne of Portugal, Brazil gave
to King John IV
him her allegiance, and Vieyra was chosen to accompany the viceroy's son to Lisbon
to congratulate the new king.[4] His talents and aptitude for affairs impressed John IV so favorably that he appointed him tutor to the
Infante Dom Pedro, royal preacher, and a member of the Royal Council.[5]

Vieyra did efficient work in the War and Navy Departments, revived commerce, urged the foundation of a national bank and the
organization of the Brazilian Trade Company.[5]

Vieyra used the pulpit to propound measures for improving the general and particularly the economic condition of Portugal. His pen
was as busy as his voice, and in four notable pamphlets he advocated the creation of companies of commerce, denounced as
unchristian a society which discriminated against New Christians (Muslim and Jewish converts),[3] called for the reform of the
procedure of the Inquisition and the admission of Jewish and foreign traders, with guarantees for their security from religious
persecution. Moreover, he did not spare his own estate, for in his Sexagesima sermon he boldly attacked the current style of
 preaching, its subtleties, affectation, obscurity
and abuse of metaphor, and declared the ideal of
a sermon to be one which sent men away " not
contented with the preacher, but discontented
with themselves."[4]

In 1647 Vieyra began his career as a diplomat, in

the course of which he visited England, France,
the Netherlands and Italy. In his Papel Forte he
urged the cession of Pernambuco to the Dutch as

P. António Vieyra, the price of peace, while his mission to Rome in

preaching 1650 was undertaken in the hope of arranging a
marriage between the heir to the throne of
Portugal and the only daughter of King Philip IV
of Spain. His success, freedom of speech and reforming zeal had made him enemies
In the book 'History of Brazil, Volume
on all sides, and only the intervention of the king prevented his expulsion from the
2 - 1817' By Robert Southey, Antonio
Society of Jesus, so that prudence counselled his return to Brazil.[4] Vieyra advised the King of Portugal
and later became a member of the
In his youth he had vowed to consecrate his life to the conversion of the African
Royal Council.
slaves and native Indians of his adopted country, and arriving in Maranhão early in
1653 he recommenced his apostolic labors, which had been interrupted during his
stay of fourteen years in the Old World. Starting from Pará, he penetrated to the banks of the Tocantins, making numerous converts to
Christianity and European civilization among the most violent tribes; but after two years of unceasing labour, during which every
difficulty was placed in his way by the colonial authorities, he saw that the Indians must be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the
.[4]
governors, to prevent their exploitation, and placed under the control of the members of a single religious society

Accordingly, in June 1654 he set sail for Lisbon to plead the cause of the Indians, and in April 1655 he obtained from the king a
series of decrees which placed the missions under the Society of Jesus, with himself as their superior, and prohibited the enslavement
of the natives, except in certain specified cases. Returning with this charter of freedom, he organized the missions over a territory
having a coast-line of 400 leagues, and a population of 200,000 souls, and in the next six years (1655–61) the indefatigable
missionary set the crown on his work. After a time, however, the colonists, attributing the shortage of slaves and the consequent
diminution in their profits to the Jesuits, began actively to oppose Vieyra, and they were joined by members of the secular clergy and
[4]
the other Orders who were jealous of the monopoly enjoyed by the Company in the government of the Indians.

Vieyra was accused of want of patriotism and usurpation of jurisdiction, and in 1661, after a popular revolt, the authorities sent him
with thirty-one other Jesuit missionaries back to Portugal. He found his friend King John IV dead and the court a prey to faction, but,
dauntless as ever in the pursuit of his ambition, he resorted to his favorite arm of preaching, and on Epiphany Day, 1662, in the royal
chapel, he replied to his persecutors in a famous rhetorical effort, and called for the execution of the royal decrees in favor of the
Indians.[4]\

Circumstances were against him, however, and the count of Castelmelhor, fearing his influence at court, had him exiled first to Porto
and then to Coimbra; but in both these places he continued his work of preaching, and the reform of the Inquisition also occupied his
attention. To silence him his enemies then denounced him to that tribunal, and he was cited to appear before the Holy Office at
Coimbra to answer points smacking of heresy in his sermons, conversations and writings. He had believed in the prophecies of a
16th-century shoemaker poet,Bandarra, dealing with the coming of a ruler who would inaugurate an epoch of unparalleled prosperity
for the church and for Portugal, these new prosperous times were to be called the Quinto Império or "Fifth Empire" (also called
"Sebastianism"). In Vieyra's famous opus, Clavis Prophetarum, he had endeavoured to prove the truth of his dreams from passages
of Scripture. As he refused to submit, the Inquisitors kept him in prison from October 1665 to December 1667, and finally imposed a
[4]
sentence which prohibited him from teaching, writing or preaching.
It was a heavy blow for the Society, and though Vieyra recovered his freedom and much of his prestige shortly afterwards on the
accession of King Pedro II, it was determined that he should go to Rome to procure the revision of the sentence, which still hung over
him though the penalties had been removed. During a six years' residence in the Eternal City, Vieyra won his greatest triumphs. Pope
Clement X invited him to preach before the College of Cardinals, and he became confessor to Queen Christina of Sweden and a
member of her literary academy.[4]

At the request of the pope he drew up a report of two hundred pages on the Inquisition in Portugal, with the result that after a judicial
inquiry Pope Innocent XI suspended it in Portugal for seven years (1674–81). Ultimately, Vieyra returned to Portugal with a papal
bull exempting him from the jurisdiction of the grand inquisitor
, and in January 1681 he embarkedfor Brazil. He resided in Bahia and
occupied himself in revising his sermons for publication, and in 1687 he became superior of the province. A false accusation of
complicity in an assassination, and the intrigues of members of his own Company, clouded his last months, and on 18 July 1697 he
died in Salvador, Bahia.[4]

His works form perhaps the greatest monument of Portuguese prose. Two hundred
discourses exist to prove his fecundity, while his versatility is shown by the fact that
he could treat the same subject differently on half a dozen occasions. His letters,
simple and conversational in style, have a deep historical and political interest, and
[4]
form documents of the first value for the history of the period.

Quote
"We are what we do. What we don't do, doesn't exist. Therefore, we only exist on
[3]
days when we do. On the days when we don't do, we simply endure".

"The purpose for men who have invented the books was to cherish the memory of
getting men."[6]
past things, against the tyranny of time and against for

"Holland, is the land of which flows with milk, and Brazil is the land which flows
with honey; and when the one is joined to the other, they become wholly and
The first page of "Historia do Futuro",
."[7]
properly the Land of Promise, a land flowing with milk and honey
first edition

Works
His principal works are:

Sermões (Sermons) (15 vols., Lisbon, 1679–1748); there are many

subsequent editions, but none complete; translations exist in Spanish,
Italian, German and French, which have gone through several editions
Archive
História do Futuro (History of the Future) (Lisbon, 1718; 2nd ed., ibid.,
1755); this and the Quinto Império and this Clavis Prophetarum seem to
be in essence one and the same book in different redactions
Cartas (Letters) (3 vols., Lisbon, 1735–46) In the book 'History of Brazil, Volume
Notícias recônditas do modo de proceder a Inquisição de Portugal com 2 - 1817' By Robert Southey, Antonio
os seus presos (News on how the Portuguese Inquisition proceeds with Vieyra compares Holland and Brazil
its prisoners) (Lisbon, 1821) to Milk and Honey.
Arte de Furtar (The Art of Stealing) published under Vieyra's name in
many editions is now known not to be his
A badly edited edition of the works of Vieyra in 27 volumes appeared in Lisbon, 1854–58. There are unpublished manuscripts of his
in the British Museum in London, and in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. A bibliography of Vieyra will be found in
[4]
Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la compagnie de Jesus, viii. 653–85.
The Complete Works of Father António Vieyra,[8] annotated and updated, began to
be published in 2013, nearly four centuries after his birth. This 30 volumes
publication includes his complete letters, sermons, prophetic works, political
writings, writings on Jews and Indians, as well as his poetry and theatre; and it is the
first complete and carefully edited publication of all of Vieyra's prolific written
work. One of the largest editorial projects of its kind, it was the result of an
international cooperation between various Luso-Brazilian research institutions and
scientific, cultural and literary academies, under the aegis of the Rectory of the
University of Lisbon. More than 20 thousand folios[9] of manuscripts and printed
pages attributed to Vieyra were analyzed and compared, in dozens of libraries and
archives in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, France, Italy, England, Holland, Mexico and in
the United States of America. About one quarter ofThe Complete Works are made of
previously undiscovered and unreleased texts. The project, directed by José Eduardo
Franco and Pedro Calafate, was developed by CLEPUL in partnership with Santa
Casa da Misericórdia, and published by Círculo de Leitores, with the final volume to
be released in 2014. Although this is a Portuguese edition, a selection of his works
Sermoens do P. Antonio Vieyra da
will be made available in 12 languages as part of the project. Companhia de Jesu, prègador de
Sua Magestade, Septima Parte
Recognition
António Vieyra was one of the literary greats of the Portuguese-speaking world.[3] The Padre António Vieyra Chair in Portuguese
Studies, at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica-Rio de Janeiro was created on 7 October 1994, to train teachers and researchers in the
social sciences. Promoting academic exchanges between Brazil and Portugal, the Chair’s main aim has been to deepen the cultural
dialog that already exists between the two countries within the university context. The Chair is involved in the training of teachers in
[10]
the areas of Portuguese Literature and Culture, Portuguese Language, and Lusophone Literatures.

V [11]
In 1997 Portugal issued a commemorative coin to mark the 300th anniversary of the death of Fatherieyra.

Portugal issued a stamp in 2008, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Vieyra's birth (1608). Brasil has issued already two Vieyra
stamps, in 1941[12] and 1997.

The statue of Father António Vieyra, unique in the country, by the sculptor Marco Fidalgo, was inaugurated on the Largo Trindade
Coelho near the church of São Roque, on the initiative of the Holy House of Mercy of Lisbon, Portugal.

References
1. The Portuguese spelling is Antônio Vieira.
2. RevelarLX (http://revelarlx.cm-lisboa.pt/gca/?id=1156)based on CARDOSO, Maria Manuela Lopes – António V ieyra:
pioneiro e paradigma de Interculturalidade. Lisboa: Chaves Ferreira Publicações S.A., 2001. p. 37-57;
DOMINGUES, Agostinho – O Padre António V ieyra: um património a comunicar. Porto: Edição Artes Gráficas, Lda.,
1997. p. 6-37; DOMINGUES, Mário – O drama e a glória do Padre António ieyra.
V 2ª edição. Lisboa: Livraria
Romano Torres, 1961. p. 9-31. MENDES, João, S.J. – Padre António Vieyra. Lisboa: Editorial Verbo, imp. 1972. p.
9-23.
3. "Up Magazine – TAP Portugal » Padre António Vieira, Brazil" (http://upmagazine-tap.com/en/pt_artigos/padre-antoni
o-vieira-brazil/). upmagazine-tap.com.
4. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain: Prestage,
Edgar (1911). "Vieira, Antonio" (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/V ieira,_Antoni
o). In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 49–50.
5. "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Antonio Vieira" (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15415d.htm). www.newadvent.org.
6. "O fim para que os homens inventaram os livros ... - António iVeira - Frases" (http://www.citador.pt/frases/o-fim-para-
que-os-homens-inventaram-os-livros-foi-antonio-vieira-19068). Citador.
 7. Southey, Robert (February 5, 1817)."History of Brazil" (https://books.google.com/books?id=5FIOAAAAQAAJ&pg=P
A697#v=onepage&q=milk&f=false). Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown– via Google Books.
8. "CÍRCULO de leitores"(http://www.circuloleitores.pt/catalogo/1061674/padre-antonio-vieira). www.circuloleitores.pt.
9. "Google Tradutor" (http://translate.google.pt/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=pt-PT&ie=UTF-8&u=http://expr
esso.sapo.pt/lancada-obra-integral-do-padre-antonio-vieira=f785286) . translate.google.pt.
10. "Margato, Izabel. "The Padre António Vieyra Chair:Teaching, Research and Cultural Action", Pontifícia Universidade
Católica-Rio de Janeiro"(http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Portuguese_Brazilian_Studies/ejph/html/issue7/pdf/im
argato.pdf) (PDF).
11. "500 Escudos, Portugal"(https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces13043.html)
. en.numista.com.
12. [Antonio Vieira, SJ (http://www.manresa-sj.org/stamps/1_Vieira.htm) "Father Antonio Vieyra, SJ", Jesuit Stamps]

Publications
Robert Southey, History of Brazil (Volume Two, London, 1817)
Luiz Cabral, Vieyra, biographie, caractère, éloquence, (Paris, 1900)
Luiz Cabral, Vieyra pregador (two volumes, Porto, 1901)

External links
History of Brazil (Volume Two) Longman - 1817
Works by or about António Vieira at Internet Archive
Works by António Vieira at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
Manuscripts versions ofClavis Prophetarum (XVIII) in the Historical Archive of the Pontifical Gregorian University
António Vieyra in the Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University
Dramatic episodes of the Portuguese Inquisition, .v1, the case of Father Antonio Vieyra, page 205 onwards, author
Antonio Baião

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ieira&oldid=881891444"

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