António Vieira

Portuguese missionary, diplomat, and writer

• Born: February 6, 1608
• Birthplace: Lisbon, Portugal
• Died: July 19, 1697
• Place of death: Salvador, Brazil

The Jesuit Vieira opposed his nation’s enslavement of the Brazilian Indians but condoned enslaving Africans, so long as they were treated well and were encouraged to become Christians. His twelve-volume compilation of his sermons represents some of the finest literature and oratory of the Portuguese baroque, but his writings also caused him to be censured by the Portuguese Inquisition.

Early Life

António Vieira (ahn-TAWN-yew VYAY-ee-ruh) was born in Lisbon at a time when Portugal and Spain shared the same monarch, King Philip III of Spain (also known as Philip II of Portugal). Although a Spanish king and Spanish laws ruled the Portuguese world, however, much of the everyday work in the national and colonial bureaucracies continued to be carried out by Portuguese functionaries. Vieira’s father was one such official, sent from Lisbon to occupy an administrative post in Brazil in 1614. At the age of six, then, António left Portugal with his family and sailed to the Brazilian capital city of Salvador.

Against his parents’ wishes, Vieira decided when still an adolescent to follow a religious vocation: He entered the Jesuit college in Bahia when he was fifteen years old. While he was preparing for the priesthood, a Dutch fleet attacked Salvador in 1624, hoping to wrest the rich sugar lands of Brazil from Spanish and Portuguese control. The fleet was repulsed the following year. (The Dutch would return in 1630, however, to seize the captaincy of Pernambuco, to the north of Bahia, where they would remain until 1654.) The Brazilian military struggle between the Portuguese and the Dutch became early fodder for Vieira’s extraordinary writing skills, when, in 1626, the 18-year-old initiate was chosen by his superiors to write the annual letter from the Jesuits in Brazil to their superiors in Rome.

In the 1630’s, Vieira established a reputation as a passionate and compelling preacher. He exercised this talent not only in the churches frequented by the Portuguese, but also in missions among the Brazilian Indians of Bahia and in services attended by African slaves. The earliest of the sermons he later published was preached to the slave members of a black brotherhood whose patron was Our Lady of the Rosary. Throughout his life, Vieira remained committed to the missionary charge to evangelize all people, including Europeans, Brazilian Indians, and Africans. Because he believed that all Christians were equal before God, he urged Portuguese masters not to mistreat their African slaves, and although he never condemned the practice of enslaving Africans, he warned masters on several occasions that God would punish them for abuses against their slaves.

Life’s Work

When the Braganza Dynasty came to power in Portugal in 1640, ending sixty years of rule by Spain, Vieira was sent to Lisbon to assure King John IV that he had the support of his Brazilian subjects. Vieira quickly became a favorite of the new king and a frequent preacher in the royal chapel. He was also chosen to conduct diplomatic missions for the king, and in that capacity he traveled throughout Europe. Vieira’s efforts to negotiate a marriage for the Portuguese prince that would bring Portugal an alliance with France or Spain failed. He was more successful, though, in gaining the financial backing of Portuguese New Christians (Jews who had converted to Christianity) to establish a trading company that would strengthen the Brazilian sugar trade and provide the revenue necessary to expel the Dutch from Pernambuco.

Vieira reciprocated King John’s admiration. He became convinced that God had great things planned for the new Portuguese king; in fact, he believed John would usher in the Millennium, the one thousand years of peace prophesied in Scriptures. Even when John died in 1656 without accomplishing this mission, Vieira did not lose hope. Instead, he claimed that God would miraculously raise up the king to unite and rule the world in peace.

In the 1650’s, Vieira was appointed head of the Jesuit mission to convert the Indians of Maranhão, in Brazil’s Amazon region. Many of the Portuguese settlers in the New World saw the Indians as nothing more than a source of slave labor, and they tenaciously resisted the efforts of missionaries who tried to keep them from enslaving the indigenous Americans. Vieira became a staunch ally of the Indians, boldly preaching against the avarice and sin of the settlers who continued to enslave them. He successfully petitioned the king to grant the Jesuits custody of the Amazonian Indians. His efforts to protect the roughly 200,000 Indians evangelized by the Jesuits in Maranhão so angered the Portuguese settlers that they drove all members of the Society of Jesus from the region. Upon his return to Europe in 1661, with his patron and protector John IV now dead, Vieira came under attack by the Portuguese Inquisition.

In his diplomatic missions during the 1640’s, Vieira had developed friendships with Jews and New Christians in Amsterdam. Many of them had fled Portugal, fearing the persecution of the Inquisition. He lobbied the king to lift restrictions on New Christians, and to seek their help in funding a company that would make Brazil more profitable for the Portuguese. These sympathies toward New Christians probably helped to bring Vieira under the scrutiny of the Inquisition. The official reason for Vieira’s trial by the Inquisition, however, had to do with his prophetic writings. While in Maranhão, he had begun writing a History of the Future , in which he proclaimed that King John would be resurrected and, with the support of the people who would convert in large numbers to Christianity, would usher in the Fifth Reign, God’s kingdom of peace on earth. After a series of thirty interrogations, Vieira was found guilty of ideas that bordered on heresy.

In 1669, Vieira decided to leave Lisbon and travel to Rome, where he hoped to convince the pope to grant him protection against future attacks by the Portuguese Inquisition. There he became a favorite of Queen Christina of Sweden , who had abdicated her throne and moved to Rome when she converted from Protestantism to Catholicism. Although Cristina urged him to become her private confessor and remain in Rome, Vieira returned to Portugal and from there sailed back to Brazil in 1681. He spent the remaining sixteen years of his very long life in Bahia, organizing his sermons for publication and continuing to minister to Brazilians of a variety of ethnic and social class backgrounds.

Significance

For centuries, the sermons of Vieira served as models of Portuguese baroque rhetoric. His work interested primarily theologians and students of Portuguese literature. More recently, however, Vieira has come to the attention of historians for his strong defense of Brazilian Indians. He saw in Portugal’s global missionary enterprise, which included efforts to evangelize the indigenous people of the New World, a clear sign of the special mission God had for his countrymen. This bolstered his belief that a Portuguese king would usher in the Millennium. He also asserted that African slaves in Brazil who accepted Christianity were full members of the Christian community, equal in every way to their masters. Moreover, in an age when Jews and New Christians were being persecuted and even forced to leave Portugal , Vieira spoke out in favor of including them in national life. Thus, one of the greatest Portuguese orators of his time has come to symbolize the quest for equality and toleration in the pre-Enlightenment world.

Bibliography

Alden, Dauril. “Some Reflections on António Vieira: Seventeenth-Century Troubleshooter and Troublemaker.” Luso-Brazilian Review 40, no. 1 (Summer, 2003): 7-16. An excellent overview of Vieira’s political contributions in Brazil and in Europe.

Boxer, Charles R. A Great Luso-Brazilian Figure: Padre António Vieira, S.J., 1608-1697. London: The Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Councils, 1957. Short account, first delivered as a lecture, of the life of António Vieira.

Cohen, Thomas M. The Fire of Tongues: António Vieira and the Missionary Church in Brazil and Portugal. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998. Focuses on the centrality of the missionary experience for understanding Vieira’s vision of Portugal’s unique role in history.

Jordán, María V. “The Empire of the Future and the Chosen People: Father António Vieira and the Prophetic Tradition in the Hispanic World.” Luso-Brazilian Review 40, no. 1 (Summer, 2003): 67-78. Provides good background on the millenarian tradition in late medieval Europe and thus situates Vieira’s prophetic writings in their broader historical context.

Schwartz, Stuart B. “The Contexts of Vieira’s Toleration of Jews and New Christians.” Luso-Brazilian Review 40, no. 1 (Summer, 2003): 33-44. Demonstrates how others in the seventeenth century shared Vieira’s more tolerant views of New Christians. Thus, the author argues that Vieira was not unique; he was of his times.

Vieira, António. António Vieira’s Sermon Against the Dutch Arms. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. One of the few of Vieira’s sermons translated into English, it provides an excellent example of both his oratorical skills and his conviction that God must take the side of Portuguese Catholics against Dutch Protestants.