Portuguese literature

Amador Arraez in one of his dialogues defines mysticism thus: ‘There is a theology called mystic, as being hidden and unintelligible to those who have no part in it. It is attained by much love and few books and with much meditation and purity of heart, which alone suffices for its exercise, and consists mainly in the noblest part of our will inflamed in the love of God, its full and perfect good.’[553] ‘Our will inflamed’: perhaps these words explain the excellence of the style, the intensity and directness, of the writers in this mystic theology. Style, so shy and elusive to Flaubert and his disciples, came unsought to the religious writers of the sixteenth century, because they wrote not with an eye on verbal artifices but out of the fullness of the heart, ‘self-gathered for an outbreak’; and their works can still be read with pleasure by priest and pagan. Mysticism, inherent in the character of the Portuguese, runs through a great part of their literature; we find it, for instance, in the merry poetry of Gil Vicente or in the precious accents of Soror Violante do Ceo. Strength of character, aloofness, rapt enthusiasm, singleness of purpose: these are the qualities of mysticism at its best, and if it also manifests itself in vagueness and confusion, this was not so with the great mystic and religious writers of the golden age of Portuguese literature. To them mysticism was not a cloudy goodness or an abstract perception-dulling humanity, not a mist but a pillar of fire, in the light of which the facts and details of reality stood out the more clearly. But if the intensity of many of the mystics has its natural complement in the fervour and directness of their prose, this was not always the case, and it was not only in profane works that the Portuguese language fell into the pitfalls of culteranismo. All the more remarkable is the purity, the exquisite taste, the simplicity and charm of some of the later, seventeenth century, prose. The secret of this prose lay in fact in culteranismo itself, the points and conceits of which were based on a recognition of the value of words. All the seiscentistas set to playing with words as with unset stones of price. The more critical or inspired writers joined in the game but selected the genuine stones, leaving the rest to those who did not care to distinguish between gems and coloured glass.

A faint vein of mysticism is to be found in the work of Frei Heitor Pinto (c. 1528-1584?), who was born at the high-lying little town of Covilhan and professed in the famous Convento dos Jeronimos at Belem in 1543. After taking the degree of Doctor of Theology at Siguenza he in 1567 competed for a Chair at Salamanca University, but came into collision with Fray Luis de Leon, and in a bitter contest between the Hieronymite and Augustinian Orders Pinto was defeated. He returned to Portugal, became Professor of the new Chair of Scripture at Coimbra University in 1576, Rector of the University and Provincial of his Order.[554] After the death of the Cardinal-King he appears vehemently to have espoused the cause of the Prior of Crato. King Philip accordingly invited Pinto to accompany him to Spain—he was one of the fifty excluded from the amnesty of 1581—and scandal added that the king had him poisoned there in 1584. Pinto was an eminent divine, a man of wide learning, a master of Portuguese prose, and he appears to have inspired his pupils with affection; but King Philip could scarcely have considered him worth poisoning, especially when removed from his sphere of influence. No doubt he went to Spain with extreme reluctance—on other occasions of his busy life when the affairs of his Order drove him to France and Italy he had sighed in tears (in spite of his interest in travel, his love of Nature, and especially his antiquarian curiosity[555]) for his quiet cell at Belem, ‘where he had lived many years in great content’. Perhaps too he had not forgotten his defeat at Salamanca. ‘King Philip’, he now said sturdily, ‘may put me into Castille but never Castille into me.’ Pinto wrote commentaries on various books of the Old Testament, which were published in Latin, but his principal work consists in the dialogues, a maneira dos de Platão, of his Imagem da Vida Christam (1563), followed by the Segunda Parte dos Dialogos (1572). The first part has six dialogues, the subjects being true philosophy, religion, justice, tribulation, the solitary life,[556] and remembrance of death. The five of the second part treat of tranquillity of life, discreet ignorance, true friendship, causes,[557] and true and spurious possessions. It is impossible to read a page of these dialogues and not be struck by the extraordinary fascination of their style. It is concise and direct without ever losing its harmony. Perhaps its best testimonial is that its magic survives the innumerable quotations, although one may regret that the work was not written, like the Trabalhos de Jesus, in a dungeon instead of in a well-stocked library.[558] Apart from the proof it affords of the exceptional capacity of the Portuguese language for combining softness and vigour, the work contains much ingenious thought, charming descriptions, and elaborate similes. Some twenty editions in various languages before the end of the century show how keenly it was appreciated. It was certainly not without influence on the Dialogos (1589) of the energetic and austere Bishop of Portalegre, Amador Arraez (c. 1530-1600), who spent his boyhood at Beja and professed as a Carmelite at Lisbon a year after Frei Thomé de Jesus and two years after Frei Heitor Pinto had professed in the same city. Like the former he studied theology at Coimbra.[559] Cardinal Henrique, when Archbishop of Evora, chose Arraez to be his suffragan, and in 1578 appointed him to the see of Tripoli. Three years later he was made Bishop of Portalegre by Philip II. He resigned in 1596, and spent the last four years of his life in retirement, in the college of his Order at Coimbra. A few weeks before his death he wrote the prefatory letter for the revised edition of his great work.[560] It consists of ten long dialogues between the sick and dying Antiocho and doctor, priest, lawyer, or friends. The longest, over a quarter of the whole, is a mystic life of the Virgin, and of the others some are purely religious, as Da Paciencia e Fortaleza Christam, some historical or political (Da Gloria e Triunfo dos Lusitanos; Das Condições e Partes do Bom Principe). That on the Jews (Da Gente Judaica) is marred by a spirit of bitter intolerance; on the other hand there is an outspoken protest against slavery. The whole of this interesting miscellany, which incidentally discusses a very large number of subjects,[561] is tinged with mystic philosophy, and at the same time shows a keen sense of reality. In style as in degree of mysticism it stands midway between Pinto’s Imagem and the Trabalhos de Jesus. It is evident that its composition, although less artificial than that of the Imagem, has been the subject of much care, and the author declares in his preface that while adopting a ‘common, ordinary style’, to the exclusion of forced tricks and elegances, he has striven after clearness and harmony (the two postulates of his contemporary, Fray Luis de Leon). The result is a treasury of excellent prose, in which the harmonious flow of the sentences in nowise interferes with precision and restraint, that grave brevity which Arraez notes as one of the principal qualities of Portuguese. It can rise to great eloquence (as in the lament of Olympio) without ever becoming rhetorical or turgid.

The prose of Pinto and Arraez was a very conscious art, that of the still greater Frei Thomé de Jesus (1529?-82) was the man, and the man merged in mysticism, without thought of style. He was the son of Fernam Alvarez de Andrade, Treasurer to King João III, and of Isabel de Paiva. One of his brothers was the celebrated preacher Diogo de Paiva de Andrade (1528-75), another the historian Francisco de Andrade; a third, Frei Cosme da Presentação, distinguished himself in philosophy and theology, but died at the age of thirty-six at Bologna, while the work of a nephew (son of Francisco de Andrade), Diogo de Paiva de Andrade (1576-1660), Casamento perfeito (1636), is counted a classic of Portuguese prose. His sister D. Violante married the second Conde de Linhares. As a boy at the Augustinian Collegio de Nossa Senhora da Graça at Coimbra he is said to have been all but drowned while swimming in the Mondego. He professed at the Lisbon convent of the same Order in 1544, went to Coimbra to study theology, and then became master of novices at the Lisbon convent.[562] Here in 1574 he planned a reform of the Order, but when all was ready for the secession of the new Recoletos an intrigue put an end to the scheme, which a kindred spirit, Fray Luis de Leon, later carried into effect. Frei Thomé was permitted to retire to the convent of Penafirme by the sea, near Torres Vedras, where he might hope to indulge his love of quiet and solitude. He was, however, appointed prior of the convent and Visitor of his Order, and in 1578 was chosen by King Sebastian to accompany him to Africa. At the battle of Alcacer Kebir, as he held aloft a crucifix or tended the wounded, he was speared by a Moor and taken prisoner to Mequinez. Here he was loaded with chains and placed in a dungeon, and as the slave of a marabout received ‘less bread than blows’. The Portuguese Ambassador, D. Francisco da Costa, intervened, and he was removed to Morocco. Frei Thomé had borne all his sufferings with the most heroic fortitude, and now, broken in health but not in spirit, he refused to lodge at the ambassador’s and asked to be placed in the common prison. During a captivity of nearly four years, regardless of his own fate,[563] with unflagging devotion he ministered to the numerous Christian prisoners, and was occupied to the last with their needs. Costa, who shared the general respect and affection for this saint and hero, visited him as he lay dying (April 17, 1582). Vattene in pace, alma beata e bella! It was during his captivity that he composed the work that has given him the lasting fame earned by his life and character, writing furtively in the scant light that filtered through the cracks of the prison door.[564] These fifty Trabalhos de Jesus (2 pts., 1602, 9) embrace the whole life of Christ, and deserve, more than Renan’s Vie de Christ, to be called a gracious fifth Gospel. Each trabalho is, moreover, followed by a spiritual exercise, and these constitute a Portuguese De Imitatione Christi. Rarely, if ever, has such glow and fervour been set in print: none but the very dull could be left cold by these transports of passionate devotion. The prose wrestles and throbs in an agony of grief or rapture, of mysticism carried to the extreme limit where all power of articulate expression ends.[565] Frei Thomé de Jesus is a master of Portuguese prose not by any arts or graces but through the white heat of his intensity. No book shows more clearly that style must always be a secondary consideration, that if there be a burning conviction excellence of style follows. It could evidently only have been written by one who had greatly suffered, indeed by one who still suffered, one who expressed in these fervid accents of heavenly communion an oblivion of self and an energy habitually employed in eager earthly service of his fellow men. In a prefatory letter (November 8, 1581) addressed to the Portuguese people he declared his intention of publishing as it stood this masterpiece of mystic ecstasy, which he believed to have been written by divine inspiration.[566]

Another celebrated treatise of a mystic character is the Voz do Amado (1579) by the learned Canon D. Hilariam Brandão (†1585). The religious works of this century are very numerous. We may mention the anonymous Regras e Cautelas de proueito espiritual (1542), which is written in biblical prose and deals with the fifteen perfections or excellences of charity and kindred subjects; the dialogues Desengano de Perdidos em dialogo entre dous peregrinos, hũ christão e hũ turco (Goa, 1573) by the first Archbishop of Goa, D. Gaspar de Leão (†1576), and the Dialogo espiritual: Colloquio de um religioso com um peregrino (1578) by Frei Alvaro de Torres [Vedras] (fl. 1550), who was drowned in the Tagus when on the way to his convent at Belem.

D. Joana da Gama (†1568), a nun of noble birth who directed a small community founded by herself at Evora, a few miles from her native Viana, published a short collection of moral sentences in alphabetical order, followed by a few poems (trovas): Ditos da Freyra (1555). She insists, perhaps a little too emphatically for conviction, on her lack of intelligence and ability, and says that these sayings were written down for herself alone and that she purposely avoids subtleties (ditos sotijs), but her aphorisms contain some shrewd personal observation. Fact and legend have combined to weave an atmosphere of romance about the life of Manuel de Sousa Coutinho, better known as Frei Luis de Sousa (1555?-1632). A descendant of the second Conde de Marialva, he early entered or was about to enter the Order of Knights Hospitallers at Malta, but was captured by the Moors in much the same way and at about the same time (1575) as was Cervantes. He was taken to Algiers, and may have known Cervantes there, or the statement that he became Cervantes’ friend may have been an inference from the latter’s mention of him in Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda; they may have met in Lisbon in 1590, or at Madrid. Sousa Coutinho returned to Portugal in 1578, and some years later married D. Magdalena de Vilhena, widow of D. João de Portugal, one of all the peerage that fell with King Sebastian at Alcacer Kebir. Sousa Coutinho, at the invitation of his brother in Panama, is said to have gone thither in the hope of making a fortune, but the date is not clear. His unbending patriotism was immortalized when as Governor of Almada in 1599 he burnt down his house rather than receive as guests the Spanish Governors of Portugal. The prospect of riches at Panama may have seemed especially alluring after this rash act. He appears to have lived quietly in Portugal for some years before 1613, when both he and his wife entered a convent. Their act has been variously explained as due to melancholy disposition or to the early death of their daughter, D. Anna de Noronha. Probably after her death the example of their friend the Conde de Vimioso and the conviction that the only abiding pleasure is the renunciation of all the rest were prevalent factors in their decision. The legend, however, related by Frei Antonio da Encarnação and dramatized two centuries later by Garrett, records that D. João de Portugal, D. Magdalena de Vilhena’s first husband, had been not killed but taken prisoner in Africa, and after many years’ captivity he reappears as an aged pilgrim and bitterly reveals his identity. In the convent of Bemfica, where he had professed in September 1614, Frei Luis de Sousa was consulted on various matters by the Duke of Braganza and others who valued his fine character and clear judgement, but he did not live to see the Restoration. He was entrusted by his Order with the revision of works left by another Dominican, Frei Luis de Cacegas (c. 1540-1610). These he re-wrote, giving them a lasting value by virtue of his style. The first part of the Historia de S. Domingos, ‘a new kind of chronicle’ as he calls it in his preface addressed to the king, appeared in 1623, but the second (1662) and third (1678) parts were not published in his lifetime. A fourth part (1733) was added by Frei Lucas de Santa Catharina (1660-1740), who among other works wrote a curious miscellany of verse and prose, romance and literary criticism, entitled Seram politico (1704). In the biography of the saintly and strong-willed Archbishop of Braga, Vida de D. Fr. Bertolomeu dos Martyres (1619), the excellence of Sousa’s style is even more apparent, for it has here no trace of rhetoric and the pictures stand out with the more effect for the economy with which they are drawn—the dearth of adjectives is noticeable. The archbishop’s visits to his diocese give occasion for charming, homely glimpses of Minho. Neither of these books is the work of a critical historian (in the Vida, for instance, winds and waves obey the archbishop), but the latter, especially, is in matter and manner one of the masterpieces of Portuguese literature, a livro divino, as a modern Portuguese writer called it.[567] The Annaes de El Rei Dom João Terceiro, written at the bidding of Philip IV, was published in 1844 by Herculano, who described the work as little more than a series of notes, except in the Indian sections, which summarize Barros. It is as a stylist, not as a historian, that Frei Luis de Sousa will always be read, and read with delight.[568] The subject of his biography, Frei Bartholomeu dos Martyres (1514-90), wrote in Portuguese a simple Catecismo da Dovtrina Christam (Braga, 1564), resembling the Portuguese work of his friend Fray Luis de Granada (1504-88): Compendio de Doctrina Christãa (Lixboa, 1559).

The Historia da Vida do Padre Francisco Xavier (1600), by the Jesuit João de Lucena (1550-1600), born at Trancoso, who made his mark as an eloquent preacher and Professor of Philosophy in the University of Evora, is also one of the classics of the Portuguese language. It receives a glowing fervour from the author’s evident delight in his subject—the life of the famous Basque missionary in whose arms D. João de Castro died. His command of clear, fluent, vigorous prose, his skilful use of words and abundant power of description, enable him to convey this enthusiasm to his readers. Part of the matter of his book was derived from Fernam Mendez Pinto, but the style is his own.

Like Frei Luis de Sousa, Frei Manuel da Esperança (1586-1670) became the historian of his Order in the Historia Seraphica da Ordem dos Frades Menores (2 pts., 1656, 66). We know from remarks in the second part that he paid the greatest attention to its composition, for which he had prepared himself by reading hũa multidão notavel of books on that and kindred subjects. Similar excellence of style marks the later work of the Jesuit Francisco de Sousa (1628?-1713), O Oriente conquistado (2 vols., 1710), in which he chronicles the history of the Company in the East.

The most celebrated Portuguese preacher of his time,[569] Frei Thomé de Jesus’ brother, Diogo de Paiva de Andrade (1528-75), represented Portugal at the Council of Trent in 1561. His eloquent Sermões (1603, 4, 15) were published posthumously in three parts. His mantle fell upon Francisco Fernandez Galvão (1554-1610), the prose of whose Sermões (3 vols., 1611, 13, 16) is admirably restrained and pure. Less sonorous than the periods of Paiva de Andrade, the Trattados [sic] Quadragesimais e da Paschoa (1609) and Tratados das Festas e Vidas dos Santos (2 pts., 1612, 15) of the Dominican Frei Antonio Feo (1573-1627) perhaps gain rather than lose by being read, not heard. In the clearness and precision of their prose they are scarcely inferior to the remarkable Sermões (3 pts., 1617, 18, 25) of the Augustinian Frei Philipe da Luz (1574-1633), confessor to the Duke of Braganza (afterwards King João IV), in whose palace at Villa Viçosa he died. He, too, writes sem grandes eloquencias; he is as precise as Feo in his use of words, and his vocabulary is as extensive. Purity, concision, clearness, and harmony give him, together with Feo, Ceita, and Veiga, a high place in Portuguese prose.

The sermons for which the Dominican Frei Pedro Calvo (born c. 1550) was celebrated were published in Homilias de Quaresma (2 pts., 1627, 9), and at the repeated request of a friend he wrote his Defensam das Lagrimas dos ivstos persegvidos (1618) to prove that ‘tears shed in time of trouble do not lessen merit’. The Sermões (1618) and Considerações (1619, 20, 33) of Frei Thomas da Veiga (1578-1638), like his father a Professor of Coimbra University, are written in a style of great excellence, as, although a trifle more redundant[570] and latinized, is that of his contemporary, like him a Franciscan, Frei João da Ceita (1578-1633), whose prose has a natural grace and harmony, if it is less pure and indigenous than that of Luz. His best known works are the Quadragena de Sermoens (1619) and Quadragena Segunda (1625). Two more volumes of Sermões (1634, 5) appeared after his death. Two slightly later writers were Frei Cristovam de Lisboa (†1652), brother of Manuel Severim de Faria, and Frei Cristovam de Almeida (1620-79), Bishop of Martyria. The former, author of Jardim da Sagrada Escriptura (1653) and Consolaçam de Afflictos e Allivio de Lastimados (1742), in the preface to his Santoral de Varios Sermões (1638) deplores the new fashion of certain preachers who hide their meaning under their eloquence. He is himself sometimes inclined to be florid. Bishop Almeida attained a reputation for great eloquence even in the days of Antonio Vieira.[571] His Sermões (1673, 80, 86) are simpler than those of Vieira, but for the reader their prose lacks the quiet precision of Ceita, Veiga, or Luz, whose sermons may be considered one of the sources from which a greater master of Portuguese, Manuel Bernardes, derived his magic. The Jesuit Luis Alvarez (1615?-1709?), who was born a few years after Vieira, and lived on into the eighteenth century, also had a great reputation as a preacher. The fire is absent from the printed page, but his works, Sermões da Quaresma (3 pts., 1688, 94, 99), Amor Sagrado (1673), and Ceo de graça, inferno custoso 1692), are notable for the purity of their prose.

The religious works of the seventeenth, as of the sixteenth century are very various in subject and treatment. Frei João Cardoso (†1655), author of Ruth Peregrina (2 pts., 1628, 54), also wrote a lengthy commentary on the 113th Psalm in twenty-one discourses: Jornada Dalma Libertada (1626). Ten years earlier a Jew, João Baptista d’Este, had published in excellent Portuguese a translation of the Psalms: Consolaçam Christam e Lvz para o Povo Hebreo (1616). His title was suggested by that of a far more remarkable book by another Jew, Samuel Usque (fl. 1540), Consolaçam ás Tribulaçoens de Israel, written probably between 1540 and 1550[572] and first printed at Ferrara by Abraham ben Usque in 1553. The author was the son of Spanish Jews who had taken refuge in Portugal, where he was born, probably at the end of the fifteenth century.[573] His famous work is an account of the sufferings of the Jewish race. In three dialogues Jacob (Ycabo), Nahum (Numeo), and Zachariah (Zicareo) converse as shepherds. Israel, in person, relates his sorrows down to the fall of Jerusalem, an event which is described in detail, and so on to the persecutions in European countries (novas gentes), and at the end of each dialogue the prophets administer their comfort. The book closes with a chorus of rapturous psalms in biblical prose, rejoicing at the coming end of Israel’s tribulations and calling for vengeance on their enemies, and thus finishes on a note of joyful faith and courageous hope, without an inkling of charity. The first dialogue, which condenses Old Testament history, has a rhythmical, luxuriant style, rich in Oriental imagery, but later, where Roman history is the authority, or in the tragic account of the persecution of Jews in Portugal[574] under João II and the two succeeding kings, the style is shorn of rhetoric. Nor is there a trace of false ornament in a long passage of wonderful eloquence, Israel’s final complaint and invocation to sky and earth, waters and mortal creatures. The agony and awful glow of indignation at these recent events had a restraining influence on the style, which loses nothing by this simplicity. Quieter descriptions are those of the shepherd’s life and of the chase in the first, and of spring and evening in the third part.

The Jesuit Diogo Monteiro (1561-1634), when towards the end of his life he published his Arte de Orar (1631), promised, should his ‘great occupations’ allow, to print very soon the second volume dealing with the divine attributes. This did not appear in that generation: Meditações dos attribvtos divinos (Roma, 1671). The Arte de Orar contains twenty-nine treatises (604 ff.). Its subjects are various (of the virtue of magnificence; of the esteem in which singing is held by God, &c.), and they are presented with fervour and clear concision, and especially with a complete absence of oratorical effect. Quintilian takes part in one of the six dialogues which compose the Peregrinaçam Christam (1620) by Tristão Barbosa de Carvalho (†1632); he is on a pilgrimage from Lisbon to the tomb of Saint Isabel at Coimbra, but he expresses himself in excellent Portuguese, modelled perhaps on that of Arraez. The prose of the Retrato de Prvdentes, Espelho de Ignorantes (1664) by the Jesuit Francisco Aires (1597-1664) often rises to eloquence, notably in the fervent prayers. His Theatro dos Trivmphos Divinos contra os Desprimores Hvmanos (1658) is of a more practical character. The Franciscan Frei Manuel dos Anjos (1595-1653) laid no claim to originality in his Politica predicavel e doutrina moral do bom governo do mundo (1693), written in a clear and correct but slightly redundant[575] style.

Frei Luis dos Anjos (c. 1570-1625) in his Iardim de Portugal (1626) gathered edifying anecdotes of saintly women from various writers, and set them down in good Portuguese prose. The Franciscan Frei Pedro de Santo Antonio (c. 1570-1641) in his Iardim Spiritual, tirado dos Sanctos e Varoens spiritvaes (1632) contented himself with translation of his authorities, adding, he modestly says, ‘some things of my own of not much importance’. He carefully avoided interlarding his Portuguese with Latin, his object being fazer prato a todos. Even more humble is the work of the Cistercian Frei Fradique Espinola (c. 1630-1708), who compiled in his Escola Decurial (12 pts., 1696-1721) an encyclopaedia of themes so various as the fate of King Sebastian, the duties of women, and the habits of storks. Although it lacks the literary pretensions of the Divertimento erudito by the Augustinian Frei João Pacheco (1677-?1747), it contains some curious matter. A similar miscellany of anecdotes and precepts was written by João Baptista de Castro in the eighteenth century: Hora de Recreio nas ferias de maiores estudos (2 pts., 1742, 3).

The life of the ardent Frei Antonio das Chagas (1631-82) abounded in contrasts. Born at Vidigueira, of an old Alentejan family, Antonio da Fonseca Soares began his career as a soldier in 1650; a duel (arising out of one of his many love affairs), in which he killed his man, drove him to Brazil, and it was only after several years of distinguished service[576] that he returned to Portugal, perhaps in 1657. In 1661 he attained the rank of captain, but in the following year abandoned his military career, and in 1663 professed in the Franciscan convent at Evora, exchanging the composition of gongoric verse for a voluminous correspondence in prose, and his unregenerate days of dissipation for a glowing and saintly asceticism. (Trocando as galas em burel e os caprichos em cilicios are the words with which he veils the real sincerity of his conversion.) Preferring the humbler but strenuous duties of missionary in Portugal and Spain to the bishopric of Lamego, he founded the missionary convent of Varatojo, and died there twenty years after his novitiate. During those years he built up and exercised a powerful spiritual influence throughout Portugal, and it continued after his death. Few of his poems survive, since he committed the greater part of his profane verse to the flames, but some of his romances may still be read. It is, however, as a prose-writer, especially in his Cartas Espirituaes (2 pts., 1684, 7), that he holds a foremost place in Portuguese literature. There is less affectation in these more familiar letters than in his Sermões genuinos (1690) or his Obras Espirituaes (1684). The very titles of some of his shorter treatises, Vozes do Ceo e Tremores da Terra, Espelho do Espelho, show that he had not even now altogether escaped the false taste of the time, and artificial flowers of speech, plays on words, laboured metaphors and antitheses appear in his prose. But if it has not the simple severity of a Bernardes, it possesses so persuasive, so passionate an energy, and is of so clear a fervour and harmony that its eloquence is felt to be genuine.

The Jesuit Frei João da Fonseca (1632-1701), in the preface to one of his works, Sylva Moral e Historica (1696), which may have given Bernardes the idea of his Nova Floresta, rejects affected periods and new phrases, and there is no false rhetoric in his Espelho de Penitentes (1687), Satisfaçam de Aggravos (1700), which takes the form of dialogues between a hermit and a soldier, and other devotional works. Another Jesuit, Alexandre de Gusmão (1629-1724), although born at Lisbon, spent most (eighty-five years) of his long life in Brazil. He wrote, among other works, Rosa de Nazareth nas Montanhas de Hebron (1715), compiled from various histories of the Company of Jesus, and Historia do Predestinado Peregrino e seu Irmão Precito (1682). The latter is an allegory in six books which lacks the human interest of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which it preceded. It describes the journey of two brothers, Predestinado and Precito, out of Egypt to Jerusalem (Heaven) and Babylon (Hell). The style is simpler and more direct than might be inferred from the inflated title, and often has an effective if studied eloquence.[577]

Vieira dying is reported to have said that the Portuguese language was safe in the keeping of Padre Manuel Bernardes. The aged Jesuit, who maintained his interest in literature to the end, may have received Bernardes’ Luz e Calor[578] (1696) in the last year of his life, and the Exercicios Espirituaes (2 vols., 1686) had appeared ten years earlier. Other works, Sermões e Praticas (1711),[579] Nova Floresta (5 vols., 1706-28), Os Ultimos Fins do Homem (1727), Varios Tratados (2 vols., 1737), were soon forthcoming to justify the prophecy. Manuel Bernardes (1644-1710), the son of João Antunes and Maria Bernardes, was born at Lisbon, studied law and philosophy at Coimbra University, and at the age of thirty entered the Lisbon Oratory, where he spent thirty-six years. That was all his life, yet through his books this modest, humorous, austere priest has exercised a profound influence not only, as Barbosa Machado declares, in guiding souls to Heaven, but in moulding and protecting the Portuguese language. His style is marked in an equal degree by grace and concision, intensity and restraint, smoothness and vigour.[580] With him the florid cloak, in which many recent writers had wrapped Portuguese, falls away, leaving the pith and kernel of the language; the conceits of the culteranos disappear, and the most striking effects are attained without apparent artifice. In his hands the pinchbeck and tinsel are transmuted into delicate pieces of ivory. The charm of his style is difficult to analyse, but it may be remarked that his vocabulary is inexhaustible, his precision unfailing, that he is not afraid to employ the commonest words, and that the construction of his sentences is of a transparent simplicity, as bare of rhetoric as is the poetry of João de Deus. His reputation as a lord of language has survived every test. His works are not merely the deliciae of a few distant scholars but an acknowledged glory of the nation, praised by that literary iconoclast Macedo, and quoted as an authority in the Republican Parliament of 1915. The most popular of his works are Luz e Calor, and especially the Nova Floresta, in which moral and familiar anecdote go quaintly hand in hand, but if one must choose between excellence and excellence his masterpiece is the Exercicios Espirituaes, in which thought and expression often rise to sublime heights. One may perhaps compare him with Fray Juan de los Ángeles (†1609). His simple doctrines spring from the heart and, winged by shrewd knowledge of men, touch the heart of his readers. One of his more immediate followers was Padre Manuel Consciencia (c. 1669-1739), author of a large number of works on moral and religious subjects, the best known of which is A Mocidade enganada e desenganada (6 vols., 1729-38).