António Vieira between Greeks, Romans, and Brazilians: Comments on Rhetoric and the Jesuit Tradition in Brazil

Abstract

This article uses a short reflection on the life and work of Father António Vieira (born Portugal, 1608, died Brazil, 1697) to draw our attention to the need to account not just for the dynamic interplay between colony and metropolis, but also the colony’s impact on the teaching, theory, and practice of rhetoric since 1492. Specifically, my reflection focuses on Vieira’s Le Lacrime d’Eraclito, a text that suggests that for rhetorical theory and practice the colonial encounter had ramifications on the European continent as profound as those on the American. We cannot speak of an American or Western rhetorical tradition and history without considering this interplay in which the American colonies were active participants, not passive subjects.

Notes

¹ Using Vieira’s text with its original title (in Italian) calls attention to the fact that Vieira achieved great eloquence in that language even as he objected that learning it distracted him from his true mission (in Brazil). The versions of Vieira’s Le Lacrime available today are Portuguese translations.

² Vieira has received significant scholarly attention in Brazil over the last decades. See, for example, Maria Theresa Abelha Alves; Maria Cecilia M. N. Coelho, “Padrões” and “Visões”; Valéria Maria Pena Ferreira; Ana Lúcia M. de. Oliveira; Alcir Pécora; Adriano Prosperi.

³ An example including a somewhat more familiar figure for U.S.-based readers: The Mexican nun Sor Juana Inez de La Cruz read and commented on Vieira’s Sermão do Mandato, and Le Lacrime was also translated into Spanish and published in Mexico City (Brescia; Ricard). There is good evidence, in other words, not only of Vieira’s indirect intellectual influence in the Americas but also the direct circulation of his writing there.

⁴ The text was published in Italian in 1709 and in Portuguese in 1710. Earlier, in 1685, a Spanish version was published in Mexico (see footnote 3).

⁵ Ironically, Vieira had fared no better during his last tenure in Brazil (1655–1661). There, he had aroused the ire of slave owners by attacking their treatment of the native population. In 1661, Vieira was exiled from Brazil to Lisbon.

⁶ The Ratio studiorum was a Jesuit plan of studies for lay and religious training first published in 1599. As Don Abbott outlines, the plan of the Ratio “was itself derived from the pedagogical precepts of antiquity and, like classical education, was intended to produce students who were masters of eloquence” (103). As Abbott further notes, “To achieve this goal the Ratio Studiorum stipulated that five courses were to be taken over a period of five years: three courses in progressively advanced Latin and Greek grammar, followed by a course in humanities, and culminating in the study of rhetoric” (103). Vieira was both a student and a professor of the Ratio.

⁷ On the political and religious issues related to Vieira´s five years in Rome, see Thomas Cohen, Fire 144–149.

⁸ We also find this same idea in another sermon, Pelo bom sucesso das armas de Portugal contra as de Holanda (1640), delivered at the Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Ajuda, in Bahia.

⁹ “Molti soldati muoiono in guerra ridendo; la ragione la dà il filosofo: perché ricevono le ferite nel diaframma, muscolo tra il cuore e il pulmone. Non rideva Democrito come contento e pago. Ridea ben come ferito, riteneva nel petto tutte le piaghe del mondo, onde, ferito tanto sul vivo, rideva.”

¹⁰ “Seneca, nel suo libro De Tranquillitate, parlando di questi due filosofi, assegna la ragionne del riso dell’uno e del pianto dell’altro. Hic quoties … in publicum processerat, flebat; ille, … ridebat. Huic omnia, quae agimus, miseriae, illi ineptiae videbantur: Sì che il perché ridesse Democrito era il sembrargli tutte le cose umane inezzie e scioccherie; al contrario, il perché Eraclito piangesse era il giudicar che faceva che tutte le umane cose fosser miserie.”

¹¹ Barros alleges that Vieira granted Cattaneo the right to choose, though Cattaneo’s text rebuts this assertion: “by royal command he is supposed to defend the smile of Democritus” (“Per regio commando è a me toccata la difesa del riso”) (164).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Cecília de Miranda Nogueira Coelho

Maria Cecília de Miranda Nogueira Coelho is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Av. Antônio Carlos, 6627, Sala 4055, Belo Horizonte–MG–Brasil–CEP–31270-901.