BARRADAS, MANOEL. - Portuguese Jesuit missionary, b. at Monforte (Alentejo) in 1572, d. at Cochin in India on 31 July 1646. Having entered the novitiate of Evora in 1587, he set out in 1591 for India, where he pursued his studies and held various assignments in the missions of Goa and Malabar. From 1621 to 1623 he worked in Ethiopia with Fr. Manoel d'Almeida, chiefly in the province of Tigré, with residence at Fremona. Returning to Goa, he fell at Aden into the hands of the Turks, who held him prisoner for six months. He was later provincial of Goa (1640-43) and of Malabar (from 1643 until his death).
The attribution to B. of treatises on the mythology, sects and customs of the Hindus has been disputed (cf. H. Hosten, The authorship of the Portuguese Manuscript on Indian Mythology, in Anthropos, 2 [1907], pp. 272-74; Streit, Bibl., V, p. 214, is full of confusions). The manuscript that he sent to Europe seems to be nothing other than an extract or an abridgment of the Livro da seita dos Índios orientais by the Jesuit Giacomo Fenicio (b. in 1558 and d. in 1632) of Capua (cf. the introduction prefixed by J. Charpentier to the edition of Fenicio, Uppsala 1933, pp. LXXVIII-LXXII). More important are B.'s three treatises on Ethiopia: Do estado da S. Fe romana em Ethiopia; Do reyno de Tyre e seus mandos; Da cidade e fortaleza de Adem. Their edition constitutes volume IV (Rome 1906) of the Rerum Aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales inediti of Fr. C. Beccari. Beccari himself reprinted their principal passages in Italian translation: Il Tigré descritto da un missionario gesuita del sec. XVII (2nd ed., Rome 1912).
Bibliography3 works
Edmondo Lamalle