BARRADAS, MANOEL. - Portuguese Jesuit missionary, b. at Monforte (Alentejo) in 1572, d. at Cochin in India on 31 July 1646. He entered the novitiate at Evora in 1587 and in 1591 set out for India, where he completed his studies and carried out various duties in the missions of Goa and Malabar. From 1621 to 1623 he worked in Ethiopia with Fr. Manoel d’Almeida, mainly in the province of Tigré, residing at Fremona. On his return to Goa, he was captured by the Turks at Aden and held prisoner for six months. He later became Provincial of Goa (1640-43) and of Malabar (from 1643 until his death).
The attribution to him of treatises on the mythology, sects, and customs of the Indians 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 confusion). The manuscript he sent to Europe appears to be nothing more than an extract or compendium of the Livro da seita dos Indios orientais by the Jesuit Giacomo Fenicio (b. 1558, d. 1632) of Capua (cf. the introduction by J. Charpentier to the Fenicio edition, Uppsala 1932, pp. LXXXVIII-LXXXII). More important are the three treatises by Barradas on Ethiopia: Do estado da S. Fe romana en Ethiopia; Do reyno de Tygre e seus mandos; Da cidade e fortaleza de Adem. Their publication constitutes volume IV (Rome 1906) of the Rerum Aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales inediti by Fr. C. Beccari. The same Beccari reprinted their main sections in Italian translation: Il Tigré descritto da un missionario gesuita del se. XVII (2nd ed., Rome 1912).