SILVEIRA, Gonçales da, Venerable. - Jesuit, missionary and martyr, b. of a noble family at Almeirim (diocese of Lisbon) on 23 February 1526, d. at Monomotapa (Zambezi) on 15 March 1561.

Having entered the Order in 1543, he was sent to Goa, as provincial of the mission of India in 1556, and he gave such an impulse to missionary activity that in the three years he remained there 7,000 pagans were baptized in the city alone. His success caused him to be chosen for a field still unexplored in south-eastern Africa, the region of Mozambique, in present-day Rhodesia, where the missionaries had been requested by the son of a Kaffir king, baptized at Mozambique. Silveira, having landed on 11 March 1560 at Sofala, pushed into the interior of the land as far as Otongwe, where Gamba, king of the Maharanga, resided. In the space of 7 weeks, he succeeded in baptizing the King, his whole court and many other pagans, as many as 400. He then left Otongwe to the care of his companion, Father Fernandez, and moved toward the Kingdom of the "king of gold," Monomotapa, on the banks of the Zambezi, to win it to the faith. He succeeded there, in fact, also with the cooperation of the Portuguese, and at the end of 1561 he baptized the King and his court; by the following March the Christians had risen to 300. This aroused the envy of the Muslims, who feared to see their commerce taken from them by the Portuguese; it was easy for them to ensnare the King, still weak in the faith, and to make him believe the most absurd calumnies against Silveira, depicting him as a sorcerer who would have done away with everyone and as an advanced spy of the Portuguese army. The King, frightened, had the missionary strangled without more ado. The expedition, sent to avenge his death, never reached its destination, and the mission had to be interrupted for lack of missionaries who might for that moment continue the work begun by Silveira.

Bibliography8 works

BIBL.: Sommervogel, VII, coll. 1731-33; N. Godigno, Vita Patris Gonzali Sylvieri, Lyon 1612; A. P. de Paiva e Pona, Das primosus trabalhos des Portuguees na Monosustapa, O padre d. G. da S., Lisbon 1892; G. Theal Mc Call, Records of S. E. Africa, VII, Cape Town 1901; H. Chadwick, Life of the ven. G. da S., Rochampton 1910; L. Kilger, Die erste Mission unter den Bantustämmen Ostafrihsa, Münster in W. 1917; Fr. Rodriguez, Hist. da Companhia de Jesus na Assistencia de Portugal, I, Porto 1931, pp. 315-19, 624-36 and passim; B. Leite, D. Gonçalo da S., Lisbon 1946.

Celestino Testore

@incollection{ec11_silveira_goncales_da_venerabil, author = {Testore, Celestino}, title = {Silveira, gonçales da, venerabile}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XI}, pages = {592--593}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1953}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/silveira-goncales-da-venerabile} }

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Silveira, Gonçales da, Venerable

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