PEREIRA DE FIGUEIREDO, ANTONIO. - Portuguese theologian, scholar and musician, b. at Macao (Portugal) on 14 Feb. 1725 and d. at Lisbon on 14 Aug. 1797.
He studied with the Jesuits at Villa Vicosa and in 1744 entered the Fathers of the Oratory at Lisbon. His opposition to the Jesuits in the matter of education made him dear to the minister Pombal, whose policy, hostile to the rights of the Holy See, he supported in his numerous writings, having laid aside the habit which he resumed at death. A member (1774) and dean
(1792) of the Royal Academy of Lisbon, he was a distinguished scholar and speaker. His principal work had a disastrous diffusion throughout Europe: Tentamen theologicum (Lisbon 1766; 1769), whose doctrines, censured as heresy by F. A. Zaccaria, he reaffirmed in Defensio tentaminis theologici (ibid. 1770). P. supports the establishment of national Churches, defending the right of bishops (whose appointment and consecration he claims for the metropolitan of the region) to act independently of the Holy See, granting dispensations of pontifical right, when the Apostolic See cannot be approached.
Other writings: Rerum Lusitanorum ephemerides usque ad jesuitarum expulsionem (Lisbon 1761); Doctrina veteris Ecclesiae de suprema regum etiam in clericis potestate (ibid. 1765); Demonstração theol. canon. e histor. do direito dos metropolitanos de Portugal (ibid. 1767); Testamento novo e velho em portuguese (23 vols., ibid. 1778-90; 3rd ed., 1804-19, 7 vols.), a version based on that of the Jansenists of Mons (1667), is not always orthodox either in its introductions or in its notes.
Bibliography3 works
Vito Zolini