VIEIRA, ANTONIUS. - Jesuit, orator and missionary, b. in Lisbon on 6 Feb. 1609, d. in Bahia (Brazil) on 18 July 1697.
Carried as a boy to Bahia, he entered the Order there on 5 May 1623 and, ordained a priest in 1635, he devoted himself at once to preaching with great success. Having returned to Lisbon in 1641, he was appointed by King John IV as tutor to the infante Don Pedro, court preacher, and member of the royal Council. To him are owed the revival of trade with Brazil, the founding of a national bank and the organization of a Brazilian trading company. The King also made use of him for various diplomatic missions in France, Holland, England and Rome (1646-50). In 1652 he returned to the missions of Maranhão and Pará, where he labored tirelessly for 9 years, except for a rapid journey to Lisbon to plead for the freedom of the Indians. For this reason, on the death of John IV (1661), he was forced by the colonists to return to Lisbon, whence he was confined to Oporto, then (1667) tried at Coimbra and sentenced to forced residence by the tribunal of the Inquisition, chiefly on account of his exaggerated writings about the imminent millennium of Portugal's triumph, which was to follow upon the resurrection of John IV: Esperanças de Portugal, Quinto Império da Mundo e Cláxis prophetarum, in which he divulged with too much credulity the false prophecies of Gonçalo Annes Bandarra. Liberated (1668), he went in 1669 to Rome, where he preached to the pontifical Court, also fighting against the methods of the Portuguese Inquisition. Having returned in 1673 to Lisbon with a brief of Clement X, which exempted him from that Inquisition, he embarked again for Brazil (1681), where he first set about polishing and publishing his sermons and polemical writings, and then took up the office of visitor general.
A fine diplomat, social reformer, prudent administrator, apostle and protector of the Indians, V. is considered also and above all one of the best prose writers and orators of Portuguese literature for his literary gifts, the purity of his language, the impetuousness of his facile and abundant speech (although he indulged the deceptive taste of "Gongorism," then imported from Spain), the liveliness of his imagination, the pathos that vibrated in his gesture and his discourse. This must not cause one to forget the missionary activity carried on throughout Maranhão and Pará as far as Pernambuco, in 22 long river journeys and 11,000 miles covered on foot, and the winning to Christianity of fierce and hostile tribes.
His published works, with complete or partial reprints and translations into many languages, comprise 15 vols. of Sermons (Lisbon 1679-99); 3 vols. of Cartas (ibid. 1735), besides many other political and polemical writings. New editions, under the title of Obras completas, have not yet been brought to completion (27 vols., Lisbon 1854 ff. [sermons and some works]; 15 vols., Oporto 1907-1909 [sermons]; 16 vols., S. Paulo 1943-45 [sermons]).