Álvares (Father Manuel)

Old Madeiran books of genealogy say that Afonso Álvares Columbreiro, a native of a settlement on the outskirts of Seville, was one of the first and noble settlers of the village (lugar, settlement rank below a town) of Ribeira Brava (‘wild river’). They add that he founded there the chantries (capela) of St Catherine (Santa Catarina) and São Bento (St Benedict of Nursia) within the entailed estate (morgadio) he had established, whose seat lay in that parish (freguesia). One of his granddaughters, named Brígida Gonçalves, and her husband João Mealheiro or Malheiro, who held the rank of noblemen, were the ancestors of Father Manuel Álvares. He therefore came of noble lineage, which in any case adds little to his undeniable merits and virtues. His parents were Sebastião Gonçalves and Beatriz Álvares, who retained the privileges of nobility inherited from their forebears.

All his biographers, including the author of the Synopsis Annalium Societatis Jesu in Lusitania, state that he entered the Society of Jesus on 4 July 1546, at the age of 20, and that he died in Évora on 30 December 1583, aged 57. He must therefore have been born in 1526, at a time when births were not yet regularly registered in this diocese. For that reason his baptismal entry is not to be found in the parish archive of Ribeira Brava, as we have more than once had occasion to confirm.

His vocation for the Church had dawned early, for as early as 1538 he had received the so-called minor orders from Dom Ambrósio Brandão, titular bishop of Rocina, who had come to this island to perform the episcopal functions temporarily. Father António Franco relates that a carrack bound for India put in at Funchal and, because of illness, landed a member of the Society of Jesus, who took refuge in the hospital to be treated for the sickness that had struck him. Manuel Álvares went to visit him to obtain news and information about an old friend and fellow student of his. From his dealings with the religious grew the desire to embrace the order of St Ignatius, which since its foundation in 1540 had enjoyed extraordinary renown and attracted many vocations to the Church. He soon left his father’s house and entered the congregation of the Jesuits in 1546, as already mentioned.

During his studies, in which he proved a student of extraordinary talent, he showed a special fondness for the dead languages – Latin, Greek and Hebrew. In the first of these he soon became a true authority, and he was regarded as one of the most notable Latinists of his time. He also had a thorough knowledge of Syro-Chaldaic and Arabic, and was acquainted with other oriental languages as well.

Of the works he wrote, it was his Latin grammar, De Institutione Grammatica, that brought him worldwide renown. To appreciate its worth, it is enough to say that, besides the countless editions made of it in Latin, it was translated into French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Bohemian, Croatian, Flemish, Hungarian, Polish, Chinese and Japanese.

After Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads), no work by a Portuguese author has been translated and reprinted so many times. Edgard Prestage, in his study of Francisco Manuel de Melo, published a few years ago, says: ‘this work... has gone through more than 400 editions, being translated into every language, and a Chinese version was published in Shanghai in 1869. Very few scientific books have thus enjoyed three centuries of life’. José Silvestre Ribeiro, in his Curso de Litteratura Portuguesa, states ‘that this illustrious Madeiran is one of the pedagogical glories of Portugal and that his book is the most extensively and intensively disseminated work that Portuguese literature has had’. To conclude these quotations, the celebrated and learned Bishop of Viseu, Dom Francisco Alexandre Lobo, adds: ‘either in the ecclesiastical estate or in the republic of letters I see no other Portuguese who can be preferred to Jerónimo Osório. In the union of the one and the other I see no Portuguese who can equal him’.

For two hundred years the books of Manuel Alvares were the standard treatises for teaching Latin in almost the whole of Europe. However, the appearance of the works of António Pereira de Figueiredo and Luís António Verney, around the middle of the 18th century, gave rise in Portugal to much criticism and debate about the value of the celebrated Jesuit’s work. With the progress of the science of language over the long period of two centuries, his books began to lose the authority they had enjoyed, a decline to which the Marquis of Pombal’s ban on their adoption in public or private teaching also contributed considerably. Nevertheless, as late as the second quarter of the 19th century some twenty editions of his grammar were published in various European countries.

Besides his method for teaching Latin, Manuel Alvares wrote other works, some of which remained unpublished. The fame that crowned his name as a writer and scholar, together with the great prestige he enjoyed among his fellow religious, had marked him out for high office in his order. He thus served as rector of the renowned colleges of Lisbon, Évora and Coimbra, always showing the superiority of his talent and his eminent qualities of tact in government.

We shall close this biographical note with the very words of the author of the Bibliotheca Lusitana (‘Portuguese library’): ‘He was an exemplary model of all the religious virtues, earning for them the praise of his holy patriarch. His forbearance having been tried by a long illness, he died with great piety in the College of Évora on 30 December 1583, aged 57 and after 37 years in religion. Some years later, when his tomb was opened, his body was found incorrupt’.

In August 1917 Dr Urbano Canuto Soares came to Funchal, by order of the Ministry of Public Instruction, to carry out research on the life and works of Father Manuel Alvares.