Andrade (Dr Francisco Justino Gonçalves de)

Among the Madeirans who achieved notable distinction abroad and brought great honour to their native land, one who stands out is Dr Francisco Justino Gonçalves de Andrade. He was born in the parish (freguesia) of Campanário (‘bell tower’) on 18 February 1821 and died in the city of São Paulo on 25 July 1902, the son of Lieutenant Francisco Joaquim Gonçalves de Andrade and Dona Caetana Maria de Macedo.

At the age of 18, after studying at the Funchal Lyceum (Liceu do Funchal), he sailed for Brazil to seek his fortune. Recognising, however, that his vocation did not lie in the commercial life to which he had devoted himself, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo, thereby following the advice he had received from his uncle, Dom Manuel Joaquim Gonçalves de Andrade, bishop of that diocese.

His university career revealed an extraordinary talent, and in it he won the most brilliant academic triumphs, completing his degree in juridical and social sciences in 1850. The following year he defended his theses and received his doctorate. Shortly afterwards, in a public competitive examination that became famous and in which he was placed first, he was appointed substitute professor (lente substituto) and later full professor (lente catedrático) at the University where he had been one of the most studious and distinguished students.

It was as professor of the chair of Civil Law that he truly made his name, and he was regarded as the foremost Brazilian civil lawyer of his time. As happened with those distinguished Madeirans Dr Patrício Moniz, Ferreira de Freitas and others besides, he left no work that matched his great merits or bore witness to his profound knowledge and vast erudition in the difficult and thorny speciality to which he devoted his whole life. Nevertheless, his lectures as a professor, the consultations sent to him from every part of Brazil, the high regard in which the most eminent Brazilian jurists held him, and the fact that he was appointed a member of the commission charged with reporting on the draft Civil Code (Código Civil) drawn up by the illustrious jurist Dr Felicio dos Santos amply prove that Dr Justino de Andrade possessed the talent and learning needed to have left an enduring work, one that would have displayed more eloquently the remarkable gifts of his privileged mind and his immense erudition.

He seldom took on court cases and almost entirely confined himself to answering the consultations frequently addressed to him; his opinions were respected as those of a great authority on the various questions of Brazilian civil law. He devoted all his time to study, leading a life of retirement and silence, wholly removed from politics and from anything that might disturb that thirst for knowledge which in him seemed to take the form of an almost morbid preoccupation.

Dr Justino de Andrade had no political or party leanings, but he was a devoted personal friend of Emperor Peter II, and that alone was enough for him to be dismissed as director of the Faculty of Law; retirement from his professorship was later imposed on him as a result of a conflict that arose within the Academy. We shall close this brief biographical sketch by saying that, if Dr Justino de Andrade commanded respect through the breadth of his knowledge, his brilliant talent and his rare capacity for work, he was no less esteemed for the unbending austerity of his character and his remarkable firmness of principle, which made him a great moral figure, deeply esteemed and admired throughout the Brazilian empire.