Moniz (Dr Patrício)

Dr Patrício Moniz was without doubt the most gifted mind our land produced in the 19th century. The vigour of his talent, eloquently displayed in a remarkable philosophical culture, and his immense learning, which made him a true sage in every sense of the word, fully bear out our assertion, bold as it may seem to many. He was an eminently superior spirit, drawn to the abstractions of the loftiest philosophy, to which he had devoted himself entirely, and he made a point of despising the Europeans of superficial, ill-founded science. Nevertheless, he was sometimes taken for a man of only middling learning by those who can judge only by appearances and who are accustomed to measure a man’s intellectual worth by an endless parade of dates, names and quotations from the most respected and fashionable authors.

He possessed the most remarkable aptitudes and merits, which aroused the admiration and astonishment of those who knew him most closely and were best able to appreciate the full range and greatness of his mental faculties. The general public could only occasionally, and always imperfectly, gauge the calibre of that splendid talent. Just as pearls hide in the depths of the ocean and diamonds in the bowels of the earth, so his vast intelligence lay buried in the deepest modesty and the most complete self-effacement, which made him simply adorable and truly delightful to those who were on intimate terms with him. And yet a man of such intellectual stature passed almost unnoticed, leaving to posterity no substantial work, which his rare faculties as a scholar, thinker and philosopher could undoubtedly have produced. This regrettable circumstance must be attributed in large part to the fickleness of his temperament and to the constantly unsettled life he led during the years when his mind was at its most vigorous. Nevertheless, anyone who consults his writings will readily recognise what his intellect would have been capable of, had various causes not prevented him from producing a work of greater scope.

Dr Patrício Moniz was a great theologian. Every branch of the vast science of theology was familiar to him, and he discoursed on all of them with remarkable proficiency. To hear him from the professor’s chair was to be enraptured by such profound knowledge, such astonishing erudition and such spontaneous and persuasive eloquence; it seemed that theology, a science so difficult in itself and so strewn with pitfalls, held no secrets for him.

If he was a most distinguished theologian, he was no less accomplished a philosopher – a philosopher in the strict and proper sense of the word, not merely an amateur or even a devoted student of philosophy. Dr Patrício Moniz wrote a book entitled Theoria da Afirmação Pura, which we are not competent to judge properly, but which we can confidently state bears witness to the lofty faculties of his mind. The work may have its imperfections and is evidently shot through with much obscurity; it seems rather to have been written by a German philosopher absorbed in the most abstract philosophical speculation than by a southerner who spent a large part of his life in a country such as Brazil. It is beyond dispute, however, that a mediocre intellect would have been incapable of producing a work of that kind and of delving so deeply into such lofty philosophical questions.

He enjoyed great renown as an orator, and was indeed a most distinguished one, the city of Rio de Janeiro being the chief arena of his oratorical triumphs. The Brazilians rightly took pride in their great sacred orator Mont’Alverne, who, after the great Vieira, won a prominent place among those who have preached in the Portuguese language. The Brazilian press was unanimous in proclaiming Dr Patrício Moniz the true successor of Mont’Alverne. His fame as a sacred orator crossed the ocean and resounded in the Old World. He published some sermons and funeral orations, which are true gems of their kind, but most of his discourses were not written down. Having reflected on and studied his subject, he left the delivery to the flights of improvisation. He was gifted with remarkable fluency, and words often poured from his lips in cascades of eloquence. Yet he was not, and never could be, a popular orator. The breadth of his learning, his natural bent for philosophical questions and a certain itch to tackle subjects that were inherently thorny and bristling with difficulties drew him irresistibly away from the kind of speech that moves and carries away the masses. Utterly disdaining applause, he generally chose as the subject of his orations only those matters most closely akin to his philosophical and theological predilections. Dr Patrício Moniz was one of the most notable sacred orators of our country, and unquestionably no one surpassed him in the theological sciences or in his profound knowledge of all the sources of sacred oratory.

Philosophers are generally little inclined to works of fiction and outpourings of feeling. Nevertheless, in his youth Patrício Moniz courted the Muses, adopting the Arcadian name of Cleomenes Messeide as a member of the Roman Arcadia, and he wrote two volumes of verse, which he published at the ages of 18 and 19. Later, when the study of the speculative sciences, to which he had devoted himself wholeheartedly, had taken complete hold of his mind, he ceased to be a disciple of Apollo in order to follow the path of the great philosophers. It was nonetheless clear that he could have won a distinguished place on Parnassus had he continued to play the lyre.

It remains for us to give a few biographical details of this illustrious fellow countryman of ours. He was born in the parish (freguesia) of Santa Maria Maior (‘St Mary Major’) in this city on 2 April 1820, the son of Francisco João Moniz, a senior official of the Treasury Board (Junta da Fazenda), and of Dona Ana Foster Moniz. In 1828, when he was only 8 years old, he went to Rio de Janeiro with his father. His father had been elected deputy for Madeira to the constituent Cortes (Portuguese parliament) that sat from 1821 to 1822 and professed the principles of the Porto revolution, so he was forced to leave the country when Miguel I proclaimed himself absolute king in 1828.

Patrício Moniz completed his secondary education in the Brazilian capital, while at the same time devoting himself to poetry. In 1838 he published the volume entitled Meditações Noturnas, and in 1839 another volume of verse, to which he gave the title Composições poéticas offerecidas ao seu querido pai Francisco João Moniz.

Shortly afterwards he went to Paris, where he enrolled in the faculty of law and took the degree of bachelor (bacharel, university graduate). He then made his way to Rome, and in that capital he studied at the celebrated Roman College, or Pontifical University, taking his doctorate in the faculty of theology after revealing his extraordinary talent and winning various academic distinctions. Having been ordained priest in Rome and having completed all his university work, he returned to the city of Rio de Janeiro. There he devoted himself to the service of the Church, to preaching, teaching, journalism and study, which he never abandoned.

As we have already said, the capital of the empire was the scene of his triumphs as an orator. At the Recreio Literário Português he gave remarkable and brilliant lectures, and in recognition that society had a life-size oil portrait of the illustrious Madeiran hung in its rooms. At many ceremonies, at solemn funeral rites and at other public occasions, he delivered speeches that became famous. Despite his long career as an orator, few of these speeches were published, owing to the circumstance, which we have already noted, that he rarely wrote down the orations he delivered.

Dr Patrício Moniz was a journalist and a polemicist of stern mettle. He brilliantly displayed his distinguished qualities as a writer and scholar in Religião, Tribuna Catholica, Iris and other newspapers, which he edited or to which he contributed with greater or lesser regularity.

He taught with great proficiency in Rio de Janeiro and in Funchal. At the seminary of this city he held the chairs of theology, philosophy, history and eloquence, as well as other subjects.

Dr Patrício Moniz was a member of various literary and scientific societies, both Portuguese and foreign, and always refused all the decorations and honorary titles with which others sometimes wished to distinguish him. In addition to the works already cited, he published five speeches as separate pamphlets and a few other booklets, among them one entitled Reflexões sobre a carta do sr. Alexandre Herculano.

In 1878 or 1879, after being for some time a professor at the Funchal seminary, where the breadth of his learning filled his pupils with genuine amazement, he left for mainland Portugal. There he held various ecclesiastical posts until he was appointed parish priest of Aveiras de Baixo, a humble parish of the Patriarchate (the archdiocese of Lisbon) with fewer than a thousand inhabitants. He lived there for years, close to destitution and in the most complete obscurity – perhaps the greatest luminary of the Portuguese clergy of his day.

He was a man of great austerity of character, of a lively and purified religious faith and of irreproachable conduct. Scorning all pomp and ostentation, he lived simply and modestly, and whatever was left over from his meagre means he generously shared among the poor. He had eccentricities and very personal ways of looking at things and judging people, which at times bordered on the ridiculous, but an unaffected simplicity and a sincere, artless ingenuousness always made them attractive and endearing. He died in Lisbon on 28 February 1898, at the age of 78.