Vieira (João Fernandes)

To the article on this illustrious Madeiran on page 18 of volume II, we wish to add some further information that identifies him more clearly. We draw readers’ attention in particular to the valuable and exhaustive historical memoir by the academician Rodrigo de Lima Felner, Nome verdadeiro do portuguez João Fernandes Vieira, published in 1873, and to the fine study by Lieutenant-Colonel Alberto Artur Sarmento entitled Ascendência, naturalidade e mudança de nome de João Fernandes Vieira, printed in 1911. Drawing on these and other research works, the Brazilian writer Dr Mário de Melo published an excellent article, reprinted in the Funchal press, from which we shall extract a few passages that bear closely on our subject:

“

The Portuguese João Fernandes Vieira, who came to Brazil very young, was the most influential figure in the restoration of Pernambuco. He had blind panegyrists and has his detractors. The latter did not confine themselves to pointing out his errors, some of them amply documented, or his ambition, which may have been excessive – it is enough to note that, apart from the scientists brought by Maurice of Nassau and a few others, every European who came to Brazil had as his aim the accumulation of wealth.

Pereira da Costa and Alberto Lamego piled up document after document against the Madeiran. And to belittle him they began by casting doubt on his legitimate descent. They made him out to be now the bastard son of a Madeiran man of standing and a courtesan, now the son of a criminal and a mulatto woman. Viriato Corrêa and Paulo Setúbal took it upon themselves to spread the slander in popular books.

When the one and the other, in different years, spread this account, I protested, basing myself on what Adelino de Luna Freire had written. But my protest could not be forceful, given the scantiness of the documentation, for only recently was the baptismal certificate found of the man to whom the people of Pernambuco owe everything.

I knew that João Fernandes Vieira was the son of Francisco Dornelas and had changed his name on coming to Brazil, but according to my notes Francisco Dornelas’s wife was Teresa Mafra. Thus the stigma of being a bastard son hung over the liberator’s memory, and Antónia Mendes might well have been the courtesan spoken of by those who slandered his memory, or the real name of the “Benfeitinha”. Without losing any time, I wrote to Mr Alberto Sarmento asking him to tell me the name of Francisco Dornelas’s true wife.

In reply, he sent me an interesting monograph entitled “Ascendencia, naturalidade & mudança de nome de João Fernandes Vieira”, published in 1911 and therefore before the baptismal certificate came to light (found in the parish (freguesia) of Nossa Senhora do Faial, on the island of Madeira).

Francisco d’Ornelas fled to Brazil as a boy and there took the name João Fernandes Vieira. He became very rich, and with his wealth and valour he freed Pernambuco from the power of the Dutch for the Crown of Portugal. For these and many other services he was made a nobleman of the Royal Household (fidalgo da Casa Real) and a member of its Council of War; Alcaide-mor of the town of Pinhal; commander of the commanderies of the Order of Christ of São Pedro de Torradas and of Santa Eugénia d’Aula; superintendent of the fortifications of Pernambuco and of all the others of the State of Brazil to the north and pro.; Proclaimer of the Liberty and Restoration of Pernambuco.

The identification of João Fernandes Vieira is therefore confirmed. He had no reason to be ashamed of his ancestry. He was a fidalgo (nobleman of the lesser nobility) by his father’s blood and by his mother’s. The legend of his shameful illegitimacy and mixed race crumbles. He was a legitimate son, white, clean and pure. If that was so, why did he emigrate and change his name? He emigrated because of his adventurous temperament and because of the poverty which, together with the plague, was ravaging the island of Madeira. The legal system of the time was that of the entailed estate (morgadio). Only first-born sons had the right to the inheritance and its revenues, and the duty, together with the family name, of preserving the entail. ‘The brethren, starving, resentful of fortune but still blinded by the vanity of their name, would only submit to work in a foreign land.’

Francisco d’Ornelas, the second brother of Manuel d’Ornelas, understood early on that the whole of their father’s fortune would go to the latter. He heard the fantastic tales of the riches of Brazil, to which settlers were sailing on every ship. While still very young he ran away from his father’s house, joined a party of emigrants and sailed with it to try his luck through work. The first job he obtained in Pernambuco was as a servant. That was too humiliating for the lineage of the Dornelas. He changed his name. Even so, he took the surname Fernandes from his great-grandfather António Fernandes, of Covas (‘hollows’), in Faial, and the surname Vieira from his paternal great-great-grandfather Pedro Vieira, great holder of the entail (morgado) of the Ribeira de Machico (‘Machico stream’), on the island of Madeira, and joined them to the forename João, also from his maternal great-grandfather João Mendes. And so he created the full name of João Fernandes Vieira, under which he made his way in Brazil and passed into history, a name more dignified by his deeds than the one his parents had given him at the baptismal font’.

What has been transcribed above is fully confirmed by the extract from the baptismal certificate discovered by the distinguished genealogist Canon Fernando de Meneses Vaz, which was recorded on page 19 of volume II of this work. See Monuments (II-393).