Tomás (Manuel)

According to the Nobiliarchia Portuguesa, volume 2, page 212, Manuel Tomás was born in Guimarães in the year 1585, as the son of the physician Luís Gomes de Medeiros and D. Gracia Vaz Barbosa. The particular circumstances of his life are entirely unknown to us until he settled in Madeira, and the reasons that led him to leave the mainland of the Kingdom to establish permanent residence in this city, where he remained until his death.

The illustrious annotator of the 'Saudades da Terra' leans towards the belief, with good grounds, that Manuel Tomás was a chapter member or even a dignitary of the Funchal Cathedral, based on the reference made by the licentiate Bartolomeu do Vale Cabreira in the censorship of the poem 'A Insulana', saying that 'over the course of many years he acquired the beneesse of which he was also quoted'. We also have reason to believe in the opinion of Dr. Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo, judging that the author of the 'Insulana' and the 'Phenix da Lusitânia' was a canon of the Funchal cathedral. Little is known about the life of this esteemed poet and considered writer, Inocêncio Francisco da Silva says, following the Bibliotheca Lusitana, 'that he was assassinated by a blacksmith's son on April 10, 1665, when he was 80 years old, without, however, the motive for the assassin's action being revealed to us'. Dr. Azevedo says that Manuel Tomás 'having become involved in the dissensions that later led to the ecclesiastical sedition of September 18, 1668, was therefore assassinated on April 10, 1665 by a blacksmith's son'. We do not know on what grounds the illustrious professor based his assertion, nor how a man, and moreover an octogenarian, was killed because of events that occurred three and a half years after his assassination, as Manuel Tomás succumbed on April 10, 1665, and the sedition broke out on September 18, 1668, as affirmed by the same Dr. Álvaro de Azevedo, and as can also be seen in the article 'The deposition of a governor', published years ago in the Diário do Commercio. It is worth noting, which is of the utmost importance for the present case, that the sedition was directed against the governor D. Francisco de Mascarenhas, for supposed or true grievances received from him, and that this governor and captain-general of Madeira took office on November 28, 1665, that is, seven months after the assassination of Manuel Tomás. It seems to us, therefore, very difficult to link the death of the illustrious poet to the sedition of 1668, unless historical data not yet known come to modify our opinion. The epic poem that linked Manuel Tomás to Madeiran history and made him extremely sympathetic to the inhabitants of this archipelago is well known, narrating, although with the fictions and hyperboles of poetry and even more so of the poetry of the time, the discovery of Madeira, which he originally attributed to Machim, its progressive development, the various phases of its history, and particularly the deeds and actions that illustrated many Madeirans. Being a poem in which the author gave free rein to his imagination, it still contains some valuable and not insignificant indications for the history of Madeira. The work, which was published in Flanders in 1635, was very popular and for a long period of time constituted the favorite reading of all enlightened Madeirans, with frequent citations and references to it in various manuscripts, memoirs, nobiliaries, and various other writings dealing with Madeiran matters. As for the literary merits of Manuel Tomás and the value of his poem 'Insulana', let us hear the authoritative opinion of Inocêncio Francisco da Silva, who is not usually lavish with praise: 'Manuel Thomaz was a poet of the gongorist school, of whose precepts he always showed himself to be a fervent disciple. Although his style is, as befits this school, turgid and emphatic, and abounds in hyperbolic ideas, amplifications, and concepts, etc., he still possesses real merit, as a man endowed with a fertile mind and a vivid imagination. Most of the defects noted in him are not his own, but of the century in which he lived, and of the bad doctrines in which he was educated. The erudite Francisco José Freire in his 'Arte Poética', cites with praise and more than once, the 'Insulana' as one of our most remarkable epics; and, in truth, this seems to be the most valuable composition of Manuel Thomaz; its greatest sin is perhaps its excessive length, for it could well be reduced to five or six cantos, which would certainly make it more regular'.

Manuel Tomás also wrote the poem 'Phenix da Lusitânia', which deals with the liberation of Portugal from the Castilian yoke, in addition to other writings listed in the 'Diocionario Bibliographioo Portugwez'. Similar in subject to the 'Insulana' is the poem 'Zargueida', published in 1806 and written by the Madeiran poet Francisco de Paula Medina, whom we have already discussed.