RECENT PORTUGUESE PUBLICATIONS
BULLETIN 44

February 2005

 
 PART XIII:

Religion, Theology

 
See also items 5, 41, 46, 50, 53, 74 & 223.

88. CARDOSO, Jorge. Agiológio lusitano. 5 vols. Porto: Centro Interuniversitário de História da Espiritualidade, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade do Porto, 2002. Fontes e Monumenta, II. Thick folios (28 x 20.1 cm.), orig. illus. wrps. (5, 6 ll.), 570 pp., (1 l.); (1, 6 ll.), 788 pp., (1 l.); (1, 6 ll.), 905, (1) pp., (1 l.); (1, 12 ll.), 728 pp.; 180 pp., (3 ll.). Uncut and unopened. One of 500 copies. ISBN: 972-9350-66-3; 972-9350-67-1; 972-9350-68-X; 972-9350-69-8; 972-9350-66-3 [sic?]. 5 vols. $350.00

Facsimile reprint, including new introductory material in the first volume by José Adriano de Freitas Carvalho, of the rare original edition. The fifth volume, completely new to this edition, is subtitled Estudo e índices, and was prepared by Maria de Lurdes Correia Fernandes.

Since the four volumes were issued by four different publishers over the span of 92 years (1652-1744), complete sets of the original work seldom come on the market. Organized in the form of a calendar, the Agiologio includes biographical information on some 2,500 men and women (not only saints) who worked for the Church, mostly in Portugal and its dominions. Many of the men and women described here were probably too minor to appear in any other account. The Agiologio therefore provides a wealth of information for a study of the training and travels of such members of the Church. Some 425 of those listed worked outside Portugal, and of those over half (220 or so) were in Japan, at Firando, Nagasaki, Vomura, Miaco, etc. Eleven more were in China (Hanchow, Macau and Canton), 59 in India, 67 elsewhere in the East, 48 in Africa. Fifteen lived or worked in Brazil, in Bahia, Pernambuco, Espirito Santo and Rio de Janeiro: they range from such well known figures as P. José Anchieta (III, 594-600) to Irmão Mattheus Nogueira (I, 285) and Sor Beatriz de Jesus Benta (I, 538). There is even mention of one in Mexico (IV, 233) and one in Florida (II, 428).

In addition to the biographical sketches, Cardoso often includes, in notes at the end of each day of the calendar, a few paragraphs of information on the places where these men and women worked. Volume I has sections on Firando (235.h) and Nagasaki (64.o), on Loanda, Cabo Verde, and Morocco, on São Paulo and S. Vicente, and on Sumatra, Ceylon, the Maluccas, Ternate and many other areas of the East. Volume II includes a brief discourse on the discovery of Florida (438.b), and sections on S. Thomé, Canton, Macao and Vomura, among many others. Volume III includes brief descriptions of the Congo, the Spanish island of Guadalupe, Timor and Hanchow. Volume IV has paragraphs on Pernambuco, Moçambique, Mombaça, Diu and Miaco, among others. There are also brief descriptions of particular convents and monasteries, e.g. in São Paulo, Loanda, Cochin, Macao, Malacca and Ormuz.

Cardoso, a native of Lisbon, wrote the first three volumes of this work. It was continued nearly a century later by Antonio Caetano de Sousa, but never completed: the four volumes cover only January through August. Both the Agiologio and Cardoso have long been highly esteemed. Barbosa Machado quotes at length the many eminent men who praised Cardoso's erudition and thoroughness. Innocêncio, who found Cardoso's prose style sometimes awkward and his mind sometimes too credulous, nevertheless calls the Agiologio "um trabalho vastissimo, escripto com erudição extraordinario, e accusa no seu auctor muita sciencia e louvavel zelo pelas cousas da patria."