António Vieira
Six Sermons
Edited and translated by Mónica Leal da Silva and Liam Brockey
Reviews and Awards
"This volume grants us direct access to the observations and judgments of a long-lived contemporary witness, and allows readers to formulate their own opinions about Vieira's rhetoric and style ... Now, four centuries on, thanks to an accurate, elegant and reader-centred translation, Vieira can speak to new audiences." - Patricia Odber De Baubeta, Bulletin of Spanish Studies
"The sermons Monica Leal da Silva and Liam Brockey have edited, translated, and introduced-a small fragment of Vieira's corpus of sermons, delivered over the course of several decades and originally published in twelve volumes between 1679 and 1699-consistently seduce and shock, affect, surprise, and edify, bringing more of the work of this renowned diplomat and orator into English for the first time... Da Silva and Brockey's edition would be perfect for an undergraduate history course on colonial Latin America or Brazil or religious history surveys of various temporal and spatial configurations. Who knows, it might offer some coveted lessons and needed inspiration to orators-preachers, teachers, and politicians-of our own day as well." - Richard Hoffmann Reinhardt, Reading Religion
"Missionary, diplomat, theologian, pulpit preacher, social critic, political strategist, and one of the finest writers of the Portuguese language, the Jesuit António Vieira was a remarkable figure of the Baroque age whose life has remained relatively unknown to English-speaking readers. This excellent edition and translation of his sermons finally gives them access to Vieira's talents and thought, and helps to restore him to the prominence he deserves." - Stuart Schwartz, George Burton Adams Professor of History and Chair of the Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies, Yale University
"The reader will find here six of António Vieira's sermons, most available in English for the first time. Brilliantly translated and contextualized, the sermons reflect the ways a leading Jesuit grappled with the bewildering forces of globalization, commerce, slavery, and morality, forces the Jesuits themselves unleashed. How to find providential meaning in a Portuguese global empire built on the backs of both slaves and Jesuit missionaries? How to have providential certainty in a world bedeviled by greed, growing religious apathy, and geopolitical uncertainty? How to be a prophet in a new, yet weakened Braganza-led Israel? Out of hundreds of possible sermons, the authors have masterfully picked a handful to illuminate a complex, deeply contradictory world of faith and violence." - Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin
"António Vieira is a major religious, cultural, and political figure in the early modern world, little known outside the field of Iberian history. This outstanding translation of selected sermons will contribute to integrate his thought in the long-term complex analysis of colonialism, slavery, racism, and national assertion." - Francisco Bethencourt, author of Racisms from the Crusades to the Twentieth Century
