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Biblioteca Eng.º Guedes Rodrigues
AMADOR ARRAIS (Fr.)
DIALOGOS de Dom Frei Amador Arraiz Bispo de Portalegre. Em Coimbra: Em casa de Antonio de Mariz, Impressor, 1589.
[ ]2, A-Z, Aa-Zz, Aaa-Zzz, Aaaa-Gggg4, Hhhh3; [2], 307, [1] ff.; 205 mm.
Br. Amador Arrais (1530?-1600) received his doctorate in Theology at the University of Coimbra, and professed on January 31, 1546 in the Order of the Carmelites, where he had entered as a novice a year earlier. A highly eloquent sacred speaker, he was appointed royal preacher by D. Sebastião. Coadjutor of Cardinal D. Henrique was later appointed by this bishop of Tripoli “in partibus infidelium”. The Cardinal, upon ascending the throne, appointed him his chief almoner, having been elected by Philip II Bishop of Portalegre in 1581, a position he held for 15 years. The diocese, still in the organizational phase and ravaged by the plague, was going through a period of great difficulty, requiring a Herculean effort to reorganize. He convened two diocesan synods, drew up constitutions that he never published, and enriched the Cathedral with ornaments and works of great artistic value. From his private wealth he contributed enormously to the rescue of the prisoners of Quibir, not sparing him, however, from censure motivated by the contribution he made to the organization and financing of the Invincible Armada, nor sparing him from serious disputes with the chapter, nor the he exempted himself from the accusation of using the diocese's income to protect family members and to build the church of Colégio do Carmo in Coimbra, accusations that led him to resign in 1596, retiring to his school in Coimbra where he died four years later. These Dialogues, published for the first time on this date in 1589 and reprinted with revisions by the author in 1604, began to be written by his brother D. Jerónimo Arrais in Latin, having been continued and translated by Fr. Amador Arrais. Today we are unable to determine exactly where the work of one or the other ends, but Amador Arrais was responsible for the best that the work has, both in content and form. As sources for the work, first of all, Fr. Amador Arrais had the classics – Philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, Cicero or Seneca, poets such as Homer or Ovid, playwrights such as Plautus and Terence, naturalists such as Pliny, historians such as Livy, etc. . Sacred Scripture is constantly present, followed by the Fathers of the Church, with particular emphasis on St. Augustine, St. Jerome and St. John Chrysostom. We find as influences his contemporaries Petrarca, Lorenzo Valla, Erasmo, Damião de Góis, João de Barros, Jerónimo Osório, André de Resende, Garcia de Orta and, with quite surprising frequency, numerous stanzas from Os Lusíadas, sometimes transcribed in full. It is from this synthesis, fusing all its components with his proven life experience and sincere experience of faith, that Br. Amador Arrais builds his mentality, considering it as a “humanitas christiana” destined to the formation of a society whose members would configure in the world as perfect an image as possible of the “civitas Dei”. In this tone, the 10 Dialogues are developed between Antiochus (personification of the author himself), who is ill, and several other interlocutors, belonging to different classes and professions, debating, from a perspective of solid Christian orthodoxy and a clear sense of humanism, some of the most burning problems and feelings that agitated Portuguese society in the 16th century. In addition to this interest in the content of the work, his prose, which has an excellent syntactic structure, develops with balance and clarity, smooth ductility and an attractive rhythm, making his work one of the most perfect expressions of Portuguese prose of his time. Not referenced in Samodães, Important Private Library, Auvermann, General Bibliography of Manuel dos Santos. Biblios, I, p. 399, GEPB, 3, p. 326, D. Manuel, III, 212, Inoc, I, p. 52
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