Lisbon, Na Officina de Ioam da Costa, 1668.. FIRST EDITION. 4°, disbound, laid into later beige wrappers. Woodcut royal arms of Portugal on title page. Woodcut headpiece and initial on p. [3]. Typographical headpiece and woodcut initial on p. 5. Small ypographical vigette in lower blank margin of p. 36. Light dampstains and soiling. Brownstain in lower margins toward end. In good condition, if just barely. 36 pp. A-D4, E2. *** FIRST EDITION of this sermon on the Queen's birthday. Leite and Paiva cite a Saragoça, 1668 edition in Portuguese, and a French translation of 1669. This sermon was included in volume XIV of Vieira's collected Sermoens, 1710. The dedication to the Queen by P. Manoel Fernandez occupies p. [3]. Vieira (1608-1697) is described by Boxer as "certainly the most remarkable man in the seventeenth-century Luso-Brazilian world" (A Great Luso-Brazilian Figure: Padre António Vieira, S.J., p. 4). Born in Lisbon, he moved to Bahia as a child and there became a Jesuit novice in 1623. By 1635, when he was ordained, he was already famous as a preacher, and when the Dutch withdrew from Brazil it was he who was chosen to preach the victory sermon. Vieira, a trusted advisor of D. João IV, was sent by him on diplomatic missions to France, Holland and Rome. Beginning in 1652 he spent nine years as a missionary in Maranhão, where he vehemently defended the rights of the Indians against the colonists who wanted to enslave them. As a result, the colonists managed to have him and all the other Jesuits in Pará and Maranhão deported in 1661. Back in Lisbon, his campaign for toleration of the New Christians (crypto-Jews) and his Sebastianist beliefs led to his trial by the Inquisition. He was found guilty, but the ascension of the future D. Pedro II as regent in 1668 led to his release. Vieira’s status as a diplomat and missionary would guarantee his letters a place in Portuguese history, but his style and content are also exceptional: his letters and state-papers are invaluable sources for the period, and his sermons are as readable today as they were in the seventeenth century. Pessoa dubbed him "O Imperador da lingua portuguesa" (quoted in Boxer, ibid., p. 3). *** Paiva, Padre António Vieira, 1608-1697: bibliografia 1133. Arouca V202. Innocêncio XXII, 373. Martinho da Fonseca, Aditamentos, 55. Morais Rocha de Almeida, Dicionário de autores no Brasil colonial (2010) p. 582. Barbosa Machado I, 423. Backer and Sommervogel, VIII, 655. Leite, História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, IX, 216-7. Exposição Bibliográfica da Restauração 1627. JCB, Portuguese and Brazilian Books, 668/3. Not in J.C. Rodrigues.
