Gabriel Malagrida

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Gabriel Malagrida (b. 18 September or 6 December 1689, at Menaggio, in Italy; d. 21 September 1761, at São Nicolau, Lisbon) was an Italian Jesuit missionary to Brazil. He was later caught up in the Távora affair and executed burned in the stake.

[edit] Life

Gabriel Malagrida was the son of Giacomo Malagrida, a doctor, and wife Angela Rusca.

He entered the Jesuit order at Genoa in 1711. He set out from Lisbon in 1721 and arrived on the Island of Maranhão towards the end of the same year. Thence he proceeded to Brazil. For 28 years he worked for the Christianization of the country.

In 1749 he was sent to Lisbon, where he was received with honour by John V of Portugal. In 1751 he returned to Brazil, but was recalled to Lisbon in 1753 upon the request of the queen dowager, Marianna of Austria, mother of Joseph I of Portugal, who had succeeded to the throne upon the death of his father, John V.

The influence which he exerted at the Court of Lisbon offended the Marquis of Pombal (as he would become), the prime minister. He induced Joseph to banish Malagrida to Setúbal (November, 1756) and to remove all the Jesuits from the Court. An attempt upon the life of the royal chamberlain, Teixeira, during which the king was accidentally wounded, was amplified by Pombal into a conspiracy headed by Malagrida and other Jesuits.

Malagrida was declared guilty of high treason, but, being a priest, he could not be executed without the consent of the Inquisition. Meanwhile the officials of the Inquisition, who were friendly towards Malagrida, were replaced by tools of Pombal, who condemned him as a heretic and visionary, whereupon he was strangled at an auto-da-fé, and his body burnt.

The accusation of heresy was based on two visionary treatises which he is said to have written while in prison. His authorship of these treatises has never been proved. A monument in his honour was erected in 1887 in the parochial church of Menaggio.

[edit] References

  • Mury, Histoire de Gabriel Malagrida (Paris, 1884; 2nd ed., Strasburg, 1899; Ger. trans., Salzburg, 1890);
  • Un monumento al P. Malagrida in La Civilità Cattolica, IX, series XIII (Rome, 1888), 30-43, 414-30, 658-79;
  • Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, V (Brussels, 1894), 394-95;
  • Butina, Vida de Malagrida (Barcelona, 1886).

[edit] External link

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.