José da Sacra Família

File:Jose da Sacra Familia.jpg

Portrait of José da Sacra Família by Manuel Maria Bordalo Pinheiro (c. 1843)

José da Silva Tavares OAD (14 February 1788 – 14 September 1858), better known by the religious name of José da Sacra Família, was a Portuguese Roman Catholic priest and theologian, a discipline he taught at the University of Coimbra. He was a noted Miguelist, going into exile in France after the Civil War, where he ran a college attended by some of the most distinguished Portuguese intellectuals of the following decades. After having been private secretary to the former infant D. Miguel de Bragança while in exile, he spent his later life as a missionary in England, the country where he died.

Biography

José da Sacra Família was born in Argivai, Póvoa de Varzim, the son of João da Silva Tavares. Destined for religious life, he professed at the Convento do Grilo, in Lisbon, on June 25, 1805, in the Order of the Discalced Augustinian Hermits, also known as the Reformed Order of Saint Augustine or of the Grilo friars. He then adopted the religious name of Friar José da Sacra Família, by which he later became better known.

He enrolled on October 29, 1807 at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Coimbra. At this Faculty he received the degree of Doctor in Theology, in an act concluded on July 20, 1814, defending a dissertation on the virginal conception of Christ.

Remaining at the University as a Philosophy student, but having a brilliant academic curriculum, in 1817 he applied as an opositor and became regent on July 12 of that year of a subsidiary chair of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Coimbra, teaching theological subjects, a task in which he occupied himself until he was appointed, in 1824, professor of Arithmetic and Philosophy at the Royal College of the Arts.

In 1820 he was part of a commission, appointed by the reformer of studies in Portugal, D. Francisco Alexandre Lobo, Bishop of Viseu, designed to reform the preparatory studies necessary for access to the University of Coimbra and to form the plan of the Portuguese selection for use of primary schools. The commission began its work, but the consequences of the Liberal Revolution of 1820 led to the failure of its reformist intentions.

After the Liberal Revolution of 1820, he courageously expressed his political ideas, defending absolutism, against the liberal tide that swept the Coimbra academy. A public proof of this support occurred in 1823 when, on the last day of a triduum addressed to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, he preached a sermon in the University chapel in thanksgiving for the success of Vilafrancada, which was printed in 1824. Throughout the turbulent period that preceded the Portuguese Civil War (1828–1834), Friar Sacra Família was one of the most prominent defenders of Miguelist legitimacy and traditionalist ideas concerning the power of the sovereign.

Friar Sacra Família lived in Coimbra, as a student and teacher, one of the most agitated periods in the history of Portugal, marked by dramatic events that radically changed the country's social and political structures: the French invasions, intense diffusion of liberal revolutionary ideology through of Masonic activism, the implementation of the constitutional regime, the independence of Brazil, and the fratricidal confrontation between legitimists and liberals that led to the Civil War. Despite all this instability, he taught at the Royal College of Coimbra until July 1832, and was then transferred, during D. Miguel's government to the Royal Establishment of Belém, in Lisbon, with the aim to take on the chair of Rational and Moral Philosophy there.

After the civil war ended with the end of Miguelist rule and the extinction of religious orders, he decided to go into exile. Sacra Família left Lisbon for Havre on September 9, 1834 and settled in Paris. In France he began to dedicate himself to private teaching, living off lessons given to young children of Portuguese emigrants, generally aristocratic families taking refuge there as a result of the support given to the defeated Miguelist party.

However, to ease his conscience, he requested a brief pontifical secularization from Rome, which was granted to him on May 7, 1835, becoming a secular priest and resuming his civil name.

In 1836 he moved to Menars, on the outskirts of Paris, working as a teacher of Portuguese Language and Literature at the Prytanée installed by Prince Joseph de Chimay at the Château de Menars, having as students the young Portuguese and Brazilians who attended that establishment.

From 1838 onwards, he founded and began to direct the College D. Pedro de Alcântara, in Fontenay-aux-Roses, aimed at young Portuguese and Brazilians, which was inaugurated on November 17, 1838.

The school acquired a real celebrity, with not only many Portuguese and Brazilians who later became famous being educated there, but also many French people. The school had as students, among others, Pedro de Amorim Viana, Camilo de Monserrate, António José Viale, Joaquim Pedro Quintela and Américo Ferreira dos Santos Silva.

For unknown reasons, he left the College and moved to England in 1848, where he became a Catholic missionary in Witham, Essex. In that location he dedicated himself to the construction of a small temple and engaged in dialogue with Protestants.

In 1851 he left for Hanau, near Frankfurt, as private secretary to D. Miguel I, then in exile there. He remained in the former monarch's company until 1853, then returned to England once more.

He then lived in the Catholic community of Saint Helen in Brentwood, Essex, 35 km from London. José da Sacra Família died there, aged 70, from stomach cancer. He was buried in the local parish cemetery, with Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman and other important figures from English Catholic society attending the ceremony. The funeral was paid for by Francisco José da Silva Torres and his wife Antónia Adelaide Ferreira, who were in London at the time.

Major publications

• Sermão de acção de graças pregado na Real Capela da Universidade de Coimbra em a tarde do último dia do tríduo em que o corpo académico dirigiu solenemente à padroeira da Universidade e de todo o Reino, Maria Santíssima, debaixo do título augusto da Sua Imaculada Conceição, o seu agradecimento pela portentosa restauração da monarquia portuguesa em 1823 (1824)
• Lições elementares de Geographia e Chronologia, com seu atlas apropriado, accommodadas ao estado de conhecimentos e mais circumstancias dos alumnos da aula de Arithmetica e Geographia do Real Collegio das Artes da Universidade (1830)
• Elementos de Arithmetica (1849; translation of the work of Étienne Bézout, new edition based on the Coimbra edition, but annotated and enlarged with a valuable appendix)
• Elementos de geographia e de cosmographia (1851)
• Portuguese translation of the work De illustribus Viris, by Cornelius Nepos, and a collection of themes for use in classes.

References

• Marques, João Francisco (1973–1975). "Para um Estudo da Vida e Obra de Frei José da Sacra Família", Boletim Cultural Póvoa de Varzim, Vols. XII, (1973), pp. 281–322; XIII, (1974), pp. 201–305; XIII (1975), pp. 93–198.
• Marques, João Francisco (1975). José da Silva Tavares e a Actividade Contra-revolucionária no Período do Liberalismo. Póvoa de Varzim: Separata do Boletim Cultural Póvoa de Varzim, Nos. 12, 13 and 14 (illustrated).
• Marques, João Francisco (2006). "O Itinerário do Egresso Agostinho Frei José da Sacra Família e a sua Actuação Contra-revolucionária no Exílio." In: As Ordens Religiosas. Da extinção à Herança", 2.º Encontro Cultural de São Cristóvão de Lafões. Centro Regional das Beiras da Universidade Católica Portuguesa.