The great prose-writer of the century, ANTONIO VIEIRA (1608-97), was born in the same year and city as D. Francisco Manuel de Mello and spent a life as unquiet. He was not literary in the same sense as Mello, but he has always been considered one of the great classics of the Portuguese language. He was the son of Cristovam Vieira Ravasco, _escrivão das devassas_ at Lisbon, but at the age of seven he accompanied his parents to Brazil (1615) and began his education in the Jesuit college at Bahia. In 1623, by his own ardent wish, long opposed by his parents, he became a Jesuit novice and professed in the following year. Before he was thirty he was Professor of Theology in the Bahia college and a celebrated preacher, the sermons in which he encouraged the citizens of Bahia in the war against the Dutch being especially eloquent. In 1641 he was chosen with Padre Simão de Vasconcellos to accompany D. Fernando de Mascarenhas, son of the viceroy, to Europe in order to congratulate King João IV on his accession. Vieira preached in the Royal Chapel on New Year’s Day, 1642. Both his sermons and his conversation greatly impressed the king, and from 1641 to the end of the reign (1656) his influence was great although not unchallenged. They were critical years in Portugal’s foreign policy, and Vieira, who refused a bishopric but was appointed Court preacher, was entrusted with several important missions--to Paris and The Hague (February-July 1646), London, Paris, and The Hague (1647-8), and Rome (1650). In 1652 he returned to Brazil as a missionary in Maranhão, and during two years roused the bitter hostility of the settlers by his protection of the slaves or rather by his opposition to slavery. In 1655 he again left Lisbon for Maranhão,[626] and during five arduous years showed unfailing courage and energy in dealing with natives and settlers. The latter in 1661 attacked the mission-house and arrested and expelled the Jesuits. At home King João, Vieira’s friend, was dead. Differences arose between the Queen Regent supported by Vieira, and her son, and one of the first acts of the latter on taking power into his own hands was to banish Vieira to Oporto and later to Coimbra. Here in the spring of 1665[627] he wrote that curious work _Historia do Futuro_ (1718), which was to interpret Portugal’s destiny by the light of old prophecies, but of which only the introduction (_livro anteprimeiro_) was printed. An even stranger book, in which he had paid serious attention politically to the prophecies of Bandarra, was denounced in 1663, and in October 1665 Vieira was consigned to the prison of the Inquisition at Coimbra. His sentence was not read till 1667 (December 24), and it condemned him to seclusion in a college or convent of his Order and to perpetual silence in matters of religion. The deposition of King Afonso VI (1667) and the accession of his brother Pedro II altered Vieira’s prospects, and his eloquent voice was again heard in the pulpit.