After preaching before the Court in Lent 1669 he proceeded to Rome on business of the Company and spent six years there. He preached several times in Italian, and Queen Christina of Sweden, who had settled in Rome in 1655, offered him the post of preacher and confessor, which he refused. In August 1675 he returned to Lisbon, where he was coldly received by the Prince Regent, and in 1681 retired to Brazil. In the same year he was burnt in effigy by the mob at Coimbra. A special brief given to him by the Pope secured his person from the attacks of the Inquisition. But even at Bahia he was not free from troubles and intrigues. His activity continued to the end of his long life. In 1688 he preached in Bahia Cathedral, and was Visitor of the Province of Brazil from 1688 to 1691. Even in 1695 we find him, although feeble and broken, writing letters and eager to finish his _Clavis Prophetica_[628] (or _Prophetarum_), which now lies in manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris and elsewhere. Seventy years earlier he had been entrusted by the Jesuits with the composition of the annual Latin letters of the Company. Vieira’s vein of caustic satire no doubt made him numerous enemies and increased the difficulties which his advocacy of the Jews and slaves and his fearless stand against injustice and oppression were certain to produce. Ambitious and fond of power, he could devote himself to causes which entailed a life of toil and poverty. An energetic if unsuccessful diplomatist, an ingenious thinker, a statesman of far-reaching views, he was also a fantastic dreamer, but his dreams and restlessness rarely affected the sanity of his judgement. The works of this great writer and extraordinary man are an inexhaustible mine of pure and vigorous prose, at its best in his numerous _Cartas_, written in _selecta et propria dictio, nusquam verbis indulgens sed rebus inhaerens_. A Portuguese critic, Dias Gomes, notes his ’sustained elegance’, and we may sometimes sigh for an interval of Mello’s familiarity or Frei Luis de Sousa’s charm. In his famous _Sermões_ he bowed intermittently to the taste of the time for conceit and artifice. He condemned the practice in a celebrated sermon, but indeed a certain humorous quaintness was not foreign to his temperament, and in the obscurity, at least, of the _cultos_ he never indulged. When inspired by patriotism or indignation his words soar beyond cold reason and colder conceits to a fiery eloquence. Among writers whom he influenced was the Benedictine FREI JOÃO DOS PRAZERES (1648-1709), of whose principal work, _O Principe dos Patriarchas S. Bento_, or _Empresas de S. Bento_, only the first two volumes were published. Closer imitators of Vieira were FREI FRANCISCO DE SANTA MARIA (1653-1713), author of _O Ceo Aberto na Terra_ (1697) and many sermons, and the Jesuit preacher ANTONIO DE SÁ (1620-78), whose _Sermões Varios_ appeared in 1750. FOOTNOTES: