Gonçalo da Silveira

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Gonçalo da Silveira (b. 23 February 1526, at Almeirim, about forty miles from Lisbon; died 6 March 1561) was a Portuguese Jesuit missionary in southern Africa.

[edit] Life

He was the tenth child of Dom Luis da Silveira, first count of Sortelha, and Dona Beatrice Coutinho, daughter of Dom Fernando Coutinho, Marshal of the Kingdom of Portugal. Losing his parents in infancy, he was brought up by his sister Philippa de Vilhena and her husband the Marquis of Tavora.

He was educated by the Franciscans of the monastery of Santa Margarida until 1542, when he went to finish his studies in the University of Coimbra, but he had been there little more than a year when he was received into the Society of Jesus by Fr. Miron, rector of the Jesuit college at Coimbra.

He was appointed provincial of India in 1555. The appointment was approved by St. Ignatius Loyola a few months before his death. Gonçalo's term of government in India lasted three years. He used to say that God had given him the great grace of unsuitability for government - apparently basing this on a certain want of tact in dealing with human weakness.

The new provincial Antonio de Quadros sent him to the unexplored mission field of south-east Africa. Landing at Sofala on 11 March, 1560, Gonçalo proceeded to Otongwe near Cape Corrientes. There, during his stay of seven weeks, he instructed and baptized the Makaranga chief, Gamba and about 450 natives of his kraal. Towards the end of the year he started up the Zambesi River, on his expedition to the capital of the Monomotapa which appears to have been the N'Pande kraal, close by the M'Zingesi River, a southern tributary of the Zambesi. He arrived there on 26 December, 1560, and remained until his death. During this period he baptized the chief and a large number of his subjects. Some Arabs from Mozambique agitated against the missionaries, and Silveira was strangled in his hut by order of the chief.

The expedition sent to avenge his death never reached its destination, while his apostolate came to an abrupt end from a want of missionaries to carry on his work.

[edit] References

Chadwick, Life of the Ven. Goncalo Da Silveira (Roehampton, 1910);
Theai, Records of S. E. Africa, printed for the Government of Cape Colony, VII (1901);
Wilmot, Monomotapa (London, 1896)