Góis, Manuel de
Creators: name: Carvalho, Mário Santiago De
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2020

description: Manuel de Góis (Emmanuel a Goes, in Latin) was born in Portel (southern Portugal, Alentejo province) in 1543. He was the son of João Vagueiro and Maria Álvares. As a child, Góis might have heard of Manuel Fernandes’s death in 1555, a Jesuit priest whose fame, eloquence, and virtue left a living mark in the Alentejo (Rodrigues 1931: 672). Góis is said to have joined the Society of Jesus on August 31, 1560. According to the historian of the Society of Jesus Franco (1714: 873), at the age of twelve (circa 1555) Góis fled to Castile, where he took four years of Latin and Rhetoric plus two years of Philosophy (circa 1561). According to other versions, after a period of training at the University of Évora and the Coimbra College of Arts, he finished his Philosophy and Theology studies at the University of Évora (Rodrigues 1931: 459). If we follow Franco’s narrative, there is a slight possibility that on July 19, 1562, he had welcomed his brother, Gaspar de Góis, fourteen-years-old, as a novice in Évora. Gaspar de Góis will end his life as a martyr, along with Pedro Dias, during their sea journey to Brazil. However, if we follow Rodrigues’s narrative, Pedro da Fonseca, Sebastião de Morais, Pedro Gómez, or Marcos Jorge are likely candidates for having been his teachers in the Arts course. Manuel de Góis surely met Luis de Molina in Coimbra, though we know that Molina did not appreciate him very much (see below § 2.1.). He could also have met the mathematician Pedro Nunes and the physician Tomás Rodrigues da Veiga on the occasion of their visit to the university (1556). Góis’s quotations of Veiga’s works suggest that he might have been acquainted with him. The good relations between Veiga, who owned the Chair of Prima in Medicine for more than twenty years (1557/79), and the Society of Jesus were very well known up to the point of becoming engraved on Portuguese literature by the renown 17<sup>th</sup> century Jesuit António Vieira, as “Magnus Thomas” (Rodrigues 2003: 172). It is said that Manuel de Góis taught Humanities (Latin and Greek) in the Jesuit Colleges of Bragança, Lisbon, and Coimbra (1564-72). We know for sure that he was in Coimbra already in 1568. Immediately after these eight years of teaching humanities in the Coimbra College of Arts, Góis is said to have been teaching two complete philosophy courses at the same College (1574-78 and 1578-82); note, however, that in 1574, due to illness, Góis was replaced by Francisco Pereira who in 1576 read theology and later became provincial (see Carvalho 1927). Dating from the last year of Góis’s Coimbra period as a master of the College of Arts (1582), Santos (1955a: 563) reports a “thesis” on metaphysics, questioning if the intellect or the will instead, would be the highest human faculty, “Utrum intellectus sit potentia nobilior voluntate” (on this kind of literature, see Gomes 1961). This subject matter will be later addressed by Góis in his commentaries on <em>De Anima</em> and <em>Ethica</em>. Surely, that long teaching period gave him the necessary expertise to take into his own hands the philosophical achievement which made him famous, viz. the main responsibility for the composition of the <em>Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Iesu </em>(hereafter:<em> Coimbra Jesuit Course</em>). In August 1568, Góis writes the mandatory annual letter to Rome, depicting how the Jesuits took care of convicted Jews during their trial and condemnation to death (Rodrigues 1938a: 510). On January 1, 1569, he praises very much Luís da Cruz’s tragicomedy <em>Pródigo</em>, a play he watched in Coimbra in May 1568, while being a lecturer of Latin and Greek. In the letter, he witnesses the general commotion of the entire audience: “omnes incredibili voluptate perfusi sunt (…). Atque haec fere omnia cunctis spectatoribus lachrymas executiebant…” (see Rodrigues 1938b: 78-9). According to his testimony, Góis eyewitnessed the supernova Cassiopeia, in 1572, in Coimbra (<em>In de Caelo</em> I c. 3, q. 1, a. 4, p. 61). As mentioned, the experience of eight years teaching the arts could have been the catalyst to his assuming a prominent role in the edition of the <em>Coimbra Jesuit Course</em> that he began to write during the 1580s and whose first volume was published in Coimbra in 1592. As a matter of fact, on August 14, 1585, Sebastião de Morais reports to Rome that Góis is finishing the <em>De Generatione</em>, and we know that he wrote it after completing a more substantial work, i.e. the commentary on the <em>Physica</em>. Historian of the Society Rodrigues (1938a: 115) dates the beginning of the composition of the <em>Coimbra Jesuit Course</em> by Góis in 1582/83, but other historians date its redaction back to 1581/83 (Santos 1955b and 1955c). On April 2, 1591, acting on behalf of the College of Jesus, Pedro Gonçalves signs, with António de Mariz, the agreement to take forward the printing of “Dos físicos”, i.e. the <em>Physica</em>, by Góis. He witnessed the publication of all his contributions except the volume on the <em>De Anima.</em> Still, according to Franco (1714: 874), when the <em>De Generatione</em> came out from the press (1597), Góis had already died. As we have written for this Encyclopaedia, in the “Editorial History” of this particular title, the commentary on the <em>De Generatione</em> belongs to the second phase of Góis’s work but was published only in the third phase. We do not have any explanation either for the delay affecting the publication of <em>On Generation and Corruption,</em> or for the fact that this is the more carelessly edited of all titles of the <em>Coimbra Jesuit Course</em>. Manuel de Góis death occurred in Coimbra, on February 13, 1597, at the age of fifty-five.