Bento Teixeira
Bento Teixeira · Arts & Literature
New Christian author of the Prosopopeia (1601), the first poet of Brazil
vers 1561, Porto, Portugal — vers 1600 (ou 1618 selon les sources), Lisbonne, Portugal
Porto, Pernambouc, Lisbonne
Bento Teixeira is recognized among Jewish contributors to Arts & Literature — New Christian author of the Prosopopeia (1601), the first poet of Brazil
Origins and early life
Bento Teixeira was born around 1561 in Porto, into a family of New Christians — the Jews of Portugal forcibly converted in 1497 and their descendants — and was taken as a child to Brazil, where he grew up in the sugar country of Pernambuco and became a schoolmaster; the academic studies that document him treat his New Christian status as established, and this fiche adds that no individual ancestor is named in them.
Work and career
He is remembered as the first poet of Brazil: his Prosopopeia, an epic in the manner of Camões's Lusiads celebrating Jorge de Albuquerque Coelho, governor of Pernambuco, was printed in Lisbon in 1601 — the first work of literature by a Brazil-based author ever published. His life was darker than his verse. The sources record that in 1594 he killed his wife, who had been unfaithful; and when the Inquisition's visitor came to Pernambuco in 1595 he was denounced as a Judaizer — for keeping the Sabbath, for doubting the faith — arrested, and shipped to Lisbon for trial.
Later years
Sentenced in 1599 to prison and penance, he died soon after, around 1600 by most accounts, though some sources say 1618: a martyr of the Inquisition in the eyes of the historians of Sephardi Brazil, and the founder, in spite of everything, of a national literature.
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Source: https://www.sephardichorizons.org/Volume1/Issue3/BitterTaste.html
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New Christian author of the Prosopopeia (1601), the first poet of Brazil
Source: https://www.sephardichorizons.org/Volume1/Issue3/BitterTaste.html
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