Joaquim Teófilo Fernandes Braga (24 February 184328 January 1924) was the president of Portugal, serving in 1915. A Portuguese writer, playwright, politician he became the leader of the Republican Provisional Government after the overthrow of King Manuel II, having become president after the resignation of President Manuel de Arriaga.
Biography Teófilo Braga was born in the Azores, in São José, Ponta Delgada. His father, Joaquim Manuel Fernandes Braga, was probably a descendant of one of King João V's illegitimate children, most likely António of Braganza who was a Doctor in Theology, knight of the Order of Christ and known as one of the Children of Palhavã. His mother was Maria José da Câmara Albuquerque, from the island of Santa Maria, another descendant of Portuguese nobility because she could probably be traced back to Urraca Afonso, who was one of King Afonso III's illegitimate children, as the genealogist Ferreira Serpa has shown. Teófilo was the 13th descendant of Diogo Gonçalves de Travassos, father of D. Pedro, who married Violente Velho Cabral, sister of the Commander of Almourol, Gonçalo Velho, and descendant of Cristovão Falcão, a poet and Count of Avranches. His mother had seven children (Teófilo being the youngest), of which three died during infancy, the others being Luís, João Fernandes and Maria José.Lúcia Costa Melo Simas, 2007 Teófilo's father became a widower when Teófilo was only three years old (his mother died at the age of 31). Originally, his father was an artillery lieutenant and commander in Mosteiros, and quit the army after the Concession of Evoramonte, and being without means, he established a nautical school and mathematics in Ponta Delgada, eventually finding a job at the local secondary school. Two years later, the elder Braga married a woman (Ricarda Joaquina Marfim Pereira) with a decidedly bad attitude to the young boy,Of his stepmother, Teófilo would recount as his worst experiences instances when he was kicked by the stepmother for showing her affection, and of a situation where he took revenge by tying her boot-strings together. Simas (2007) also referred to instances when Teófilo would cry passionately at the grave of his departed mother, promising to be successful and never to succumb to despair. fathering two daughters with her (Maria da Glória and Maria do Espírito Santo).
The child took refuge in literature, especially in the public library in Ponta Delgada or at the home of the Viscount of Praia, where his father (for a time) was a private tutor to the Viscount's daughters.It is likely that at this time he became friends with the Viscount; later when he was attaining the chair of Modern Literature Teófilo would count on the Viscount as a benefactor. Simas, 2007 It was in the Ribeira Grande newspaper A Estrela Oriental (The Oriental Star), edited by former pharmacist Francisco Maria Supico (a native of Lousã), that his first naive poem A Canção do Guerreiro ("The Song of the Warrior"), in a patriotic tone, dedicated to his brother João Fernandes Braga was published. He followed these with O Meteoro and O Santelmo. At the age of 15 in 1859, in an edition paid for by the Viscount of Praia, he published a book of verse entitled Folhas Verdes ("Green Leaves") and edited by the newspaper A Ilha (The Island); it was a timid imitation of Folhas Caídas (Fallen Leaves) by noted author Almeida Garrett.
He revealed a tenacious and combative nature and was known to have been disciplined during his time at his secondary school in Ponta Delgada (where his father was teacher) for disparaging remarks made to his teacher. At the end of secondary school Teófilo hoped for future prospects, even informing his father of his intention to leave São Miguel and travel to America for a professional career (likely as a typographer or merchant).Amadeu Carvalho Homem, 1989 But his father suggested expanding his studies at the University of Coimbra, mindful of his child's lack of abilities in his preferred fields. Therefore, Teófilo Braga, as a student, arrived in Coimbra in April 1861, with hopes of achieving a doctorate in Theology or Law; after a year, in which he repeated his prerequisite entrance qualifications, he joined the Faculty of Law at the university. His first lodging would be at the home of Filipe de Quental (1824–1892), professor of Medicine and paternal uncle of the author Antero de Quental.
University
Life as a student was spartan and austere, and he did not adopt a Bohemian lifestyle on campus, preferring to concentrate on his studies. A contemporary, the writer Ramalho Ortigão, had this to say of the young Teófilo: "Simple, sober, hard, with habits of austerity bordering on spartan, he knows how to reduce his requirements as he lacks resources, living in his isolation like Robinson on his island, Teófilo Braga has a unique passion, a passion of a prelate of science. He does not publish a volume per week because there is no machine in Portugal that can accompany the rapidness of his pen. He writes with grace, disinterested, in the satisfaction of his supreme pleasure, pleasure of spilling ideas. This incredible force and at the same time his unique weakness; I've never met another. At his most acerbic nature, he has a passion of his ideas...in the 19th century, with his systematic activity and with his impatience guided by the profoundly pacifist philosophy of Auguste Comte, Teófilo Braga is the most perfect archetype of the uncredited worker and useful citizen. In the middle of Portuguese society...[we are] consoled by the power of contemplation, and a figure such as Teófilo Braga is a rare curiosity that we call...a human"Manuel Amaral, 1915, pp. 437–438
While at Coimbra he became involved with literary controversy and activism; Teófilo joined his contemporaries, who included the writer Antero de Quental, in what became known as Questão Coimbrã (English: Coimbra Question), a loose affiliation of artists with non-traditionalist philosophies and ideals about 1865. He remained on the periphery of this group's activities, though, while writing many of his recognized early works: O Pirilampo, O Fósforo and Tira-Teimas. A few of his professors in the Faculty of Law recognized his application, and arranged tasks that helped his studies, including the organization and classification of monastic documents. But his new projects did not affect his participation with the student activists against the autocratic Rector Basílio Alberto de Sousa Pinto and many of the traditionalists at Coimbra. He reserved his best efforts for his own projects; during this time he convinced editor Gomes Monteiro, of Casa Moré (a publishing house in Oporto), to publish his poem Visão dos Tempos (in 1864). It was a work that borrowed directly for its base the themes from Victor Hugo's La Légende des siècles, and captured in verse all the essential classicism of Judaism and Christianity. The work received many positive reviews. At the time the indisputable authority of Portuguese literature was António Feliciano de Castilho and his Lisbon admirers, who could establish or ruin the reputation of young authors. Castilho, and his protégé Manuel Pinheiro Chagas were captivated by the classic prose of Visão (English: Vision) and congratulated in public Braga's work.
But this was not repeated in his follow-up book of poetry Tempestades Sonoras, which were preceded by a philosophical prologue that was both obscure and indecipherable. Generally, Castilho's conservative Lisbon admirers criticized severely many of the personalities with dissident tendencies, due to considerations both artistic and political. At the time of the publication of Tempestades, Antero de Quental had just completed his Odes Modernas (English: Modern Odes), a shockingly militant work that challenged the conservative constitutional monarchy in Portugal, its class society and the religious hierarchy. Castilho and his prelates decided to begin a philosophical battle, without quarter, against the two iconoclasts, "that they considered exponents of a School at Coimbra of depraved tastes and highly harmful." The literary "conflict" began in earnest when Manuel Pinheiro Chagas published his obra-prima Poema da Mocidade. António Feliciano de Castilho, in a letter-to-the-editor António Maria Pereira, to promote the book and provide a prologue to the volume, critically attacked Antero Quental and Teófilo Braga, as well as their loose affiliation of friends. This was the beginning of the Questão Coimbrã Movement, an impassioned period that involved many Portuguese literary writers, that included many critical texts and apologies. Antero de Quental responded with his work which challenged Castilho's original text, which he entitled Bom Senso e Bom Gosto (English: Good Sense and Good Taste), followed by A Dignidade das Letras (English: A Dignity of Letters) and Literaturas Oficiais (English: Official Literature), while Teófilo challenged with his literary violent work As Teocracias Literárias (English: The Literary Theocracy). After his first year at the university, won by his tenacious inflexibility and idealism, Braga was confronted by the literary conflicts between traditionalists and modernists: "Quickly, I found myself encircled by hate; they cut-off my life in the newspaper; in Law classes, they took my academic distinctions; the critics devastated me rudely; the bookstore owners refused to publish what I wrote; and the patriarchs of Letters, with their authoritative weight smiles with sober equivalence at my intellectual value, circulating depressive stories about my character and customs, which served to dismake my sacrifices. Another would have given up. I saw myself forced to reverse the base of my existence, abandon the Art that had seduced me, because it removed my contemplative serenity, and I launched myself into criticizing, into erudite knowledge, into science, into philosophy."
Rocha Martins referred to an interview that he had with Braga, in 1916, and where, as a visible admirer of the writer and president, he wrote of Teófilo's life and difficulties at Coimbra. Teófolio had recalled that one time, in Oporto, at the home of the librarian Moré he had met Camilo Castelo Branco, who had extended his hand in friendship, but Braga had "turned his back". As Rocha Martins elaborated, Teófilo "was just a youth then...today he would not have turned his back on anyone...All men should learn to forgive".Maria Luísa V. de Paiva Boléo, 1996 It was not just an attack on aesthetic differences between political ideologies, Castilho also endorsed his protégé (Chagas) for a professorship in the department of Modern Literature of the Faculty of Letters, and used his letter to champion him for the position, in which both Teófilo and his friend Antero Quental were interested.
In April 1868 Teófilo Braga married Maria do Carmo Xavier (1841–1911), sister of Júlio de Matos, generally from a wealthy family (the couple would live at the Matos home for a time). Their life together would be tragic, marked by the premature deaths of their children: Joaquim, just after his birth (1869), Teófilo, at 13 (1886) and in March of the next year, Maria da Graça, at 16 (1887). Maria do Carmo, whose health was always fragile, was inconsolable (and by the time her husband held the Presidency her health was debilitated and she died away soon afterwards). Camilo Castelo Branco a declared enemy of the writer, would be unusually forgiving, when Teófilo's children died within a brief period of one another; at the time, Camilo would write the sonet A maior dor humana (English: The Greatest Human Pain).