Osório, Jerónimo

Abstract

Easily the best-known Portuguese writer in sixteenth-century Europe, Osório engineered wide exposure for his many books, on a variety of topics, but all of them in Latin. He was educated outside Portugal, including a particularly formative period in Bologna, but most of his life was spent in his own country, where for more than 20 years he was bishop of the Algarve.

Though not an original thinker, Osório’s ability to convey orthodox Catholic beliefs in elegant Latin prose brought him many readers, including in the Protestant world. His early works of the 1540s, On Civil and Christian Nobility and On Glory, show him to have been a Christian humanist, with an unusual (for Portugal) interest in and knowledge of the work of Homer. However, he could not accept the work of the classical philosophers because it was not based on revealed religion. He was also profoundly critical of Machiavelli, on the grounds of his hostility to Christianity.

Osório was also well known, especially in England, for his open letter to Queen Elizabeth, who he tried to persuade to return to the faith of her ancestors. It led to a polemic with Anglican theologians which lasted for many years. His writings about kingship do not move very far from the ideas of St Thomas Aquinas.