The creation of a Vieira’s sermonary: On the disposition of Father Antonio Vieira’s sermons on their Nineteenth-century edition by Father Antonio Onorati

Abstract

The disposition (dispositio) of Father Antonio Vieira’s (1608-1697) sermons on their Editio Princeps, which does not seem to follow any specific order, still is a somewhat obscure issue in the literature about the author, in spite of the clues let by Margarida Vieira Mendes in one of the most important works on Vieira’s sermons, her book A Oratória Barroca de Vieira (“Vieira’s baroque oratory”). Their original disposition, being apparently random, were not taken into consideration in many of later editions, for what the newly published The complete works of Father Antonio Vieira is just one example. The same is true for one of the most important anthologies of Vieira’s sermons from the Nineteenth century, O Crysostomo Portuguez (1878-1890) (“The Portuguese Chrysostom”), organized by other Jesuit, Father Antonio Onorati (1829-1881). In this five-tomes edition, which I intend to analyze here, Onorati tried to present Vieira as a role model for evangelical preachers in the Portuguese language for oratory beginners. Hence, among other editorial interferences, Onorati also altered the sermons’ disposition, in order to organize them according to the Church’s liturgical calendar, as to apparently turn their use easier for the clerics, thus creating a sermonary, a thing that Vieira claimed in the prologue of the Editio Princeps he had avoided to do.