Jerónimo Osório da Fonseca was a Portuguese Roman Catholic humanist bishop, historian and polemicist.
Background
Osório was a native of Lisbon and one of two sons of Joao Osorio de Fonseca, and Francisca, daughter of Affonso Gil de Gouveia, Ouvidor of the lands of the Infante Ferdinand, both families of aristocratic lineage.
His father, appointed by John III to be Ouvidor Geral (Auditor-General) of Portuguese rule in India, went alone, and there found himself under the authority of Vasco da Gama.
Education
Jerónimo, at school in Portugal, showed such prodigious ability in Latin that in 1519, when aged 13, his mother sent him to Salamanca in Spain to study civil law.
In 1525, aged 19, he went to Paris to study Aristotelian logic and Natural philosophy.
Career
Returning to Portugal, Osorio next proceeded for theology to Bologna, where he made such a name that King John III invited him in 1536-1537 to lecture on scripture in the reorganized university of Coimbra.
He returned to Lisbon in 1540, and acted as secretary to Prince Luiz, and as tutor to his son, the prior of Crato, obtaining also two benefices in the diocese of Vizeu. In 1542 he printed in Lisbon his treatise De nobilitate.
After the death of Prince Luiz in 1553, he withdrew from court to his churches. He was named archdeacon of Evora in 1560, and much against his will became bishop of Silves in 1564.
The Cardinal Prince Henry, who had bestowed these honours, desired to employ him at Lisbon in state business when King Sebastian took up the reins of power in 1568, but Osorio excused himself on the ground of his pastoral duties, though he showed his zeal for the commonwealth by writing two letters, one in which he dissuaded the king from going to Africa, the other sent during the latter's first expedition there (1574), in which he called on him to return to his kingdom.
Sebastian looked with disfavour on opponents of his African adventure, and Osorio found it prudent to leave Portugal for Parma and Rome on the pretext of a visit ad limina. His scruples regarding residence, and the appeals of the king and the Cardinal Prince, prevented him enjoying for long the hospitality of Pope Gregory XIII, and he returned to his diocese and died at Tavira on the 20th of August 1580.
An exemplary prelate, a learned scholar and an able critic, Osorio gained a European reputation by writing in Latin, then the lingua franca of the studious throughout Christendom, and the perfection of his prose style caused him to be named by contemporaries "the Portuguese Cicero. "
His well-stocked library was carried off from Faro when the earl of Essex captured the town in 1596, and many of the books were bestowed on the Bodleian at Oxford.
Osorio's book was turned into Portuguese by F. M. do Nascimento, into French by J. Crispin (2 vols. , Geneva, 1610), and an English paraphrase in 2 vols. by J. Gibbs came out in London in 1752.
His Opera omnia were published by his nephew (4 vols. , Rome, 1592). Two of his polemical treatises have been translated into English, his Epistle to Elizabeth Queue of England by R. Shacklock (Antwerp, 1565), and his Confutation of M. W. Haddon by J. Fen (Louvain, 1568).
His Portuguese epistles, including the two before mentioned, were printed in Lisbon in two editions in 1818 and 1819, and in Paris in 1859.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Haddon said of him that "he was a most perverse, overthwart Brawler, who besides a commendable Facility in the Latin Tongue, could profit the Publick nothing at all. "