Background
Gregório de Matos e Guerra was born in Salvador, Bahia, to Gregório de Matos (a Portuguese nobleman) and Maria da Guerra (a matron).
Gregório de Matos e Guerra was born in Salvador, Bahia, to Gregório de Matos (a Portuguese nobleman) and Maria da Guerra (a matron).
University of Coimbra.
He is the patron of the 16th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. In 1672, he served as solicitor for the city of Bahia to the Portuguese court. In 1679 he returned to Brazil as a widower.
A malcontent, he criticized everyone and everything: the church, government and all classes of people, from the rich and powerful to the lowly pauper, sparing no race or profession.
His irreverent and satiric writings eventually got him into trouble, and Gregório was exiled to Portuguese Angola in 1694, where he is said to have contracted a lethal disease. Very ill, he managed to return to Brazil the following year, but he was prohibited from entering Bahia and from distributing his poetry.
He instead went to Recife, where he died in 1696. Tradition says that a few minutes before death, he asked two Catholic priests to come at him and stand each one aside of his body.
Thus he described himself as "dying between two thieves, like Jesus Christ in his crucifixion".