Gregório de Mattos e Guerra, who earned the nickname "Devil’s mouthpiece", was born in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, on December 23rd 1636 [1]. His grandfather, Pedro Gonçalves de Mattos, belonged to the organization Santo Ofício da Inquisição in 1618 while he was living in Bahia  [2]. His father, Gregório de Mattos, as well as his grandfather, was from Guimarães, Portugal. His mother, María da Guerra, was from Bahia. Gregório de Mattos belonged to a family of landowners, contractors and civil servants in the colony. In 1642 he studied in the Jesuit College in Bahia and later, in 1650, he continued his studies in Lisbon. Two years later, in 1652, he studied at the venerable University of Coimbra, where he graduated in Canon Law in 1661. That same year, he married Michaela de Andrade, who came from a family of magistrates, in Lisbon. Quickly promoted in his juridical career, in 1663, after having his "thoroughbred" verified, he was honorably elected as Colony judge in Alcácer do Sal, [3]. For the period 1665-1666, he was appointed for the Santa Casa da Misericordia (a charity institution)  [4]. Two years later, in 1668, he was honorably conferred to represent Bahia in the Law Court held on January 27th in Lisbon. Three years later, in 1671, as magistrate, he was promoted to Civil Judge in Lisbon, and in 1672, nominated as attorney for the Senate. On January 20th 1674, he represented Bahia in the Law Court again, however that year he was removed from office as an attorney. His daughter, Francisca, who had been born in Lisbon, was baptized in 1674 at the parish São Sebastião da Pedreira. His wife died in 1678, and there is no news of his son with Michaela de Andrade. In 1679 D. Gaspar Barata de Mendonça appointed him as Chief Judge of the Ecclesiastic Court in Bahia and Pedro II appointed him as Chief Treasurer of the Cathedral in 1682, after subjected to tonsure in 1681. Distinguished as an important and renowned magistrate, his sentences were published by the lawyer Emanuel Álvarez Pegas in 1682 and 1685  [5], who embarked Gregório de Mattos for Bahia, which made the clergyman return in a hurry in order to be entitled to an ecclesiastic prebend. In 1683, months after his arrival, he was removed from the Curia in Bahia by the new Archbishop D. Fr. João da Madre de Deus  [6], because he did not want to use a cassock and he did not accept the imposition of orders, necessary to perform his functions at the Archbishopric. In Bahia, he had even more makings of a satirical poet before his idle and promiscuous life in Salvador. As most priests did not give a good example (the clergy used to be called "stall of beasts"), Gregório de Mattos decided to write chronicles on the customs and the society in Bahia in general, and directed them against the wealthy and ruling classes, blacks and whites, colonizers and slaves, the native nobility and its mulatto girls. Not being a clergyman any longer, as what he had lived before as a magistrate, he began to build on his new trend towards poetry: creating plenty of satirical (he used to call people from Bahia of infernal rabble), erotic, pornographic, grotesque, lyric and sacred poems. Following the best tradition of medieval Iberian poetry, of folk poetry and as a reader of the Spanish Golden Age poets [7], Gregório de Mattos strung his lyre and sharpened his satire. In 1684, he began his adventures in the Recóncavo region in Bahia of All Saints, in his forefathers’ telluric roots, together with his friends, among which there was the Portuguese poet Tomás Pinto Brandão (1664-1773). In the 80’s he married María de Póvoas (or dos Povos) in Bahia, with whom he had a son called Gonçalo. In 1685, Antonio Roiz da Costa, ecclesiastic attorney in Bahia who would later be satirized by the poet, accused him before the Inquisition for having a free life and being "a daring man who had no Christian manners" [8]. The piece or letter that resulted from the accusation of heresy, which stated: "he says bad things about Jesus Christ and does not take his hat off when a procession passes by his doorway", did not have follow-up because one of the witnesses had moved from Bahia and the other one had died. We believe that it was the prestige of his family, among other factors, that made the accusation vanish. In 1691, Gregório de Mattos became Brother at Santa Casa da Misericordia in Bahia, and one year later, he paid a debt he had with Santa Casa in Lisbon. Because of his satirical poems against many people and mainly because of the portraits he made of the governor Antonio Luiz Gonçalves da Cámara Coutinho  [9], "the homosexual lay brother" he was threatened by the governor’s children, who had promised to kill him. His friend governor João de Alencastro [10] and other colleagues began a plan to capture him and send him to Angola with no right to go back to Bahia. In 1694, it did happen against the poet’s will. In Luanda, when he arrived, he got involved in a military conspiracy, demanding a better salary and a change in the currency exchange, and he favored the local government, with Governor Henrique Jacques de Magalhães, and participated in the imprisonment and sentence of the sedition  [11]. As a reward, he received permission to return to Brazil and stay in Recife, far from Bahia and from his enemies. However, he had contracted a fever in Africa and died in Recife on November 26th 1695 at the age of 59, six days after Zumbi’s death (the black’s leader in the movement against slavery).

His apographic poetry -reproduction of an original manuscript- remained kept in codices in Portugal (being the most important the one at the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon, Reserved Section, number 3,576), in Brazil and the USA. The historian Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen published 39 poems in 1850 in the "Florilégio da Poesia Brasileira", published in Lisbon. From then on, Gregório de Mattos would be included in several anthologies and Parnassus. Part of his apographic work was published by Alfredo do Valle Cabral (1882) and Afrânio Peixoto (1923-1933) in 6 volumes, which was later published by Academia Brasileira de Letras. James Amado (1968) published his complete works in 7 volumes, reissued in 2 volumes by Editora Record in 1990 under "Obra Poética", with all the erotic, pornographic and grotesque parts which were unknown and censored by Afranio Peixoto.

Critics of the poet began in the 18th century with a manuscript biography attached to some codices, with variants, done by Manuel Pereira Rabelo. This biography was one of the most important pieces that reviewed the poet’s life, in the unceasing search for documented resources. From the 19th century until present times, the poet Gregório de Mattos had his biography increased as well as studies on his life and work. We are currently concluding the most extensive list of bibliographic and documented resources on the most important satiric poet in the Portuguese and Brazilian literature during the Baroque period. His apographic work will eventually be the object of a critical edition carried out by a team of specialists. As Professor Antonio Houaiss said, "the fact is that historic investigation on Gregório de Mattos’ life has already achieved an insuperable documentation degree, as two decades ago documentation on his life was something from which one could not expect much". In fact, biographic investigation has contributed a lot in the location of documents and poetic codices for the portrait of the wandering poet, Gregório de Mattos, and to know his work. We have tried to locate those documentary resources – life and work - in Brazil and in Portugal to make easier the comprehension of the Brazilian poet and his identities as a magistrate in Portugal and a clergyman and poet in his homeland, Brazil, which he once called "native land plague"

NOTES

1. We have determined the poet’s year of birth as 1636 from the document: Sumários Matrimoniais da Câmara Eclesiástica de Lisboa, 1661, sheaf 2, number 69, manuscript at the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon, Seção de Reservados. In 1986 the Centro de Estudos Baianos of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) organized a Symposia on Gregório de Mattos e Guerra’s life and work, at the 350 anniversary of his birth. On that occasion, the Brazilian General Post Office, Empresa Brasileira de Correios e Telégrafos, launched a commemorative stamp; the Biblioteca Nacional in Rio de Janeiro carried out a documentary exhibit on the poet, and the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon had a postcard printed in order to register the event. In 1996, the Centro de Estudos Baianos organized an International Meeting "The poet is reborn every year", commemorating the 360 anniversary of Gregório de Mattos e Guerra’s birth.

2. Novinsky, Anita. Cristãos Novos na Bahia. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1972, p. 115 and p. 138.

3. Habilitações de Genere; "Leitura de Bacharel", Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, sheaf 2, number 6, letter G.

4. According to Nome dos Provedores da Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Alcácer do Sal, published by Santa Casa da Misericórdia, Alcácer do Sal, 1957. And also in the manuscript book "Termo de eleitação de irmãos (Actas), 1660-1708" at Santa Casa da Misericórdia in Alcácer do Sal. This information is owed to Dr. João Carlos Lázaro Faria, from the Museu Nacional de Pedro Nunes in Alcácer do Sal.

5. There are two sentences by the judge Gregório de Mattos Guerra, elaborated in 1671 and 1672, and published in Pegas, Emmanuellis Alvarez; Commentaria ad Ordinationes Regni Portugalliae, Ulyssipone, 1682. Tomus Septimus, p. 290 to 303 (sentence from p. 294 to p. 296) and p. 638 to 648. Another sentence by Gregório de Mattos e Guerra is published in Pegas, Tractus de Exclusione, Inclusione, Succesione et Eredictione Maioratus, Pars Primas, Ulyssipone, 1685, p. 569 to p. 570.

6. Archbishopric in Bahia from 1683 to 1686.

7. Gregório de Mattos’ impregnation after reading Quevedo and Góngora made his critics consider him a plagiarist. The book by Gomes, João Carlos Teixeira. Gregório de Mattos: O Boca de Brasa, Rio Vozes, 1985, has recently located this problem within an intertextuality study.

8. Mattos, Gregório de; Obras Completas (published by James Amado), Salvador, Janaína, 1968, 3º vol., p. 716 to p. 727. These are three satires or grotesque portraits against Dr. Antonio Roiz da Costa, called the Christ’s habit’s knight (Cavaleiro do Hábito de Cristo).

9. Governor of Bahia, the capital city in Brazil-colony, from 1690 to 1694.

10. The poet’s and governor’s friend (1694-1702) whose "legend" says he had ordered leaving a book in the Palace so people could copy Gregório de Mattos’ poems. Unfortunately such a manuscript codex has never been found.

11. On this subject, we have the article: Peres, Fernando da Rocha, Gregório de Mattos e Guerra em Angola, "Afro-Ásia", num. 6-7, CEAO from the Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, 1968, p. 17-40. See also Peres, Fernando da Rocha. Gregório de Mattos e Guerra: uma revisão biográfica. Salvador, Edições Macunaíma, 1983.