The Mother of the Missions
C.R. Boxer profiles the learned and pious Duchess of Aveiro, a proud and forceful member of the Iberian aristocracy, who devoted her wealth to the propagation of the Gospel overseas.
This remarkable woman was born at Azeitao, Portugal, on January 11th, 1630. She was the eldest daughter of Dom Jorge de Lencastre, Duke of Aveiro, and of his Spanish wife, daughter of the Duke of Maqueda.
Christened with a resounding roll of names, reminiscent of the Spanish aristocrat in Voltaire’s Candide, Maria de Guadalupe Luiza Melchiora Antonia Dominica Raymunda Boaventura Egidia Sebastiana Margarida de Lencastre Cardenas Manrique, came of the highest aristocracy in the Iberian Peninsula.
Unlike many girls, even among the nobility, she received an excellent private education, learning to read Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Latin with facility, and also classical Greek and English if one of her eighteenth-century Portuguese biographers is to be believed.
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