http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/António_Vieira
....the reform of the Inquisition also occupied his attention. To silence him his enemies then denounced him to that tribunal, and he was cited to appear before the Holy Office at Coimbra to answer points smacking of heresy in his sermons, conversations and writings.
He had believed in the prophecies of a 16th-century shoemaker poet, Bandarra, (((no I am not making this up, it's in Wikipedia, read it yourself))) dealing with the coming of a ruler who would inaugurate an epoch of unparalleled prosperity for the church and for Portugal, these new prosperous times were to be called the Quinto Império or "Fifth Empire" (also called "Sebastianism"). In Vieira's famous opus, Clavis Prophetarum he had endeavoured to prove the truth of his dreams from passages of Scripture.
As he refused to submit, the Inquisitors kept him in prison from October 1665 to December 1667, and finally imposed a sentence which prohibited him from teaching, writing or preaching.
It was a heavy blow for the Society, and though Vieira recovered his freedom and much of his prestige shortly afterwards on the accession of King Pedro II, it was determined that he should go to Rome to procure the revision of the sentence, which still hung over him though the penalties had been removed. During a six years' residence in the Eternal City Vieira won his greatest triumphs. Pope Clement X invited him to preach before the College of Cardinals, and he became confessor to Queen Christina of Sweden and a member of her literary academy. (((I assume this means that our Jesuit Brazilian Futurist here ran into Rene Descartes at some time, but I don't think I even want to go there... now just now, this jetlag is killing me.)))
At the request of the pope he drew up a report of two hundred pages on the Inquisition in Portugal, with the result that after a judicial inquiry Pope Innocent XI suspended it for five years (1676–81). Ultimately Vieira returned to Portugal with a papal bull exempting him from the jurisdiction of the grand inquisitor, and in January 1681 he embarked for Brazil.
He resided in Bahia and occupied himself in revising his sermons for publication, and in 1687 he became superior of the province. A false accusation of complicity in an assassination, and the intrigues of members of his own Company, clouded his last months, and on July 18, 1697 he died in Salvador, Bahia.
His works form perhaps the greatest monument of Portuguese prose. Two hundred discourses exist to prove his fecundity, while his versatility is shown by the fact that he could treat the same subject differently on half a dozen occasions. His letters, simple and conversational in style, have a deep historical and political interest, and form documents of the first value for the history of the period.
As a man, Vieira would have made a nobler figure if he had not been so great an egotist and so clever a courtier. The readiness with which he sustained directly opposite opinions at short intervals with equal warmth argues a certain lack of sincerity. His name, however, is identified with great causes, justice to the Jews and humanity to the Indians. The fact that he was in advance of his age led to many of his troubles....
