The church of St Cecilia (São Paulo), where Plinio was baptised on 7 June 1909
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira was born on 13 December 1908, a Sunday, while the bells of the church of St Cecilia seemed to be celebrating the event with their festive chimes. He was baptised in that same church on 7 June 1909.54 His parents, João Paulo Corrêa de Oliveira and Lucilia Ribeiro dos Santos, belonged to old families of the rural aristocracy that had been spontaneously formed in Brazil as early as the sixteenth century and which, because of its social status and refinement of manner, can be compared to the European nobility of that period.
The Corrêa de Oliveiras descended from the sugar mill lords, first colonisers of Brazil, the “well-born, the nobles of their time”.55 João Alfredo Corrêa de Oliveira,56 brother of Plinio’s grandfather, Leodegario, had sketched an unforgettable profile of those “strong generations who loved the land, where they saw shining the gold of their freedom and independence, and from which they harvested wealth and virtue. (…) For these generations the land they inherited was a fideicommissum of their families and a coat of arms they treasured more than their lives, to the same extent as honour.”57 João Alfredo, born on 12 December 1835, gifted with extraordinary intelligence, was professor of Law in the University of Recife, and had a brilliant political career: he was congressman for a number of legislatures, minister of the Empire at only 35 years of age in the Rio Branco conservative Cabinet, then Senator for life of the Empire, Councillor of the Council of State and finally President of the Council of Ministers. In this role, on 13 May 1888, he had Princess Isabella, the Imperial Regent, sign the famous Lei Aurea that abolished slavery in Brazil. After the proclamation of the Republic, he was an important member of the Brazilian Monarchical Directory and President of the Banco do Brasil. He died at 87 years of age in Rio de Janeiro on 6 March 1919.
Plinio’s maternal family, the Ribeiro dos Santos, belonged to the traditional class of the “Four-Hundred-Year Paulistas”,58 founders of the city of São Paulo, and descended from those bandeirantes who had fought against the Dutch heretics. An important figure among his maternal ancestors was his great-grandfather, Gabriel José Rodrigues dos Santos, professor at the Law School and congressman in the imperial Parliament. He was considered one of the most brilliant orators and experts in public law of his time.59 His daughter, Dona Gabriela Ribeiro dos Santos, Lucilia’s mother, frequented the famous salon of Dona Veridiana, one of the most influential women in Paulista society.60
At the beginning of the century, the chácara of Dona Veridiana, a small palace in Renaissance style in the Higienópolis area, was the centre of social and intellectual life of São Paulo, together with “Vila Penteado”, the small Art Nouveau palace that Count Antônio Alvares Penteado had had built in the same area by the architect Carlos Ekman.
Notes:
54. The church of St Cecilia was built in 1884. In 1895 The Rt Rev Joaquim Arcoverde, then bishop of São Paulo, created the parish of St Cecilia, nominating as parish priest Father Duarte Leopoldo e Silva, his future successor to the government of the diocese. In 1901 he was succeeded by Father Benedito de Souza.
55. Fernando de Azevedo, Canaviais e Engenhos na vida politica do Brasil, in Obras Completas, 2nd , (São Paulo s. d., Ediçoes Melhoramentos), vol. XI, p. 107.
56. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “João Alfredo Corrêa de Oliveira”, Diário de São Paulo, 21 December 1936, now in J. S. Clá Dias, Dona Lucilia, vol. III, pp. 215-16. In this article the young nephew describes with great psychological penetration the intellectual evolution of his great uncle from positions of strict liberalism to a sincere and practising Catholicism.
57. João Alfredo Corrêa de Oliveira, O Barão de Goiana e sua Época Genealógica, in Minha Meninice & outros ensaios, (Recife, Editora Massangana, 1988), p. 56.
58. The Four-hundred-year Paulistas “are something more than the noble, than the ‘real gentleman’, than the aristocratic, they are the authors of the almanac of Brazilian Gotha. They are the holders and dispensers of Brazilianess. For them the world was born four hundred years ago when the first Portuguese and their families, from whom they descend, disembarked in Brazil. The Four- hundred-year Paulista is amiable, kind and proud. He has a marked sense of caste and is inaccessible: those who constitute 70 percent of the political ruling class of the country, defend themselves from society by every means”, Corrado Pizzinelli, Il Brasile nasce oggi, (Milan, Eli, 1955), p. 284.
59. On Gabriel José Rodrigues dos Santos (1816-58), J. S. Clá Dias, Dona Lucilia, vol. I, p. 45, vol. II, pp. 19-26. The most complete work on this personage is by Paulo do Valle, Biographia do Dr. Gabriel José Rodrigues dos Santos, published with his Discursos Parlamentares collected by A. J. RIBAS, Rio de Janeiro, Tip. Paula Brito, 1863.
60. Veridiana Valeria Prado (1825-1910), daughter of Antônio, Baron of Iguape, married Martinho da Silva Prado (1811-91) and had four children, destined to carry out an influential role in Brazilian life: Antônio (1840-1929), Martinico (1843-1906), Caio (1853-89) and Eduardo (1860-1901). A true “matriarch” of the family, she died in 1910 at 85 years of age. Darrell E. Levi, A Família Prado, (São Paulo, Cultura 70, 1977), p. 63; English orig.: The Prados of São Paulo: An Elite Brazilian Family in a changing society, 1840-1930. The Prado, with the Penteado, “symbolised the economic and industrial life in São Paulo during the First Republic” (ibid, p. 104).