As a researcher and author, Cardinal Saraiva was an authority in the fields of philology and history: his ten-volume Complete Works (published posthumously in 1856-1878) were standard reference works for more than a century.
Francisco Manuel Justiniano Saraiva was the son of notary Manuel José Saraiva and his wife Leonor Maria Teodora Correia; born on 26 January 1766 in Rua das Flores, Ponte de Lima, he was baptized on 9 February in the town's Parish Church of Our Lady of the Angels (Nossa Senhora dos Anjos).[1]
Saraiva was an advocate of the ideals of Liberalism and Enlightenment. While it is often said that he had become a Freemason (historian Oliveira Marques has written that Saraiva was initiated in a Coimbra lodge sometime before 1821, having adopted Condorcet as his symbolic name), Saraiva himself has left texts denying any association.[3]
As a result of the political instability of the time, the 1822 Constitution was suspended just one year later, following the Vilafrancada uprising. Saraiva renounced his public and ecclesiastical offices (he had been elected Deputy of the Nation and made Bishop-Count of Coimbra, as well as Rector of the University of Coimbra) and retired to the Batalha Monastery. He would only return to politics in 1826, after the King granted a new Constitutional Charter, having been again elected to the Chamber of Deputies. When the absolutistMiguel I seized power in 1828, Saraiva once again retreated to monastic life, in the Convent of Serra de Ossa in the Alentejo, where he remained until the end of the Portuguese Civil War.[3]
After the civil war ended in 1834 and constitutional monarchy was established, Saraiva was once again actively involved in politics: he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1834, 1836, and 1838; from 1834 to 1835 he was made Minister of the Kingdom in the Duke of Palmela's first constitutional cabinet.[3]
In the aftermath of the civil war, the liberal regime stripped many privileges away from the Church, and Saraiva had an important role in the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Saraiva was appointed Patriarch of Lisbon by Queen Maria II under the Padroado system in 1840; Pope Gregory XVI confirmed his appointment in a consistory on 3 April 1841, and wrote to Saraiva concerning his appointment on 29 August 1841 in his letter In consistorio.[4] The appointment was preconised by Gregory XVI in his bullOnerosa pastoralis, issued on 3 April 1843.[citation needed] Later that same year, on 19 June 1843, Saraiva was made a Cardinal.[2]
123456Canas, António Costa. "S. LUÍS, Frei Francisco de (Cardeal Saraiva)". Dicionário de Historiadores Portugueses: Da Academia Real das Ciências ao Final do Estado Novo (in Portuguese). Centro de História da Universidade de Lisboa. Retrieved 5 February 2020.
↑Pope Gregory XVI, Epistola In consistorio (in Italian), published on 29 August 1841, accessed on 30 November 2025
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