Manuel António Ribeiro (13 December 1878 – 27 November 1941) was a Portuguese writer, poet, and relevant political figure during the First Portuguese Republic. He is known for his role as an active proponent of syndicalism in the early 20th century, as the founder of the first Bolshevist organisation in Portugal (the Portuguese Maximalist Federation), as well as one of the first organisers of the Portuguese Communist Party.

Manuel Ribeiro
Born(1878-12-13)13 December 1878
Died27 November 1941(1941-11-27) (aged 62)
Notable workA Catedral (1920)
O Deserto (1922)
A Ressureição (1923)
Political partyPortuguese Communist Party
MovementLiterary realism

In 1926, having already shown a certain religious disquiet as well as a profound interest in sacred art and liturgy, he formally converted to Catholicism, which implied his abandonment of the socialist movement and of his partisan activity, but not of his social concerns: he became aligned with Christian democratic sectors that espoused the modern Catholic social teaching of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, he never denounced the labour movement, and denounced fascism.[1] In 1932, he started publishing Era Nova, a religious and political weekly openly opposed to Salazar's ideology, that is soon after labelled as radical propaganda and shut down.[2]

His literary works, particularly his "social trilogy" consisting of A Catedral ("The Cathedral", 1920), O Deserto ("The Desert", 1922), and A Ressureição ("The Resurrection", 1923), made Manuel Ribeiro one of the most widely-read novelists in Portugal in the 1920s, but were deliberately obscured in the following decades by the authoritarian conservative Estado Novo regime.[3]

References

edit
  1. ^ Medina, João (1981). "Um semanário anarquista durante o primeiro Governo Afonso Costa: "Terra Livre"" [An anarchist weekly publication during Afonso Costa's first government: «Terra Livre»] (PDF). Análise Social (in Portuguese). XVII (67–69): 735–765. Retrieved 12 December 2020.
  2. ^ Silva, Gabriel Rui (2011). "Entre o trabalho e a cruz: vida, romance e fé de Manuel Ribeiro" [Between labour and the cross: the life, novels, and faith of Manuel Ribeiro] (PDF). A Ideia: Revista Libertária (in Portuguese). 14 (69): 9–25. Retrieved 12 December 2020.
  3. ^ Silva, Gabriel Rui de Oliveira e (2009). Manuel Ribeiro e o Romance da Fé [Manuel Ribeiro and the Novel of Faith] (doctoral thesis) (in Portuguese). Universidade Aberta. hdl:10400.2/1371. Retrieved 12 December 2020.