ANTÓNIO VIEIRA was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1608 and died in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, in 1697. He was an orator, Jesuit missionary, statesman and diplomat, and the author of a great number of sermons, letters, state papers, and the unique, visionary work História do Futuro [History of the Future]. He sought to convince the Jews to return to Portugal and polemically defended the natives against enslavement. He is to Portuguese prose what Camões is to poetry. For the great twentieth-century poet Fernando Pessoa, Vieira was the "Emperor of the Portuguese Language." Vieira is considered the most important Portuguese and Brazilian writer of the Baroque period. His vast oeuvre provides an extraordinary window into the world of the seventeenth century.