Luís Reis Torgal honours António de Oliveira

My last teacher has died… A tribute to António de Oliveira

As I wrote in the book História... Que História?, published by Temas e Debates in 2015, deep down my memories of my History course from 1960 to 1966, the year defended my thesis, are not entirely positive. At that time, our science was considered “narrative” and “contextual”. The subjects that stimulated by critical reflection, which I had learned at high school with Alberto Martins de Carvalho, were mainly found in philosophy and the history of culture, which were taught by teachers with different ideas and from other fields of knowledge: Sílvio Lima (who was dismissed by Salazar in 1935, but was able to return in the 1940s), who reflected on the principles of the history theory in his unforgettable classes; Miranda Barbosa, whom I remember above all for the didactic way in which he explained complex philosophical theories to us, especially Husserlian phenomenology; Miguel Baptista Pereira, from whom I learned philosophy and much about life in and out of the classroom; Maria Helena Rocha Pereira, who showed us Greek culture with rare sensitivity and knowledge; Joaquim Ferreira Gomes (also dismissed during Marcello Caetano’s time, fortunately only for a few short, agonising days), in this case more on account of the socialising opportunities and his critical remarks throughout his life than of his classes; and Silva Dias, my real teacher, not so much for his classes on the History of Modern Culture and the History of Portuguese Culture, but more for the critical way in which he guided my first historical research .

I also remember the lessons given by Luís Reis Santos, in an "anarchic" way, but which stimulated my taste for art; the pedagogical and methodological lessons given by Manuel Augusto Rodrigues in the first year he taught the history of Christianity; the practical lessons given by Avelino de Jesus Costa on the technique of reading ancient documents; the rare sense of careful and in-depth research given by Ferrand de Almeida, despite us his sleepy classes; and... António de Oliveira, who died at the beginning of 2021. Like Carlos do Carmo, a “man of the city”, who made me feel that fado is not only “fatum”, a song of fate inscribed on the palm of your hand, but also the everyday life of the city, with poetry and a critical sense. Fortunately, Jorge Alarcão is still very active, the master of all archaeologists, but to the detriment of my education, he was never my teacher, nor was Bairrão Oleiro, who had already left for Lisbon. What I owe to some of the teachers not mentioned here, who have already left us, apart from the friendly interaction with some of them, was simply the conditions for me to become a self-taught or... apprentice historian on my own.

Almost everyone is forgotten in this wave of presentism that is drowning us and the past, without which, as Herculano would say, there is no present and no future, because everyone inherits something good or bad from the past that they themselves are or will become. That is why the most notorious trend of our time is "populism". It is a sad trend that has no ideology, good or bad, that lives only in the moment and thanks to the ephemeral (which lasts only one day). And that is why history, although the oldest and most structured of the social sciences, is now (until when?) a science with less impact.

Dead or transformed by today’s wave of speed, it prevails less as a science than as an opinion. But it will survive, because when this smoke and this (not only physical) pandemic have subsided, we will all have to return to libraries and archives, whether paper, oral or digital. In this maelstrom there are almost only journalist historians or historian journalists, or merely opinionated commentators on common topics, or the “writers” who write about history. Or those who, by their merit or for reasons unknown, have managed to break through the barrier of fashionable communication and make it onto the television “show” or at least to the radio and into the book supermarkets.

Forgive me for this apparently pessimistic way of paying tribute to a true historian, António de Oliveira, who, although he taught me, with the pedagogical difficulty of a beginner, Roman civilisation, to which he was assigned as an assistant (I taught from the Middle Ages to the present day), became a historian of great and recognised merit of the modern age. Like Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, he taught me a new form of economic and social analysis of the Iberian Union and the Restoration, which I analysed from the perspective of the history of ideas in my doctoral thesis supervised by Silva Dias, and he showed me how Coimbra, or a university city, developed, studying its economic and social life in the 16th and 17th centuries, from the transfer of the General Studies from Lisbon in 1537 to 1640. Fortunately, there are still historians who remember his fundamental work, as I was pleased to discover at a conference I attended a few days ago by Rui Lobo, an architectural historian and specialist in the process of construction and development of the colleges that appeared in the city at that time, at a time when university meant “universality” of knowledge and its institutions. This is in contrast to some of the "brand new histories" which, using the cosmetics of “entrepreneurship”, try to find new ways, often very old ways, of making history. I say this because a few days ago, while leafing through a history that wanted to be "new" because it was written backwards, from the end to the beginning, and with milestones (simple dates, as seems to be the fashion), I noticed that in the volumes on the modern period, Silva Dias, who revolutionised his history in terms of the ideology of “discoveries”, religious sentiment and, in general, the culture of that period, had been forgotten. Fortunately, this was not the case with António de Oliveira, although his most important work, his doctoral thesis, was omitted. Both tried and succeeded in breaking with the “narrativism” of the 60s and 70s. They tried to follow, in a genuinely new analysis, to follow the currents based in France and elsewhere, because from that moment on history sought to be truly “global”, another magical word in the current vocabulary, used and misused, which now prevails, albeit with quality, to enter the world of the “publishing spectacle” that defines the world of books today.

António de Oliveira worked until almost 1 January 2021, working in silence, I won’t say in the libraries and archives (first his health and then Covid didn’t allow it), but in his office. He died on 1 January, the same day as Carlos do Carmo, who was rightly remembered and commemorated on television, radio and in the national press. The tributes paid to historians are usually no more than a meeting with colleagues, a note in a local newspaper or – and this is the best way to remember them – the reading or re-reading of their books by the few who dare to try to find the reasons for life then and now. In these times of coronavirus, many of his colleagues, former students and admirers were able to attend António de Oliveira’s funeral.

That is why I wanted to leave my testimony, because my Last Teacher has died. But his memory remains.

Figueira de Lorvão, 2 January 2021

[Text originally published in Jornal Público]