De gestis Mendi de Saa (On the Deeds of Mem de Sá) is the first Latin epic of the Americas, written by the Spanish Jesuit José de Anchieta. It takes as its theme the accomplishments of Mem de Sá, third-governor general of Brazil. De gestis gives special attention to three major events: campaigns against the Indigenous Tupinambá, the foundation of Rio de Janeiro, and efforts to drive the French out of Brazil. As such, Anchieta’s epic offers unique insights into the early colonization of Portuguese America, efforts to evangelize the Tupi-Guarani, and the extension of Old World rivalries into the New World.

José de Anchieta (1534-1597) was born in the Canary Islands and educated at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. A member of the Society of Jesus, he was one of the first Jesuits to arrive in Brazil, taking part in the founding of São Paulo in 1554 and of Rio de Janeiro in 1565. Anchieta is perhaps best known as the author of Arte de gramática da língua mais usada na costa do Brasil (Coimbra 1595), the first grammar of any Indigenous Brazilian language. His missionary activities among the Tupi-Guarani are documented in his extensive, multilingual correspondence, as well as in his lyric and dramatic poems written for local performance in Portuguese, Spanish, Tupí, and Latin. His reputation as a Latin poet rests on two lengthy compositions: his devotional poem to the Virgin Mary, De Beata Virgine Dei Matre, and his De gestis.

The critical edition overseen by Armando Cardoso, S.J., is over three thousand hexameters long and divided into four books. An elegiac epistle to Christ serves as a preface to this epic, which is followed by an invocation to Christ and a propositio that describes Brazil as the domain of Satan. Book 1 narrates Mem de Sá’s arrival in Brazil in 1557 and the subsequent battle against the Tamoios in the Captaincy of Espírito Santo. His son, Fernão de Sá, leads the Portuguese at the Battle of Cricaré, but dies there in 1558. After avenging his son’s death, Mem de Sá returns to his headquarters in Bahia. The second book shifts its focus to Mem de Sá’s role as governor, quelling the rebel Cururupeba, imposing new laws on the Tupí, and subduing discontent among the Portuguese. The text describes the foundation of four aldeias (Jesuit missionary settlements of indigenous peoples) and the spread of Christianity in Bahia. The 1559 uprising in Ilhéus leads Mem de Sá on another campaign against the Tupí, which culminates in an epic battle on the beach. The book closes with a hymn to peace and a celebration of the pacification of the coast.

Following an invocation to the saints, Book 3 relates the start of the war of Paraguaçu. After native Brazilians kill Portuguese fishermen, Mem de Sá demands that those responsible be handed over to him; when his ultimatum goes unanswered, the Portuguese prepare for a long campaign. They destroy two forts in Paraguaçu and rebuff an ambush on the beach; they return to Bahia in triumph, where the Tupí sue for peace and become subject to the governor’s laws. Mem de Sá then prepares to avenge Pedro Fernandes Sardinha, the first bishop of Brazil, who had died more than a decade before the governor’s tenure. Through analepsis, the text describes the bishop’s shipwreck off the coast and his harrowing death at the hands of a different Indigenous tribe, the Caeté. Mem de Sá’s campaign against the Caeté is cut short by a directive from Portugal, which sends him to deal with the French colony to the south of Bahia. Book 4 describes the alliance between the Tamoios and the French Protestants at France Antarctique, which is led by French Vice-Admiral Nicolas de Villegaignon. Preparing an armada to go against the French, Mem de Sá sails south to Rio de Janeiro in 1560. After an unsuccessful parley with Bois-le-Comte, Villegaignon’s nephew, Mem de Sá begins his attack, first taking Fort Coligny and then laying siege to the island of Villegaignon. The siege ends when the French abandon their position; the Portuguese capture and destroy the fort. The epic concludes with a hymn to Christ as the ruler of human history.

Like many Latin epics of this period, De gestis is imbued with the language, themes, and style of Virgil’s Aeneid. An accomplished poet, Anchieta finds innovative ways to express details of his life in Brazil in flowing Latin hexameters. The description of the aldeias in Book 2, for example, is a meditation on the labors of Jesuit missionaries and their hopes for new converts, which blends the music of the Psalms with Horatian lyric. Similarly, the account of Tupí war costumes in Book 1, based on the poet’s own experiences, cannot be reduced to a handful of passages in Virgil or Ovid, but instead infuses these ancient models with meticulous details about the colors and textures of native dress. Despite this interest in Indigenous customs, De gestis celebrates the advent of Christianity and the assimilation of the Tupinamba to “civilized,” European mores. The recurrent allusion to Tupí anthropophagy as a demonic practice, as well as the vilification of French “heretics,” draws a clear line between orthodox Catholics and religious others in sixteenth-century Brazil. The incongruous blend of Christian devotion and colonial violence renders De gestis an important witness to the ideological fictions of Portuguese America.

*Adapted from Chapter 1 of Empire’s Companion: Virgilian Epics from Colonial Ibero-America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming). Copyright © 2025 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.