D. Frei Alexandre de Gouveia, Bishop of Beijing (1751-1808)

This project focuses on the life and work of Franciscan Bishop Alexandre de Gouveia. Born in Évora in 1751, he studied mathematics at the University of Coimbra. At the age of 23, he left for China via India in 1783, after his appointment as Bishop of Beijing. In Macau, he reopened the Seminary of St. Joseph and, upon arriving in his diocese in January 1785, he had to fight against the divisions that existed among the nearly three dozen Catholic missionaries then living in Beijing.

He also had to face the cyclical persecutions against Chinese Christians. Gifted with wisdom, common sense and an inexhaustible desire to know the world that was opening up before his eyes and understanding, he eventually established himself as a good bishop at the head of the thirty thousand Chinese Catholics scattered throughout his diocese of Beijing and as a good manager of the daily lives of European missionaries in the Chinese capital. He died in June 1808 in Beijing and is buried in the Catholic cemetery of Zhalan.

The final period of the reign of Emperor Qianlong, who died in 1799, and the early years of Emperor Jiaqing's reign are also the subject of detailed study, attempting to conceptualise the social and political constraints that conditioned the activity of European missionaries in China.