Manuel Álvares

Who was Manuel Álvares?

Manuel Álvares was a Jesuit educator in Portugal.

Álvares was born on the island of Madeira. In 1546 he entered the Society of Jesus, taught the classical languages with great success, and was rector of the colleges of Coimbra and Évora. He died at Évora.

Among the more than three hundred Jesuits who have written text-books on different languages, he takes the foremost place. His Latin grammar was adopted as a standard work by the Ratio Studiorum, or Plan of Studies, of the Jesuits. Perhaps no other grammar has been printed in so many editions; Carlos Sommervogel, in his "Bibliothèque de la compagnie de Jésus," devotes twenty-five columns to a list of about four hundred editions of the whole work, or parts of it, published in Europe, Asia, and America. There exist also numerous translations into various languages. An edition with a Chinese translation appeared in Shanghai in 1869. A very interesting edition is one published in Japan in 1594, with partial translation into Japanese. An English edition, "An Introduction to the Latin Tongue, or First Book of Grammar", appeared in 1686. In many editions the text of Álvares is changed considerably, others are abridgments.