Amadeus of Portugal


Amadeus of Portugal

Vera effigies, published in Pietro Ridolfi's Historiarum Seraphicae Religionis, 1586
Confessor
BornJoão de Menezes da Silva
circa 1420
Campo Maior, Alentejo Region, Kingdom of Portugal
Died10 August 1482
Milan, Duchy of Milan
Venerated inCatholic Church
(Franciscan & Conceptionist Orders, Spain & Portugal)
Feast12 August
AttributesReformer of the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans)
Major worksApocalypsis nova

Amadeus of Portugal (Campo Maior, Portugal ca. 1420 – Milan, Duchy of Milan, 10 August 1482), born João de Menezes da Silva, was a Portuguese nobleman who became first a Hieronymite monk, then left that life to become a friar of the Franciscan Order. Later he became a reformer of that religious order, which led to his founding of a distinct branch of the Friars Minor that was named after him, but later suppressed by the Pope in order to unite them into one great family of Friars Minor Observants (1568).

His Apocalypsis nova, which contained prophecies of a pope, the "Angelic Pastor", who would work with an emperor to restore harmony in the church and the world, was influential well into the next century, in Rome and the monarchies of Spain and Portugal.[1]

  1. ^ Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation, edited by Evonne Levy, Kenneth Mills, p. 272; Angels, Demons and the New World, pp. 180–182, edited by Fernando Cervantes, Andrew Redde