On march 22, 1833, the regency of Brazil in the name of the emperor, by virtue of the privileges of ecclesiastical patronage which the crown enjoyed, appointed Dr. Antônio Maria de Moura to the See of Rio de Janeiro, vacant since the death of the eighth bishop, Dom José Caetano da Silva Coutinho, on January 27, 1833. In accordance with the usual practice, the regency petitioned Pope Gregory XVI on April 30 of the same year to confirm the appointment by sending the appropriate bulls of institution without which (since collation is effected solely by institution of the Roman Pontiff) the bishop-elect could not be consecrated and enthroned and, in the case of Brazil, could not exercise jurisdiction over the diocese or administer it. When Gregory refused to confirm Dr. Moura, for reasons which will later be made clear, the Imperial Government and the Holy See became involved in a dispute more bitter and prolonged than any of the many disputes between the two powers that characterize the history of the church-state relationship in Brazil from the proclamation of the independence of the country in 1822 to the abrogation of the union and the renunciation of patronage by the government in 1890.

In the october, 1949, issue of THE AMERICAS the present writer published an article on the wood-beach at Recife in Brazil as it existed in late colonial days. To this the editor very kindly added the subtitle “A Contribution to the Economic History of Brazil.” Since the article appeared I have received a number of communications from historians in Brazil and in Portugal who commented with such interest upon the subject that I feel justified in soliciting more space in THE AMERICAS in order to present a discovery I have recently made. Since it concerns the authorship of the extraordinary watercolor around which the article was written, it is of vital importance to the subject.

The old wood-beach in the harbor of Recife, the capital of the rich colonial captaincy of Pernambuco, was the storage place for the valuable shipments of tropical woods to Portugal and other parts of the Portuguese Empire, which constituted a major element in Brazilian eighteenth-century trading. In the Arquivo Militar of Rio de Janeiro there is a view of the area showing in great detail the warehouse, the government and other buildings that surrounded it, as well as men working on the shore and loading ships that lie at anchor in the harbor. This watercolor, which was published in THE AMERICAS, is signed by José de Oliveira Barbosa and dated 1788. The author gave as his only identification the phrase “of the Regiment of Olinda.” Since an examination of the records of this regiment in the year 1788, which are now at the Arquivo Histórico Colonial in Lisbon, failed to show Barbosa’s name among the officers, I reached the conclusion that at that time the man did not have the rank of officer and so stated in my article.

It is fairly well known that in 1890 Guillermo Prieto was crowned the most popular poet in Mexico. Students of Mexican literature will add that he also wrote articles on manners and customs, criticism, original dramas, satire, travel books and folklore. Those who delve into political science have discovered that he served in the national congress for some forty-eight years, that as postmaster general he reorganized the Mexican postal system, and that he served four terms as minister of finance. Some have even seen the fat tomes in which he published his views on political economy, but practically nobody today knows that Prieto was also a writer of history. The purpose of this paper is to shed more light on Guillermo Prieto as a historian.