Cónego António Manuel da Costa Teixeira (1866-1919): um racionalista cristão e a transformação social

Abstract

This article aims to understand the life and work of Canon António Manuel da Costa Teixeira (1865-1919), a native of Santo Antão, Cape Verde. Using diverse bibliography and archives (Cape Verde, Portugal and France), it was possible to trace the portrait of a “nervous genius” who played an important role in the archipelago’s cultural progress, through his publications and the school institutions he created. In 1911, he came into contact with Spiritism, a doctrine founded on the existence of spirits, or incorporal beings from the invisible world, and their relations with the corporeal world, earning him excommunication by Pope Pius X (1835-1914). He asked to be initiated into Martinism by Gérard Encausse (1865-1916), better known as Papus, in order to create Martinist lodges in Cape Verde.