Geraldino Brites and education issues (1926-1934)

Abstract

Geraldino da Silva Baltazar Brites (1882-1941) – a Portuguese physician and university professor renowned for his work in the scientific fields of Histology and Embryology – was an ardent Republican who defended the ideals of equality and secularism in the social order and customs, fighting for a University that was free from the shackles of conservative thinking and intellectual stagnation. This Portuguese scientist moved among Republican circles and published regularly in anarcho-syndicalist, anti-fascist magazines and newspapers, living under the ideal of modernity and scientific theories, using the principles of liberty and tolerance, and contradicting all forms of oppression. His absolute rejection of the idea of schools adopting religious education, believing that it should be confined to the private sphere or to strictly appropriate locations placed him, in 1926, in the centre of a cultural and religious conflict with Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira, a close friend of Salazar and the future Patriarch of Lisbon. This work explores not only their different convictions and reasoning about education but at the same time also aims to bring to light a Republican figure who remains forgotten.