Victorino João Carlos Dantas Pereira

Victorino João Carlos Dantas Pereira ComC CavSE CvA CGCL (2 August 1804 – 5 September 1867) was a Portuguese military officer, fidalgo and educator.

Biography

Victorino João Carlos was born in Lisbon, the first son of noted mathematician and naval officer Dantas Pereira and his wife Maria Eugénia da Cunha.

His godfather was the Prince Regent, and his godmother was Princess Carlota Joaquina. In 1807, when he was only three years old, he accompanied his parents to Brazil in the royal entourage. They gave him his first education there and he continued his studies in the city of Rio de Janeiro until he was forced to interrupt his first year at the Royal Military Academy to return with his family to Portugal in 1820.

While still in Brazil, he had been honoured by King João VI with the noble knighthood of his royal house, which his father possessed. In Lisbon, he studied at the Royal Navy Academy, the Royal Fortification Academy and the Royal Chemistry and Physics Laboratory, where he completed his artillery course in 1826. He was promoted from artillery cadet No. 1 to 2nd lieutenant of the same regiment in 1825 and to 1st lieutenant in 1826. In 1828, Dom Miguel honoured him with the Commendation of Christ. In 1830 he was promoted to captain. He took part in the fighting that the Miguelist forces sustained in the Azores against the Constitutionalists and, when the latter managed to seize the entire archipelago, he was taken prisoner and then deported to Santa Maria Island, where he spent four years serving his sentence and was also dismissed.

As soon as he was free, he travelled to Paris to accompany his father, who had emigrated there and was now old widower and seriously ill. To make the most of his stay in the capital, he studied the subjects that would enable him to obtain a bachelor's degree in literature. As his father's illness worsened, he accompanied him to Montpellier and attended to his last moments there. Afterwards, seeing his military career in Portugal cut short, he decided to offer his services to Dom Carlos in Spain, where he was immediately recognised as an artillery captain in the Spanish army, which was then engaged in the Carlist War. He fought valiantly in this campaign and, as a result of his conduct in the defence of Irún on 16 and 17 May 1837, Victorino Dantas was made lieutenant colonel and awarded the 1st class cross of the Royal and Military Order of Saint Ferdinand by Dom Carlos, by Royal certificate of 5 July 1837.

Wounded and then taken prisoner, he endured great privations, being transported from jail to jail and constantly at risk of execution, since the Carlist prisoners were often shot in retaliation for the Liberal prisoners that the Carlist also shot. But far from succumbing to this prospect, it was he who was the most carefree in prison, always encouraging his comrades.

Following the Convention of Vergara of 31 August 1839, having been included in it as an officer in the army commanded by Dom Rafael Maroto and belonging to the garrison of Estella, he returned to Portugal, where he arrived in November of the same year. Finding it impossible to practise his profession as a result of the change in political institutions, Victorino Dantas had to resort to the meagre income he could get from private teaching. He therefore joined one of the Lisbon schools as a teacher and head of studies, and in return for his work, his younger brother Pedro Dantas was also admitted as a pupil.

On 22 March 1842, he was reinstated in the army as a 1st lieutenant, and on 3 November 1847, he was assigned to the 3rd section. By decree of 19 October 1847 and by royal charter of 15 November of the same year, he was appointed teacher at the main school of primary instruction in the province of Cape Verde. He went there to found this main school, which had been created by decree on 14 August 1845, and governed it with great zeal and good results, serving cumulatively in other public posts to which he was appointed by the governors general.

When his six-year commission had expired, Victorino Dantas returned to Portugal. On 29 April 1851, he was promoted for the second time to captain. In 1855, shortly after his return from Cape Verde, he was chosen by King Pedro V to set up and direct the primary school that the king had established in the royal palace of Mafra. The exceptional competence with which Victorino Dantas Pereira responded to the trust placed in him by King Pedro V and King Luís I can be seen in the interesting reports he published on the work of the Royal School of Mafra and the solemn prize distribution sessions.

In the 1865 session, King Luís I, thanking Professor Dantas Pereira for the zeal with which he had carried out the duties of his ministry, decorated him with the Order of Saint James. In the report on the extraordinary inspection of schools in the Lisbon district in 1863 to 1864, the commissioner of studies, Mariano Ghira, wrote: "This class (the Royal School of Mafra) is so important for the "good results it has produced and for the good method and dedication of its intelligent teacher, that it should be considered a model school."

Through repeated appeals, he promoted and succeeded in getting African pupils to come to the Royal School of Mafra and become qualified teachers for the schools in the colonies. This important service to overseas education was a huge burden for Victorino Dantas Pereira, as he had to educate and instruct them, while also hosting them for very little official remuneration. On 22 August 1862 he was commissioned captain 1st class, and on 28 March 1863 he obtained the habit of Avis, being promoted to major in 1867, and in the same year he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

Later that year, he was appointed to inspect the primary schools in the municipalities of Mafra and Torres Vedras, which he did with the greatest solicitude, but which jeopardised his already ruined health. He died on 5 September 1867.

Works

As well as his reports on the Royal School, he published a translation of Louis Bourdon's Algebra and a Selecta de leitura corrente.