Francisco Manuel do Nascimento

December 23

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On this date in 1734, Portuguese poet and heretical priest-on-the-run Francisco Manuel do Nascimento was born. Becoming Deistic, he translated Moliere's anti-clerical "Tartuffe" (1778), which provoked the Portuguese Inquisition to order his arrest. Nascimento fled Portugal. In exile, he wrote satires and poems under the pen-name of "Filinto-Elysio," according to Joseph McCabe's A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists. D. 1819.