John Almeida
English Jesuit missionary in Brazil
John Almeida (1571 – 24 September 1653) was a Jesuit missionary.
Childhood
He was born in London. His real surname was Meade, but it was changed to Almeida, because of his Portuguese surroundings.
He was one of the most conspicuous of the disciples of Joseph of Anchieta, missionary of the colony of Brazil, almost equalling him in the number of his alleged miracles.
At the age ten he was sent, some say by his parents, to Viana do Castelo in Portugal. But he himself writes that he was taken away, in the absence of his parents, by someone he did not know. He was adopted by the family of Benedict de Rocha, with whom, at the age of seventeen, he went to Brazil to engage in mercantile pursuits.
He narrates that on the way out he fell overboard, but was, as he thought, almost miraculously saved. He did not continue in business, as was intended, but began a course of studies at a College of the Society of Jesus. At the age of twenty-one, he became a Jesuit.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6218837. VIAF identifies the subject as 19232565. The Library of Congress control number is no00095061. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1571 and 1653.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Almeida” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.