Abstract

John Hyacinth de Magellan, a Portuguese physicist who lived in London in the last 26 years of his life until his death in 1790, has his religious life and personal views analyzed in the light of new and previous research. His personal religious evolution is followed throughout his life as well as his views about personal, social and ethical matters. The influence of the religious practice in Portugal during the first half of the 18th century and of the reactionary ideas prevalent in the country at that time was certainly decisive to his emigration to England, since he was a cultivated man that had a strong will to devote himself to scientific matters. Through his correspondence and other sources, it is confirmed that he never gave up Catholicism, though his religious practice was not always strict and orthodox, and sometimes it seemed to be somewhat similar to Protestantism.