Culture
John III's support for the humanist cause was significant. In literature, his active support of Gil Vicente, Garcia de Resende, Sá de Miranda, Bernardim Ribeiro, Fernão Mendes Pinto, João de Barros and Luís de Camões was notable. In the sciences, John III supported mathematician Pedro Nunes and physician Garcia de Orta. Through his links to Portuguese humanists such as Luís Teixeira Lobo, Erasmus dedicated his Chrysostomi Lucubrationes to John III of Portugal in 1527.
The monarch awarded many scholarships to universities abroad, mainly in the University of Paris, having sent fifty Portuguese students to the Collège Sainte-Barbe headed by Diogo de Gouveia. He definitively transferred the Portuguese university from Lisbon to Coimbra in 1537. In 1542 John III created in Coimbra a College of Arts (Liberal arts) for which he quickly recalled the many prominent Portuguese and European teachers headed by André de Gouveia at the College of Guienne in Bordeaux. Those included George Buchanan, Diogo de Teive, Jerónimo Osório, Nicolas de Grouchy, Guillaume Guérante and Élie Vinet, who came to be decisive for the disclosure of the contemporary research of Pedro Nunes. The king provided the university with excellent resources. However, the importance of the College was shadowed by rivalry between the orthodox views of the "Parisians" group headed by Diogo de Gouveia and the more secular views of the "Bordeaux" school headed by his nephew André de Gouveia, within the advent of the Counter-Reformation and the Society of Jesus.
The Society of Jesus founded colleges and made education more widely available, but it also created great instability in Portuguese education, setting itself up as a rival of the University of Coimbra, often taking a conservative position against any innovation. The Inquisition also arrested and killed many prominent teachers and censured new ideas like Erasmism.
Another noteworthy aspect of John III's rule was the support he gave to missionaries in the New World, Asia and Africa. In 1540, after successive appeals to the Pope asking for missionaries for the Portuguese East Indies under the Padroado agreement, John III appointed Francis Xavier to take charge as Apostolic Nuncio. He had been enthusiastically endorsed by Diogo de Gouveia, who had been his teacher at the Collège Sainte-Barbe and advised the king to draw the youngsters of the newly- formed Society of Jesus. The Jesuits were particularly important for mediating Portuguese relations with native peoples.
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