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On the 2nd of June, 1548, the new College of Arts of Coimbra was officially opened by King João III. Andre de Gouvêa, of the Guyenne College at Bordeaux, was invited to be its first principal. He accepted, and brought with him from Bordeaux some of the most brilliant members of his staff. Portugal seemed to offer them a haven of peace in a Europe beset by the storms of civil war and religious intolerance. Among the teachers who made up Gouvêa's staff was the famous Scottish humanist George Buchanan, and he was to remain with the Coimbra College until his denunciation to the Inquisition in 1549. When he arrived at Coimbra he had already translated two plays of Euripides (the Medea and the Alcestis), and had written two original plays in Latin. One, the Baptistes, was on the subject of the death of John the Baptist, and the other, the Jephthes, on the needless sacrifice of Iphis, the daughter of Jephtha. These plays had been acted at Bordeaux, but had not yet been published. Andre de Gouvêa was particularly convinced of the worth of playacting as a supplement to Classical studies, and there can be no doubt that he carried this conviction with him to Coimbra.