After attending six years in Maîtrise des Arts he earned a degree as doctor in theology, and simultaneously, began teaching at the college.
As an adept of the most advanced religious ideas, André de Gouveia bent Saint Barbe into the Humanist ideals.
[2] On arrival, Gouveia proclaimed that he would not recognize differences of creed in staff and pupils, many of whom showed sympathy to the new doctrines of the Reform.
André de Gouveia returned to Portugal at the invitation of King John III, accompanied by a group of foreign teachers, to head the new College of the Arts at the University of Coimbra.
Rivalry between the secular trends of the new "Bordeaux" teachers, and the more orthodox method of the "Parisian" school headed by Diogo de Gouveia led several teachers, including George Buchanan, to face the Inquisition: Gouveia kept numerous contacts with European scholars and Portuguese businesses when he was in France.