Dom Francisco Manuel de Mello
Encyclopedia
Dom Francisco Manuel de Mello (November 23, 1608 – August 24, 1666), was a Portuguese writer.
, was a native of Lisbon
. He studied the Humanities at the Jesuit College of St. Antão, where he showed a precocious talent, and tradition says that at the age of fourteen he composed a poem in ottava rima
to celebrate the recovery of Bahia
from the Dutch
, while at seventeen he wrote a scientific work, Concordancias mathematicas.
, he found himself in the historic storm of January 1627, when the pick of the Portuguese fleet suffered shipwreck in the Bay of Biscay
. He spent much of the next ten years of his life in military routine work in the Peninsula
, varied by visits to the court of Madrid
, where he contracted a friendship with the Spanish poet Quevedo
and earned the favor of the powerful minister Olivares
. In 1637 the latter despatched him in company with the conde de Linhares on a mission to pacify the revolted city of Évora
, and on the same occasion the duke of Braganza, afterwards King John IV
(for whom he acted as confidential agent at Madrid), employed him to satisfy King Philip IV
of his loyalty to the Spanish
crown.
In the following year he suffered a short imprisonment in Lisbon. In 1639 he was appointed colonel of one of the regiments raised for service in Flanders
, and in June that year he took a leading part in defending A Coruña
against a French
fleet commanded by the archbishop of Bordeaux, while in the following August he directed the embarcation of an expeditionary force of 10,000 men when Admiral Oquendo
sailed with seventy ships to meet the French and Dutch. He came safely through the naval defeat in the channel
suffered by the Spaniards at the hands of Maarten Tromp
, and on the outbreak of the Catalonian rebellion became chief of the staff to the commander-in-chief of the royal forces, and was selected to write an account of the campaign, the Historia de la guerra de Cataluña, which became a Spanish classic.
On the restoration of a Portuguese ruling dynasty
, in 1640 he was imprisoned by order of Olivares, and when released hastened to offer his sword to John IV. He travelled to England
, where he spent some time at the court of Charles I
, and thence passing over to Holland assisted the Portuguese ambassador to equip a fleet in aid of Portugal, and himself brought it safely to Lisbon in October 1641.
For the next three years he was employed in various important military commissions and further busied himself in defending by his pen the king's title to his newly acquired throne.
, and her husband's jealousy, led to his arrest on November 19, 1644 on a false charge of assassination, and he lay in prison about nine years. Though his innocence was clear, the court of his Order, that of Christ
, influenced by his enemies, deprived him of his commenda and sentenced him to perpetual banishment in India
with a heavy money fine, and the king would not intervene to save him. Owing perhaps to the intercession of the queen regent of France and other powerful friends, his sentence was finally commuted into one of exile to Brazil
.
During his long imprisonment he finished and printed his history of the Catalan Revolt
, and also wrote and published a volume of Spanish verses and some religious treatises, and composed in Portuguese a volume of homely philosophy, the Carta de Guia de Casados and a Memorial in his own defence to the king, which Herculano
considered perhaps the most eloquent piece of reasoning in the language.
During his exile in Brazil, where he sailed on 17 April 1655, he lived at Bahia, where he wrote one of his Epanaphoras de varia Historia and two parts of his masterpiece, the Apologos dialogaes.
and Rome
, by way of England, and France, and Alfonso VI charged him to negotiate with the Curia about the provision of bishops for Portuguese sees and to report on suitable marriages for the king and his brother. During his stay in Rome he published his Obras morales, dedicated to Queen Catherine, wife of Charles II of England
, and his Cartas familiares. On his way back to Portugal he printed his Obras Métricas at Lyon
in May 1665, and he died in Lisbon the following year.
Manuel de Mello's early Spanish verses are tainted with Gongorism, but his Portuguese sonnet
s and cartas on moral subjects are notable for their power, sincerity, and perfection of form. He strove successfully to emancipate himself from foreign faults of style, and by virtue of his native genius, and his knowledge of the traditional poetry of the people, and the best Quinhentista models, he became Portugal's leading lyric poet and prose writer of the 17th century. As with Luís de Camões
, imprisonments and exile contributed to make Manuel de Melo a great writer: His Letters, addressed to the leading nobles, ecclesiastics, diplomats and literati of the time, are written in a conversational style, lighted up by flashes of wit and enriched with apposite illustrations and quotations. His commerce with the best authors appears in the Hospital des lettras, a brilliant chapter of criticism forming part of the Apologos dialogaes. His comedy in redondilhas, the Auto do Fidalgo Aprendiz, is one of the last anti; quite the worthiest production of the school of Gil Vicente, and may be considered an anticipation of Molière
's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.
Youth
De Mello, a connection on his father's side of the royal house of BraganzaBraganza
Braganza may refer to:* House of Braganza, a Portuguese ducal and later royal House* Duke of Braganza, a Portuguese title that has been used for example by several heirs-apparent to the Portuguese throne...
, was a native of Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
. He studied the Humanities at the Jesuit College of St. Antão, where he showed a precocious talent, and tradition says that at the age of fourteen he composed a poem in ottava rima
Ottava rima
Ottava rima is a rhyming stanza form of Italian origin. Originally used for long poems on heroic themes, it later came to be popular in the writing of mock-heroic works. Its earliest known use is in the writings of Giovanni Boccaccio....
to celebrate the recovery of Bahia
Bahia
Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil, and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the fourth most populous Brazilian state after São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, and the fifth-largest in size...
from the Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, while at seventeen he wrote a scientific work, Concordancias mathematicas.
Military career
The death of his father, Dom Luiz de Mello, drove him early to soldiering, and having joined a contingent for the Flanders warDutch Revolt
The Dutch Revolt or the Revolt of the Netherlands This article adopts 1568 as the starting date of the war, as this was the year of the first battles between armies. However, since there is a long period of Protestant vs...
, he found himself in the historic storm of January 1627, when the pick of the Portuguese fleet suffered shipwreck in the Bay of Biscay
Bay of Biscay
The Bay of Biscay is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Brest south to the Spanish border, and the northern coast of Spain west to Cape Ortegal, and is named in English after the province of Biscay, in the Spanish...
. He spent much of the next ten years of his life in military routine work in the Peninsula
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
, varied by visits to the court of Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, where he contracted a friendship with the Spanish poet Quevedo
Francisco de Quevedo
Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, Luis de Góngora, Quevedo was one of the most prominent Spanish poets of the age. His style is characterized by what was called conceptismo...
and earned the favor of the powerful minister Olivares
Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares
Don Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel Ribera y Velasco de Tovar, Count-Duke of Olivares and Duke of San Lúcar la Mayor , was a Spanish royal favourite of Philip IV and minister. As prime minister from 1621 to 1643, he over-exerted Spain in foreign affairs and unsuccessfully attempted domestic reform...
. In 1637 the latter despatched him in company with the conde de Linhares on a mission to pacify the revolted city of Évora
Évora
Évora is a municipality in Portugal. It has total area of with a population of 55,619 inhabitants. It is the seat of the Évora District and capital of the Alentejo region. The municipality is composed of 19 civil parishes, and is located in Évora District....
, and on the same occasion the duke of Braganza, afterwards King John IV
John IV of Portugal
|-|John IV was the King of Portugal and the Algarves from 1640 to his death. He was the grandson of Catherine, Duchess of Braganza, who had in 1580 claimed the Portuguese crown and sparked the struggle for the throne of Portugal. John was nicknamed John the Restorer...
(for whom he acted as confidential agent at Madrid), employed him to satisfy King Philip IV
Philip IV of Spain
Philip IV was King of Spain between 1621 and 1665, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and King of Portugal until 1640...
of his loyalty to the Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
crown.
In the following year he suffered a short imprisonment in Lisbon. In 1639 he was appointed colonel of one of the regiments raised for service in Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
, and in June that year he took a leading part in defending A Coruña
A Coruña
A Coruña or La Coruña is a city and municipality of Galicia, Spain. It is the second-largest city in the autonomous community and seventeenth overall in the country...
against a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
fleet commanded by the archbishop of Bordeaux, while in the following August he directed the embarcation of an expeditionary force of 10,000 men when Admiral Oquendo
Antonio de Oquendo
Antonio de Oquendo was a Spanish admiral; in 1639 he was in command of the Spanish forces at the Battle of the Downs.-Naval career:...
sailed with seventy ships to meet the French and Dutch. He came safely through the naval defeat in the channel
Battle of the Downs
The naval Battle of the Downs took place on 31 October 1639 , during the Eighty Years' War, and was a decisive defeat of the Spanish, commanded by Admiral Antonio de Oquendo, by the United Provinces, commanded by Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Tromp.- Background :The entry of France in the Thirty...
suffered by the Spaniards at the hands of Maarten Tromp
Maarten Tromp
Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp was an officer and later admiral in the Dutch navy. His first name is also spelled as Maerten.-Early life:...
, and on the outbreak of the Catalonian rebellion became chief of the staff to the commander-in-chief of the royal forces, and was selected to write an account of the campaign, the Historia de la guerra de Cataluña, which became a Spanish classic.
On the restoration of a Portuguese ruling dynasty
Portuguese Restoration War
Portuguese Restoration War was the name given by nineteenth-century 'romantic' historians to the war between Portugal and Spain that began with the Portuguese revolution of 1640 and ended with the Treaty of Lisbon . The revolution of 1640 ended the sixty-year period of dual monarchy in Portugal...
, in 1640 he was imprisoned by order of Olivares, and when released hastened to offer his sword to John IV. He travelled to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, where he spent some time at the court of Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
, and thence passing over to Holland assisted the Portuguese ambassador to equip a fleet in aid of Portugal, and himself brought it safely to Lisbon in October 1641.
For the next three years he was employed in various important military commissions and further busied himself in defending by his pen the king's title to his newly acquired throne.
Imprisonment and exile
An intrigue with the beautiful countess of Vila NovaVila Nova
There are parishes and municipalities that have the name Vila Nova in Portugal, Cape Verde and Mozambique:-In the Azores:*Vila Nova, a parish in the municipality of Praia da Vitória-In mainland Portugal:...
, and her husband's jealousy, led to his arrest on November 19, 1644 on a false charge of assassination, and he lay in prison about nine years. Though his innocence was clear, the court of his Order, that of Christ
Order of Christ (Portugal)
The Military Order of Christ previously the Royal Order of the Knights of Our Lord Jesus Christ was the heritage of the Knights Templar in Portugal, after the suppression of the Templars in 1312...
, influenced by his enemies, deprived him of his commenda and sentenced him to perpetual banishment in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
with a heavy money fine, and the king would not intervene to save him. Owing perhaps to the intercession of the queen regent of France and other powerful friends, his sentence was finally commuted into one of exile to Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
.
During his long imprisonment he finished and printed his history of the Catalan Revolt
Catalan Revolt
The Catalan Revolt affected a large part of the Catalan Principality of Catalonia between the years of 1640 and 1659. It had an enduring effect in the Treaty of the Pyrenees , which ceded the county of Roussillon and the northern half of the county of Cerdanya to France , thereby splitting the...
, and also wrote and published a volume of Spanish verses and some religious treatises, and composed in Portuguese a volume of homely philosophy, the Carta de Guia de Casados and a Memorial in his own defence to the king, which Herculano
Alexandre Herculano
Alexandre Herculano de Carvalho e Araújo , was a Portuguese novelist and historian.-Early life:...
considered perhaps the most eloquent piece of reasoning in the language.
During his exile in Brazil, where he sailed on 17 April 1655, he lived at Bahia, where he wrote one of his Epanaphoras de varia Historia and two parts of his masterpiece, the Apologos dialogaes.
Literary endeavors
He returned home in 1659, and from then until 1663 we find him on and off in Lisbon, frequenting the celebrated Academia dos Generosos, of which he was five times elected president. In the last year he proceeded to ParmaParma
Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....
and Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, by way of England, and France, and Alfonso VI charged him to negotiate with the Curia about the provision of bishops for Portuguese sees and to report on suitable marriages for the king and his brother. During his stay in Rome he published his Obras morales, dedicated to Queen Catherine, wife of Charles II of England
Charles II of England
Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...
, and his Cartas familiares. On his way back to Portugal he printed his Obras Métricas at Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
in May 1665, and he died in Lisbon the following year.
Manuel de Mello's early Spanish verses are tainted with Gongorism, but his Portuguese sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s and cartas on moral subjects are notable for their power, sincerity, and perfection of form. He strove successfully to emancipate himself from foreign faults of style, and by virtue of his native genius, and his knowledge of the traditional poetry of the people, and the best Quinhentista models, he became Portugal's leading lyric poet and prose writer of the 17th century. As with Luís de Camões
Luís de Camões
Luís Vaz de Camões is considered Portugal's and the Portuguese language's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Vondel, Homer, Virgil and Dante. He wrote a considerable amount of lyrical poetry and drama but is best remembered for his epic work Os Lusíadas...
, imprisonments and exile contributed to make Manuel de Melo a great writer: His Letters, addressed to the leading nobles, ecclesiastics, diplomats and literati of the time, are written in a conversational style, lighted up by flashes of wit and enriched with apposite illustrations and quotations. His commerce with the best authors appears in the Hospital des lettras, a brilliant chapter of criticism forming part of the Apologos dialogaes. His comedy in redondilhas, the Auto do Fidalgo Aprendiz, is one of the last anti; quite the worthiest production of the school of Gil Vicente, and may be considered an anticipation of Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.