André de Resende

• 1. Introduction

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  André de Resende, born around 1498 in Évora, Portugal, would spend his life chasing two contradictory ambitions: building a glorious past for his country and finding a way to escape its courts. He was a Dominican friar who studied at some of Europe's greatest universities, corresponded with Erasmus without ever meeting him, and ended up buried in the Cathedral of the very city where his life began. He is remembered today as the father of archaeology in Portugal. But his legacy carries a complication. At least one of the ancient inscriptions he brought to light was later found to be a forgery. The story of how a man devoted to antiquity came to be called one of the great forgers of the sixteenth century begins in a small boy's entry into a monastery after his father died.

• 2. A Scholar Across Europe

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  After losing his father, Resende entered the local Dominican Order in Évora at the age of ten or twelve. That early enrollment set the pattern for what followed: formal institutions would shape him, and he would push against them. His education took him across Spain, France, and the Low Countries. At the University of Salamanca and then Alcalá de Henares, he studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. In France, theological training carried him through Paris, Marseille, and Aix, where he became archdeacon of St. Maxime-les-Baumes.

  By the late 1520s, Resende had settled in Belgium, moving between Leuven and Brussels. In Leuven, his Latin professor was Conrad Goclenius, a close friend of Erasmus. Through Goclenius, Resende published his first Latin poem, Encomium urbis et academiae, in 1530. A poem in praise of Erasmus followed soon after: Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Encomium. Erasmus read it, wrote back expressing admiration, and asked for more. Resende sent him a copy of Genethliacon Principis Lusitani, a birthday poem composed for the newly born Prince Manuel of Portugal.

  Despite the warmth of this exchange, the two men never met in person. Erasmus kept asking about the Portuguese poet, though, pressing for news in letters to their mutual friend Damião de Góis. That correspondence put Resende inside the circle of the most celebrated humanist of the era without ever putting them in the same room. Studying under Goclenius also brought Resende into contact with Johannes Secundus and Marius Nizolius, two other figures in the humanist network of the period. He also befriended Nicolaus Clenardus there and later offered Clenardus a position as tutor at the Portuguese court.

• 3. In Charles V's Entourage

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  Resende left Leuven in 1531 and traveled to Brussels, where he joined the court of Emperor Charles V, working alongside the Portuguese ambassador Pedro de Mascarenhas. That placement put him in motion again. In 1532 and 1533, the imperial entourage moved through the Holy Roman Empire; Resende passed through Regensburg, Bologna, and Barcelona.

  Bologna proved particularly productive. Access to a press there allowed him to publish several substantial works in quick succession: Genethliacon, Epicedion, and his satirical Epistola de Vita Aulica ad Speratum Ferrarium, along with a handful of shorter poems. In July 1533, while the entourage was in Barcelona, Resende and Mascarenhas departed the Emperor's court and headed back to Évora, this time to stay.

• 4. Courts, Classrooms, and Frustration

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  Back in Portugal from 1533 onward, Resende became one of the most prominent humanists in the country. At the court of King John III, he led a group of Erasmian scholars and served as tutor to the Infante D. Duarte. Yet the position grated on him. He complained openly about the lack of leisure and said he would prefer to live abroad. He also expressed frustration with what he saw as academic conservatism inside Portugal.

  In 1551, he moved into a teaching role, becoming a professor of Sacred Theology at the University of Coimbra. Four years later, the Jesuits took over administration of the university. The contracts of Resende and other humanists were not renewed. He returned to Évora, the city where his story had begun.

• 5. Building Portugal's Ancient Past

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  Évora occupied the center of Resende's intellectual life in his later years. He devoted himself to the study of antiquities there, driven by a dual loyalty to ancient Rome and to the Catholic faith. His aim was to construct a past that was simultaneously Roman and Christian, giving Portugal a cultural identity anchored in both traditions.

  In 1553, he published his História da antiguidade da cidade de Évora, the History of the Antiquity of the City of Évora. In it, he argued that the Roman general Sertorius had resided in Évora and cast Sertorius as a symbol of Lusitanian independence. He also claimed that Évora was among the oldest Christian cities on the Iberian Peninsula. His broader study, De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniae, extended this project across Portugal as a whole. Notably, that work says almost nothing about the centuries between the Romans and the Reconquista, making no reference at all to the period when Portugal was under Islamic rule. He also wrote two books on aqueducts and one on ancient epitaphs.

  Resende died in his home in Évora on the 9th of December 1573, still working on De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniae. The text was completed by others after his death and published in 1593, twenty years after he died. He is buried in the chapel of the right transept of the Cathedral of Évora.

• 6. The Forger Problem

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  Resende's work was widely endorsed during his lifetime. Modern historians have come to a different assessment. Scholars now consider his construction of Portuguese history in relation to Rome to be largely fabricated, with little basis in documented evidence.

  The sharpest blow to his reputation came from the nineteenth-century epigraphy specialist Emil Hübner, who examined an inscription Resende had put forward as a genuine artifact from ancient Rome and concluded it was inauthentic. Philip Spann, writing in 1981, placed this finding in its bluntest terms, calling Resende one of the great sixteenth-century forgers of inscriptions. Together with Nicolaus Clenardus, Resende is still recognized as a pioneer in advancing Christian humanism in Renaissance Portugal. But the gap between the history he wanted Portugal to have and the history the evidence could actually support has followed his name ever since.