Faria y Sousa

Faria y Sousa, MANUEL DE, Portuguese historian and poet, was born near Pombeiro in 1590, was secretary to his kinsman the Bishop of Oporto, and became in 1631 secretary to the Spanish embassy at Rome, where he enjoyed the favour of Pope Urban VIII. Three years later he returned to Spain, and died at Madrid in 1649. His writings fill more than sixty volumes, partly in Spanish, and comprise works on Portuguese history, on Portugal and its possessions in America and Africa, and commentaries on Camoens. His Portuguese poems comprise about two hundred good sonnets and twelve eclogues, and it is mainly by these, and also by three theoretical treatises on poetry, that he has influenced the development of the poetic literature of Portugal, in which he was long regarded as an oracle. His poetry exhibits talent and spirit, but is on the whole tasteless and bombastic.—He must not be confounded with Manuel Severin de Faria (1583–1655), who was one of the most learned numismatists of his age.