AMARAL, ANTONIO CAETANO DO

AMARAL, ANTONIO CAETANO do. - Portuguese historian and scholar, born in Lisbon in 1747 and died there in 1819. He was a canon of the see of Evora, which he relinquished in 1766, and a deputy of the Holy Office. He had taken his doctorate in canon law at Coimbra, and from 1780 the Academia Real das Sciencias of Lisbon included him among its first group of members. Although interrupted by death, his work is of very considerable scope and chiefly concerns the civil and religious history of Portugal: particularly noteworthy are five memoirs tracing the national history of the period before the Roman conquest and that of the first Portuguese monarchy. The Church owes him two volumes of Memoirs on the life of the archbishop of Braga, don Fr. Caetano Brandão, a Life of St. Martin of Braga, and one of St. Fruttuoso. The latter is of special interest because of its introduction, which deals with the state of Spanish ecclesiastical discipline, and particularly that of the province of Braga, in the seventh century. To all these works must be added translations of French and Spanish writings of a historical or religious character.