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 Évora, which he resigned in 1766, and a deputy of the Holy Office. He had earned a doctorate in canon law at Coimbra, and from 1780 the Academia Real das Sciencias of Lisbon included him among its first group of fellows. Although his work was interrupted by his death, it is of considerable scope and chiefly concerns the civil and religious history of Portugal: especially noteworthy are five memoirs that trace the national history of the periods before the Roman conquest and of the early 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 Fructuosus. The latter work is of particular interest for its introduction, which deals with the state of ecclesiastical discipline in Spain, and especially in the province of Braga, in the 7th century. To all these works are added translations of French and Spanish historical or religious writings.