BARROS, JOÃO de. - Portuguese writer and historiographer, b. at Viseu in 1496, d. near Pombal in 1571.
In 1520 he published the Crónica do Imperador Clarimundo, which, conceived as a chivalric romance of adventures and alternating prose and verse, rich in characters and episodes, already revealed that intent of glorifying the homeland which forms the purpose of B.'s greatest work, namely the Décadas da Ásia, most useful for knowing the history of the Portuguese empire in the East. B. proceeds by choosing from the best documents, but the desire to exalt his country makes him gather only the elements suited to that purpose; therefore the history of the conquest is conducted from a decidedly tendentious point of view and lacks proportion and objectivity, and it is the imitation of Livy's histories that suggests to him the impassioned speeches of his heroes. The work, which was to be one of Camões's sources, was to consist of four sections, each dedicated to one of the parts of the world that had been the theater of Portuguese activity, but such a vast design could not be carried out. Of B. there remain only four decades of the Ásia, the last of which was published posthumously; eight others were written by Diego do Couto and a thirteenth by Antonio Bocarro. B. is also the author of moralistic and didactic writings (the Ropica pnefma, a Dialogo da viciosa vergonha in which Christian morality is combined with heroic exaltation and the love of glory, etc.), a Portuguese grammar for the use of the natives with prayers and precepts of Christian doctrine, and various dialogues and discourses.
Recently (Lisbon 1921) a selection of the first decade was published in the collection Antologia portuguesa by A. de Campos, and R. Lapa edited an edition of the Panegiricos.
Bibliography4 works
Jole Scudieri Ruggieri