BRITO, BERNARDO de. - Portuguese Cistercian monk, in the world Balthazar de Brito de Andrade, who lived between 1561 and 1617; he was a poet, historian and scholar. His principal works are the Monarquia lusitana and the Chronica de Cister; the first extends from the origins of the world to 1098, the presumed year of the donation of the county of Portugal to Count D. Henry (and is therefore interrupted precisely at the point where it ought to begin), and the other likewise remained interrupted at the first part, which runs from the foundation of the Order of St. Benedict to the life of St. Juliana (6th-13th centuries). Rather than for their historical value, however, the two works are appreciable as models of style and as a document of culture, since the Monarquia is a bombastic exaltation of the Lusitanian lineage, stuffed with falsehoods and inventions of every kind, and the Chronica (in which national history also has a large place) abounds in visions and miracles, the fruit of the author's imagination and of his immoderate desire to magnify his own Order.
An edition of the Monarquia lusitana was published at Alcobaça-Lisbon between 1597 and 1609 (the 2nd ed. in 1609) and more recently, edited by Fr. Joaquim de Foyos (Lisbon 1806-1809); the poetic collection entitled Sylvia de Lisardo appeared in Lisbon in 1597; the Chronica de Cister, in 1602. Various works by the author are still unpublished.
Bibliography
Ruggero M. Ruggieri