FERNÃO LOPES. – Portuguese chronicler. Biographical details about him are scarce and uncertain: he may have lived from about 1380 to 1460. King John I appointed him to the trusted position of keeper of the archives of the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon, a post he held for 36 years, during which time he compiled the chronicles requested of him on the kings of the national dynasties of Burgundy and Aviz.
He completed or drafted ten biographies of the nine kings of the first dynasty and the first of the second. Only the last three of these survive in the original: those on King Peter I (a draft), King Ferdinand, and “his” King John I. These works suffice to make him the greatest of Portuguese historians of his century (he is called the “father of Portuguese history”) and perhaps the most notable in Europe at that time. His history demonstrates a scrupulous concern for truth and a continuous aspiration toward a “philosophical” arrangement, as he himself expresses it, of causes and effects in events. Of singular effectiveness is his portrayal of Nuno Álvares, the saintly military leader in the defense against the Spaniards (if the *Crónica do Condestável de Portugal Nuno Álvares Pereira* is indeed his, as a portion of scholarship still maintains), and his descriptions of crowds.
Giuseppe Carlo Rossi