SOUSA, LUIS DE (MANUEL DE SOUSA COUTINHO). – Portuguese historian, born in Santarém, lived from 1555 to 1632.
His work, which deals with political and ecclesiastical history, is distinguished by the serenity and clarity of its style, in interesting contrast with the baroque manner of the mystical writers with whom he should, instead, be associated by analogy of situations and spiritual attitudes. But the figure of L. de S. is also famous and popular because of an event in his life. Upon returning to his homeland after the captivity he had endured at the hands of the Arabs in Algiers (where he shared a prison with Cervantes), he married Donna Maddalena di Vilhena, whose first husband, D. João de Portugal, presumed for years to have been lost in the disastrous African battle of Alcácer-Québi, suddenly reappeared in Lisbon: to this return Portuguese poetic tradition attributes the pathetic separation agreed upon between Donna Maddalena and Don Manuel, both of whom entered religious life (1613). Literature took possession of the event, and J. B. de Almeida Garrett drew inspiration from it for the masterpiece of the national Romantic theatre, Frei L. de S.