19 Facts About Alexandre Herculano

Alexandre Herculano took part in all the actions of the great siege, and at the same time served as a librarian in the city archives.

Alexandre Herculano published his first volume of verses, A Voz de Propheta, in 1832, and two years later another entitled A Harpa do Crente.

Alexandre Herculano had greater book-learning than Scott, but lacked descriptive talent and skill in dialogue.

Alexandre Herculano's touch is heavy, and these novels show no dramatic power, which accounts for his failure as a playwright, but their influence was as great as their followers were many.

Alexandre Herculano had to collect manuscripts from all parts of Portugal, decipher, classify and weigh them before he could begin work, and then he found it necessary to break with precedents and destroy traditions.

The first volume gave rise to a celebrated controversy, because Alexandre Herculano had reduced the famous battle of Ourique, which was supposed to have seen the birth of the Portuguese monarchy, to the dimensions of a mere skirmish, and denied the apparition of Christ to King Afonso, a fable first circulated in the 15th century.

Alexandre Herculano was denounced from the pulpit and by the press for his lack of patriotism and piety, and after bearing the attack for some time his pride drove him to reply.

In 1856 Alexandre Herculano began editing a series of Portugalliae monumenta historica, but personal differences between him and the keeper of the Archives, which he necessarily frequented, interrupted his historical studies.

Disillusioned with mankind and despairing of the future of his country, Alexandre Herculano rarely emerged from his retirement; when he did so, it was to fight political and religious reactionaries.

Alexandre Herculano defended Portugal's monastic orders and successfully opposed the entry of foreign religious orders.

Alexandre Herculano supported the rural clergy and idealized the village priest in his Paroco da Aldeia, an imitation, unconscious or otherwise, of Oliver Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield".

Alexandre Herculano opposed the Concordat of February 21,1857, between Portugal and the Holy See, regulating the Portuguese Padroado in the East.

Alexandre Herculano supported civil marriage, although his "Studies on Civil Marriage" was banned.

However, though he conducted political propaganda campaigns in the press in his early days, Alexandre Herculano never exercised much influence in politics.

Alexandre Herculano's lyricism is vigorous, feeling but austere, and almost entirely subjective and personal, while his pamphlets are distinguished by energy of conviction, strength of affirmation, and contempt for weaker and more ignorant opponents.

Alexandre Herculano's History of Portugal is a great but incomplete monument.

Alexandre Herculano's remains lie in a majestic tomb in the Jeronimos Monastery at Belem, near Lisbon, which was raised by public subscription.

In 1866, Alexandre Herculano married Mariana Herminia de Meira, born around 1830, whom he had first fallen in love with at the age of 26.

Alexandre Herculano explained in a letter to his friend Joaquim Filipe de Soure that he wanted someone to care for him in his old age and that he never wished to have children, believing it incompatible with his work.