Luís de Sousa

Luís de Sousa (born 1555, Santarém, Port.—died May 5, 1632, Bemfica, near Lisbon) was a monastic historian whose prose style in his chronicle of the Dominican order earned him an important position in the history of Portuguese literature.

Sousa may have studied law at the University of Coimbra. About 1576 he became a novice in the Knights of Malta but did not continue his religious affiliation at that time. Between 1584 and 1586 he married Madalena de Vilhena, widow of a Portuguese military hero.

In 1613, however, Sousa and Madalena decided to take religious vows and thereby separate for the rest of their lives. According to some, they were motivated by grief over the death of their young daughter; according to others, it was the discovery, or at least the rumour, that Madalena’s first husband was still alive. Sousa entered the Dominican monastery at Benfica, where he spent the rest of his life, changing his name to Friar (Frei) Luís de Sousa and taking vows in 1614.

Sousa soon took over the order’s chronicle begun by Friar Luís Cácegas, the História de São Domingos, 3 vol. (1623, 1662, 1678; “History of Santo Domingo”). Its publication brought him immediate recognition as a master stylist of Portuguese prose. In addition, he completed the Vida do Arcebispo D. Frei Bartolomeu dos Mártires (1619; “Life of Archbishop D[ominican] Friar Bartholomeu dos Mártires”), a biography of a 16th-century Portuguese Dominican friar who became archbishop of the see of Braga, Port. The biography is considered a literary masterpiece, as well as a valuable historical record.

Nevertheless, Sousa might have remained an obscure monastic chronicler known only to scholars had his own life not been dramatized and popularized by the 19th-century Portuguese writer João Baptista de Almeida Garrett. Garrett’s romantic play Frei Luís de Sousa (1843), emphasizing the personal struggles of the man, made Sousa a legendary and heroic figure in Portuguese history.