Humanism in Portugal Under John III (1521–1557)

Abstract

Damiao de Gois landed on the shores of Lisbon in August 1545, probably with strongly stirred emotions.¹ Having left Portugal as a young man, he now returned as a recognized scholar, with a wife and three sons. How proudly he must have introduced Johanna to the bustling harbor and the colorful city of Lisbon on its lofty hills. But the homecoming was shadowed. Johanna, of course, had left familiar surroundings to enter a completely foreign land — and Damiao himself had never denied that he would have preferred to live abroad. Although he seemed assured of a bright future in his own country, he arrived to find Portugal in the midst of a lively and — in the end for him — a disturbing intellectual debate and harrassed by economic difficulties.