Author. He was a 19th century Portuguese poet, journalist, politician, polemicist and historian, yet he is most recognized as a novelist. He received his early education comprising of Latin, logic and rhetoric, at the Necessidades Monastery, and spent a year at the Royal Marine Academy studying mathematics with the intention of entering on a commercial career. In 1828 Portugal fell under the absolute rule of King Miguel, and Herculano, becoming involved in the unsuccessful military pronouncement of August of 1831, had to leave Portugal clandestinely and take refuge in England and France. In 1832 he accompanied the Liberal expedition to Terceira Island as a volunteer, and was one of King Pedro IV's famous army of 7500 men who landed at Mindelo and occupied Porto. He took part in all the actions of the great siege, and at the same time served as a librarian in the city archives. He published his first volume of verses "A Voz de Profeta" ("The Prophet's Voice"), in 1832, and two years later another entitled "A Harpa do Crente" ("The Believer's Harp"). In these little books he proves himself a poet of deep feeling and considerable power of expression. The stirring incidents in the political emancipation of Portugal inspired his muse, and he describes the bitterness of exile, the adventurous expedition to Terceira, the heroic defense of Porto, and the final combats of liberty. In 1837 he founded the "Panorama" in imitation of the English "Penny Magazine", and there and in "Ilustração" he published the historical tales, which were afterwards collected into "Lendas e Narrativas" ("Legends and Narratives") in 1851. Also, in 1837 he became royal librarian at the Ajuda Palace, which enabled him to continue his studies of the past. The "Panorama" had a large circulation and influence, and Herculano's biographical sketches of great men and his articles of literary and historical criticism did much to educate the middle class by acquainting them with the story of their nation, and with the progress of knowledge and the state of letters in foreign countries. After spending his early years as a poet, Herculano introduced the historical novel into Portugal in 1844 by a book written in imitation of Walter Scott. "Eurico" is about the fall of the Visigothic monarchy and the beginnings of resistance in the Asturias Region which gave birth to the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. A second book, "Monge de Cister" ("Cistercian Monk"), published in 1848, describes the time of King João I, when the middle class and the municipalities first asserted their power and elected a king who stood in opposition to the nobility. From an artistic standpoint, these stories are rather labored productions, besides being ultra-romantic in tone, but they were written mainly with an educational goal. These and editions of two old chronicles, the "Chronicle of Dom Sebastião" in 1839 and the "Annals of King João III" in 1844, prepared Herculano for his life's work, and the year 1846 saw the first volume of his "History of Portugal from the Beginning of the Monarchy to the end of the Reign of Afonso III", a book written on critical lines and based on documents. The difficulties he encountered in producing it were very great, for the foundations had been ill-prepared by his predecessors, and he was obliged to be artisan and architect at the same time. He 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. Students in Portugal and abroad welcomed the book as an historical work of the first rank, for its evidence of careful research, its able marshalling of facts, its scholarship and its painful accuracy, while the sculptural simplicity of the style and the correctness of the diction made it a Portuguese classic. The second volume of his history appeared in 1847, the third in 1849, and the fourth in 1853. The first volume, however, gave rise to a celebrated controversy after Herculano reduced the importance of the battle of Ourique to a mere skirmish and denied the apparition of Christ to King Afonso I. 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 a letter to the cardinal patriarch of Lisbon entitled "Eu e o Clero" ("Me and the Clergy", 1850), he denounced the fanaticism and ignorance of the clergy in plain terms, and this provoked a fierce pamphlet war marked by much personal abuse. In his youth, the excesses of absolutism had made Herculano a Liberal, and the attacks on his history turned this man, full of sentiment and deep religious conviction, into an anti-clerical who began to distinguish between political Catholicism and Christianity. His work "História da Origem e Estabelecimento da Inquisição em Portugal" ("History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal", 1854–1855), relating the thirty years' struggle between King João III and the Jews was compiled, as the preface showed, to stem the Ultramontane reaction. His study "Do Estado das classes servas na Península desde o VII até ao XII século" ("Condition of the working classes on the peninsula from the seventh to the twelfth century"), was Herculano's most valuable contribution to history. In 1856 Herculano began editing a series "Portugalliae monumenta historica", but personal differences between him and the keeper of the archives, which he necessarily frequented, interrupted his historical studies. On the death of his friend King Pedro V, Herculano left Ajuda and retired to a country house near Santarém. The alliance of Liberalism and Catholicism, represented by Herculano and his fellow poetic historians Chateaubriand and Lamartine had ended as the movement known as Ultramontanism, that grew within the Catholic hierarchy after the Revolutions of 1848. Herculano also opposed the Concordat of February 21, 1857, between Portugal and the Holy See, regulating the Portuguese Padroado in the East. Herculano supported civil marriage, although his work "Estudos sobre o Casamento Civil" ("Studies on Civil Marriage") was banned (put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum). His remains were originally interred in the Cemetery of Azóia de Baixo, being later moved to Prazeres Cemetery, in Lisbon, to a private mausoleum. On June 27, 1888 his remains were ultimately moved to a majestic tomb in the Monastery of Jerónimos, which was raised by public subscription.