Antônio Ribeiro dos Santos

Jurisconsult, philologist, and poet. He graduated in Philology and Humanities in Rio de Janeiro and in Canon Law in Coimbra, where he presented his thesis De sacerdotio et imperio selectae dissertationes. In 1771, he received his doctorate, and in 1790, he was ordained subdeacon. He also served as a deputy of the Holy Office of Coimbra. Among other roles, he served as a judge (desembargador) of the Casa da Suplicação, a deputy of the Mesa de Consciência e Ordens, and a deputy of the House of Braganza. His participation in the commission appointed by Queen D. Maria I for legislative codification was the most notable aspect of his judicial activity: there, in opposition to Pascoal de Melo, he defended conceptions of popular sovereignty that would later be imposed by the French Revolution, specifically the right that obliged the king to popular consultation. He authored the first essay published in Portugal advocating for the abolition of the death penalty («Discurso sobre a pena de morte e Reflexões sobre alguns crimes» Jornal de Coimbra nº. XXXIII, Parte II, s.d.). He was a librarian at the University of Coimbra, a royal censor, and a chronicler of the House of Braganza, and for twenty years, he played an important role in what would become the National Library, to which he bequeathed many of his Memoirs, almost all handwritten. He was an effective member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Celtic Academy. «A better philologist than poet», in the opinion of Luís de Sousa Rebelo, his attribution of Celtic origin to the Portuguese language became famous – a thesis later authoritatively refuted by Alexandre Herculano, although, on the other hand, many of Ribeiro dos Santos's studies informed Herculano's notes on História de Portugal. He also studied Hebrew culture and the origins of typography in Portugal. He wrote sonnets, odes, and epigrams and used the Arcadian name Elpino Duriense. He associated with Bocage and Stockler, and later, when blind, with António Feliciano de Castilho. Author of philosophical poetry or poetry celebrating the scientific knowledge of Nature, he is, alongside José Agostinho de Macedo, one of the Portuguese proponents of «literaturized scientism», «which is an ideological byproduct of the mental habits of experimentalism and naturalistic taxonomy» of the Age of Enlightenment (António José Saraiva and Óscar Lopes, História da Literatura Portuguesa). He translated Lírica de Horácio, 2 volumes (1807), and a part of the Ilíada. The translation of Aristotle's Arte Poética is also attributed to him by some.