Inácio Garcez Ferreira

Poet and Camões scholar. He entered the Order of Saint John the Evangelist at the age of nineteen, studied Theology at the University of Coimbra, attained the dignity of canon in his Order, and, in 1712, left the Congregation and departed for Italy. First in Rome, then in Naples, he pursued extensive literary activity, notably dedicating himself to continuing the works on Camões that had occupied João Franco Barreto (1600–c.1674), studies he used for the critical apparatus of his Italian translation of Os Lusíadas, in two volumes (Naples, 1731; Rome, 1732). He was a member of the Arcadian Academy of Rome under the name Gilmeno. He must have returned to Portugal around 1732, settling in Lamego. He left in manuscript a Tratado da Língua e Ortografia Portuguesa. Also known by him is an Elogio Parenético de D. João V (Rome, 1716).