Pe. António dos Reis

Historian, orator, poet, and Latinist, he is one of the personalities who emerge in the 18th-century wake of our most erudite humanism. Having been a student of the Jesuits, he nevertheless professed, in 1707, in the Congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. He was a professor of Moral Theology and political consultant to D. João V, who, in 1720, appointed him as one of the founders of the Academia Real da História and, in 1726, Latin historiographer of the kingdom. He was also censor of the Academia da História, qualifier of the Holy Office, and chronicler-general of the Oratory congregations. He mastered Latin, Greek, Castilian, Italian, French, and English. Besides being the author of historiographical works, particularly within the scope of the incomplete História Geral da Congregação do Oratório, and numerous epigrams and sermons, both in Latin and Portuguese, and often signed with a pseudonym, he is the main organizer of the eight-volume poetic collection, Corpus illustrium poetarum lusitanorum, whose last volume would be published by Father Manuel Monteiro.