Tristão Gomes de Castro

Descendant of João Gomes da Ilha (or o Trovador), a court poet featured in the Cancioneiro Geral of Garcia de Resende, and heir to the House of his grandparents Gomes de Castro upon the death of his mother, D. Joana Gomes de Castro, he completed his education at court where he later became a gentleman (fidalgo) of the Household of D. João III. A Knight of the Order of Christ, he received the position of Chief Standard-Bearer (Alferes Maior) of the island of Madeira. Author of numerous chivalric romances, he had a reputation as a scholar and an excellent Latin poet. His chivalric romance Argonáutica da cavalaria ou Leomundo de Grécia (written probably between 1599 and 1611 and dedicated to the Countess of Vila Nova de Ficalho), mentioned by Barbosa Machado in Biblioteca Lusitana, thought to be lost until recently, and part of a rich Portuguese literary tradition of chivalric books in manuscript form, was recently discovered in the National Archives of Torre do Tombo (ANTT, Manuscritos da Livraria: cod. 686) by Aurelio Vargas Diaz-Toledo from the Complutense University of Madrid. According to this researcher, another chivalric romance by Tristão Gomes de Castro, entitled Clarindo de Grécia, is also supposed to exist. In May 2011, the DRAC [Regional Directorate for Cultural Affairs] of Madeira announced the launch of the collection «Biblioteca Madeirense» (provisional title) whose "number one will deal with the 'very interesting' work of the little-known Madeiran author, Tristão Gomes de Castro."