Garcia de Resende (14703 February 1536) was a Portuguese poet and editor. He served John II as a page and private secretary. After John's death, he continued to enjoy the same favour with Manuel I, whom he accompanied to Castile in 1498, and from whom he obtained a

knight A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the ...

hood in the Order of Christ. In 1514, Resende went to

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

with Tristão da Cunha, as secretary and treasurer of the embassy sent by the king to offer tribute to

Pope Leo X Pope Leo X ( it, Leone X; born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, 11 December 14751 December 1521) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 9 March 1513 to his death in December 1521. Born into the prominent political an ...

. In 1516 he was given the rank of a nobleman of the royal household, and became ''escrivão de fazenda'' to Prince John, afterwards King John III, from whom he received further pensions in 1525. Resende built a

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common type ...

in the

monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone ( hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer whi ...

of Espinheiro near

Évora Évora ( , ) is a city and a municipality in Portugal. It has 53,591 inhabitants (2021), in an area of 1307.08 km2. It is the historic capital of the Alentejo and serves as the seat of the Évora District. Due to its well-preserved old to ...

, the pantheon of the

Alentejo Alentejo ( , ) is a geographical, historical, and cultural region of south–central and southern Portugal. In Portuguese, its name means "beyond () the Tagus river" (''Tejo''). Alentejo includes the regions of Alto Alentejo and Baixo Alen ...

nobility Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy. It is normally ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm with many exclusive functions and characteristics. The characteri ...

, where he was buried. Obras de Garcia de Resende

Poetry

He began to cultivate the making of verses in the palace of John II, and he reported that how one night when the king was in bed he caused him Resende to repeat some "trovas" (troubador songs) of

Jorge Manrique Jorge Manrique (c. 1440 – 24 April 1479) was a major Castilian poet, whose main work, the ''Coplas por la muerte de su padre (Verses on the death of Don Rodrigo Manrique, his Father)'', is still read today. He was a supporter of the queen ...

, saying it was as needful for a man to know them as to know the '' Pater Noster''. Under these conditions, Resende grew as a poet, and moreover distinguished himself by his skill in drawing and music; while he collected into an album the best court verse of the time. This was the ''Cancioneiro Geral'' (General Songbook), probably starting in 1483, though not printed until 1516, which includes the compositions of some three hundred '' fidalgos'' of the reigns of kings

Afonso V Afonso V () (15 January 1432 – 28 August 1481), known by the sobriquet the African (), was King of Portugal from 1438 until his death in 1481, with a brief interruption in 1477. His sobriquet refers to his military conquests in Northern Africa. ...

, John II, and Manuel I. The main subjects of its pieces are love,

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...

and

epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two mille ...

; and most of them are written in the national '' redondilha'' verse, but the

metre The metre ( British spelling) or meter ( American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pr ...

is irregular and the

rhyming A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...

careless. The Spanish language is largely employed, because the literary progenitors of the whole collection were

Juan de Mena Juan de Mena (1411–1456) was one of the most significant Spanish poets of the fifteenth century. He was highly regarded at the court of Juan II de Castilla, who appointed him ''veinticuatro'' (one of twenty-four aldermen) of Córdoba, ''sec ...

, Boscán and Garcilaso. As a rule the compositions were improvised at palace entertainments, at which the poets present divided into two bands, attacking and defending a given theme throughout successive evenings. At other times these poetical soirées took the form of a mock trial at law, in which

Eleanor Eleanor () is a feminine given name, originally from an Old French adaptation of the Old Provençal name ''Aliénor''. It is the name of a number of women of royalty and nobility in western Europe during the High Middle Ages. The name was introd ...

, the queen of John II, acted as judge. Resende was mocked by other rhymesters about his corpulence, but he repaid all their gibes with interest. The linguist Edgar Prestage gives an assessment of the ''Cancioneiro Geral'' in the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Eleventh Edition.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Resende 1470 births 1536 deaths 15th-century Portuguese poets 16th-century Portuguese poets Portuguese male poets Portuguese Renaissance writers 15th-century Portuguese writers 16th-century Portuguese writers 16th-century male writers People from Évora