Francisco de Sá de Miranda was born in Coimbra. He studied in the school at the Santa Cruz Monastery, where Portugal’s great epic and lyrical poet Luís de Camões was also schooled some decades later. He went on to read Law at the University, at the time based in Lisbon. As a graduate of Law, he frequented the Court and became friends with the Portuguese Renaissance poet Bernardim Ribeiro (1482?−1552?). Thirteen of Sá de Miranda’s poems were published in the famous Cancioneiro Geral assembled by Garcia de Resende (1516). He spent six years abroad in Italy, from where he imported and introduced the sonnet and the dolce stil nuovo (sweet new style) into the Portuguese language. He died in Amares, in the District of Braga in the north of Portugal, where he had moved after becoming fed up with court life in Lisbon. This later period of relative solitude was one of his most productive poetically speaking. He is buried in the cemetery of the Igreja de São Martinho de Carrazedo.
You may find his poetry in…
Five Coimbra Poets brings together different poetical voices from diverse centuries, starting in late medieval Portugal with Dom Dinis and ending with Fernando Assis Pacheco in the last half of the 20th century.
Cinco poetas de Coímbra une voces poéticas profundamente distintas de siglos diferentes —de la Alta Edad Media, con Don Denís, a Fernando Assis Pacheco, en la segunda mitad del siglo XX—.
Cinq poètes de Coimbra réunit des voix poétiques profondément distinctes, issues de différents siècles, allant de Dom Dinis (le Portugal de la fin du Moyen-Âge) à Fernando Assis Pacheco (seconde moitié du XXe siècle).
