ANDRE (1810-1877), Portuguese historian, was born in Lis bon of humble stock, his grandfather having been a foreman stonemason in the royal employ. In 1831 under the absolute rule of D. Miguel, Herculano had to take refuge in England and France. In 1832 he accompanied the Liberal expedition to Ter ceira as a volunteer, and was one of D. Pedro's famous army of 7,500 men who landed at Mindello and occupied Oporto. He published his first volume of verses, A Voz do Propheta, in 1836, and two years later another entitled A Harpa do Crente. In 1837 he founded the Panorama in imitation of the English Penny Maga zine, and there and in Illustracdo he published the historical tales which were afterwards collected into Lendas e Narrativas (1851) ; in the same year he became royal librarian at the Ajuda Palace-. On entering parliament in 1840 he resigned the editorship of Panorama to devote himself to history.
Herculano introduced the historical novel into Portugal in 1844 by a book written in imitation of Walter Scott. Eurico treats of the fall of the Visigothic monarchy and the beginnings of resistance in the Asturias, while the Monge de Cister (1848) de sci ibes the time of King John I. Herculano had greater book learn ing than Scott, but lacked descriptive talent and skill in dialogue. These and editions of two old chronicles, the Chronica de D. Sebastido (1839) and the Annaes del rei D. Joao III. (1844), prepared Herculano for his life's work, and the year 1846 saw the first volume of his History of Portugal, a book written on critical lines and based on documents. Serious students in Portugal and abroad welcomed the book as an historical work of the first rank, but the first volume gave rise to a celebrated controversy, because Herculano had reduced the famous battle of Ourique to a mere skirmish, and denied the apparition of Christ to King Alphonso. Herculano was denounced from the pulpit and the press ; in a letter to the cardinal patriarch of Lisbon entitled Eu e o Clero (185o), he denounced the fanaticism and ignorance of the clergy in plain terms. The second volume of his history appeared in 1847, the third in 1849 and the fourth in 18S3. His History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition was com piled, as the preface showed, to stem the Ultramontane reaction. In 1856 he began editing a series of Portugaliae monunienta historica, but personal differences between him and the keeper of the Archive office, which he was forced to frequent, caused him to interrupt his historical studies, and on the death of his friend King Pedro V. he left the Ajuda and retired to a country house at Val de Lobos near Santarem. His protest against the Concordat of Feb. 21, 1857, between Portugal and the Holy See, his successful opposition to the entry of foreign religious orders, and his ad vocacy of civil marriage, were the chief landmarks in his battle with Ultramontanism, and his Estudos sobre o Casamento Civil were put on the Index. Finally in 1871 he attacked the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and Papal infallibility, and fell into line with the Old Catholics.
A rare capacity for tedious work, a dour Catonian rectitude, a passion for truth, pride, irritability at criticism and independence of character, are the marks of Herculano as a man. He could be broken but never bent, and his rude frankness accorded with his hard, sombre face, and alienated men's sympathies though it did not lose him their respect. His lyrism is vigorous, sensitive, austere and almost entirely subjective and personal, while his pamphlets are distinguished by energy of conviction, strength of affirmation, and contempt for weaker and more ignorant op ponents. His History of Portugal, by its style a Portuguese classic, is a great but incomplete monument (it ends with the year 1279). A lack of imagination and of the philosophic spirit prevented him from penetrating or drawing characters, but his analytical gift, joined to persevering toil and honesty of purpose, enabled him to present a faithful account of ascertained facts and a satisfactory and lucid explanation of political and economic events. He is the greatest modern historian of Portugal and the Peninsula.
See A. Romero Ortiz, La Literatura Portuguesa en el siglo xix. (1869) ; Antonio de Serpa Pimentel, Alexandre Herculano e o seu tempo (i88i) ; Moniz Barreto in Revista de Portugal (July 1889). A definitive edition of the Historia de Portugal was published by Prof. David Lopes in 8 illus. vols. (1914-16). (E. P.; A. B.)