RESENDE, GARCIA DE (147o-1536), Portuguese poet and editor, was born at Evora, and began to serve John II. as a page at the age of ten, becoming his private secretary in 1491. He was present at his death at Alvor on Oct. 25, 1495. He continued to enjoy the same favour with King Manoel, whom he ac companied to Castile in 1498, and from whom he obtained a knighthood of the Order of Christ. In 1514 Resende went to Rome with Tristdo da Cunha, as secretary and treasurer of the famous embassy sent by the king to offer the tribute of the East at the feet of Pope Leo X. In 1516 he was given the rank of a nobleman of the royal household, and became escrivilo de fazenda to Prince John, afterwards King John III., from whom he received further pensions in 1525. Resende built a chapel in the monastery of Espinheiro near Evora, the pantheon of the Alem tejo nobility, where he was buried. Resende collected the best court verse of the time in the Cancioneiro Geral, probably begun in 1483 though not printed until 1516.
The Cancioneiro is redeemed from complete insipidity by Re sende himself, and his fine verses on the death of D. Ignez de Castro inspired the great episode in the Lusiads of Camoens (q.v.). Resende is the compiler of a gossiping chronicle of his
patron John II., which, though plagiarized from the chronicle by Ruy de Pina (q.v.), has a value of its own. Resende's Miscellanea, a rhymed commentary on the most notable events of his time, which is annexed to his Chronicle, is a document full of historical interest, and as a poem not without merit.
His Cancioneiro appeared in 1516, and was reprinted by Kausler at Stuttgart (3 vols., 1846-52). A new edition was published by the Hispanic Society of America in 1904. The editions of his Chronicle are those of 1545, 1596, 1607, 1622, 1752 and 1798. For a critical study of his work, see Antonio de Castilho, Excerptos, seguidos de uma noticia sobre sua vida e obras, um juizo critico, apreciaciio de bellezas e defeitos e estudo da lingua (Paris, 1865). Also Anselmo Braamcamp, As sepulturas do Espinheiro 0900 passim, especially pp. 67-8o, where the salient dates in Resende's life are set out from documents recently discovered ; and Dr. Sousa Viterbo, Diccionario dos Architectos . . . Portuguezes, ii. 361-74.