Pinto, Fernão Mendes

(ca. 1510-1583)

   Soldier and adventurer in Asia and one of Portugal's greatest prose writers of the 16th century. He was the author of a classic, largely true adventure story and history of Portugal in Asia, the Peregrinação, which in popularity among 17th-century readers in Iberia and Europe rivaled Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quijote. Even less is known about Mendes Pinto's life than that of Luís de Camões. He left as a soldier on a fleet for India in 1537, and lived in Asia for about 17 years. In addition to Portuguese India, he saw many places in Southeast Asia, China, and Japan. His service for Portugal involved great personal suffering including wounds in battle, captivities, and near-starvation. In later years, he retired as a lay brother of the Jesuit Order in Goa and went to Japan in 1556.

   In 1558, he retired to Portugal, where he wrote his great work, the Peregrinação, which can be translated as 'Travels." The work was not published in his lifetime, but only in 1614, and it was long considered a work mainly of fiction, an apocryphal composition. It was apparently more popular in Spain, France, and England than in his homeland. Later critics and translators have concluded that much of the work is a partly true description of the Portuguese in Asia and of Asian events, coupled with a wry but honest look at the foibles of the Catholic Church of his day.