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U.Porto Memory

Teachers and students of the first Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto

José Freitas de Bragança

	1892-1982 Teacher, Historian and Art Critic

Born in Porto on 17 April 1892, he completed his high school studies there in 1910. He then left for Paris where he graduated in Modern Philology at the Sorbonne. During the 1^st World War, he taught English at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, began to collaborate with French newspapers and directed the Portuguese section of a reputed French publisher.

He returned to Porto in 1922, and Dr. Hernâni Cidade suggested his name for the position of Assistant Professor of the 2^nd Group (Romance Philology) of the 1^st Faculty of Arts of Porto, taking up office on 16 June 1923. Here, he held the chair of Medieval and Barbarian Latin. The following year, he asked permission to the School Board to teach a course in Modern French Literature, but this never materialized. At the beginning of 1925, he was sent on a service commission to the Ministry of Labour. At the end of the academic year, he terminated his contract with the Faculty, which had not been renewed apparently because of the disagreements he had with Dr. Hernâni Cidade.

He then settled with his family in Lisbon and spent his time focusing on expanding his knowledge on Art, in particular European Art in the Renaissance. His reputation as an historian and art critic was surely marked by his anti-authoritarian political views, as shown by the closing of the Open University of Lisbon after he participated in a colloquium, and the cancellation of one of the lectures in the Palácio das Belas-Artes in Lisbon.

As part of his research work, he was involved in several controversies related to Portuguese historical-cultural issues, for example, when he said Grão-Vasco was the author of the famous "Questão dos painéis" of S. Vicente [a painting formed by 3 panels] and when he defended that the "Crónica Geral de Espanha de 1344" [General Chronicle of Spain of 1344] was originally Portuguese and that Fernão Lopes was not the author of the Chronicles of the Kings of the 1^st Portuguese Dynasty before Pedro I of Portugal.

He died in Lisbon in 1982. His book collection is kept in the National Library of Portugal.
(Universidade Digital / Gestão de Informação, 2008)