Diogo de Couto

Diogo de Couto - woodcut in the journal "O Panorama" 1837 (from the private collection of Dr. Nuno Carvalho de Sousa, Lisbon)

Diogo de Couto (* around 1542 in Lisbon , † December 10, 1616 in Goa ) was a Portuguese historian .

Life

Diogo de Couto studied Latin and rhetoric at the Colégio de Santo Antão and philosophy at the Convento de Benfica. In 1559 he went to India , from where he was to return a decade later. He was a close friend of Luís de Camões and traveled to the Ilha de Moçambique in 1569 , where he found him in debt and without money to return. Diogo do Couto and other friends helped the poet, who was able to present his greatest work, Die Lusiaden , in the capital . They arrived in Lisbon in April 1570 on the ship Santa Clara, but had to anchor in the Tejo off Cascais because the plague was rampant in Lisbon .

He soon went back to the Orient after he had been given the task of searching for the "Décadas" by João de Barros from King Philip II . Diogo de Couto continued the decades and wrote nine more volumes. A modern edition in 14 volumes appeared in Lisbon from 1778 to 1788 as Da Asia de João de Barros, dos feitos que os Portuguezes fizeram no descubrimento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente . A book with the life of de Barros, written by the historian Manoel Severim de Faria, and a comprehensive index of all decades were also published with this edition . The historian criticized and openly protested the abuse, corruption and the usual tyranny in India.

Beyond the “Décadas”, de Couto described, among other things, the tragic sinking of a carrack in front of São Tomé and wrote the Diálogo do Soldado Prático with a devastating criticism of the conditions in India, emphasizing the ambitions of the rich, the love of luxury and the oppression of the poor , the lack of dignity and disloyalty in reports to the king.

Web links

• "De Ásia de João de Barros e Diogo do Couto" , original text
• "Angkor Wat"