The affection which the first princes of the house of Aviz had felt for literature, and especially for purely national literature, has been alluded to, and the natural result is to be seen in the works of the early poets, and of the eloquent chroniclers of the fifteenth century. The honour given by these princes to literary endeavour heightened its importance in the eyes of the people, and raised the whole standard of education. The Portuguese were therefore prepared to take advantage of the stores of knowledge revealed by the revival of classical learning, and to profit greatly by it. Ayres Barbosa, a native of Aveiro, was the first to introduce the study of ancient Greek into the peninsula; he had listened to the lectures of Politian and his contemporaries at Florence, and after teaching "the humanities" at the University of Salamanca for about twenty years from 1495, he returned to Portugal as tutor to the younger sons of King Emmanuel. His most distinguished Portuguese pupil was, however, Andrea de Resende, the antiquary, who was one of the professors at the University of Coimbra, during the epoch of its greatest reputation, and is well known as the friend and correspondent of Erasmus.
This university,[21] at which the most famous authors and statesmen of Portugal received their education, deserves some slight notice here. A university was founded by King Diniz at Lisbon in 1300, but the turbulence of the students, and their perpetual quarrels with the citizens, caused him to remove it to Coimbra, about the year 1308. During the fourteenth century the habitat of the Portuguese university was moved from Coimbra to Lisbon in 1338, from Lisbon to Coimbra in 1354, and from Coimbra back to Lisbon in 1377. John "the Great" paid great attention to the university, as he did to every valuable institution in the kingdom; and in 1400 he entirely remodelled it, establishing a staff of fourteen regius professors, four of whom were to teach grammar, three Roman law, three canon law, two logic, one medicine, and one theology. On this footing the Portuguese university remained until 1537, when John III., perceiving that the busy pursuits of a noisy capital were hardly suited to quiet study and the acquisition of learning, removed it finally to the beautiful city of Coimbra, and once more changed its constitution. In 1547 the king summoned Andrea Govea back to his native land, and requested him to bring with him other men of learning. Andrea Govea and his brothers were famous as scholars throughout Europe, even in the days which could boast of Scaliger; they were all natives of Beja, and had been educated at Paris; Martial Govea, the eldest, wrote one of the earliest Latin grammars, published at Paris in 1534; Antonio Govea argued the cause of Aristotle against Ramus, edited Virgil and Terence, and was held to be the most formidable rival of Cujas as an exponent of Roman law; while Andrea had been principal of the College of St. Barbe, rector of the University of Paris, and afterwards principal of the College of Guienne at Bordeaux, and was termed by Montaigne, "le plus grand principal de France."[22] Andrea Govea brought with him to Coimbra, as requested, many of his friends and colleagues, including George Buchanan, the greatest scholar Scotland has ever produced, Patrick Buchanan, his elder brother, Arnoldus Fabricius and Elias Vinetus, learned Frenchmen, and his own countrymen, Diogo de Tieve, João da Costa, and Antonio Mendes. This brilliant band did not, however, long remain united, for Andrea Govea died in 1548, and his death was followed by the persecution of George Buchanan by the Inquisition. The illustrious scholar was accused of eating flesh in Lent, and of writing a poem against the Franciscans, and after being imprisoned in a convent he was only too glad to escape from the inhospitable country. Though the death of Govea, and the persecution of Buchanan, deprived the remodelled university of its most famous teachers, there yet remained a sufficient number with such coadjutors as Jeronymo Osorio, Bishop of Silves, Andrea de Resende, and Pedro Nunes, the mathematician, to make this the golden age of the University of Coimbra; and the instruction they imparted profoundly impressed the minds of their most promising young Portuguese pupils, such as Ferreira and Camoens.