Diogo de Couto

Diogo de Couto (* about 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, where he was supposed to return a decade later. He was a close friend of Luís de Camões and traveled in 1569 to the Ilha de Moçambique, where he found him with debt and no money for the return. Diogo do Couto and other friends helped the poet, so that in the capital was his greatest work, The Lusiads imagine. They arrived in Lisbon in April 1570 on the ship Santa Clara, but had to drop anchor in the Tagus at Cascais, because in Lisbon rampant plague.

He immediately went back to the Orient, after he had received the task of finding the " Decadas " by João de Barros of King Philip II. Diogo de Couto continued the decades and wrote nine other books. A modern edition in 14 volumes was published from 1778 to 1788 in Lisbon as Da Asia de João de Barros, dos Feitos que os Portuguezes fizeram no descubrimento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente. About this edition a book with the life of de Barros, written by the historian Manoel de Faria Severim, and a comprehensive index of all published decades. The historian criticized the abuse, corruption and violence, the usual rule in India and protested openly against it.

About the " Decadas " also described de Couto, among others, the tragic demise of a carrack before São Tomé and wrote the Diálogo do Soldado Prático with a devastating critique of the states in India, highlighting the ambitions of the rich, the love of luxury, the oppression of the poor, lack of dignity and of disloyalty in the reports to the king.