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THE TEAM
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He also believed that the vanguard of that intellectual development had moved from the France of Mabillon to the Germany of Leopold von Ranke, of Friedrich Carl von Savigny and of so many other historians who are frequently cited in his writings. (Catroga, “A. Herculano e o historicismo romântico”[“A. Herculano and Romantic Historicism] , 54-55) – and of Heinrich Schäfer, the author of the book he referred to as “the best book ever on the history of Portugal” (História de Portugal, II, 618). However, it should not be inferred from the above that Herculano was a unilaterally Germanophile historian since his work also documents numerous praises and references to supporters of critical history from different national traditions such as the Italian Michele Amari and Luigi Cibrario, the Spanish Francisco Martínes Marina, Pascual de Guayangos and Tomás Muñoz y Romero, the British Thomas Macaulay, as well as several other French authors (“Solemnia verba”, 71; Bernstein, A. Herculano, 83 nt. 31, 90-91, 95-96). Furthermore, the vast continuity between Herculano’s critical-philological efforts and those that marked the paths of Portuguese scholars from previous generations should be noted, such as the cases of António Caetano do Amaral, João Pedro Ribeiro and the Visconde de Santarém [Viscount of Santarém]. At least from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, the Real Academia de História and also the Academia das Ciências, as of 1779, with which all the above-mentioned authors had had connections, in addition to Herculano himself, had been particularly important institutions for the advance of studies, debates and publications related to documental research. Therefore, the critical pattern behind Herculano’s approach to his sources from Cartas sobre a História de Portugal onwards should not be understood as a radical inflexion in Portuguese historical culture; that is, it should not be viewed as the result of a single individual’s innovative efforts inspired exclusively by foreign accomplishments. Instead, it represents the maturity point of a scholarly undertaking of a collective and multi-generational nature (Macedo, A. Herculano: polémica e mensagem, 13-21).
In 1842, a substantial interpretation guideline and a set of methodological ideals and methodical practices were already in place, which História de Portugal would try to materialize some years later. Herculano published the four volumes of his major work in 1846, 1847, 1849 and 1853, respectively. In the first two volumes and in most of the third, his writing is structured classically in a diachronic history of events. Upon reviewing features of the Iberian experience before, during and after the Roman dominion, covering the Visigoth and Muslim invasions and the attempted reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula by entrapped Christian forces, Herculano presents in great detail a chain of events which, in his opinion, had been decisive for the country's formation, beginning with the gift of the Condado Portucalense [the County of Portugal] by Alfonso VI, king of León and Castille, to Henry of Burgundy in 1096. From then onwards, the text is quite intensively grounded on documental sources.
