Pedro Augusto de São Bartolomeu de Azevedo or, more simply, Pedro de Azevedo, as he became known in historiographical and academic circles, was born in Santarém on 24 August 1869 and died in Lisbon on 3 February 1928 at the age of 58.

Pedro de Azevedo, the son of a discreet secondary school teacher by the name of Ventura Faria de Azevedo, probably got from his father his interest in literature , which would shape his entire life. As a result of this precocious vocation, and after completing his secondary education in 1887 , he enrolled in the Higher Degree for Librarians and Archivists, recently created by the General Inspection of Public Libraries and Archives and affiliated with the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, from which he was the first official graduate. In the course of his studies, he had the opportunity to make contact with the subjects of national history, comparative philology, Latin and Greek literature, modern European literature, diplomacy , numismatics and bibliology, all of which became deeply rooted in him and which, together with palaeography, formed the main body of his numerous works and studies. His continuous output dates back to at least 1897, when he published Alguns se l os antigos do concelho de Santarém [Some old stamps from the municipality of Santarém] with the Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda.

From a historiographical point of view, Pedro de Azevedo can be defined as a direct descendant of the Romantic and erudite tradition of the 19 th century, embodied in Portugal by Alexandre Herculano. This legacy also includes the Basto brothers, in particular the palaeographer and diplomat João Basto. The impact of the nineteenth-century Romantic historiographical current on the work produced by Pedro de Azevedo is apparent at various levels: from the protagonism he gave to the medieval period in his studies, most of which focused on the period from the 13 th to the 16 th centur y ; to the emphasis given to the quality of reflection in the treatment of historical subjects; and the eclectic approach he took to history. Above all, however, it shines through in the critical and systematic work he did on documentary sources, in what is undoubtedly his most valuable contribution to the field of erudite history, a branch of historiography that developed especially from the end of the 19 th century onwards and which combined the primacy of documentary research with the refinement of critical methods. In this regard, the names of Gabriel Pereira, Sousa Viterbo , and Braancamp Freire, among others, illustrate Pedro de Azevedo ’ s intellectual universe.

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