Baião ’ s works are based on an in-depth knowledge of the documentation and a wise evocation of the contexts, mentalities , and characters. They are decisive milestones in the subjects covered, such as the beginnings of expansion in the Indian Ocean, inquisitorial processes , and the work of Portuguese historians and diplomats.

However, he never went beyond a certain factualist limitation, which can be seen, for example, in his contribution to the História da Expansão Portuguesa no Mundo [History of the Portuguese expansion in the world ] , of which he was one of the editors . In the twenty or so pages dedicated to the governorship of Francisco de Almeida, Afonso de Albuquerque , and João de Castro, he limited himself to reproducing the essential facts and transcriptions from bibliographies that he himself had mastered, referring, moreover, to works of his own authorship ( História da Expansão Portuguesa no Mundo , [History of the Portuguese expansion in the world ] , vol. II, 1939, chapter IX, pp. 101-127). The same is true of the volumes of Episódios Dramático s da Inquisição Portuguesa [Dramatic Episodes of the Portuguese Inquisition] , in which he attempts to narrate the misadventures of national cultural figures with the Holy Office, without, however, going beyond a sometimes almost anecdotal record: see what he wrote in volume I about t he son of the chronicler Rui de Pina and about t he canon and poet Baltasar Estaço (Lisbon, Seara Nova , 1972 , 1 st ed. 1919, p p. 17-19 , 63 et seq. ).

Unlike other earlier Portuguese scholars and documentalists – João Pedro Ribeiro, José Agostinho de Macedo, Inocêncio Francisco da Silva , and Teófilo Braga – Baião appears not to have cultivated or enjoyed polemics, epistolary , or public conflict. He was part of a collective movement to reunite and rediscover national culture and historical science with the facts, documents and figures of the past, a movement where he seems to have integrated perfectly , apparently indifferent to the regimes that followed one another outside the archives and academia – monarchy, First Republic, military dictatorship, Estado Novo. In short, he coexisted intellectually with his academic ancestors and predecessors and with his peers and contemporaries dedicated to the same endeavours.

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