José V. de Pina Martins was born in Penalva de Alva, in the municipality of Oliveira do Hospital, on 18 January 1920. He was the son of António Vitorino de Abrantes Martins, a landowner, and Maria Olímpia Faria de Pina. He attended primary school in Penalva de Alva, the Seminary of Coimbra and completed his secondary education at the Colégio Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas in Oliveira do Hospital. He enrolled at the University of Coimbra in 1942. From the beginning of his stay in this city, Pina Martins participated in activities promoted by Catholic youth circles and made his debut as an author, contributing to various periodicals. After completing his degree in Romance Philology in 1947 with a thesis entitled Miséria e Grandeza do Homem nos Pensamentos de Pascal (The Misery and Greatness of Man in the Thoughts of Pascal), he submitted a second thesis the following year to improve his grade, entitled A Ideia de Deus e da Morte na Poesia de Antero (The Idea of God and Death in the Poetry of Antero). It was also in 1948 that he moved to Rome to take up the position of Lecturer in Portuguese Culture at La Sapienza University .

In this city, he began working as a journalist for the newspaper L’Osservatore Romano in 1950 and directed a programme on Vatican Radio dedicated to promoting Portuguese culture. In the same year, he enrolled at the University of Bologna, where he travelled regularly to attend the lectures of Carlo Calcaterra. In 1951 and 1952, he also attended the Course in Library Science and Book History taught at the Vatican Apostolic Library by Lamberto Donati, a great connoisseur of illustrated books from the Renaissance. According to Pina Martins himself, it was at this time that he conceived the idea of creating a library dedicated to Humanism and the Renaissance and that he bought the first copies of rare works with which he began to realise his dream. Also in 1954, he was put in charge of Cultural Services at the Portuguese Embassy to the Holy See, becoming involved in the campaign for the release of the poet Ezra Pound. The following year (1955), he was appointed Portuguese reader in Poitiers. During his stay in this city, Pina Martins devoted himself to studying the collection of old books preserved in the Municipal Library and the University Library and developed a close relationship with Raymond Cantel. It was at the suggestion of the latter and Léon Bourdon that he enrolled his doctoral thesis at the University of Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle, in 1956. On his return to Portugal in 1962, José V. de Pina Martins was admitted as an assistant at the Faculdade de Letras [School of Arts and Humanities] , where he taught Modern Cultural History, Classical Cultural History, History of Portuguese Literature II and Italian Literature until 1972. In 1969, he began teaching technical preparation courses organised by the Library and Archives Inspectorate at the National Library in Lisbon, aimed at librarians, archivists and documentalists, where he taught the subject of History of the Book.

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