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Jacinto Inácio de Brito Rebelo (born on 25 October 1830 in Ponta Delgada, Azores) was the son of Pedro de Brito Rebelo, an important figure in the liberal army who died after the Cerco do Porto (Siege of Porto). His work was marked by military life although he also made a name for himself as a bibliophile, writer and historian. He studied at the Colégio Militar where he finished his course in 1847. On 27 July of that year he entered the infantry as a private. He pursued a military career and, until he was promoted to captain, held various posts in the public works sector in several concelhos [counties] around the country. He became a colonel (1887) and finally retired with the rank of brigadier-general (1895).
In the literary field he wrote both drama and poetry but it was as a historian that he stood out, revealing a clear interest in events related to the archipelago of the Azores. He collaborated on various periodicals, for example, Jardim das Damas, Campeão das Províncias and Jardim Literário, as well as O Instituto and Arquivo Histórico Português, in which he showed his notable skills as a historian. He was one of the founders of the newspaper Concórdia (1873), of which he was chief editor, and the magazine O Ocidente, Revista Ilustrada de Portugal e do Estrangeiro (1878), becoming one of their most active collaborators. In the various monographs and articles he wrote, he devoted special attention to the figures of Gil Vicente, Afonso de Albuquerque, Miguel Leitão de Andrade and Alexandre Herculano. We owe the first publication of the Livro de Marinharia (Book of Seamanship, 1903) attributed to João de Lisboa, a 16th century manuscript found in the library of the Condes de Castelo Melhor, to Brito Rebelo as well as publication of a popular edition of Fernão Mendes Pinto’s Peregrinação (Peregrination) in four volumes (1908-1910).
In November 1879 he accepted the invitation of Ernesto do Canto to become a regular contributor to the Arquivo dos Açores. He therefore moved to Lisbon to carry out some serious research in the Torre do Tombo searching for documents that could throw light on the history of the Azores. However, faced with incomplete indexes and some reference codes he was given by Ernesto do Canto that turned out to be wrong – but which at times in fact led to new discoveries – his research was hard and took a long time. It should be noted that at the time archive documents were not available for reading by the public, the staff were primarily occupied with royal diplomas, and there were no supporting monographs or catalogues. These would only appear later.
