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By drawing indiscriminately on romantic idealism, especially via the French route, little indeed separated the voluntarist in this domain from the sociological and even providentialist theories, despite the greater influence attributed at times to individual paths (as in O. Martins' great portraits) and others to the "social milieu" (as insisted by Teófilo) on historical progress. Although with corrected excesses – which explain the criticisms of Consiglieri Pedroso and Emídio Garcia of the theory of divine choice, or of some positivists and republicans of the hyper-subjectivation of certain narratives –, the prominent role given to great personalities, the recognition of their relevance in historical processes, was practically unanimous among the many who, in the historiographical milieu, devoted themselves to biography (or resorted to it to compose synthesis works). In this sense, it is all the more significant that, even among those touched by deterministic theories, the awareness of the effectiveness of life portraits among a predominantly illiterate audience often prevailed over depersonalised accounts: as in the case of the positivist Zeferino Cândido, where the great figures provide the titles to the chapters of Portugal (S. Campos Matos, “História, positivismo e função dos grandes homens”, 1992, e Historiografia e memória nacional, 1998, pp.395-401, 409-28; F. Catroga, “O magistério da história e a exemplaridade do ‘grande homem’”, 2004; A.M. Hespanha, “A história na cultura portuguesa contemporânea”, 2009, pp.585-86).
This awareness, which also encompassed imagination and sentiment as the main avenues of attraction for the anonymous masses, was expressed in different ways by authors dedicated to biographical writing. Not many were like O. Martins, who became famous in the field of biography as a literary exercise or art of resurrection, either because they rejected it on principle or because erudition played a role in their interests and activity. But in the clear preference for the genre, especially reflected in the more substantial volumes, there was an almost equal manifestation of a pedagogical and moralising conception based on the idea of biography as the chosen terrain of history and of the latter, in the style of Carlyle and Emerson, as a collection of biographies. As already seen, many were successful in the genre of biographical writing before the undeniable influence of O. Martins' works: Pinheiro Chagas, Teófilo Braga, Rebelo da Silva, Latino Coelho and Luciano Cordeiro. All of them, in their own way, disciples of Plutarch and Cicero, used life stories as a means of politically active moralisation, but probably all of them, or the majority, were also knowledgeable about the individualistic theories then in vogue. (O. Martins, Os filhos de D. João I, [1891], p.8; P. Chagas, “Historia de Julio Cezar...”, 1864; T. Braga, Os centenarios como synthese affectiva..., 1884, p.181).
